PUB: 2011 National Flash Fiction Competition

2011 Flash Fiction Competition - 
Urban Myths


Sponsored by Fiction Feedback - the leading independent critique service for writers

The Writers’ Circle has launched a national flash fiction story writing competition, with a theme of Urban Myths.

There are cash prizes, plus the winners will be featured in the 2011 collection of members’ writing, Aware.

 

CADWC members are eligible to enter and can submit one story free of charge.

 

Word length is 500 words and deadline is 30th September 2011.

 

The competition is open to anyone living in the UK.

 

 

1. Stories should address the theme of Urban Myths.

 

2. Maximum number of words: 500

 

3. The story must be typed and submitted by post.

 

4. The name of the author must not appear on the actual story.

 

5. Closing date for receipt of stories is September 30th 2011.

 

6. Entrants must send with their stories a separate cover sheet which gives their name, address, telephone number, email and title and first line of story or stories. This acts as the entry form.

 

7. Entry fee is £3 for one story, and £5 for two. Please send a cheque made out to Chorley & District Writers’ Circle, and post with cover sheet and story or stories to: Aware Competition, 27 Thirlmere Road, Blackrod, Bolton BL6 5EB.

 

8. Members of Chorley & District Writers’ Circle are eligible to enter and are entitled to one free entry.

 

9. Writers can enter as many stories as they like provided they’re accompanied by the appropriate fee.

 

10. Stories must not have been published for public view on any platform. (Stories read at private group readings or posted on password-protected forums are eligible.)

 

 

Prizes: Winner: £100; second prize: £50; third prize: £25, plus publication for winners (and possibly short-listed entries) in Aware, the Circle’s annual digital collection of writing posted on their website, and on the Fiction Feedback website.

 

By entering, writers agree to their stories being published in Aware and on the Chorley Writers and Fiction Feedback websites. Copyright always remains with the author.

 

We cannot enter into any correspondence about individual stories, only about the rules of entry. For information, please email: mail@chorleywriters.co.uk

 

 

INFO: James Anderson’s Partner Can’t Join Family’s Wrongful Death Suit in Mississippi - COLORLINES

James Anderson’s Partner 

Can’t Join Family’s 

Wrongful Death Suit

in Mississippi


Friday, September 9 2011

 

Earlier this week the family of James C. Anderson, the black man who was killed in an alleged hate crime in Mississippi, filed a lawsuit agaisnt the seven white teens who participated in the murder. But the state of Mississippi will not allow Anderson’s male partner of 17-years to be part of the family’s civil suit, the New York Times reported.

As the Andersson family lawyer explained to the Times, James Bradfield, Anderson’s partner, is not a plaintiff in the family’s suit because same-sex partners have no claim in civil actions like the one the family is putting forward in the state of Mississippi. (There is no indication that Anderson’s sexual orientation was a factor in the crime.)

Anderson was violently attacked and then run over by a group of white teens on June 26, 2011. Deryl Dedmon 19, of Brandon, Mississippi is accused of intentionally running over Anderson with his green Ford-250 and is now facing capital murder charges because of evidence that he assaulted and robbed Anderson, according to Hinds County District Attorney

The civil suit accuses the seven white teenagers of deliberately setting out in the early morning hours of June 26 to go to Jackson to “go f*ck with some niggers.” 

The New York Times provides a few more details:

The lawsuit makes public for the first time the names of all seven people who had piled into the two vehicles that night, charging that while some were directly responsible for assaulting and killing Mr. Anderson, others were negligent because they acted as lookouts and did not try to help Mr. Anderson. …

The suit did not specify an amount for damages, but it included accusations of negligence as a way to tap into the homeowner’s insurance policies of some of the families of the young people involved, Mr. Dees said.

Anderson leaves behind his partner and a 4-year-old girl they were raising together.

 

__________________________

 

New Details in Violent

Mississippi Murder of

James Craig Anderson


James Craig Anderson (Family Photo)

Tuesday, August 23 2011, 12:25 PM EST

New details are emerging of the alleged racially motivated murder of Jackson, Mississippi resident James Craig Anderson. The new information paints the victim as a church-going man who was raising a 4-year-old girl with his partner, James Bradfield, and the suspect as a wayward young man who struggled with substance abuse.

Anderson was violently attacked and then run over by a group of white teens. Deryl Dedmon 19, of Brandon, Mississippi is accused of intentionally running over Anderson with his green Ford-250 and is now facing capital murder charges because of evidence that he assaulted and robbed Anderson before allegedly killing the man.

Hinds County District Attorney Robert Shuler Smith said last week that he has called on the FBI for help investigate the murder. On Friday, charges against Dedmon were upgraded from murder to capital murder, theClarion Ledger, a local newspaper reports. If convicted, Dedmon could face the death penalty.

Although there were seven other white teens involved in the alleged hate crime, only one other teen, John Rice, has been charged with simple assault. Anderson’s lawyer told The Times this week the family and others wonder why only two of the seven teenagers have been charged in the crime.

It’s unclear what the other teens were doing while Dedmon and Rice physically attacked and robbed Anderson, but witnesses told police that one teenager yelled “white power” and that Dedmon used a racial slur when he bragged about running Anderson over later that night. 

The Southern Poverty Law Center is currently working with the family and their lawyer to investigate whether some of the teenagers involved may have ties to a gang with white-supremacist leanings, the Times reports.

Anderson’s family has remained silent until recently. Although the family created the James Craig Anderson Foundation for Racial Tolerance, they’ve stayed away from the media due to fear of media and political scrutiny as the case moves forward, the family lawyer told reporters

Anderson was a gifted gardener and always genial, his family recently told the Times. He liked his job on the assembly line at the Nissan plant north of Jackson, where he had worked for about seven years. 

He sang tenor in the choir at the First Hyde Park Missionary Baptist Church and was so good “he’d have you falling out,” his partner James Bradfield said.

“If you met him, the first thing you were going to see was that grand piano smile,” Anderson’s sister Barbara Anderson Young also told the times.

If Dedmon, who’s currently being held in isolation, is successfully prosecuted with a hate crime, it’ll be a first under the state’s 1994 hate crime law.

 

 

 

 

INTERVIEW + VIDEO: Sanaa Lathan Speaks On Contagion, The Help & Upcoming Film « Clutch Magazine

Sanaa Lathan

 

Sanaa Lathan Speaks

On Contagion, The Help

& Upcoming Film

Saturday Sep 10, 2011 – by

 

Sanaa Lathan is back on the big screen as part of the cast of the highly anticipated psycho thriller Contagion. From Catfish and Black Bean Sauce, Love & Basketball to Alien vs. Predator, her repertoire is as versatile as her talent. Lathan chatted with BET recently about her role in Contagion, thoughts on Black women in roles of servitude and her next bone chilling project.

Contagion is a complex thriller about the pandemonium brought on by a fatal worldwide epidemic. Although she does not hold a major role, it is a pivotal one. She plays the wife of Lawrence Fishburne’s character, an officer of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, who contributes to the global panic that ensues once the virus is unleashed. Lathan said she particularly enjoyed being a part of the film because it gave her the opportunity to work “with people who really get it.” Speaking about director Steven Soderbergh she told BET,  “[he] knew what he was doing when he made [Lathan and Fishburne's] characters Black. He’s such a smart guy and he’s aware of film history. We had a conversation on set and he said, “I wasn’t interested in this being another ‘white man save the world’ movie.”  So Steven knew that he wanted Laurence really early on. I love him for that.”

Lathan also expressed a desire to star in more romantic comedies in the future, but not a rehashing of the films she’s known for. She’s ready to take it to the next level: “I’d love to do another romantic comedy again, but it would have to be different from the Love and Basketballs, the Something News and the Brown Sugars.  It would have to be a different story, a different character pushing me in different directions.  I’m very picky about it being something that doesn’t repeat — I’m always trying to elevate from what I’ve already done.”

Giving her perspective on recent controversy about the popular film The Help, Sanaa related it to her own experience playing a maid herself in the off-Broadway play Meet Vera Stark, which explored the notion of playing a servant vs. being one. In response to whether domestic roles are a step back for Black women, Lathan said, “I feel like it’s getting better. I’m definitely a ‘glass half–full’ person, so I look for those examples of it getting better. I thought that the way The Help was executed was beautiful and I was thoroughly entertained. It was empowering to those women. I’m rooting for Viola Davis. I think she did an amazing job in it and I was deeply moved by her performance. There’s a possibility that Meet Vera Stark may go to Broadway next year. And if it does, I just want everyone to come out and see, because it’s such a tour-de-force role.”

Lastly, Sanaa Lathan gave a glimpse into her upcoming role in what she calls a “horror ghost” story titled Vipaka. The film, set in New Orleans, also stars Anthony Mackie, Mike Epps and Forest Whitaker. “I play Anthony Mackie’s wife. It’s kind of like a love triangle between my character, Anthony’s and Mike Epps’ character, who plays his brother. Mike Epps is doing a really dark, complicated edgy role. People are gonna be so blown away by him in this movie. Forest Whitaker plays a mysterious person who comes into all of our lives and makes us reveal secrets we have from each other and ourselves. So it’s like a horror film but it’s also a psychological thriller. I had a blast working with Anthony, Mike and Forest — that was a treat for me.

Sanaa promises Vipaka to be something new and refreshing in Black cinema. “There’s definitely some freaky s— in it. It will keep people on the edge of their seats. You’ll be jumping and screaming, but it’s also really deep and really layered. I’m not interested in doing a straight horror film.  I’m excited because there are good moments in Vipaka that I don’t think people have seen Black people do on screen lately.”

One more reason Ms. Lathan is a fan favorite. This is a gifted actress who knows how to think outside of the box.

 

INTERVIEW + VIDEO: Photographer Lauri Lyons

Photographer Interview:

Lauri Lyons

 

Photo: Lauri Lyons by Jamel Shabazz
 
D&B: Where are you from?
LL: I am a global nomad. My family is from Jamaica, but later immigrated to the U.S. Both of my parents joined the Air Force and as a family we traveled the world many times over.

I have lived in a variety of locations that include the South Bronx, Greece, Louisiana, Germany, etc. As a photographer my work has enabled me to live in Europe, West Africa, and South America. I have lived in the suburbs, trailers, European homes, and military bases throughout the world.

 

D&B: What kind of photography do you shoot and how did you get started - any
"formal" training?

LL: I earned a BFA in Media Arts from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
My photography has evolved over the years. Initially my first love was photojournalism, then I moved towards portraiture, and now fine art.

My 'personal' work has always been intertwined with my 'commercial' work. Regardless of the categories, all of my work is essentially autobiographical.

Two examples are my books 'Flag: An American Story' (2001) and 'Flag International' (2008). The Flag series is a testament to the global interpretations of the American dream. Flag illustrates people from around the world, holding the American flag and discussing their views about America.

Over the years I've had countless hours of 'formal' training. I learned all the rules and now I'm breaking the rules.

 

Muslim girls, England - Copyright Lauri Lyons

D&B: What cameras or techniques do you use?
LL: I generally like shooting medium format film and HD video cameras for moving images. I prefer the manual 'old war horse' cameras such as Mamiyas and Yashicas for still photography. They don't need batteries, dust and water are powerless, they can take a good beating, and nobody wants to steal them. Very important if you shoot on location as much as I do.

D&B: Who are your mentors (in photography)?
LL: Bruce Davidson, Jamel Shabazz and Andre Lambertson. They are not only great photographers but also consistently great examples of artists who have vision, longevity and ethics.

D&B: Have you experienced any setbacks or different treatment along your
photography career that you would attribute to being a woman and/or photographer of color? (this question is optional)

LL: Unfortunately I have to say the setbacks I have encountered, but transcended, were created by photographers and curators of color. We generally don't like to discuss this in public forums, but the truth is, a lot of people in our photo community have a 'crabs in a barrrel' mentality.

There is still a deeply embedded belief that there can only be a few of 'us' of on 'top'. That belief system is corrosive, unjust, hypocritical and ultimately self-sabotaging.

Fortunately, my resilience is strong and I know the value of my hard work. I will never allow other people to determine how far and wide I can reach. I am the captain of my own ship. I hope other artists who encounter obstacles come to the same realization.

 

Afrolicious - Copyright Lauri Lyons

D&B: When did you realize you could have a career in photography? Describe your journey towards becoming a working photographer.
LL: While attending college I was inspired by the work of the Magnum photographers. After graduating I moved to New York in order to meet Bruce Davidson and work for Magnum Photos. From that point I also assisted a National Geographic photographer.

Afterward I moved into the magazine arena as a Photo Editor for several national magazines. The photo editing experience enabled me to gain experience producing shoots, working with celebrities, and an understanding of the publishing business.

After several years of working behind the scenes with artists and creative directors, I decided to pursue my own career as a professional photographer. I studied at ICP to refresh my technical skills and then embarked on editorial assignments and personal projects.

I have always thought of my career in terms of longevity. Over the years I have diversified my experiences into the fields of advertising, publishing, teaching, exhibitions, journalism, and consulting.

 

Man on dock - Copyright Lauri Lyons

D&B: What do you hope to achieve with your photography?
LL: Photography is a tool that allows me to experience the world in a multi-layered fashion. My artistic intention is to inspire curiosity, dialogue and action.

D&B: What's your dream photography project?
LL: My dream photography project is whatever I am working on at the moment.

D&B: What's the biggest (life) lesson you've learned through photography?
LL: The biggest lesson I have learned through photography is, life is an evolving adventure. Live it!

 

__________________________

 

 

 In The Frame

 

Filmmaker Leah Hamilton documents nyc photographer Lauri Lyons, the first African American female photogrpaher to be represented by Getty Imges, and creates a cool profile of who she is, what she does and why she does it.

>via: http://current.com/groups/vc2-on-tv/76430062_in-the-frame.htm


 

PHOTO ESSAY: Nana Kofi Acquah Photography: 8 Fresh photos, 7 wild thoughts on Photography

8 Fresh photos,

7 wild thoughts

on Photography

 

_MG_9769
1. Photographers and bad backs are like vultures and rubbish dumps.
I wish I knew this when I started. I’d have checked how much gear I carried around.
_DSF3211
2. The old adage “It’s the poor workman who always quarrels with his tools”,is as true for the carpenter as it is for the photographer.
_DSF3420
3. Nobody tells a writer “you write so well, you must have a good pen” but they are comfortable telling a photographer “Your photos are lovely, you must have a good camera”.

4. Photoshopography is not the same as Photography. Be honest about which of these two you practice.
_MG_9570
5. The camera will always grant you access but you get to choose whether to heaven or hell.
_MG_9568
6. The camera is a great wall to hide behind.
_MG_9283
7. The camera never lies but the computer can and often does.
_DSF3439
Do enjoy the rest of the week :)

 

 

 

SCIENCE: Humankind-Born In Africa


 

Martin Meredith’s

“Born in Africa:

The Quest for the

Origins of Human Life”

    In 1924, anatomy professor Raymond Dart came across an unusual skull that a mining company had inadvertently blasted out of a hillside in a South African village. Despite its small brain size, the Taung Child, as the skull was to be named, had distinctively human features, including signs that its owner walked upright. But Dart’s finding contradicted prevailing scientific opinion, which held that the evolution of a large brain preceded other human adaptations, such as walking. Confirming this belief was the 1912 discovery of Piltdown Man, a skull found in a gravel pit in Piltdown, England. With its large cranium but otherwise apelike features, Piltdown Man supposedly represented the missing link between primates and humans, proving that humans came out of Asia and not Africa.

    Dart disagreed, and he enthusiastically published his findings. Yet the conservative scientific establishment savaged him, arguing that he had misidentified a mere primate. Among Dart’s other crimes were failing to follow proper research protocol and using “a ‘barbarous’ combination of Latin and Greek in naming the specimen Australopithecus.” After this professional drubbing, Dart suffered a nervous breakdown, and the Taung skull languished for years as a paperweight on the desk of a colleague.

     

    (PublicAffairs) - ‘Born in Africa: The Quest for the Origins of Human Life’ by Martin Meredith. PublicAffairs. 230 pp. $26.99

     

    Twenty-three years later, Robert Broom, a maverick fossil hunter and physician who conducted his South African excavations under the blazing sun dressed “in a dark suit and waistcoat, long-sleeved white shirt, stiff butterfly collar and somber tie,” made his own discovery of an australopithecine, finally vindicating Dart. In 1953, scientists confirmed that Piltdown Man had been an elaborate 40-year hoax, a skull patched together from a combination of human and orangutan remains and artificially distressed to appear ancient. The Piltdown skull was only a few hundred years old; the Taung Child, however, was eventually dated at 2.7 million years.

    Broom’s discoveries finally turned the tide of scientific opinion toward accepting humanity’s origins in Africa. A gold rush of anthropological exploration in Africa followed, its history marked by bitter rivalries, brash pronouncements and breathtaking discoveries. In “Born in Africa,” journalist and historian Martin Meredith has compiled a satisfying account of this quest. The author of numerous historical books on Africa, Meredith here offers a social history of 20th-century anthropological exploration in Africa, one that gives flavor to both the significance of new discoveries and the charismatic personalities who made them.

    In 1926, Louis Leakey began what became a successful, multi-generational research enterprise in Kenya. Leakey, his wife, Mary, and son, Richard, went on to make some of the most significant hominid discoveries of the past century. Sites in Kenya, Ethiopia and South Africa yielded spectacular specimens, particularly in landscapes whose exploration demanded stamina and persistence. In Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge, where Mary Leakey first spotted the 1.75 million-year-old skull she referred to affectionately as “Dear Boy,” researchers battled black dust clouds, drought conditions and incessant sun while also having “to contend with marauding lions, rhinoceroses and hyenas.” Later, Richard Leakey’s team found a 1.6 million-year-old, nearly complete skeleton in Kenya’s Lake Turkana, which “resembled a lunar landscape, a boundless expanse of lava and sand littered with the wrecks of ancient volcanoes. The winds and the heat were ferocious.”

    Fossil hunting was an arduous and frequently unrewarding business. Sometimes years would pass with no discoveries at all as researchers scrambled to acquire funding and government permits. Although Meredith gives credit to native fossil hunters who unearthed noteworthy finds, the scientists, many of whom were skilled at self-promotion, take center stage. At the start of new fieldwork in Koobi Fora, Kenya, for example, Richard Leakey, “with romantic notions of himself as a heroic explorer riding across the African desert,” hired camels and let the cameras roll. In 1974, when Leakey’s American rival Donald Johanson announced his discovery of the 3.2 million-year-old australopithecine known as Lucy, he shouted on camera, “I’ve got you now, Richard!”

    Outsized personalities, turf wars, public insults and heated debates were the order of the day. Meredith outlines these scientific disputes in a clear and accessible manner, and presents a lucid summary of the current scientific thinking on the origins of humanity, with a narrative timeline that traces the chronology of human migration out of Africa. Much like the fossil hunters themselves, Meredith manages to assemble a cogent and compelling narrative from the occasionally messy history of paleoanthropology. “Born In Africa” pays tribute to those intrepid scientists who dedicated their lives to finding the fragments of bone that would illuminate the story of our common humanity in Africa.

    Rachel Newcomb is an associate professor of anthropology at Rollins College and the author of “Women of Fes: Ambiguities of Urban Life in Morocco.”

    Correction:

    Earlier versions of this book review incorrectly identified Kenya as the country in which the Olduvai Gorge is located. The Olduvai Gorge, a site of significant fossil discoveries, is in Tanzania. This version has been corrected.

     

     

    __________________________

     

     

    Born in Africa

    The Quest for the

    Origins of Humankind

     

    Africa does not give up its secrets easily. Buried there lie answers to the origins of humankind. After a century of investigation, scientists have transformed our understanding about the beginnings of human life.

     

    By Sophy Kohler for The Times

    Martin Meredith’s Born in Africa allows us to enter the arcane world of palaeoanthropology with no prerequisites. It is not necessary to have pored over the Piltdown Man case in high school history or to have scrambled up to Blombos Cave and pawed for hours in the dust.

    We have others to do these things for us, as did Meredith. Meredith’s task, as the historian, was to recreate the story, to mould the evidence together in a way that made sense. And he does this beautifully, whittling down millions of years into 200-odd pages, without leaving you feeling like you’ve missed out on the details.

    Born in Africa is the story of the search for mankind’s ultimate ancestor, the race to reconstruct one heck of a family tree.

    For those of us who cannot tell an ancient shell midden from the work of a meticulous oystercatcher, Meredith reduces the grand “quest for the origins of human life” to something eminently digestible.

    His method? Studying and aggregating the “work, writings and reminiscences of several generations of scientists”. Meredith dilutes hard science with good narrative, making Born in Africa a rare find within its discipline.

    The book begins, inevitably, with Charles Darwin, the “Adam” of evolutionary biology, who first suggested Africa as the birthplace of mankind.

    But Meredith does not dwell on Darwin; we leave him behind in favour of lesser-known men like Robert Broom, who raided graves for “research purposes”, and Raymond Dart, a medical student who was forced to study bones instead of brains due to a lack of equipment.

    Meredith successfully connects the stories of the individuals and their discoveries, filling the gaps between big finds like Lucy, Taung Child and Mrs Ples, and big names like Louis Leakey, Phillip Tobias and Elisabeth Vrba.

    With the story’s own evolution, the isolation that normally surrounds these eureka moments begins to dissolve.

    Meredith’s account is one of discoveries unfolding simultaneously, each often rendering the other void. It is with these interwoven narratives that Born in Africa strikes gold.

    In his notes at the end of the book, for instance, Meredith describes Dart as having had a “vivid repertoire of lecture hall tricks”, which included “leaping up and grasping water pipes attached to the ceiling of the lecture hall to demonstrate the brachiation form of primate locomotion; knuckle-walking like a chimpanzee; and performing a ‘crocodile walk’ to illustrate how reptiles moved about”.

    However, the author avoids the trap of valorising palaeoanthropology’s key players: he also reveals their flaws. Broom is described as having had “the honesty of a good poker player”. Mary Leaky was expelled from school and Louis Leakey lived “in sin” after divorcing his first wife, Frida.

    The book also describes vast amounts of professional rivalry, most significantly following the arrival of the molecular anthropologists, who had the power of DNA and didn’t have to get their hands dirty.

    Born in Africa reveals how our search for a common ancestor has so often gone against the human spirit of co-operation.

    Meredith continually reminds us that our ancestors were more than just skeletons.

    We are forced to consider the possibility that there is no definitive line that separates “human” from “ape” and the consequences of such a possibility. Through Meredith’s eyes, we come to see Neanderthals as more than apes with better posture: we have to create a place for them within ourselves.

    Meredith ends the book with the familiar conclusion that we are all descended from a small group of African hunter-gatherers.

    While there are still many gaps to be filled, Born in Africa is a healthy, humbling reminder that we are not the finished product. Meredith’s book is refreshing for being the story of men rather than the story of skulls.

    >via: http://bookslive.co.za/blog/2011/09/06/clearing-the-dust-a-review-of-martin-m...

     

    __________________________

     

    Scientists Fight To Prove


    Humanity 'Born In Africa'

     

    LISTEN TO THE REPORT

     

    Fossil remains of Australopithecus afarensi, known as "Lucy," were first discovered in Ethiopia and Tanzania in the 1970s.
    Dirk Van Tuerenhout/AP

    Fossil remains of Australopithecus afarensi, known as "Lucy," were first discovered in Ethiopia and Tanzania in the 1970s.


    Cover of 'Born In Africa'

     

    Born In Africa: The Quest For The Origins Of Human Life
    By Martin Meredith
    Hardcover, 288 pages
    PublicAffairs
    List Price: $26.99

    Read An Excerpt

     

    May 12, 2011

    For years, anthropologists and archeologists believed that Asia held the answers to their questions about the origins of mankind. So when a set of controversial hominid remains was discovered in Africa in the early 20th century, it took a while for scholars to accept that they may have been wrong.

    In Born in Africa, author Martin Meredith details the battles, contempt and fraud of the search for the origins of human life.

    Meredith tells NPR's Neal Conan that Charles Darwin was the first to speculate that mankind actually evolved in Africa.

    "[Darwin] didn't really have any evidence for that," Meredith says, but he figured that since gorillas and chimpanzees were humans' nearest known relatives at the time, and they're most likely to be found in Africa, so too should early humans.

    Still, for about 50 years, Darwin's idea was summarily dismissed.

    "It was only during the 20th century that the evidence on the ground began to emerge that this piece of Darwin's speculation was likely to prove to be accurate," Meredith says.

    The evidence emerged in fits and starts, and was often disputed by those who still believed Asia was the key to the origin of mankind.

    "Everybody was looking for what was called at the time [the] 'missing link,'" Meredith says.

    In the late 19th century, German biologist Ernst Haeckel theorized that the missing link lay between ape and human populations.

    "His scheme of things was that there couldn't have been just a singular move from being an ape to a human, there had to be somebody who occurred in between," Meredith says.

    So at the turn of the 20th century, he says, there was a huge, frenzied effort to find the missing link.

    "The way was open for fraudsters to claim having found elements of bones and tools, and evidence of ancient humans ... in Southern England," Meredith says.

    One so-called discovery became known as the Piltdown Man hoax and, according to Meredith, the people behind it were students of the going theories about what the missing link might look like. Their specimen had a fairly large brain and an ape-like jaw – essentially a mixture of ingredients.

    "[They] constructed this so-called missing link and it more or less distorted science in Britain for a period of 40 years," Meredith says.

    And because scientists believed it, they dismissed any evidence that didn't fall in line.

    "It's extraordinary the way in which a whole scientific endeavor can be manipulated in such a way that the real truth, as it were, is hidden for decades," Meredith says.

    So when Raymond Dart discovered a small-brained early hominid, Australopithecus Africanis, in South Africa in 1924, he brought it to England expecting to make a significant contribution to science. But that's not exactly how it worked out.

    According to Meredith, Dart's hominid discovery "was laughed out of court."

    "The scientific establishment believed that the key element in any human ancestor must have been a large brain — they believed that the brain led the way in human evolution," Meredith says.

    Dart's discovery went unvalidated until the 1950s.

    "It's an example [of how] scientists cling on to a particular school of thought," Meredith says, "even though there is evidence which is beginning to contradict them."

     

    >via: http://www.npr.org/2011/05/12/136247011/scientists-fight-to-prove-humans-born...

     

     

     

     

     

     

    AUDIO: House Music at home and abroad

    High Holy Days:


    The History and Future


    of House Music

     

    by DJ Lynnee Denise

     

    WildSeed Music NYC is proud to present its first ever double mixed cd,High Holy Days: The History and Future of House Music.

     

    GO HERE TO LISTEN TO EPISODE 1

    Episode 1 “The Children of Baldwin,” explores several periods of classic house where both familiar Chicago hits and underground New York City gay club sleepers tell the stories of their sound. Baldwin tells us that: “The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him/her,” and I believe the same can be said for the Disc Jockey. Through this mix I hope to bring voice to the untold stories and visibility to the nameless people that generated a global musical movement.

    Episode 2, “Mighty Real: The Sound of Tomorrow” pulls on current producers who incorporate elements of classic house, but also push beyond the borders of acceptable dance-floor grooves. Sylvester helped shape a soulful, yet formulaic genre of house music that focuses on spiritual-sexually-inspired falsetto vocals and driving, repetitive disco rhythms. This mix is dedicated to his artistry, fearlessness and commitment to authenticity.
    Liner notes for High Holy Days feature two of my favorite scholars and house heads:

    Thokazani Mhblambi: “Music’s fluidity, its ability to exist in-context and in many other contexts simultaneously, can provide a stimulus towards the direction of freedom. But for house music to do this, it needs to be rescued from the context of excess and accumulation and loaded with transformative content of liberation. It needs to be freed from the ghettoes of global cultures of consumerism, which seek to marginalize the contributions of the church, gospel music, African spirituals, gay-club culture all of which have been foundational to its origins.”

    Tim’m West:

    Jimmy B-boy blues
    wide-eyed and full like his laugh
    surrender to joy

    We close our eyes
    inheriting the praise dance
    of sinner sermons

    Sweet serenity
    baby powder voudou dust
    Eden where we dance
    +++++++++++++++++++++++++
    320x240_4328502
    Lynnee Denise
    Known for her eclectic mixes of classic hip-hop, soul, funk and deep house, dj lynnee denise of Wildseed Music draws from Black social and political movements to present the dynamic range of music of the Diaspora. lynnee denise was resident dj for “Schomburg Nights” at the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture and for the Central Park Skaters Association. She performed in the Orchestra of DJs at the Studio Museum in Harlem and in the Sekou Sundiata and Days of Art and Ideas conference at Harlem Stage. Working as the Sound Designer for the Excavating Motherhood exhibit at the Brooklyn Arts Gym in 2007 sparked lynnee’s passion for combining visual arts, youth development and music production to reflect her broad interest in the concept of humanization through music. lynnee has been a guest dj at internationally recognized venues in New York City including Joe’s Pub, Mocada Museum, Deity, Sutra, Knitting Factory, Harriet’s Alter Ego and Rush Arts Galleries. She's spun along side underground and internationally known artists such as Ursula Rucker, Joi, Saul Williams, MC Lyte, DJ Beverly Bond, DJ Spinna, Eric Roberson, Amplified Music (UK tour), Martin Luther, Julie Dexter, Cody Chestnut, Malena Perez, Larry Heard (Mr. Fingers) and Donnie. She was the feature dj at Spelman College's “Take Back The Music” and Toni Cade Bambara conferences in Atlanta. lynnee works as the Director of Programs and Services for exalt youth, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to transform the lives of youth involved the criminal justice system. She holds a BA in Sociology from Fisk University and an MA in Ethnic Studies from San Francisco State University.

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    Freedom in the age of democracy

    • Posted on June 22, 2011

     


    By Thokozani Mhlambi
    In 2008 I would often go dancing to house music with my friends. We would frequent a club called Vudu in downtown Cape Town. While dancing to the DJs mixing I would feel absolutely free. This was a moment where I could really let loose, suspending my thoughts and worries, and just be with the music. Nothing else mattered. This feeling of being free kept me going back to the same club every single weekend, on both Friday and Saturday. Eventually I knew all the tracks they would play and knew which resident DJ would play what. The predictability only made me love it even more. I would imagine my body filling out the silent spaces between the recurring drum-kick. The footwork and the different parts of my body would each represent something in the music. When there were many girls in the club, it would be even better. The dance moves seemed so much more natural and graceful on a woman’s body. They were feminine in their stamping of the beat, and there I would enter, slicing between the swirls their bodies made, carving out a ritualistic trance. This ancient ritual was transposed as our movement did not revolve around a fire, but around a flashing strode light—in the club.

     

    In that space we embodied a sense of being free in our moves. But this sense of freedom did not ring true to our reality outside of the club. Leaving the club, we would return to our ordinary lives where our fears of encountering a road-block on the way home were very real. There were also the obligations and demands imposed by our communities on us as the young adults of the new democratic dispensation. Ours was the expectation to achieve and excel. “You were after all born in a time of freedom. Unlike us who grew up in a time where if you were black you could not accomplish anything.” But was what we were experiencing in the club really freedom? And was that the limit of it? (Freedom only experienced in the club!)

    The topic of freedom seems terribly passé in the year 2011, 17 years after apartheid. I am drawing a parallel between house music and freedom, hoping that in using house music as a lens we may have a better understanding of freedom. House music is eclectic in the symbols it draws from. It brings together African traditions of performance, Christian spirituals and black male sexuality. In this combination house music becomes a vehicle, holding potential emancipatory action.

    The present South African situation is characterized by a great degree of uncertainty and ambiguity from all sectors of its population. I am thinking here of tag-lines such as “making South Africa work” by the organization Men On the Side of the Road. I am also thinking of Ivor Chipkin’s book “Do South Africans exist?” What these statements reveal is a desperate attempt to name that which cannot be named, that which is yet-to-be-born.

    The confusion of unknowability reveals itself on the ground through sheer greed and self-servitude. Even those in positions of power, who sprinkle us with dream potions of future promises, grab at any opportunity, as if what lies ahead is grim. ‘The worst is yet to come’. Most of these habits of the black elite are consonant with past models of white privilege. But the accumulation is empty as it is unable to free itself of its material conditions. For freedom naturally desires equality; without equality freedom becomes distorted, an imprisonment which does not set the soul loose. The result is further alienating to the mind from the physical freedom it pursues.

    House music grapples with the difficult issues we have been unable to resolve in our material reality. In house music we see the co-mingling of ambiguities within the post-Apartheid scenario. Religion, tradition, sexuality and identities may indeed be the underlying basis upon which we remain as uncertain now, as we were 17 years ago, on “what South Africa is”. House music conflates these issues in a dynamic and experiential way, addressing precisely that which we have been unable to speak in words.

    It is for this reason that I return to the old question about freedom. Like a Kwaito song that has long lost its flavor, it is still worth listening to. It may bring to life those memories of iskero or isthwetla, all the dances styles of the early 90s. Perhaps I’m out-of-step, they always told me ukuthi ngiyabhimba, but who knows, maybe it’s just the dubstep in me.

    There are some interesting features common to the traditions of music in Africa and elsewhere across the globe. There is repetition. Repetition can either be in the form of a recurring rhythm or melody. A ‘chorus’ in a song is an example of a repeating melody that appears in the music every now and then. A repeating rhythm can be seen in West-African drumming where certain parts are played over and over again throughout the music with subtle variation. This repetition is crucial. It organizes sound, allowing different sounds to exist as a whole. Repetition is not mere redundancy, it is not devoid of intelligence, rather repetition ritualizes the experience of listening, reassuring the listener of a wholeness in the music. Confirming to the ears that what they are in fact hearing are related sounds. In house music too, it is the repeating drum-machine pattern that drives the music.

    The pleasure of the listening experience lies in its ability to evoke dance. The repeating 4/4 rhythm of the drum-machine enables dance. You see, house music’s focus has always been on the dance floor. It is music made specifically with the clubbing environment in mind. Repetition in music is therefore a process of engaging the body in the music. It secures the listener’s position in the musical experience as not merely passive, but involved in a very physical way.

    There is a feature prominent in traditions of music in Africa, where there are no boundaries between the audience and the performers. Those who are involved are at once performers and listeners the music. House music is in keeping with this interdependent relationship.

    My father asks me why so many youngsters aspire to be House music DJs in our days. “It’s as if no one wants to work”, he would add. I think there are two things at play here. One is that contemporary South Africa is fertile with opportunities for new kinds of identities. These identities lie outside of the 9-to-5pm working phenomenon. The computer-age has given birth to many possibilities in terms of creative work, from graphic designing to beat-making. Identities centered on creative work and entertainment are ideal platforms for expression; with reasonable financial gain, outside of the standard work frameworks. Having witnessed our parents struggle against physical oppression; we ask “What were you fighting for?” It was a struggle for us to live our dreams. We want to pursue the fruits of that struggle into our reality, to push the gains of the struggle for freedom to its limits, freeing the mind so that imagination is extended making true liberation a possibility. Our parents’ deferred dreams seem to be coming out through us; their skeletons have awakened to our new consciousness—they desire to come out and dance.

    A music promoter once said to me, “House music is like a spirit. It works with the mind.” It would therefore make sense why house music would become a rich territory for cultivating the freedom of the mind. House music has exploded in its popularity in S. A. over the last 17 years or so. One can no longer speak seriously about the genre in global terms without mentioning Mzantsi. In shebeens, upmarket night-clubs, minibus taxis, and on public radio it is House music that blares!

    House emerged in the 1980s in the United States. Its popularity began in the gay scene, and in Chicago and other parts it remained very much a ‘black thing’. Its spillover to the mainstream market was through radio airplay, mostly in pirate radio stations. Pirate radio not only serviced the uncontainability of house but it also guaranteed its illegitimacy—it has moved from the being the music of gays (already seen as problematic on its own) to that of rebellious drug-using youth.

    Although house emerged in America, it had a greater impact, in terms of masses, outside of the U.S. By the 1990s it had generated itself a heterogeneous group of listeners worldwide, including places like Tokyo, Australia and Germany.

    House music is the same age as our democratic dispensation in South Africa. The increase in access to overseas sound material in the early 1990s led to house music’s growth locally. But we preferred our house music slowed down compared to our overseas counterparts. DJs like Oskido, Mdu and Christos were getting house vinyls from abroad and they were playing them on the outskirts of Jozi’s CBD. Gradually these guys began experimenting with the music by slowing it down in tempo to about 90bpm and then adding their own vocals on top. These were the early beginnings of kwaito. Kwaito was seen as a ghettoization of house music—as Arthur Mafokate himself once said in an interview about kwaito, “It’s all about ghetto music.”

    I wont delve any deep into kwaito.  House music entered the popular music scene mediated through kwaito. House music has grown in tandem with our democracy.

    Religion has the effect of satisfying needs experienced in the physical world in the metaphysical realm. Early colonial administrators used this aspect of religion as a way of controlling African masses in relation to the very real conditions of oppression they were experiencing. Africans though had their own response. Although Christianity was intended to pacify, it became an equally potent symbol for resistance. Africans could reference their own situation of suffering against the suffering experienced by Israelites in Egypt in the bible. Christianity provided a supernatural impulse in the struggle for freedom.

    The most notable example in this impulse is Enoch Sontonga’s hymn Nkosi Sikelela iAfrica. The hymn is at once a call for God to bless Africa, and an inference to a post-liberation vision of Africa as a centre of power and fame. The liberation struggle re-defined Christianity and its Bible on the basis of the struggle for freedom, forging a spiritual foundation for human equality. This trend was not only in Africa, but in the diaspora at-large. It is this tradition that house-music calls upon, in its use of the Church as a trope and in its cut-‘n-paste of African-American gospel spiritual songs. “Oskido’s Church Grooves: Fourth Commandment” (released in 2004) comes to mind here. Holding true to the religious theme, the first track is a sermon, “Oh Lord teach us how to pray”. The rest of the album continues in the usual secular fashion.

    These religious tendencies grapple with serious sacred issues in a very secular and real way. Historically electronic music has always seen its role as bringing seriousness to the secular. One of the early founders of electronic music composition, Pierre Henry (1950) viewed his art as a shift from “the sacred” to “a relationship with cries, laughter, sex, death. Everything that puts us in touch with the cosmic, that is to say, with the living materiality of plants on fire.” There are no gatekeepers in the secular realm. It is available to everyone, and can bring critical issues to the people in all their diversity. So what is it that hinders us from seeing the house music messages in this light?

    Electronic music has been characterized by a male dominance in its production. In South Africa too, people who have been at the forefront in the production and Dj-ing of house music tracks have been men, black men in particular. BlackCoffee, Vinny Da Vinci, Oskido are but a few names that come to mind. The physical responses to their music though have been mixed. Dance is often associated with feminine tendencies. There are certainly many house music dance styles locally that are feminine in their gestures, the manyisa is one that easily comes to mind. As house music is rooted within the dancing experience the combination of the masculine production and feminine dance is of relevance. 

    Music’s fluidity, its ability to exist in-context and in many other contexts simultaneously, can provide a stimulus towards the direction of freedom. But for house music to do this, it needs to be rescued from the context of excess and accumulation and loaded with transformative content of liberation. It needs to be freed from the ghettoes of global cultures of consumerism which seek to marginalize the contributions of the church, gospel music, African spirituals, gay-club culture all of which have been foundational to its origins. This is perhaps an extreme kind of consumerism of late modernity. Where modernism sought to free art from social constraints, autonomy came to imply self-possession. House music is an industry that generates its own hype, garners its own applause and dictates its own artistic value.

    What we are witnessing here is the disembodiment of art, ridding it of its conditions of emergence, in order to satisfy consumerism. Artistic expression thrives in contexts where it is allowed to live itself out and die, because it has fulfilled its mission to us as human beings. This has already happened to the genre of the novel, and is unfolding in jazz as we speak. When art is over-loaded with the demands of ‘the market’ it loses this ability of living itself out towards its death. Unable to sustain the freedom outside of the dancefloor, house music soon exposes its own hollowness.

    The freedom I feel when dancing to house music in the club is short-lived precisely because it is a false freedom. For true freedom naturally desires equality—meaning that it locates its worth within the worthiness of other human beings. The self must subside for the ‘collective’ to emerge, this kind of equality is at the heart of any psychic awareness. It is an awareness that says: “I am not alone”, an awareness that takes into regard the affectual nature of things, not as mere objects, but as life everlasting, things as movements spatially bound, but also capable of so much more.

    We persist in our house music frenzy, hoping that this so-called freedom, spent wandering between night-clubs and shebeens will provide redemption. Nightclubs are places of leisure and being social, but very little socializing actually happens here, as our voices our muffled by the blaring music. Soaring above our voices, house music takes over and becomes our voice. The way house music blares over the airwaves, on the streets and in places of leisure may be acting as a form of silence—a silence that is amplified by the under-fulfilled promises of our democracy.

    Unless we name our freedom we will continue to live in silence, precisely because a subject with no name is unable to speak. Its locus of thoughts, actions and feelings are unknowable. As a consequence, every gesture that emerges from it seems bizarre. To seize power means taking back; it is about an entire generation taking back and possessing what is rightfully theirs by birthright. It is about undoing that which colonialism did, by taking back those spaces which rightfully belong to us as a people. We are dispossessing that which the spirit of conquest sought to claim as belonging to some and not others. In so doing we restore humanity—putting into play that reality which was imagined for us. A reality of freedom and equality. By naming our freedom into a reality we forge a new set of ‘given’ conditions, opening the doors for new phenomena.

    Thokozani Mhlambi is an Archival Platform correspondent

    PUB: Consequence Magazine

    The Consequence Prize in Poetry

    Each year a distinguished poet is invited to select the winner of The Consequence Prize in Poetry. We are delighted to announce that award winning poet and translator, Martha Collins, will select this year's winner. The prize recognizes exceptional work addressing the consequences of armed conflict or social injustice. The award for best poem includes a cash prize of $200. The winning poet and three finalists will have their work published in the Spring 2012 issue of CONSEQUENCE Magazine.

    No entry fee is required to submit your poem.

    Guidelines:
    Please observe these guidelines carefully.

    There is no entry fee.
    The poem(s) should address the consequence of war, or social injustice.
    Please submit no more than three poems of any length.

    Submissions for the contest may be emailed to Consequence.Mag@gmail.com or mailed to: CONSEQUENCE, PO Box 323, Cohasset, MA 02025-0323, Attention Poetry Editor.

    If you submit multiple poems, each must begin on a separate page.
    Include your name and contact information in a cover letter only. Please do not identify yourself on the page(s) containing your poem.
    In your cover letter include a short biography of no more than 75 words.

    Your submission should be received by October 1, 2011.
    If you submit by regular mail, and you want confirmation that your entry has been received, please include a self-addressed, stamped post card.
    If you want mailed, original copies returned, include a SASE.

    Visit our website at www.consequencemagazine.org on or after November 25, 2011 to see the winning poet's work, and the names of the three finalists. Due to the large number of submissions, the announcement on our website will be the only notice of contest results.

    We look forward to reading your poems.

     

    PUB: Holland Park Press

    Angels & Devils Poetry Competition

     2 April 2011  by Holland Park Press

    Later this year we will publish Angel, the English translation of Arnold Jansen op de Haar’s Engel and to celebrate this event we are holding a poetry competition Angels & Devils.

    We all have relatives and this conjures up a wide range of emotions from the very good to the most awful; let this be your poetic inspiration.

    We are delighted to announce that Donald Gardner will be judging this competition assisted by the Dutch publishing advisor and the publisher.

    The Task

    You are asked to write a poem of no more than 30 lines about family relationships. You can write in English or Dutch.

    We are looking for poems that look at one’s relatives in an original way; we are especially interested in poems that use a personal experience to create general empathy.

    To help you on your way here are a few examples of poetry dealing with relationships and we hope they will inspire you.

    In Angel the protagonist writes this poem about his mother:

     

    Mother

    eternal unkilling
    of dying fathers

    babbling aunties
    wasting precious time

    who now snaps his laces
    their hibernation dissolving

    sunday is out
    she happily puts on her lipstick

    thinking back when she was but young
    being young   when all still belonged

    standing there forever frozen
    phoning her child


    Well of course relations provide you with an infinite source of material. Poets have put this to good use and for a wonderful example, think of the opening lines of Philip Larkin’s famous poem This Be The Verse:

     

    They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
    They may not mean to, but they do.

    Another example which may be helpful is from the collection Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes, in which he reminiscences about his wife Sylvia Plath:

     

    The dark ate at you. And the fear
    Of being crushed. ‘A huge dark machine’.
    ‘The grinding indifferent
    Millstone of circumstance’.

    Provided it touches on relationships, everything goes, happy or sad, touching or funny, as long as it expresses your original voice in content as well as form.

    What is the prize?

    The author of the winning poem will receive £100 plus the winning poem will be published in our online magazine.

    Because we invite entries in Dutch and English, two poems will be awarded the first prize, one English and one Dutch poem. For the benefit of our English readers the winning Dutch poem will be translated into English and published in both languages in our magazine.

    Who can take part?

    Anyone who submits an entry that complies with these guidelines:

    •    The poem has to be written in English or Dutch
    •    The poem should be 30 lines or less
    •    The poem must be the original work of the entrant and must not have been previously awarded or published
    •    You can only send in one poem per entrant

    When is the closing date?

    You can send in your entries from the 2 April 2011 and the competition closes on 31 December 2011.

    How to submit your entry

    In order to enter the competition you have to email us. We regret that we cannot process entries that do not follow the guidelines set out below, so please read these instructions carefully.

    • The poem must be attached as a single Microsoft Word file
    • You need to use Word 97-2003 file type (.doc extension not .docx)
    • The font should be 12-point, Times New Roman, single line spacing
    • The Word file has to be named as follows: ddmmyy_firstnamesurname_AD.doc, where ddmmyy is the date on which you send the email, firstname and surname are your names.
    • Ddmmyy firstnamesurname AD must appear in the subject line of the email
    • The body of the email should contain your contact details
    • Email to: submissions AT hollandparkpress DOT co DOT uk

    The Judges

     Donald Gardner

    Donald Gardner, born in London in 1938, is a poet and freelance Dutch translator. He has lived in Holland since 1979 and is the translator of the eminent Dutch poet and author Remco Campert. (I Dreamed in the Cities at Night, Arc Publications, 2007) He was originally a translator of Latin American literature and his published work includes an acclaimed translation of Octavio Paz's long poem The Sun Stone (Cosmos, 1968). Donald Gardner’s own poems have been widely published and his most recent collections include How to Get the Most out of your Jet Lag (Ye Olde Font Shoppe, New Haven, 2000) and The Glittering Sea (Hearing Eye Press, 2006). He is also well known for his performances of his poetry in Amsterdam, London and New York.

    Arnold Jansen op de Haar

    Arnold is the publishing advisor for Dutch literature for Holland Park Press and the author of several novels De koning van Tuzla (King of Tuzla), Engel (Angel) and a poetry collection Joegoslavisch requiem (Yugoslav Requiem) as well as other books, numerous columns and articles.

    Bernadette Jansen op de Haar

    Bernadette is the publisher and founder of Holland Park Press. She is delighted to organise this competition and is looking forward to reading your poems.

    via hollandparkpress.co.uk