Although I need to focus on finishing a dissertation, I have had more arts activity than I deserve. Friday December 16 at 8 pm, Connor Bennett saxophones, Chris Palmer guitar and I are launching our CD “The Phantom Hunter” at the Gift Shop Gallery on Rebecca Street in Hamilton.
Meanwhile, I am so pleased to have won the Hamilton Arts Council’s Kerry Schooley Award, presented to the author who “best captures the spirit of Hamilton,” for The Midnight Games. Gary Barwin was kind enough to say that, now having been in academia for a few years, I was starting to sound “professorial.” At least, I think he was being kind. I certainly think I look professorial!
October 25, 2016 –
An email from New York City reminds me that the written word never stops working. David Mulkins writes from the Bowery: “Just had wonderful conversation with Charles Mingus’ son, Charles Mingus III, who contacted me to compliment your Windows on the Bowery poster on the Five Spot.”
Mr. Mingus was responding to the Bowery Alliance of Neighbors’ show “Windows on the Bowery,” 64 window placards celebrating the Lower Manhattan neighbourhood’s many contributions to American history & culture. I wrote the texts for two of the placards. Mounted at the Bowery’s Cooper Union’s Foundation Building and inside the Bowery branch of the HSBC Bank, the placards can also be seen at each of the celebrated historic sites. The 325 Bowery placard (#54 on map) celebrates the Tin Palace jazz club that operated there in the 1970s, and at 5 Cooper Square (#59) can be seen “The Hippest Place on Earth: Five Spot Jazz Club,” the original site of the club which from the 1950s until the 1970s presented Cecil Taylor, Thelonious Monk, Herbie Nichols, Billie Holiday, Ornette Coleman and many others.
Charles Mingus III with the Five Spot Café poster, text by David Neil Lee. Photo by Alfonso Iandiorio.
Thank you Charles, and David Mulkins. Maybe there is some point to writing books! Meanwhile, I am marking papers for my fall TA position, and waiting to hear back from my committee about the first draft of my dissertation. Will they think it’s okay, with a few tweaks … or will it be back to the drawing board!
Hope you are all having a productive autumn ….
