The 2006 Black Weblog Awards, by and/or about Black people.
I'm voting for Uncle Bernie!
I know it's kinda late, but important information
2nd Annual "Brighter Days" Party Hosted by The Chocolate BarThe Where & When
The Chocolate Bar
45 Waverly Ave
Between Park & Flushing
Fort Greene, BrooklynSunday, August 06, 2006
8pm-3am
This year's event is an official Pride in the City party, co-promoted through People of Color in Crisis and featuring DJ Hard Hittin Harry and C2, so there's bound to be a lively crowd on the dancefloor. Translation: You'll fit right in!
The music? Classics.
The cover? $10
The cause? Our fight against racism, sexism & homophobia.
What other pride party can say that?!?100% of the donations collected at the door will go toward supporting the work of the RBMF, particularly the $1500 scholarship awarded annually to a college- bound NYC high school student committed to the fight against injustice.
Available to work a 1 hour shift collecting donations at the door? Email info@rashawnbrazell.com today to help us make this event a great one! We'd love to have you.
If you're like me and unable to attend, you can always check here to send a donation.
Damn, thought I posted this. If you're in Chicago, you're either watching Kev live, or pissed off with the late notice. This is straight from Mr. So
Dear Family, Friends, and Fans alike!!!Just a quick reminder... PLEASE SPREAD THE GOOD WORD to ANYbody youknow in the CHICAGO area!
FINAL REMINDER!!!
TONIGHT! SATURDAY AUGUST 5 @ 10pm
DAVENPORT'S Chicago, FL
Located on 1383 N. Milwaukee in lovely Wicker Park!A great sounding room! First show in Chicago in 2 years! Pleasespread the good word!
ALSO - Check out http://www.myspace.com/kevinsoandmidnightsnack for FREE DOWNLOADS, new pictures, and updated info!!!
ALSO Also- for all my friends in the MA area - My performance of "ABrighter Day" will air THIS SUNDAY (8/6) at 11:00am on CBS Channel 4 "Sunday With Liz Walker" - so please TIVO it and/or have your VCRs ready !
UPCOMING NYC/MA shows:
8/22 ROCKWOOD MUSIC HALL 8pm
9/15 LARZ ANDERSON CONCERT SERIES 8pm with special guest SIMON LYNGE!Hope to see you real soon!
peace and gratitude
ks2006 WingBone Records
MacRumors.com offers live coverage of Apple's WWDC 2006 Keynote.
I update as necessary:
Goodbye PowerMac! The introduction of the Mac Pro (ugh!!! hate the name, but given the MacBook moniker, it was expected).
The numbers:
2.6 Ghz dual
256 MB ram
Superdrive
$2499
And ready for shipping today.
more--
old case - two optical drives - woodcrest processors - based on core 2 duo - all dual core, up to 3 Ghz - large 4 MB shared L2 cache - 128 bit vector engine, 64 bit - up to 3x a Xeon - amazing processor, every Mac Pro gets 2 of them - 1.6 to 2.1x faster than the G5 quad - room for 4 hard drives - up to 2 TB of internal storage - second optical drive
( more after the jump )
( Additional news and info from The Mac Observer and ARS Technica)
The completion of the Intel transistion finishes today (210 days totals since the first announcement). The other product news: Xserve. $2999 for standard configuration. More details--
- built on Xeons - quad performance, similar to specs of Mac Pro
- with smaller chip, footprint, easier to get faster chips in
- 5x faster than machine it replaces
- up to 5 terabytes of storage
- amazing performance - new features, more space, adds redundant power supply
Steve Jobs has taken the stage to talk up Mac OS X history. Of course, he's leading up to an announcement of Tiger to come. And poking fun at Redmond. Har!!
- "Time Machine" appears to be a new backup scheme that'll be built into Tiger; most people (present company included) don't perform regular backups. This will make it quite easy.
coolest part - and reason we call it that - whole new way of backing up files; backup to HD, or server; can restore everything, or just one file at a time; and be right where you were when the HD driveautomatically backs up mac
you change a file, it automatically backs up
photos, music, documents, files folder, everything
then you can restore everything
"With time machine, you can get those files back by entering a date or time..."
- Boot Camp, FrontRow and PhotoBooth all to be built-in to Tiger, along with beta software from outside developers
- "Spaces" = Virtual Desktops: create different spaces for different clusters of apps to work together; can drag info from one desktop to the other; spaces allows users to create collections of apps for different tasks that's intuitive
- Improved Spotlight: advanced search features; ability to search on multiple machines at once, including at work, servers, etc.
- "CORE animation" = a core layer in Mac OS X similar to CoreAudio and the other Core elements of OS X that handles animation and 3D animation. Allows you to dramatically increase the production value of your applications; handles everything in between - color, size, opacity, all kinds of things.
- Universal Access = much improved for disabled users. Advanced Brailler support, closed-captioning for QuickTime and greatly improved voices for Voice Over! (ed. no more robotic voices!!!)
- "The BIG One" = .Mail. Stationary, Notes, To-Do added. The latter is system-wide under Tiger! All greatly integrated with iCal, iPhoto, etc.
- Dashboard = Dashcode. It's a development environment for making Widgets. It includes Templates (generic Widgets that can be modified and edited to meet your needs). over 2500 widgets available for download.
You can read more at the above links and from the Apple homepage shortly.
Even with its recent "one time only" selection of former Negro League stars to be inducted to the MLB HOF, Baseball should go further and make sure O'Neil is inducted. At the very least, they need to include him for his decades as an ambassador. And they need to do it before he can enjoy it.
Buck O'Neil hospitalized for fatigue; resting comfortablyFormer Negro Leagues star Buck O'Neil was resting comfortably Monday after being hospitalized over the weekend.
The 94-year-old O'Neil was admitted to a hospital Saturday after complaining that he didn't feel well, said Bob Kendrick, a friend who also is marketing director for the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.
"Mostly the doctors just wanted to be extra cautious with him," Kendrick said Monday. "They just wanted to slow him down a little."
Kendrick said O'Neil had been in good spirits and joking with hospital staff. He declined to say which hospital O'Neil was in, but said O'Neil appreciated all the concern.
"He's getting kind of antsy," Kendrick said with a laugh. "He's ready for them to turn him loose. But with a 94-year-old, you want to err on the side of overcaution."
O'Neil received a standing ovation last week before and after he spoke at the Baseball Hall of Fame Induction ceremony when a class of 17 Negro Leagues players was enshrined. He received much support to be part of the group of inductees but fell short in the voting.
He also stepped into the batter's box during the Northern League All-Star game and received an intentional walk last month.
The Kansas City T-Bones signed O'Neil to a one-day contract, making him the oldest man ever to play professional baseball. He surpassed 83-year-old Jim Eriotes, who struck out in a minor league game in South Dakota earlier this month, by more than a decade.
Don't ask me about the title. It was inspired. The following is via George Kelly (AKA The BlogFather!) who's also one of the expert editors of:
Code Z: Black Visual Culture NowIt's true. Young, critically-engaged black artists have been conversing among ourselves in a whole new way for the last 10 to 15 years, and yet no forum has emerged to encapsulate that in a broad-based way. No forum seems to address that generation of visual creators, and to do so in an accessible, smart, dynamic way. These became my goals in building Code Z.
I like what I've seen and read thus far. 'Sides, anything that has G. involved...
Spare Change Is Big Business in a Culture of GenerosityMr. Sorro is a beggar, one of thousands who ply the streets here in a city famous across West Africa for its generosity. He moved here from Ivory Coast after a war injury left him disabled. He had heard about Senegal's tradition of charity, born of its particular brand of Sufi Islam that requires its adherents to give freely in the hopes of increasing their bounty a thousandfold.
These days, though, Mr. Sorro is feeling trapped, and not just by the wheelchair he uses. Dakar's benevolence is being strained as ever larger numbers of beggars, many of them from neighboring countries like Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Burkina Faso, choke the streets.
Begging here once brought in as much as $10 a day, which is about what a blue-collar worker in the region makes nowadays. But, the police have begun chasing Mr. Sorro and his friends away from their normal posts, trying to clean up the city's image, and the generous hands of Dakar are growing fatigued.
I visited Senegal more than a dozen years ago (April 1992) and witnessed this brand of begging:
Dakar has another category of beggars as well. Impoverished village families often send their boys to the cities to attend Koranic schools, where they are expected to support themselves by begging.The boys are known as talibé, and 100,000 of them wander the streets of Senegal’s cities.
Outside idling buses and taxicab windows, the boys chant Arabic prayers for coins, food or sugar cubes. Some find the system exploitative, and rumors abound of imams who amass significant wealth from their charges.
Nevertheless, people give, freely and often.
Unlike their older, more aggressive New York brethren, you felt alright giving change and food and other items. In fact, had I known about this beforehand, I would have bought change, tees and trinkets to give out freely.
Haven't posted one of these in a while:
Call For Submissions Unpublished Short Fiction By Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, And Transgendered AuthorsSubmissions open: September 1st, 2006
Submissions deadline: December 1st, 2006Blithe House Quarterly : queer fiction lives here
Featured in the January 2005 New York Times article on the literary magazine boom
Blithe House Quarterly, the leading journal of lesbian and gay literary fiction, is pleased to open submissions for its Spring 2007 issue.
My favorite story in the current issue is Fair Trade by Thomas Kearnes.
A little late notice, but important (info via Bernie's posting to a LGBTPOC listserv):
CONTACT: Daevon Hibbert, New York State Black Gay Network, 212.828.9393 ext. 135
What: Press Conference
When: Tuesday, August 22, 2006, 10:00am
Where: NW Corner of 125th Street & Broadway, Manhattan, NY 10036
Who: Confirmed Speakers include: Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY); Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer; NY City Councilmember’s Melissa Mark-Viverito, Robert Jackson and Yvette Clarke; Clarence Patton, Anti-Violence Project; Mark McLaurin, New York State Black Gay Network; Maurice Franklin, Masons of New York
The New York State Black Gay Network decided to take homophobia in the Black community head on with a bold new transit/billboard campaign, which they are launching at a press conference in Harlem with Congressman Charles Rangel, Borough President Scott Stringer and other guests. The press conference is being held on 125th Street & Broadway, in front of two large Billboards that read "I AM GAY, And This Is Where I Stay." Far away from traditional gay neighborhoods like Chelsea and the West Village where many gay marketing campaigns are targeted, this campaign is being rolled out in subway stations in Black communities like Harlem, Bed-Stuy, Jamaica, Brownsville and East New York, where most Black gay men live. "Black gay men have always been a part of every aspect of the Black community, it's not a matter of acceptance from the community of some foreign presence, it is about acknowledgement, love and respect from our own for us," said Mark McLaurin, Executive Director of New York State Black Gay Network. "If we want to stop the spread of HIV, Black gay men need to know that their lives matter in the very communities in which they live." Twenty-five years into the HIV epidemic, Black Men who have sex with men (MSM) remain the group most impacted by the HIV epidemic. A 2005 five-city Centers for Disease Control study showed a staggering 46% of all Black men who have sex with men may already be HIV positive. Other studies have concluded that the stigma of being gay in the Black community remains one of the reasons for high rates of infection among Black MSM. "We hope that these billboards remind our neighbors, our family members, and religious leaders that we are part of this community," continued McLaurin. "When you verbally or physically bash Black gay men, you are bashing somebody's brother, father, friend or lover." Black gay men in New York City have also been subjected to a rash of attacks and murders. Most recently, Black gay recording artist Kevin Aviance was attacked after leaving a club. Black gay activists say that much more harassment and verbal attacks go unreported.The transit campaign is part of NYSBGN's Campaign for Black Gay Men's Lives. To learn more about visit www.nysbgn.org. To see the transit/billboard campaign, visit www.wearepartofyou.org.
Anthony R. Morgan
Director of Programs
New York State Black Gay Network
103 East 125th Street
Suite 503
New York, NY 10035
T. 212.828.9393 x137
F. 212.828.1661
C. 646.335.5696
“The day will come when you will trust you more than you do now, and you will trust me more than you do now. And we can trust each other. I really do believe that we can all become better than we are. But the price is enormous – and people are not yet willing to pay it.”
-James Baldwin
Political Trailblazer Is Quick to a Microphone[T]here is praise in many corners for Mr. Liu, who holds the distinction of being the first and only Asian-American to win a major elective office in New York City. Peter Vallone Sr., a former City Council speaker, said that as the first Asian-American on the Council, Mr. Liu was simply fulfilling his responsibility as a trailblazer, breaking new ground in New York's well-worn arena of ethnic politics. The opinion is echoed by Mr. Liu.
"It's not something I sought," Mr. Liu said in a recent interview at City Hall. "In fact, I wish I were the ninth, or the tenth. But I happily accept the responsibility that comes along with it. There's a lot of pressures that come along with it, but also lots of opportunity."
Given the precedent he has already established, there are those in City Hall who speculate about whether Mr. Liu aspires to become mayor.
"Am I interested in running for higher office?" Mr. Liu said in response to a question. "Yes, I am."
I'd probably vote for him. Right now, I can't see voting for any current wannabe.
I rarely post on political items, but I thought this was appropriate:
Cindy Sheehan: Celebrating Irrelevancy!Thanks be to God for irrelevance. Now I can go home and get my strength back, spend time with my kids, and prepare for true and lasting peace.
Appropriate (and free) music for the first anniversary of the Hurricane Katrina Disaster/Fiasco:
Baptized in Dirty Water by Chris Thomas KingIt's a slow-burning blues scorcher from Chris Thomas King, whom you might have seen playing bluesman Tommy Johnson in the film O Brother, Where Art Thou? The Louisiana native's latest LP is an ode to his New Orleans hometown and to the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina. In our Discovery Download this week, "Baptized in Dirty Water," King sings about the levee that broke and the dirty water that rushed in, forcing many to confront — or reevaluate — their faith.
Unfortunately, this is a common concern for many residents in Black neighborhoods throughout NYC (and indeed, the US) of late:
Black New York frets the changing face of HarlemFrom 2000 to 2005, an estimated 32,500 blacks moved out and some 22,800 whites moved in to the Congressional district that includes Harlem and other neighborhoods in the north of New York City, U.S. Census Bureau data show.
"A lot of white folks have come through here and really changed the complexion of the neighborhood," said Bernard Moore, 51, an unemployed black carpenter who said he cannot find work in Harlem because contractors bring in their own crews of largely immigrant workers. (emphasis mine)
"The cost of rent is so high even churches are selling their buildings to prospective apartment buildings that are out of reach for most black folks," Moore said.