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Twin Town High (vol. 8) |
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Topics > Arts > Readings/Lectures/Poetry/Open Mics |
...unleashing the awesome power of "the word!" |
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Who would you most like to go to Hell?
Thursday 20 April @ 17:40:51 (Read: 4167) |
by Lydia Howell
Think protest has to be grim? Humor is a mighty weapon for making political observations and deflating the powerful. Frank and Susan Fuller take aim at the growing political power of the religious Right with the “Department of Homeland Decency: Manual of Rules and Regulations.”
The Fullers report no shortage of material either. “Women’s reproductive rights. Abstinence-only sex-ed and prayer in the public schools. The Ten Commandments in courthouses. The fake fight about Christmas. Domestic spying. There was LOTS of fodder for us!” laughs Susan, longtime TC actor who’s also made her living doing voice-overs. “Frank and I were tired of being depressed. It was either drink or write!”
“Or drink AND write!” husband Frank Fuller, lifelong journalist and former managing editor of Pulse dryly chimes in.
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Truth Maze: Speaking Truth with Power
Friday 03 March @ 17:35:00 (Read: 2999) |
by Dwight Hobbes
In the beginning—the early ’70s, anyways—there was The Last Poets. Grandmaster Flash, Sugar Hill Gang and such. Grassroot prose-poet philosophers with serious skills and consciousness to match. On their heels came just so much niggah-noise from knucklehead thugs, Neanderthal narcissists prostituting the genre to glorify willful ignorance—a subhuman lifestyle of greed, violence and misogynist braggadocio. Rappers, their accountants and record labels got rich as hell and are getting richer still, while people get themselves killed playing “Emulate the Asshole.”
A long time later—and not a minute too soon—there is Truth Maze and his debut CD Expansions + Contractions (Psoems 1:1) on Tru Ruts/Speakeasy Records. Rectifying like a big dog, his voice harks back to the seminal era of spoken word and is about contributing to the community as an agent of change, not being a posturing parasite who helps hold it back (never mind oreos or toms—there’s your worst sellout). Truth pulls people’s coats with tough-love criticism. Maybe kid gloves compared to, say, Last Poet Jalal Nuriddin’s “Wake Up Niggers”—but, just the same, he calls black folk on chronic complacence.
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Progressive rabbi to speak on new “spirtual politics”
Wednesday 15 February @ 14:21:25 (Read: 4896) |
by Lydia Howell
Rabbi Michael Lerner is most known for what he calls “a progressive middle path that is both pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian.” He has abhorred Palestinian suicide bombers as well as Israel’s violent repression in the Occupied Territories, earning the ire of some on both sides.
Lerner weighs in on another hot-button issue—the concept of morality in politics —with his newest book, “The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country From The Religious Right.”
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“Beirut Heart”—Wisconsin housewife’s Middle East odyssey
Wednesday 11 January @ 19:02:01 (Read: 2794) |
by Lydia Howell
Beirut was once known as “the Paris of the Middle East.” For Cathy Sultan, Beirut was like an endlessly facinating lover—that 15 years of civil war ultimately consumed. Sultan reads from her remarkable memoir, “A Beirut Heart: One Woman’s War” (Scarletta Press), Saturday, Jan. 14, at May Day Books in Minneapolis.
“There were ancient marketplaces from the time of Christ, Roman ruins in the center of the city. You’d see an open hole of an archeological excavation next to a modern building. Women from Saudia Arabia, totally veiled, walked next to women in tight jeans. A cosmopolitan city,” the Eau Claire, Wisc., author remembers.” Beirut was the perfect blend of Eastern and Western cultures.”
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Desdamona: Listen to the Lyrics
Thursday 10 November @ 20:58:32 (Read: 2591) |
by Dwight Hobbes
She turned on the radio to catch a vibe
alive with the earth inside
her eyes like lost seashells,
drifting from the bottom to spill over the brim
The music bled through speakers
began to trim her capacity to speak, her
ideas derived from his
manhood, determining who she is
It must be the ass, it must be the cash
it must be the anthrax on the Tampax
Now she sings solo about how she ain't no ordinary ho
Let me see that sexy body go bump, bump, bump
She slumps in the seat,
says she doesn't listen to the lyrics but she likes the beat
Mainstream seeps into subconscious and slowly but surely she feels worthless
like success might lie in a bikini on UNCUT BET.
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An excerpt from Cindy Sheehan’s statement on what needs to happen now...
Thursday 06 October @ 02:41:55 (Read: 2691) |
The “Anti-War” Dems perplex me the most … except for the good guys, like the members of the Out of Iraq Caucus and a few senators, the Democratic party line is that we must allow Iraq a window of two months' time, and after the referendum on the constitution this month and the parliamentary elections in December, it will be time to attack the failed policies of George and his cabal of liars.
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Palabristas: Fighting Words
Friday 16 September @ 03:42:32 (Read: 6603) |
by Toki Wright
Late last Thursday evening, I entered the Resource Center of the Americas on E. Lake St. with pen and pad in hand. On a small couch and wooden chair I see Palabristas members Teresa Ortiz from the Resource Center of the Americas, Lorna Duarte (current editor of La Prensa de Minnesota) and Rodrigo Sanchez-Chavarria (activist and radio host) deep in discussion about their next performance. Two things strike me about the conversation. Firstly, they are actually meeting to discuss the performance beyond just practicing and secondly, they look genuinely happy to be performing poetry.
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Writer finds grace in place
Thursday 14 July @ 04:13:09 (Read: 2528) |
Novelist, ecologist Scott Russell Sanders to speak Thursday
by Brian Kaller
Scott Russell Sanders has written books for almost every corner of the library, including children’s books (“Warm as Wool”), science fiction (“Terrarium”), fantasy (“Bad Man Ballad”) and historical fiction (“A Place Called Freedom”). But he is perhaps most renowned for his personal essays about the natural world, which have appeared in publications like the Sun, Orion and the Utne Reader.
In an ironic, fast-paced culture, Sanders is the opposite of hip. His thoughtful essays celebrate the joys of not going anywhere, of getting to know the nearby creek or the old lady across the street, of family and community. Gently radical, deeply spiritual and passionately conservationist, Sanders harkens back to the American traditions of Henry David Thoreau and Aldo Leopold. Pulse of the Twin Cities interviewed Sanders earlier this week.
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Women take on Wal-Mart
Thursday 05 May @ 19:15:31 (Read: 3609) |
Journalist Liza Featherstone speaks at St. Paul labor series
by Lydia Howell
After cutting a wide swath of economic dominance across rural and small-town America, retail giant Wal-Mart is meeting urban resistance as it tries to expand into cities, observes journalist Liza Featherstone. When a Wal-Mart opened on University Avenue in St. Paul last May, it was met by hundreds of protesters, both neighborhood residents and union members.
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Poet documents the downsized
Tuesday 30 November @ 20:39:47 (Read: 2921) |
Nowak writes about working class
by Lydia Howell
We can picture farmers and workers from the 1930s more easily than those of today. The Great Depression had Dorothea Lange, whose photographs of down-and-out Americans remain in history textbooks. But who tells the stories of today’s downsized factory workers?
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'Homegrown Democrat' Keillor's Manifesto
Wednesday 20 October @ 15:05:26 (Read: 2987) |
by Polly Mann
If you, like me, believe that the greatest threat this country and the world today faces is the reelection of George W. Bush, I would urge you to run, not walk, to the nearest bookstore and buy a bunch—that’s right, a bunch—of copies of Garrison Keillor’s book, “Homegrown Democrat.”
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Angela Davis to Speak
Thursday 16 September @ 16:58:02 (Read: 2978) |
Author,activist, critizes prison system
by Dwight Hobbes
Prisons says author and long-time activist Angela Davis. They don't rehabilitate. They exist to keep companies in business, building penitentiaries and keep troublesome minorities away. The responsible thing to do, she says, is get rid of them.
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Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman pushes the third estate
Wednesday 21 April @ 13:39:23 (Read: 4370) |
by Lydia Howell
“There are crucial questions we have to raise and they don’t involve lack of patriotism. They involve our civic duty, which is to hold people in power accountable,” concludes Amy Goodman. “There’s a reason journalism is the only profession that’s protected by the Constitution. It’s essential to the functioning of a democratic society.”
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Against All Enemies, except himself
Thursday 08 April @ 15:42:29 (Read: 3064) |
A review of Richard A. Clarke’s history of the War on Terror
by Ed Felien
Richard Clarke ends with the phrase from the oath of office that gives the book its title, “to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States of America, Against All Enemies.”
What is clear from his book is that Clarke never really thought about that oath, and, if he did, he misconstrued the meaning so that he thought his job was to defend the country by subverting the Constitution.
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The Pulse Interviews Harvey Pekar
Wednesday 24 March @ 12:55:08 (Read: 2836) |
The Pulse Interviews Harvey Pekar, in comic form.
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David Daniels brings a reggae sensibility to his new CD Talkin’ Roots
Wednesday 03 March @ 13:57:15 (Read: 3627) |
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by Dwight Hobbes
Anybody who’s ever caught writer-performer David Daniels
in action can tell you: this guy burns like a house on fire.
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Book Review: Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976.
Friday 27 February @ 11:14:17 (Read: 2741) |
Anonymous writes: "by Piero Gleijeses
When I first saw this book, I was preparing to go to Cuba and went to the Cuba Solidarity Committee meeting to meet local people interested in the right of Cubans to their own government. The woman selling this book encouraged me to read it in spite of its massive volume and focus on warfare strategies. "
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Henry Rollins: not a liar
Wednesday 18 February @ 14:04:12 (Read: 4143) |
by doc pop
I wouldn’t call Henry Rollins a renaissance man … I’d say he’s some sort of Fritz Lang super robot, burning raw cynicism and testosterone for fuel.
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