I’ve told several people that I didn’t know what white radio was until I was in my early teens, in the early 80s. What I don’t mention was that when I did “discover” white radio, I found (? was told about?) Casey Kasem and that was it. Casey Kasem and “American Top 40” WAS radio to me.
When I decided I wanted to be a broadcaster, I started to imitate Casey Kasem. Listen to me read something today, and you’ll hear me pause before the last three words or so of a paragraph. That’s me still doing Casey Kasem.
For some reason, I’ve become obsessed recently with the LYRICS to “Star Trek: TOS.” It’s a little known fact. Here they are (and good going, whichever fan sang this 🙂 ):
Beyond The rim of the star-light My love Is wand’ring in star-flight I know He’ll find in star-clustered reaches Love, Strange love a star woman teaches. I know His journey ends never His star trek Will go on forever. But tell him While he wanders his starry sea Remember, remember me.
This is a slightly off-beat, really smart book for scholars of W.E.B. Du Bois, The Crisis magazine (the group’s organ, created by Du Bois) and the Black press. It includes obvious flashpoints of Crisis history–like Du Bois’ ouster from the magazine in 1934 because of his call for Blacks to form their own economic co-operatives (which he boldly explained was voluntary Black segregation, much to the chagrin of Walter White and the very integrationist NAACP) and his surprising “Close Ranks” editorial in support of World War I–but does so in the context of other historical discussions. Keeping the focus clearly on Du Bois’ 1910 to 1934 tenure, Kirschke’s and Sinitiere’s contributors focus on under-discussed, or unfocused, aspects of the magazine’s history, such as its Black community arguments for women’s suffrage, Du Bois’ use of African and Africanized art and political cartoons (and the intellectual explanation of the art as a central space of content), Du Bois’ commitment to create Black children’s literature and folklore fantasy, and other topics. (The coda at the anthology’s end, which tries to update the magazine’s history into the 21st century, is way too shallow to give comment, but it is an understandable attempt.) This even collection, unusual in itself, is an important supplement to the work of Sondra Kathryn Wilson, David Levering Lewis, and others. The Crisis magazine deserves a body of literature, and this book shows that a quality, and qualified, one is definitely being developed.
Why do filmmakers keep cutting out her best scenes in these “Thor” movies?!? (Damn, didn’t she used to be a major movie star?) She basically cameoed in the first, and [SPOILER ALERT!] died in the second!
My two cents: Oprah’s eulogy was powerful, but understandably restrained.
FLOTUS’ was beautifully crafted.
I wanted Cicely Tyson to keep going.
As former President Bill Clinton said, she lived so many lifetimes that all the speakers could show up and talk about just a part of her life. Unfortunately, virtually nothing of the political Maya was mentioned, other than a brief mention of the Harlem Writer’s Guild, her work in Ghana, and knowing Malcolm X. And most of that was done by Clinton, not the Black speakers! LOL! 🙂
SONIASANCHEZ: It’s going being her sister, Amy, and you are right, it is a very sad occasion, but anytime I can hear and see her perform, you know that she will live forever. I first met Sister Maya in the 1960’s. That was period when we were all gathering together to change the world. I saw her on a couple of occasions at affairs where we all read our poetry. I most especially remember her in the play “The Blacks.” She came out in her tall, six feet majesty, and you were just stricken by her, by her beauty and by her grace. And I still have in my memory, when Lumumba was killed, Louise Meriwether and Sister Maya, climbing, going over the walls there at the U.N. They were protesting. To have seen that, you stood there in awe.
AMYGOODMAN: The first president of the Congo.
SONIASANCHEZ: Yes, Lumumba.
AMYGOODMAN: The democratically elected president of the Congo.
SONIASANCHEZ: It was an amazing moment to see the resistance that they were doing there in New York City at the U.N.
The post below, showing a conversation between Dave Chappelle and Maya Angelou, show the “realness” of her much more than the soft-shoe funeral did.
