Poster for the September 17, 2005 Blues Series Reuion – Images by kenne
This October, the Academy for Lifelong Learning (ALL) at Lone Star College – Montgomery will be celebrating its 10th anniversary. One of the many successful programs that were a part of the ALL was The Blues Series, which began the same semester as ALL. Five years ago, when the College celebrated its 10th Anniversary, ALL was very involved in the all-day event, which included presenting a Blues Series Reunion. The Blues Series brought together some of Houston’s (and the country’s) best blues musicians.
Sun warms the lizard’s back and the humble back of the mountain. A raven croaks from the top of a thermal. The valley oak above the barn, dying a huge branch at a time, stands in calm mortability, content with the warm light that has fed its leaves, the dark waters that have fed its roots, its acorns that have fed the woodpeckers for five hundred rainy seasons.
Joy invited me to attend this month’s luncheon meeting of the Old Pueblo Women’s Club, which took place at the Lodge at Ventana Canyon. The speaker was Dave Fitzsimmons, a recently retired internationally knownjournalist/cartoonist. At one point in his amusing presentation, he walked over to our table and said, “Isn’t this a woke organization, and your name is Ms.” We went up to his drawing pad, took one look at me and said,
sun and blue sky sunscreen and music seaweed hat and hot tub birthday 77 — thankful more sunscreen alone, why
existential moment
searching for clarity
becoming entangled
more sunscreen music plays on time present time past now, conditions timeless moments caught in limitation being and un-being feeling easy cause for wonder sudden shift in sunlight more sunscreen
This is an exciting and informative piece by Frank. I’m impressed with the connection with Birmingham, MLK, and Vulcan. Having been born on January 15th and living in Birmingham, only walking distance from the giant statue between ages 9-12, I will always feel a connection with the three. — kenne
Monday is Martin Luther King Day in the United States, which I take as an occasion to honor the man but also to honor the American promise that changes for the better can be achieved, albeit via earnest efforts and personal costs.
At my age King and the mid-century struggle for what was then called “Civil Rights” were not history — they were current events. I can tell you that despite the somewhat anodyne holiday we celebrate this year, these things were in King’s time as fractious and deadly as any issues today. Some of the immediate issues in the struggle were things we might now assume are self-evident, equivalent civic rights for Black Americans: the rights to vote, to travel, to sit in a restaurant, to speak for change. I assure you these things were controversial, and that it was easy to find short and long arguments…
She gave me whiskey kisses and we danced the Texas two-step till the witches hours. She was a bad, bad woman and I wanted more and more. She loved me, I had cash for the whiskey and the side of the water. She told me, never mix together the whiskey and the water. Whiskey need to go down hard and the water make it easier.
She told me. Let’s not trifle with love words. Words become meaningless and the only proof that matters. Is the Scottish whiskey, the good song and us, bare-ass at 4 am. You and I. Just lies and stories, we have become drunk on whiskey kisses and we loved the witches hours. We use and abuse our skin till we cannot no-more. This is all we need.
I caressed her long legs, I kissed her stomach and I wrote…
Poster for the September 17, 2005 Blues Series Reuion – Images by kenne
Poolside, January 15th — Computer Art by kenne
Becoming is Superior to Being 