Oscar Micheaux, Pioneering Black Film Director

Micheaux should be celebrated for forging new ground, and providing early roles to some of the finest black talent of the day.

Much of this info is from Rotten Tomatoes:

Oscar Micheaux (January 2, 1884 – March 25, 1951) was the first major African-American feature filmmaker, the most successful African-American filmmaker of the first half of the twentieth century, and the most prominent producer of race films. He directed the first black film (The Homesteader, from 1918, now lost, based upon his own novel) and he was the first black person to direct a sound film (The Exile, from 1931). “His work was a corrective to the prevailing stereotypes of blacks that were rampant in Hollywood at the time. However, his films are not particularly remembered for their quality, and contemporary critics find his treatment of working-class African Americans to be problematic. Still, Micheaux should be celebrated for forging new ground, and providing early roles to some of the finest black talent of the day (like the great Paul Robeson, playing a duel role in 1925’s Body and Soul).” Having seen one or two of his films, I’d definitely agree with this assessment.

More about Oscar Micheaux here and here. Watch this four-minute tribute video, then go to YouTube and type in the name of Oscar Micheaux.
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And on a completely different subject: People with Blogger blogs – PLEASE (I’m begging here) turn off WORD VERIFICATION…it takes too long trying to spell out weird words and most times I have no clue what the letters are – which means I have to type in words more than once. There are even pictures showing you how.

To Award, or Not To Award; That is the question.

I’ve totally changed my sense of my personal history and time, especially since I began blogging.

I recently read this great article by Patio Patch (Laura from London, UK) about how to be an awards-free blog without seeming ungracious. She noted: “As an ingenue exploring the blogosphere I was surprised to see prominently placed ‘award free blog’ buttons. At the time I considered these to be rude presumptions of a confetti of accolades but hindsight has shown that this is a politely circumspect way of side-stepping the issue.”

I hadn’t, in fact, gotten any awards in a while, so I was thinking that, in my existence, it had become a moot point.

So naturally, at that point, I get an award from Dustbury, one Charles G. Hill, who, as the person who nominated him put it,”might cover social media, automobile tires, basketball, My Little Pony, print magazines, transportation in Oklahoma, women’s shoes, and Zooey Deschanel — all with enviable literary skill and brio.” I came across him initially because he knows more about Warner Brothers Loss Leader LPs than any sane person should.

The rules:
In a post on your blog, nominate 15 fellow bloggers for The Versatile Blogger Award. (Now this has become increasingly difficult, if only because of the aforementioned no awards policy. But I have a workaround.)
In the same post, add the Versatile Blogger Award. (Check)
In the same post, thank the blogger who nominated you in a post with a link back to their blog. (Thank you, CG.)
In the same post, share 7 completely random pieces of information about yourself. (See below)
In the same post, include this set of rules. (Check)
Inform each nominated blogger of their nomination by posting a comment on each of their blogs. (Or tweeting.) (Well, we’ll get to that.)

The seven random things aren’t all that difficult for me; they are usually strands of blogposts I could never finish.

1. I’ve totally changed my sense of my personal history and time, especially since I began blogging. I used to believe that I would go from one chapter to another in life. But now I see it as one long continuum, with things from my past often playing more significant roles in my present than I ever would have guessed.

2. On two different occasions, I dated for a time a woman who was at least a decade older than I was. Indeed, for the majority of my dating life, I’ve gone out with women in their 40s. That includes my wife, who’s younger than I.

3. The only trophy I ever won was for racquetball. The racquet broke off the trophy, but I’m still keeping it, in the office I’m writing this, actually.

4. The ONLY time I’ve EVER done the chicken dance was in Galveston, TX in 1995. It was at a work conference

5. My Twitter name, Ersie, is based on a stuffed monkey I no longer own.

6. We have drawers of random electronic and computer junk I should probably throw out, but haven’t, because I have the bizarre notion I might need them, in most cases because I never knew what they really did in the first place.

7. I can probably name more New York Giants (football) and New York Yankees (baseball) players from the 1960s than the 21st century.

And now for my designees for the award. Ready? (Drum roll, please.)

YOU. That is, if you don’t mind getting awards, if you like giving awards to others, by all means, consider yourself so dubbed by me. And if you WANT me to specifically call on you, then let me know, and I will. But if you’re award-free, don’t let me ruin the streak.

October Rambling

Stan Lee becomes a Jeopardy! category

A sure sign of madness: I’m now participating on the Times Union Getting There blog. Here’s my introductory piece, and you’ll find more along the way.

A Graveyard Of Commerce: Albany’s walled-off waterfront offers a boat launch, some casual tourism, and raw sewage

W. enters a local school board race – in Colorado

For mixed family, old racial tensions remain a part of life

The REAL Way to Get Wall Street’s Attention:

GO to OccupyWishList.org to provide some necessary supplies to various Occupy groups.

Bad Lip Reading – I enjoy this more in concept than in actuality

U.S. Skater Nailed First ‘Quadruple Lutz’. No, I don’t know what it is either, but my wife does.

25 Words You Might Not Know Are Trademarked -actually most of them I knew. But there were a few in comments that I did not.

A segment from Family Feud that came out eight months ago; never said I was ahead of the curve.

Ken Levine answers my question. He’s a TV writer of some note (Frasier, MASH).

And Then There’s………Maude.

The Dick Van Dyke Show Blogathon: In Praise Of Laura Petrie’s Capri Pants (or something like that); the article’s better than the title. And related to D.V.D., the Carl Reiner Tribute at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Obscure 1987 Sitcom Predicted Muammar Gaddafi’s Death Year.

A spider in the lampshade! And speaking of spiders, Spider-Man Swing dances, and Stan Lee becomes a Jeopardy! category.

From Jim Shooter, former editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics: old Superman Syndicated Strips. Plus Spooky or Inexplicable Events – Directory Assistance. Quite moving.

Nursery Rhyme Comics: Great comic illustrators do Mother Goose

MAD guy Al Jaffee’s greatest fear

Paul McCartney Toasted John Lennon At His Wedding Reception

The Porkka Boys cover of “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Folks from Finland are particularly fascinating to me. In any case, not a wretched excess version, such as William Shatner’s jaw-dropper.

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) announced the appointment of Dr. Anne C. Beal, M.D., M.P.H., as its first chief operating officer. PCORI was created by Congress as an independent, non-profit research organization to help patients and those who care for them make informed health decisions. Anne, BTW, is my cousin.

An interview with singer, songwriter, poet and my e-friend, Amy Barlow Liberatore

Did you know of Frank Kameny, who died this month? You will after you read these pieces by Arthur at AmeriNZ and, and watching this piece from CBS News.

Patti Page recently rerecorded “Doggie in the Window” as “Doggie in the Shelter.”

Science fiction writer David Brin shared this fascinating blog post about the social and cultural meaning of Star Trek

Never say science fiction is just make-believe. We live it every day

(Thanks to JA Fludd for some of these)

Foolishness over Our Food Supply

The results show that the dominant causes of food price increases are investor speculation and ethanol conversion.

 

There’s an appeal for CARE’s 2011 World Hunger Campaign going on – tax-deductible at least in the US. And I find it absurd.

Not that they are making the appeal, but that they HAVE to. How is it that there is a food crisis?

Part of it is elucidated in a study by the New England Complex Systems Institute entitled The Food Crises: A quantitative model of food prices including speculators and ethanol conversion [PDF].

From the abstract:
Recent increases in basic food prices are severely impacting vulnerable populations worldwide. Proposed causes such as shortages of grain due to adverse weather, increasing meat consumption in China and India, conversion of corn to ethanol in the US, and investor speculation on commodity markets lead to widely differing implications for policy. A lack of clarity about which factors are responsible reinforces policy inaction. Here, for the first time, we construct a dynamic model that quantitatively agrees with food prices. The results show that the dominant causes of price increases are investor speculation and ethanol conversion. Models that just treat supply and demand are not consistent with the actual price dynamics. The two sharp peaks in 2007/2008 and 2010/2011 are specifically due to investor speculation, while an underlying upward trend is due to increasing demand from ethanol conversion.

In other words, greed, and insanity.

Read also The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2010: Addressing Food Insecurity in Protracted Crises [PDF] from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization: “FAO estimates that a total of 925 million people are undernourished in 2010 compared with 1.023 billion in 2009. Most of the decrease was in Asia, with 80 million fewer hungry, but progress was also made in sub-Saharan Africa, where 12 million fewer people are going hungry. However, the number of hungry people is higher in 2010 than before the food and economic crises of 2008–09.”

There are also, increasingly, water shortages. Frankly, those TV ads such as One Million New American Jobs: The Benefits of Increased Access to Domestic Oil & Gas, touting the Canadian tar sands oil that would have been too dirty for the US government to buy, under legislation signed by George W. Bush, make me even more nervous. Allegedly cheaper oil, but at what cost to the water supply?

As Blog Action notes:
“Food is something that we all share in common but is distinct to each of our cultures. The way we produce, distribute and consume food is crucial to our shared future, and the unhealthy imbalance of food scarcity in developing world and food over-abundance in the developed world is unsustainable for us all.”

Take the quiz.

Things you didn’t know you didn’t know

Inscrutable.

I was catching up with my blog reading when I discovered that LisaF over at Peripheral Per­cep­tions had called me out in one of her posts with this chal­lenge. So I’m giving it a try.

If you could go back in time and relive one moment, what would it be?
I suppose winning my JEOPARDY! game. I would have breathed, instead of hyperventilating.

If you could go back in time and change one thing, what would it be? Just one?

There are so many. I suppose there was a friend with an illness, and I didn’t realize how significant it was, and I should have. If I had, I would have gone there to visit.

What movie/TV char­acter do you most resemble in per­son­ality?
I have no idea. At some level, I suppose it’s one of those characters on that show the Big Bang Theory – which I don’t watch because I just can’t stand the laugh track – who knows a few things but is socially inept. I’m not as smart as those guys, but not as much of a dweeb either. Or Drew Carey on the Drew Carey Show.

If you could push one person off a cliff and get away with it, who would it be?
I hon­estly don’t think I could bring myself to push anyone off a cliff unless someone was trying to push me off a cliff and it was self-defense. Or I was defending someone else. Yeah, I might be able to do that.

Name one habit you want to change in your­self.
Going to that negative place. there might be five great things and one bad thing, and guess which one gets too much of my attention?

Describe your­self in one word.
Inscrutable.

Describe the person who named you in this meme in one word.
Colorful.

Why do you blog? (In one sen­tence)
Can it be a really LONG sentence?
I blog because I have found it useful, even necessary to write what I’m thinking and feeling, lest I interrupt my mental processing with ‘noise’; yet I’ve found it more beneficial through the interaction that has evolved with other, usually distant, people, not occasionally more meaningfully than those with people I see on a daily basis.

Now I’m sup­pose to pass this on and share the brain-racking insightful fun. So, I decided on YOU. You know who you are; if you think it’s you, it probably is. If you don’t, it’s probably you, too.

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