Are you an altar boy emeritus, an old school Roman Catholic or former ace Latin student? The RiffRaff Players rise again with a holiday show of seasonal songs on Dec. 10-11-12 at The Room Upstairs in Princeton, W.Va. One of the songs we’re doing is a duet on “O Come O Come Emmanuel” between myself and Kathleen Coffee. The last verse will be sung in Latin and I’m wondering whether I’m pronouncing the following verse correctly. Check my diction at my music site at Myspace.com/douglaseye where I’ve uploaded a draft version of the song - Kathleen’s voice will come in a future draft, along with fabululoso modal instrumentation by the Captain Lazerblast band. The verse in question:
Veni, veni Emmanuel. Captivum solve Israel. / Qui gemit in exsilio, Privatus dei filio. / Gaude! Gaude! Emannuel. / Nascetur pro te Israel….
Back in 2007, videographer Kevin Briles and I were rocking online for thegazz.com arts magazine of The Charleston Gazette. We did a video profile of West Virginia documentary photographer Paul Corbit Brown, on his work among the street kids orphaned by the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The video got lost when the Gazette reshuffled its servers, but I just found it on a back-up CD. Take a look - Paul is one of the angels of Appalachia.
After a death in Charleston, W.Va., lawyer and artist Debbie McHenry - who knew the boy who was shot - felt she had to do something. A lively art class at the Roosevelt Center resulted. Here’s a video we just did about it with a story for the Saturday, Nov. 8 Charleston Gazette. Click the ‘Art Works’ icon after you get to the story. A cool quote (and strong words) from McHenry at the end of Katherine Gregory’s story:
… McHenry firmly believes that her art class can change the world and shape the youngsters’ lives, but said that more people need to get involved and volunteer across the community.
“We can’t feel that because we do public services work as our job that you can accept that as your contribution,” she said. “It needs to be beyond your paycheck and outside of your comfort zone to count.”
Come to the The Clementines 2nd Annual HALLOWEEN CABARET, from 7 to 9:30 p.m., SATURDAY, Oct. 31 at Taylor Books, 226 Capitol St., in Charleston, W.Va. With special guests Option 22, Kathleen Coffee and The Flow. The Clementines feature Casi Null and Douglas Imbrogno (and whomever we rope into a current song). Come as someone or something else.
Am on the road on vacation this week and having some big times. This woman has just come upon Ron Mueck’s “Untitled (Big Man)” from a current show at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., titled “Strange Bodies.” Indeed.
“Hear My Song” by the RiffRaff Players, March 2009
Here are two back-of-the-room videos of “Flying Home” and “Hear My Song” from the RiffRaff Players production of “Songs for a New World” at the Tamarack theater this March 2009. Ed Trotta of Summit Stage Theater II in Bluefield shot the subsequent show, at the Room Upstairs in Princeton, W.Va., on two high-def cameras. But since none of us have a hi-def camera we have not yet seen it. Plus, we need someone with the mojo to edit a two-shoot video of a one-hour-and-15 minute show down to a fabulous, finished version. Advice welcome on that. Hope you like these.
“The River Won’t Flow” by the RiffRaff Players, March 2009.
In the midst of the economic gloom of Bluefield, W.Va., Gary Bowling’s House of Art is a trippy, eccentric, must-be-seen-to-be-believed, go-to place for art, music and culture. Here’s a four-minute audio slideshow story I did on the place for the Charleston Gazette, with more than 50 photos and an audio interview with the slightly cracked majordomo of the establishment.
A “Third Place” refers to a gathering place in the community that is separate from our two usual social environments of the home and workplace. The Squire Tobacco Unlimited Shop in downtown Charleston, W.Va., is just such a place. The gregarious man who runs it, Charlie Morgan, used to be a Union Carbide engineer, then traveled to places like Saudi Arabia to create data centers. Illness led to retirement and a return home to Charleston. He got turned on to cigars in the late ’90s. Now, he’s something of a smokey guru to cigar and pipe smokers in the area. His shop stocks more than 600 boxes of cigars, all hand-made and hand-rolled, plus pipes, tobaccos and lighters galore.
It’s a cozy place with stuffed sofas, a communal vibe and clouds of aromatic smoke hanging in the air. (Though if your sensibilities are easily bruised by Vargas-girl photography and politically incorrect portraiture — for us pinko-liberal types, that is — you may not wish to linger over the wall of photos in the back. “That’s my Wall of Shame,” says Charlie, who lets another fellow hang the photos. “I don’t go back there.” )
It’s not just a manly citadel, though. About 40 to 50 women each month come in to buy cigars at The Squire, Charlie says, and many hang for awhile, adding plumes and fumes to the atmosphere. I love the place and am a member in good standing, with my white laminated “Squire’ card in my wallet entltitling me to discounts. I buy exactly one cigar a month there, an Arturo Fuente 8-5-8 . In fact, there’s a half-smoked one in an ashtray on the back porch, where I sit in exile from the rest of the family to smoke. Cigar and pipe exiles from across the valley head to The Squire to share the burn.
You listen to the National Public Radio commentators and reporters over the years and the voices become a part of the soundtrack of your life, all warm and fuzzy-like. Then, one of them, Juan Williams, says something like this. And you know, henceforth, you will never ever listen to him again - if you ever do listen to him again - without wanting to spit on his shoes. Here’s more on Williams describing First Lady Michelle Obama as an angry “Stokely Carmichael in a dress,” which many observers in the links on this post note says a whole lot more about the guy making the remark. But really it’s National Public Radio that should be paying heed, as one person noted: “NPR should be ashamed to have their name on that screen with those comments.” Mine is a teensy blog in the outback of the web. But I wanted to add my tiny little search result to the algorithm the next time someone Googles “Williams, Juan…” “Eed-jit!” as the Irishman at the bar might say.
Here’s the piece to read on Michelle Obama , Ta-Nehisi Coates’ profile “American Girl,” from The Atlantic Monthly. It gets at the kind of appealing, full-blooded human being in actual evidence before the nation’s eyes.
