Any and all posts, rants and raves about the film adaptation of Ntozake Shange’s choral poem, for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf, have gotten just what’s coming to them…attention, retweets, ping backs, Facebook recommends. I remember many moons ago, a young Shange, hot off the success of her “for [...]
We haven’t heard much about the President’s trip to Asia since the breakdown of trade talks in South Korea. A bust according to news outlets. Was it a total bust? No one’s talking about it now. Personally, I like this photo of him having green tea ice cream on a visit to the Great Buddha [...]
Washington, DC this weekend was a city of magical realism. We caught a glimpse of a pink dragon going up 14th Street with a merry band of revelers on board. A gaucho on a horse brought traffic to a crawl on my street. I suppose when the going gets tough, the tough think magically. Every [...]
If the National Mall is considered the “prime time” for rallies, then Comedy Central was not ready. I can’t say what happened, what was funny, or what was what on the stage where Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert MC’d because I couldn’t SEE or HEAR anything. Since there was no way to get past the [...]
In 2008 I started a Community Organizer Hall of Fame, a series of profiles of persons who are doing selfless work for the benefit of others. Yesterday Marisol Valles Garcia, a 20-year-old mother and student of criminology was sworn in as sheriff of Praxedis G. Guerrero, a small border town caught in the crossfire of [...]
When I saw chef Nathalie Dupree‘s name on the list of authors for the Capital Bookfest, an annual event that features African American books and authors (now expanding from PG County into several communities) , I didn’t really blink. Nathalie is well-respected as a southern food chef, and she can throw down some fried chicken. [...]
The New and Enclosed Arena Stage Once Arena Stage started their capital campaign to expand their complex, it became part of a larger urban plan for the Southwest waterfront area. At this point the new Mead Center for American Theater holds more than just the landmark Fichandler main stage and Kreeger stage inside the glass [...]
Inside the Beltway is quite exciting this time of year for all the best reasons…and this just scratches the surface. Sunday, September 5, 6 PM Graywolf Press and CAS/51 celebrates the publication of SKIN, INC. – Identity Repair Poems by Thomas Sayers Ellis (see the eclectique interview with Ellis) CAS/51 510 Randolph Street, Washington, DC [...]
In the years that followed, New Orleans could have remained a symbol of destruction and decay; of a storm that came and the inadequate response that followed. It was not hard to imagine a day when we’d tell our children that a once vibrant and wonderful city had been laid low by indifference and neglect. [...]
I read Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir of her year off to reset her senses and sense in Italy, India, Bali, but I didn’t finish the book. I picked it up right after finishing Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea. His quest raised the stakes; so a self-help travelogue was probably not the best [...]
