Miami Book Fair 2006 November 12 - 20 Eight days of readings and discussions, including a three-day Street Fair presenting 300 authors, booksellers and publishers from the U.S. and around the globe; storytelling and kids' book authors at Children's Alley; rare books at the Antiquarian Annex; and International Pavilions, this year highlighting the cultures of Spain, Haiti, Brazil, China, Dominican Republic, and Israel. Details at www.miamibookfair.com

FYI:
AOL lifestyle screen this morning had an article "Items to Never Buy Brand New." First on the list: books! The example given quoted a new hard cover with 66% savings if bought at - (drumroll please!) Half.com! http://money.aol.com/top5/general/things-never-to-buy-new-1

http://www.theliteracysite.com

2006 Children's Book Week
November 13-19, 2006

Since 1919, educators, librarians, booksellers, and families have celebrated Children's Book Week during the week before Thanksgiving.

The theme for the 87th annual observance of Children's Book Week is More Books, Please! Use these materials to decorate your walls, promote your events, and most importantly, encourage kids to read.
http://www.cbcbooks.org/

Twelve Million Join Border Rewards Today marks the first day members in Borders Rewards Program can use their “award dollars” at Borders and Waldenbook stores. The company reported that 12 million members have enrolled in the loyalty initiative since it was introduced in February. Membership in Borders Rewards is free, with no enrollment costs or annual fees. Members receive exclusive savings every week, earn Personal Shopping Days every month, and earn Holiday Savings Rewards every time they shop. Five percent of all qualifying purchases made by members throughout the year go into a personal Holiday Savings account, which can be used now through January.

The Blues world lost a beloved figure on October 19, 2006, when Snooky Pryor passed away at the age of 85. While many blues fans recognized Pryor as a consummate musician and entertainer, few may realize what a pioneer he actually was. He was one of the first harmonica players to amplify his instrument. His early recordings are seen by many as the beginnings of the postwar Chicago Blues sound that is still so popular today. Though it is currently out of print, the Paula Records release, Snooky Pryor, captures Pryor’s earliest recordings into one collection, and a fine collection it is, featuring not just Pryor, but many of Chicago’s great early Blues pioneers at their best. For the rest: http://www.bluenight.com/BluesBytes/fk1106.html

Ford to Sell Lincoln Cars Through Amazon.com ABC News - USA Come Monday, the automaker will start selling its luxury Lincoln brand through online retailer Amazon.com. The MKZ sedan, MKX crossover ... http://abcnews.go.com/Business/IndustryInfo/story?id=2661439&page=1

Village Voice Keeping Jazz Musicians Alive Many world-renowned jazz musicians have no pensions, no medical plans, no hope by Nat Hentoff November 19th, 2006 8:25 PM Wendy Oxenhorn, the rhythm section for the Jazz Foundation of America photo: tinazimmer.com He played with Harry James and Sinatra and now was traveling 76 miles each way, four nights a week, with stage-four cancer just to make $100 a gig to support himself and his 92-year-old mother. After five operations, he's cancer-free, and we kept up his rent, car payments and put food on the table. —Wendy Oxenhorn, executive director of the New York–based Jazz Foundation of America I cannot even imagine the world without jazz and the blues, and I cannot imagine turning our backs on the very people who gave their lives, their life experiences, and the music to us all these years, especially now when they need us most. —Quincy Jones In 1918, the New Orleans Times-Picayune declared jazz "an atrocity in polite society," and fulminated that "we should make it a point of civic honor to suppress it. Its musical value is nil, and its possibilities of harm are great." But jazz went on to become an international language, surviving even in dictatorships that banned it. Nazi Germany condemned the music as a disgusting "Negro-Jewish" mongrelization. And in the years jazz was still prohibited in the U.S.S.R., a Moscow tenor saxophonist wrote me that he had translated my John Coltrane liner notes and covertly distributed them to other musicians in unlawful samizdats. But as the years went on, and more sidemen and leaders grew ill or fell out of fashion, few of the music's admirers here or around the world were aware of the barren last years of these musicians. Jazz musicians do not have pensions, and very few have medical plans or other resources. Pianist Wynton Kelly, for example—a vital sideman for Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie—died penniless. I was at the first recording session of pianist Phineas Newborn, whose mastery of the instrument was astonishing. As jazz musicians say, he told a story. His ended in a pauper's grave in Memphis. At last, 17 years ago, in New York, a group of musicians and jazz enthusiasts for whom the music had become essential to their lives formed the Jazz Foundation of America. Its mission is to regenerate the lives of abandoned players—paying the rents before they're evicted, taking care of their medical needs, and providing emergency living expenses. Because of Dizzy Gillespie—who had such a strong will to live and more generosity of spirit than anyone I've ever known—the Jazz Foundation has been able to send musicians to New Jersey's Englewood Hospital and Medical Center and its Dizzy Gillespie Memorial Fund. In 1993, Dizzy, dying of cancer at Englewood Hospital, said to his oncologist and hematologist, Dr. Frank Forte, a jazz guitarist by night, "Can you find a way to get the medical care I'm getting for musicians who can't afford it?" Since then, at no cost, jazz makers have received a wide range of treatment there—from cancer care to hip replacements. A very active Jazz Foundation board—including musicians and extraordinarily generous donors—has continuously expanded the foundation's reach to musicians in this area and elsewhere. (I'm an inactive member of the board. All I do is write about what it does.) The indispensable driving force at the Jazz Foundation is its executive director, Wendy Oxenhorn. I've known a number of people who gave their all to keep others alive—death penalty lawyers and human rights workers, for example—but I've never come across anyone who is so continually on call as Wendy, at all hours, even when she herself is not well. Says Wendy: "The average guy who calls in has not been to a doctor for 20 years. One hadn't been for 50 years." And she tells musicians and everyone else that "these are in no way handouts. It's a privilege to be of use to people who spent a lifetime giving us all they had." In January, the world's largest organization of what I call the family of jazz—the musicians, broadcasters, critics, producers, historians, et al, of the International Association for Jazz Education—will hold its 34th Annual International Conference in New York. On January 10, the IAJE, for the first time in its history, will present a special award recognizing the incalculable efforts of the Jazz Foundation in support of the New Orleans and Gulf Coast musician communities after the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Among those receiving the award is the Jazz Foundation's president, Jarrett Lilien, head of E*Trade Financial, for providing the funds to house hundreds of musicians and their families. He has done much more for the foundation, and is working on creating the Players' Residence for jazz musicians in New York—with low rents, a place for jamming, dental and medical facilities, recording studios, and a phone contact for gigs. It'll be the first of its kind in the world. More of that and other Jazz Foundation projects in a future column. Also getting the award is Agnes Varis of Agvar Chemicals Inc., who, along with her many other wide-ranging donations to the foundation, made it possible for Wendy and the staff to provide jobs for hundreds of musicians displaced by Katrina in eight states. The third recipient will be Wendy Oxenhorn. I hope the gala dinner will include a musical performance by Wendy. As she has demonstrated at the Jazz Foundation's annual benefit concerts at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, Wendy plays a penetratingly passionate blues harmonica. Soon after Katrina struck, Wendy—speeding to Lafayette, two and a half hours from devastated New Orleans—had already gotten new instruments for stranded musicians and helped persuade local clubs in the area to provide extra gigs for the players. She also got money for them to work in local schools and shelters. No request for help is beyond her determination. "We had one musician stuck in a shelter with his five-month-old baby," she recalls. "The Red Cross had run out of baby formula, and our social worker, Alisa, managed to get Similac (a maker of baby formula) to donate a case overnight." If you want to be part of this essential branch of the jazz family, you can donate to the Jazz Foundation of America, 322 West 48th Street, 6th floor, New York, NY 10036; 212-245-3999, ext. 21; or wendy@jazzfoundation.org. The life from this music encircles the globe.

IRS panel wants eBay auctioneers to pay taxes Kevin McCoy USA Today Nov. 20, 2006 08:55 AM Attention online auction sellers: An IRS advisory committee wants you - to pay federal income taxes on your profits. Anyone who sells goods online should first be required by law to submit a federal tax identification number, a change that would enable the IRS to track the transactions and seek any taxes owed, the committee recommended in a new report to the federal tax-collection agency. The recommendation is similar to an enforcement option raised in August by the staff of the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. The IRS advisory panel of tax specialists, citing the rapid growth of Americans selling via eBay, uBid and other online sites, said it's likely that "a significant number of those users either choose to ignore income reporting requirements or are unaware of their obligations." advertisement "We're trying to help close the tax gap" between what Americans actually earn and what they report to the IRS, said committee member Rachel Paliotti, corporate tax manager for Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island.... more here: http://tinyurl.com/yxmq9e

blue* is unabashedly dancin' a happy dance @ #858.



Sorry, carry on......

Now the world is a lesser place: Film Director Robert Altman Dies - By DAVID GERMAIN, AP Movie Writer Tuesday, November 21, 2006 (11-21) 08:55 PST Los Angeles (AP) -- Robert Altman, the caustic and irreverent satirist behind "M-A-S-H,""Nashville" and "The Player" who made a career out of bucking Hollywood management and story conventions, died at a Los Angeles Hospital, his Sandcastle 5 Productions Company said Tuesday. He was 81. The director died Monday night, Joshua Astrachan, a producer at Altman's Sandcastle 5 Productions in New York City, told The Associated Press. http://tinyurl.com/yhdznw

Yale's stolen Lewis Carroll letter surfaces on eBay November 26, 2006 NEW HAVEN, Conn. --A rare letter penned by author Lewis Carroll in 1890 recently surfaced on the Internet auction site eBay, where the seller detailed everything from its beautiful signature to its distinctive purple ink. To a Yale University librarian, however, it all sounded a bit too familiar for comfort. Now, police at the Ivy League university are investigating when and how the valuable letter was purloined from its Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The search for the culprit has taken police down a proverbial rabbit hole as they try to track the letter's path from Yale to a Utah-based collector, who purchased it from another seller without knowing it had been stolen. Carroll, whose given name was Charles Dodgson, was a teacher and minister best known for his 1865 children's classic, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." One of Carroll's favorite young friends, Alice Liddell, inspired the famous tale of a girl who tumbles down a rabbit hole into a land of satire, inverted logic and nonsense. Winifred MacDonald, another young friend of Carroll's, is believed to have helped immortalize Alice with her praise for the early version of the manuscript and her family's urgings to Carroll to publish it, according to literary scholars. The letter stolen from Yale was written to MacDonald, by then a grown woman, in 1890 to thank her for sending a photograph of herself in costume. Yale acquired that letter and about 25 others in 1971 when it purchased the papers of her father, Scottish writer George MacDonald. The eBay ad, which has since been pulled off the site and deleted from its archives, featured a picture of Carroll and an image of two of the letter's four pages. It promises authenticity, but glosses over provenance: "Originally obtained from Whitlock Farm book barn in Bethany, CT, in 1999," is all it says. Police called that business, officially known as Whitlock Farm Booksellers, after learning from library officials that the letter had been stolen. Norman Pattis, an attorney who purchased the book store last year, said neither his records nor those of the previous owners showed any sign of the letter passing through the shop. Police say it might have been lumped in with a larger transaction. "This is every used bookstore owner's nightmare, to be told an item you bought and sold in good faith was stolen," Pattis said. "The question of provenance is always an open question. How do you know what it is? And if it came to you from a legitimate channel?" Officers believe it might have passed through several owners in the undetermined number of years since it was stolen from Yale's collection. "Tracing it back all the hands it has gone through since it left Yale -- that's going to be the difficult part," said Yale police Lt. Mike Patten. The collector who offered it for sale on eBay returned it to Yale after learning that the university was the rightful owner. The Carroll letter is not the only item stolen from Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in recent years. Renowned dealer E. Forbes Smiley III, of Chilmark, Mass., is scheduled to start serving federal and state prison time in January after admitting he stole nearly 100 rare and expensive maps from libraries worldwide, including the Beinecke library. He was caught after a Yale librarian discovered a razor blade on the floor near the spot where he had been perusing books of maps. ------ Information from: The Hartford Courant, http://www.courant.com

Hello Raps and all. Another big loss for jazz & blues. Hard-living jazz legend Anita O'Day dies at 87 POSTED: 12:59 a.m. EST, November 24, 2006 http://tinyurl.com/wco6u LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Anita O'Day, whose sassy renditions of "Honeysuckle Rose," "Sweet Georgia Brown" and other song standards that made her one of the most respected jazz vocalists of the 1940s and '50s, has died. She was 87. O'Day died in her sleep early Thursday morning at a convalescent hospital in Los Angeles, California, where she was recovering from a bout with pneumonia, said her manager, Robbie Cavolina. "On Tuesday night, she said to me, 'Get me out of here,'" Cavolina said. "But it didn't happen." Once known as the "Jezebel of Jazz" for her reckless, drug-induced lifestyle, O'Day lived to sing -- and she did so from her teen years until this year when she released "Indestructible!" "All I ever wanted to do is perform," she said in a June 1999 interview with The Associated Press. "When I'm singing, I'm happy. I'm doing what I can do and this is my contribution to life." Cavolina recently completed a feature film about O'Day and accompanied her to shows and on tours. >>> Also: http://www.anitaoday.com/