When our central character Hue Manatee is nearly dispatched by an angry boat propeller in the opening scene, the close call is witnessed by a passing itinerant musician, fiddler and singer Flickati Cricket. The two opposites find commonality in their mutual awareness of environmental degradation and somehow vaguely know that the responsibility lies with the two-legged ones. Rather than accept this condition as inevitable, the two set off in search of a solution, seeking the counsel of renowned teacher and change agent, Leon Chameleon. When they find Leon he is scurrying about getting his affairs in order. The two youngsters try to engage him in answering their questions, but he remains distracted and aloof until Hue mentions the “change” in their environments. Leon’s attention sharpens upon hearing mention of his favorite subject and he acknowledges the presence of the two. They soon learn that Leon is about to embark on a long and arduous journey to his ancestral homeland, the Galápagos. When the two younger ones protest the imminent loss of their new mentor, Leon invites them to join him in the hope of learning more about their questions. But before setting out Leon takes them to meet Shining Eagle, the shaman of the Northern Hemisphere Imáji Nation, to bless their journey. Shining Eagle gifts them with one of his own feathers to enable them to transcend gravity and speed them on their way.

En route to the Galápagos the three travelers meet and share songs and perils with a whale and a trio of dolphins, ultimately rescued on the back of Ella Condor, the medicine woman of the Southern Hemisphere Todos tribe, who delivers the three seekers to their final destination. Upon arriving on the rocky shores they’re welcomed by the well-known street corner quintet, Acapellago. They sing together, after which Leon reveals that for him this has been a one-way trip, and he prepares to take the ultimate journey. Flickati realizes that her mission is to employ her music as a teaching medium, and Hue understands that his function is to “act locally” and return home to clean up his own neighborhood. As the three are about to go their separate ways, Hue awakens from semi-consciousness with a bump on his forehead from the early morning boat propeller incident. Seeing only the faces of his concerned manatee family about him — no wise chameleon or rapscallion cricket, no eagle or condor spiritual leaders, no dolphins, whale or Galápagosian singers — Hue realizes that his colorful odyssey was all just a strange and beautiful dream from which he has awakened wiser and more determined than ever to make a difference in the life of his troubled planet.

Hue Manatee’s Quest is available as a Screenplay, a Stage Adaptation in several forms, a Book Manuscript and a CD. Contact James Durst: JamesDurst@aol.com

After 37 years, in October of 2011 I returned briefly to Vietnam to honor my friend Pham Duy on the occasion of his 91st birthday. Even though Pham Duy was born October 5, 1921, the Vietnamese begin counting “one” at birth. He is that nation’s ‘Pete Seeger/Woody Guthrie’, singer/composer of poems, operas, symphonies and thousands of songs, and we had toured together throughout South Vietnam in the spring of 1974 at the invitation of the US Information Service. Our friendship led to a collaboration where each of us translated ten of the other’s songs into our own language and then published together a bi-lingual song book, Songs/Ca Khuc, under the auspices of the Vietnamese American Association. Someone at the party had actually found a copy at a used book store. I’ve recorded several of these translations and used two in my musical, Hue Manatee’s Quest. The distinguished red-jacketed gentleman seen briefly in the front row is Pham Duy. After living 30 years with his family in Southern California, he returned to Saigon in 2005 to live out his days. Together with his two oldest sons, Quang and Cuong — also respected musicians in their own right, he continues to fill the air — and our hearts — with wonderful music.  –James

RIPPLES of PEACE

111 Ways You Can Help Create Peace in the World
Edited and Compiled by Rae Thompson
With Photos by Mark Tucker
Foreword by Louise Diamond

RIPPLES OF PEACE is an exquisitely wrought collection of quotes, poems, aphorisms, exhortations and prayers from global peacemakers lovingly created by writer Rae Thompson and complemented with photos by this generation’s Ansel Adams, Mark Tucker. Should live on everyone’s coffee table or travel in one’s backpack for ready reference.

$17 includes US shipping (elsewhere please add $5)

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You know we need more food for our hungry ones
It takes a lot of work to get the job done
We need more food by the tons and tons
What we don’t need is any more guns

You know we need education for our younger ones
It takes a lot of work to get the job done
We need better schools for our daughters and our sons
What we don’t need is any more guns

REFRAIN
‘Cause any more guns is many more tears
We’ve got enough guns for a thousand years
Shut the factories, then retool
Not another gun for another damn fool

You know we need to clean the river of the pollution
It takes a lot of work to get the job done
We need to dredge up the poison where the Hudson runs
What we don’t need is any more guns

REFRAIN
‘Cause any more guns is many more tears
We’ve got enough guns for a thousand years
Shut the factories, then retool
Not another gun for another damn fool

BRIDGE
‘Cause guns don’t hammer and guns don’t saw
They don’t help build anything at all
They can’t help a seed grow tall into the sky
They only make people bleed
They only make people die

We must declare our independence from petroleum
It takes a lot of work to get the job done
We need to harness up the power of the water, wind and sun
What we don’t need is any more guns

REFRAIN (2x)
‘Cause any more guns is many more tears
We’ve got enough guns for a thousand years
Shut the factories, then retool
Not another gun for another damn fool

The Bengali song Duranta Ghurnir (it means “Life is a whirlwind,” more or less) that Madhumita and I sing together on my Internationally Unknown CD could be this past year’s theme song. We made 3 international trips: Egypt in February (belated honeymoon), Israel in May (we performed 12 concerts in 9 days) and then India to visit family in Kolkata for 10 days at the end of October/beginning of November. Returning home November 6th (my fifty-fifteenth natal observation), our connecting flight in Delhi departed just after midnight, arriving at JFK soon after 6:30am — so with all the time zonal changes, I actually enjoyed around a 33-hour birthday. And  since most folks were not traveling on the Diwali holiday, our half-full return flight afforded each and every one of us 3 seats across which to stretch our languid forms in relative luxury.

Our Israel trip got off to a rip-roaring start when upon arrival I discovered that Delta had managed to separate the neck from the body of my guitar. Some feat considering my travel case, specially-designed for  checking as baggage, had been back and forth to India 5 times, Israel twice before, and countless other destinations without incident. Good news was that our friends Michal & Bob Mark at nearby Neveh Shalom/Wahat al Salaam had only just met a young furniture designer who also builds guitars, and so my new best friend Essi managed to perform the miraculous re-attachment surgery — literally overnight — to get us back on the road without missing a beat. And he refused to accept payment for his work! And then after a coupla months Delta acknowledged its culpability and coughed up a reasonable balm for my anguish, thereby also avoiding public embarrassment on YouTube from my already half-composed Delta Blues. “Yes,” they said, “we’re aware of the United Breaks Guitars viral video on YouTube.” Case closed (and guitar safely stowed within). Speaking of YouTube, you can go there to see & hear highlights from several of our performances that included some Bedouin and Arab schools, the African Refugee Center & the Arab-Jewish Center in Yaffo. Also the Folk Clubs in Karmiel, Tel Aviv and Kibbutz Tzora, as well as the Jacobs Ladder Festival on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. What’s the Hebrew word for whirlwind?

In Egypt we plied the Nile by hotel boat, communing with pharoahs and queens, mummies and monuments from Luxor to Cairo, where we pierced the darkened heart of the Second Pyramid with our presence and annoyed some camels with the same. Upon arrival we were momentarily confused when our charming guide Abdel invited us to “make chicken,” until we realized he was simply asking us to check in.

October 1st Madhumita concluded her employment at Covidien after a 2.5-year tenure, and is presently in job-seek mode. Departure gifts from Covidien have given her a modicum of breathing room in which to find a new position. We are optimistic. Alas, I never got around to proposing to Covidien — a surgical supply company — my idea for a home surgery kit, to be called (wait for it) “Suture Self.”

We drove to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving and Mom’s 92nd birthday, stayed awhile, then Madhumita flew home while I drove between the snowflakes circuitously homeward via Chicago, Memphis, Little Rock, Dallas and Tulsa before turning the horse toward the barn. My legendary weather karma kept me virtually dry the whole way.

I continue to gain color and strength — and weight — as I enjoy my ongoing recovery from last year’s medical detour, and am nearly back to what we euphemistically call “normal.” Projects abound and 2011 promises to be a productive year. We wish the same for you.

With much Love from Here,
James & Madhumita

–© James Durst 2010

Departing Kolkata around 8pm on the 5th, we arrived in New Delhi for a brief layover before catching our connecting flight back to New York just after 1am. Thus began my longest birthday ever which, when spanned across 9.5 time zones following the path of the sun, amounted to somewhere around 33 hours when all the candles were finally extinguished at the tail end of the day. Add an hour for the return to Standard Time, and you’ve got yet another bonus. An extra 10 hours or so to contemplate one’s successful arrival at ‘retirement age.’ REtirement, hell! I’m not even tired yet! In many ways I feel as though I’m just hitting my stride. If you must know, I’m fifty-fifteen.

Having once again survived the adrenalin rush of Kolkata traffic, where lane separations are non-existent and taxis and cars jockey for advantage with buses and trucks, often spilling over into opposing traffic, in a cacophony of the Chaos Theory in practice, I distracted myself from the death-defying crosstown foray by putting pen to page as we flew through the fray (in much the same way that my Song From Slovenia came into being between Maribor and Ljubljana in 1972). Here’s the result:

KOLKATA TRAFFIC JAM
Not for the weak of will
Nor the fainthearted
Kolkata traffic jam–
Don’t get me started
I and my latest meal
Shall soon be parted

We surge, we thrust, we jab
And beg the question
Is that red traffic light
Just a suggestion?
Kolkata traffic jam
Impedes digestion

Kolkata traffic jam
Show some compassion
Before my awe-filled eyes
My life is flashin’

White knuckle sandwiches
‘Twixt bus and lorry
Where angels fear to tread
We’re bound for glory
But they do this every day
Why should I worry?!

Kolkata traffic jammed
Intensely lyrical
Angelic evidence
Densely empirical
Another day unscathed
Another miracle!

Kolkata traffic jam
Show some compassion
Before my awe-filled eyes
My life is flashin’

–James Durst
30-31 October 2010 © 2010

]]> http://www.jamesdurst.com/home-from-india-safe-and-sound/feed/ 0 http://www.jamesdurst.com/this-human-gumbo-called-india/ http://www.jamesdurst.com/this-human-gumbo-called-india/#comments Fri, 29 Oct 2010 15:38:01 +0000 james http://www.jamesdurst.com/?p=576 KOLKATA, INDIA

Have just returned to the family home in Birati from visiting both Ramakrishna Mission and Dakshineshwar Temple  earlier this evening, located on opposite sides of the Ganges, from the banks of which we dipped toes into the roiling waters. Oh, the humanity…!

My sixth visit to India and Kolkata specifically since 2000, and I think I’m finally beginning to be able to maintain a relatively steady heartbeat in traffic. Breathe in, breathe out and repeat. It helps that my brother-in-law Partha is a better-than-competent driver, just assertive enough to compete with the lunatics on all sides.

I have great and growing affection for this undulating human gumbo called India and am feeling overwhelming gratitude to have this family, both the immediate and the genomic, in my life. Would that I could transmit the impressionistic tapestry that fills my senses with pungency and cacophony. These leave me overwhelmed as well.

And well is what it all is. I hope you are the same.

This project is something I’ve wanted to do for years. It’s my small way of honoring his memory and paying tribute to one who gave me — and us — so much.” The WHERE I’M BOUND tour coincides with the projected release of Bob Is My Co-Pilot, James’ tribute CD.