Pachanga Music Bash @ People's Mansion, SF, for Los Cenzontles

Linda Ronstandt together with Molotov Author Robert Mailer Anderson co-hosted musical bash featuring David Hidalgo of Los Lobos and rocker Dave Alvin to benefit Los Cenzontles: a school of arts and culture for young people, with special focus on contemporary manifestations of native and ancient traditions in music and the arts with roots in Mexico and Latin America.  

Highlights below.  Photos by Beth Stansberry.

Los Cenzonteles Folk Band, using native instrumentation (see below)

Playing percusson on goat's jaw.  Real goat, real jaw.

Linda Ronstandt with Eugene Rodriquez, co-founder and musical director of Los Cenzontles, a community school operating out of the  East Bay, in San Pablo and Richmond area for 20 years.  Linda is a long time supporter.  Los Cenzontles is a band, school, community hang out, and attracts musicians working in rock/polka/Cal-Tex-Mex traditoins to its Pachjanga jams from all over the country.   

Dave Alvin (of Border Radio fame) playing "Fourth of July" with David Hidalgo of Los Lobos  and Eugene Hernandez (right) and accordian player Flaco Jimenez (left). Pete Sears is on piano (Jefferson Starship). 

 During the later jam bassist Les Claypool, guitarist Jay Walsh and saxman Patrick Wolff (Patrick Wolff Trio) joined in.

Dancers.  

World Famous Molotov Editions Photographer Beth Stansberry with poet and translator Gillian Conoley (works including--among many others-- On Feeble Love & Bitter Love, a fresh annihilation of dada manifesto by Tristan Tzara--just released from the infinite vaults of Molotov Editions)

Robert Mailer Anderson on stage with daughter Frances singing vocals, with back-up from Dave Hidago of Los Lobos and Los Cenzonteles Pachanga Jam musicians

Genuine Victrola: wind-up device that plays early recordings surpisingly loud with no use of electricity whatsoever. A purely mechanical device from before the electric era which piped music into the room before the concert itself began. 

COLLABORATORS

Others piped in and dancing, wandering through the Pachanga dancing included the blessed and obscure, the divine and the bedridden, the holy and the forgotten, animals and dogs, some pictured above and others lost in the crowd: actors Edward James Olmos and Mykelti Williamson; sax player Joshua Redma; teachers and artists Lorena Oropeza and Astrid Rodriguez; former NAACP President Benjamin Jealous;  photographers Jim Goldberg and Allesandra Sanguinetti; , Paul Pelosi; Oscar Villalon (Zyzzva); Mary Ladd; Peter Marvelis (City Lights Books); Julie Lindow; Peter Kaufman; Gina of Miami (whose Chicago father is renowned Karate sensei), Gina's sister in the wild pink skirt; and variois members of the Anderson-Miner clan together with Molotov collaborators from Ukiah  to San Leandro who remain unidenitfied by design or happenstance in the shadows.  

//DS

Inside Out(side): Hawley Hussey & Bill Brovold, Alleycat Gallery, SF

Hussey and Brovold juxtapose the outer and inner in SF Alleycat Gallery Show intermingling  Hussey's Hanging Botanicals with Brovold's Peephole Boxes and Magical Instruments.

Photo Domenic Stansberry

Wildflower Botanical Paintings and Woodcuts: Hawley Hussey

Photo Domenic Stansberry

Brovold's Peephole Boxes alongside Hussey's Wildflower Hangings.  The Peephole Boxes give glimpses into inner worlds: Backyard Croquet: Disco Constellations: Fred Flintstone Receding into Infinity.

LEFT BELOW: Musical Instrument: Hollowed Tree, Piano/Guitar Strings wiht Frets:  on wood stand played spontaneously with help of pivot device: Brovold  

(Photos: Domenic Stansberry)

RIGHT ABOVE Detail Botanical Painting, Hussey.  

LEFT TO RIGHT: Detail Wildflower Woodcut: Peephole into Hanging Room; Wildflower Painting: Marbles Rolling Down Strings in Hollow Tree Instrument

Opening Night at Alleycat Gallery, on 24th Street In San Francisco's Mission District, behind Alleycat Books.

DS:

 All photos Domenic Stansberry

DECEMBER NEWSLETTER: from Molotov Editions

News and reviews of Mololov Editions and our various endeavors, including our books, theatrical productions, and dada annihilations. 

REVIEWS:  THE WHITE DEVIL

Stansberry nails the sultry, decadent, and erotically charged tone with one perfectly placed hammer stroke after another.   Booklist (Bill Ott)

Perhaps the most surprising feature of this tour de force is its pervasive links to both Jacobean tragedy and contemporary Mediterranean noir. Who knew? --Kirkus

 Edgar-winner Stansberry takes the reader on a wild ride in this exceptional noir . . . compelling reading.   Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

 Gripping from beginning to end, The White Devil is an unforgettable novel by an author at the height of his powers.   Foreword Reviews (Claire Foster)

Domenic Stansberry, author of The White Devil

 Anything but staid or predictable . . . keeps readers guessing, entertained, and thoroughly immersed.  Midwest Book Review

 With its down-to-the-bone, spare prose style, … and scenes that would not be out of place in a Fellini classic, The White Devil is quite simply perfect in its execution. UK Raven Crime

A really good book [and]  very haunting story . . .   Human nature is so bizarre sometimes, and here, its dark side is writ very large.  Crime Segments

 

ON STAGE: THE DEATH OF TEDDY BALLGAME

Since it’s publication by Molotov Editions in October—and with advance fanfare from Leah Garchik at the SF Chronicle—Robert Mailer Anderson’s new play, The Death of Teddy Ballgame, has been staged to jazz accompaniment, under the direction of Jon Moscone (former director Cal Shakespeare), at the Henderson Lab at the SF Jazz Center; at the Yerba Buena Center with Broadway actor and screen star Shiloh Fernandez; and in a one night staged reading forthcoming at the Clark Gallery.  All to packed houses, standing room only.   More news on future stagings as events unfurl.

DADA ANNIHILATION: ON FEEBLE LOVE & BITTER LOVE

Fresh translation/annihilation of Tzara’s famous dada manifesto by Gillian Conoley.  Published in limited edition on the occasion of the Dada World Fair in San Francisco, staged as benediction on opening day of the fair at City Lights.  Conoley is author of 8 books of poetry, LA Times Book Award Finalist for Peace,  translator of Henri Michaux’s A Thousand Times Broken.  Innovative in a fantastic way . . .. .  smart, talented, perceptive.  Huffington Post on Gillian Conoley

Beautiful Libraries in All 50 States

LOS ANGELES CENTRAL: 3rd lagest in US, blend of Mediterranean and Egyptian inflences.

Anesthetics & the Unconscious

A cooperative study on the nature of consciousness—between  the University of São Paulo and the University of Wisconsin(Madison)—appears to indicatethat unconsciousness is what happens when different parts of the brain can’t connect: 

"The [reserachers]  compared the brain activity of patients from the full spectrum of consciousness — awake, asleep, drugged with anesthetics, in comas or suffering from “locked-in syndrome,” in which the body appears trapped in a comalike state but the brain is active and aware. "

Pushcart Prize Nominations — Awst Press

Awst Press, exciting new press--publisher of Donald Quist's Harbors:  announces PushCart nominations:: Jayy Dodd, David Olimpio, Erin Pringle-Toungate, Donald Quist, Sophfronia Scott, and Sonya Vatomsky. 

OF FLESH AND SPIRT Sophrania Scott, pushcart nominee from Awst's Essay Series.

Essay collection by Donald Quist from Awst Press, 

SOPHIE LYONS: QUEEN OF THE UNDERWORLD (1913)

No one reads the Queen of the Underworld (1850–1924).

In 1913, Sophie Lyons wrote her memoirs, chronicling six decades of bank robberies, prison breaks, cons, and swindles that left her a rich woman. One hundred years later, we’re [Combustion Books] bringing this important work back into print, casting back the veil of the 19th century criminal underworld. This is the world of fences and art thieves, bank sneaks and conwomen, but it is punctuated by a remarkable and nearly universal honor among thieves. Fully illustrated throughout with numerous diagrams of robbery methods and ways of concealing stolen valuables.

via Brickbat Books (my favorite Philadelphia bookstore)

@WritersNoOneRds / Facebook

Source: combustionbooks.org

First Latino governor of the Golden State? | Vida en el Valle

Former Los Ángeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa plans on running for governor of California in 2018--and has been touring the state, which despite its enormous wealth also has the highest poverty rate in the nation.  

CENSUS DATA  

"Of the largest 300 cities in the nation that are impacted by high poverty rates, 77 are in California and 3 of the top 5 most poverty-stricken towns are in the Central Valley."

According to VIDA en el Valle--a HIspanic Weekly, serving California  San Joaquin Valleuy, Villaraigosa has been on an intensive tour of the area.

Below is a condensed version of VIDA's article, from which M/e is quoting directly.

“I learned that the whole water issue is more complex than people in the big cities would have you believe. I also learned that there are a lot of hard working people who are not working anymore,” said Villaraigosa.

He compared the Central Valley and its people to the Midwest.

“They believe in family, God, have a strong work ethic and believe in this great country. But for some reason, they, and people from the Inland Empire all share this sense that their issues and their problems are not really important to some of our policymakers and that nobody listens to them.”

Part of his Central Valley tour included a stop in East Porterville, an unincorporated community in Tulare County that has been plagued by drinking water issues for years and claims about 12 percent of the state’s failed water wells. Dozens of government agencies and nonprofit organizations have stepped in to help the community, eventually drawing international media attention for its woes as California’s drought worsens. 

“I learned that if you are lucky enough to be a homeowner in East Porterville, you get a 50 gallon tank of water; and if you are poor you have to shower in a truck,” said Villaraigosa.

California/Mississippi Poverty Rates

This chart is 2013, but the economic divide, between rich and poor, has increased in California, and the housing adjusted poverty rate has climbed to 27%, worse for seniors and children's and minorities.  States like California, New York, Florida, Texas--which do not rank as badly using traditional measures-- turn out to have much higher poverty rates, among the worst in the nation, when adjusted for cost of living.  There are similar problems, in California, in regards to public schooling.   The US government has recently begun to adjust poverty rankings based on cost of living, this you will see conflicting figures from the government itself, between 16 and 27%, with the United way putting the figure in the low 30 percentiles.   DS