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Welcome to thecie dot org. We make poetic media with people of all ages from all over
the world for everyone. Please explore our website to learn more about our
videos and our art
work in the schools.
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Thursday, March 1, 2007THE MAGIC GREEN SCHOOL BUS is a half-hour documentary portrait of Paul Wellstone. Created by kids at Lake Country Montessori School in Minneapolis, it is a trip for people of all ages. See what lessons we learned from the life of the late teacher and senator from Minnesota.
Click to see a scene from the movie. To see the whole shebang on line, click on the panel for the bus to the right where it reads, "See the film". We are grateful to Stinkless Communications for hosting the video.
The historian Howard Zinn enthuses, "It is delightful. And a brilliant idea to tell his story through the magic bus, the bus driver, the utterly charming children! It is a good example of how to take a subject that at first glance seems rather dull, and invest it with vitality, humor, inspiration, without sacrificing serious ideas."
Music includes Ballad of Paul and Sheila by Mason Jennings, Star Spangled Banner played by Larry McDonough and On the Bus by Larry Long and Wellstone Elementary School.
You might also want to learn more about the current legislation for Mental Health Parity.
To order your own copy, zoom. To order on line at Wellstone Action, click.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006SHRINKING VIOLET is a multimedia montage of poems, pictures and profound objects written, recorded and collected by Mike Hazard.
This is the purple section in a series on the visible spectrum. RED EYE, AGENT ORANGE, FOOL’S GOLD, THE EVERGREEN MAN and THE BLUEBIRD OF HAPPINESS compose the sequence.
ULTRAVIOLET WE
Ultraviolet we cannot see
ornaments the petals
of certain flowers,
powering the bee
to the pollen,
the flower to eternity
Free for all, come see SHRINKING VIOLET in the St. Paul Art Crawl, Friday 5-10pm October 13, Saturday 12-7pm October 14, and Sunday 12-5pm October 15, 2006 at Lowertown Lofts, 255 Kellogg Boulevard E, St. Paul.Monday, September 11, 2006A RAINBOW A poem by Mike Hazard
a rainbow
of cranes
colors
ground zero
where
the towers
and planes
and cranes
were, now
towers
a rainbow
of cranes
A thousand paper cranes were hung among a mass of memorabilia on a fence around an old church near ground zero. I took a picture. After watching the cranes grind away at ground zero, clearing the debris, I wrote a poem. Today I put the two together, a picture poem for peace.
Pax. Paix. Salaam aleikum. Shalom. Peace.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006A PACK OF DOGS will be on exhibit throughout the dog days of August at the Black Dog Café. Free, it is a collection of canine photographs and poems by Media Mike Hazard.
YOU GOT AWAY
You got away for good this time. You were
always getting away, racing into the woods,
disappearing in a fast and furious blur of fur.
Cleverly teased home once by a trail of baloney,
you wolfed it slice by slice right up to the door,
then made another great escape as we
grabbed for matted hair and combed thin air.
Whenever you did get away, we hollered
your many pet names. You never obeyed,
always following the bliss of your piss,
mapping and remapping the neighborhood.
On a leash, on late night walks, you heard
and kept the family secrets. Time after time,
patrolling the house in the darkness
we fell asleep to the tick of your toes.
THE SAVAGES ARE COMING
“The savages are coming,
the savages are coming,”
screamed the man as he ran
up to his neighbor’s house
near Mankato, August 19,
1862: The Sioux Uprising.
The neighbor was flaying
a wolf alive, trapped
and hung, spread-eagled.
Peeling the canine’s skin,
the wolf and men howled,
“The savages are coming,
the savages are coming.”
Located in Lowertown in downtown St. Paul by the Farmers Market at 308 Prince Street, the Black Dog Café is open every day. Hours are Mon-Thu 7am-10pm; Fri-Sat 7am-11pm; Sun 7am-8pm. For info, call 651.228.9274.Wednesday, July 12, 2006WACAPI WANAGI/GHOST DANCE is a cool video by Deb Wallwork of a hot buffalo by Laura Youngbird. This video is from a half hour program called WE & ME, created at Circle of Nations School in Wahpeton, North Dakota as part of an artist residency with Media Mike.
Friday, June 16, 2006THE CAMERA OPERATOR whose lens focused Howard Dean's infamous scream in Iowa for the network pool is a media buddy. One of the savviest people I know, he was stunned the morning after when he saw how his recording was being used to assassinate the candidate.
You can hear Dean's "I have a scream" speech here.
The camera sees; people frame, and edit.
A similar scenario seems to be unfolding with Susana De Leon. Footage recorded by a private group was edited by a local teevee investigative unit into a news story.
It makes De Leon appear to be racist. This is so out of line with the individual we've been recording as a leader of a community outfit called Quetzalcoatlicue, that this short is offered here as part of the big picture. It was recorded at a Solstice ceremony.
For another take on the story, visit Twin Cities Daily Planet.
By the way, everyone is invited to the north end of Powderhorn Park in Minneapolis to see this year's Solstice Ceremony, Saturday June 17 at 11am.
The camera sees; people react and act.
Wednesday, June 7, 2006JERRY LIEBLING ASKS, "When was the last time you went to a museum and you went in fear?"
Click to see what he is talking about in a new film by Media Mike,
LOOKING AT LIEBLING.
Liebling is showing a collection of his photographs at Minnesota Center for Photography. Curated by George Slade, the show runs through Sunday June 11, 2006. There will be a closing discussion on that last day at 2pm led by Slade.
For a radio interview, click.
To see pictures, click.
Located at 165 13th Avenue NE, Minneapolis, the Minnesota Center for Photography is open Tuesday-Sunday 12-5pm and Thursdays 12-8pm. For more, call 612.824.5500.
He will open your eyes. Click.Thursday, April 20, 2006AGENT ORANGE is a multimedia montage of poems, pictures and profound objects written, recorded and collected by Mike Hazard.
This is the orange section in a series on the visible spectrum. RED EYE, FOOL’S GOLD, THE EVERGREEN MAN, THE BLUEBIRD OF HAPPINESS and SHRINKING VIOLET compose the sequence.
JAIL
Curious as a school of koi
men and women
dressed in orange
are looking at us
looking at them…
Curious as a school of koi
Free for all, come see AGENT ORANGE in the St. Paul Art Crawl, Friday 5-10pm April 21, Saturday 12-7pm April 22, and Sunday 12-5pm April 23, 2006 at Lowertown Lofts, 255 Kellogg Boulevard E, St. Paul. Or call 651.227.2240.
Did you know Columbus brought the orange to this hemisphere? The fruit began in Asia.
Agent Orange is also the poison the American military sprayed all over Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.
SCHOOLS
In a tasty and tasteful Chinese restaurant called Rainbow, my daughter and I were seated at a table next to a 120 gallon tank loaded with a school of large orange carp. Projecting into the middle of the dining room, so you could see through it like a big lens, we were in a fish bowl.
As we talked about college, the hungry and healthy fish zoomed in and out of our conversation. After going to the bathroom, I swam back, a fish-faced fool of a father, trolling for a laugh. This adult, who once upon a time was my child, smiled.
“It was nice dining with you,” she said as we were about to leave. Fishing for compliments, I didn’t realize she was thanking the carp. Fish, like families, swim in schools.
Saturday, March 18, 2006LOVE MAKING? For an essay on why I love making poetic videos, click.
Check out the library of video poetry links.
Saturday, March 11, 2006PEACE HOUSE SINGS is a new film about a place people call "the living room of Franklin Avenue". For two decades this totally volunteer-run, faith-based action has been helping people trying to better themselves. To celebrate its 20th anniversary, we made a new documentary, Peace House Sings.
For one of the songs from Peace House Sings, click.
To buy a copy for $20, call Catherine Mamer at 763-588-4144.Sunday, February 26, 2006Gladys S. Ray, Biidwewidamookwe (Hear the Thunder Coming Woman), has passed on. Among many good works, she was the informed informant who was instrumental in making Mino-bimadiziwin: The Good Life the great film that it is.
Lucky enough to meet her a few times, I always took notes. Here are two poems for her which retell stories she told.
A KODAK MOMENT
A herd of buffalo appeared in our camp by the Sheyenne.
Eagerly, we flashback with Gladys. As the scene clicks,
her dark eyes widen with wonder. We are there.
From inside the car, through the window,
a bull is rubbing his beard on the picnic table.
More bulls are grazing among the pup tents
of the sleeping campers, dreaming they hear bison.
"I took pictures that look just like postcards!"
A MOSQUITO AMONG THE MAHNOMIN
Gladys grinned when we noticed the hum.
"I'm keeping a pet mosquito in the house.
I had to tell my children to leave it alone.
It makes me feel like I'm out in the woods.
I can't believe how stupid we were when we began.
We knew nothing about the ways of the world.
We just knew the woods, the mosquitoes,
the berries, and mahnomin, the wild rice."
I can't believe how smart she was in the end.
She was born near Mahnomen, Minnesota, on the White Earth Reservation. "Mahnomin" is the Ojibwe word for wild rice. I used to always call Gladys when I needed a translation.
"Ba go sen dam is hope as a noun." "Aashkibaago indicates green." "SUN IS GII SIS MOON IS DIBIKIGIISIS. HOPE THIS IS HELPFUL, gLADYS"
Download a good interview with this wonder woman.
Donations in her memory may be made to Hospice of the Red River Valley.
GLAD GLADYS
Glad Gladys
always glad
to see us
showers us
with stories
always glad
Glad Gladys
Miigwetch, Gladys Shingobe Ray, thank you.Thursday, February 16, 2006THE LATE EUGENE MCCARTHY was an all-American American.
Visit a website for McCarthy.
See three poems at Minnesota Stories.
To read a catalog of obituaries which have been appearing all around the world, click.
You may also watch the whole film on line at Free Speech TV.
While we were making the film, Gene got very sick and I wrote this poem about some of the things we were going to do.
WE WERE GONNA AND WE STILL MIGHT
We were gonna smash the ball past those who bought the park.
We were gonna listen to you play Mozart on the clarinet.
We were gonna take your dog Punky for a walk in the country.
We were gonna hunker down by the Vietnam Wall and feel the pierced heart of America.
We were gonna remind the country about the tear gas in Chicago and how it still makes people cry.
We were gonna get Ladybird, Abigail and Muriel together and record the real story of 1968.
We were gonna ask if you feel like a veteran, wounded in the war at home.
We were gonna dare ask you about St. Sebastian and private devotions.
We were gonna climb the steps of the Senate or the House--you said it didn't much matter which--and talk sense about democracy.
We were gonna get a bottle of Dewars and Robert Bly and drink until you guys forgot the camera was rolling.
We were gonna trace the arc of your thought back through Thomas More and Theresa of Avila.
We were gonna give the system a test, and we still have to.
We were gonna keep death daily before our eyes, and we have.
We were gonna smash the ball past those who bought the park.
We were gonna change the world, and we still might.
To order a copy of the documentary, click. Sunday, February 12, 2006Minnesota Stories is a vlog.
Media Mike's GANG, a meditation on violence linking and synching local and global points of view, is now playing at Chuck Olsen’s ambitious and ambidextrous website for new media.
CABLE FABLE shows media activist George Stoney in action.
I'M STILL DANCIN' is a song for Rose, founder of Peace House.
AT THE CROSSROADS is a vloem.
Hear Susu Jeffrey speak to the power of talk.
Click to see a scene from THE MAGIC GREEN SCHOOL BUS.
Witness two poems about Vietnam recited by the late Eugene McCarthy.
For more about web maestro Olsen's multitudinous mediations,
zoom.
To learn about vlogging, zoom to Vlog Wild and Blogging + Video = Vlogging.
We are the media.Wednesday, December 7, 2005PEOPLE WE RARELY SEE ON TEEVEE is a half hour collection of clips of good folks who rarely appear on the tube: youth, teachers, the blind, poets, philosophers, activists, Aztec dancers and others.
In Minneapolis, on MTN:
Monday December 19 at 11pm on Channel 17
Thursday December 29 at 9pm on Channel 16
Saturday January 7 at 5:30pm on Channel 17
In St. Paul, on SPNN:
Sundays and Saturdays in December at 3:30pm on Channel 16 Friday, October 14, 2005The Bluebird of Happiness is a wingy collection of poems, pictures and profound objects on the color blue. The work of Media Mike Hazard, it shows at the St. Paul Art Crawl on Friday 6-10pm, October 14 and Saturday 1-6pm, October 15, 2005.
A BLUEBIRD OF HAPPINESS
A bluebird of happiness flies
in Geraldine’s aquamarine eyes.
I feared she’d died and flown
to heaven when I found her,
here in this rest home since
she can’t remember when.
She’s good on the old days,
not so on the current questions
she repeats like bird calls.
Are you a good husband?
Are you a good husband?
I answer you’re my teacher
in the school of hard knocks.
She says her daughter once
spelled that knocks “k.n.o.x.”.
Giving her a little peck goodbye,
I flutter away, stopping to study
the bluebird picture by her door.
In Geraldine’s aquamarine eyes
a bluebird of happiness flies.
Click to see Blue Moon.
It’s free for all ages in the fifth floor atrium of Lowertown Lofts, 255 Kellogg Boulevard E, St. Paul. For more, call 651.227.2240.Saturday, April 16, 2005FOOL'S GOLD is a whimsical collection of poems, pictures and profound objects on the color yellow. It shows at the St. Paul Art Crawl on Friday 6-10pm, April 22 and Saturday 1-6pm, April 23, 2005.
It's free for all ages in the fifth floor atrium of Lowertown Lofts, 255 Kellogg Boulevard E, St. Paul. For more, call 651.227.2240.
It's about gold fish, the golden rule and the golden bowl.
ROUND SONG
On a golden beach
in a bright yellow shirt
with a round belly
as big as the sun
a blonde man shines
as big as the sun
with a round belly
in a bright yellow shirt
on a golden beach.
FOOL'S GOLD
The maple tree in front of the old man's palace has shed its leaves in a golden shower. He takes the gold-plated banjo out of its case. Marked with his strumming, it's a four string tenor: $275: "In those days, boy!"
A print of a piano-playing lady by Renoir hangs on the wall above him. It is turning blue as the yellow fades in the daylight. I mention I heard Renoir sometimes painted with his penis. He laughs hard.
The bold sun beams on his glass of whiskey. Gold tree of life, gold instrument, gold liquor, gold teeth. Fool's gold for this neighbor, pen in hand, panning for nuggets of wisdom from the old man.Wednesday, April 13, 2005To see how community media makes the world go around, click. Mary Brady’s PUBLIC ACCESS AND THE PRESERVATION OF DEAF CULTURE and John Akre’s MOGADISHU TO MINNEAPOLIS are especially keen. Published by the Alliance for Community Media, you can download the whole shebang, free. See too the selection of international news. Friday, April 1, 2005The Children Remember airs on Twin Cities Public Television, TPT Channel 17 on Sunday, April 3 at 6pm.
Winner of First Prize for Feature Documentary at the Fargo Film Festival, The Children Remember shows us life at the Minnesota State School for Dependent and Neglected Children.
Written by Mike Hazard, narrated by Kevin Kling and directed by Kathleen Laughlin, the documentary is a story of stories told first person by some of the 10,635 orphan kids who lived there between 1886 and 1945.Monday, March 14, 2005MY PEOPLE ARE MY HOME, a fine film portrait of the late great midwestern writer Meridel LeSueur, will air on Twin Cities Public Television, TPT - 17, at 6pm on Sunday, March 27.
My People is about politics, caring for the planet and the struggles of people everywhere to survive with grace. Filled with hope and passion, it is essential viewing for all ages.
LeSueur says in the film, "Guard the democratic corn, we are brothers and sisters of the corn, solidarity of the ovum and pollen more immense than man-made fission, wrapped in the shuck of communal love."
To order your copy of the program on vhs or dvd, click. $20 plus $5 for S&H. Or call 651.227.2240 for VISA/MasterCard orders. It is rated R for radical!Sunday, December 12, 2004SOLAR POWER & MOONSHINE, a collection of pictures, poems and profound objects by Mike Hazard, is on exhibit at the Minnesota Center for Photography until Wednesday December 22, 2004.
To celebrate the Solstice, there will be a free haphazard happening with video, poems and star cookies on Sunday December 19 from 2-4pm.
Here are two of Hazard's poems, one for the moon and one the sun.
THE BLUE-HAIRED MOON
Your belief in The One Above made us
get down on our knees and close our eyes.
The sacred heart of your faith in Jesus
is a prize of prayers and praise.
By the Great Horn Spoon,
good night Gramma, and do not cry, please:
I promise by the blue-haired moon,
we will always hum and sing your lullabies.
THE BURNING BUSH
Abuzz with bees
amazed among
the manzanitas
in Madera canyon
abuzz with bees
in a honey of a sun
a man and a woman
in a maze of flowers
abuzz with bees
pause to praise
the burning bush
speaking in tongues
abuzz with bees
It is a show which plays with a thousand points of light.
Red, green and blue together make white light. We have three sorts of cones in our retinas which are sensitive to red, green and blue light. A holy trinity makes light white. This is the physical reason why the first color televisions had three tubes, red, green and blue. RGB.
It’s candles.
It’s Christmas crazies.
It’s sacred circles, like this petroglyph at the Jeffers.
It’s about Icarus.
Matisse said, “The future of art is light.”
The Minnesota Center for Photography is located at 165 - 13th Avenue NE, Minneapolis, MN 55413 USA. Gallery hours are Tuesday - Sunday 12-5pm, Thursday 12-8pm. For more information, call 612.824.5500.Wednesday, December 1, 2004Give John Schott's weblog of dizzying and dazzling digitalia et alia a shot.Tuesday, August 31, 2004Check out these Czech pictures taken by Michal Daniel.Sunday, July 4, 2004THE HAPPY PATRIOT is a portrait of Michael Moore by Media Mike in honor of Independence Day 2004. Thursday, July 1, 2004What possesses a person to carve a medieval stave church by hand in the late 20th century?
Building A Dream, a magical film on the making of the stavkirke in Moorhead, plays on TPT Channel 2 on Sunday July 11 at 10pm. (Check local listings.)
Directed by Deb Wallwork, written by Cris Anderson, narrated by Bill Holm and edited by Kathleen Laughlin, click to read the director's weblog on the building of the film.
Saturday, April 24, 2004Flying Colors is a palette of poems and pictures by Media Mike Hazard in the St. Paul Art Crawl, 6-10pm Friday April 23 and 1-6pm Saturday April 24. Free for all ages at Lowertown Lofts, fifth floor atrium, 255 Kellogg Boulevard E, St. Paul.
FLYING COLORS
while my birding buddies look aloft
in the budding branches and blue skies
listening for songs of a feather,
I linger among the green long grasses
loaded with dew, chanting silently
"debauchee of dew, debauchee of dew"
when zooming in closer I realize,
at a thousand points of view,
with tiny motions of my eyes,
each bead of water shoots a new
firework of colored light,
a mirror of birds in flight:
red cardinal, orange oriole,
yellow flicker, green head mallard,
blue-winged warbler, indigo bunting,
black and white tern…
we pause with our binoculars,
mesmerized as we try to memorize
the tiny song of a sparrow
we cannot see or name for sure:
grasshopper? Baird’s? Henslow’s?
somewhere over the rainbows
a song of a tiny sparrow
calls us across the meadowFriday, April 23, 2004Read the weblog of a human being who searched for answers to the big questions -- as Dr. Luther put it, Was bedeuten dieser? What does this mean?Saturday, February 14, 2004TRUE COLORS
Racing to our first date
in a gray mist of rain
a hand-painted sign
for a flower store
bloomed out of the blue,
pulling me off the road.
Not knowing your
favorite color or flower
I asked for a rainbow
and peeking through
my crazy bouquet
of tulips, daffodils,
irises and zinnias
in a forest of green
ferns and bear grass,
I smiled when I saw
your smile grow
like a fragrant rainbow
as our true colors
came out with the sun.
A poem for Valentine's Day from Media Mike.
Monday, January 19, 2004In his last sermon, Martin Luther King said at Washington National Cathedral on March 28, 1968, "It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence, and the alternative to disarmament, the alternative to a greater suspension of nuclear tests, the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and thereby disarming the whole world may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation..."Sunday, October 5, 2003SIGNS OF LIFE is a collection of camera works with word play by Mike Hazard.
We see signs everywhere we look.
Directions.
Propaganda.
Facts.
Pleas.
Opinions.
Screeds.
Questions.
Games.
Names.
Visions.
Part of the St. Paul Art Crawl in Lowertown Lofts at 255 Kellogg Blvd E, the exhibition runs from 6-10pm, Friday October 10 and 1-6pm, Saturday October 11, 2003.
If you look, you will see signs of life.
Wednesday, September 17, 2003A BONZE OF BRONZE
forced by chance
of wicked weather
to change our plan,
we missed a murder
in the Blue Mounds
& we found a man
at Gustavus Adolphus--
or perhaps, perhaps--
pure Providence?
--we were found
by a man whose hands
shape a world in wax:
wings for angels,
Saint Norbert’s cross,
the odd fish & octopus;
a soul who pours
his heart’s blood
like molten metal
in the crucible;
a teacher who burns
with desire for us;
a human who hammers,
grinds & polishes;
an artist who casts
shadows & shimmers
in the wilderness:
a bonze of bronze
A poem portrait of the late Paul Granlund by Mike Hazard.
Friday, June 6, 2003PEACE WORKS began when my daughter came home last fall and reported that a military tank was recruiting on the grounds of her high school.
She said she approached the history teacher and the soldier who were manning the tank and asked, respectfully, if either saw a disconnect between the zero weapons tolerance policy in the school and a tank at the school. They went ballistic, verbally abusing her until she cried.
With a vision of a student and a tank running in my head--truth standing up to power--this incident in the war at home spurred me to make PEACE WORKS.
It is a half hour video compilation of ten shorts featuring Robert Bly, Carol Bly, Roy McBride, Jim Northrup, Eugene McCarthy, Thomas McGrath, Diego Vazquez, Mickey Chance and David Bengtson.
Premiered recently at the Nobel Peace Prize Forum, this half hour video is offered FREE to anyone who offers to submit it to their cable system for play or donate it to a library or show it to a group.
It is now playing nationally on local cable in more than 100 places from coast to coast. To find the cable access center serving you, click.
A donation envelope will accompany the videotape; while donations are not expected, gifts are fully tax-deductible and always gratefully put to good use.
To request your free copy, email us your name, snail mail address and brief description of your plan for the piece.
Thursday, June 5, 2003BLIND FAITH is a paper movie of poems and pictures about seeking things and seeing things by Mike Hazard. It is among the works of art in the 44th Midwestern Exhibition at the Rourke Art Museum in Moorhead, Minnesota, through 7 September 2003. For information call 218-236-8861.
This is a poem from Blind Faith.
A BAT IN HEAVEN
I'm a bat in heaven
today for Halloween.
I want to bless & be
blessed by a bat I killed
like a bat out of hell.
As violence begets violence,
& peace makes peace,
so a little bat came to me
in a dream recently
& gently kissed my elbow.
Grateful as hell,
today for Halloween
I'm a bat in heaven.Thursday, May 1, 2003Multitudinous McGrath Thomas McGrath (1916-1990) used to joke he had a 200 year plan for his verse. The laugh is for you and me. North Dakota’s gift to the millennia and subject of our film, The Movie at the End of the World, he truly contained multitudes. Zoom to learn more.
If you receive Prairie Public Television, tune in The Movie at 9pm (CT) on May Day, Thursday May 1, 2003.
Click to read John Lamb's cue for McGrath's Movie.Friday, February 14, 2003A LOVE BIRD SONG A poem by Mike Hazard
dust to dust
sister tourist
of lust & trust
sing we must
dust to dust
sing we must
brother tourist
of lust & trust
dust to dustFriday, January 31, 2003"Genius with a brush" is what the Star Tribune art critic Mary Abbe called him. He is the late painter Jerry Rudquist, and he's featured in "A Life's Work, a new exhibition at Macalester College, February 3 until March 14, 2003. There will be an opening reception on Saturday, February 15, from 7-9pm.
Among the art included is a video portrait of Rudquist called The Painted Eye, created by his former student Mike Hazard in 1997. It is a pupil's homage to his professor, a sixty-year visual history of one person's head as a kind of relic, a documentary of painting a beautiful painting, and a meditation on self-portraits with a "slide show" of Rudquist's favorite self-portraits by artists throughout the history of Euro-American painting.
To order a copy, click here.
Sunday, September 8, 2002The Vidiot, The Ish Fish, Cliché Heaven…stare with your ears at the thunderstorms and brainstorms of Ken Nordine. It’s word jazz.
Thursday, August 8, 2002Frederick Manfred's novel Riders of Judgment is coming soon to the Hallmark Channel on August 24, 2002 (ET/PT) as Johnson County War.
While it’s too bad the poetry of Manfred’s title has been lost in the making, word is it is pretty good. Starring Tom Berenger, Luke Perry, Adam Storke and Burt Reynolds with a script adaptation by Larry McMurtry, this movie may finally undo what Manfred used to call his Hollywood hoodoo.
The late Siouxland author, subject of our film American Grizzly, is studied with a smart set of stories and links.
Read The Sundered Egg, a marvelously Manfredian piece by Mick McAllister on Fred’s controversial novel The Manly-Hearted Woman. Or Cottonwood, a deep elegy by the same man.
Wednesday, July 24, 2002Why name a crater on Mercury after Pablo Neruda? Why have a Poet Laureate of the United Nations? What is the splendid city? This is a lively site exploring how we can build a culture of peace and nonviolence in the world through poetry.
As Neruda said accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature, "Lastly, I wish to say to the people of good will, to the workers, to the poets, that the whole future has been expressed in this line by Rimbaud: only with a burning patience can we conquer the splendid City which will give light, justice and dignity to all mankind. In this way the song will not have been sung in vain."
For the rest of Towards the Splendid City, click.
Friday, May 24, 2002Stun & stir Aimed at global awareness of polio, these photographs of the Brazilian artist Sebastião Salgado stun and stir. Sunday, May 5, 2002Hand-Held Visions, a new book by DeeDee Halleck on the history of community media around the world, culminates with a rousing profile of indymedia.org.
The book's subtitle, "The impossible possibilities of community media", calls to mind the poet Tom McGrath's definition of politics, "acts of the impossible." The book is available from Fordham University Press.Tuesday, March 5, 2002Look & see "Looking is what saves us," says the activist & mystic Simone Weil.
Please take a look at the camera works of Deb Wallwork and Mike Hazard. You will see Correspondences.
Looking is what saves us.
Wednesday, January 30, 2002A bad pun for a good man Mahatma Gandhi, as you may know, walked barefoot his whole life, which created an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him frail, and with his odd diet, he suffered from very bad breath. This made him…what?
A super callused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.
Tuesday, December 4, 2001Mad Old Man In honor of Robert Bly’s 75th birthday, and grateful for his contributions to six of our poetry films—with Issa, Etheridge Knight, Frederick Manfred, Eugene McCarthy, A Sampler of Minnesota Poets and Peace Works--we are giving away copies of A MAN WRITES TO A PART OF HIMSELF, our video portrait of Mr. Bly, free to the first 75 people who ask.
Featuring poems by Kabir, Neruda, Yeats and Jacobsen as well as by Bly, the film was screened at Open Book in Minneapolis as part of a day-long celebration of the poet’s life of lively letters hosted by the Loft on Saturday, December 8, 2001.
Monday, August 6, 2001"Bad words make a bad world," said Tiger Jack Rosenbloom. He died Sunday at 94 of natural causes. A video study of his life called "Mr. Respect", created in 1998 by Mr. Ford’s sixth graders at Capitol Hill School in St. Paul with Media Mike, is offered for free for all in honor of his passing.
"A community lesson for the whole world," the video has been nationally telecast on Access Orbit and WorldLink and featured at the Silver Images Film Festival in Chicago for programs honoring elders. Email or call 651-227-2240.
Tiger also said, "God don’t make no bad days." Amen.
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