The Flying Brick Library, Richmond’s Oregon Hill-based radical lending library, has announced plans to reopen in early 2009.

Roughly in the tradition of Grace Arents, who started the first free library in Richmond (now the William Byrd Community House), Greg Wells and friends started the Flying Brick Library in their house on Pine Street. Now that household is dissolving, and the Flying Brick Library is changing hands. Style Magazine has an article.

For more info please check out http://www.matcallahan.com/

A short Biography on Mat Callahan: 

Born 14 July 1951 in San Francisco. Mat’s Mother and Grandmother were dancers. He spent his childhood dancing at their school Peters Wright Creative Dance. At 13, he took up music. Later, he got involved with the Black Panthers and other revolutionaries. Refused induction into the US Army. Worked with San Francisco Mime Troupe and co-founded the Mime Troupe sponsored band Red Rock. He began composing and performing with the duo Prairie Fire, recording several records and touring the US. Upon his return to San Francisco he formed a band called the Looters. They made several albums, toured the US, Canada, Nicaragua and Europe. He helped found the artists’ collective Komotion International. Spent ten years operating art gallery, recording studio and performance space. Edited and published the magazine Komotion. Produced albums for numerous artists. Authored the book Sex, Death and the Angry Young Man. Formed group the Wild Bouquet. Made two albums. Toured US, Canada and Europe. Began work on Testimony. Testimony published Spring 2000. Began work on the album on “San Francisco”. “San Francisco” completed September 2001. Completed “The Trouble With Music” in 2005.

A recent live review of Mat and Yvonne:

Gabe Kindler of the Sursee Woche, January 24, 2008:

“The voices of Mat Callahan and Yvonne Moore harmonize not only very well, but often blend on stage and create something so new and intense that no one can escape from.  They are vocally powerful and poetic, producing acoustic intensity and touching intimacy.

Songs with fascinating rhythms and sound patterns tell American stories about rebels, outcasts, and the hunted.  They return at times to the era of protest songs during the Seventies and Eighties, but always lead back to the present.

They invite the audience to their parlor, and make clear how the joining of two musical worlds create a thrird, which, to discover, seems an enjoyable adventure for both of them.”

506 s. Pine Street.

The FlyingBrick Library Presents: Moving Images - Aseries of six movies to educate and ponder while it’s still coldoutside. Come to the library on Thursday evenings and watch somedocumentaries about real people’s struggles and triumphs withus.
The Library is at 506 S. Pine St. and can be accessed by wheelchair

Thursday, February 7 7:30 pm

UP THE RIDGE: A one-hour documentary by Nick Szuberla and Amelia Kirbyabout a maximum security prison in Virginia. In 1999 Szuberla andKirby were DJ’s for Appalachia’s only hip-hop radio program inWhitesburg, KY when they received hundreds of letters from inmatestransferred into nearby Wallens Ridge, the region’s newest prisonbuilt to prop up the shrinking coal economy. Filming began thatyear. The movie gives an in-depth look at the U.S. prison industryand the social impact of moving hundreds of thousands of inner-cityminority offenders to distant rural outposts.

‘When I visitedWallens Ridge in the spring of 1999, it was new and as yetunoccupied…It was both lavishly expensive and needlessly remote,built not because it was needed but because it was wanted bypoliticians who thought it would bring them votes.” –Joseph T.Hallinan Going Up the River: Travels in a Prison Nation, 2001

Thursday, February 21 7:30 pm

WINTER SOLDIER: Adocumentary about the Winter Soldier Investigation, a publicinquiry into war crimes committed by American forces in Vietnam, heldat a Howard Johnson motel in Detroit in February 1971. The Vietnam Veterans Against the War organized this event where morethan 125 veterans spoke of atrocities they had witnessed andcommitted.

On the 37 year anniversaryof this event the words of one participant veteran are eerilyrelevant:

‘Wegathered not to sensationalize our service but to decry the travestythat was Lt. William Calley’strial for the My Lai Massacre…if Calley were responsible, sowere his superiors up the chain of command, even to the president.The causes of My Lai and the brutality of the Vietnam War were rootedin the policies of our government as executed by our militarycommanders.’ –DonaldDzagulones,

AndLater: No! The Rape Documentary-about African-Americanwomen’s experiences, THIRST!-about water privatization, TheTake-about workers seizing control of factories in Argentina andWetback-documenting theexperiences of migrant workers crossing the border.