UKIAH, Calif. – Friends of the Mendocino College Library, an affiliate of the Mendocino College Foundation, will host mystery author Waights Taylor Jr. for its third reading in the fall reading series.
He will be reading from his new novel, “Kiss of Salvation” at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 20, in Room 4210, upstairs in the new college library. The college is located at 1000 Hensley Creek Road in Ukiah.
Admission to the event is free.
The setting of 1947 Birmingham, Alabama, cloaks many mysteries under its segregated shroud: glittering social soirées, secret sexual parties, a Machiavellian civic leader, and multiple murders prostitutes in dark alleys.
New York Times best selling author Sheldon Siegel said this about Kiss of Salvation: “'The Kiss of Salvation' takes us back to the dawn of the Civil rights movement in 1947 Birmingham. It’s a murder mystery, a history, and an in-depth study of evolving times in the American South. Deftly written and immensely readable, Taylor paints a picture of a complex era in American culture. Highly recommended.”
Taylor was born in Birmingham and spent his young, formative years growing up in the segregated South.
After graduation from the University of Alabama in 1959 with a bachelor of science degree in aeronautical engineering, his professional career included 24 years in the aviation industry and then 22 years in management consulting.
When his professional career was coming to an end, he turned to writing. He is an author, a poet and a playwright.
His first book, “Alfons Mucha's Slav Epic: An Artist's History of the Slavic People,” was published in 2008.
His first chapbook of poetry and short stories, “Literary Ramblings,” was published in 2010.
His second book, “Our Southern Home: Scottsboro to Montgomery to Birmingham – The Transformation of the South in the Twentieth Century,” was published in October 2011. “Kiss of Salvation” was released in August.
Waights now lives in Santa Rosa.
For more information about the reading or the author, please check the college Web site at www.mendocino.edu or call 707-468-3051.
Jessica Silva is Mendocino College's director of community relations and communication.
LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Third Friday Live series at the Soper Reese Theatre in Lakeport hosts the cool jazz vibe of the Dorian May Trio at 7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 21.
Tickets are $10 each.
The group consists of Dorian May on piano, his wife Dorothea May on bass and Tom Rickard on drums.
With sounds like those of Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans and Eddie Palmieri, Dorian May’s piano artistry shapes together classic, modern and Latin jazz.
He mixes in Bach harmony, world and poly rhythms and is equally at home in world music and classical music as he is with hard-swinging bebop, Cuban Salsa and down-home blues.
At his shows you will hear anything from classical to TV/movie themes, children’s tunes, traditional jazz, folk songs to Cuban boleros.
May’s diverse experiences in music include a degree in classical piano performance, keyboardist in a touring Emerson, Lake & Palmer tribute band, high-school band director, percussionist/accompanist at world music and jazz festivals, and currently leader and arranger for several Mendocino- and Sonoma-based jazz and Latin bands.
The Soper Reese Theatre is located at 275 S. Main St., Lakeport, 707-263-0577.
Tickets are available online at www.soperreesetheatre.com ; at the box office on Fridays from 10:30 to 5:30; and at The Travel Center, 1265 S. Main St., Lakeport, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.
The title “Nightcrawler” has the vague sound of a horror film, and though it is not, the premise is grounded in the horrifying possibility of TMZ-style journalism taken to extreme measures to capture the tabloid mantra of “If it bleeds, it leads.”
The dark side of television news is not confined to the latest escapades of frivolous celebrities and anyone named Kardashian.
“Nightcrawler” explores the underbelly of so-called journalism in which freelance bottom-feeders seek out footage of the sensationally gruesome scenes of domestic violence, murder and vehicle accidents.
Jake Gyllenhaal, a versatile actor who has also played his share of troubled characters, stars as intense, borderline sociopath Louis Bloom, the titular character of “Nightcrawler,” a title that is fitting for one engaged in the sleazy business of trolling the police scanners for hot tips of the grisliest crime incidents.
At the film’s opening, Louis is a random petty thief, though so devoid of any scruples that he has no problem beating up someone who tries to prevent him from stealing scrap metal from a junkyard for a quick monetary fix.
Clearly, Louis is unhinged and callous enough to fit right in with those who might profit from others’ misery.
Stumbling upon an accident scene involving a woman barely escaping an exploding vehicle, Louis encounters Joe Loder (Bill Paxton), a roaming videographer who chases down ghastly accident scenes and peddles his footage to local TV newsrooms in Los Angeles anxious to titillate audiences with as much bloody carnage as they can get away with.
The impressionable Louis, lacking any moral compass and eager to make a fast buck, is intrigued by the possibility of a new career as a “nightcrawler,” a fitting job for his nocturnal pleasures, only slightly removed from his penchant for illegal activities.
In fact, Louis uses purloined goods to obtain a video camera and an old police scanner so that he can tap into the “if it bleeds, it leads” mantra of late night TV news.
His first attempts at acting as paparazzi of the crime scene don’t go so well, but his luck soon changes with awesome footage.
An eager buyer for what Louis has to sell is Nina Romina (Rene Russo), a hardened news director at the lowest rated TV news station in Los Angeles.
Ever the cynic, Nina schools Louis in the finer points of tabloid news, letting him know that crimes against people in the wealthier neighborhoods are what drive the TV ratings.
Not burdened by any moral reservations, Nina is all too willing to whisper into the ear of a news anchor that an already shocking story needs to be punched up with more graphic details.
Nina expresses her view that the TV news should be akin to a “screaming woman running down the street with her throat cut.”
Equally unbound by the norms of respectable reporting, Louis, assisted by his perplexed assistant Rick (Riz Ahmed), goes to great lengths to obtain his stories, willing to manipulate the crime scenes to his benefit and interfering with police investigations and first responders when it most suits his purposes.
Louis goes to extremes in his work not only because he wants to topple Joe Loder as the prime go-to guy for gruesome footage, but he’s also driven by persistent, reckless ambition to succeed.
Even though he’s an uneducated man with a violent streak, he knows how to read every situation to maximize his advantage.
“Nightcrawler,” perhaps not always intentionally, aims for many things in its expose of the shady world of tabloid journalism.
The film could be considered a satire of the current state of TV journalism, or it might be fateful commentary on our endless obsession with tabloid-style sensationalism. It’s also a character study of a strange man fixated on the dark side.
Chilling and disturbing, “Nightcrawler” offers the viewer the opportunity to form a number of opinions. Louis Bloom is either evil or was seduced by evil; maybe it’s both.
Los Angeles turns into a postcard of the seamy side of life, realized into a modern version of the tarnished image of the City of Angels so visible in “Chinatown.”
Dark and frequently creepy, consistent with the oddly weird Louis Bloom, “Nightcrawler” taps into a visceral feeling about society’s strange fascination with rubber-necking journalism, unable to resist looking at the ten-car pileup or the sad tale of a nasty home invasion.
“Nightcrawler” just might be the unfortunate parable of our voyeuristic times.
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.
LAKEPORT, Calif. – On Sunday, Nov. 23, Lake County cellist Clovice Lewis will join a list of Romantic era composers in a symphony concert, playing a movement from his just-composed concerto entitled “The Score.”
The November program is officially the “Fall Concert” of the Lake County Symphony and takes place at 3 p.m. at Lakeport’s Soper Reese Theatre, 275 S. Main St.
According to Lewis his piece is written in four movements, each commemorating a portion of an imaginary movie – hence the title – but although the movie may be imaginary, the music is anything but, as concert attendees will learn.
The movement to be played by the orchestra is the third – entitled “Love’s Embrace” – which will feature a cello solo, played by Lewis, who is a regular member of the cello section.
As is traditional the concert will open with the Symphony Youth Orchestra led by conductor Sue Condit. The group has recently been joined by several new members and has been rehearsing intensively for this concert.
Condit has selected two numbers featuring the modified works of a panoply of great composers.
The first is entitled “A Tribute to the Three B’s” arranged by Gerald Anderson and featuring themes from the works of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms.
The second is “A Night at the Symphony” arranged by Sandy Feldstein and featuring trumpet voluntary themes from two noted composers Brahms and Rossini.
Trumpet voluntary only incidentally refers to that instrument, but is actually a style of playing, in this case Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 and Rossini’s “William Tell Overture – the familiar theme music from the “Lone Ranger” radio and television series.
John Parkinson, conductor and music director, has chosen a program made up primarily of composers from the Romantic period including Franz von Suppe a prolific composer who produced more than 30 operettas, one of which – the “banditenstreiche” – proved to be one of his most popular. First debuted in 1911 it was quickly translated into English in a more pronounceable form, “The Jolly Robbers Overture.”
The better-known “Merry Widow Waltz” is drawn from a popular piece written by Franz Lehar which he derived from a comedy entitled simply “The Merry Widow.” Lehar rewrote it as an opera, and Parkinson has selected its overture for the fall concert.
Although Gioachino Rossini is considered by some to be more of a neoclassicist than a Romantic, Parkinson has chosen his Tancredi Overture to help flesh out his program of Romantic composers along with Franz Joseph Haydn’s classical “Symphony No. 95 in C Minor.”
This piece is noted for the fact that it is not only beautiful music, but is also the only one of the composer’s famed Twelve London Symphonies to be written in a minor key.
Advance ticket purchase is recommended and can be made online at www.soperreesetheatre.com or by phone at 707-263-0577.
Tickets are $20 for symphony association members or $25 general admission.
As always there will be an open rehearsal at 11 a.m. at which youths under 18 will be admitted free, while others pay only $5.
As a writer and reader, there’s hardly anything I enjoy more than coming upon fresh new ways of describing things, and here’s a sparkling way of looking at an avalanche, by Marty Walsh, who lives in Maine.
The snow's/feet slip
out from under it and down the mountain slope it comes flat on its back white skirt and billowy petticoats blowing back over its head, whiplashing rickety pine sapling as it passes, bowling boulders left and right until it comes to a juddering sudden heart- thumping stop just shy of the little village in the valley far below.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation ( www.poetryfoundation.org ), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright 2013 by Marty Walsh, whose most recent book of poems is Furniture Out in the Woods, Marty Walsh, 1999. Poem reprinted from Plainsongs, Vol. XXXIV, No. 1, by permission of Marty Walsh and the publisher. Introduction copyright 2014 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. They do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
LAKEPORT, Calif. – Lake County Poet Laureate Casey Carney will give a reading at the Mendocino College Lake Center on Sunday, Nov. 16.
The reading will begin at 2 p.m. at the center, 2565 Parallel Drive in Lakeport.
Admission is free to the event, which is presented by the Lake County Friends of Mendocino College and Friends of the Mendocino College Library.
Carney – Lake County's poet laureate for 2014 through 2016 – is a lifelong artist who expresses her creativity through poetry, writing, photography, performance art and teaching.
Holding a master’s degree in dance, Carney is a professional choreographer, and has taught dance and participated in numerous dance concerts in Los Angeles.
She has studied with such notables as Bessie Schonberg, Jeff Slaton, Bella Lewitzky, Risa Steinberg and Gloria Newman.
Carney also has performed as a soloist at the Los Angeles Dance Kaliedoscope Festival.
A former special education teacher, Carney currently is involved with mentoring at-risk youth.
She believes in the power of creativity in helping people to connect with their individual voice and to bring that voice into the world. She is interested in a multidisciplinary approach to expression and healing.
Carney is working on her manuscript of poetry titled “How to tell a Party from a Disaster.”
Following the reading, there will be an open mic session to let audience members recite their poetry.
Sign-ups will take place prior to the reading and during the break.
