IMBABAZI THANKSGIVING

Excellent word comes from ABC News, if it holds. A report about Frederick, the Imbabazi Orphanage artist and photographer, is scheduled for Thanksgiving on "PrimeTime Thursday" (10 p.m. ET, 9 p.m. CT). His hands were amputated during the Rwanda genocide of 1994 and have since been replaced by prosthetics with help from supporters of the Rwanda Project: Through the Eyes of Children.

Frederick's story was originally supposed to run Aug. 14 on ABC's "World News Tonight" but didn't: That turned out to be the night of the big Northeast blackout. This time the piece will have an added mention about project founder David Jiranek, who died accidentally on Aug. 17.

I've written about the Rwanda Project many times before as "an arts project of the most stirring kind." (Definitely click on the flash introduction.)Frederick is one of 13 children who were part of it. See for yourself who Frederick is. Go to the group photo "Meet the Children" and run your mouse over his face in the upper lefthand corner (he's the one in the yellow shirt).

Meantime, as I've written before, you can listen to an NPR interview of orphanage founder Rosalind Carr, who is 90 and still going strong. "She's everybody's feisty grandmother who can entertain you for hours, sitting at her knee, listening to her fabulous stories," David Jiranek said not long before he died. "She has perfectly coiffed gray hair, is a magician with gardens and plants, has tea every day at 4, and then slugs [it out] with the government, landlords, etc. fighting for her kids."

As I've also written before, how about buying a print of one of "The Rwanda Project" artists? Hell, buy more than one. It's a tax-deductible donation. Here's how to help. If you can't afford the price of a print ($100), just enjoy the photos on the site and forward the URL to friends.

POSTSCRIPT: Late word comes that there will be no mention of David Jiranek, founder of the Rwanda Project, in the "Primetime" piece. No matter, even if it's possible that of all the stories connected with the Imbabazi Orphanage, Jiranek's might actually be the most fascinating. He was too modest ever to have believed that and, had he lived, he never would have allowed anybody else to believe it. But those who knew him will appreciate what I mean.

November 26, 2003 12:12 PM |

Categories:

Me Elsewhere

'WILD SIDE' STILL ROCKS 

Nelson Algren was one of the great American authors of the 20th century, it is no exaggeration to say, and among the most neglected. Consider his underrated classic, "A Walk on the Wild Side." The title -- popularized and co-opted as an idiomatic phrase by Hollywood and Madison Avenue (institutions Algren loathed) -- is familiar to most anyone who speaks English or knows Lou Reed's lyrics. But the novel itself? Hardly.

BUSTER KEATON REVISITED 
Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat is not a biography. "This book is merely a fan's notes," Edward McPherson writes in the introduction, although his publisher ignores the disclaimer and calls it a biography on the cover. In fact, the book is a bit of both, a difficult combination to bring off unless you're David Thomson, who set the standard with Rosebud, his penetrating rumination on the life and career of Orson Welles, which was nothing if not a distillation of every obsessive thought he ever had about the myth and the man and all his movies.
LAUREN BACALL, STILL SALTY AT 80 
When Lauren Bacall writes that her singing voice ranges "somewhere between B minus sharp and outer space," she's being candid and funny. It's not every stage star with two Tony Awards for best actress in a musical whose vocal talent offers so little promise. (OK, Harvey Fierstein excepted.) Still less would one admit it.
THE STARS ACCORDING TO BOGDANOVICH 
Peter Bogdanovich's superb collection of movie-star profiles and interviews -- a sequel to Who the Devil Made It, his interviews of top film directors -- begins with an affectionate tale about Orson Welles that reminds us just how intimate the author's connection to Hollywood's greatest has been. But contrary to what we've come to expect from dime-a-dozen celebrities and celebrity interviews not worth two cents, the tale avoids bromidic egotism and journalistic platitudes.
SAMMY'S WHITE DREAMS 
Four decades ago Lenny Bruce sentenced Sammy Davis Jr. to "30 years in Biloxi," stripping him of "his Jewish star" and "his religious statue of Elizabeth Taylor." Now we have two new biographies of Davis that spring him from ridicule, if not from doubts about his legacy, and restore a measure of dignity to a black entertainer whose huge fame and success never overcame his devout wish -- indeed his lifelong effort -- to be white.
more picks

Sites to See

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by CriticalMASS published on November 26, 2003 12:12 PM.

NO LIMITS was the previous entry in this blog.

THE BOLD AND THE BOLDER is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Creative Commons License
This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.