A reminder YEAR EIGHT is ending for the NMCACWF at the Tuesday, May 5th, 7-9 p.m. NMCACWF’s First Tuesday … in the Narciso Martinez Cultural Arts Center in San Benito …. Come and see if the “high” from Poetry Month can be maintained! Add your 10 minutes to the vault of universal wisdom! Gene for [...]

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by Gene Novogrodsky How wonderfully self-centered! Scarcely a word from the developed world when it comes to: contaminated water; diarrhea; AIDS; malaria; malnutrition; general sanitation and hygiene; starvation; birth difficulties; factory farming and its unhealthy spin-offs …and the list goes on and on …. Why worry! Those health issues only affect about half or more [...]

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By Gene Novogrodsky The ATV factory closed, So they tossed beds and Mattresses in the back of the Pickup, and headed for the shale fields. She had a day to clear the rental, And she never knew that her morning glories Would orange two months later, While oil and coal field particles Filled her flowerless [...]

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A report Somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty people showed up Monday, April 27, at the Galeria 409 to hear Betsy Price, consultant Ken Mills and David Martin Davies of Texas Public Radio outline burgeoning plans for a new organization, Voices from the Valley, aimed at bringing more public and community radio to the Rio [...]

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from Virginia Gause Poetry Month in the Valley will conclude with the first official book signing in the United States for La Primera Voz Que Oí (The First Voice I Heard), a collection of Spanish poems by Brownsville native Brenda Nettles Riojas, is scheduled at 1:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 30 at the Arnulfo L. [...]

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Video by Edgar Clinton, Jr.

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Video by Edgar Clinton, Jr.

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from Gene’s Notebook …and the man in the Lopez Four line speaks of the puente George Washington in Spanish, so I cut into his conversation and say, “My grandparents used to live near the George Washington Bridge in New York City after they moved from a poorer section up to the bridge.” He listens. And [...]

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By Rudy H. García There you are! My morning light! Sparkling, Shining, Silver kite, Guide me with your moon-beam-string While the morning mockers sing. Waken up my drowsing state And cast your silken thread to me. Draw me, forth, unto my lover To kiss caress and stir her From our nestling bower. Lead us far [...]

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Opinion by Gene Novogrodsky I am addressing this to the mainly erroneous TEA Party and secessionist adherents – though they have at least two good points. The current federal tax code is written with favors to the rich at its core, so the Tea Party folk have a gripe there – not that I heard [...]

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A video by Edgar Clinton, Jr. Here is some documentation of the TEA party in Harlingen. The text of the accompanying song:

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by Gene Novogrodsky Purple blossoms, Purple beds, And there I see death, More than I did under Full branches, leafed, That strayed like wild women’s hair When winds blew …. Yes, I saw death once From a bench under those branches; Now it soothes from those purple beds, Beds like sheets, twisted, and soft ….

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by Rudy H. García Recuerdo bien aquella vez Cuando tu madre luz te dio Mis ojos se abrieron realmente, por primer-vez El hombre más feliz fui yo Y Recuerdo bien aquella vez Esmeralda es tu mes Cuando tu rostro suavecito y rosita sentí. Cuando Magdalena, Eulogia, broto de ti Cuando el más grande orgullo regalaste [...]

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A video Here is Despedida ( the fourth movement) of the Concerto for Marimba and Orchestra by Ney Rosauro performed by Thomas Raines, marimbist, and the University of Texas at Brownsville Orchestra. The performance took place at Sacred Heart Church at the corner of Sixth Street and Elizabeth in Brownsville. You should have been there. [...]

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By Gene Novogrodsky High mountains in the southwest, Misty chills, thatched huts, twisted roads, Women, kids and the elderly, An eco-tourist paradise …. Ripping waves in the northeast, Fishermen with gutted sharks, Hanging rays, cut bait fish, Women, haughty and worn, and skinny kids, Fresh red and white-fleshed food for the state and nation …. [...]

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by Thomas Thornburg Mary Jane, you brown-eyed baby, the way they put you down And tell such little lies on you around this stinking town; Rarely once and maybe never Mary Jane won’t tell; If she’ll let you, she can get you feeling very well; Just because you haven’t met her, you can mend your [...]

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by Gene Novogrodsky With gloves and a metal poker, He goes deep into the day’s Trash cans, grabbing and stabbing Aluminum cans from weekend parties Buried under pizza boxes and store-bag plastic. Earth Day? Earth Day 39? What’s that? A recycler he is, Doing what he knows on Earth Day, while unknowing as The trash [...]

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Intellectual theft by Stan Raines This needs no explanation.

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A proposal It’s National Poetry Month, we’ve just had a celebration of verse and spoken art at the Galeria 409, and the Valley International Poetry Festival is about to take off for its second year. So it must be time to again shuffle out some clerihew, those little satiric pieces invented by Edmond Clerihew Bentley [...]

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An outrage noted by Joe Premont This is from a Yahoo news story: At Permian High School in Odessa, Texas – made famous by the H.G. Bissinger book “Friday Night Lights” – school officials spent $70,000 for a chartered airplane to fly the football team to visiting games. Meanwhile, the school’s textbooks were 15 years [...]

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A tip from Jim Abbott

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by Gene Novogrodsky And since she never wanted To come to the United States, Preferring a Russian gin mill That her father owned, The rabbi getting her name Wrong at her funeral brought Down the curtain on the bar-maid Teen turned mother, cook and Egg-peddler in street-house-car- Packed New York’s Lower East Side, Those Russian [...]

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A Thank You Realizing that I have a certain prejudice, but my feeling was and is that last night’s celebration of NYBT’s first year as a literary rag was a screaming success. The parting comments were all positive and there is a strong possibility that, if we make it through another year, we’ll have another. [...]

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A reminder Don’t forget the party tonight at the Galeria 409 to celebrate the first year of NunnaYerBizness Today. There are refreshments available and much entertainment including poetry and music. The Galeria is at 409 East 13th Street in Brownsville. See you there. -Stan

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By Gene Novogrodsky Before the urban animal control truck Came to take the dark grey possum To the still-wild brushland, A white possum came to the trap – A visit – and then ran across a cracked yard, Slanted street and under a rotted-board House when the truck stopped ….

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