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Brian & George's Ukrainian Odyssey #3, page 10
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Mecha Sonic Sessions 2 - music, industrial noise, and fire
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by Michael Cobb
ave you ever seen a man play an umbrella under an iron horse? Neither had I, until I attended Mecha Sonic Sessions 2 at an undisclosed location in deep Gowanus.
On Saturday, May 21 I went beyond Smith and 9th streets. Across from Bayside Fuel and a metal scrap yard stands an innocuous looking cinderblock building near Hamilton Parkway. A bohemian crowd hung around outside chatting, smoking, and waiting for the show to begin. Passing through an iron door I entered an underworld full of music, industrial noise, and fire.
With 40 performers and 20 acts, it’s challenging to summarize, but in essence Mecha Sonic is a melding of jazz, powertools, and pyrotechnics in a carefully crafted series of avante garde works orchestrated with classical precision and stunning theatricality. The show pushes the boundaries of multiple art forms and results in an experience that is exciting, surprising, thrilling, and at times even a bit dangerous. During one act alone, I witnessed Dalius Naujo conduct an orchestra of three baritone saxophones (Dave Sewelson, Lathan Hardy, and Stefan Zeniuk), trumpet, and tuba backed by a Tom Waitsian junkyard band clanging
off kilter rhythms on pots, pans, and an oil drum while a 500,000 volt Tesla coil crackled lightning blue bolts of electricity over the whirring of circular saws and the alarming whistle of a huge acetylene tank that shot 15 foot flames inside the massive industrial space. Fire and the fear of being blown to bits generated enough heat to make me break a sweat.
Other highlights included sultry singer Sage Sovereign descending stairs with a fiery crown backed by the snaking, swinging sounds of early 20th century New Orleanian jazz. An expert fire eater, Sovereign later extinguished flaming wands down her throat. It should be noted that the producers took precaution by having a fire crew and EMTs on site. The aforementioned “umbrellist” Ken Butler played a mind boggling array of homemade instruments including two hockey sticks and a tennis racket, a broom, a fishing pole and badminton racket, a balloon, a sword, a knife, and finally the umbrella, proving that while almost anything can be strung, it takes a genius to conceive and realize these mad, surrealistic visions.
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Calabrese's court goes back live
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by Brian Abate
ed Hook’s Community Justice Center has been an important part of the neighborhood since opening on Visitation Place in 2000. I had the opportunity to get a tour of the Center and speak to Judge Alex Calabrese, attorney Edna McGoldrick, and Director of Housing and Civil Justice, Ross Joy. I got to witness some of the housing court cases that took place at the Justice Center, including one involving a woman from the Red Hook Houses, who has had a broken shower for more than six months. Another case involved a woman whose stove that has not worked for more than three months. “I want to make sure that everyone knows they should come to us if they’re having a problem like this,” Calabrese said. “I know a lot of people worry about coming to court but they’re entitled to the repairs. Unfortunately, it tends to be a long drawn out process but we’ll make sure the repairs get done.” Calabrese has even visited some apartments that aren’t getting needed repairs in a timely fashion in order to try to speed up the process. One of the biggest obstacles for the Justice Center during the last couple of years has been adjusting to virtual court and dealing with the many challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. “To call it a challenge for us, is an understatement,” McGoldrick said. “We had been doing things in person for so long and it’s a huge change and adjustment. Today, one person was holding their camera while walking and he couldn’t hear us well and the moving camera was making me dizzy. I’m a bit old-fash-
(continued on page 5)
Industrial noise and fire in Gowanus. Photo by David Siffert
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On May 12, Fort Greene's Brooklyn Music School presented a new concert titled “New Music in New York,” featuring new original pieces of contemporary music that focus on peace and the environment—including “Dissolve, O my Heart” by Missy Mazzoli, “Peace” by Jessie Montgomery, and “Lyrica Nova, Op.59 No.3” by Ukrainian composer Sergei Bortkiewicz (1877-1952). The concert also marked the U.S. premiere of “The Condor and Woodpecker Sonata” by celebrated composer Leonardo Le San. The four pieces were performed by Juilliard School alumni Leerone Hakami (violin) and Shay Slusky (piano). The free concert, open to the public as an in-person event, was also live streamed. “It is a gift in my book to have an audience in person at a live concert and to extend the invitation to anyone around the world that would like to tune in and join this program where these amazing artists worked so hard to put that program together,” Le San said. “And this was my first concert stepping out in person and showing my face because every other concert I’ve been a part of has been virtual, long distance, and live streamed. It was a wonderful feeling … like a Renaissance moment.” Inspired by the large condor bird who
travels from Argentina to the mountains of Colombia, Le San says “The Condor and Woodpecker Sonata” is a “love letter to the environment.” He began writing the piece in 2020 and worked with Hakami and Slusky to turn the idea into a reality. While the first bird character serves more as a satire character, mocking the incoming human machine, the second character is a befriending hybrid bird that expresses sorrow and grief about environmental conditions and for the bird’s habitat. The third movement of the piece introduces the woodpecker and represents the way in which the three birds communicate their concerns about the human’s presence in their world, to express Le San’s environmental empathy. During post-concert Q&A, Le San noted that his collaboration with the two young artists was “unbelievable”—in a positive way—as they all developed and expressed their own voices for the piece throughout the entire three movements. “It was very important, for me, that they were each allowed to have a voice, and I think it came true. They championed the piece and that was a huge success for me as a composer,” Le San said. “When I saw the audience during their performances, I felt the energy. That energy was really circu-
lating, and I think we were all energized in just not taking one second for granted and just being fully present every second of the concert.” BMS Student Mentor Director Dr. Michelle Lie noted that one of her students, age 7, attended the concert with his father. “He said that it was his second ever live concert he attended and was particularly taken by the violin performance as he studies violin currently,” BMS Executive Director Brian Adamczyk, who emceed the evening said: “We offer different types of performing arts programming at BMS and classical music is certainly one of them. But I can’t say that this organization historically has done a lot of new music, classical genre premieres, or special events,” he said. “We know that fans of this type of music exist out there and, so, I think this was a moment to start building a new audience and to take a first stab in creating an opportunity for that type of music to be performed properly in a theatrical setting.” The performance is still available to watch online on BMS’s YouTube channel (search “New Music In New York l Brooklyn Music School”) and will be shown in Colombia where the condor is a very important symbol. “This is very much a global fight … to save our environment, and this is what we do through music,” Le San said.
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June 2022
LETTER
Subway vendors
There are more important issues for riders to deal with than legal or illegal immigrant vendors selling Churro and other products in the subways. This was the case at the recent arrest on April 29th of a vendor at the East New York Brooklyn Broadway Junction A,C,L & J Station. The same is true for transit police. Fare beaters continue to rob the MTA of several hundred million in revenue yearly. Com-
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muters have to deal with conductors who close the doors while crossing the platform attempting to transfer from a local to the express train. Try looking for the proper way to depose of your old newspaper as more trash cans are removed from more stations. Riders have to deal with the fear of being mugged, pushed down a flight of stairs or on to the tracks, aggressive panhandlers, eating as if one is at home or restaurant, those
hogging two seats, yawning, coughing or sneezing without covering up, the release of flatulence and acrobatic performers swinging from subway car poles or homeless people riding back and forth with their meager possessions taking up several seats. Women are periodically accosted by gropers while perverts engage in other unhealthy sexual activities. Many have grown tired dealing with rats, mice and litter. NYC Tran-
sit should consider installing separate cans for recycling newspapers, plastic and glass along with regular garbage. Selling advertising on the side of cans could generate revenue to help cover the costs of more frequent off-peak and late-night collection and disposal.—Larry Penner Larry Penner is a transportation advocate, historian and writer who previously worked for the Federal Transit Administration Region 2 NY Office.
Opinion: Words by George
B
An unexpected benefit, by George Fiala
elieve it or not, I think COVID has given me a precious gift. It's kind of a long story but I've got the room this month so here goes. It all started in December 2019, when a friend of mine who just happened to start the Brooklyn Paper back in the 1970's, Ed Weintrob, told me that if I hadn't been to the Newseum in Washington DC, I better go now, because they were closing for good at the end of the year. Turns out that the Newseum, which I had never heard of, was a museum dedicated to the idea that the media and the public need to better understand each other. It was started by the founder of Gannett newspapers, and occupied a large building in downtown DC. It opened in 2008, but ended up losing too much money so the building was sold and they had to find a new home, which they are still actually looking for. However, I did make it to DC right around Christmas and spent a fun couple of days going to different museums, and a restaurant or three.
desk. Both of those I have never taken before, or since. My eyes were so red that I actually went to the eye doctor, who couldn't find anything wrong and told me that older people can get dry eye and gave me some drops for it. Sooner or later I got better and didn't think too much more of it. PS–I didn't miss a day of work. A couple of months go by, and the whole country is shocked into a lockdown because of an epidemic that was throwing thousands into hospitals, and killing many of them. Of course, that's COVID, which is still feared among many throughout this land. I'm one of those that still have the immortality syndrome of youth, and I was very happy to be belong to not one, but two essential services—my newspaper and my mailing business. I missed no work, no mailings or issues of the paper, although work got really slow and I actually did spend a fair amount of time at home, something I hadn't really done since before kindergarten. Friends of mine thought I was nuts to go outside at all.
A couple of weeks after returning, which would make it the middle of January 2020, I came down with a horrendous cough that accompanied other horrible ailments, including a bad case of diarrhea.
I broke down and got an internet connection and started staying up all hours watching old Johnny Carson reruns via streaming. I admit it was an interesting new way to live, not having to get up for work at any particular time most days.
The actual point of this story is that I'm pretty old, and in all my years I never had a bad cough or a humongous case of diarrhea. And my teeth didn't ache and my eyes never turned red and I didn't have trouble getting out of bed. I slept with a bottle of Nyquil next to me and worked with Dayquil on my
As far as my physical being, which is the real point of this column, I noticed that my jaw felt funny, and I started having pains in my joints. Both these things had never happened to me before. My mom used to complain about arthritis, and I just figured my time had come.
A friend recommended glucosamine, which actually helped, and which I swore by for about a year. But I still didn't feel myself, all of which I attributed to old age. After a while something new started happening, which is that in order to get up out of a chair, or do other things that required changing positions, I found that I could no longer just do it, I actually had to think about it first. I told a lot of friends about how I missed my youth, when my brain didn't have to know that I was going to do before I did it. Things like standing up and walking down stairs. But as far as I knew, those days were gone. I never had any training in aging, I just figured I'd learn as I go along. So I didn't question anything. At this point I wasn't really sure that I had experienced COVID, but I kind of suspected it and I saw articles about it being around the world even before 2020. DC was full of tourists from all over the world when I went that holiday season. In 2021 I took the COVID shots and the booster. Because I was visiting a friend's grandmother, I would take the Covid test weekly. One day, after covering a Christmas party at the senior center on Court Street, I tested positive. I was very slightly sick for about two days. I did notice that my symptoms were exactly like those I experienced that January, just a million times milder. And just like that first time, after a big trip to the bathroom, I got better. Anyway, fast forward to about a month or two ago, and I slowly realized that I no longer had to think about what I
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was going to do before doing it. I could sit up on a dime. And I could go into a catcher's crouch just like the old days. That had been my check on my physical condition, and for a while I couldn't do it at all. That's when I realized that what I actually had lost was my balance. I couldn't walk up stairs without holding on, and in general, without actually giving up any activities, I had to fight frailty. The words of my mother, who when she said it was at 20 years older than I am now, came back to me. "I don't wish old age on anyone." But all of a sudden I had it all back. Just like that. A gift more precious than anything money can buy. And what do attribute it to... I'm guessing I must have had long Covid! Hopefully I'm off the hook for at least a decade, as there's nothing like youth!!!
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Plastic-free lunch day at PS 15 by Nathan Weiser Cafeteria Culture is behind a 2019 award-winning documentary called Microplastic Madness. This movie documents the first Plastic Free Lunch Day, which was led by 56 fifth graders from PS 15. On that day in 2019, students counted 558 fewer plastic items and reduced total lunchtime waste by 99 percent. This year they had pizza, broccoli and oranges all served without plastic. They had paper trays and food that was not wrapped. Cafeteria Culture staff comes to third grade teacher Michael Maraia’s classroom once a week. They study the use of single use plastics and how it creates micro plastics and how it gets in the ocean. “The kids are really into it,” Maraia said. “We have been recycling in the school for years with our compost bins. The kids really catch on how important it is and how important it is for making our earth sustainable.” In an effort to reduce plastic waste, many students are bringing reusable water bottles and reusable forks from home. At the school, their goal is to be zero waste.
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“The biggest issue we have had this year is our water cups, which are plastic” Maraia said. “Every day just in the cafeteria alone we go through about 100 cups. Our goal is to try to come up with solutions for how we can make changes.” The third grade teacher’s students will be writing letters to businesses to try to get everybody in the school a reusable water cup. Rhonda Keyser, who is the education director of Cafeteria Culture, said the organization has been in existence for 11 years. “This is all over NYC and it started right here and it is because of our incredible kitchen staff,” Keyser said. “We want to thank you for being incredible visionaries. Without you, our students would have nobody to talk to. We asked them, do you think it is important to reduce school food and plastic, and they said because we have access to the decision makers.” “Plastic makes a big impact on the earth and when we liter it goes into the ocean and it contaminates the foods that we eat,” said Kioni Grant, who is in fourth grade. Cafeteria Culture works creatively with youth to achieve equitable zero waste, climate-smart school communities and a plastic free biosphere. The kids at PS 15 learned how plastic is polluting the environment, and they have marched for climate justice.
June 2022
THE JUDGE
(continued from page 1)
ioned in this way but I think it makes a big difference to work with people in person.” “It’s just not the same when you’re not talking to and working with people in person,” said Calabrese. “We’re holding housing court again and the number of cases has increased and unfortunately there are a lot of apartments that are in bad shape and desperately need work done. The other cases that we had very frequently before the rent moratorium were tenants not being able to pay the rent. “One of the things we try to do here is get to the root of why people are ending up here, whether it’s for getting behind on the rent, or shoplifting or assault. Rather than just having them serve their time and end up back here again later on, we try to help people long-term. If they have a drug issue, we try to work with them to get sober, if they’re having mental health issues we want to get them the treatment they need.” McGoldrick also told me about peacemaking, which is a holistic approach, based on Native American tradition, that allows everyone involved in a situation to talk through the problem and work together to reach an agreement on restitution and repair. It’s different than a typical mediation process where an impartial person listens to each party’s side of the story and then makes a final decision. “For example, there was a young man
who hit and injured his sister because she took his food,” McGoldrick said. “There were obviously deeper issues than her taking his food so we brought both of them in and we brought in the parents and we got them to talk about what was really going on. They got to the heart of the problem instead of just coming up with a temporary solution that wouldn’t resolve those deeper issues.” I was invited to observe the courtroom, which struck me in that the judge’s seat wasn’t up above everyone else’s like I was used to seeing on television or at Borough Hall. “That was done to make the process less intimidating,” McGoldrick said. “There are also windows without locks so there can be some light in the courtroom. We don’t want people to feel afraid when they come here.” I felt comfortable, which seemed fitting for Red Hook. I also got to see the cells, and while they weren’t fancy they certainly seemed nicer than the pictures of the cells at Rikers Island, and the bathrooms at least provided some privacy. McGoldrick’s one complaint about the facility is that it does not provide much privacy for visitors or lawyers to speak to people being held in the cells, which makes it difficult to discuss their cases. “We want people to be comfortable when they come here and to know that they will be treated with respect,” Calabrese said.
Justice Center Director Brian Joy (left) inside the Center at 88 Visitation Place.
respect. This came through in their interactions with people and throughout my tour. “We do a lot of prevention services, not waiting for people to have a housing case or facing eviction,” Joy said. “One of the services we’ve expanded, especially during the pandemic, is helping people with the lease renewal process. There’s a lot that goes into it and it’s actually a burdensome process so that’s our bread and butter. We’ll do around 15 certifications in a day when it’s busy.” Another form of assistance the Center provides is helping tenants (especially the elderly) learn how to use technology to renew leases.
While Wednesday is the day when housing court proceedings are actually scheduled in the courtroom, the help desk is open Monday-Friday to answer housing-related questions.” It was a busy day at the Justice Center with Calabrese, McGoldrick, and Joy having to move from room to room and work with a lot of different people. “We’re here in person, and there’s a lot to get done,” McGoldrick said. “We had to get used to virtual court and now we're getting back to live. I’d just like people to know that we’re here to continue to help people and try to make a difference for the community.”
Calabrese, McGoldrick, and Joy spoke about the importance of treating those in the Center with dignity and
“We want people to be comfortable when they come here and to know that they will be treated with respect,” Calabrese said.
676 celebrates getting together! by Nathan Weiser PS 676 had after school Family Game Night starting at 3 p.m. on a beautiful afternoon in their school yard. This was the first one that they school organized since before the pandemic. Many parents of the elementary school kids attended the activity filled event.
After the pizza, the activities continued. There was a group of about 10 kids who enthusiastically played a game of musical chairs and then 10 more kids who did not play the first time got to enjoy musical chairs. After each musical chairs game, the winner got a prize.
Many parents were also at the harbor science fair earlier in the afternoon. At the science fair, each class prepared a project as a team.
Pastor Pacheco from Redemption Church played the music during the musical chairs and was the DJ for the event.
To start the event, there was Connect Four, Checkers, Uno, Candy Land, Jenga and Make 7 for the kids and parents to enjoy at the tables.
After the musical chairs in the school yard was finished, there was a raffle for the kids who were interested. Three names were chosen and the prizes that the kids received consisted of a family Uno game, Twister and a Star Wars game.
There was a lot of pizza available from Mark’s Pizzeria, which is close by on Van Brunt Street, as well as water and Capri Sun for the kids.
Red Hook Star-Revue
The conditions were ideal for the kids to enjoy the games outside.
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June 2022, Page 5
TONY SAYS IT'S PIZZA TIME!
McGettrick’s questions by Brian Abate As we wrote in our May edition, Assemblymember Marcela Mitaynes introduced a bill to the state legislature that would create zero-emission zones in “heavy distribution areas.” If those zones are deemed warranted, then the city’s zoning laws might have to be altered. Right now, people can do anything they want with their property as long as they don’t violate existing zoning, which includes things like noise, etc. But not pollution or truck traffic.
would consider creating these zeroemission zones.
This is important for Red Hook as more than a couple last-mile warehouses are planned for the neighborhood. There are concerns about too much truck traffic and pollution.
“One of the important things is that they speak with the leadership either in the State Senate or the Assembly,” McGettrick said. “Another is whether it has been assigned to a committee and if so, which committee? Have they decided to hold hearings on the bill, and if so, when? Also, is there a companion bill with the same legislative components? Has that been introduced or sponsored in the state senate? These are some of the basic elements in the making of legislation.”
Red Hook is a mixed-use zoned area, a legacy of the days when longshoremen ruled the neighborhood. The huge amount of online shopping has created a new need for local warehouses. Because of zoning, Red Hook has become an ideal place for real estate developers to build these warehouses. As a mixed-use community, with both public and private housing, as well as schools and parks, there needs to be a balance between commercial and residential use to keep everything working well. Mitaynes’ proposed bill would set up a one year program which would require the last-mile-warehouses to conduct studies about their impacts to the neighborhoods they operate in. Based upon the results, the State
Long-time Red Hook c o m mu n i t y leader John Mc G e t t r i c k John McGettrick is the longhead of the Red Hook contacted the time Civic Association S t a r- R e v u e and expressed concerns:
We attempted to ask Mitaynes these questions, but as of press time, her office has not responded. In an interview with THE CITY last month, Mitaynes said “This is about the future of our community and ensuring that we’re as healthy as possible. I think we can be a driving force to really show how we can be proactive on some of the stuff that’s happening, particularly because these things are happening so fast.”
Starting September PS 15 will be the Red Hook’s only Public choice for and NOT TOO LATE! It’s not too late!Kindergarten Seats are available at It’s not School tooIT’S late! Seats are available at Pre-K
Seats are available at PS 15, The Patrick F. Daly Magnet School of the Arts for grades 3K to 5 please contact the Parent Coordinator please contact the Parent Coordinator Ms. Campbell at Ms. Campbell Please contact theatmain office at 718-330-9280 call Mcampbell50@schools.nyc.gov to Mcampbell50@schools.nyc.gov ensure a seat for theor 2022-2023 school year!or call 347-930-2746 to ensure a seat for the 347-930-2746 to ensure a seat for the We have afterschool opportunities 2022-2023 school year! 2022-2023 school year! for grades 3K for through We have5th! afterschool opportunities for We have afterschool opportunities
The Patrick F. The DalyPatrick MagnetF.School of the Arts is now for the fall term. PS taking 15, Theapplications Patrick F. Daly Magnet PS 15, Daly Magnet th DOE website or call (718) 935-2009. You can getArts one for at Myschools School of the Arts for gradesth 3K to 5th School of the grades 3K on to 5the
We take a holistic approach to education that nurtures the child by offering a safe and stimulating education for all our students, including students with Disabilities (SWDs), English Language Learners (ELL) and high achieving students; our teachers participate in professional development to offer continuous improvement and ongoing staff development.
We promote wellness through numerous on-site services and community partners such as an inhouse occupational, physical, dental and speech therapists from Lutheran/ Langone Health. PS 15 thrives on active partnerships with many community organizations including: The Studio in School, Extreme Kids and Crew, Young Audiences of NY, Brooklyn Chorus, Marquis Studios and Cafeteria Culture among others.
grades 3K through 5th!
We encourage strong parent participation as well as a collaborative and professional partnership with community-based organizations that address the physical, intellectual, emotional, moral and social needs of our children. Our instructional programs enable all children to reach high levels of performance that will prepare them to be successful people in the 21st Century.
grades 3K through 5th!
Please reach out to Ms. Campbell if you need further assistance. Call 917-669-0508 or mcampbell50@schools.nyc.gov Page 6 Red Hook Star-Revue
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June 2022
Biddybros achieve big
S
by Brian Abate
ports have always been an important part of the Red Hook community. Melvin Goddard has been helping kids in the neighborhood reach their potential in sports.
from there we threw a block party and I saw that we had a bunch of talent and after that, I was able to start putting a team together and that’s how I started coaching.”
Goddard coaches basketball players ages 6-10 on his team, the Biddybros. He has also organized flag football and softball events in Red Hook. His partner Karl Sanders, who played college basketball for St. Francis (NY) coaches older kids in basketball.
One of the toughest parts of coaching has been getting funding for the kids to have uniforms.
“I grew up in Red Hook playing basketball all the time and I fell in love with it,” said Goddard. “Then for a few years I fell out of love with it but coaching and seeing these kids improve has made me fall in love with the game again.” Goddard played basketball for the Visitation Hawks in Red Hook and at John Jay High School in Park Slope. “My high school coach said to me ‘you’re a fine leader and one day you’re going to be a fine coach,’ and that really resonated with me,” Goddard said. “I used to just give pointers to kids in the neighborhood. Then
Some Upcoming Events in June: Tots Program: Every Saturday through June 25th from 9-11 am at the Red Hook Recreation Center, 155 Bay St. 718-722-3211. NYC Parks offers structured programs for children 6 months to four years old, consisting of learning, sports, and crafts. Tots will be active, develop social skills (like sharing toys), and can explore the environment around them. Senior Dance Workout: Tuesdays and Thursdays through June 25th from 4-5 pm at the Red Hook Recreation Center, 155 Bay St. 718-7223211. Pick up some news moves to bring to the dance floor and get a good workout! Individuals of all abilities are encouraged to join this modified class as dancing is the quickest shortcut to happiness! Fitness Room: Monday-Friday from 6 am-8:15 pm. Saturdays from 8 am – 10:30 pm. at the the Red Hook Recreation Center, 155 Bay St. 718-7223211. Weightlifting isn’t just about bulking up and building muscle mass. Benefits include improved posture, better sleep, gaining bone density, and much more. Treadmill exercise is an effective way to increase heart rate to a healthy level and so are warm-up exercises. Ages 16 and up are welcome. Free for ages 24 and under.
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“I don’t want the parents to have to worry about paying so I’ve been doing it the cheapest way I can,” Goddard said. “I take a lot out of my own pocket and light donations from my friends have helped. “For example, I put on a one-day tournament in the park for my team and three other teams. I got the refs to come in and I had a friend buy pizza for all the kids. I went to a store called Kidstown and I bought shirts for $2, shorts for $3, and then I went to my print guy who I’ve known for 20 years and he only charged me $3 to print the numbers on each shirt. So I was able to give each kid a uniform for $8, so it only ended up being $80 and I was able to pay for it out of my own pocket.”
email Goddard at melvingoddard@ yahoo.com or search for Melvin Goddard on Facebook and Instagram. An additional problem for Goddard is that it’s often very expensive to enter his team in tournaments. “I want to put my kids in four different tournaments this summer,” Goddard said. “Kyrie Irving’s tournament in the Bronx for 8-year-olds costs $425 to enter and $35 per game for referees. So it adds up to a lot. There are other tournaments that are even more expensive. Right now I’m finishing up this grant from the mayor’s office called the Safe in the City Grant. I’m putting in for the max which is $10,000 and I’m showing them all of the things I’ve been doing and all of the things we’ll be able to do with that money.” For Goddard, connections are key as connections have allowed him to get his teams into tournaments that aren’t as expensive. I also asked Goddard how he came up with his team’s name (Biddybros) and he told me that it has a special meaning.
Anyone who wants to donate can
Motion & Expression: Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays 3:30-5:30 pm. through June 25th at the Red Hook Recreation Center, 155 Bay St. 718722-3211. This program will get youth to move their bodies, learn self-expression, and build confidence while teaching them hip-hop moves. Dance classes provide children with guidance, discipline, and structure while also having fun. Children ages 6-17 are welcome to participate! Arts & Crafts: Tuesdays and Thursdays through June 25th 4-5 pm. Red Hook Recreation Center, 155 Bay St. 718-722-3211. Does your child love to get messy? Come join in this art class where children can show off their creativity and socialize with others. Arts and crafts assist children with various skills. RED HOOK INTERGENERATIONAL EVENT: Friday, June 17th, at Coffey Park. The Red Hook Recreation Center presents a spring festival for the entire family. A delightful afternoon of games, arts & crafts, music, information tables, and more. The Red Hook Star-Revue will have a table set up with giveaways so feel free to stop by and say hello! Additionally, there will be a variety of performances celebrating Juneteenth and a wonderful tribute to Ms. Debbie Grant.
Help the Red Hook Library by Nathan Weiser There was a friends group at the Red Hook Library before the pandemic and they are starting a new one for people that are passionate about the library and want to support the Red Hook branch.
“The part of the program that’s run by Sanders for older kids is called Brothers Dream,” Goddard said. “His nephew, who he called ‘Brother’ was shot and killed when he was 12-years-old which was around 15 years ago. So everything that we do, we always try to incorporate ‘Brother’ into the team names.” He also spoke about the importance of making sure kids from Red Hook are able to get opportunities to play sports. “I want people to know that there are still people in Red Hook trying to do positive things,” Goddard said. “A lot of the kids that are using the soccer and baseball fields aren’t even from Red Hook. I want to make sure that kids from Red Hook have the option to play sports. I really want to help these kids reach their full potential.” “A lot of the kids that are using the soccer and baseball fields aren’t even from Red Hook
A library friends group can add support and advocacy and it is an extra group of people that care about the library. The interests and strengths of the members inform and lead to what the group can do. “This is another organization of people trying to have more activities and participation,” Colon said. The point of a friends group is to advocate the Red Hook Library.
Their first informational meeting was held May 19. They plan to have another meeting with the goal to have at least five members so they can be officially be recognized and have backing from the Brooklyn Library.
“That can be with our local politicians and letter writing campaigns,” Kowpak said. “It can be supporting the library in talking up events and spreading the word about things we are doing. It can be fundraising.”
Some libraries have a dedicated friends group like this. The branch in Carroll Gardens and Park Slope do and this group could benefit the library and community.
Some branches have bake sales, plant sales or crafts sales, and then that money that is raised through those efforts support programs.
Joyce Kowpak, who is the library supervisor at the Red Hook Library, started at the library a few weeks before the pandemic in February of 2020 after previously working at another branch in Brooklyn. “I love this branch and the people that work here are wonderful,” Kowpak said. “They are very committed. We are lucky to have people that care about what is going on.” Cynthia Colon, who has lived in Red Hook since 1967, approached Kowpak about starting a Friends group again.
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There are official rules of any Friend's Group. It entails being friendly, not using foul language and abiding by the Brooklyn Public Library dress code. “We have to have four meetings a year,” Kowpak said. “Some groups do monthly and some groups find that onerous. Each member must be over 18 and the meetings must be at the library.” There were two people in addition to the librarian at the meeting. One interested person was away when the initial informational meeting hap-
(continued on page 11) June 2022, Page 7
OP-ED: THE WORDS MATTER
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“Here’s your reparations, nigger,” is the message the killer reportedly wrote on his weapon, the one that wasn’t a gift from his dad. Intended for a broad audience, those four words carry farther than any bullet, although it is arguable that no rhetoric can stand in for action, especially carefully planned and long-sought action. The words, however, cannot be divorced from the lives taken in the unbelievably short span needed to kill ten people and wound three others (physically), and that’s where the issue stands. Everyone watching, everywhere in the world is instantly cluedin to the source and wellspring of the violence unfurled for them; how one responds is the key. In order to make sense of our existence, stories are created. Narratives, sagas, tales, whatever name you give them, they all serve to make the abstract concrete, the nebulous clear. The words have a value and they aren’t just the grunts and howls of an animal crying out in the dark, even if there is something to be said for the metaphor. The animal in question moaned and spat its displeasure with the world as it is and his perception of his precious standing in that world in many places, many times before but gamely bluffed out of punishments that could have averted last Saturday’s action by saying he was only kidding.
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Amid the calls for an end to the misery wrought by hate and wishes to wash clean the scenes of carnage, it has been noted that the latest killer to join the list read through and rehashed many, many words learned from television and the internet and reproduced them for the world to see. The stated intentions were so clear that there should have been an intervention. School officials, presumably not wanting to take away the parent’s right to raise their child any way they choose likely let the killer off with a warning because when you get right down to it, people say crazy, vicious, unspeakably vile things all the time and don’t really mean it. Don’t they? Certainly they do. And never taking a step be-
yond that way of thinking has gotten us in part to the precipice we’re facing. Every time a cry for help goes unheeded, the angry tossed-off threat is minimized, or someone shows us who they are, and we don’t believe them – that’s another chance for the diseased mind to grow more disturbed and the willpower to resist the urge to lash out and tear the whole damned thing to shreds weakens just a little bit more. We don’t want to live in a world where turns of phrase are forbidden and exaggerations are thought crimes, but there has to come a point at which threats to entire communities and ethnic groups as a whole are taken seriously enough to drive home the point that it’s not OK, it isn’t all just a joke, you are to some degree responsible for the sins of your father, and that your liberty isn’t more valuable than the safety of all those you could possibly annihilate if only given the chance. Another aspect of this current tragedy that deserves some attention is just how deeply the casually expressed repulsed loathing found in those first four words runs and just how assbackwards and wrong the sentiment really is. “Here’s,” is clear enough: at the point of a gun, the phallic standin, got it. “Your,” again, we see where this is going. With “reparations,” however, we’re getting into the heart of the matter. Having heard something about black people wanting some possible recognition of past mistreatment and violence (the redlining and highway-building that split East Buffalo off from the rest of the city and lynchings and burnings that happened when blacks tried to move into white neighborhoods), the killer turns his favorite bullets into metaphorical gifts to his victims. The last word needs no explanation – the lowest term you can come up with, not as juicy, pithy, or even clever as some others, but on the baseness scale just about right for expressing a purposefully warped worldview where death on a Saturday afternoon at the grocery is what you rightfully deserve for being black and alive in America. The words matter.
Return to normal
Jerry Armer of Community Board 6 announces a return to actual meetings. Page 8 Red Hook Star-Revue
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June 2022
Success and Stability as an Independent Artist by Roderick Thomas
T
he story of the independent music artist is usually marked with challenges and hopes of eventually ‘making it big’ and signing a record contract with a major label. For rapper J.R. Clark, his path as an independent artist has brought challenges, but also success without a major label deal. Here’s how J.R. Clark found stability and success as an independent artist. Roderick: Hi J.R, it’s a pleasure to speak to you.
J.R. Clark: Of course, thanks for doing this interview. Roderick: So J.R, let’s talk about your origins, where are you from? J.R. Clark: Well, I grew up in Virginia—Newport News/Virginia Beach.
Roderick: I don’t think Virginia gets enough recognition for the artists it produces.
true.
Roderick: That’s amazing. Have you had the chance to work or perform with any major artists recently? J.R. Clark: Thanks. I performed with Pop Smoke and that was a big deal for sure. I just did the 420ish festival—everybody was there: Rick Ross, The City girls, Gucci Mane, you name it.
Roderick: I heard you went to Regent University? I know they have a law school, are you a lawyer? J.R. Clark: lawyer crimian got Regent
No way, I’m not a [laughs]. I studied nal justice as undergrad and my masters at University
J.R Clark: For sure, we have Missy Elliot, Timbaland, Pharell, Pusha T. The list goes on.
that. My mom is Latina—-Haitian and Dominican.
Roderick: Very cool. You know reggaeton is making a comeback, and I feel like Latin music, especially from the Caribbean is really doing well right now. Ever think about making some reggaeton? J.R Clark: Yea! I just did a reggaeton song called “El Trafico.” But the Latin music I really love is more old school like bachata and salsa. I’m not sure Reggaeton is my lane, but it’s nice to branch out. Roderick: So you have a new project out, an EP called, My State of Mind: The Prelude. Can you tell me a bit about what people can expect? J.R Clark: I wanted to make a project that was relatable, chill music that reflects everyday people—the things we go through. My State of Mind reflects where I am in life—the ups and the downs, the joy, everything really. Roderick: I love that. Is there a song that you really connect with from the EP?
J.R Clark: My favorite right now is “Perception.” I talk about everything, and the way the song hits straight on, it just sets the tone for the whole project.
Roderick: When did you know you wanted to be a rapper? J.R. Clark: I was actually a studio engineer at first, but I got tired of recording people [laughs].
Roderick: Any advice for up-and-coming artists?
J.R Clark: If the music business is what you want to do, you need to study what you’re getting into. Second, you need to have some income to fund what you do—-your job, an investor, both, whatever. Third, understand what type of artist you want to be—-your image, style, and voice.
Roderick: What made being an engineer tiring?
J.R. Clark: Folks couldn’t pay their studio bill, so in my mid-20s I decided to pursue rap. I knew song structure and concepts, and I understood how make songs.
to
J.R Clark: Focus on your music skills. Today, people are so focused on clout and fame. I don’t even tell most people I’m a rapper [laughs].
Roderick: Who were some of your inspirations as a rapper?
If music is what you want to do, be skilled at it. Clout is not a success. You can be very famous and very broke. Focus on being talented, skilled, and successful.
J.R. Clark: When I first started rapping, I was on youtube typing ‘chill beats’ and this guy Curren$y kept coming up. I found out he was a rapper, and I started looking him up on Datpiff.
Roderick: What are your music business goals for 2022?
Roderick: You were a natural then?
J.R. Clark: Musically, for sure, but I took my time to get my sound right. When I started, mumble rap was so big. I tried that sound and I was like, this is not for me [laughs]. Roderick: You’re currently an independent artist. What has been the biggest challenge so far?
J.R. Clark: I can’t say there’s been just one challenge. I’ll say that as an independent artist you have to make more phone calls yourself. You have to be involved at almost every step. Roderick: For you, what’s the biggest difference between being independent and signing to a major label?
J.R. Clark: The major labels have the money, and when they give you a budget you have to pay that back. For me, the difference is having the machine of a major corporation behind you. Music labels are businesses, I wish more artists understood that.
Roderick: When did you feel like you’d finally made it?
J.R. Clark: You know, I guess I feel that way right now. Independent artist life is great, I’d say just having stability in my career feels amazing. J.R. Clark: I went shopping recently and bumped into Rick Ross and then Santana. We were all buying stuff from the same place. For me, it’s a reminder that you have the power to make your own dreams come
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J.R Clark: Um…maybe work with a major label, but the timing has to be right. J.R. Clark is his own man.
in government studies.
Roderick: What made you study criminal justice?
J.R. Clark: I knew of so many people, even family members in federal prison. I think it was my way of understanding how not to end up in the same place I’d seen others in.
Roderick: How does your education influence your music?
J.R. Clark: I’ve been formally educated, and educated by life experiences and those influences end up in my music. I was in the streets at one point, so that’s part of my history. Today, I rap about how my life is now. I’ve traveled to so many different countries, and I’m a business person too. I incorporate all of my experiences, I’m not just talking about the streets.
Roderick: Ok last question. What do you want your legacy to be? J.R. Clark: Ultimately, I want to leave a legacy that says to others, you can own your stuff. I want to have inspired others to own their art, and build wealth.
Roderick: Hats off to you J.R. Thanks for taking the time to speak with me J.R Clark: My pleasure Roderick, thanks for having me.
Listen to J.R. Clark’s new EP: My State of Mind: The Prelude, now available on all streaming platforms.
Roderick Thomas is an NYC based writer, filmmaker, Instagram: @Hippiebyaccident, Email: rtroderick.thomas@gmail.com, Site: rodericktho-
mas.net
Roderick: Speaking of traveling, will you be taking your music abroad anytime soon?
J.R. Clark: I’m actually going to Colombia soon, but that’s for vacation with my family. Roderick: Oh, do you speak Spanish?
J.R Clark: I do actually, a lot of people don’t know
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June 2022, Page 9
George and Brian's Ukrainian Odyssey Why I care about Ukraine
W
hen Kent State happened, I was a senior in high school. In case you’re not sure what I’m talking about, in June 1970, National Guard soldiers were at an antiwar rally at Kent State University in Ohio and fired on and killed four student protesters. Mass shootings were not as common as they are today, especially not by representatives of the government. I’m guessing most of those reading this know what I’m talking about since that event has gone into the history books of our country. At that time, I was totally against war and guns and anything military. I was against the Vietnam War with the belief that our country had nothing to fear from any Vietnamese person, so why would we be killing them over there in their own country. Unlike a lot of my peers, it wasn’t only because of a fear of being drafted, although by being accepted to college I didn’t have to worry about that. During the rest of my life, until just recently, I have always felt the same about war. I’d prefer if there were no weapons at all. It seems crazy that anybody would want to take a human life. One exception is the case when somebody is either temporarily or permanently insane. In that case that person needs to be apprehended and if possible, treated for the insanity, or else put away from society if still a danger. I guess I wasn’t prepared for a whole country to go completely insane. It was hard for me to believe that, especially
Thoughts on Ukraine by Brian Abate
B
efore the February 24th Russian invasion, I really didn’t know too much about Ukraine. Even though the war has been going on since 2014 and I have family members who are originally from Lviv (one of the biggest cities in Ukraine), I didn’t know anything about the history of the country or the gruesome details of the battles already taking place there. After February 24th, I remember listening to the news and reading articles about the war every day, and the vast majority of “experts” seemed to think that Ukraine would fall within a matter of days and Russia would quickly reach Kyiv (the capital.) I quickly learned that those “experts” severely underestimated the will and spirit of the Ukrainian people, who have pushed back the Russian troops and done an amazing job fighting
Page 10 Red Hook Star-Revue
by George Fiala
after the experiences of all the wars of the twentieth century, a country as big as Russia, would invade another large country. Not just invade by bombing modern and historic buildings to smithereens, not just shooting soldiers defending their country against and unwarranted attack, but killing noncombatants (civilians), journalists and volunteers trying to deliver humanitarian aid, but raping and pillaging as well. I do know that rape is still used as a wartime tool in some places in Africa, and in Bosnia during that war in the 1990’s. But invading a country to get spoils, as Russia is doing right now by stealing grain and even household items, is disgusting. This is what I found in a book published in 2013 called “Looting and Rape in Wartime: Law and Change in International Relations.” It says: “practice of pillage was essential in medieval feuds, became a weapon of European warfare by 1500, and continued to be a regular part of any war through the early eighteenth century. It had two legitimate functions: hurting the enemy and maintaining one’s own army when in charge of the enemy’s countryside.” Notice it says “through the early 18th century.” My own mother happened to be a prisoner of the Nazis during WW II. She told lots of stories about those days, and I heard many times that after escaping the Germans, the main job of her little group of four women was to avoid the Russian soldiers, and find American ones to be liberated by.
back against a much more powerful military. People with no military experience have taken up arms to fight for their country and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky refused to leave his country despite numerous attempts by the Russian military to assassinate him. The courage of the Ukrainian people amazes me. Since the February 24th invasion, I’ve attended many fundraisers for Ukraine, spent a lot of time in the East Village (the Ukrainian section of New York City), and visited the Ukrainian Museum and the Ukrainian Institute of America as part of my work for this paper. I’ve learned a lot about the history of Ukraine, and I’ve learned that this current invasion is just the latest in a long history of Russian attacks on Ukraine. I’ve also gotten a chance to listen to live Ukrainian music and poetry readings and to learn about traditional artwork (I especially enjoyed seeing
The reason was that US soldiers were taught the rules of war and violations were strictly enforced. In fact, the big blot on General Patton’s career was when his soldiers killed Italian prisoners of war in cold blood in Sicily (the Biscari Massacre). She said that the Russian soldiers were mistreated as soldiers and took it out on innocent women and households. I have a little porcelain house with a big hole in the middle. She told me that marauding Russians loved to steal clocks, and took the clock out of the middle. In any case, in my ever-naïve mind, I never thought that the events of the past three months could ever occur, at least in what we call the civilized world. So when it did, and does, to this second, I’ve had to rethink my ideas about weapons and killing. What Russia is doing seems so horrific that I find myself in full support of anything that will help Ukraine kick out the Russians. If it were up to me, I’d send in American troops, and join them if possible. Although I will say that I’m a little too chicken to enlist as a mercenary. There are lots of people here and in Europe who fear full tilt support of Ukraine because of the threat of nuclear retaliation by Russia, and a third world war. Russia has been using words to fight the battles that they know they will lose on the battlefield for some time now. Instead of sending in troops to take over foreign governments, they have been able to infiltrate elections and treaties. I’m convinced that if not for Russia, Brexit would have never passed in England, and their in-
how Ukrainian Easter eggs are made.) I’ve also eaten at many Ukrainian restaurants and realized that I love a lot of Ukrainian foods including pierogies and goulash. I enjoyed eating at Varenyk House, Veselka, Streetcha, and several others. My favorite part of learning about Ukraine and its culture has been meeting a lot of great people. I’ve been to the East Village, the Upper East Side, Queens, and various parts of Brooklyn, and all of the people I’ve met have been kind and very appreciative of the Ukrainian section of the newspaper. I’m proud to say my workplace and my home are filled with Ukrainian flags, artwork, and souvenirs. I’m thankful that I’ve been able to meet so many great people but it has also been difficult to see these people hurting because their country is fighting for its freedom and because they have family and friends in Ukraine who aren’t safe right now.
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fluence in tilting presidential elections in Hungary, Belarus, Poland and even the US towards autocratic style leaders friendly to the Russians in undeniable. They did the same in Ukraine, but when the people threw out the Russiafriendly president Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, Putin sent in troops and took over Crimea. At the time, our president resisted sending in major armaments to help Ukraine defend their territory, fearing that he would only be prolonging violence. Events have shown that to be the wrong strategy, as evidenced by the carnage we see on our television screens every day. Russia will not be satisfied until they totally control Ukraine, even a devastated Ukraine. In the same way that the world has been able to prevent Germany and Japan from furthering any megalomanic ambitions since their defeat in 1945, Russia must be defeated. And their people shown the error of their ways. Lately I’ve been reading articles in the NY Times and other places saying that we need to restrain our aid. Both German and French leaders seem worried about upsetting the Russian leader. I happen to be immensely grateful to President Biden for leading the world to the defense of Ukraine, but if he loses popular support that will be harder in the future. These are the reasons that I am doing the best that I can in these pages to help the fight against Russian aggression. And until they are defeated, the Star-Revue will keep doing so.
I’ve also learned from them that Ukraine has a lot more in common with the United States than I had initially realized. The Ukrainians are fighting for democracy and for their freedom, just like so many Americans have done throughout the course of our country’s history. I think that as members of the media, we must continue covering what’s happening in Ukraine, and as Americans, we need to continue helping Ukraine in various ways such as supporting local businesses and restaurants, attending events, and making donations. Even the small things, like shopping at a Ukrainian store, eating at a Ukrainian restaurant, or donating a few dollars can make a difference and those little things will eventually add up. I don’t believe this war should have ever happened in the first place but I do believe that Ukraine will be victorious in the end. Slava Ukraini!
June 2022
SLAVA UKRAINI!
The Russian Arts Theater and Studio, a company headed by Aleksey Burago, a Russian who emigrated here in 1997, presented a version of George Orwell's Animal Farm last month at Pushkin Hall, 86th Street and Broadway. The irony of the takeover of the animals by the pigs was not lost, and a reading by the characters of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights at the end of the play brought this theatergoer to tears! The other events we went to included two poetry readings and a discussion of the Ukrainian roots of Zabars. On the left is a woman teaching the audience about the history of Ukraine,including iconic Ukrainian poet and author Ivan Franko. In the middle is a man from Ukraine talking about famous artist Andy Warhol, who has Ukrainian roots. In the middle on the right is a group of panelists, including a few of Zabars' original founders discussing their beginnings and Ukrainian ties. On the bottom right is a group performing poems by poet Serhiy Zhadan who has decided to remain in Ukraine despite the war.
SLAVA UKRAINI! (continued from page 7)
pened. Kowpak has been in touch with the Seniors Advisory Group as well as the PTA at area schools to inform them of this group. She thinks it will be good to have a diverse group of people including various ages and talents. There could be people who want to be involved by reaching out to the community and publicizing the library and others who want to raise money for the library through fundraisers like bake sales. The other participant at the meeting moved to Red Hook right before Hurricane Sandy and has always liked libraries. When she heard this group was getting started she was interested and wanted to help. Colon is interested in outreach and often connects people and tells them about other events happening in the community when she goes to events. She was surprised to find out earlier this year that some people did not
Red Hook Star-Revue
know Red Hook had a library. She tries to let people know that there is a lot of information at the library and it has information about things going on in the community. Youth programs abound at the library. There is children’s story time outside when the weather is nice. A gardening program just began in the paved area with planters that is behind the library. There is an upcoming event at the Red Hook Library that the friends group might be involved with which is the Summer Reading Kickoff, and every library does a celebration for this. It’s an even bigger deal this year since it’s a collaboration with the 125th anniversary of the Brooklyn Public Library. The theme this year of summer reading is “you’re invited.” In the middle of the Red Hook Library there is a birthday cake with balloons with wrapped books on the table containing a preview of what the book is about. Besides the advocacy and fundraising, the friends group can support events that happen at the Red Hook Library.
The library supervisor said another event they are having is the summer reading outdoor concert, which was on Saturday, June 4. “Traditionally at the end of the summer we will have something to wind down for summer reading and give the kids school supplies,” Kowpak said. The friends group would not be involved with homework help, which is a different way of being involved and helping at the library.
Major change coming The Red Hook Library will be closing in the spring of 2023 for renovations and will open again two years later. This is a renovation that had been delayed a few times.
The library website has artist renderings of how it is supposed to look after renovation. There will be a exterior renovation and interior renovations including flood proofed doors, a space for teens, brand new furniture and updated technology, more meeting rooms for the community to use, more windows and a community room accessible via a garden entrance to use after hours. There are a few standard practices for when libraries close for renovation but what will happen in Red Hook is not known yet. The book bus might come a few times a week and the library might partner with a local organization to hold programs like having story time.
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June 2022, Page 11
The Spirit of the Water - Cesar Chox
I
’ve known Cesar Chox – an Indigenous Guatemalan artist – for a few years. I met Cesar at OYE Studios, an artists’ collective in Brooklyn. OYE brings together artists from everywhere. I’ve been writing profiles of Indigenous people from North and South America and was eager to chat with Cesar to learn his story. The interview below is the result of collaboration between Cesar, Marlen, and me. Questions labeled “M” indicate a combination of Mike Fiorito and Marlen Tapia. We are one embodied spirit in this article. While the interview that follows doesn’t represent a word for word translation, it reflects the spirit of the conversation. M: Can you tell me about where you are from?
C: I was born in a village that is well known in Guatemala, called Nahualá. It is named after a river. When there was a dry season in Guatemala, the only river that did not dry out was the one in my village. In the K’iche’ [Quiché] language it is called Nahalhá, meaning “Spirit of the Water” (nawal = spirit; ja = the water). In the past most of the people spoke K’iche’, but the language is slowly disappearing. First, the people stopped wearing traditional clothing, then the language also started to disappear. Now more people speak Spanish than K’iche’. Nowadays, I believe the locals speak perhaps 50% Spanish and 50% K’iche’, but the number of K’iche’ speakers continues to dwindle. Last week I was in Queens with friends; they were my neighbors back in Guatemala. I was in the neighborhood to pick up a certificate by the street where they live now. They asked me to come over. I was impressed by my friend’s son. He said hello to me, but he said it in K’iche’, then in Spanish, and then in English. He asked me if I speak in English and I said I do, and he began talking in English to me, and then he asked me if
by Mike Fiorito I spoke Spanish. His accent was perfect. And that’s what we need; it’s what I want and not to forget: where I was born, the history of my village. But not all Guatemalans think the same way. Of course, we are all different. M: It’s great that you want to keep this connection and pass it along to your son and other children as well.
C: Yes, but not at first. When I came to the United States, I mostly experienced discrimination. But, in time, I don’t know from where the idea came to me, I started drawing illustrations inspired by Mayan, Mexican and Central American culture as well. It started evolving the art that I do. Now I’m illustrating skateboards. I made my first one in New York City from a recycled skateboard. I was about to throw it away, but I started to sand it, I painted it, and it came out well. Then everyone started messaging me asking how much I wanted for it. I sold it. Then they asked me to make more with the Indigenous style. I’ve been able to find a way to combine my love of art with honoring my K’iche’ heritage. M: When was the last time you went to Guatemala?
C: In 2008; that’s when I came to the United States. I haven’t gone back since. Time has really flown by. And, in my case, I haven’t interacted much with Guatemala, or my family back home since I’ve been here. My Dad passed away when I was two years old, and we didn’t stay in touch with the rest of the family afterwards. Then I came to the United States and here I found the family I was looking for. What I loved doing back in Guatemala was drawing. I used to draw whenever I could. I never thought I would meet people like Johny and Carlos (from OYE Studios) who would encourage me. I never thought I would meet as many people who share similar interests with me as I’ve met in this country. But
now, in the United States, most of the people I know are artists. We artists hang out together. I’ve discovered myself through my art! M: Do you have family here?
C: I had two brothers here, but one of them returned to Guatemala.
Some people asked me why I was fighting for my immigration case. They tried to convince me to go back to Guatemala. I found a job first here in Brooklyn, and then another one in Manhattan. And there they helped me with obtaining my green card and my social security number. But my brothers and friends didn’t believe me because I didn’t pay a lawyer or anything. I just found wonderful people, and I keep encountering more and more wonderful people. I was given my residency in 2012, and then I went to another organization, and that was where my mind was opened. It was called Atlas de Aguay. Sadly, that organization doesn’t exist anymore. M: What was your experience like with them?
C: Well, most of the people were students. Everyone had different paths. Trying to build a future. And, I didn’t have anything, I was just looking for English classes. Then I met the director and she kept in touch with me. I began connecting with people from the organization. They became like my family. One day they were talking about needing a logo for the organization. They turned to the young people to see if we could help. Then we started brainstorming. We had the idea, and each one of us went home to work on our ideas. I had a concept for a logo. And, can you believe it, they picked mine right away. They said, this will be our logo. They told me that I was an artist. I used crayons from the 99-cent store. I didn’t know any better! I didn’t have any idea that there were different types of pencils, or colors. After that, I received donations of paper,
pencils.
M: And was this before the scholarship?
C: Yes! From there the organization helped me to find a school. I spent one month in a school, then I met models that were working at that academy, a Mexican couple. They invited me to a show they had. It was my first show ever. And they asked me about my school and what I was doing. They suggested that I apply for a scholarship. They told me to go to the office, to ask for a woman named Denise, and to talk to her and show her my work, and perhaps I might have an opportunity. This was at the end of 2013. Miraculously, I got the scholarship from 2013-2018.
At that point it was hard for me to learn English. I thought I needed an English certificate to prove I knew English and to obtain better job opportunities. A White friend I met told me that they wanted to learn Spanish, and so we started to teach each other. Then I started to catch more English through music, songs, and movies. Then people started inviting me to parties, and shows, and to hang out to do drawing. I began to forget about Guatemala. Then, it seemed like almost all the White people that I met liked my style of drawing. And now I am proud to represent my culture, and that’s what I am working on right now. I have a lot of ideas but putting them all together and expressing them is hard! I don’t speak 100% K’iche’ anymore. K’iche’ is my mother language, and yet I have it all mixed up. Even with my brother, I mix up K’iche’ with English and Spanish, too. Some kids from the building who were born here say that they want to learn K’iche’. So, I am teaching them. They ask me for a new word and then repeat it, and the next day, they ask for another new word. Someone sent me a book in K’iche’, which I haven’t read yet. Everybody
(continued on next page)
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STAR REVUE June 2022
Bang on a Can Plays Long, and Wide, in downtown Brooklyn by Kurt Gottschalk
T
he Long Play festival, which ran in various venues around downtown Brooklyn from April 29 to May 1, was created to replace the previous Bang on a Can marathon, an annual single-stage daylong free presentation usually in Manhattan. Over three days at 10 venues, more than 60 acts represented a mix of contemporary composition, jazz-based improvisation and updatings of folk and rock traditions. It’s no longer a free festival, but it improves on the old model by allowing time for full concerts as well as staging, lighting and, crucially, sound checks. Contemporary, in this formulation, stretches back to the middle of the last century. While the music Bang on a Can presents—and the music founders Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe compose— certainly carries a currency, the first of what should become an annual festival put stakes firmly in the ground by revisiting Ornette Coleman’s 1959 album The Shape of Jazz to Come, Terry Riley’s 1964 open form composition In C and Karlheinz Stockhausen’s landmark 1968 a cappella piece Stimmung.
Stimmung, in fact, opened the festival in a performance by the vital New York vocal ensemble Ekmeles. The singers, seated in a circle on the floor of a studio in the Mark Morris Dance Center, engaged in a long and less than welcoming—yet fully absorbing—ritual. Riley’s In C, an immensely flexible piece for any number of musicians playing a series of repeating phrases at their own pace on instruments of their choosing, sold out two nights at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Opera House. The Bang on a Can All-Stars shared the stage with the German dance company Sasha Waltz & Guests. As a visual component, the dozen or so dancers busily moving about the stage in repeated motions—complimenting but not
CESAR CHOX (continued from previous page)
asks me about it. My friends Johny and Carlos ask me: can you show me that book written in K’iche’? Imagine, in my village in Guatemala, they want to forget K’iche’. But here, it’s celebrated. If I would have left my culture behind, I don’t know what kind of art I would’ve done. I survived and I emerged with my art. And people tell me how well I am doing, and how hard I’ve been fighting to preserve my culture in my art. Many Guatemalans who come here are encouraged to rediscover their Indigenous roots in the United States. I too am proud to represent my culture. M: And which of your dreams have you accomplished so far?
C: I am finishing my house in Guate-
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corresponding to the music—was stunning, and it’s the kind of piece that the resident All-Stars ensemble was born to play: loud, challenging, interpretive and precise.
In C ran the first two nights of the festival. On the third, the Opera House was host to an unforgettable reworking of the album The Shape of Jazz to Come. Tracks from the album were arranged, individually, by composer/performers Nick Dunston, Craig Harris, Nicole Mitchell, Carman Moore, David Sanford, and Pamela Z and played by an orchestra fronted by a jazz band including four musicians who played with Coleman: drummer Denardo Coleman (Ornette’s son and frequent bandmate, who helped to organize the evening), trumpeter Wallace Roney, Jr., bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma and guitarist James “Blood” Ulmer. They were joined by two exceptional younger players— pianist Jason Moran and saxophonist Lee Odom—who well know their way around Coleman’s music. It was a fittingly ambitious tribute that by all means should be made available on record. The Coleman and Riley concerts were the big-ticket items, but the festival was hardly just about propping up the old guard. Indeed, as a presenting organization, Bang on a Can has long been committed to presenting younger and lesser known composers and performers representing a diversity in gender, genre and geography and doing so on the strength of the work. They have, for decades now, set an example that orchestras and organizations would be wise to follow.
And while Gordon, Lang and Wolfe, were at the center of the festival, they put their own work on the periphery, in matinee and late-night slots. Three of Wolfe’s string quartets were presented in an 11pm set at Roulette, played with ferocity by longtime Bang on a Can allies Ethel. Four Marys (1991) and Early That
mala. I also want to take a good vacation in Guatemala in that house.
There’s a lot of corruption in Guatemala, but I want to try to do everything I can to help. I want to get things like paint brushes and art supplies for the people. I want to go and do some art in my village, too. And do something in Bensonhurst because I live here. Ironically, in Bensonhurst, there are many Guatemalan people and stores, but people are divided by religion. As I always say, we all worship the same God, but some go to a Catholic church, and some to an Evangelical church. M: Have you done a mural recently?
C: Yes, at a store in my neighborhood. The owner is from Costa Rica. I really like it a lot, it took me a long time. I was happy. In that neighborhood, most people now know me as the Mayan
Summer (1993) served as a reminder of what a strong voice Wolfe had well before being recognized with MacArthur and Pulitzer prizes. The more recent Blue Dress, a 2015 arrangement of a 2010 piece for singing violinist with electronics, was great to hear in all its glory on the heels of a stunning performance of the earlier With a Blue Dress On, which was heard just two weeks earlier at Carnegie Hall in a stunning performance by Tessa Lark. Gordon’s 2009 Timber, for amplified 2x4’s, was played Mantra Percussion in another late-night set, bringing a surprisingly meditative calm to amplified planks of wood. Lang presented his 2012 Death Speaks, a setting (or re-setting) of all the lines in Schubert songs delivered by Death. The morbid romantic wrote a lot of them, enough to fill a half an hour, and Lang’s repurposing of them was delivered beautifully in an afternoon performance by My Brightest Diamond singer Shara Nova.
Gordon, Lang and Wolfe were also represented in their joint orchestration (with Evan Ziporyn) of Brian Eno’s Music for Airports, played by the All-Stars and the Choir of Trinity Wall Street at Roulette to start off the long Saturday. (That concert was followed on the same stage by the choir giving a ravishing performance of Arvo Pärt’s Kanon Pokajanen.) As a trio of talented composers, a radiant resident ensemble and a presenting organization committed to building a contemporary canon, Bang on a Can is among the city’s best new music outfits. To hold claim to all three, they have proven a model for valued younger organizations, such as the International Contemporary Ensemble and the Wet Ink Ensemble, and are an important asset to the city’s cultural well-being. Long play the Can.
because of my drawing style and my usage of K’iche’. From there, other people began introducing me as the Mayan.
I never want to forget my heritage. And I want to keep developing my art and keep building my K’iche’ language skills. M: Who is the main influence on your art?
C: What influences my art is mostly the people who fought for Guatemala. The heroes who fought against the Spanish, like Tecún Umán. My K’iche’ language also influences my art. I am Indigenous. My art and my language are my culture. M: Do you have any upcoming shows?
C: I was supposed to do a show in May, but it’s not confirmed yet. It will be at Chashama Galleries. This is something I was talking with someone about the other day. They don’t let you have an exhibition if you don’t have a studio.
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There are many galleries around the city and in Brooklyn. And also, I do projects with my friends at OYE Studios. I am often involved in work there. It’s like a home to me. Sometimes, as I told you, it is complicated, because I get involved in different projects at the same time. That’s why I need to find a job where I can get off a little bit earlier. Then I can work on my art, maybe come to OYE, and get home at a reasonable time. Mike Fiorito is an author and freelance writer. His book Falling from Trees received the 2022 Independent Press Award in the short story category. His newest book, Mescalito Riding His White Horse, inspired by bluegrass legend Peter Rowan, will be available for pre-order later this year. For more information, go to https://mikefiorito.com/
June 2022, Page 13
False stereotypes discredit Italian youth by Dario Pio Muccilli, Star-Revue Foreign Correspondent
S
ince Italy opened up after the pandemic, newspapers are full of interviews with prominent entrepreneurs and restaurateurs claiming a shortage of young people willing to work and their over-expectation of salary, vacations and days off. This wave of criticism towards Gen Z has tended to portray the latter as a bunch of slackers and idlers, who prefer to benefit from social assistance rather than rolling up their sleeves and work. This phenomenon is not new, as already in 2012 then-Italian Minister of Labour blamed youth for being too “choosy” when entering the job market. Moreover, the image of a young boy laying on his sofa while doing nothing is so rooted in public opinion that it has become a stereotype capable of discrediting an entire generation. “The youth? They prefer not to give their weekend up to have fun with friends. And when they come to try to work they’re arrogant as if they’ve made it, expecting to receive high salaries since the beginning. I may be unpopular, but I’ve no problem at all to say that learning by working doesn’t mean you have necessarily to be paid”: these were the words that caused last April 14th the polemic we’re talking about. They were pronounced, during an interview to Il Corriere della Sera, by Alessandro Borghese, Chef, restaurateur and host of many cooking shows.
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He was soon backed by Italian Entrepreneur Flavio Briatore, former husband of top-model Naomi Campbell and known for his always controversial stances. Since they’ve expressed their view, lots of restaurateurs and businessmen have spoken out in favor of Borghese. Amongst them even Italian worldwide famous singer Al Bano and the issue has surprisingly entered the Parliament debate. Are their claims true? There’s no real answer, ‘cause there’s no real question: a thing like “the youth” simply doesn’t exist, it is made up of different individuals with different lives, expectations and needs. However all the critics usually forget to explain what are the widespread hiring conditions imposed on young people seeking work. Undeclared work and exploitation are commonplace and this pushes many young workers to have the desire for a more dignified job. On the Instagram account of the Italian political movement Possibile it can be read this: “I signed an intern contract at a famous bar in my area, but I worked twelve hours from 5 pm to 8 in the morning, without any pause and always in a rush. Six days after the signature, the employer came to me with 120 euros [$129, roughly 1.6 euros ($1.70) per hour.] Of course I immediately escaped away from that infernal place.”
Situations like this are far from uncommon, and they’re widespread through all the tourist enterprises in Italy, where waiters, lifeguards and factotum are often underpaid or hired without satisfying legal requirements. It is impossible that people like Borghese or Briatore don’t know about any of these predicaments, and this is clear in Borghese’s statement that “learning by working doesn’t mean you have necessarily to be paid”. The long-standing tradition in the country of underpaid apprenticeship backs his stance, but the evolution of the job market simply makes this reasoning no more affordable for a young worker. When Borghese, Briatore and most of the protesting employers started their career the free apprenticeship was able to open perspectives of a stable workplace in the future. Nowadays, due to the economic crisis, as well as to a surge of precarious work, this idea of a life-long work has become nothing but a myth. Indeed in Italy, recent data collected by the National Council of the Youth reveal how half of the people under 35 have experienced unregistered or precarious work, unemployment, as well as harassment in the working place. Most of them live with an annual salary below 10,000 euros ($10,781 USD), which doesn’t allow young people to be autonomous, obliging them to still
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be housed by their parents. This data barely supports the idea of a slacker generation, but it rather shows a generation sacrificing itself for really little money. Their request, so much blamed by the entrepreneurs, of a higher salary, vacations and days off, mirror the 20th century struggle for working rights that have crossed Italy, a country with certain legal guarantees for workers (like the Workers’ Statute, 1970) that on paper were and still are an progressive in the world, but are today often ignored. It should be no surprise then that today's youth has sought to claim those rights their grandparents and parents had fought for. What’s happening indeed is a rise of consciousness by the youth of the country that is helped in a way by their critics too, because their criticism often seems so unacceptable that it draws so much attention to the matter, especially on social networks. Covid-19 has had certainly an impact on this attitude of seeking dignified working conditions, as a surge in resignations during the last year suggests, they’re looking for a bright future after the darkest hour of the lockdown. Therefore, the misunderstanding between them and the entrepreneurs is based on a different time perspective: the first ones have some needs for their life, the latter just for the next tourist season.
June 2022
happens with women, when people write about her (including me, here), they write about the men she’s worked with: Bowie, Morrisey, even Brian Molko of Placebo. (And Bowiephiles, take note, she has Tony Visconti on bass and Donny McAslin on saxophone here.) Then they mention Kate Bush. But The Beauty Shop deserves to be judged on its own merits. Start with the hyperdramatic videos Young made for the album and proceed directly to her Bandcamp. It’s not an album to be taken lightly, or forgotten quickly.
If this does prove to be the summer of Bush, then maybe some of that good fortune will come the way of NYC phenom Kristeen Young. The comparison does her a bit of a disservice, as comparisons usually do, but it’s not a hard one to make with her new album The Beauty Shop ( June 24, self-released on vinyl and CD): the soprano vibrato like a serrated knife, the intensity and complexity of the music, the sometimes sheer terror of the songs. Young’s been around for a bit. The Beauty Shop is her ninth album after her 1997 debut, and like The Dreaming was for Bush, it’s a defining statement. There’s anger in the songs, not monthsanger but years-anger, chiefly about the expectations and obligations of being a woman. And perhaps as
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Hard industry from the Big House. If the Saajtak discotheque doesn’t quite sound like a good time, Prison Religion’s dancefloor is a nightmare of beats and blasts. Hard Industrial B.O.P. (out June 10 on UIQ, cassette and digital) is the third release by the Virginia duo of Poozy (Parker Jones) and False Prpht (Warren Black) and it’s a downright frightening 23
Meanwhile, the gnomes are rising up. The other celebrated ’80s act making headlines is Spın̈al Tap, the all-too-believable mock metal band immortalized in film by Rob Reiner. In hindsight, one has to wonder how much metal parody we really need. The oft missed fact of the matter is that metal sometimes (less often than not) is already making fun of itself. Just as nonfans tend to think country singers playing the hick are really that dumb, the cheekiness of epic, mythic metal is often missed. In both cases, the point is the music; the lyrics are just a funhouse mirror. The Belgian power trio Gnome might manage to subvert such prejudice with pointy red hats, but probably won’t. They are poundingly tight, though, while singing about their efforts to rise and wage war against their oppressors, the tyrannical forces who seek to hold down the, uh, gnomes. King (out May 5, digital and CD, from Polder Records) delivers the lyrics— more of them than on their 2018 debut, but there’s still a few blistering instrumentals including most of the epic 12-minute closer—with anthemic sincerity. Even when they’re playing little jigs, they’re total riff monsters. Recommended starting point is the video for “Wenceslas.” The album is filled with tongue-incheek guitar-face action, but it’s fighting music. The revolution is afoot—a tiny, dirty, hairy, warty, foot. We’re all gnomes.
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Beauty runs deep. The surprise hit of the summer may turn out to be Kate Bush’s 1985 single “Running Up That Hill” which, after placement in an episode of the Netflix series Stranger Things, hit the top 10 in 14 countries and raced to the top of the Apple Music charts in the states. It’s not exactly a deep cut. The video was in regular rotation on MTV in its day, and it’s been covered repeatedly since then, including a 2003 version by Placebo that charted after being used in the TV show The O.C. The song certainly runs alongside “Wuthering Heights” as one of Bush’s best known tracks, and it’s not hard to understand why. The lyrics speak of overcoming adversity, and who doesn’t love that? It was also the first time Bush retread old grooves, reusing the heavy drums and Fairlight synthesizers from her previous album (The Dreaming, which remains her break-though and brilliant career high) but with lyrics less distancing, less demanding, less—smart.
To further belabor the forced parallel, the new record by Saajtak could be heard as a direction Bush might have gone had she committed herself to electronics and sequencers in the years after running up said hill. The band’s debut, For the Makers (out June 3 from American Dream) arrives after close to a decade of activity in Detroit, and their tight dynamic shows it. The songs would be easy to dismiss as amped-up club music, but there’s a lot going on in the mix. The electronics and Alex Koi’s suspended voice make for something like hardcore Goldfrapp, but with layers you can get lost in. Koi had relocated to New York City by the time work began on the album and in this case, familiarity breeds content. For the Makers took shape through long-distance improvisations and lockdown file-sharing, which might explain its weird mix of alienation and cohesion. Detroit house music still seems somehow stamped in their DNA, at least in Simon Alexander-Adams’ synthesizers, but it’s pretty heady stuff, and with the drive Ben Willis’s bass and Jonathan Barahal Taylor’s drums, set to make brainpans dance.
minutes. Heavy beats, processed voices and screams, loops and drill’n’bass blasts fill the 9 short tracks, more like scenes than songs. In the album’s title, they reference jazz drummer Art Blakey and the dawn of hard bop as an effort to find a purity outside of gimmickry. “So many here are held captive within prisons and facilities,” they ask in the notes to the album. “What is honesty? Words, gestures, and identities twisted through the perverse lens of a failing system?” The gimmicks Prison Religion rejects are societal, which leaves them with a pretty anti-social, and powerfully disconcerting, music.
STAR REVUE June 2022, Page 15
SONIC SESSION IN GOWANUS (continued from page 1)
The final act I witnessed was a battle between bikes and horns. Two motorcycles revved below a corrugated metal door and lunged threateningly at the crowd but were faced down by the brass section who blew them back with a skronking wall of sound, shooing them away like pesky flies who roared off into the night. Sadly, I missed the seven-foot long “graphic equalizer of fire” called a Ruben’s tube. Mecha Sonic is an almost overwhelming display of rich spectacle that can be taken in installations or absorbed as a whole.
Even intermissions were intriguing as an ominous, steadily building hum (like a giant vacuum cleaner) emanated from a set of synthesizers covered with a jumble of wires plugged into innumerable sockets, circuits, and blinking boxes. It was as if Dr. Frankenstein’s lab had fused with the command center of Star Trek’s USS Enterprise maintaining a constant tension that kept the crowd continually on edge. Hot, carny freaks with heavy eyeliner, nose rings, dyed hair, tattoos, and leather boots later turned out to be part of the show, blurring the lines between performers and audience members, adding an interactive quality to the programming. All of this magic emanates from the brains of Stefan Zeniuk, Dan Glass, and Chris Cortier. These three wizards met at the intersection of music, theater, art, and industry.
Zeniuk is a NYC-born saxophonist, bandleader, animator and DJ. He is the inventor of the Flame-O-Phone, a fire-breathing baritone sax, which has been seen in viral videos from Postmodern Jukebox, Improv Everywhere, Maker Faire, and more. Zeniuk has performed and recorded with Vampire Weekend, Father John Misty, and The Violent Femmes. His original animations have been featured on NPR and in Billboard Magazine. He also DJs on WKCR 89.9 FM, and since 2008, has led the psycho-mambo band Gato Loco. Glass is a fabricator, sculptor, event producer, and maker of experiential and participatory art. Projects include a propane-fueled calliope of musical flamethrowers, the Smash Truck mobile destruction room, and themed parties such as SafetyFest. He is also a freelance journalist who has written about solar eclipse chasing, urban exploration, trespass theater, GPS failure, the future of freight transportation, and the psychological effect of viewing Earth from space for New York Times, Atlantic, Citylab, Gothamist, Los Angeles Times, Wired.com, Vice, and others.
Chris Cortier is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, video artist, engineer, and inventor. He designed and built most of the instruments for Fire The Band, the brass band where all instruments shoot fire. He recently completed a tour of the US with Atlas Obscura, playing an interactive synthesizer installation he designed with a user interface made of vegetables, including a potato-powered keyboard. As a musician, he has played with Patti Smith, Michael Stipe, and Matthew Barney, and opened for Reggie Watts as well as Squirrel Nut Zippers. But Mecha Sonic also receives input from its various performers who continually suggest new ideas. As a result it is growing in scope and scale. Though Zeniuk, Glass, and Cortier are glad to exhale after this tremendous production, they are already thinking of Mecha Sonic 3, “probably sometime next year”.
When asked if they could envision bringing Mecha Sonic to an officially designated performance space that more closely complies with safety codes, the producers say they are open to the idea. One could envision it happening at Lollapalooza or perhaps even St.Ann’s Warehouse if the fire marshall were to approve. For the moment, this totally unique experience flourishes underground by invite only. Until then, fans of adventurous music, theater, and performance art can keep abreast of future Mecha Sonic Sessions on Facebook and watch extensive footage on YouTube. It’s a wonder that such magic still exists in 21st Century New York, or anywhere really. Mike Cobb is a writer, musician, and multimedia producer based in Brooklyn. From 2017-2019 he was the Star-Revue's Music Editor.
Part of the Mecha Sonic Session. Photo by David Siffert.
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June 2022
The Evil That Men With Guns Do in John Ford’s America
J
ohn Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, which turned 60 this year, is undeniably a classic. Pairing John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart for the first time, it’s the Western that introduced Duke’s “Pilgrim” into the Hollywood firmament and gave the world the irresistible line, spoken by a newspaper editor, “When the legend becomes a fact, print the legend.” And, like Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, released a couple years earlier, it found an auteur used to wide, Technicolor canvases brimming with budget relegated to drab soundstages, black-and-white photography, and minimal resources — and emerging with a lean, taut masterpiece. But what makes Liberty Valance timeless is how it continues speaking to us across the decades, and not always comfortably.
Like the best Ford films — Stagecoach, My Darling Clementine, The Searchers — Liberty Valance is a HowThe-West-Was-Won myth. And like those films Ford has a central American friction on his mind: the law, and whose idea of it rules the land. On one side is Ransom Stoddard (Stewart), a lawyer from the East toting a carpetbag of law books seeking adventure in Shinbone, a frontier town in what’s likely the Colorado territory. He’s greeted by Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin), a “no-good, gun-packing, murdering thief ” who ambushes Ransom’s stagecoach. Upon seeing Ransom’s library, Liberty sneers, “I’ll teach you law. Western law,” then proceeds to mercilessly whip the lawyer for daring to stand up to him and his gang. Between them is Tom Doniphon (Wayne), Shinbone’s white hat cowboy who believes in Ransom’s law but instinctively understands Liberty’s. “I know those law books mean a lot to you,” Tom tells Ransom. “But out here a man settles his own problems.” In other words, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
Yes this is a Western with a title promising that one man will shoot another dead, but Ford unequivocally rejects that argument as not only self-defeating but un-American. The director knew, better than most thanks to what he saw making documentaries for the Navy during World War II, the fragility of democracy. The world might have been made safe from fascism — but not forever. The work is never over. The defense of American ideals demands ongoing, multi-generational vigilance. The American Experiment is always one variable away from blowing up in our faces. When Liberty Valance was released in April 1962, in the glow of John Kennedy’s New Frontier, it was a celebration of what makes America great (for some, at least). Everyday people pull together to defy the terrorism of wealthy ranchers who hire murderers like Liberty to scare voters away from the polls; they excercise their franchise; and they opt for statehood and its promise of a brighter future of community and progress. The good people of Shinbone reject the gun and the repressive fear of unpredictable murder and brutality it represents. It’s America triumphant, and it’s rousing (albeit laced with a strain of melancholy).
Watching Liberty Valance today is a wholly different experience. Open your daily paper (if you still have one) or a news website or social media app for all the proof you need that we’re living in a funhouse reflection of the nation Ford celebrated. The political minority rules. The future exists for the super-rich. Equality
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by Dante A. Ciampaglia and justice are vanishing concepts. And our culture has determined that the value of guns is greater than the lives of people, particularly children. Somewhere along the way we acquiesced to fear, allowed ourselves to accept as normal what the New Yorker’s Jelani Cobb rightly describes as the absurd “vision of a society in which firearms are as commonplace as cell phones, and where more guns mean more safety.” Part of our predicament is undeniably due to elements of the Western mythology, created in no small part by John Ford and John Wayne, and their shallow perversion by shallow men who feel the need to be performatively masculine: the attitude, the swagger, the costumes, the guns. Does it matter that it never really existed? Not when it’s there in our manufactured national imagination, a false history to be mined and exploited. Print the legend.
Ford is far from a perfect artist. His portrayal of Native peoples, especially, is often deplorable. Still, he had an incisive instinct when it came to identifying and righteously condemning threats to the body politic.
"The defense of American ideals demands ongoing, multi-generational vigilance." The Grapes of Wrath (1940) is perhaps his most explicitly political film, but Liberty Valance doesn’t shirk from that task. And viewed from our 2022 vantage, the film feels like a from-the-grave condemnation of America’s gun cult, our national absurdity.
Liberty Valance is a fascist, full stop. The only freedoms he recognizes are the freedom to be his supplicant and the freedom to pay for disobedience with your life. In one powerful scene, Liberty and his gang destroy the Shinbone Star’s printing press and beat its editor nearly to death for running a story about Liberty losing an election. It’s Ford pulling no punches in showing what’s at stake in this ongoing civilizational battle. But Liberty’s violence is also aimed at disrupting all democracy and daily life, particularly education. Ransom teaches a literacy and civics class that ends under threat of Liberty’s guns. But despite that culture of fear, the Western territory chooses statehood to, as the Shinbone Star editor says, “protect the rights of men and women, however humble.” Ransom is celebrated as a man of the future; Tom slips into obscurity. The ballot defeats the gun.
The American story is written by people demanding their rights in the face of violent reprisal and possible death — from the American Revolution to the Suffragettes to the Civil Rights movement, from pioneers organizing states out West to countless forgotten local decisions made by communities fed up being under the thumb of repressive politics. That legacy vibrates through Shinbone and its people. And sure it’s only
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a movie, but through it Ford might as well be asking, “They did it — what’s your excuse?”
To really drive home, that violence is a threat to democracy and its success, Ford does the unthinkable: he strips Wayne of his weapons. At the start of the film, which is told in flashback, Ransom, now a former governor and two-term senator, returns to Shinbone to attend to the now-dead Tom. He looks in Tom’s coffin, sees he’s without his boots and pistol, and demands they be returned. “He didn’t carry no gun, Ranse,” the undertaker says. “He hasn’t for years.” John Wayne? Without a gun? Blasphemy! Or it could be progress. Or at least maturity. At the start of the film, Tom believes strength comes from packing. When he meets Ransom, recovering from his beating at the hands of Liberty, he urges the lawyer to carry a piece if he wants vengeance. “I don’t want a gun. I don’t want a gun,” Ransom replies. “I don’t want to kill him. I want to put him in jail.” Whenever Ransom makes such an appeal, he’s met with the snark and scorn a naive Easterner deserves. “You can’t shoot back with a law book,” the editor says at one point. And while Ransom wavers, acquiring a gun and confronting Liberty, it’s not the bullets that bring civilization to Shinbone. It’s community organizing, government, and constitutional law. Tom knows this best of all: He’s the man who shoots Liberty Valance. Everyone thinks it was Ransom, giving his appeals to law and order some muscle, and so Ransom gets all the glory. But for Tom — the gunsfirst gunslinger — gun violence costs him everything he loves and values, including his way of life. And so he renounces guns and all their empty promises. By all accounts, Ford was something of a bastard — especially to Wayne, who he mercilessly bullied on sets for any number of infractions, real and imagined. And yet so many of his films are imbued with a sense of hope and fervor for creating a more perfect Union. People do bad things, some change, others are punished, and violence is often involved. But in the end, if a better country hasn’t been forged, his characters have all the tools and confidence to build one. And as viewers we’re left grappling with a vision for how our country can be (minus the racism and sexism) and viewing our country as it is.
The chasm between those two points feels wider than ever, and often hopelessly unbridgeable. I don’t for a second believe that sitting our feckless politicians in front of a John Ford movie will rekindle whatever is left of their decency or sense of common cause. If the murders of 19 elementary school kids in Uvalde, Texas, or 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary, or 14 students at Stoneman Douglas High School, or 10 Black shoppers at a Buffalo grocery store, or any of the more than 1,300 people killed in mass shootings since 2009 can’t rouse their humanity nothing can. But for the rest of us, a film like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, like all great art, can be a kind of catalyst. It’s a reminder that things have always been hard in America, but hopelessness is a choice. And as naive as it can feel at times, especially in the face of the steep challenge, change can happen. All it takes is standing together as a community, locking arms, saying “No more!” — and voting every last one of the un-American pro-death bums out.
June 2022, Page 17
Books Quinn on Books: Mama’s Boy Review of One Headlight, by Matt Caprioli Review by Michael Quinn
W
e are children for only a short time, but spend the rest of our lives making sense of our childhoods. It’s an impressionable period of so many firsts. We soak them up like a sponge. In his heartfelt coming-of-age memoir One Headlight, Matt Caprioli (the former Arts Editor of this paper) wrings out his origin story as a gay man and writer. It drips with regret, colored by the loss of his mother Abby, who dies at 54 of colorectal cancer right as Caprioli is coming into his own as an adult. Eternally optimistic yet almost willfully naïve, Abby is unable to provide her son with a stable upbringing, yet she gives him something far more valuable: a healthy sense of his own worth. A near fatal car accident when Matthew is a baby causes Abby to embrace the fundamentalist faith of her childhood. As a boy, Matthew mimics the movements of the men at their church, hoping to ape their masculinity (he is fighting against his understanding that he’s gay). Then he discovers ice-skating. From his first turn on the ice, Matthew is a natural. Abby is immediately supportive and works to get him better skates and lessons. At a tournament, Matthew excels in the first round, then buckles under pressure. His dad calls him a loser, while Abby says, “You know you’re still my champ.” Despite his natural aptitude, Matthew shies away from the sport, afraid of its gay associations, and shrinks from his mother’s kindness.
When their parents divorce, Matthew’s half-sister Lee Ann prefers to stay with their police officer father, while Matthew is drawn to Abby’s encouraging but chaotic presence. The children ping pong between culturally-barren suburban California and a poverty-stricken stretch of Alaska. “Homeschooling” Matthew means Abby lets him wander
What a Shell Can Tell: Where They Live, What They Eat, How They Move, and More Book by Helen Scales
Review by Marie Heuston
“Have you ever found a shell at the edge of the ocean, lying on the sand? You may have thought it looks pretty and feels good to touch, but did you know that a shell has many secrets to tell? All you need to know is what to look for.”
around the local mall while she’s working. She cheerfully drifts from one dead end-job to another: working at a bakery, as a dishwasher, as a maid. One visit, Abby picks up 12-year-old
Some might see Abby and Matthew’s relationship in One Headlight as a kind of reverse parenting. But as Caprioli sees it, “they learned from each other.” Matthew at the airport during a snowstorm. She’s driving a broken-down Mustang (short one window and a headlight; she doesn’t have the money to have them repaired) which she calls Rocky (after the boxer). Exhausted after her double-shifts, she starts nodding off at the wheel. To keep her awake, Matthew turns off the heat and tells her to roll down the window. Blasted by the cold, they then blast gospel music on the radio, singing along at the top of their lungs as they barrel down With these opening lines, author and marine biologist Helen Scales invites young readers to learn more about shells from around the world in her book What a Shell Can Tell, out this month from Phaidon. Geared towards children ages six to nine, the book is a large volume, measuring 10 by 12.5 inches, and it is lavishly illustrated by Sonia Pulido, an artist living in a seaside village near Barcelona. Pulido’s beautiful illustrations not only depict shells as we see them most often, uninhabited on the beach, but as they look when they are occupied and moving, eating, and camouflaging in their natural habitats.
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an ice-slicked mountain.
Seemingly unable to make a smart decision for herself, Abby takes up with Caleb, a dim-witted man 20 years her junior (whom an exasperated Matthew describes in his journal as an “idiotic idiot”). Knowing Abby’s hungry for his approval, Matthew reluctantly gives it to her, and she beams “like a kid whose parents had suddenly changed their mind on ice cream for dinner.” Abby hangs on every kind word she hears—especially from her beloved Matthew. And he likewise blooms under her care. In high school, he plays varsity tennis and is elected to the prom court. Bursting with pride, Abby crashes the dance with her doofus husband in tow. Some might see Abby and Matthew’s relationship in One Headlight as a kind of reverse parenting. But as Caprioli sees it, “they learned from each other.” Abby encourages his writing; when he has a job at a local paper after high school, she writes an effusive letter to the editor. As he ages, Matthew sees in her “a habit of imitating whatever I tried”: ordering the same food, reading the same books, going to college (they attend school at the same time), even moving to New York.
Caprioli mentions the writing of One Headlight within the book. He wrote it longhand. It sometimes feels like he also worked on it in chunks and didn’t completely smooth the seams when he joined everything together. Some parts (like the Mustang episode) feel polished, while others feel a little less developed. There are episodes that don’t feel like they belong in this book at all, such as his brief foray into sex work. The timeline is jumpy and seems confusing even to him. At different parts of the book, he’ll tell us things he already told us, introduce characters we already
know. A sanctimonious tone creeps in whenever he airs his grievances, so that your takeaway isn’t the way Lee Ann wrongs him, for example, but his judgment of her behavior.
One Headlight works best when it focuses on Abby. She’s a complex character: likable and maddening at the same time. An interesting parallel Caprioli doesn’t really explore is how he, like Abby, is forced to work a series of exhausting, physically-demanding, low-paying jobs to support his fledgling life as a writer in New York. Unlike Abby, Caprioli complains endlessly and relies on Abby not only for sympathy, but for understanding and acceptance of his sudden unavailability when he emotionally withdraws.
One of the book’s best scenes shows Matthew, fed up with Abby’s chaos infringing on his new life in New York, getting into a cab and abandoning her on a street corner with a pile of her bags at her feet and no place to go. He fights back tears but doesn’t turn around. The abandonment is brutal—in part because you could see how he felt like he had no other choice. One Headlight well illuminates the necessary pain of separating from our mothers to become who we are—and the way we continually return to them, and to who we were, to understand who that is.
Children will love poring through the pages, trying to spot shells they’ve seen in their own travels and ones they may hope to find some day. The book has a clever Q&A format to engage young readers, with sections such as What can a shell’s pattern tell you? and What can a shell’s shape tell you? In “Can a shell tell you its age?” readers will learn how the ridges on a clam shell—a common sight on the beaches in our area—resemble the rings of a tree: the more ridges, the more years the clam has been alive.
In addition to the facts children will learn about shells around the world, What a Shell Can Tell also acknowledges the dangers that shells and oceans face today, and the author inspires shell col-
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lectors and budding marine biologists alike to take better care of our oceans and environments and the shells living in them.
June 2022
Jazz by Grella Purgatory
I
by George Grella
n the winter of 2020, trumpeter Wallace Roney appeared one evening on WKCR. A few weeks later, he was dead, killed, by the coronavirus. As Sharif Abdus-Salaam, who had hosted Roney, said with some shock when reporting this, “COVID does not play around.” No it does not.
Nor, now with more than a million Americans needlessly dead, has it stopped playing around. We’re currently in an upsetting purgatory, with government from President Biden to Mayor Adams declining to do anything other than tell people to get vaccinated and occasionally send out testing kits. At best, only 2/3rds of subway riders have on masks, hardly any bar or restaurant asks for vaccination proof—as per Adams, who is close to doing as little in six months as Bill DeBlasio did in eight years—the CDC isn’t really keeping track of data anymore and encouraging people to be out in public when they still might be contagious (and since there’s so little mask wearing now, it’s a massive experiment in viral incubation), the blithe don’t care and the concerned are befuddled and anxious.
Government wants us to get together again, but absolutely not in that way, any way that might upset the established status quo, and way that might be improvisatory, that might be jazz. Government wants us to work and make money so we can consume and pay taxes. Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul want people to return to offices to work, not because the work matters but because vacant offices threaten the livelihood of commercial real estate developers who are the kind of people who get to talk with Adams and Hochul (and I can’t imagine either of them ever seeing this column, much less even listening to jazz. Here in the jazz capital of the world, Adams’ idea of culture is to go to a nightclub for a party to celebrate a new credit card.).
We are gathering against purgatory however, as best we can. We’re going to concert halls and clubs. Music is happening. And we’re also getting COVID, and so are musicians. Every day I see reports of musicians on tour—the one place they might make money—begging audiences to wear masks and announcing they have to cancel a tour because someone has come down with the virus at one venue or another. There’s some hazy but real dividing line between fans of musicians and live music, and fans of going out, and the latter seem to hold the capitalist notion that musicians are just one more exploitable commodity. The jazz industry, the business such as it is, is not supporting these musicians very well. Some venues, like
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Wallace Roney Jr., photo by Ellen Qbertplaya
"Jazz and blues (and by extension all 20th century pop music) exist because a specifically African American culture produced them." the Village Vanguard, Birdland, and the Jazz Gallery ask for vaccination proof, but not the Blue Note or Smalls, and these are environments where people are eating and drinking, not just listening but going out, and doing their socializing in front of musicians. Now anyone can buy a ticket to the Blue Note and eat and drink and chat, and everyone there—musicians, staff, and patrons—just must hope that, at the very least, that person is being honest and sincere about how well they feel. That’s the design of Adams’ policy, which is to trust your health to the strangers who are nearest to you. That doesn’t strike me as paradisiacal.
Concert halls are a little different. All the major classical spaces require proof of vaccination and masks. BAM only requires the former, Roulette only suggests masks. This was noticeable during the Bang on A Can Long Play festival over the last weekend in April. At the BAM Opera House and associated venues like the Mark Morris Dance Center, the venues asked
people to keep their masks on and most complied (although a few couldn’t be bothered), while Roulette only suggested people wear masks and, depending on the set, up to half the audience didn’t have masks. The interesting breakdown was how this seemed to correlate to the acts on stage. For the improvising jazz trio of pianist David Virelles, bassist Reggie Workman, and drummer Andrew Cyrille, the audience was heavily masked, while for Gary Lucas’ and Nona Hendryx’s Captain Beefheart band—a fabulous band playing fabulous music—maybe half the audience was masked. As a basic sign of respect for the musicians, this seemed especially odd, with the Beefheart band drawing an audience of elderly hippies and hipsters whose social insignia is a care for the world around them but, unsurprisingly, turned out to care only about themselves. Do they even listen to Beefheart, one of the best things this country has produced, someone who, despite the beef in his heart against the world, was trying to give to those around him?
There was something sad about this, doubled uncannily be seeing Wallace Roney, Jr. on stage for the closing festival performance in the Opera House. This was a new realization of Ornette Coleman’s classic The Shape of Jazz to Come album. There was an upfront band of Roney, Jr., alto saxophonist Lee Odom, pianist Jason Moran, guitarist James “Blood” Ulmer, bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma, and drummer Denardo Coleman, with a small orchestra behind conducted by Awadagin Pratt. This wasn’t straight tunes from the album, but fantastic, skillful, imaginative re-compositions from the likes of Nicole Mitchell, Pamela Z, Craig Harris, Carman Moore, Nick Dunston, and other great Black composers. Dazzling in and of itself, I was drawn to Roney, Jr.’s playing. The first I’d heard him, his sound was beautiful and his improvising was thoughtful in the best way, like saying complete sentences before he spoke, then listening to how eloquent and shapely the grammar, syntax, and meaning were.
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This is purgatory because something is going to play out in the end, but just what that might be, and when, is an agonizing puzzle. Democracy has been steadily disintegrating since Bush v Gore, late capitalism is corrupt and decadent, the police protect property and politicians and beat up (and worse) peaceful protestors and unarmed civilians. The confusion and pain of this is crucial to jazz because, as Abiodun Oyewole said while performing at Vision Festival 25 last year, this country should be a paradise. And it should, because it’s organized on the principles of political and social values, not on tribalism or language. And America produced jazz directly out of both those principles and the facts that savagely contradicted them, like slavery. Jazz and blues (and by extension all 20th century pop music) exist because a specifically African American culture produced them. Jazz and blues also aspire toward that abstract, social paradise, not a pure one but a real one, all kinds of people gathering in all areas of society, a mongrel nation that celebrates a mix, a creative mess, idiosyncrasy, and surprise, rather than a smooth racial, social, religious, and political conformity.
STAR REVUE June 2022, Page 19
Marie's Craft Corner
Turn a shoebox into a play space for mini figures and tiny toys! by Marie Hueston For years, shoeboxes have been used to store childhood mementoes like trading cards and trinkets. They are also the perfect size and shape to transform into a play space for mini figures and tiny toy animals. Follow these instructions to create your own design.
Decorate the outside of the box. I chose to cover the outside of my shoebox with gift wrap, but you can cover the sides with construction paper, or paint your box, or adorn it with stickers—use your imagination and the materials you have on hand to make your box one-of-a-kind!
Paint a blue sky and clouds on the inside of the box. Paint the inside of the box light blue to resemble the sky. When the blue paint is completely dry, use white paint to add clouds. Note: If you are using acrylic paint, be sure to wear a smock or clothes you don’t mind getting paint on and cover all surfaces since this type of paint does not wash off. Add activities on top of the grass. I added a pond by cutting and pasting an oval piece of blue construction paper. I also drew a small hopscotch game on white paper, cut it out, and glued it beside the pond. You can customize your own box in many ways: Try cutting out small circles of gray paper to create a stone path through the grass.
What You’ll Need: A shoebox, construction paper, craft paint, paintbrush, scissors, ruler, and glue. Additional paper, markers, gift wrap, and stickers can also be used for optional decorations.
Measure and cut green construction paper “grass.” Glue the paper to the bottom of the box. As an optional decoration you can create shrubs by cutting a scalloped edge on a thin strip of green construction paper and gluing it around the inside edge of the box. Open your shoebox and position it so that a longer flat surface is on the bottom. Shoeboxes with hinged lids work best for this craft, but if your shoebox has a detached lid, lay the lid on a table and flatten one of the edges on the long side, then place the other part of the shoebox on top of the lid and secure it with tape so it resembles the starting position of the box shown here.
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July Preview: Start saving the cardboard inserts you sometimes find in packaging for a board game craft!
Share your designs with us! Send photos to the editor: george@redhookstar.com We will print them in the next issue www.star-revue.com
June 2022