More than Just Food for Thought

Finding good food that is worth eating is sometimes difficult. There is a McDonalds on the corner of every block with a Starbucks placed strategically in the middle. It's hard to get a fresh perspective on food when your options are limited to what is available, convenient, and mass-produced.

Although living one's life in the "gastronomic doldrums" is less than desirable, it is far more tragic to be deprived of intellectual stimuli from a wide variety of views and sources. There is no doubt that the mega-bookstores that have become dominant in the past decade have contributed to the limited options available to readers.

Luckily, Washington area residents have an alternative: the Busboys and Poets Bookstore. This nonconformist bookstore happily offers nontraditional books, such as those published by AK Press. The Oakland, California-based publisher/distributor was founded in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1990 and opened their U.S. branch in 1994. During their eighteen years in the publishing business, AK Press has become an ultimate authority on all anarchist books, CDs, and DVDs. Does that last sentence sound like an oxymoron?

Regardless, if you're craving something different, you can find many AK Press items at both the DC and the Virginia locations of the Busboys and Poets Bookstores. In a recent interview with Publishers Weekly, Don Allen, General Manager of the DC Busboys and Poets, noted that some of the best sellers from AK Press include a three-DVD set on the Black Panthers, What We Want, What We Believe and several of AK Press's vegan cookbooks.

Bitter? A Cure for What Ails You

It's no secret: every recent utterance, and every distant association, of Busboys and Poets' favorite Presidential candidate is being parsed to the point of absurdity by his opponents, both Democratic and Republican.

Hendrik Hertzberg, in the new New Yorker, speaks to the absurdity surrounding the recent Philadelphia debate:

In the seven weeks since the previous Clinton-Obama debate, the death toll of American troops in Iraq had reached four thousand; the President had admitted that his "national-security team," including the Vice-President, had met regularly in the White House to approve the torture of prisoners; house repossessions topped fifty thousand per month and unemployment topped five per cent; and the poll-measured proportion of Americans who believe that "things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track" hit eighty-one per cent, a record.

In other words, only an out-of-touch elitist could call someone an out-of-touch elitist for observing that almost everyone has a reason to be bitter about the shape of national politics.

The Pennsylvania primary holds the potential to release us from at least one aspect of this madness: if Obama finishes within a single-digit margin of Clinton tonight, Stephanopoulos and his peers among the punditry might finally acknowledge that this race is between Obama and McCain, between responsible policies and destructive delusion. Hertzberg goes on to dream:

The battle might even be about ideas.

Have you been living in the Washington, D.C., area long enough that your first reaction to such a statement is "yeah, right"?

Or do you perceive a change in the wind?

We'll be watching tonight's events with rapt attention at the Busboys and Poets' Shirlington, VA, location. It'll be a community of Obama supporters, political activists, and just plain political junkies, gathered around a big screen and enjoying the drink specials and free wi-fi.

Details are here, courtesy of MyBarrackObama:

Join your friends at Busboys and Poets as we anticipate the PA returns! 7PM-till the last vote is counted! Drink Specials throughout the night. The returns will be shown on our Big Screen Projector and in our bar.

Join us!

For the Babies

Literacy theorists, child educators, and all-around bloggers, take note: there's a great new blog on our radar called For the Babies...

Written by Leensa Fufa, the blog has been going since February. It's about, well, literacy theory, child education, and all-around blogging. An excerpt:

My fondest memory of literacy involves road trips with my sister and her godmother. My sister and I memorized Shel Silverstein poems to pass the time… and earn money! My sister’s godmother was very generous and I still have Tree House memorized. Now I recite it to my students.

Leensa writes about an experience perusing the aisles at the Busboys and Poets store, here:

I love this Busboys & Poets Books! Although small and somewhat crowded, I find its collection of books rich and refined. The affiliation with Teaching for Change ensures thoughtful and deliberate selection of books.

Leensa also admits to a tendency that's becoming increasingly dominant among even the most avid of book-lovers: going to the bookstore to look for interesting titles, then picking up one's selections from Amazon for the sake of economy.

Hey, that's the modern world. The number of viable, community-oriented bookstores decreases by the year, as national and international retailers consolidate their hold on the market. Choice increases but it comes with a price.

At Busboys and Poets, we remain a vital space, but it would be much more an uphill struggle in such an environment if we strove to exist as a bookstore alone. So we have the restaurant; we have visiting authors; we have the Langston Room.

It's a privilege to be able to play host to the vibrant community of writers, poets, activists, educators, and literary enthusiasts here in Washington, D.C. and the surrounding area. There is truly a great movement underway, and what it needs to grow is community.

So please do come down to spend some time with us. Browse the shelves, view a reading, maybe sample a delicious panini-- and also, for community's sake, won't you please consider buying a book?

Richard Peabody on the Scene

Sweet.


Local fiction and poetry publishing luminary Richard Peabody graced the Shirlington Busboys location with a reading last night.

And: local blogger of all things literary Wendi Kaufman wrote about it at The Happy Booker, here.

Thanks Wendi!

Busboys and Poets Getting Some Love

What does it mean to say that Busboys and Poets has been getting a lot of love from a lot of corners lately? It means that the great events that take place here are receiving favorable mentions from various writers and press outlets.

St. Patrick's Day has already come and gone-- or one could say that we're now approximately 354 days away from the next one-- but that's no reason not to note that the Progressive Democrats of America gave us a shout-out in conjunction with the holiday's happenings:

National radio commentator, author, and speaker Jim Hightower will bring his unique combination of political insight and down-home humor to Busboys and Poets Restaurant on March 17 to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with Capital Area members of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) and help kick off PDA's "Healthcare NOT Warfare" national campaign.

Another thing that's recently taken place is, of course, Split This Rock: the four-day festival wherein poets and activists from all over the nation converged on the Capital City to collectively protest the Iraq War on the fifth anniversary of its inception. David Montgomery at The Washington Post wrote about it, and he didn't forget to mention us:

In long, disheveled columns, they are prowling Langston Hughes's old neighborhood around U Street NW. They are eating catfish at Busboys and Poets (where else?) and quoting Hughes, Shelley and Whitman back and forth -- "Through me many long dumb voices" -- over the hummus and merlot.

Catherine Andrews at the Washingtonian wrote about Split This Rock, and Busboys, too:

Timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq, the Split This Rock Poetry Festival brings in writers from all over the world. They’ll be reading in a variety of locations along the U Street corridor. (Definitely check out Busboys & Poets, where several readings will take place.)

That's a lot of love. Thanks, everyone-- right back at you!

Obama: A Poet in the Langston Hughes Tradition?

John Lundberg, a contributor at the excellent news & opinion collator Huffington Post, has written movingly and presciently about Barack Obama's recent Philadelphia speech in an article entitled Poems About Racism.

Beginning with an analysis of Obama's deft delivery-- highlighting the ways by which the Senator defused the media's tendency to reduce the best oratory into a collection of damning sound bytes-- the article moves forward to draw parallels between the life led by Hughes and the one led by Obama.

It gets better: the piece then quotes Hughes' poem "I, Too, Sing America", Michael S. Harper's "American History", Claude McKay's "The White House", and Robert Lowell's "For the Union Dead", threading these American artifacts together into a narrative that culminates with Obama's address to the nation.

Perhaps the following lines from McKay's poem might serve as a fulcrum for the argument:

Oh, I must search for wisdom every hour,
Deep in my wrathful bosom sore and raw,
And find in it the superhuman power
To hold me to the letter of your law!
Oh, I must keep my heart inviolate
Against the potent poison of your hate.

This may all seem counter-intuitive in the abstract-- after all, Obama never bussed tables and Hughes never ran for President-- but Lundberg makes the case convincingly, so please do check it out.

Great Article in the Washington Post today

Poetry takes front and center during this week of protest against the Iraq war (or any war for that matter). Great programming throughout the weekend. Check out www.splitthisrock.org for more details and visit www.busboysandpoets.com for the complete schedule of events.

David Montgomery of the Post writes: 'The politicians have had their say, and the veterans, the military families, the kids getting arrested in the streets this week -- now it's the poets' turn".

"People in this society are starved for meaning," he says. "In a time of war, the government divorces language from meaning. . . . They drain the blood from words. Poets can put the blood back into words." Martin Espada -poet and professor at University of Massachusetts

folks can turn their lives around if they are given an opportunity

"People need to know that just because you are incarcerated does not mean you are not a productive member of society... folks can turn their lives around if they are given an opportunity... We have to reintegrate people back into society... Those released need to be helped to become active politically - their involvement can get them to feel connected back to their community."

"Poetry Kept Me Alive"

"Poetry is a way of keeping alive and keeping emotionally vivid .... you need to keep feeling ... without it you forget you are a human being ..." prisoner

"I was a very young angry child ... I marched for civil rights as a child... I got angry and militant... I got in trouble - not being able to read and write - I got locked up ... then Martin Luther King Jr. died and got angrier - they took away my reading in prison ... I got more angry and I did not stop until someone gave me back my book... I started reading and writing... I later formed a writers club"

"Poetry is much more important than food"

I am sitting here in the Langston Room at Busboys and Poets listening to prison poetry. What an incredible panel. This is the second day of "Split This Rock" poetry festival.

What an incredible collection of poets and artists. Yesterday Sonia Sanchez took center stage in the main dining room. There were over 300 poets - artists - dreamers - activists and friends sharing their humanity - together. All of us were there to mark the 5th anniversary of the war in Iraq. All of us struggling to make sense of the senseless - to make sense of the depravity - to make sense of the devastation - and ask ourselves - why?

We are all here to bare witness - to speak the unspoken - to hear the unbearable - and to express our collective rage.

We are all here to connect and reconnect with other artists and poets... to provoke and challenge "conventional wisdom".

obama yes we can speech

Barack in Virginia

The Barack Obama 'Yes We Can' Music Video With The Lyrics

brilliant.


---


LYRICS


It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation.

Yes we can.

It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail toward freedom.

Yes we can.

It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness.

Yes we can.

It was the call of workers who organized; women who reached for the ballots; a President who chose the moon as our new frontier; and a King who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the Promised Land.

Yes we can to justice and equality.

Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity.

Yes we can heal this nation.

Yes we can repair this world.

Yes we can.

We know the battle ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.

We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics...they will only grow louder and more dissonant ........... We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope.

But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.

Now the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of LA; we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people; we are one nation; and together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast; from sea to shining sea --

Yes. We. Can.

Oprah's speech for Barack Obama

in ucla

Instant Updates on Super Tuesday

Who are you voting for?

Barack Obama

Dennis Kucinich

John Edwards

Hillary Clinton

Ron Paul

Mike Huckabee

John McCain

Mitt Romney

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green party candidate

The large serving of meatloaf was homemade good, drenched in mushroom gravy and served over a large mound of mashed potatoes. It was comfort food at its best. The crab cakes are even more successful. Although they do contain filler, it's just enough to bind the lumps of crab together. They are served atop lobster grits with slivers of stir-fried carrots and peppers.
Service was attentive, and the servers were quick with refills on drinks, including water and sodas.

It seemed that every second table had a plate of fried calamari, and many tables were crammed with various kinds of pizzas.

Desserts were especially enticing. Here, I finally found the simple but delicious chocolate layer cake I'd had a taste for and a not-too-sweet carrot cake that was rich with spices.
The Washington Post

November 22, 2007

pink - mr. president with spanish subtitles

Bomani Armah, not a rapper but a poet with a hip-hop style, is hitting the big time

(Photo credit: By Bill O'leary -- The Washington Post)

Bomani Armah is a Busboys and Poets regular. For the Busboys family, he often leads Open Mic Night while inspiring his fellow poets, poetesses and audience members alike.

We were thrilled to crack open this morning's Washington Post and see that they had featured Bomani on the cover of the Arts & Living Section (C01). The article's title is aptly written: His Punch Line Smarts: Hip-Hop Parodist Bomani Armah Juggles Sense of Humor and Identity, and the contents of the article are even better.

A few of our favorite passages on his provocative and now infamous song "Read a Book" (for the full article from today's paper, please click here)

[Its] rise to [the] consciousness:

He's fixated... on what has happened to him over the past four months, how he somehow became a symbol of the coarsening culture. All because he wrote a crunk song, "Read a Book," that traveled the Internet, that was discovered by Black Entertainment Television, that was made into a video, that ignited a controversy, that turned Bomani Armah into a person he didn't recognize, someone accused of "setting my people back 100 years." Between the irate blog posts and the snippy interviews by the likes of CNN's Tony Harris, Armah discovered that he had suddenly become somebody.

Bomani's follow-up thoughts [below the surface] of "Read a Book":

" 'Read a Book' was a joke from the beginning," he says. "It was more about parodying the state of hip-hop." And now it has become the thing that defines him. He thought about that for a moment. "Damn, do this many people not get me?"
[...]

"I feel like I'm a sergeant out here in the field, showing how ridiculous the culture is," Armah says. He began performing his song around the Washington area and it caught on. He made it available for free download on his MySpace page, and the buzz grew. At some point the "Read a Book" MP3 reached the inbox of Reginald Hudlin, president of entertainment for BET, who passed it on to the network's animation division, which loved it and wanted to create an animated video off the track. Which is where Tyree Dillihay, a Los Angeles-based animation director, comes in.

OMN 11/13: Presenting Loren...

Loren doesn't just serve customers dinner at Busboy and Poets, he offers his poetry and a little bit of a soul. Great waiter. Great poet.

Love may leave you heartbroken and hopeless.
Tears may fall, but life must move on.

"Never had I heard such beautiful lies spoken. I tried to dry my eyes from time to time..."

OMN 11/13: Presenting Derrick...

OMN 11/13: Exclusive Interview - Erwin Catlin

OMN 11/13: Presenting Erwin Catlin...

OMN 11/13: Presenting Katrina...

OMN 11/13: Presenting Doug McCulloch...