January 14 2024
January 14, 2024
# 1639
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Martin Luther King Jr.’s life was a testament to the enduring impact of nonviolent resistance in the fight for social justice and equality. Rev. King’s philosophy is rooted in Christian principles and influenced by the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi. King was among the leaders of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Birmingham Campaign, and the March on Washington at the Lincoln Memorial. He thrilled the world with his iconic "I Have a Dream" speech, a speech that galvanized a movement and inspired generations.
Fats Domino singing "Blueberry Hill" on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956
Creators of The Alan Freed Show - DVD transfer of video tape
A screenshot of Fats Domino singing "Blueberry Hill" on the "Alan Freed Show" 1956. The picture quality is bad, taken from a video-tape source. I feel this may be useful as the image is public, as it's a screenshot from a TV series not under copyright.
King's efforts, especially when joined with those of then President Lyndon Johnson, were instrumental in the enactment of landmark legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which outlawed segregation, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which protected voting rights. These laws significantly advanced civil rights in the United States.
King’s enduring message of peace, nonviolence, and equality remains as relevant and powerful today as it was during his lifetime, making him one of the most influential figures in modern history.
Little Richard in concert
Robbie Drexhage - Own work
Little Richard in concert
Simultaneously with these pivotal moments in civil rights history, Fats Domino, Little Richard, and Chuck Berry exploded into the music scene. Not only did they redirect the course of American pop music, but they challenged societal norms and racial barriers. They fostered a sense of shared experience among diverse audiences, existentially breaking down racial barriers by encouraging generations of teenagers to share their music, dance styles, and cultural attitudes. They nurtured a sense of unity and understanding among young people from diverse racial and social backgrounds that did not exist before their arrival on the pop scene,
The rise of rock 'n' roll symbolized a shift towards more progressive and inclusive values in American society. It touched the realms of fashion, language, and social norms. Teenagers, inspired by the rebellious and energetic spirit of rock 'n' roll, began to challenge traditional conventions and stereotypes, breaking down the barriers of the rigid segregationist policies of the time.
Chuck Berry 1957
Universal Attractions (management) - eBay item photo front photo back
Fats Domino, Little Richard, and Chuck Berry sang of the angst, the hopes, the interests of teenagers. We white inner-city kids accepted them as artists, not as black artists. The impact of the rockers was incalculable. American would never be the same. “Rip it Up,” “Aint that a Shame,” and “Sweet Little Sixteen” joined forces with “I have a dream” to advance the cause of justice in America.
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Commentary
We at existentialautotrip are very proud of Kat’s commitment to yoga. She worked hard to make her advanced studies happen. After two years as Brad’s Press Secretary, Kat decided to look for another job. It didn’t take her long to get offered two jobs. She made her choice and asked her employer if she could start in early February. They agreed so Kat took January to further her studies as a yoga instructor. Details of her trip to India below. We will be anxiously waiting her report.
Kat will be spending January in India
Best Yoga Teacher Training in India
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Kat’s Gen Z Corner
AyurYoga Eco Ashram. Details here: https://ayuryoga-ashram.com/yoga-instructor-training-india/200-hours-yoga-teacher-training/
Best Yoga Teacher Training in India | AyurYoga Eco-Ashram
Rated among top 10 yoga retreats in the world by HuffPost, this ashram offers one of the most intensive yoga
ayuryoga-ashram.com
I’m in India for a month to study hatha yoga at an ashram just outside of Mysore. First I’m in Bangalore for three days to settle in and see the city.
For the same price of a low end hotel in the US, I’m staying at the Taj, which has really been the most luxurious experience of my life and well worth the cost given my newness to the area and being a woman alone.
My first full day, the concierge insisted I go to an art fair five minutes away that turned out to be the most remarkable experience. I went back to the hotel twice to drop off pieces I purchased and pick up more money. It was called Chitra Santhe (art fair) by Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, a local art school.
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Do You Believe in Magic? Anthology of Stories from the North End
Edited by Dom Capossela
We can now offer substantial multiple-copy discount prices for “Do You Believe in Magic?”20% off if you order three or more and 40% off if you order nine or more.
For details, see Stories of the North End at questonorthend.org
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Tucker’s Corner
Last August my wife’s best friend Jeff passed away after unknowingly taking fentanyl laced oxycontin. I’ve lost family and friends before but this one was different. It hit hard. My wife got hit with a wall of grief that knocked her flat. It took me a few weeks to realize that I too was grieving. Jeff and I had a strained relationship which can happen when two people only know each other because of their mutual connection to a third party. But we grew to care deeply for one another over the near decade that we were in each other’s lives. Jeff was a gay man. That detail has little bearing on our relationship but it might also have all everything to do with our relationship as how you identify is wrapped around every fiber of your being whether you like it or not. It’s colors how you see the world. It determines your sense of humor. It’s everything. I only mention that detail about Jeff because it made it even easier to watch the film in this week’s review and think of him. This one is special. This is All of Us Strangers.
All of Us Strangers - Directed by Andrew Haigh
The surreal almost supernatural atmosphere of Andrew Haigh's "All of Us Strangers" is present from the first shots, where the sunset light streaming through the windows of the new apartment building seems piercingly gold, almost molten. There's something weird about the light, like it's sentient, reaching out for this building in particular. Then there's the building itself. It's mostly empty. There are only two residents. It's like the building is floating in a space where time either collapses or stretches out like an accordion. Things become possible, things like forming a fragile and unexpected love connection, or, stranger, like being able to speak and meet with the dead. "All of Us Strangers" does these things, creating a sense of uncanniness from the first time we see the golden light hit the building windows, like it's come across the vast abyss of space specifically for this time, this place.
Andrew Haigh's other work shows the director's interest in relationships and intimacy (although not in an otherworldly way). "Weekend" was about a one-night stand's transformation into something more substantial, occurring, as the title suggests, in a compressed timeframe. "45 Years", on the other hand, showed the devastating crack-up of a relationship. Both films showed Haigh's sensitivity to human behavior, as well as the good care he takes of his actors, the room he gives them to feel and create. Charlotte Rampling was nominated for an Academy Award for "45 Years" and no wonder. Haigh loves actors. "All of Us Strangers" is a quartet, featuring four memorable performances by Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Claire Foy, and Jamie Bell.
Scott plays Adam, first seen basking in that eerie molten glow, as though being pulled towards it. He's a screenwriter, supposed to be working on a new script, but instead puttering about and procrastinating. One night the only other resident of the building knocks on his door. This is drunk, flirtatious, charming Harry (Mescal), looking for a hookup. Nothing happens that night but a delicate thread is established.
On occasion, Adam gets on a bus and travels to the house where he grew up in a nearby suburb. Inside live his parents (Foy, Bell), who died in a car crash when Adam was 12. They are the age they were when they died. Adam shows up at the door, and his parents are eager to hear about what he's been doing with himself all this time. It's a reunion, but the intensity of feeling is too much. This sense of "too much" floods the film: every interaction spills over into the next, and the next, with scenes between Adam and Harry, Adam and his mum, Adam and his dad, alternating. There's no filler, no downtime. It's one heavy catharsis after the next.
Haigh's touch is light, though. He has removed the extraneous and distracting. Loosely based on the 1987 novel Strangers, by Japanese novelist Taichi Yamada (who died just last month at the age of 89), "All of Us Strangers" is about a man coming out of hiding, facing his past and his present, simultaneously. Losing both your parents in a car crash at the age of 12 is, of course, a life-altering event. He has gone through his whole life without witnesses. The reunion is not without its hiccups. When he tells his mother he's gay, she is shocked. It's like she's never even heard of such a thing. She worries it will be a "sad" life for him, a lonely one. Her views are outdated. (The flipside, though, is her fears are not unfounded). When he breaks the news to his dad, the interaction goes a bit differently. (Jamie Bell, always an interesting actor, is just heartbreaking here.)
This potentially maudlin stuff is elevated by the work of all of the actors. What matters here is not just what is being said, but the emotions underneath. All four performers pour pure, undiluted feeling into their performances. The emotion gives the supernatural "All of Us Strangers" a feeling of reality. This is how it might go if you met your dead parents again. You'd want them to know you. You have so many things you didn't get to say. You'd want to try to say them. There'd be no beating around the bush, no small talk. You'd have the courage to get to the point.
In real time, the relationship between Harry and Adam unfolds with tenderness and care. Adam, nearly celibate, is uncomfortable with sexual touch and yet yearning for it. The generation gap is present. Harry has no concept of associating sex with a possible death sentence. They talk things out. These scenes, too, are amazing (and make you really feel the lack of frank adult romances in cinema). If there's no small talk between Adam and his parents, the same is true with Adam and Harry.
The premise may seem hokey to some, an artificially generated family therapy session but I'll come clean. When I have a strong response to a film, I interrogate it, whether the response is positive or negative. I look for my blind spots, I question resistance, I ask myself what the film is trying to do and whether or not it does it successfully (as opposed to wishing for a whole other film to have been made). "All of Us Strangers" generated such a strong personal response it obliterated my ability to interrogate it. I had no distance. I'd love to talk to my friend Jeff again, and let him know I'm doing okay, tell him he doesn't have to worry. I'd love to see his face again and hear his laugh. Through "All of Us Strangers" I lived out that fantasy vicariously. The emotion was overwhelming. "All of Us Strangers" flattened me.
Return to God
“I have come to tell the world that God exists.”
Medjugorje
Since June 24, 1981, in a small village in Bosnia-Hercegovina (former Yugoslavia) the Blessed Virgin Mary has been appearing and giving messages to the world in a small village named Medjugorje. She tells us that God has sent Her to our world during this time of Grace as the Queen of Peace. In Her own words She tells us, "I have come to tell the world that God exists. He is the fullness of life, and to enjoy this fullness and peace, you must return to God".
Our Lady's mission of peace is to reeducate us and to help us convert and recenter our lives back to God. Our Lady's role has always been one of inviting everyone to love Her Son, Jesus.
Come join us to experience this life changing NORTH END PILGRIMAGE TO MEDJUGORJE
We will stay with Ivan the visionary from June 21-29 https://www.206tours.com/cms/frdellapenna/ (https://www.206tours.com/cms/frdellapenna/)
Username: Saint
Password: Francis206
Sharing
I want to share this with you because I feel it might have something to do with what we are working together on
I want to share this with you because I feel it might have something to do with what are are working together on and it might represent something that was never acknowledged but expressed in our growing up in the North end which we are committed to sharing with the world. I would love to hear what you feel and think about this.
Forever
Geri,
I couldn’t sleep. I keep getting up around two am and have finally got the discipline not to lay in bed. I do not have insomnia I just can not sleep at times.
I am beginning to see that moments of time is what we have to manifest our life affirming possibilities in our land of the living. I was lying awake in bed thinking about Kathy Micelli my friend and my friend's wife whose son just passed from an overdose. We never had many moments together but we did have many moments of being together. I always know that if it was not for Franky-y. I would rather die than invalidate their intimacy. I would marry her in a heart beat even if we never had sex. I realized something deeper. Intimacy has nothing to do with sex. Sex is just a physical metaphor for a recognition of who we are. One person whose sole function is to bring new life into the world.
"Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of the living
And forthwith found salvation in surrender
Such as we are we gave ourselves outright. “
Has new meaning for me now.
"In our end is our beginning.”
We can only be truly known in the world unless this acknowledgement, this experience this manifestation of our oneness brings life into the world.
Geri, I do not know how I got here. It took me over forty years to get here devouring many disciplines over a life time but I am sure fornicating glad I am here.
Did you notice that I didn’t say fucking and said fornicating. There may be some hope that I am be politically correct. On second thought there is no hope I might be politically correct.
I Love You
Raphael
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Chuckles and Thoughts
Change is not popular; we are creatures of habit as human beings. ‘I want it to be the way it was.’ But if you continue the way it was there will be no ‘is.’
Robin Williams
Winslow Homer - Breezing Up (A Fair Wind) - Google Art Project
Winslow Homer - OgHYzsaNTlFiWQ at Google Cultural Institute maximum zoom level
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Six Word Stories
"Winds of change, sails set, adventure."
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Mail and other Conversation
We love getting mail, email, or texts, including links.
Send comments to domcapossela@hotmail.com
text to 617.852.7192
This from Kat C re: Lord of the Rings, issue Jan 7:
Loved that you both wrote on Lord of the Rings — forever a classic.
and this from Tucker J re: Kat’s Year End Book Review:
I love your posting about your year in books.
I'm researching the majority of the ones I don't know about and adding them to my To-read list!
2024 is going to be the new year, better me year!
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Last Thought
On Sunday, the 7th, my daughter Kat called me from India. She’d been settled for a day and was in heaven. The hotel was amazing and the buffet was greater than she had ever seen. The people are amazing and food fairs breathtaking. She’s got another two days of this bliss and then moves to her ashram where she will undertake her 200 hours of classes. As a dad, I am very happy for my daughter. She promises photographs. It was a long call, almost an hour.
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