TV Watching…Awards Cometh, I Get It

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom premiered on Friday on Netflix. From IMDB, Chicago, 1927. A recording session. Tensions rise between Ma Rainey, her ambitious horn player and the white management determined to control the uncontrollable “Mother of the Blues”. Based on Pulitzer Prize winner August Wilson’s play.

Ma Rainey the Mother of the Blues was brash, loud, and difficult and may have had Turner’s syndrome(XO genetic) from the looks of broad neck and short stature.

and understood the gravity of owning her art and autonomy. The Blues was a means for us to tell our story to get us going. The whitewashed history books was never going to do it, so we and artists like Ma Rainey ensured the songs were song her way telling her story of survival, celebrating her beauty. How she fought against the exploitive nature of ‘race music and records’ where the Black artist of the early 20th Century would be locked into horrible contracts, would see the wide spread availability of their music, but would not profit from the sales could not even sit in the same audience, eat at the counter of diners, get a cold bottle of Coke without being hassled. Branford Marsalis is the Music Director for the Movie, and his remix and remastering of her songs are well done without changing the sound or structure of the original in the album for the movie, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Even finding images that were not copyrighted by Getty’s and not by her foundation , if that even exists is rare. This would be the last and one of the greatest performances of the late great, Chadwick Boseman.

But he posthumously, as well as the Screenwriter, Producer, Director, and this amazing cast

will rightfully be nominated and win every theatrical prize in 2021. Well Done!!

Eating and Drinking

I am personally bringing Sunday dinner back. I am finishing off my rib roast with baked vegetables, each giving the roast a new flavor, tenderizing it even more…

mushroom rice, and roasted brussel sprouts with bacon…Get in My Belly!!

Reading

Sundays are for reading the NY Sunday Times in particular Arts and Leisure and the Book Review. I love reading for fun. And the of Becky Brandon nee Bloomwood and her enabling family,

is a great respite on a dreary afternoon while the rice cooks and the roast bakes!

Consider navigating to Chattabooks to pick up books for your young reader. Keep an eye on your kids and young adults. Dystopian and chaotic novels can be anxiety provoking to adults, why let kids read that stuff?

I have a robust and still adding Children’s and Y and R section at Chattabooks with several additions today

Every evening Lampie, the lighthouse keeper’s daughter, must light a lantern to warn ships away from the rocks, but one stormy night disaster strikes. The lantern is not lit, a ship is wrecked, and someone must pay.

To work off her debt, Lampie is banished to the Admiral’s lonely house, where a monster is rumored to live. The terrors inside the house aren’t quite what she thought they would be–they are even stranger. 

But the reviewer from the NYTimes likened the above book to their love of Secret Garden by Frances Burnett and beautiful illustrations

and Stevenson’s Treasure Island unabridged and fully illustrated

I have added both to my own library because of the positive story and the beautiful illustrations. Art and books should educate and entertain and uplift. Stop reading or watching those things that make you feel worse or cause full on anxiety.