This Womans Work…

FCW: in the wake of the executive order this weekend trading away FULL women’s healthcare rights in order to pass the healthcare reform bill, PLEASE read this excellent Daily Kos diary and offer thoughts & comments – not enough people have read it and it is VERY good.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/3/20/848309/-Abortion-History:-From-This-Womans-Work-To….-Mens-Choice

we can only hope that a new executive order will be issued REVERSING the earlier one.  whatever the President can DO, he can UNDO.

THAT will be change we can TRULY believe in.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Greetings from LA, fellow FCW worldwide.

I wanted to share some more info about a great event I was recently invited to participate in by the luminous Sabrina Taylor (http://www.sabrinataylormusic.com) and the Artists United Live group at the Artist Palooza Warehouse Space in Santa Monica, CA.  Also performing were Kirrily Keys & Allison Geddie, along with Sabrina Taylor.  DJ King James spun between sets.  Survivors of breast cancer and their caregivers were on hand to share their own stories, and beautiful art and installations decorated the space.

ARTISTS UNITED LIVE 10*10*09 ~ AMY CLARKE

BELIEVE! breast cancer survivors & their projects

AMY CLARKE ~ ARTISTS UNITED LIVE 10*10*09

inspiring installation, quotes clipped to the lingerie, great paintings too

ARTISTS UNITED LIVE 10*10*09

SABRINA TAYLOR hugging a survivor, ARTISTS UNITED LIVE 10*10*09 ~ AWARENESS

Prevention through diet, exercise, and lifestyle are some of the most helpful ways to ward off conditions! In addition to hearing from the survivors there who beat the odds, my mother is a two time mastectomy survivor, and after her first diagnosis, was told by her first doctors she would not live to see her children grow up.  Well, she ignored the dire predictions, sought a second opinion and alternative care, and is still alive and teaching today.  May her story, the stories of those at the AWARENESS event, and the stories of those yet untold inspire others to believe in HOPE FOR A CURE ~ and remind all of the brave women out there to never give up.  KEEP BELIEVING in the resilience of your own body and mindpower to heal ~ it can be your best ally.

Also, LOVE YOURSELF EXTRA! take care of yourself, do regular breast self-exams, eat healthy whole foods and those high in anti-oxidants, and make sure to get regular mastectomies…use this month to educate yourself about breast cancer and how to stay safe, healthy, and strong.

http://www.nbcam.org

http://www.nationalbreastcancer.org

Hope these photos and the stories inspire others.

Peace, Amy

http://www.amyclarke.com

FCW: Gaia Grove / Indiegrrl Night LA! 7/31/09

(FCW ~ while this event is the “East Side” version of two Indiegrrl events happening in the last week in July in Los Angeles (Mon Jul 27 is “West Side” in Venice CA) it is the WEST COAST version of the FCW brunch date (in tandem w/Aug 2 Governor’s Island brunch on the EAST COAST in NYC!)  and who knows, spontaneous FCW brunch may happen Sunday Aug 2 – after all, there was one Sun June 7th in Las Vegas of all places!, and a mini version Sunday July 5 in Westwood, Los Angeles . . .

XOXO ~ Amy Clarke, FCW, Gaia Grove, Indiegrrl, MAAT Music…

http://www.amyclarke.com

http://www.myspace.com/amyclarke

http://www.facebook.com/amyclarke

Tweets by amyclarke

FRIDAY JULY 31 2009

Indiegrrl 2009 Women in the Arts L.A. Conference :: Hollywood – Theatre District

FRIDAY JULY 31, 2009
9PM –11PM at Café Muse LA ~
9PM-9:30 networking, mingling
9:30-11PM round robin sharing of individual talents

Cafe Muse, 323-464-MUSE
6547 Santa Monica Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90038
http://www.cafemusela.com
East of Highland Ave, btwn Las Palmas & Wilcox Aves.
Street Parking/Valet Available Some Nights

Gaia Grove presents Indiegrrl Night
Networking, music, spoken word, conversation, art & more…

Gaia Grove (http://www.gaiagrove.org) presents an evening with Indiegrrl – Independent Women in the Arts! As a prelude to the Nashville Conference coming up Aug. 20-23 at the Hotel Preston, (http://www.indiegrrl.com), join other Indiegrrl artists, creatives, innovators, musicians & entrepreneurs in a relaxed evening of networking, music, art and conversation. Indiegrrl works to create networking, educational, and showcasing opportunities for women. We are an international members organization that supports women in the arts regardless of race, religion, or sexuality. Indiegrrl welcomes, with open arms, songwriters and musicians with all genres of music, spoken word and poets, story tellers, comedy, visual arts, film, music production, radio, dance and more. Indiegrrl is working hard to produce various events including an annual conference, community festivals, individual showcases, contests and more for our members to get involved with and is working to build a community of women to support each other in their artistic careers. We partner with various community groups & charitable organizations to produce events supporting and showcasing women and to bring more awareness to local women artisans & to donate to various charitable causes.

If you would like to perform, introduce yourself, your entrepreneurship, creative skill, service, or artistry, email gaiagrove@gmail.com

Scheduled to perform/present: Amanda Abizaid, Amy Clarke, Athena Reich (in from NY), Genevieve, Julie Chadwick, Lisa Turner, Melinda Ortner, Michael Ann Azoulai, Nance Broderzen, TK Promo

http://www.gaiagrove.org
http://www.indiegrrl.com
http://www.cafemusela.com

FCW LA EVENT: FRI 13 IN VENICE, CA

FCW SOCIETY (LA) & Gaia Grove supports this upcoming event at The Talking Stick, Venice, CA. FIERCE AND FABULOUS FEMALE MUSICIANS . . . FREE SHOW!

FREE!

FEED YOUR HEAD WITH GREAT MUSIC & LYRICS,

FEED YOUR BODY WITH TASTY FOOD FROM THE TALKING STICK,

FEED YOUR SOUL WITH MAGIC AND LOVE,

AND FEED THE MUSICIANS (IF YOU ARE ABLE).

ENJOY!

http://www.amyclarke.com

http://www.gaiagrove.org

http://www.netteradio.com

Goddess Night SUN March 2 – LA!

The Goddesses gather on SUNDAY MARCH 2 in Los Angeles! Send your friends in CA! Have fun at the FCW SOCIETY 3 YEAR ANNIVERSARY – we’ll miss you!

HOPE TO SEE YOU ALL on WEDNESDAY MARCH 26 at THE BITTER END in NYC! BRAND NEW SONGS…FCW and GAIA GROVE already starting to be involved with this show in NYC…want to help be a part of the MARCH 26 show raising awareness for the environment? amy@amyclarke.com…

http://www.amyclarke.com http://www.myspace.com/amyclarke http://www.scorpfaery.com
http://www.myspace.com/fcwsociety
http://www.myspace.com/gaiagrove http://www.gaiagrove.org
http://www.myspace.com/women4acause

wisdom.hope.change.dream.love.

This is the freshly painted mural I saw on the corner in my neighborhood, immediately after walking out of the polling place to vote in the Democratic Primary in California…it’s my dream ticket…combined…

Beautiful, yes? I named her Gaia…

For more about our GaiaGrove/FCW Society meetup on the LEFT COAST on the same day as the FCW meetup in Brooklyn on Sunday Feb 3rd, see: www.gaiagrove.org

Ans save the date! WEDNESDAY MARCH 26th 2008 – Amy Clarke back in NYC to play The Bitter End – at 7:30PM…$8…Mary Edwards opens at 7PM
www.bitterend.com
www.amyclarke.com
www.myspace.com/amyclarke
www.scorpfaery.com
www.myspace.com/gaiagrove

Benazir Bhutto

Benazir Bhutto: From the Oxford Union to her Last Rally in Rawalpindi

Posted December 27, 2007 | 06:06 PM (EST)

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by Arianna Huffington
The world is debating the political fallout from Benazir Bhutto’s assassination — from fear of chaos in Pakistan to the impact of her death in Iowa. There is already no shortage of analysis about the national security implications of her death, but I want to write about the young woman I met in England before she became a player on the world stage.

She was at Oxford. I was at Cambridge. And by a strange coincidence I became president of the Cambridge Union and she became president of the Oxford Union. The anomaly of two foreign women heading the two unions meant that we ended up debating each other around England on topics ranging from British politics to broad generalities about the impact of technological advance on mankind.

When I checked my blackberry this morning at 5:28 am LA time there was an e-mail from our news editor Katherine Zaleski: “Benazir Bhutto killed by bombing.” As we found out afterwards she was killed by an assassin’s bullet. But just as the news was filled with the details of her death, my mind was filled with how full of life she had been every time I had seen her, including the last time in 1998 when she came to my home in Los Angeles for a dinner (which Harry Shearer, also there, wrote about). She was in exile, her husband in jail, and she was separated from her children. But still, there was an incredible life force about her, a sense that no matter what life brought her way, whether a tough debating argument, or exile, or her father’s death by hanging, or the deaths of her two brothers — she could deal with it, and she would prevail. Until the rally in Rawalpindi.

Three years earlier, I had seen her at the height of her power and fullness of life when she was staying at Blair House in Washington, DC as the visiting prime minister of Pakistan — the first woman prime minister in the Muslim world. She had her third child with her and took me to her bedroom to meet her. Then she sat on the bed with her baby in her arms while we laughed about our lives on the debating circuit, and talked about her life now. (Including how much she loved her husband. She was trying to convince me that even though it was a marriage arranged by her mother, she had fallen in love with him, as if she had spotted him herself across a crowded room.) She had arrived at Oxford from Harvard, where she had gone at 16 after her convent school in Karachi. But wherever she was, she was at home because she was always at home in her own skin.

I wrote a book about fearlessness last year, long before the rally in Rawalpindi, where she went against everyone’s advice and despite the fact that there had already been a failed attempt at her life. She was fearlessness epitomized. Many will debate her political successes and failures, her personal probity in public office, the charges of corruption against her and of course the national security implications of her death, but for now I’m just filled with a profound sadness about the end of a woman that was always brimming with life. I asked her to blog before she returned to Pakistan and blog she did. Here’s a portion of what she wrote this fall:

I long ago realized that my personal life was to be subjugated to my political responsibilities. When my democratically elected father, Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was arrested in 1977 and subsequently murdered, the mantle of leadership of the Pakistan Peoples Party, our nation’s largest, nationwide grassroots political structure, was suddenly thrust upon me. It was not the life I planned, but it is the life I have. My husband and children accept and understand that my political responsibilities to the people of Pakistan come first, as painful as that personally is to all of us. I would like to be planning my son’s move to his first year at college later this month, but instead I am planning my return to Pakistan and my party’s parliamentary election campaign.
I didn’t choose this life. It chose me.

The world lost a brave woman yesterday. Strength to her family and the people of Pakistan.

voice of a woman, voice of a nation

Anna Akhmatova, widely hailed as “the voice of Russia” during World War I and II, the Russian revolution, and the Stalin terror, had a voluminous output of richly textured works. She has inspired many of my songs and I found this work of hers today strangely resonant to current tides in America and reminded me of my recent visit to meditate with the earth in Runyon Canyon near Griffith Park – see photos where I found rose petals on the ground at http://www.scorpfaery.com

anyhow, here is the poem by Anna:

LAMENTATION

I won’t throw up my hands

at the anguish of Leningrad

I won’t wash it with tears,

I won’t bury it in the ground.

I’ll go a mile beyond

The anguish of Leningrad.

And not with a glance, not with an allusion,

Not with a reproach, not with a word,

But with a bow down to the ground

In a green field

Will I pray.

1944
Leningrad

Anna Akhmatova

What a powerful woman. If you like Maya Angelou or if you just like good poetry, please check her out. Her story is amazing, and the Destiny’s Child “Survivor” song was more than written for her. Lovers lost in the war, in the terror, and through it all, she remained a powerful, creating force, born 1889, published from 1909 “Make it easy for me, all alone, /To embark on my final dream, /Make the tall sedge roar/That spring, my spring, is here” through 1966 “Necessity herself has finally submitted, /And has stepped pensively aside.” (Feb ’66) Best translation of her is also by a lifelong scholar of hers and another fabulous woman – Judith Hemschemeyer, with editor Roberta Reeder.

amy@amyclarke.com

P.S. In Music Playoffs this week! Vote: http://www.musicplayoffs.com

Indiegrrl! Festival for Change

Check out FCW performing for change in the Blue Ridge Mountains linked from FCW Amy Clarke at www.scorpfaery.com…for more on these artists, visit her site!

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The Indiegrrl! Festival For Change was a ton of fun, really amazing artists, powerful music, I made a lot of new friends and fans – and some will be trekking north from VA to check out my DC shows this upcoming weekend! More on DC soon – for now, some shots from the weekend…
on the road, headed into the blue ridge mountains

amy clarke at the keyboard

julia carroll, corey houlihan

the divine rachael sage

leslie berry, vicki blankenship

a happy amy after playing

sunset on the way home

Now, attention turns to DC! Send all of your friends!
SAT NIGHT SEP 15: http://www.redandblackbar.com
SUN NIGHT SEP 16: http://www.phase1dc.com

AND DON’T FORGET – THURS SEP 20th – MO PITKINS, NYC!