The force-of-life known as Meg Tuite messaged me last week, asking if I’d record a short video of myself, about a minute, saying how I “planned to rock 2017.” Although I am not a fan of my own voice, I do like singing in a choir!

Meg collected a number of voices for this montage. Here is Standing Together, Produced and Edited by Meg Tuite & Ken Robidoux for Connotation Press

The video is, by turns, thoughtful, and provocative, and hopeful.  It features the faces and voices of:

• Bethany W. Pope (00:16),
• Jordan Blum (00:41),
• Jack Cooper (1:27),
• Joanne Adams (1:56),
• Indigo Moor (2:04),
• Lidia Yuknavitch (2:36),
• Malacki Rodriguez (3:10),
• Meg Tuite (3:37),
• Jesse Bradley (6:49),
• Ravyn Stanfield (7:08),
• David Snow (8:06),
• Kari Nguyen (8:18),
• Ramon Lovato (8:24),
• Sam Snoek-Brown (8:50),
• Teisha Twomey (9:18),
• Robert Vaughan & Len Kuntz (9:55),
• Cynthia Lee Ameli (10:31),
• Paul Beckman (11:04),
• Laura Stride (11:52),
• Anne Elizabeth Weisgerber (12:25),
• Leif Miller (13:21),
• Sheldon Lee Compton (13:30),
• Kevin Ridgeway (13:58),
• April Bradley (14:14),
• Josephine Adams (14:40),
• Joanie Reese (15:15)
• Vivian Faith Prescott (16:09),
• Matt Tuite (16:38),
• Frankie + Emily Stern  (17:02), and
• Cass McMain (19:27).

Books Meg recommends include: Citizen by Claudia Rankine; Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates; Anthology entitled Show Me All Your Scars; Black Peculiar by Khadijah Queen; she also recommends Toni Morrison and James Baldwin; Olio by Tyehimba Jess, and an anthology entitled Women Write Resistance. Her final recommendation was Intersex: A Memoir by Aaron Apps.

Thanks to Meg and Ken for producing this neat time-capsule for January 2017.

I wish you all a year of good reading and writing, filled with happiness, success, and good health.