The university closes at 4:00 today, and then I get to head home on the International Express, aka the #7 train, to the fabulous borough of Queens. Our household's scheduled highlights for the three-day weekend include massive bouts of desperately needed spring cleaning interspersed with obsessively extensive sessions of Battlestar Galactica watching (we're now up to the second half of season two and full-on addicted), and, oh yeah, perhaps the occasional outdoor excursion. Till next week, then, some links:
The Indigenous Human Rights Film Festival began earlier this week and is continuing through this weekend and into next week. Next up tomorrow: "Indigenous Voices of the 21st Century" and "America's Secret Chernobyl" at the International Action Center at 4:00; and "Blood Money and the World Bank" and "Palabra India" at Bluestockings at 7:00.
Tuesday evening at the Widi Catering Hall in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, George Galloway, fiery left-wing member of the British parliament, and Vietnam veteran and anti-war activist Ron Kovic are the featured guests at an evening in solidarity with the people of Gaza sponsored by Al-Awda New York. The event is a fundraiser for the Break the Siege on Gaza Caravan.
What of those men arrested in a supposed plot to bomb a Bronx synagogue? It's an FBI entrapment production from start to finish. If anything, the FBI itself should be on trial since it's the FBI's personnel who created the plan, lured the men into it, provided the fake explosives, and so on. There was no plot before the FBI fabricated one. Louis Proyect reviews the list of government-concocted "terror plots" since September 11.
I'm not a fan of the late David Foster Wallace's magnum opus Infinite Jest, which I forced myself to read a couple years ago and, well, loathed for reasons both artistic and political. But some people I respect adore that book and, who knows, maybe my reaction was way off. For those ready to dive in and decide for themselves, there's Infinite Summer, a twittering, facebooking reading group that kicks off June 21. Thanks to Blographia Literaria for the link.
Did you know Reynolds Price is gay? Me neither. Now everyone does, thanks to his new memoir, which feels like "a boisterous coming-out party," according to Gay Book Blog.
Finally, I want to thank novelist Tayari Jones, who's Vineyarding for a month of writing solitude, for taking the time to read my post of yesterday about white writers and people of color characters and commenting on it on her blog, a comment that included calling me out for sort of hiding behind or using Teresa to justify myself on this subject. Point taken. The grappling continues.
