Lisa Gill's poetic subversions never neglect the art, humility, compassion, care & choice, hence her presentation on Guerrilla Literature @ 516 Arts yesterday afternoon. Check out the Street Arts exhibition. Loved Thomas C. Haag's alter-mythologies (see… Continue

Because of the Harlem Renaissance, the post-World War I Great Migration of African Americans from the South to northern cities is generally well-known. Blacks also resettled the West Coast to work in defense industries during World War II, the subject of Chester Himes’ harrowing novel, If He Hollers, Let Him Go. In early histories of New Mexico, the focus has been upon the “Heroic Triad” of Anglos, Latinos and Native Americans who comprise this… Continue

Jan. 4 It's a brisk morning and the sky is gray-white and overcast. I'm staying at the River Inn in Monte Rio, a small, sleepy town along the Russian River, enjoying a brief vacation between semesters in graduate school. The River Inn, nestled among dark-green trees, is a comfortable ochre European-style house, with a dining room heated by a potbelly iron stove and wide windows facing out onto the river, and small, unheated bedrooms on the… Continue

It was one of my brother’s life-pleasures to sing with Pete Seeger at University Settlement Camp in Beacon, New York. As for so many, Pete was a surrogate father figure to him. Seeger and his wife Toshi Ohta, who was involved in radical organizations in New York City, shopped sometimes at my father’s Oriental Food Shop on Amsterdam Avenue and 124th Street in Manhattan. During the summer my siblings and I would attend Pioneer Youth Camp in Rifton, New… Continue