Art and Culture

I’m Jim McKeown, welcome to Likely Stories, a weekly review of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.

Fiona Davis is a best-selling author of several novels.  She lives in New York City.  She graduated from the College of William and Mary and Columbia Journalism School.   The Chelsea Girls is her fourth novel.

The appearance of a mysterious work of art allows an overlooked artist to appear as well.

It sounds like something straight out of science-fiction: a mysterious silver monolith standing 10 feet high deep in the remote deserts of Utah.  No one knows how it got there; no one knows how long it’s been there; no one knows who put it there.  Utah state biologists counting bighorn sheep from a helicopter discovered it on the 18th of last month.

Very quickly there was speculation in the art world that it could be the work of a minimalist sculptor named John McCracken, who died in 2011. Those who knew him and his work well however were skeptical.  A spokesman for the gallery that 

You probably haven't heard many songs performed faster than "Don't You Know Me, Thomas?" by Rev. H.B. Crum and the Mighty Golden Keys.

Hi, I’m Jim McKeown, welcome to Likely Stories, a weekly review of fiction, Non-Fiction, and Poetry.

With hundreds of books in my TBR pile, sometimes it takes years to get to a particular book.  I am not sure how I came across this one, The Restaurant of Love Regained, by Ito Ogawa.  This interesting and absorbing book was released in 2008.  It is a splendid story of love, loss, and Japanese cooking.  Ito was born in 1973 and she authored several children’s books.  She also runs a popular website about cooking, where she supplies daily recipes of Japanese cuisine.

A Comic strip character that once caused a riot reflects the power of art to convey significant messages.

When I was a little boy, I had two animal toys sitting on my bookcase.  One was an alligator standing up on his hind legs and the other was a little gray furry thing wearing a striped shirt. I had a vague sense that the two came from a comic strip, but I really wasn’t sure.  I knew their names, so I—or my parents—had to have been familiar with where they came from.  The alligator’s name was Albert.  The grey thing was a possum named Pogo.

Pogo was a comic strip drawn by Walt Kelly that ran in newspapers from 1948 to 1975.  Kelly was born in 1913 and worked as an animator on the Disney films  

The Hightower Brothers were a fine gospel family band originally led by 10-year-old lead vocalist Robert Lee, better known as "Little Sugar."

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On this month's episode of Conversations with Creative Waco, Emily MacDonald shares about the Historic Waco Foundation's upcoming exhibition "Making History: The Art of Historic Waco" which features works by local artists of all skill levels and styles. Melissa Pardun, co-owner of Maker's Edge, joins Kennedy Sam to give an update on the Makerspace and highlight how to give the gift of creativity this holiday season.

Hi, I’m Jim McKeown, welcome to Likely Stories, a weekly review of fiction, Non-Fiction, and Poetry.

Graham Swift won the Booker Prize for his novel Last Orders, and I had hopes for another win, but not for this year!  His latest novel is Here We Are.  This story is set in 1959 Brighton-by-the-Sea.  According to the dust jacket, there are three main characters: Ronni is a brilliant young magician, Evie, his dazzling assistant, and Jack, who is a born entertainer.  The language is wonderfully comic, but it requires some patience. 

Even in times of economic troubles, some cities are choosing to use tax dollars to support their local arts scene.

In Jersey City, New Jersey earlier this month, the election was not just about Biden vs Trump. Voters there had before them the question of a new tax that, if they approved it, they would soon be paying.

And approve it they did, perhaps unlikely enough in today’s climate.  What’s more is that the second largest city in New Jersey has now become that state’s first to establish a municipal tax that will go to support the arts.  Estimates are that it could generate between $1 and 2 million per year. A city arts committee will make decisions about where the money will go.

The Jersey City mayor has worked for two years to get this referendum on the general election ballot.  He didn’t want to just stick a line for funding the arts into the city budget.  Doing that would make it too vulnerable to arbitrary

Brother Isaiah's Church of God in Christ Choir's "Climbing High Mountains" is a great example of music from Vee-Jay Records' large stable of first-rate gospel artists from the mid-1950s.

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I’m Jim McKeown, welcome to Likely Stories, a weekly review of fiction, Non-Fiction, and Poetry.

Diane Cook lives in Brooklyn, New York.  She has had a number of short stories to her credit.  Her second novel, The New Wilderness, is a gripping tale.  This story is about a group of people who were moved off of the “City” and forced into a large uninhabited area of wilderness.

Sometimes we’re reminded that the power of human creativity can be limited only by human frailty.

One of the most creative musicians of the second half of the 20th century was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania on the day World War Two came to an end in Europe.  Keith Jarrett was a piano prodigy almost from the time he was a toddler.  He began piano lessons before he was 3 and gave his first full recital when he was 7.  After high school he went to Boston to study at the Berklee College of Music but left after a year to go to New York City and play. Like so many other great players he did a stint in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers after meeting Blakey at a Monday night jam session at the Village Vanguard in 1964.

Like many jazz players, he put a high premium on improvisation, but was determined to push that as far as possible.  In 1973, he began playing totally improvised solo piano concerts.  He would approach the piano with no music

The Soul Seekers of Fort Worth released several unjustly ignored 45s for Houston's funky and feisty Peacock label. 

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