Blue Mountain Center

The Sacred Meal

In her style of memoir and personal reflection, Nora Gallagher explores the practice of communion, not as an arcane, church- tradition but as a living, breathing way into the holy.
The Ancient Practices is an eight-book series with staggered releases through February 2010. Immensely compelling and readable, each classic book features a foreword by Phyllis Tickle, the general editor.

Interviews and Lectures
For interviews, please contact Stephanie Newton at SNewton@thomasnelson.com. For lectures, talks and workshops, please contact Victoria Gerken at VGerken@randomhouse.com.
For more books by Nora Gallagher and news, go to www.noragallagher.org

A piece I wrote about peregrine falcons in New York City is on Smithsonian. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/The-Worlds-Fastest-Animal-T...

I am pleased to announce that the Italian label Rossbin Records has just released my latest work Doble Mano, performed by the Laura Andel Orchestra!

Doble Mano is a 60-minute composition for 9 musicians and conductor for an eclectic instrumentation, including a bandoneon from Argentina, gamelan instruments from Indonesia, and a prepared Fender Rhodes. Detailed players info below. To listen to some music excerpts, click here: http://www.myspace.com/lauraandelmusic

Music composed by Laura Andel for 9 musicians and conductor. Recorded live by John Gurrin and Kevin James at The Kitchen Concert Series on May 12, 2007 in NYC. Mixed by Kevin James. Final mastering by Elliott Sharp. With Taylor Ho Bynum (Cornet) Carl Maguire (Fender Rhodes) Ursel Schlicht (Piano) Stephanie Griffin (Viola) Matt Bauder (Clarinets) Raul Jaurena (Bandoneon) Ken Filiano (Double Bass) David Simons (Gamelan instruments) Danny Tunick (Percussion & Gamelan instruments) Laura Andel (Composition / Conducting)

You can order Doble Mano for $14 (including Shipping)
http://www.lauraandel.com/orderdoblemano.html
You can also order on my website previous CDs, such as:
I n : : t e n s i o n : . & SomnambulisT
http://www.lauraandel.com/recordings.html

Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid has won the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship. This
follows on the heels of the book having received the American Book Award and a finalist spot for ForeWord magazine's Book of the Year.

Not only does Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid chronicle Wilderson's life as an elected official in the ANC and his underground activities as an insurgent in Umkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC's armed wing; but it is also a riveting, funny, and disturbing account of his life as a member of the first Black family to integrate the all-White enclave Kenwood, in Minneapolis, MN; as well as his political maturation in 21st century America, when he returned from South Africa.

Please take a moment to listen to his NPR interview, Tale Told From Inside South Africa's ANC, NPR News & Notes, January 6, 2009:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3D99043092. And Google: American Book Award Winner Could Permanently Transform the National Conversation About Racial Politics.

Also, be on the lookout for Professor Wilderson's book on race, film theory, and politics Red, White, & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms. See the Duke University Press Spring catalog: http://www.dukeupress.edu/books/S10_catalog/Spring2010.pdf

If you would like Frank to speak at your institution or to your group please go to Evil Twin Booking and click on Frank's picture. There you'll get
his booking agent's contact information. http://eviltwinbooking.org/

To learn more about Frank B. Wilderson, III please visit his website: www.incognegro.org.

I was just accepted into the Ut Graduate School of Social Work, and I begin January. Turned 53 today, November 13. Susanne and I are going bootscooting tonight. Waiting on word from Soros to see if I am a finalist for a fellowship. All is well.

Leslee Becker won the 2009 Moondance International Film Festival Award/Short Story Category.

She published the following stories: "Terrier" in THE KENYON REVIEW, Summer 2009; "The Little Gentleman" in
CRAZYHORSE, Spring 2009, and "Chicken Lake" in NORTHWEST REVIEW, Fall 2009.

Journalism-wise, I've been writing about progressive economics, and had the pleasure of interviewing David Morris for a Time.com piece on "Why Buying Local Helps the Economy". My latest book is "The Therapist's New Clothes", a memoir of training as a psychotherapist--and a cautionary tale about the seductions of psychotherapy. The book and other news are on my website: www.judithdschwartz.com

My (fellow BMC alum) husband, Tony Eprile, teaches and is the author of "The Persistence of Memory", a novel that explores three fraught decades of South African life from the viewpoint of a young man with a perfect memory. We live in Southern Vermont with our son, now 14.

Conceptual artist/writer Mike Silverstein and I are taking on the parking ticket predators and their faux curb taxes in our new website parkinghorrors.com. I think you'll find it's a lot of fun.

The Worldwide Parking Ticket Blight

Philadelphia — Pretty much everyone who reads a newspaper in this country knows that local governments have transformed needed parking regulations into cash cows for their own recession-depleted general funds. Most Americans however, don't know that this same predatory process — often in an even more pronounced form — is at work in countries around the world. 

Britain is a prime example. After the government in 1991 allowed local councils to administer ticketing systems, often with the help of private contractors, the number of tickets issued soared 700 percent in the next six years. It has been increasing steadily there ever since. Stories such as parking wardens giving tickets to bus drivers stopped to pick up passengers, and to vans operated by the national blood service, have become a staple of English newspapers.

Madcap tales in this realm are turning up everywhere. In Tel Aviv, for example, if you haven't paid your ticket fines, you get a visit at your home in the evening from collectors. In Darwin, Australia, an elderly woman tied her dog to a fence by a parking bay while she shopped, and when she returned found a parking ticket tucked under its collar. 

Parkinghorrors.com tracks this worldwide parking enforcement madness on a daily basis, with a special focus on the way it is playing out in this country. In addition, it runs regular features on the effect parking is having on local merchants, individual tales of woe from victimized motorists, and poignant and frequently hilarious cartoons by artist Kay Wood. 

For more information, contact Kay Wood or her sidekick, Mike Silverstein, at info@parkinghorrors.com.

Mime, a new public artwork by Kristin Jones and Andrew Ginzel, opened in October in Richmond Heights, Missouri. Commissioned by the St. Louis Metro Arts in Transit (AIT), a community partnership program, the dynamic sculpture was recently installed at the Richmond Heights MetroLink Station.

The work is located at the Boulevard-Saint Louis (Brentwood Blvd. at Galleria Parkway, Richmond Heights, MO) and the Richmond Heights Station.

For more information about the work, please visit http://www.jonesginzel.com/00Download.html or contact Diane Roehm at diane@jonesginzel.com.

I was thrilled to be awarded a 2009 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Interdisciplinary Work.
http://www.nyfa.org/level4.asp?id=375&fid=1&sid=1&tid=15

A poem about the BMC chickens!

POETRY OCTOBER 2009 ATLANTIC
by Henri Cole
Hens

It’s good for the ego, when I call and they come
running, squawking and clucking, because it’s feedtime,
and once again I can’t resist picking up little Lazarus,
an orange-and-white pullet I adore. “Yes, yes, everything will be
okay,” I say to her glaring mongrel face. Come September,
she’ll begin to lay the blue-green eggs I love poached.
God dooms the snake to taste nothing but the dust
and the hen to 4,000 or so ovulations. Poor Lazarus—
last spring an intruder murdered her sisters and left her
garroted in the coop. There’s a way the wounded
light up a dark rectangular space. Suffering becomes
the universal theme. Too soft, and you’ll be squeezed;
too hard, and you’ll be broken. Even a hen knows this,
posing on a manure pile, her body a stab of gold.

Best American Poetry, 2009

http://www.bestamericanpoetry.com/

Although the poetry collected in this volume runs the gamut of themes from love to Freud to the beauty of the matriarchs in Genesis, the idea of America is a prominent unifying thread that spans throughout — as Derek Walcott interrogates the meaning of change in government in "A Sea-Change", only to be interrogated back by Vincent Stanley in "At the New York Public Library, I heard Derek Walcott dismiss the prose poem."

Leslie was in Vienna Sept. 27-Oct. 19, courtesy of the U.S. Embassy. Discussion and workshop took place on October 1.

IN JULY AND AUGUST LUCILLE NURKSE'S COLLAGES WERE SHOWN AT THE ADIRONDACK LAKES CENTER FOR THE ARTS IN BLUE MOUNTAIN LAKE.

Kriti Gallery in Varanasi, India has invited me this winter for a six-week residency!
This will be my first trip to India.
I will be working on collages and drawings that will be exhibited in their gallery at the end of my stay.
I will also be painting a mural in collaboration with local children and conducting bookmaking workshops for the public at their beautiful gallery space:

http://www.kritigallery.com

To raise funds for these projects, I have opened an online shop of prints, drawings, and collages:

http://www.ericaharris.etsy.com

In August Kirk performed his new work, Some Bitch I Used to Know, in New York at Dixon Place with Erin Markey and special guests Narcissister and Sara Jane Stoner.

In July he was in Mexico writing with the lesbian mafia. He went skinnydipping and got stung by a sea urchin in the most personal of places. The remedy for stinging sea creatures? Contact him for details: kirkread@earthlink.net.

Bob's "Creative Life" is available from the University of Illinois Press. George Lewis commented "...this book shows how music
can be deployed as a tool for actualing theorizing the social world."

Orchises Press proudly announces John's new book of poetry: DOLLS
Those wishing to order may do so by contacting Ochises Press, P.O. Box 320533, Alexandria, VA 22320-4533; cost: $24.77

Carolyn had a newly commissioned public sculpture on view in New Haven, CT this summer. For more information, and to see photos go to:
http://www.artspacenh.org/exhibitions/thelot.htm

SAP 2009: BABEL COLLECTIONS
by Carolyn Salas
Created in collaboration with the
Artspace Summer Apprentices

Artspace
50 Orange St.
New Haven, CT
06511
(203) 772-2709 x14

Greetings from Boulder, Colorado! I'm very excited to announce the upcoming publication for my next book: Slow the Appetite Down! Spire Press is putting it out as part of its new inSPIREd series. It's a perfect-bound chap and it's available for pre-order - $8 and no shipping costs.

You can see it at:
http://www.spirepress.org/battiste.html

The amazingly talented and cool Kelly Cherry wrote a wowzer blurb:

In her third chapbook Michele Battiste presents poems of such a dynamic intelligence that the reader finds herself exhilarated: it’s like riding with the top down! The view expands to take in what was never expected: an old woman in a shoe, palendromic numbers, the pain of not quite being Humphrey Bogart. Even a poem about the long lines women endure at intermission. And when did you last read a poem about Kegel exercises? A wry benediction for a child in the womb places the whole world in perspective. Battiste has an exceedingly sharp eye and an even sharper wit. Smart, passionate, and complex, these poems remind us that our lives are far more exciting than we sometimes think.
—Kelly Cherry, author of Hazard and Prospect: New and Selected Poems

And if you are ever in the Denver/Boulder area, come on by for a visit and we'll show you the creek!