Tuesday, February 9, 2010

“Andrew Young Returns to St. Augustine for Documentary Screening - First Coast News” plus 3 more

“Andrew Young Returns to St. Augustine for Documentary Screening - First Coast News” plus 3 more


Andrew Young Returns to St. Augustine for Documentary Screening - First Coast News

Posted: 09 Feb 2010 03:35 AM PST

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ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. -- United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young will return to St. Augustine tonight for the premiere of his new documentary, "Crossing in St. Augustine."

A Flagler College student reached out to the longtime activist for historical information for a research paper.

"I was looking for Civil Rights veterans from St. Augustine that were still around or in the area, and I looked him up and his Facebook page came up," recalled Jillian McClure, a junior at Flagler College.

Young's group called back with more than just information. The Andrew Young Foundation brought up the possibility of premiering the documentary in St. Augustine where Young made a critical stand in 1964.

"It was one of the best moments of my life," smiled McClure. "I was excited about the opportunities it could bring to the city of St. Augustine."

History professor Michael Butler shared McClure's wide-eyed reaction. "I was surprised that Ambassador Young wanted to premiere the film in St. Augustine based on his experiences in the city in 1964," said Butler.

Young wrote in his autobiography that St. Augustine was the only place where he was beaten unconscious in all of his journeys across America for civil rights.

So to come back "to a place where he wasn't warmly received," and to a place where an extreme" amount of violence and white resistance" occurred, surprised Butler.

St. Augustine became a battleground in the push for equal rights in the 60s.

"The city was used to keep the pressure on Congress to make the Civil Rights Act law," said Butler. "The racial situation in the city was so tense that a campaign was planned to highlight the fact that racism still existed in the South."

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. sent a young Andrew Young and his followers to St. Augustine to make that point in June of 1964.

"The strategy succeeeded," said Butler. "The violence made national news and Congress was compelled to make the Civil Right Act Act law which it did in July."

The screening is at 7 p.m. at the Flagler College Auditorium.  It is free and open to the public but seats are on a first come, first served basis.

©2010 First Coast News. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Too bad we couldn't be Salinger's friend, too - Lancaster Eagle Gazette.com

Posted: 09 Feb 2010 03:14 AM PST

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The news of the death of J.D. Salinger recalled the famous Dorothy Parker quip on being told that Calvin Coolidge was dead: "How can they tell?"

Of all the iconic writers of the second half of the 20th century, Salinger let us down most. Like one of his characters who demanded "authenticity," the author hid behind being authentic only to himself. He escaped constant public acknowledgement after publishing "The Catcher in the Rye" and only a dozen or so short stories.

He was not a man of his time. In our contemporary culture, which catapults good, mediocre and lousy writers into the den of lions for the rest of us to wait impatiently for the kill, he would not be pushed, shoved or flattered to engage. He rejected his 15 minutes of fame -- or as one obituary writer put it, "he was famous for not being famous."

Unfortunately, he was too pained to write for anyone but himself, and possibly for posterity if he left anything to be published posthumously. He shunned interviewers and wouldn't be exploited with tales of "mixing memory and desire," to quote from one of his short stories quoting T.S. Eliot. What has been largely overlooked in the discussions of Salinger's works after his death is the intelligent reading behind his writing. Ambitious teenagers would do well to imitate.

Holden Caufield, the narrator in "Catcher in the Rye," not only immortalized adolescent angst, he showed how it was smart to be smart. He had been kicked out of school, but not because he wouldn't read, even books he thought might "stink." He loved "classical books" and fantasized he might have been friends with the authors of the ones he liked best. Holden didn't want his own biography told like that of David Copperfield, but he knew "David Copperfield" well enough to criticize it. He was not a dumbed-down boy.

I spent the weekend rereading most of Salinger's work (a slender legacy) and learned to my pleasure that the novel and short stories remain refreshing and wonderfully innocent and politically incorrect. His characters smoke, but the reader follows the dim light and the falling ash of the cigarettes as contributing to the meaning of the action. When Seymour, an adult in the short story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," talks to a little girl about the tale of "Little Black Sambo," the tale is not condemned as racist but cherished as a poetic point of common reference in an amusing fairy tale:

"Did the tigers run all around that tree?

"I thought they'd never stop. I never saw so many tigers."

"There's only six," Sybil said.

"Only six!" said the young man. "Do you call that only?"

That's an artist's way of getting the perspective right.

In "Catcher in the Rye," Holden Caufield is not Huckleberry Finn, but he's a true literary descendant of Huck, imparting the wizened thoughts of a kid who can see through the phonies and the pomposities and insecurities of both children and adults. Other characters do likewise. Watch Lane, the boyfriend in "Franny," order snails and frogs' legs, telling those little froggies to "sit still." Snobbish foodies today could learn from his caustic criticism tempered with delicious wit. Who doesn't believe that Salinger's favorite food was the hole in the doughnut?

Huckleberry Finn takes the measure of human nature from those who live on the Mighty Mississippi; Holden Caufield exposes the sophisticates in and around New York City. If I still were a teacher, I would challenge my students to write a page of "Catcher" in words from their own experience, just to see how hard the craft really is. No tricks of Harry Potter allowed, no pushing a plot around or employing vampires to sexually titillate adolescents. Holden, a true child of the 1950s, complains that he doesn't understand what a girl means when he's necking with her and she tells him to stop. His voice, unlike vulgar contemporary adolescent jargon, displays perfect pitch in capturing the budding perplexity and puzzlement of an early sexual encounter.

"Catcher in the Rye" takes its title from an overriding metaphor. Holden weaves a fantasy image of himself standing at the edge of a crazy cliff near a field of rye. When children playing a game in the rye above the cliff begin to fall off it, it's Holden's responsibility as the only big person around to catch them. The pleasures of childhood can be dangerous and difficult, but he doesn't want them to miss those thrills. Salinger gives the catcher an authentic voice in the terrifying space between childhood and adulthood. Too bad this remarkable author wouldn't let us be his friend, too.

Suzanne Fields is a columnist with The Washington Times. Write to her at sfields1000@aol.com.

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LISTEN TO THE LION - Buffalo News

Posted: 09 Feb 2010 03:42 AM PST

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Book Club/ February

Jon Meacham sheds new light on President Jackson, an important but often overlooked figure in American history

Jon Meacham is a very busy man. Busier than you. Busier than me. "He'll only have about 10 minutes with you," an assistant in his New York City office warns, before putting Meacham on the phone.

This is one day after Meacham's staff calls to tell you that the appointment you originally had to speak with him needs to change—something shifted in his complicated appointment book—and shortly after you learn Meacham is running late from his morning and will need to cram the scheduled interview into half the time.

Better talk to him now, though, because give him a minute and Meacham—a journalist and historian who is both editor of Newsweek magazine and a best-selling author —will be off to his next commitment. There's a laundry list to choose from: the religion blog he writes for the Washington Post; his contributing editor duties at Washington Monthly magazine; his frequent TV appearances as a political commentator; and his networking with pols, presidents and the powerful—including Barack Obama, who wrote a cover story on Haiti for Newsweek a few weeks ago.

It's all in a day's work for Meacham, who turned 40 last year, and who took a few minutes — 16, to be precise — out of his jam-packed agenda to talk to The Buffalo News about his latest book, "American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House."

The book, which won the Pulitzer Prize for biography last spring, is the February selection of The News' Book Club. At 483 pages in the paperback edition, it makes for a substantial dip into the country's history, for one of Western New York's grayer and drearier reading months.

Why Jackson?

Let Meacham's explanation as to why he chose the nation's polarizing seventh president as a book subject serve as an answer for the Book Club's purposes, as well.

"He's an incredibly important figure who is overlooked," said Meacham, his thick Southern accent revealing his Tennessee roots. "He's a lunatic. So he's intrinsically interesting."

Perhaps the lunatic part is overstatement, but Meacham stands by his assessment of Jackson as a fascinating and significant president. In "American Lion," he presents a detailed narrative to lay out his evidence.

The story, despite the subtitle, covers all of Jackson's life, from his birth in North or South Carolina — historians aren't quite sure which — and childhood in the South to his courtship of Rachel Donelson, who was 17 years old and married to somebody else when Jackson met her, through his White House years and the twilight of his life, which ended in 1845.

In the old days, as now, private behavior mattered a great deal in public life. Jackson's marriage to divorcee Donelson—who died shortly before he moved into the White House — would become a thorn in Jackson's side politically, as enemies and political rivals would never cease delighting in using the episode to take potshots at Jackson's morals. (Think of John Edwards, Eliot Spitzer or Bill Clinton today, and you can see how the past and present echo each other in this regard — although, as Meacham describes it, there was more to excuse Jackson's actions than any of the modern-day three.)

"Scandal's been with us always," says Meacham on the phone. "It had many political ramifications."

Meacham, who lives in New York with his wife and three children, said he thinks his own Southern background — he was born in Chattanooga and educated at the University of the South in Sewanee — helped him in channeling the spirit of the fiery, complex Jackson into modern times.

"It helped," he said. "The drama of a provincial going to the capital city and the complications and benefits that brings is something I bring to it."

Jackson, as "American Lion" reveals, was a president who offers a lot to dislike. He treated Indian nations with swift and brutal dismissiveness in resettling them from Eastern parts of the country to the West. He was a fierce fighter — in fact, his early reputation rested on his wartime exploits at the Battle of New Orleans. He could be cold, cutting, erratic.

"He was susceptible to epic blindnesses," said Meacham. "But so are all of us."

Yet good elements to Jackson's character also gleam off the pages of Meacham's narrative. Jackson could be honest when no one else around him was; he also was proudly loyal to friends, family and allies.

Meacham brought to "American Lion" something new to historical scholarship: a cache of 60 to 70 new letters, long kept by Donelson descendants, that highlighted people, events and emotions during Jackson's White House tenure. The book took five years to write, Meacham said, and during that time he built a relationship with the Donelson family, which helped him gain an immediacy in writing about events of the early 1800s.

"My lens was, what was it like to walk through those hallways," Meacham said. "This is the first time we've known what it was like to live in the White House in Andrew Jackson's time."

In the end, Meacham said, he found himself liking Jackson more than the reverse.

"There are two ways to write a biography," he said. "One is to be utterly hostile. The other is to be empathetic. I chose to be empathetic."

In the final pages of the book, Meacham builds a case for how Jackson continues to influence the world today. "Jackson has inspired some of the greatest men who have followed him in the White House," the book's epilogue claims.

And that may be true — but much of that is a subject for another day.

Right now, Meacham is yawning, slightly, and getting ready to get off the phone.

"I've got to get back to doing my day job," he says.

But not before letting slip one last detail — that his next book about a U. S. president will be about No. 41, George Herbert Walker Bush.

"I think he's the most significant man who's been unjustly overlooked in the 20th century," Meacham says. "The connecting theme on the books I've done is looking at flawed human beings who ... manage to transcend those natural difficulties and leave us a little better than we were before."

As always, we want to hear your thoughts about this month's selection. E-mail The Buffalo News' Book Club at bookclub@buffnews.com, or write us at P. O. Box 100, Buffalo, N. Y. 14240.

"American Lion:Andrew Jackson in the White House"

By Jon Meacham

Random House

Paperback, 483 pages, $18

cvogel@buffnews.com


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Roman Polanski - YAHOO!

Posted: 09 Feb 2010 03:21 AM PST

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Perhaps one of the most notorious directors in Hollywood, Roman Polanski was as known for his tumultuous personal life as he was for his dark, disquieting and quasi-autobiographical films. After a childhood stained by Nazi atrocities, Polanski emerged from his native Poland with the Oscar-nominated "Knife in the Water" (1962). He went on to establish a reputation with several films shot in… See Full Roman Polanski Biography

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