We're for Contradancing ... It's Mourning at Heritage Square ... New Dracula Memoir Preview ... Rabe's Family History ... WEB EXCLUSIVE: Comics Icon Marv Wolfman ... Selling Medical Marijuana.
R.H. Greene's new Dracula memoir, "Incarnadine"
Writer R.H. Greene moved from LA to Bulgaria, close to the Romanian border, to write "Incarnadine, the True Memoirs of Count Dracula," which gets to the the legend's historical, emotional, and literary roots. The first piece of audio is an exclusive long version of the interview. The second is the shorter version we're airing for the Halloween edition of Off-Ramp. Come inside for info on his Book Soup reading.
R.H. Greene will appear in Los Angeles at a Booksigning at Book Soup on Sunday, November 15 at 4 PM. (Book Soup, 8818 W Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90069-2125, (310) 659-3110.)
From the news release:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
LOS ANGELES, CA - Roll over Edward Cullen, and tell Sookie Stackhouse the news. INCARNADINE: The True Memoirs of Count Dracula is coming to U.S. bookstores and to Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader. And despite the boom in vampire sagas, author R. H. Greene thinks he has something unique to offer.
"It's for grown-ups, for one thing," Greene says of the first installment in his two-part Dracula "memoir." "I've never read a Twilight novel or seen an episode of True Blood, but I stand in supermarket checkout lines, like everybody. It does seem like we're going through the Hannah Montana era of gothic fiction, doesn't it? I mean, there's an Edward Cullen Barbie doll coming out, you know?"
The conceit of Greene's novel is that it'sa "newly discovered Victorian artifact" once owned by Mina Murray Harker, the heroine of Bram Stoker's 1897 classic Dracula. In Greene's premise, the handwritten manuscript languished for over a century in the cornerstone of a remote Bulgarian farmhouse before being excavated by looters. Their "minor literary payload" turned out to be a first-person chronicle written by Dracula himself, covering more than three centuries of both his human and "un-dead" existence.
In the memoir, Dracula tells the story of his life before he became a vampire, and then leads the reader through his own unholy transformation and that of his three "wives." The action begins in the late Middle Ages during the last great battles of the Ottoman invasion of Eastern Europe, and ends with the first meeting between Dracula and Bram Stoker's protagonist Jonathan Harker.
The encounter with Harker sets the stage for a "very free" approach to Stoker's characters and event structure in Memoirs, Volume Two, which Greene has just completed writing. "Book two is called The Charnel House, and it's a very different piece of work, though in the same spirit as INCARNADINE."
According to Greene, the first-person voice lets the reader experience the Dracula mythos with an unusual amount of intimacy, and also allowed him to write a book in which "Dracula is the hero and God is the villain, which is the way I think a 'Prince of Darkness' would see things. We've kind of gotten away from the spiritual in vampire fiction, but it's clearly one of the core concerns in Stoker's original.
"There's also a whole wealth of detail in Slavic folklore that was unavailable to the author of Dracula, and it's been great fun researching those older traditions and trying to incorporate them into INCARNADINE in a way that feels authentic."
Interestingly, just a month after Greene's Dracula origin story goes to press, the Bram Stoker estate is coming out with Dracula The Un-Dead, an "official sequel" by Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt that Greene says "sounds like a detective novel based on the new Amazon extract."
While Greene says he was unaware of the sequel's existence while working on INCARNADINE, "I wish them a lot of success. Nobody deserves to benefit from the ongoing interest in Dracula more than a writer with the last name of Stoker.
"Between their sequel and my story of how Dracula came to be, I think there's a unique opportunity for readers to re-evaluate their relationship to one of literature's most lasting works. And who knows? Maybe it's Dracula's turn to reign supreme again over the genre Bram Stoker virtually invented for him. I'm pretty sure audiences are still going to care about him long after True Blood is just a pile of discount DVDs at Costco, and Edward Cullen has crumbled into dust."
Before the Wall - John's Parents Marry in Berlin
Today, Off-Ramp marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall with a trip deep into John Rabe's family archives. In this piece, filed for Savvy Traveler back in 1999, John traces his late mother's and father's footsteps in 1950s Germany. The piece, which John calls one of the best things he's ever done, includes rare audio from his collection, classified documents, and family letters that date back sixty or more years. Come inside for a link to the companion website that includes photos and more.
Victorian Mourners at Heritage Square
This weekend, get the real flavor of Victorian mourning at Heritage Square Museum, in Highland Park off the 110. KPCC's John Rabe talks with volunteers who dress in traditional mourning at the collection of old historical houses from LA's past: Meghan Ims, who makes hair jewelry, Andrea Mauk, who sits shiva at the museum, and Jordan Matthew Albert, who fashions himself as a "gentleman debunker."
From the news release:
Creepy Happenings at Heritage Square Museum
Enjoy the creepy happenings of Halloween at Heritage Square Museum during the Sixth Annual Halloween and Mourning Tours program. This two day event, hosted on Saturday and Sunday, October 24 and 25, is perfect for the whole family to enjoy.
Learn all about death and mourning etiquette during the Victorian era and participate in a funeral inside one of our historic homes. Find out about the movement of Spiritualism; what it was, who followed it and why, and perhaps have your future foretold by a fortune teller. See how other cultures celebrate and remember their loved ones as we look at the Mexican traditions and customs of Los Dias de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead. Finally, discover how even the intricate details of clothing played a role how Victorians showed their loss of a loved one.
On Sunday, (Oct 25), the Halloween and Mourning Tours program is more family friendly. Children ages 2 to 12 may come in costume, play period games, make 19th century harvest crafts, choose a pumpkin from the pumpkin patch (while supplies last), and listen to spooky stories in the Ford House by the San Gabriel Valley Storytellers.
The program runs from 12 to 4 p.m. each day. Museum admission prices are $10.00 for Adults, $8.00 for Seniors over 65, $5.00 for Children 6 to 12 years, and Free for Children under 6 and Museum members. For more information about Halloween and Mourning Tours, call the museum offices from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at (323) 225-2700.
Celebrating 40 Years of Preservation and Interpretation of the History of Southern California Heritage Square is an open-air, living history museum dedicated to telling the story of the development of Los Angeles.
The museum is regularly open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, from 12 to 5 p.m. (Hours vary November to February). Regular admission is $10/adults, $8/seniors, $5/children ages 6-12. The Museum is located at 3800 Homer Street, off the 110 Arroyo Seco Parkway (110/Pasadena Freeway) at Avenue 43, just north of downtown Los Angeles.
Special Halloween Preview: Comics Writer Marv Wolfman on "The Tomb of Dracula"
Marv Wolfman took Dracula places nobody have ever imagined when he started writing issues of The Tomb of Dracula for Marvel. The New Teen Titans and Vigilante are other highlights in a long career. In the first audio item, KPCC's Off-Ramp host John Rabe talks with Wolfman about Drac and the others in this Off-Ramp exclusive long-form interview. The second piece of audio is the shorter broadcast version.
Contradancing: A Living, Swinging Tradition
Every weekend in LA, hundreds of people gather to participate in the oldest dance in the American canon—Contradancing. This isn't a reenactment; it's a living tradition, and it's open to all comers. Correspondent Jackson Musker put on his dancing shoes and joined the throng at a recent Contradance in Brentwood led by longtime caller Susan Michaels. (READ ON FOR VIDEOS AND SLIDESHOW)
The following video features LA-based band The Syncopaths and caller Susan Michaels at a dance in Missouri. It offers a good introduction to Contra music, calling, and dancing. For LA-specific photos and video, continue reading below the break.
Intrigued? Head over to the dance this Saturday night (10/24) at the same Brentwood location that Jackson visited. (shown in the video below). Susan Michaels is calling, and a band called the Screaming Earwigs is playing. Sounds like a great time...
This clip shows a waltz at the Brentwood Contradance. Waltzes occur twice during a typical evening of dancing: once at intermission, and once at the end of the night.
A few more Contradancing photos, from a set on KPCC's Flickr page...
Dinner Party Download
Yo La Tengo's Ira Kaplan pulls out his organ... We get a hangul on Korean literate-ture... and "Food, Inc" director Robert Kenner gives Rico an industrial food complex.
CyberFrequencies: The World Gone to Pot?
Can Pot Make the World a Better Place? This week the US Government has pledged not to prosecute medical marijuana vendors or users. That's great news for Dann Halem, who runs a marijuana delivery service that uses Twitter to publish its menu. His goal is to sell enough pot to give away $10K grants to artists. CyberFrequencies takes a look at his high-minded intentions. (READ ON...)
Halem's not just using Twitter for marketing, his Tweets have becom part on the online conversation about legalizing dope.
With the state of California writing IUO's and donations to non-profits plummeting, medical marijuana clinics are promoting the idea that if pot is made legal, it could be taxed and profits could even be used to fund non-profits.
CyberFrequencies also talks to an anonymous somebody in the Cannabis Closet, who is finding the courage to come out!