Where do you see yourself by the time you turn 50?

Enter AARP's U@50 Challenge for a chance to win $5,000.

1) Watch the AARP Uat50 Challenge call-out video.

2) Produce a creative 1-2 minute video describing where you see yourself by the time you turn 50.

3) Go to the U@50 group page by clicking on the website link below.

4) Submit your video!

Deadline for Submissions has been Extended:
New deadline is November 30, 2007

Grand Prize Winner receives $5,000!!!
Other Prizes include:
2nd Place $3,000
3rd Place $1,000
4th Place $500
5th Place $500

Visit the U@50 group to enter the contest and submit your videos.

Website: http://www.youtube.com/group/AARPuat50

calling all black photographers even more urgently!

Please take my quick survey BY MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 24*, about publishing:

http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=WEB226WGU59UBE


You can download the results so far here (since they won't let me save it): publishing.pdf

Thank you!

*That's how long Zoomerang will allow me to access the results unless I want to pay $600 a year!

Glynnis Reed

If you're on mySpace, check out Los Angeles photographer Glynnis Reed's work (yeah, I'm an old-timer--I finally signed up on mySpace just to see her work 'cause I always thought mySpace was for the kids). But as the kids say, don't sleep on her!

I love this group of images of the signage of small black businesses in South Central Los Angeles, where I grew up, as well as this enigmatic, cinematic collage below.

beyond belief

I saw this mentioned yesterday on Racialicious, I think, but then found a link to a news story on an amazing blog I discovered today via Afrobella: What About Our Daughters?

In light of the Jena protests yesterday and the general state of our world, it's definitely important to spend some time @ What About Our Daughters? and in particular check out this story which I've been following via the various online resources:

Torture-rape victim faces bad-check counts

The part that really got to me?

The false check charge is for a $32.21 check to Dominos Pizza. The false pretenses charge is for $96.40 to the Kiddie Junction Consignment Shop in Beaver.

Come on now, after what she's just gone through--food and what seems like used children's items?

I came across this today looking for something else, so before I forget about it I'll post it

Black Light White Noise: Sound and Light in Contemporary Art The Black Light/White Noise: Sound and Light in Contemporary Art, documented the first comprehensive review of contemporary black artists working with sound and light, building on a longstanding tradition of artistic experimentation through the work of 16 diverse artists. The featured artists in the exhibition included Sanford Biggers, Louis Cameron, Kianga Ford, Kira Lynn Harris, Sach Hoyt, Arthur Jafa, Jennie C. Jones, Yvette Mattern, Camille Norment, Kambui Olujimi, Karyn Olivier, Nadine Robinson, and SoundLab (Beth Coleman and Howard Goldkrand). The exhibition also featured select canonical works by George Lewis (in collaboration with Douglas Ewart and Douglas Irving Repetto), Tom Lloyd, and Benjamin Patterson that place these 21st-century sound and light works in context with the history of the genre. The publication includes essays by Cassel Oliver, curator of the exhibition; Romi Crawford, director of education and public programs at the Studio Museum of Harlem; and Greg Tate, composer, musician, playwright, and contributor to The Village Voice. The catalogue published by Contemporary Arts Museum Houston contains extensive photographic and audio documentation on each light and sound installation, a DVD with reproductions of the non- static work, as well as biographical and bibliographical information on each artist. 2007. 65 pages. Paperback. 21 color and 5 black-and-white reproductions. ISBN 978-1-933619-04-0 Library of Congress Control Number: 2007927278 $19.95

Okay, so I moved my sites to another web host, and there will be some glitches (like I had lost this blog for a while--oops! And I seem to have lost the images--uh oh!) But I found it again. Whew!

what she said

And there we are. My mother is beautiful and my grandmother is beautiful and I'm beautiful. You see that beauty as it finally is even though no one wants to see it as it is in a black woman in American, not a hoochie, not a ho, not a mammy, not a dyke, not a cliché, just a woman. A lot of women. Real women doing what they can, making art where they can, making their lives mean something where they can. And there's so much music in it, too, and beauty and love, and as you go from image to image and hear our voices and know our story you know that there's a power here, a power that can't be denied. As you look at our beautiful, beautiful faces, there's no getting around it. There is something there that can't be denied. --Martha Southgate, Third Girl From the Left

These are the final words in Martha Southgate's novel Third Girl From the Left, the last of the library books I checked out in late June and kept renewing, through vacations and breaks from reading and all, until I read those words and realized along with many things that another summer's now over. I have such a like/hate relationship with art that you'd think I'd just snort at those words, but having just read this beautiful story about three generations of women struggling to be creative individual without quite knowing how one manages it, but managing it nonetheless, I was rather moved by them. And needing inspiration. It's been one of those days.

And especially since one of the characters had a tiny part in the film Coffy (hence the book's title), and my sister Karyn actually played Coffy's sister:
I was inclined to like this book from the start.