Get Your Irish Up! No Green Beer

Brooklyn Reading Works presents Blarneypalooza, a Celebration of Irish Writing and Fascinations

Thursday, March 17, 2011, 8PM, The Old Stone House

336 3rd Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215/ (718) 768-3195

What exactly is Blarneypalooza? It’s a celebration of Irish writers and influence planned with Saint Patrick’s Day in mind. The following artists will read/perform:

On Larry Honig: An avowed Situationist, this dude is way too old to behave the way he does. He’s wanted in 6 countries and wishes his epitaph to contain a line from the police report: “He was found without pants.”

Lynn McGee’s poems were just published in The New Guard, where one was a finalist and one a semi-finalist in that magazine’s contest judged by former U.S. Poet Laureate Donald Hall. Two of her poems are forthcoming in NYC Big City lit, and others have appeared in the Kennesaw Review, Ontario Review, Northwest Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Sun magazine, Phoebe, Brooklyn Review, Pittsburgh Quarterly, The Southern Anthology, Laurel Review and other journals. Lynn’s poetry chapbook, Bonanza won the Slapering Hol national manuscript contest, she won the In Our Own Write and Judith’s Room Emerging Writers contests in New York City, received a MacDowell fellowship, and earned an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University. She spent over 15 years working in literacy, and works now as the Internal Writer for a CUNY college.

Barbara O’Dair is a long-time magazine editor and writer who lives with her husband and four children in New Jersey. She graduated from Barnard College with a B.A. in American Studies and from Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, North Carolina with a Masters of Fine Arts in Poetry. She has edited two collections of writings, Caught Looking: Feminism, Pornography and Censorship, and Trouble Girls: The Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock. In 2002, as the editor of Teen People, she instituted a regular poetry column and contest. Currently, as the executive editor for Reader’s Digest, she oversees poetry in the magazine. Her journalism, essays and poetry have been published in many magazines, newspapers, journals and online publications.

Pat Smith’s play Driving Around the House has been produced in theaters around the country and is published by New Rivers Press. He regularly posts new poems on his blog Not in the News Today. Recent work has appeared in the online journal Haggard and Halloo and is soon to be published in Used Furniture Review.  He will be curating a Brooklyn Reading Works program in September.

(Native) New York poet Michele Madigan Somerville is the author of Black Irish (2009), a book of verse about being a NYC Irish Catholic, and WISEGAL (2001) a book-length poem.  Her work has appeared in many literary journals and she has won a few poetry prizes including a Macarthur Scholarship for Poetry, Honorable Mention in Dublin Ireland’s Davoren Hanna contest (sponsored by Eason Books — judge: Charles Simic), First Place Prize in the 2000 W. B. Yeats Society’s Poetry Competition (judge: Billy Collins).  She written about religion for the New York Times, and her essays on religion and education appear regularly on her websites Indie Theology (www.indiethology.com) and Bored-O-Ed (www.bored-o-ed.com) respectively as well as regularly on Huffington Post’s religion and education pages (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michele-somerville).

Michael Sweeney a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, earned his M.F.A. from Brooklyn College and teaches at Fairfield University. In Memory of the Fast Break (Plain View Press, 2008).

By Dr. Amy Glaser

As parents we are constantly faced with the challenge of modifying our children’s behaviors. Whether it is the toddler throwing a temper tantrum in a grocery store, an older sib grabbing a coveted toy from his playmate, or a student taking hours to do a short homework assignment, our aim is to prevent physical harm, incorporate some lesson that will be taken into future situations, make the child feel stronger not belittled,  and hopefully, not alienate oneself as a dominating figure but instead remain emotionally connected.

With teens and alcohol during their years at home we can monitor parties at home, speak with other parents, maintain curfews, and most importantly, share our views on alcohol and our feeling for their welfare. We hope that we make ourselves understood so that the message will become ingrained for when their daily whereabouts are out of our reach.

Here are some facts that might help your children consider their behavior in context of what is known about neurocognitive development. They’re good kids. They want to have fun. They don’t want to make irrevocable mistakes.

As teens move from dependence to independence and self-definition there are physical changes within that are in flux. The portions of the brain that express emotions and seek gratification mature more rapidly than the parts of the brain responsible for planning and regulating behavior. Thus the impulsivity of the adolescent period has a biologic basis. . Through advanced imagery studies, we now know that the frontal lobe, the area of the brain that has inhibitory and planning functions, is still developing into the mid twenties as various synapses/neurons are eliminated or pruned.   And these changes are determined both by genetics and by interactions with the environment.

Much of the knowledge about the brain and human behavior is derived from laboratory studies of animals. These studies of both rats and humans show that the developing brain responds differently than the adult to alcohol. Alcohol has been shown to impair memory, cause more brain damage and cause cognitive impairment to a greater extent in adolescents than in adults, both in rats and humans.

Conversely drinking causes less sedation and motor impairment  in adolescents than in mature brains. Thus a teen with an  equivalent alcohol exposure to an adult is more likely to be awake and mobile and thus ready for more “action.” This exposure during adolescence to alcohol affects not only that moment in time but can also alter the way the person will respond to alcohol later in life.

Studies in rats who have “Chronic intermittent alcohol exposure” (ie  binge drinking) are more likely to  have withdrawal seizures on stopping drinking. Extrapolated to humans the belief of investigators is that repeated exposure to alcohol during adolescence could lead to loner lasting deficits in learning and memory.

Continue reading The Doctor is In: Talking to Teens about Alcohol →

The Music Festival portion of South By Southwest  2011 (usually written SXSW, which is what I will do too) held each year in Austin, Texas, begins with a few official events tomorrow night and in full on Wednesday.  It runs through Sunday.  During that time there will be approximately 2000 band performing at about 100 venues, plus perhaps another 500 bands performing unofficially.  I’ll be traveling down there tomorrow and posting daily reports about SXSW over at Now I’ve Heard Everything.  If things work as they have in years past, expect those posts to appear sometime before Noon each day.

But there’s a lot of music going on in New York City during that time. Click here for a complete listing of worthwhile performances by Jon Graboff, Poundcake, Julia Haltigan, Karla Bonoff, James Maddock (two shows), David Roche, The Bright White, My Pet Dragon, Ursa Minor and Alana Sveta.

–Eliot Wagner

Get Your Irish Up! No Green Beer

Brooklyn Reading Works presents Blarneypalooza, a Celebration of Irish Writing and Fascinations

Thursday, March 17, 2011, 8PM, The Old Stone House

336 3rd Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215/ (718) 768-3195

What exactly is Blarneypalooza? It’s a celebration of Irish writers and influence planned with Saint Patrick’s Day in mind. The following artists will read/perform:

On Larry Honig: An avowed Situationist, this dude is way too old to behave the way he does. He’s wanted in 6 countries and wishes his epitaph to contain a line from the police report: “He was found without pants.”

Lynn McGee’s poems were just published in The New Guard, where one was a finalist and one a semi-finalist in that magazine’s contest judged by former U.S. Poet Laureate Donald Hall. Two of her poems are forthcoming in NYC Big City lit, and others have appeared in the Kennesaw Review, Ontario Review, Northwest Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Sun magazine, Phoebe, Brooklyn Review, Pittsburgh Quarterly, The Southern Anthology, Laurel Review and other journals. Lynn’s poetry chapbook, Bonanza won the Slapering Hol national manuscript contest, she won the In Our Own Write and Judith’s Room Emerging Writers contests in New York City, received a MacDowell fellowship, and earned an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University. She spent over 15 years working in literacy, and works now as the Internal Writer for a CUNY college.

Barbara O’Dair is a long-time magazine editor and writer who lives with her husband and four children in New Jersey. She graduated from Barnard College with a B.A. in American Studies and from Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, North Carolina with a Masters of Fine Arts in Poetry. She has edited two collections of writings, Caught Looking: Feminism, Pornography and Censorship, and Trouble Girls: The Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock. In 2002, as the editor of Teen People, she instituted a regular poetry column and contest. Currently, as the executive editor for Reader’s Digest, she oversees poetry in the magazine. Her journalism, essays and poetry have been published in many magazines, newspapers, journals and online publications.

Pat Smith’s play Driving Around the House has been produced in theaters around the country and is published by New Rivers Press. He regularly posts new poems on his blog Not in the News Today. Recent work has appeared in the online journal Haggard and Halloo and is soon to be published in Used Furniture Review.  He will be curating a Brooklyn Reading Works program in September.

(Native) New York poet Michele Madigan Somerville is the author of Black Irish (2009), a book of verse about being a NYC Irish Catholic, and WISEGAL (2001) a book-length poem.  Her work has appeared in many literary journals and she has won a few poetry prizes including a Macarthur Scholarship for Poetry, Honorable Mention in Dublin Ireland’s Davoren Hanna contest (sponsored by Eason Books — judge: Charles Simic), First Place Prize in the 2000 W. B. Yeats Society’s Poetry Competition (judge: Billy Collins).  She written about religion for the New York Times, and her essays on religion and education appear regularly on her websites Indie Theology (www.indiethology.com) and Bored-O-Ed (www.bored-o-ed.com) respectively as well as regularly on Huffington Post’s religion and education pages (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michele-somerville).

Michael Sweeney a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, earned his M.F.A. from Brooklyn College and teaches at Fairfield University. In Memory of the Fast Break (Plain View Press, 2008).

Tomorrow: Wide Open 2, BWAC’s second national art show opens its doors and Tom Martinez with his pal poet Albee Pritchard are included in the show. Pritchard’s book, Howl Now, published last year by Debi Ryan C.E.O. of VoxPop Cafe/Press Brooklyn, will be available for purchase.

Wide Open is a juried show, which received close to 1,600 submissions (of which only ten percent are accepted for exhibition). The works represent a diverse range of artwork. It’s a big gallery space good for wall pieces, sculptures and installations of a scale not often found in other shows. smaller works and affordable art (priced under $1,000) are also part of the show. .

The show takes place in one of Red Hook’s most historical and unique spaces. The gallery is in a Civil War-era warehouse located at a frankly luscious waterfront site overlooking the Statue of Liberty and New York Harbor. It is across from the Fairway supermarket and down the block from IKEA.

Tomorrow at  3PM, the $1,000 Best in Show will be selected and presented by Trotman. In total $1750 will be awarded including the $500 People’s Choice award to be selected by gallery visitors over the three weekends of the show (and all are invited to come and put in their two cents).

Opening Reception: Saturday, March 12, 2011 from 1-6 P.M.

Tonight is like a music festival with so many good choices.  You can catch three (maybe even four) great bands without breaking into a sweat.  Pick from acoustic rock (Emily Zuzik), atmospheric rock (Ursa Minor), straight ahead rock (The Ramblers and The Madison Square Gardeners), instrumental music (Jesse Harris) and country and Americana (Li’l Mo and The Monicats).  There are early shows and there are late shows.  The stars don’t align like this that often so take advantage of  tonight’s bounty.  All the details are waiting for you at Now I’ve Heard Everything just by clicking here.

–Eliot Wagner

The Madison Square Gardeners went into the Daytrotter studios Monday and played three songs live: Lightning Don’t Strike Twice, Young and In Love and Miracle Mile.  The Gardeners and Daytrotter are offering this session to you free.  Get the details at Now I’ve Heard Everything by clicking here.

Seeing Black is a real rocker of a song from the new Lucinda Williams album, Blessed.  It also has some nice guitar work by Elvis Costello.  See it by clicking here.

–Eliot Wagner

Senior Moment is a new column by Katie Hustead, owner of Paper Moon Moves, a Brooklyn-based senior move management company that helps seniors get organized, downsize and move.

Just over a year ago, I resigned from one of those huge financial organizations that we’ve all had to read way too much about in the past few years. I was successful by the Company’s standards. I had been given a few promotions and had a nice sunny office and a title that seemed to impress some of my colleagues. The problem was that I was completely uninterested in what my department did and saw no value in our services. Even worse, I had become so disgusted by the Company that I didn’t even want it to succeed. I scoffed at the Code of Ethics we had all been required to sign. Senior executives had clearly been breaking the code for decades. I wasn’t the slightest bit impressed with my professional achievements.

Life began at 5 o’clock, when all of us corporate drones packed our bags and headed for the nearest exit. My path out of the office often took me to a nursing home in the East Village, where I lead a New York Cares volunteer read aloud to seniors. Six or seven of us organize a literature Salon, taking turns reading poems, short stories, or magazine articles to a dozen residents gathered in the library. Some seniors come for the literature, some for the company, and some for the snacks. I was coming to shake corporate life and its “values” out of my system.

On a friend’s advice, I finally took a step toward finding more meaningful work. I made an appointment to see her career psychologist, Alan. He started by having me describe, in great detail, a dozen achievements of which I was genuinely proud. Together, we dissected them. Then he took me through a series of tests and exercises. A trend began to emerge: I was clearly more interested in people than in profits. And the more we talked about my volunteer experiences, the more I realized I wanted to help seniors professionally.

Seniors are comforting and fascinating. Everyone — by the time they’re in the eighties or nineties — has lived through enough chaos, grief, and beauty to publish a bestselling autobiography. And they have so much to teach us. Happy seniors should be studied so we can all learn how to make it to eighty without regret.

The job market to work with seniors was tough, and my brief attempt to apply for a job led nowhere. But Alan helped me realize that I was in a decent position to try starting my own business. While researching business opportunities that would address real needs of New York City seniors, I stumbled across the National Association of Senior Move Managers (NASMM). This organization is made up of 500 independent companies all over the country that help seniors get organized, downsize and move. This was it – I had found it! Joining this profession was a no-brainer for a person who nags her husband regularly over the state of his bedside table and gets a thrill from organizing a messy kitchen drawer.

The best way to help someone let go of something that they no longer need and that has become a burden is to find out why they are keeping it. So you ask where they got a particular item and listen to their story. By telling you that they got a tchotchke on their honeymoon, and describing the trip, they are separating out the story from the item itself. Once the story is unlocked, the tchotchke often becomes irrelevant. So I get to listen to seniors’ stories all day. Heaven.

My business plan for Paper Moon Moves practically wrote itself. I quit corporate life just in time to attend the 2010 NASMM conference in Las Vegas, where I met hundreds of experienced senior move managers with critical knowledge to share. I learned how to help a senior make tough decisions about what to keep and what to give away, how to find local buyers or auctioneers for my clients, and how to pack up decades’ worth of possessions. I also learned how to set up a new apartment so that the senior can immediately feel at home. I returned to Brooklyn and launched my business.

It’s been the best, and most challenging, year of my professional life. The business is profitable (although believe me there have been days when the sound of the phone not ringing is almost deafening and I squirm a lot more when the mortgage payment comes due). For me, success is now measured by how many times I hear things like: “I can see my coffee table;” “I can’t believe there were eight bags of donate-able clothes in the back of that closet;” “I don’t know how I made it from Park Slope all the way to California to live with my son;” “I thought this move would be impossible.”

I’m sometimes asked why I chose to work with seniors. The real answer is that the profession, and the seniors, chose me.

R.E.M. has a new album, Collapse Into Now, coming out tomorrow, March 8th.  The reviews I’ve seen uniformly call it the best album by the band in 14 years (which, if you do the math, makes the last critically appreciated REM album New Adventures in Hi-Fi).  NPR is offering you the chance to listen to Collapse Into Now today only in its entirety or on a track by track basis; all you need do is to go here and click the appropriate link near the top of the page.

Over at Now I’ve Heard Everything, nine more shows for March have been posted; five by Julia Haltigan, two by Sister Sparrow and the Dirty Birds and one each by Li’l Mo and The Monicats and Lelia Broussard.  See those additions here.  The entire Now I’ve Heard Everything March Calendar is here.

–Eliot Wagner