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Exclusive 4th of July Event!
Art Expressions

Holiday Party, July 4, 2009

from 9 pm till 2 am

• DRINK SPECIALS !
• PATRIOTIC DISHES !
• LIVE READING OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE !
• MUSIC BY ELIAS MONTEMAYOR and HOMER !

Art Expressions

301 N. Main Suite 2, McAllen, TX

For more information call 956-686-8161 or write a.expressions@yahoo.com.

A reminder

The Writers Group will meet next Tuesday, July 7th, at 7 pm as the full moon rises at the Narciso Martinez Cultural Arts Center, 225 E. Stenger St., in San Benito.

The Writers Group at NMCAC is in its ninth year and is still going strong. Founding members Gene Novogrodsky, Beto Conde, Joe Premont and Rosa Pérez still attend regularly. And many others have joined the group and show up most of the time, including such favorites as Jack King, Edgar Clinton, Jr., Roberto Cruz, Mona Sizer, Robin Cates, Kathy and Stan Raines. And every month new people are taking the chance and standing up to read to the delight of the assembled crowd.

So, if you’re a regular and not in Maine or Oregon on family business or someone who’s been harboring all those intense thoughts in your journals and notebooks, polish up ten minutes (or less) of material and come to the Narciso. My bet is you’ll be received like royalty.

-Stan Raines

By Gene Novogrodsky

The uncle, shot, and was shot at,
And maybe shot himself in early ‘45,
Saving his life in salty water of a Pacific island,
Came back, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t work …
And waited for Spring and Summer so he could
Paint Adirondack chairs ….

Green, red, white,
The chairs deep in rich Spring grass,
Family, and work and home around,
Around the rich Spring grass,
And the uncle saw paint, felt paint ….

By Gene Novogrodsky

Specifically, in Afghanistan and Pakistan:
Schools are blown up.
Women are stoned.
The CIA, KGB, Pakistani intelligence,
Al Qaeda, Taliban, tribal chieftains and
Various bandits kill, deal, and kill and deal some more ….

A boon for weapon-makers;
A boon for global planners,
Intrigue - and blood, blood, blood,
And if not refugees, ill, ill ….

Secularists, stay away!
Islam is getting even - a branch of Islam ….
And no one stays away, while rare moves of peace,
Birds, doves, patience are mocked, and more ….

[Read more →]

By Gene Novogrodsky

From green to light orange
To dark orange, in a day-night
Span, fast ….

By Gene Novogrodsky

One step, from one room to another,
Another moment,
Dreams collide,
A dream, a dream,
They collide,
Anticpation, wants …
And, the step ….

Silence, who wants to hear?
Accept the isolation …even entitlement ….
Silence …best in the whitening dawn,
Or reddening twilight ….

By Gene Novogrodsky

“Hospital zone, quiet,”
And I’ve learned to read, so I run out of
My uncle’s grip and across the street,
Safe, away from the hospital sign.

I see rabbis, ministers and priests
Shaking hands in synagogue and church
Entrances, services over …
And I cross the street
Away from those synagogues, temples and churches ….

“So this fear?
Where does it come from?”

…nothing I want to examine, nothing ….

By Gene Novogrodsky

The streetwalker, just out of jail,
Is puffy; starch and no drugs.

She leans against the cathedral’s fence,
And yells at three bricklayers.

They’re under a tree,
Replacing bricks between the street and
Cathedral entrance.

They see her dyed hair - reddish yellow -
And her thin legs.

They don’t know about her teacher and nurse daughters,
Her grandchildren - their school honors, prizes.

She tells the men she’ll come back
In the late afternoon, when they’re off.

She pauses in the sun.
They pause in the shade.

By Edgar Clinton, Jr.

The patrol car had a peculiar smell…It wasn’t minty fresh or manly clean by any means, More like Stale Puke and Oozing Bloody. No carpet shampoo was going to get all of that out. Officer Sully was checking out soon. One more year! “How the hell did I make it this long?” All his buds from the old days were retired, promoted, or dead. Heart attacks were legion, alcoholism just as prevalent, and eating the gun not unknown at all. Suicide seemed to be a contagious condition. You could count on at least three in the series. One down and next in line there were always at least two buddies that were hanging by a thread ready to drop. A corpse can freeze-frame a painful moment in time, but you just know he’s beyond the pain of this world. Many envy him his peace . Maybe there’s an end to the existential torture of the fractionally alive. Anyway it usually takes at least three.

To make it out of the Marine Corp, two tours in Nam, Then the next twenty in DPS, is just like pulling the chin whiskers and spitting into the eye of the grim reaper. When Sully lost Sue Linda, he lost his will to get out. The years pull us one way or the other. In Sully’s case he’d grown tired of bullying and intimidating inoffensive people. [Read more →]

Dirty Red’s Kantina and Long Time Comin’ invite you to come celebrate the 4th of July this Saturday in Arroyo City. The barbecue goes on the grill at 4 and the music starts at 5 pm, so come early and get a good seat for the festivities.

Dirty Red’s Kantina is an increasingly popular watering hole in Arroyo City and will be celebrating it’s first anniversary on the 4th. Long Time Comin’ presents the music of Joel Humphries and Stan Raines and has been well received in its appearances at Dirty Red’s and at Harley’s Country Store and Bayview. There will be some new tunes for this show including some originals not heard before. Come on out and do some rocking and some rolling.

See you there.

-Stan

From Julieta Corpus

Dear Fellow Poets,
Once again, I am extending an invitation to every single one of you to come and join me at Savory Perks in Weslaco for an evening of poetry. Savory Perks will be hosting an OPEN MIC NIGHT this Wednesday, July 1st from 8p.m. until 10 p.m. This place is located at 1000 South Texas Blvd. (two blocks south from downtown Weslaco).
I apologize for the short notice, but I do hope you can make it.
Thank you.

Have a great week!

By Jack Moffitt

Bell Rings at 8a.m., last sale at noon!

Last Market Until October

This is it. It is time to concede to the blistering sun. It all works out. We can spend some time improving our soils, our farms and fix those things that have been getting put off until market closes. It kind of feels like the last day of school.

Vendors will still have farms and homegrown product. Save a copy of this email - their names and numbers, email addresses, etc. may come in handy.

The product mix the rest of summer will have a lot of melons, squash, okra, etc. If you are entertaining a good-sized bunch of people, you might want to make it a real treat with some local grown veggies, melons, or a cabrito.

Economic and Social Impact

[Read more →]

By Gene Novogrodsky

Twilight Kiss

…and she needed the kitchen redone; her son-in-law knew the guy who could do it; for three weeks he drove into her driveway at 8 a.m., got his tools, set up sawhorses and was busy outdoors and indoors until noon. He’d go away for lunch, come back in an hour and work as late as 8 p.m., twilight, Saturn in the West, moon in the East, bats starting their swoops, and eating mosquitoes hatched after a heavy rain ….

She walked outside to tell him that she really liked his work; he thanked her, smiled, and took a step towards her; she did not move, and in a moment he lightly kissed her, bending his head to reach her lips, and she stretched to reach his.

“Come early tomorrow. I’ll make breakfast. And you don’t have to leave for lunch.”
“Thanks, I will,” and they kissed again, softly … under her leafed tree, away from the streetlight, away from her porch light ….

[Read more →]

By Gene Novogrodsky

Fingers

He asks me to button the
Top two buttons on his
Polo shirt.

Usually he buys polo shirts
With zippers.

But he still has some
With buttons, and he’ll
Ask me for help,
Aging fingers, bent fingers,
Trembling fingers ….

[Read more →]

By Jack Moffitt

Editor’s note: This is Mr. Moffitt’s essay from last week’s Farmers Market Report (June 20th), which didn’t get up as I was in a place without Internet service. My apologies to both my reader’s and Mr. Moffitt for the omission.

In a backhanded way, someone makes your food choices for you. They do it in a backhanded way because other than imprisoning you they couldn’t pull it off. Who is it? The government. The government, from top to bottom.

At the top, the government skews your diet towards the products of Big Grain, Big Beef and Big Poultry. They do it with USDA subsidies that pay farmers to grow grain in massive quantities. Since they have flooded the markets with these cheap grains, Big Beef and Big Chicken come in to convert the excess to meat. Hey, if a benefactor gave me nearly free grain for life, I’d buy a cow too! You are faced with a choice at the store – 99 cent chicken or 8.99 wild salmon. The cards are clearly stacked into the chicken camp. In effect, the 99 cent chicken is welfare food. The chicken’s low price is just the welfare recipient passing on the welfare bennies.

[Read more →]

From Virginia Gause

STC Library Art Gallery at the Nursing & Allied Health Campus, 1101 E. Vermont Ave., McAllen, TX 78503 proudly presents “Monumental Ideas in Miniature Books” from June 18 to September 4, 2009.

“Monumental Ideas in Miniature Books” is an exhibit featuring a hundred and five hand-made mini artist books. Free and Open to the Public!

For more information call 956-872-3488, or visit http://lag.southtexascollege.edu

STC Library Art Gallery
“Art for Learning! Art for Life!”

Or at least that was true where I was! But I’m back in the Valley and really looking forward to a couple of days of straightening all these tangles that developed over the last ten days.

I’ve got stories and poetry from Gene, poetry from Rudy, a story from Edgar, promises from a couple other people and a notebook of things I may have to say myself.

–Stan

By Jack Moffitt

Bell Rings at 8a.m., last sale at noon!

What Have we Done?

Thirty-three weeks ago we began setting up the awnings and tables that make the familiar sight-picture we now all know as the Brownsville Farmers Market. Three weeks to go and the season will close. Thousands of lettuces from California were displaced and didn’t absorb the BTU’s of refrigeration created by fossil fuels. Hundreds of gallons of diesel weren’t burned hauling veggies from outside of our local food-shed. Many pounds of fresh veggies went to the needy. Many friends were made and much valuable information was exchanged. Hot air, from myriads of conversations, is now mingled with greenhouse gas. What we have done is good. The market has momentum. The farmer has a stable market where the fruits of labor can be sold. The community has an alternative food supply.
[Read more →]

By Gene Novogrodsky

Cowboys and An Indian

…the cowboys stop in the New Mexico desert to give me a lift. They tell me to get in the front of the pickup, while one gets out and I climb in. He says that he’s going for a ride.

He lifts a saddle from the back over the truck’s sideboard, and then hefts himself up and onto it. I’m surprised, but say nothing, and off we go.

[Read more →]

By Gene Novogrodsky

… voter identification issues come and go, but in the mid-1960s in the
Virgina Tidewater voting was a huge, especially the effort by whites to keep
blacks from voting; the poll tax had been abolished, but other barriers existed,
like literacy tests that involved explaining rare lines in the Constitution;
also, the registration hours, days and locations were odd, like 10-11 p.m. on
Wednesdays in houses on back roads ….

White liberals, having our infant daughter watched by a black woman, Alice, we
decided to get her registered to vote; she stayed late one evening, and
we drove her to a white man’s house at the edge of a swamp, where he, the county
registrar of voters, opened his office at that 10 p.m. hour. Maybe he was tired;
maybe two whites with a baby, a maid and the maid’s daughter worried him, though
I doubt it - simply tired - and the Constitution remained closed, Alice was
registered in a moment and we drove back home, dropping Alice and her child in
their black settlement ….

…and almost a year later we moved to the North, and Alice and her child stayed
in the South, and we sent her a subscription to Parents’ Magazine - really, and
don’t wince - …and we lost contact …and ….

A comment

Congratulations to Melissa Zamora and Rose Gowen, newly elected members of Brownsville’s city commission. We appreciate the strengths you’ve shown through the election cycles and wish you well in your new positions. We also look forward to your efforts to improve the city’s business and to a healthier atmosphere at city council meetings.

-Stan Raines

By Jack Moffitt

Bell Rings at 8a.m., last sale at noon!

Vitamin pills– good? bad?

I like to listen to Dr. Dean Edell, the talk radio doctor. The guy seems like he is giving an honest opinion when he talks, and he keeps his game interesting by stirring controversies like the vitamin pill controversy. He relies on scientific reasoning to bash vitamin pills and has even suggested that vitamins could be hazardous because they “feed” cancers. Surely they are wrong, even Lucy was involved in some vitamin dealing.

Everyone would probably agree however, that a good diet ought to give a body the nutritional substances it needs. Check a few of the items we see at our Farmers Market and surf the net with some questions. It can be enlightening.

What’s the point in eating alfalfa sprouts? [Read more →]

BROWNSVILLE, May 2009-The Brownsville Heritage Complex, in historic downtown Brownsville, invites the public to the launch of the 1st Sunday Music and Merienda Series, a musical lecture program presented by Joe and Rosa Perez of Rumbo al’Anacua on Sunday, June 7, 2009 at 2 p.m. The event is free for BHA members and $2 for non-members.

[Read more →]

EDITOR:

Inspiration, yes, and it has come from Barack Obama, and now Sonia Sotomayor. Fine, be inspired. Doors that should never have been closed are opening. I can not imagine the frustration of those closed doors, and now the joy when open.

But feelings and inspiration will not produce an end to the US’ wars, US bankers’ greed and the US medical establishment’s opposition to the reform of an out-of-whack healthcare system.

May the Obama-Sotomayor intangible translate to concretely humanistic solutions to the US’ problems.

If it does not, then the past of closed doors will be dwarfed by gigantic issues that will transcend doors’ positions.

Eugene “Gene” Novogrodsky
Brownsville