It’s been 30 years since John Belushi was found dead from a drug overdose at a hotel on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. Belushi was one of those crazily natural comedians – whether playing…
Coolin’ it with the Blues Brothers
Posted in Movies
Month: February 2012
I got my first credit card when I was in graduate school in the 1970s. I was a student at Ohio State University on a fellowship and had enough money to warrant a card. It…
Wow, I thought as I saw the dusty stone African figures on the auction website. It was déjà vu, because I had seen an exact piece like it at another auction a week ago. It…
It was a room full of black folks with, I’m sure, one collective thought: These white men looking down on us from their gold-framed pictures must be turning over in their graves. Not turning over just…
The art of Samuel Countee
Posted in Art
The disappointment in my friend’s Valorie’s voice was palpable. She had missed the amazing oil painting of a guitar player by an African American artist named Samuel Countee. It was hanging on a wall near…
Artifacts from a prominent doctor’s office
Posted in Ephemera/Paper/Documents, and Health & Medicine
The couple who bought the house some 15 years ago had left the fourth floor intact. Now, they needed the space for their family, and had called in the auction house to dismantle the clinic…
The many sides of African American art
Posted in Art
My friend Kristin was staring at a painting when I walked up to her. That looks like a woman’s hat, she said, nodding to a fuzzy mix of flowers on a canvas before us. As soon…
The two yellow boxes were extremely bright among the mix of dull and unremarkable items on the auction table. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but the color caught my eye. I picked up a…