Long Weekend

Beautiful day in New York today: hot, sunny, mimosa-worthy; kind of perfect for what is treated as the unmeteorological-yet-quite-official First Weekend of Summer.

Relaxing morning followed by a nice walk to brunch followed by a lingering and even nicer walk to run some errands and now we're back in Chelsea listening to Django Reinhardt and about to get ready for a Sweet 17 birthday party for one of Cory's clan.

Very sad to read about Gil Scott-Heron last night. He had a hard life in a lot of ways, but did some very good, very important work. Very happy to have shared some time on this earth with him.

For him and for the day, here are a couple shots of a sculpture in a park in San Francisco - called Ecstasy in its current incarnation, it's a repurposed and reclaimed piece that Karen Cusolito and Dan Das Mann originally did for a huge Burning Man project. Fortunate to have crossed paths with this beautiful work while it was out in public.

SF MoMA

Happy Birthday Bob!

And not just that, but happy 70th birthday to the singing cowboy who wrote the number that gives this blog its name. Very exciting, and there are some good events to honor the occasion.




First, and most immediately I suppose, is that WBAI is devoting the whole day to archival interviews, studio sessions, and Dylan-related audio artifacts. You can listen to 99.5 FM or stream by clicking the link above. It's their semi-annual beg-a-thon too, so be warned about that. Small price to pay. (Hey, a station's gotta make a living. Especially a station full of dissenters, most of whom volunteer their time.)

Film Forum is showing a couple flicks documenting the early days. Don't Look Back, the D.A. Pennebaker doc that's been around since '67, and Murray Lerner's The Other Side of the Mirror, which covers the performances at the Newport Folk Festival from '63-'65, but was just released in '007. They're playing through June 2, so don't delay too much if you want to catch them.

And, of course, there is no shortage of ways to celebrate online. Articles, editorials, shoutouts, discussions, suggestions, photo essays, tributes, and of course blog entries...

Have at it!

R.E.M. Sleep

First of all, a shoutout to Carrie for getting through finals; and a special shoutout to Sherin who is somewhere in the final stages of her Master's (so thoroughly embedded in research and writing that I don't even know exactly what's left for her, but I know she's nearing the finish line, if not yet across it).

And so here's a testament to one of the presumed, if elusive, rewards of getting through grad school, which is also a nod to the screening/talk with Michael Stipe (about the very cool short 'films' curated by Stipe to accompany the songs on Collapse Into Now) Cory and I went to a couple weeks ago.

Long Pause

SO - this is the most out of it I've been since I started this thing. I think.

I was out for a variety of reasons, including travel, work, ennui and inertia. Then I started and restarted responses to the responses to Bin Laden's death, but didn't want to go with any of them. Suffice to say that I am not among those who feel that the event was a good excuse for a Frat Party/Girls Gone Wild moment, nor a mediathon around that reaction.

With that, here's a quotation from MLK, a few photos from his memorial in San Fran, and then we'll get back to it.

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. … Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

Check out the Freedom Riders documentary on American Experience tonight, if you have a moment. We caught a preview screening and talk a while back - it's very worthwhile.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.