Gotham City Soul

Last year’s Santa-Dote entry was so popular I thought I’d do another one to give people refuge from the stress that sometimes comes with the holidays. I’m a Christmas fool, being part German I am prone to what I call Weihnachtsdelerium, so I am not here to diss it but to add to your cheer by making you laugh. A couple of these things have nothing to do with Christmas such as the following throwbacks to my childhood (and some of yours too if you were born in the 1960s) I came across a Dragnet Christmas episode that was sweet and funny at the same time. Joe Friday and the gang have hearts just like the rest of us . The incongruity between their deadpan delivery and the holiday theme makes the show. For those last minute gifts and cards that look like they come from the Island of Lost Good Taste Regretsy Awesomely Bad Christmas Cards Awesomely Bad Christmas Gifts And for something different to ring in the new year, watch this performance by Babatunde Olatunji, the Nigerian drummer who

The truly perfect film Black Orpehus is 50 years old this year and it is still fascinating me. I've been to Brazil since the first time I saw the movie at least 20 years ago, and darned if the energy and music and beauty in Salvador da Bahia in 2005 wasn't like that in Rio in 1959. A synopsis from Gene Seymour in an article for the Fall 2005 issue of American Legacy "The ill-starred ancient Greek romance of Eurydice (played by the luminous Marpessa Dawn) and Orpheus (Breno Mello) takes place in Rio de Janeiro during Carnaval, with an all-black, mostly Brazilian cast, and evocative samba soundtrack by Luiz Bonfá and Antônio Carlos Jobim. With the success of this film, its director Marcel Camus and screenwriter Vinicius de Moraes broadened the global perspective on black cultures and helped ignite the bossa nova movement that would seduce music lovers in both hemi spheres" The film won the Palm D'or at Cannes in 1959, and the Oscar and Golden Globe for best foreign

So the other day someone engaged me in a conversation full of information I’d rather not have had. It was not useful, positive, enlightening, or nurturing in any way. What the individual had to say was born of an ignorance of the big picture—this person had no idea what they were talking about (I incorrectly use the plural rather than singular here to mask gender) when it came to the subject at hand, which included me and someone close to me. It might not have been so unpleasant had it not been practically the first words out of the person’s mouth. This took place in a setting where I had expected to relax and enjoy a peaceful afternoon, not get blindsided by spiritually draining gossip. The way the individual began speaking before they even said hello, it was almost as if they couldn't wait to tell me this bit of upsetting news. I choose to believe that it was thoughtless, not deliberate. It happens to us all. I had a conversation with one of the subjects of the gossip, who told m

With a few scraps that he scrounged from junk piles, a Malawian teen named William Kamkwamba built a windmill (one of the things he used was a pair of flip flops!) brought electricity and water to his village. This kid had to drop out of school because his family could not afford the $80-a-year tuition. He learned how to make the windmill from books in the local library (the books were in English and his English was not even very good at the time!) The people in his village called him "misala" crazy, but when he attached a bulb and it lit up, his fellow villagers cheered. He has certainly lit up my world and I hope he does yours too. BBC News tells the story better than I can here . I first saw this remarkable person on Good Morning America, an interview with Diane Sawyer. Kamkwamba cowrote a book with journalist and African correspondent Brian Mealer called The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind . It just came out the end of September. It's for sale of course, but try your loca

I was listening to some short stories on my Ipod yesterday evening, a collection of horror stories, supposedly although they weren't very horrific or frightening to me, and one by Peter Straub has struck me. It's called "Little Red's Tango". I'm not finished with it but one chapter was called THE BEATITUDES OF LITTLE RED and it moved me. So here they are: Whatsoever can be repaid, should be repaid with kindness. Whatsoever can be borrowed, should be borrowed modestly. Tip extravagantly, for they need the money more than you do. You can never go wrong by thinking of God as Louis Armstrong. Those who swing, should swing some more. Something always comes along. It really does. Cleanliness is fine, as far as it goes. Remember--even when you are alone, you're in the middle of a party. The blues ain't nothin' but a feeling, but what a feeling. What goes up sometimes just keeps right on going. Try to eat solid food at least once a day. There is absolut

My friend Michael Zwack, who is a transcendent artist of spirit in his own right, sent me a youtube link with images by a photographer named Hans Sylvester of what I will loosely call the Omo people of Ethiopia, as there are apparently many different tribes living along the Omo River there. If you do anything for yourself today, watch this: It will refresh your soul.

The people you see above are members of an enterprising group in the Democratic Republic of Congo that produces and sells everything from peanuts, smoked fish, and larval worms, to charcoal and lamp kerosene. Led by a man named Kalobwe Ngoy, who began his business in 1989 with $150. Today the dream of Ngoy and his fellow business partners is to open a small factory to produce purified water. They needed $2,750 to begin this enterprise. The signed up with a microloan organization called Kiva I caught up with the Mobeteli Plus Group when they needed only $25 to complete the loan. I can't tell you how it felt to be able to give that small amount of money--it meant that the full amount could be released to these entrepreneurs. These are loans, not gifts. And sure enough, not long after I made my loan, I received some repayment. I could have put it in my bank account, but there was the option of making another loan, and I did. To date, I've made three loans, some with new loan mone

Look here, I'm happy to be honest about what kind of job I think our leaders are doing, never hesitated to get on my soap box. But all this whining about disillusionment with Obama is really starting to get on my nerves. I don't know what people expected when they voted for him, but I don't think it was for him to spend all of his attention, time, energy, and brain power on special interests, not the way some folks would like. It's so unbelievably selfish to feed him to the wolves because he's not doing what you want him to do. Would we rather have had the alternative in office? And if you didn't want either, be angry at our two-party system and the way we do politics and do something to change it. Everybody is so full of criticism, but I have not heard one, not one viable solution to anything (believe it or not oilman T. Boone Pickens is really the only person who has made any sense to me at all, him and a few others. I'm sure somebody is going to write i

It was a blow to hear that Michael Jackson died of cardiac arrest yesterday, and the remembrances and analyses (some of which are neither desired or required) are too many to count. I can't think of one friend under the age of 60 who can't sing at least one line from any Jackson 5 or Michael Jackson tune. I have to admit that I was much more sad than I thought I would be—after all, I didn't know him personally. But when I think of how he touched so many people's worlds with his music—my dear friend John, who is a deejay, told me that he would never be able to count how many times he played MJ's music at weddings and birthdays and sweet sixteens for people of all races, cultures, religions, and socioeconomic levels, that Michael made his career possible in a big way. At 7 I was going to marry Michael (this was in 1969 when the Jackson 5 came out with "I Want You Back"). I declared it just as all my fellow female classmates declared that they wer

I've been away since February, mostly because I am now working regularly on the blog for the magazine I work for, American Legacy. When I can balance writing for the both that blog and this, I will be back!

It's black history month, six days in, and not a morsel from Gotham City Soul. Now that I'll be writing a blog for my magazine's Web site, I'm more inclined to veer toward other definitions of soul here. So I'm leaving black history and culture and New York City and American soul for parts varied, strange, and sometimes unknown (at least by me) to examine the spirit of things, go to places that may not be pretty, or especially pleasant all of the time, but will surely move you. It is my hope that you will be moved to movement.

A month or so ago I came upon a mini Iranian film festival on public television. There were two short films by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, The School That Was Blown Away (1996), and Images from the Qajar Dynasty (1992). But there was also a film that was something beautiful and terrible all at once, The House is Black ( Khaneh siah ast in Farsi) created in 1962 by a woman I had not known of until now: a renowned Persian poet named Forough Farrokhzad. Essentially, The House is Black is a documentary of a leper colony, an awful thing given beauty and humanity by Farrokhzad. In 1962 there were two drugs, Promin and Dapsone, used with limited and painful success to ease the disease, but a true treatment wasn’t developed until the 1970s. It is clear that even the earlier treatments did not make their way to this desolate colony in Iran. Still, with her unflinching shots of these afflicted people as they go about their daily lives, breathtaking is the scene of a woman applying eyeliner, and a

I was in a marching band—a bigger bunch of spoiled and entitled kids you probably would not have met. We took our opportunity to play instruments and be in a band for granted. Not these kids . It's often when I wonder how some of my fellow Americans can possibly share the same citizenship with me. It's more rare that I'm glad to claim a kinship. These are one of of those times This is the spirit of the thing, this impending presidency, this inauguration and I intend to savor this rare and gleaming moment for as long as I can. It may never come again in my lifetime.