Sharing The Odyssey Of Love, Fear And Laughter

Fresh from teaching a June course on speaking at the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center, following an appearance the same month at the famous Cornelia Street Café in Manhattan, poet, radio host/voice artist, blogger and videographer Bill Buschel returns this evening to Barnes and Noble’s Open Mic after a two-year absence as featured reader.

Bill is unmistakable for the humanity and atmospheric depth he brings to bear in his writing, as well as in the weight and timing of his spoken delivery. As the former chair of the PoemAlley Advisory Committee, he has been instrumental in varying capacities over the years organizing numerous PA events, from last month’s al fresco Café Night to the popular April 2010 Green Fuse event (recorded here by Bill), both held at the Unitarian Universalist Society in Stamford.

It is his series of commentaries and interviews broadcast on Graffiti, the arts program he hosts on Hellenic Public Radio (Cosmos FM 91.5), however, that constitutes the main platform for his interest in Greek history, culture and the ancient world. Graffiti guests have included novelist Jeff Siger, author of the Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis mystery series, and Professor William A.P. Childs, co-curator of the Princeton University  archaeological exhibit “City of Gold: Tomb and Temple in Ancient Cyprus” from 2012.

Edited with a supportive, if looser, focus, Bill’s blogs, Just My Eyes: The World As I See It and Things We Need (To Make it Thru the Day), offer more eclectic and multi-media observations, from pieces on fine cooking and baseball to audio of classic folk performers, like the late Stan Rogers, and video clips of stand-out performances from cable TV.

Speaking of video, Life in a Day is one of numerous engagingly provocative pieces shot and edited by Bill in his ongoing assay of the creative and human scene in the Connecticut/New York area:

Hosted by Frank Chambers and PoemAlley's Nick Miele, the Barnes & Noble Open Mic Poetry program meets the second Monday of each month in the cookbook section on the main floor of the bookstore (located in the Stamford Down Center), beginning at 7:15 p.m.

For more information, contact:

Barnes & Noble

100 Greyrock Place Suite H009

Stamford, CT 06901

203-323-1248

The Mirror Crack’d (By A Spear): Sex, Love & War At The Unitarian Universalist Society

This Sunday, PoemAlley and participants from the regional poetry community share their thoughts on gender relations, inequality and related topics clustering about that all-too ubiquitous (yet fatalistically under-examined) institution of organized mass violence, which has become the roaring hearth of American society over the last twelve years.

Part of the Unitarian Universalist Society in Stamford’s series of lay-led summer services, "Sex, Love & War" will be hosted by Ralph Nazareth and feature readings from himself and fourteen other poets, including Robin Kurtz, Lisa Labazzo,  Bob Sanders and Ronna Schenkerman, with guest readings by Neil Silberblatt (organizer of the popular state-wide Voices of Poetry series), Middlebury-based poetry therapist Marianela Medrano and Jane Wickham.

In sympathy with the issues raised by such cases as Lynddie England's haunting, romantically-entangled stint at Abu Ghraib, as well as the more recent focus on the prevalence of rape and sexual assault in the military, this Sunday’s presentation will use a combination of music, words and video, both during and in the UU Social Room afterwards, to suggest how war distorts love and loyalty and how sex and masculine identity are mis-defined to validate endless armed conflict as normative.

While the 2012 documentary, The Invisible War (see trailer below under "Additional Information")  is laudable for campaigning against widespread sexual abuse within the American armed services, the question lingers as to how realistic it is to implement reform without first acknowledging such conduct as a byproduct of a belligerent foreign policy and the overtones of martial authoritarianism and privilege that permeate domestic entertainment, sports and culture--ranging from interrogation via sexual degradation at Guantanamo, the rape of an unconscious teen by Steubenville High football team members, jingoistic films (click here for a recent critique of Zero Dark Thirty), the "doing the Lynndie" photo craze following the aformentioned England 2004 scandal, not to mention the misogynistic half-time mascot theatrics seen in college and professional sports:

On the hopeful side, if the supposedly universal allure of conflict and power seem a timeless head-scratcher rooted inviolably in our nature or genes, maybe it only seems that way due to a lack of honesty to investigate its origins, because the toddlers from this 2010 Yale study of innate empathy sure don’t have trouble defying it:

Where:
Unitarian Universalist Society in Stamford
20 Forest Street (right across from the Avon Theatre)

When:

10 AM, Sunday, July 28, 2013

Contact:

203-348-0708/www.uusis.org

____
Additional Information:

War and Sex: ABrief History of Men's Urge for Battle

John V. H. Dippel
Prometheus Books, 2010

The People's History of World War II
Marc Favreau, editor

The New Press, 2011

On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society
Dave Grossman
Back Bay Books, 2009

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined 

Steven Pinker

Viking Adult, 2011

Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World
Malcolm Potts and Thomas Hayden
BenBella Books, 2010

Invisible War (2012) trailer:

“8” At 6 At The Unitarian Universalist Society In Stamford

Don't miss “8”, the latest production penned by Academy Award-winner Dustin Lance Black, in a live staged reading at the Unitarian Universalist Society in Stamford, tomorrow evening, featuring New Fairfield-based performers Luchina Fisher and Chris Creter.

Fisher and Creter

Moving and as timely as can be, the play makes use of actual court transcripts and interviews to craft a compelling 90-minute presentation of multiple perspectives, recounting the efforts of two gay couples who challenged California’s infamous Proposition 8 ruling opposing same-sex marriage. The case of Hollingsworth v. Perry is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court, with a ruling pending this month.

Dustin Lance Black

To get more direct insight on the production from Black, who also wrote Milk (2010) and J. Edgar (2011) and acclaimed actors like John Lithgow and Christine Lahti, following the September 2011 Broadway premiere, see the interviews below:

Find out more about tomorrow’s version, co-sponsored by the UUSIS (parent organization of PoemAlley), the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Danbury and the Triangle Community Center here, courtesy of the Connecticut Post.

Directed by Barbara Fast, “8” is produced through the support of the American Foundation for Equal Rights and Broadway Impact.

When:

Sunday, June 2, 2013

6 PM

Where:

Unitarian Universalist Society in Stamford

20 Forest St. 
Stamford, Connecticut

Admission:

$10 (proceeds to benefit the American Foundation for Equal Rights)

Contact:

UUSIS, 203- 227-4388; admin@uusis.org 

Breaking The Silence

Join members of PoemAlley tomorrow morning for the annual summer poetry service held in the Sanctuary of the Unitarian Universalist Society in Stamford, located downtown directly across from the Avon Theatre on Bedford Street.

   Breaking the Silence, this year’s theme, includes Agnes Roberts, Ralph Nazareth, Richard Duffee and several other PA members exercising the imperative of the poet to speak out against suffering or run the risk of being complicit with the forces of oppression, whatever they may be. While poetry has many faces and serves various needs, in this reading it will mostly present itself as an instrument for living meaningfully in these dark times.

Refreshments will be served in the Social Room following the service. Housed in a 142-year-old church, the UUSIS is the parent organization of PoemAlley. You can learn more about it under "Associated Links" to the left.

When:

Sunday, August 25, 2012

10-11am

Where:

20 Forest Street,

Stamford, CT 06901

(free parking available in the municipal lot across the Forest Street entrance)

Phone/Email:

203-348-0708

admin@uusis.org

Cultural Gulfs, Environmental Strain, War... And An Abiding Hope

Charminar Hiderabad

Vandana Shiva, Munich (2005)

Irrepressibly dynamic peace and anti-nuclear activist, Greenwich resident Ayumi Temlock returns to PoemAlley after a two-month visit to India to talk about who she met, what she saw and the programs she participated in, conducted by such luminaries as ecology and food sovereignty activist, physicist Vandana Shiva (1993 Alternative Novel Peace Prize Winner), among others.

ISRO Manned Return Vehicle

temple ceiling

Over the last few years, Ayumi has been instrumental, independently and/or in conjunction with Greenwich/Stamford Peace Action and WESPAC Foundation, in protesting the proliferation of armed drone aircraft used against people of Yemen, Afghanistan and other nations, raising public awareness regarding the paucity of the official account of the 9/11 bombings and--a subject especially close to her--advocating for the abolition of nuclear weaponry.

 For the latter cause, Ayumi personally arranged the financing and travel arrangements to bring two Hibakusha, Takashi Morita and Junko Watanabe, from Brazil to relate their first-person accounts as survivors of the 1945 atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima to UConn students, New York residents and members of PoemAlley at Curley's in 2010. Listen to their historical contributions as translated by Ayumi at 3:35 (right after Dev Crasta and Rebeka Radna's ethereal duet) in the video below of the Green Fuse PA event, held at the Unitarian Universalist Society in Stamford (UUSIS) on April 24 of that year.