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I ♥ The Beat Museum

Our long-term vision for 580 Green includes an additional two floors, an expanded Beat Museum, a cafe, and a Beat Hotel. (Concept drawing by Michael Palumbo) (c) The Beat Museum/Michael Palumbo
The Long-term vision for 580 Green includes an additional two floors, an expanded Beat Museum, a cafe, and a Beat Hotel. (Concept drawing by Michael Palumbo)
(c) The Beat Museum/Michael Palumbo

SPECIAL FOR THE BEAT MUSEUM

by Jerry Cimino who recently told us …

how difficult things are for so many these days in San Francisco. Like many small organizations and non-profits, The Beat Museum is feeling the squeeze as rents continue to skyrocket and corporate interests take over.

The brutal truth is this: while you’re renting in San Francisco, you’re at the mercy of others. The only way to know you are truly safe is to own the property you occupy.

So, to safeguard the future of The Beat Museum, and to keep The Beat Generation and its values as the beating heart of North Beach, we intend to buy our own building.

Yes this is a large undertaking, but I feel we really have no other option. And if we don’t do it soon I believe it is likely we will wake up one day – possibly sooner rather than later – and find that we’re homeless.

Obviously, buying a building is going to be expensive. But, I am not asking you for cash you don’t have. Instead, there are four things that anyone and everyone can do to help us secure The Beat Museum’s future.

Click HERE to see sketches of a new Beat Museum. Nice!

FOUR WAYS YOU CAN HELP US KEEP THE BEAT MUSEUM OPEN.

1). WRITE TO US.
We need to show that the North Beach community, as well as Beat fans around the world, are behind this campaign. So please write in to let us know a bit about you – and why you care about the survival of the Beat Museum. You can either drop us an email or use the form in the link above.

2). TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW IN THE MEDIA.
We’re pitching this endeavor as “Good for North Beach, Good for San Francisco and Good for Beat Generation fans around the world.” I’d love for our campaign to go viral. So if you are on Facebook or Twitter please tell your followers about our fight to stay in North Beach. We’re using the hashtag #SaveTheBeatMuseum.

Also please contact TV people, radio, print and blogs. Maybe they’re here in San Francisco or somewhere else in the country or even around the world. I’m available for interviews as to why this is vital for the soul of our great city.

3). TELL FRIENDS – AND IF YOU KNOW ANYONE FAMOUS, TELL THEM, TOO.
Please forward to your friends and any celebrities you might know who dig the Beats. Please ask them for a testimonial as well. I’m firmly convinced this dream can become a reality if we can get some momentum behind us – and celebrities can help us get the word out to a much larger audience.

4). IF YOU KNOW ANY RICH FOLKS, TELL THEM!
Please forward to anyone you know who can write a big check. We have a few philanthropists lined up but we still need more. Wouldn’t it be great if we could make a public announcement soon that we have secured some major pledges? Imagine the additional support we could garner if we saw a headline like this:

“BEAT MUSEUM SECURES $1 MILLION DOLLARS IN PLEDGES FOR BUILDING CAMPAIGN.”

Imagine how big that announcement would be! The Friends of The Beat Museum is a non-profit 501(c)3 so all donations are eligible for a tax deduction to the fullest extent of the law. I know there are a lot of extremely wealthy individuals who love The Beats. We need your help in ensuring these folks know there is a Beat Museum in San Francisco that celebrates the spirit of The Beat Generation and we’re trying to buy a permanent home to cement that legacy.

Donors can remain anonymous, of course, and I welcome a phone call or email from people in this regard. I truly believe we can build a coalition of extremely wealthy supporters, but these folks need to know what we’re trying to accomplish in order to make that happen.

“IF YOU CAN HELP – PLEASE DO IT NOW.”

Please don’t put this off until tomorrow or next week. The perfect building for the future of The Beat Museum is currently on the market right now two blocks away at the corner of Stockton & Green and if we miss this chance, we may not find another.

Believe me, since my last email, the buzz about our intention for a new building in North Beach has been palpable. I know what we’re trying to accomplish is an outrageous undertaking. And our friends and neighbors in North Beach are telling us they love the sheer audacity of our plan. Can you now help us spread the buzz and make it even louder?

With your help I really do believe we can not only save the Beat Museum – but help save the soul of San Francisco.

And, if you DO want to make a donation, you may do so HERE:
Thank you very much for your consideration.
Jerry Cimino
The Beat Museum
540 Broadway
San Francisco, CA 94133
1-800-KER-OUAC
kerouac.com

I ♥ The Beat Museum

Jamie

If you too are a lover of The Beat Generation, the Beats and The Beat Museum, please feel free (encouraged) to reblog this post, copy and past this post into your blog, and share this post with links from the social media sites you favor.

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A LOOK BACK TONIGHT: To the first Woman and first Black to run for the U.S. presidential nomination of the Democratic Party

Shirley Chishom, 1925-2005
Shirley Chisholm, 1925-2005

Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm (November 30, 1924 – January 1, 2005) was an American politician, educator, and author. In 1968, she became the first African-American woman elected to the United States Congress, and represented New York’s 12th Congressional District for seven terms from 1969 to 1983. In 1972, she became the first major-party black candidate for President of the United States, and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

In 2015, Chisholm was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In Memory

Brooklyn Girls Rock!

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THE BELLE OF AMHERST, a one-woman play

BelleOfAmherst

“PHOSPHORESCENCE. Now there’s a word to lift your hat to… to find that phosphorescence, that light within, that’s the genius behind poetry.” Emily Dickinson

If you are a lover of poetry and theatre and looking for some budget-wise charm this weekend, order some Chinese food, set out the candles and wine, and stream William Luce‘s one-woman bio-play on Emily Dickinson, The Belle of Amherst, with Julie Harris. I don’t see it on iTunes, but it is on Amazon Instant Video.

Based on the life of poet Emily Dickinson from 1830 to 1886, the play is set in the family home in Amherst, Massachusetts. It incorporates her work, diaries, and letters in a reenactment of her life with family, close friends, and acquaintances. Enchanting and often funny.

After one preview, the original Broadway production, directed by Charles Nelson Reilly and starring Julie Harris, opened on April 28, 1976 at the Longacre Theatre. It ran for 116 performances. A Wall Street Journal reviewer wrote

With her technical ability and her emotional range, Miss Harris can convey profound inner turmoil at the same time that she displays irrepressible gaiety of spirit.”

In The Belle of Amherst Harris portrays fifteen characters and won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play, earned a Drama Desk Award nomination for Unique Theatrical Experience, and won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Recording. She appeared in a televised PBS production and toured the country with the play for a number of years [sources: Wikipedia and NY Times]

Luce and Harris collaborated on other wonderful plays including Bronté.  A broadway playwright, Luce also wrote Barrymore, which with family I was fortunate enough to see on stage starring Christopher Plummer many years ago. That was a bit of heaven.  Luce wrote Lucifer’s Child based on the writing of Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen), Lillian about Lillian Hellman and Zelda, which became The Last Flapper, about Zelda Fitzgerald. If script writing is one of your interests, you could probably do worse than reading a few of  Luce’s plays.

Cover art © publisher and/or playwrighter 

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CELEBRATING AMERICAN SHE-POETS (23): Gwendolyn Brooks, Journalist, Poet, Living in the along …

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“Live not for Battles Won.
Live not for The-End-of-the-Song.
Live in the along.”
Report from Part One

There is so much about Gwendolyn Brooks and her work that is remarkable and goes beyond the awards and acknowledgements, though these are many and prestigious and often firsts for her gender and race.

In 1968 Gwendolyn Brooks was named Poet Laureate of Illinois. In 1985, she was the first Black woman appointed U.S. Poet Laureate, known then as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. She received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, the Frost Medal, a National Endowment for the Arts Award, the Shelley Memorial Award, and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Guggenheim Foundation.

Gwendolyn Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas, but within a few weeks of her birth her family moved to Chicago, Illinois, her true roots and the source material for her poetry. She lived in Chicago until her death in December 2000. According to the family and friends who surrounded her at the end, she died as she lived with pencil in hand.

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“But in the crowding darkness not a word did they say.
Though the pretty-coated birds had piped so lightly all the day.
And he had seen the lovers in the little side streets.
And she had heard the morning stories clogged with sweets.
It was quite a time for loving. It was midnight. It was May.
But in the crowding darknesss not a word did they say.”
Old Marrieds

Gwendolyn’s first poem was published in a children’s magazine when she was thirteen years old. By the time she was sixteen 75 poems were published. Her first collection, A Street In Bronzville, was published in 1945. She never completed college because she saw herself as a poet and not a scholar. Maybe this is one reason why her poetry is so unselfconscious and down-to-earth.  There’s no posturing. It’s real and readable.  She experimented with many poetic forms and is known for her innovations to the sonnet. She seems to have invented a few forms of her own. Though her subject matter is serious and always compassionate and practical, often compellingly spiritual, she can – and often is – funny, even Suessian on occasion.

In writing of a particular time, place and people – as a journalist poet (a phrase she coined) – she not only chronicled the soul and lives of a people, she captured the essence of the eternals – the follies, the challenges, the good, the loving and the enduring – in the human condition, in the human soul … “To be in love,” she wrote, “is to touch things with a lighter hand.”

Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies.
And be it gash or gold it will not come
Again in this identical disguise.
Annie Allen

Was she a student of Eastern mystics or Meister Eckhart? I rather doubt it. What we have here is a good woman writing from the perspective of her own sacred space, her refined intelligence and her acute observation and imagination. She certainly also writes out of the deep love she has for her people, the exploration of the complexities of being Black in America, and her rootedness and familiarity with the South Side of Chicago. I unreservedly recommend Gwendolyn Brooks for the sheer pleasure of her poetry, for some more understanding of the Black experience in America if you are not Black, for a connection with your roots if you are Black, for your understanding of your own soul and for your education as a poet.  If you haven’t met her yet, do so as soon as you can. A good place to start is with The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks from the American Poetry Project. It has a fine introduction by Elizabeth Alexander.

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John, Who Is Poor
Give him a berry, boys, when you may
And, girls, some mint when you can
And do not ask when his hunger will end
Nor yet when it began
(From Bronzeville Boys and Girls, 1956)

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We Real Cool

“We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.”

― Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Brooks, Journalist Poet, reads We Real Cool (If you are viewing this post from an email, you’ll likely have to link through to the site to see it.)

“She was learning to love moments. To love moments for themselves.”
Gwendolyn Brooks

© 2016, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved; poems, Gwendolyn Brooks  estate; photograph of “Winnie” stone is in the public domain