s i n i m p e r m e a b l e

Jozef Jason came to the Fuller Cut barbershop for one reason: the kid’s mohawk. It’s almost second-grade picture day and he wants to look good. He hops up onto an antique swivel chair and asks his barber for the new ‘do.

“It’s high on the top and short on the bottom, and lines that go in a diagonal line where the top is gonna be,” explains the 7-year-old.

Jozef came for the mohawk, but his dad, Keith Jason, chose this barbershop over all the others in Ypsilanti — a working-class town just outside of Ann Arbor, Mich. — for a different reason. At the Fuller Cut, kids get a $2 discount if they read a book aloud to their barber.

“It’s an amazing thing,” Jason says. “It’s helping my pockets, it’s helping their education and it’s helping prepare a better future for them, so I love it.”

This program made its way to Ypsilanti because of Ryan Griffin, who’s been cutting mohawks, fades and tapers here for 20 years. He says he first read about a similar literacy program in Harlem, N.Y., so he asked his boss if they could replicate it. Within a few weeks people in the area were donating books to the cause.

Choose A Book And Read To Your Barber, He’ll Take A Little Money Off The Top

Photo: Courtesy of Keith Jason

From By Bodies of Water by Naveed Khan

A bestseller already, the new book from Random House and author Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me, looks to be the must read nonfiction title of the summer.

“We have a responsibility to treat ourselves kindly; then we will treat the world the same way.” -Natalie Goldberg in “Writing Down the Bones”

As awesomecon 2015 wraps up, check out these vintage comics an archivist at usnatarchives recently came across:

Read more at: Rediscovering Black History » Record of the Week: African-American Comics During World War II

Lumumba Speaks: The Speeches and Writings of Patrice Lumumba (1958-1961) (Book date: 1963)

Introduction: Lumumba, the first Prime Minister of the Congo: During this period, Lumumba’s powers as a speaker became famous; he dazzled friends and foe alike with his ability to create electrifying speeches at a moment’s notice … Lumumba never betrays his vision of a united Congo and Africa nor lowers the lofty heights he believed men could attain … this is a powerful portrait of a singular leader.

“The time for drawing up plans is not past. Africa today must act. The peoples of Africa are waiting impatiently for such action to begin. African Unity and Solidarity are no longer mere dreams; we must now embody them in concrete decisions.

“With one mind, one will, and one heart, we will soon make Africa, a really free and independent continent.

“Long live African Independence and unity!

“Forward, Africans, to total liberation!”

-Patrice Lumumba, August 25, 1960, Leopolville

Happy National Women’s History Month! 29 Awesome Books With Strong Female Protagonists

A sneak peek at 5 of the 365 pages in my new book, 1 Page at a Time: A Daily Creative Companion. Want more? I’ll mail you a page from my advance copy so you can help complete it before release! Details here.

Jeff Wilson, author of Mindful America: The Mutual Transformation of Buddhist Meditation and American Culture, on mindful sex.

Informed Sources reviewed by John Sinclair, East Village Other (1969)

Willard Bain’s book was originally printed by the Communications Company in San Francisco the summer of 1967 and given away free in the streets. Informed Sources is the first post-Burroughsian novel, post-McLuhan also; and in its intentions and design strictly contemporary. Bain, (who has the same initials as Burroughs—WSB—strangely enough) has gotten down to the simple major questions of control and power and what language has to do with it.

Information, is the thing that will set people free. Informed Sources. Language is the primary control device in western culture. You believe what you hear and see, but if you are given access to only a small fragment of the whole spectrum of information, your possibilities are extremely limited. If you are brought up on television and the daily press and the attendant honkie media (including the church and the American educational system) you will be given to believe, until you get the chance to find out for yourself by going out into the world, that everyone lives like a honkie in America except the crooks, commies, filthy scum dope fiend rock and roll demonstrators, black power advocates, and other deviates, and these people are all your (and America’s) enemies. It’s only when you start to become one of these types that you find out how the media have been brainwashing you. You read about yourself or your friends in the papers and you can see just how much the honkie media will manipulate information in order to keep people under control.

1, 2

“In 2002, having spent more than three years in one residence for the first time in my life, I got called for jury duty. I show up on time, ready to serve. When we get to the voir dire, the lawyer says to me, “I see you’re an astrophysicist. What’s that?” I answer, “Astrophysics is the laws of physics, applied to the universe—the Big Bang, black holes, that sort of thing.” Then he asks, “What do you teach at Princeton?” and I say, “I teach a class on the evaluation of evidence and the relative unreliability of eyewitness testimony.” Five minutes later, I’m on the street. A few years later, jury duty again. The judge states that the defendant is charged with possession of 1,700 milligrams of cocaine. It was found on his body, he was arrested, and he is now on trial. This time, after the Q&A is over, the judge asks us whether there are any questions we’d like to ask the court, and I say, “Yes, Your Honor. Why did you say he was in possession of 1,700 milligrams of cocaine? That equals 1.7 grams. The ‘thousand’ cancels with the ‘milli-’ and you get 1.7 grams, which is less than the weight of a dime.” Again I’m out on the street.”

powerful Black Science Man

Exactly.

GUERRERO

Oil on canvas with book pages

cm 70 x 100

more at www.alessandrapagliuca.com

#29 Brave New World. 2014

Based on Aldous Huxley's 1931 novel 'Brave New World'.