Benefit read-a-thon at Giovanni’s Room in Philadelphia

Reposted from Ask Nicola, the oldest LGBT bookstore in the USA is looking for authors to read at its forthcoming benefit event.

Dear LGBT authors:

The Board of Directors of the Lambda Literary Foundation and Ed Hermance, owner of Giovanni’s Room, would like to invite you to read at our first “Read-a-thon”. The event, to be held at 7:30pm on Saturday November 21, 2009, at Giovanni’s Room in Philadelphia, will be a benefit for both the Foundation and the bookstore. We’d like to invite LGBT authors to read from a recent or classic book and answer questions for approximately 15 minutes each. 100% of the proceeds from the event will go to the two beneficiaries. We will be serving donated wine and snacks during the marathon reading. While the foundation and the bookstore can’t offset any expenses authors might incur participating in this benefit, we can possibly arrange housing in local homes. Both the Foundation and Giovanni’s Room will be very grateful for your help in these trying economic times. While this is a fundraising event, we’re hoping it will be a lot of fun for a community of people who treasure our words and writers.

The Lambda Literary Foundation is dedicated to raising the status of openly lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people throughout society by rewarding and promoting excellence among LGBT writers who use their work to explore LGBT lives. The Foundation sponsors the annual Lambda Literary Awards and held its first Writer’s Retreat in 2007.

Giovanni’s Room, located at 12th & Pine in Center City Philadelphia, is the oldest LGBT bookstore in the USA. The store is faced with a financial challenge as their front wall of their historic structure is being replaced. The queer community of Philadelphia, rather than lose their cherished bookstore, is organizing fund-raising events through the fall to ensure the store’s survival.

We hope that we’ve enticed you to participate at this, sure to be wonderful, event. If you would like to read, or have any questions/comments/suggestions, please contact Scott Cranin at scranin@tlavideo.com.

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint(s): Sacco & Vanzetti

sacco vanzetti
AUGUST 23 — SACCO & VANZETTI
Executed Italian-American anarchists,
wrote stunning letters from prison.

August 23, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
Lithuania: HARVEST FESTIVAL. Ridiculous speeches, feasting and dancing.
In the “Kirvis,” a pretty maiden stands in the center of a circle of
dancers, holding an ax. The circle sings, the ax is thrown, & the young
man who catches it, often bleeding, gets a kiss & a dance.

ALSO ON AUGUST 23 IN HISTORY…
1900 — Folk, protest singer Malvina Reynolds born, San Francisco, California.
1911 — Ishi, last member of his stone-age tribe, discovered in California.
1927 — Anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti executed in Boston, amid great protests.
1983 — Back-to-the-Earth advocate Scott Nearing dies, Maine.

Chambo's Top Five Friday Internet Activities

• MORE AWESOME TAPES (AND 7-INCHES) FROM AFRICA: Frank lived in West Africa from 2005 to 2008, and he tells us all about it at Voodoo Funk, a collection of stories, MP3s and awesome record store art. He’s also DJing a “Lagos Disco Inferno” party this weekend in Brooklyn, and you can get a preview of the heavy grooves from his crates with this kinda sloppy and totally delightful downloadable mix. [Voodoo Funk]

• MEXICAN JOURNALISM 101: Tucson-based writer Charles Bowden is by far the best guy when it comes to reading about drugs and Mexico, partly because in Mexico you are not allowed to write about drugs and Mexico. In last month’s Mother Jones he wrote this terrifying story of a reporter who wasn’t even trying to do that, but Mexican Army psychopaths decided to try and kill him anyway. He fled to the United States looking for asylum so we put him in jail and took his kid away. [Mother Jones]

• CHILEAN ELECTRONICS: Arthur pal Raspberry Jones is adding a bunch of tunes to Newly Lost Edge, including some interesting electronic music from South America. Jones is a regular go-to guy when it comes to this stuff, helpfully directing our attention to mixes such as this one from Matias Aguayo, a Chilean dude “putting on his various friends from around the world – artists from Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Cape Verde, etc. – who aren’t just doing the local thing, so much as mixing that local thing with a (for lack of a better term) minimal techno vibe.” [Newly Lost Edge]

• ENDGAME TIME AGAIN: The Guardian UK joins the Financial Times in shoring up the British mainstream press’ reputation as a hub for radical anarcho-primitivist thought, following the Jared Diamond interview we wrote about last week with this pleasantly archaic exchange of letters between two dudes, one of whom is like “The writing is on the wall for industrial society, and no amount of ethical shopping or determined protesting is going to change that now” and another guy who’s like, “you’re just horny for the apocalypse.” [The Guardian]

• NEW ANIMALS: Did you see the new animals yet? World Wide Fund for Nature has all kinds of information about the 350 different species of plants, amphibians, reptiles, fish, birds, mammals and invertebrates that humans have recently discovered hiding out in the Eastern Himalayas (so not exactly “new,” so much as “new to us”). Including this flying frog that glides around from tree-to-tree with its webbed feet. That guy is most likely on the anti-industrial society side of the debate. [WWF via Science Daily]

P.S. Happy Birthday Joe Strummer! You can read Kristine McKenna’s beautifully sprawling Q&A with the dearly departed Clash frontman and all around inspirational hero from Arthur 3 (March 2003) by clicking here. We’ve also got plenty of hard copies left in the Arthur Store. Click here to go see about that.

Great Grandma’s Macaroni — a recipe and a story from The Reigning Sound’s Greg Cartwright (Arthur, 2004)

Come On In My Kitchen
by Greg Cartwright of the Reigning Sound

originally published in Arthur No. 11 (July 2004)

Greg Cartwright is one of American rock ‘n’ roll’s great undersung heroes, a veteran of legendary Memphis grease-rock outfits the Oblivians and the Compulsive Gamblers. Too Much Guitar!, the career-highlight new album by his latest band, The Reigning Sound, is reviewed by C & D in this issue; the band will be touring with the Hives across North America later this summer.

About nine years ago, while I was touring in Spain, I met an American girl who happened to be there on vacation. Conversation led to the fact that we were both looking for The Revlons’ “The Way You Touch My Hand” single. The stars were lining up but the van was leaving. Almost a year later I met her again in New York and I wound up staying at her apartment for three days. On the third day we decided to stay in because we knew it was our last night together. I said, “Let’s cook something.” She said, “I only know how to cook one thing.” She called it “Great Grandma’s Macaroni.” Was it good? I married her, didn’t I? Here goes:

1. Boil 1 package of macaroni noodles.
2. Put them in a casserole dish and mix in one small can of tomato sauce.
3. Chop up half a sweet vidalia (yellow) onion and mix it in too.
4. Add a pinch of thyme, a little oregano and salt & pepper to your taste.
5. Mix it all up good and spread a nice thick layer of shredded cheddar across the top.
6. Bake at 375 degrees about 20 minutes, or until the cheese starts to turn golden brown.

My only addition to this recipe over the last seven years has been to add a pound of seasoned ground beef in place of step 4. Thanks to Esther’s great grandma for the recipe!

Excellent article on AYAHUASCA in National Geographic

perushamans

Click here: “Peru: Hell and Back”
Deep in the Amazon jungle, writer Kira Salak tests ayahuasca, a shamanistic medicinal ritual, and finds a terrifying—but enlightening—world within.

Major praise to National Geographic for putting together the best single article on ayahuasca-as-medicine that I’ve ever seen, anywhere. Lengthy article features a first-person account of two ayahuasca treatments by courageous reporter Kira Salak, as well as commentary/information/insights from leading, sensible Western ayahuasca researchers (Charles Grob at UCLA; Benny Shanon at Hebrew University, Jerusalem; and psychologist/author Ralph Metzner) and footage of the beginning of an ayahuasca session.

Excerpt:

At the vanguard of this research is Charles Grob, M.D., a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at UCLA’s School of Medicine. In 1993 Dr. Grob launched the Hoasca Project, the first in-depth study of the physical and psychological effects of ayahuasca on humans. His team went to Brazil, where the plant mixture can be taken legally, to study members of a native church, the União do Vegetal (UDV), who use ayahuasca as a sacrament, and compared them to a control group that had never ingested the substance. The studies found that all the ayahuasca-using UDV members had experienced remission without recurrence of their addictions, depression, or anxiety disorders. In addition, blood samples revealed a startling discovery: Ayahuasca seems to give users a greater sensitivity to serotonin—one of the mood-regulating chemicals produced by the body—by increasing the number of serotonin receptors on nerve cells.

Unlike most common antidepressants, which Grob says can create such high levels of serotonin that cells may actually compensate by losing many of their serotonin receptors, the Hoasca Project showed that ayahuasca strongly enhances the body’s ability to absorb the serotonin that’s naturally there.

“Ayahuasca is perhaps a far more sophisticated and effective way to treat depression than SSRIs [antidepressant drugs],” Grob concludes, adding that the use of SSRIs is “a rather crude way” of doing it. And ayahuasca, he insists, has great potential as a long-term solution.

According to Grob, ayahuasca provokes a profound state of altered consciousness that can lead to temporary “ego disintegration,” as he calls it, allowing people to move beyond their defense mechanisms into the depths of their unconscious minds—a unique opportunity, he says, that cannot be duplicated by any nondrug therapy methods.

“Ayahuasca is not for everyone,” Grob warns. “It’s probably not for most people in our world today. You have to be willing to have a very powerful, long, internal experience, which can get very scary. You have to be willing to withstand that.”

Read the whole article here…

'44 PRESIDENTS' by MZA & Maria Sputnik

44_presidents_number_16

Forty Four Presidents by MZA & Maria Sputnik.  Available in hardcover from Garrett County Press.

A brief illustrated history of the U.S. presidency told by the presidents themselves in the style favored by modern social networking web sites, Forty Four Presidents imagines 220 years of presidential succession pancaked into a single moment — documented simultaneously by each commander-in-chief in status updates designed for easy consumption by their Facebook friends. Each status update is accompanied by a jaunty, high-contrast profile picture intended to reflect something of the essential personality (and hotness) of the president.

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint: Wesley Willis

wesley
AUGUST 21 — WESLEY WILLIS
“Warhellrider,” Joy-rider.” Rock musician and outsider artist.
willisart_skyline20
Wesley Willis, Skyline.

August 21, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
Ath, Belgium: FESTIVAL OF GOLIATH. Parade of giants.

ALSO ON AUGUST 17 IN HISTORY…
1831 — Nat Turner leads slave rebellion, Virginia.
1872 — Decadent British illustrator Aubrey Beardsley born.
1888 — William S. Burroughs awarded patent for adding machine.
1904 — William “Count” Basie born, Red Bank, New Jersey.
1971 — Black Panther George Jackson assassinated, San Quentin prison, California.
2003 — Outsider artist, schizophrenic musician Wesley Willis dies, Chicago, Illinois.