Thursday, January 13, 2011

Gillibrand and Wasserman Schultz Visit Giffords

At the end of this short, moving description, you can click on their full

report, recorded on Air Force One. It's wonderful, not to be missed, and

as they suggest, read it and weep. All three women are amazing and

genuine friends. That they were elected and sit in government gives me

more hope - joy, actually, than anything I've read in quite a while.

May it do the same for you.

-Ed

PS. Several of the emails I've sent you on Tucson come from Alternate. I

selected them from others, many of them important and/or poignant.

They're doing more on this than any other site. Check them out, yourself.

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/435807/gillibrand_and_wasserman_schultz_visit_giffords%2C_describe_her_amazing%2C_doctor-shocking_responsiveness/#paragraph2

Gillibrand and Wasserman Schultz Visit Giffords, Describe Her Amazing, Doctor-Shocking Responsiveness

By Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

Posted at January 13, 2011, 7:00 am

Grab a handkerchief before you read this one. As Obama mentioned in his Tuscon speech last night, Gabrielle Giffords has opened her eyes -- a remarkable development for a patient that was shot in the head less than a week ago. But it gets better. Giffords' close friends and fellow young Congresswomen, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and House Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), were allowed to see her in the hospital yesterday. Late last night, aboard Air Force One, they excitedly and passionately detailed their visit to reporters, describing not only an eye opening, but a remarkable arm lift and attempt to hug her husband -- movements that not only shocked her attending doctors, but apparently revitalized Dr. Lemole's faith in emotion entirely. "I just witnessed the impact of friendship and what you guys -- he said, you did this here today," said Wasserman Schultz. An excerpt:

SENATOR GILLIBRAND: Okay, well, I'll go, and then you'll go -- okay. Well, we were very excited that we were even going to have the chance of getting to visit her hospital room. We didn't know when we first came whether we had that opportunity. And so when we did have the chance, we were so excited to get to see her. And when we came in the room, the doctor was there, her parents were there, Mark is there, and the Speaker -- Speaker Pelosi and Debbie and I went in.

And we just were so excited, so we were telling her how proud we were of her and how she was inspiring the whole nation with her courage and with her strength. And then Debbie and I started joking about all the things we were going to do after she got better. And we were holding her hand and she was responding to our hand-holding. She was rubbing our hands and gripping our hands so we could -- she could really -- we knew she could hear and understand what we were saying and she moved her leg, and so we knew she was responding. And the more we joked about what we were going to do, she started to open her eyes literally.

And then you have to recognize, her eyes hadn't opened -- we didn't know that -- and so she started to struggle. And one of her eyes is covered with a bandage because it was damaged in the gunfire. So her eye is flickering. And Mark sees this and gets extremely excited. And we didn't -- I didn't know what that meant. And so he said, Gabby, open your eyes, open your eyes. And he's really urging her forward. And the doctor is like perking up and everyone is coming around the bed. And she's struggling and she's struggling and it's a good -- we couldn't figure it out, maybe 30 seconds, where she's really trying to get her eyes open, like doing this, this, this.

Wasserman Schultz goes on to compare the feeling of witnessing such a miracle to the feeling of giving birth. Read the full transcript at the White House site but, again, bring a tissue before you click. Text is real. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/01/13/press-gaggle-senator-gillibrand-and-representative-wasserman-schultz-abo

By Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

Posted at January 13, 2011, 7:00 am

No comments:

In a Benefit Concert for FolkWorks

July 17th at 2 PM

at the

Tropico de Nopal Gallery, in Los Angeles,
1665 Beverly Boulevard, East of Alvarado.

Swing Riots is an LA Jazz Gypsy Balkan Klezmer Folk ensemble with six versatile fully digitized members who recreate the brilliant music of two-finger Belgian Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt— quite a feat, in that it takes them only sixty fingers to accomplish what Django did with two. Perhaps that’s why the word genius is so often found within two syllables of Reinhardt’s legendary name.

But if you close your eyes, it hardly matters; you can drift back in time to the sweltering erotic nights of Paris’s Left Bank in the 1930s, when Reinhardt was remaking the landscape of modern Jazz, and having to relearn the guitar after suffering major burns in a 1928 fire that changed his life and modern music forever. Without the use of the third and fourth fingers on his left hand he played everything with just the two he had—and that proved to be enough.

The Swing Riots perform an irreverent gumbo of Gypsy & Creole Jazz, Klezmer & Romanian Horas, Parisian Musette & the occasional wild card thrown in for good measure. The SwingRiots are comprised of 6 core members who have played for decades in everything from Balkan dance bands to traditionalSwing groups including: Bill Marks: Guitar & Voice; Pat Mac Swyney: Mando-Guitar, Tenor Banjo, Mandolin, Cornet, Ney, Harmonica & Voice; Linda Kodaira: Violin; Nick Casillas: Clarinet & Soprano Sax;Ben Getting: Upright Bass.

Ed Pearl has done a bit of his own reshaping of the musical landscape of Los Angeles, as the creator of the legendary folk music club The Ash Grove in 1958, and had Django Reinhardt not passed away in 1953, he would surely have graced the Ash Grove stage as well, along with Muddy Waters, Bill Monroe, the New Lost City Ramblers, The Greenbriar Boys, Phil Ochs, Mance Libscomb, Lightning Hopkins, Flatt and Scruggs, Mississippi John Hurt, Jackie DeShannon and Ry Cooder.

Now Ed has embarked on a new venture, catching up with lost time as it were, and will present Swing Riots in his new summer concert series sponsored by Ash Grove Music (www.ashgrovemusic.com).

It will be a doubly special event, since it is a benefit concert for FolkWorks, LA’s free and only folk music magazine, now in its tenth year of continuous publication, covering the waterfront of LA’s sometimes bewildering variety of folk related solo performers, dance and instrumental groups and festivals, as well as national touring artists that come through town.

FolkWorks (www.folkworks.org) was just honored this past May with the Topanga Banjo-Fiddle Contest Music Legend Award for 2011, and needs the influx of funds from this extraordinary concert to keep the presses rolling, as it tries valiantly to beat the odds that have made magazine publishing a quixotic and oft-times heroic endeavor.

So support the Ash Grove, support FolkWorks, and enjoy an unparalleled afternoon of world music from the Lost Generation that these wonderful Los Angeles musicians have rediscovered, mastered and made their own. For this musical experience of a lifetime Swing Riots will be joined by vocal duet Jess Basta & Christine Tavares, formerly of VOCO in a variety of Yiddish and early jazz standards. Don’t you dare miss it!
--Ross Altman

Ed Pearl

Thursday, January 13, 2011