Somerville writer Pagan Kennedy emailed me about a new book ("Why The Long Face?") of short stories by local writer Ron MacLean, who used to direct Grub Street (a writing school now located in Boston). MacLean reminds me of the well-regarded fiction writer Timothy Gager, whose work deals with the ying and yang of relationships, existential crises of men in their early middle age, with liberal use of the Somerville-area environs for a backdrop for his fiction.

The lead story "Aerialist" deals with a man who recently lost his wife due to illness, and how he and his young daughter deal with this tragedy. The daughter takes to walking a tightrope, much to her dad's bemusement. The father learns from the girl's aerial alchemy to let go of the past and move on, and to let his daughter stand on her own two small feet:

"Kate, turned, her back to me. Took three steps away and hurled her herself backward, into air, into sky, legs gently propelling, upside down, floating, above the rope, my body resisting the urge to leap forward, to catch her, her feet spinning back to earth…Katie's face a big, blurry grin. In her element. Where did this come from? Where will it lead? I can't answer these questions. What I can do is wait for Katie land, and hold her while she's here."

There is a lot of local color in this book. Characters drink at Bukowski's, a watering hole in Inman Square. They hang in my favorite barbecue joint in Davis Square, Redbones. In this selection, we have a right on description of Bukowski's, a bar whose patrons might have driven "the dirty old man" of letters to even more libations:

"The bar is called Bukowski's, which is unfortunate, and it is populated by young men-late twenties-early thirties. You wouldn't believe the goatees. Excuse me, Van Dykes. Most of these guys are in advertising and already lost."

As in most collections, some stories are strong and others less so. MacLean can obviously spin a story. You may have the nagging feeling you have read stuff like this before-but, hey-a little more won't hurt you.

School St. Somerville, Mass. 02143 dougholder@post.harvard.edu

initiation

before you

become

a poet

you gotta

be a

taxi driver

so you can get

the feel of the

gun that the customer

presses against your

neck and demands your

money

before you

become a poet

you gotta go on

strike and carry a sign

cause the company you

worked for

won't give you a

five dollar raise

before you get

to become a

poet

you gotta wash your hands

in the dirt and grime of

mud sloggin through the hell

of vietnam

your face blackened so

the enemy out there

can't see you while you're

waitin in the dark to kill

someone

before you get to

become a poet

you gotta face death, pain,

loneliness, prison, jail, hard times,

good times, phony dames, scams on the run,

liars, cheats, and bein crazy…

pay your dues, man…

then, and only then

you

will become a poet.

Ben Fundis accepted the award for their documentary "Border Stories." Internews, a media development organization, hosted the ceremony, which celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and was attended by world leaders and celebrities.

"It was quite a special moment to give a short acceptance speech before President Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, Mariane Pearl, Richard Branson, and Peter Gabriel," said Fundis, 29, who freelances with Powderhouse Productions. "It was not something we could have expected when we were camped out on Boca Chica beach at the mouth of the Rio Grande talking about the many miles and months to come."

"Border Stories" took home the public award, voted on worldwide through the Internet. Fundis and Long started the project on December 6, 2007, exactly a year before they won the award.

"We were frustrated by the level of dialogue in the mainstream media," said Fundis, who also made a film called "Que Mira?" about street children in Nicaragua. "We wanted to let people who live and work along the border offer a point of view that is more than sound bites; we wanted to let them tell their own stories."

"Border Stories" is a web-based documentary series. The team also includes John Drew, of New York, and web developer Sophia Dengo. Each short video they make tells it's own story. Long calls it a mosaic.

"We want a full understanding of the border region and the issues. The way we did that was look at different characters that might be able to tell different sides of the story. They function as a piece, a part, of the documentary," said Long, 28, a student at Harvard Law School. "Those videos are meant to make you feel like you sat down with that person and had to a moment to understand them."

After receiving a small, private grant, Long and Fundis traveled along the border for three months, meeting people and capturing their stories. They drove from Brownsville, Texas to Tijuana, Mexico in a 1986 Volkswagen Vanagon. They had thousands of dollars worth of equipment hidden under the seats and a Rottweiler mutt mix for security. Long, formerly a reporter for the Patriot Ledger, said they used journalistic techniques for their stories.

"Sometimes we would meet people who would change our plans or who would be really compelling," said Long, of Inman Square.

The compelling character that helped win the award in Paris is a 19-year-old Mexican man who grew up in this country as an illegal immigrant.

"He's Mexican by birth, but he doesn't feel Mexican," Long said. "It's hard to figure out where you're supposed to be.

"You really feel that the line is so thin at the end of the day and we're connected."

The team plans to keep telling the stories of the US-Mexican border. They are sponsored by Projectile Arts, a New York non-profit organization of filmmakers, but after spending nearly $20,000 they are at the end of their grant. Long said they are excited about the award and the 1,000 Euro prize that came with it.

"We're thrilled," Long said. "It's nice to have that recognition that will help us to continue developing this model."

With the help of the Columbia Education School, they hope to create a curriculum out of the films for teachers to start a dialogue in their classrooms.

"I will be really happy if this project can contribute in some way towards making debate more open and honest about immigration issues," Long said. "I'd be really happy if the project can appeal to people to watch it and maybe watch somebody whose opinion they don't agree with, but find a way to listen to what they're saying."

DJ BC, local Somerville mash up artist, puts on Boston's night of "Bootie" once a month. The name Bootie itself is a mash up, a clever play on the word 'bootleg' and the stash of a pirate. The club night officially opened as Bootie in San Francisco in 2003. However, before that it had originated in London under the title "Bastard," also a name that played with the concept of mash ups.

Mash ups are a mixing together of multiple songs to create something new. Traditional mash ups are made up of two songs, but mash ups can really be any number of songs spliced together, be it four, five, six, or more. Bootie fliers illustrate this concept by splicing two different celebrity faces together to form one person.

Mash ups can be made for varying purposes-sometimes their intent is irony or humor by the clever splicing of opposing styles, like The Ramones' "Hey Ho, Let's Go" with "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer." Sometimes their purpose is to highlight an idea or concept, like Christmas, as Booties latest free album Santastic Four highlights. But it's always about putting together existing ideas to create something new.

DJ BC confirms that this is like a literary reference in writing, or a cultural reference in pop art. "Like with Andy Warhol taking something that was a piece of commercial crap and elevating it to being a piece of fine art hanging in a gallery," he said. "Of course you want to make people dance, but you want to continue to push it further and further in terms of the sources you use. The further flung, the better."

After officially opening as Bootie in San Francisco, the night proved so popular (over 1,000 people hit the floor each night) that its founders decided to expand to other cities. Only one year later they had opened successful Bootie nights in LA, New York City, Paris, Munich, Hong Kong, Mexico City, and the Burning Man Festival.

The club nights are actually run off an interactive Internet message board. This is where the original night in London, Bastard, took off from. The message board allows DJs around the world to talk and exchange songs, mixes and ideas. "It's really a community," DJ BC says. "People all over the world. The coolest thing is someone in Boston can make a track and it can be played in San Francisco that night. So before a song is twelve hours old it can be played around the planet."

DJ BC himself made his own name in electronic music with his album The Beastles, a mash up of Beastie Boys and Beatles songs. He was originally inspired back in college by blues, classic rock and punk rock, and then got into hip hop. Hip-hop in particular fascinated him, he said, by the way it could recontextualize things so well.

"The referencing was mind-blowing," DJ BC says. Besides The Beastles, DJ BC has worked on many other albums, including his latest, Strictly Mixed and Mashed with reggae-punk band Big D and the Kids Table. He has mixed and done radio shows all over the world, including France, the UK, New Zealand, and all the major cities in the US.

In December 2007 he was awarded a Boston Music Award for his remix of "Dave's Shiny New Rap." He has now been putting on Boston's version of Bootie since May.

"Bootie is a very open-inclusive night," he says. "The Bootie vibe is welcoming to everyone.. Everyone can hear something up their ally and be represented at this night."

And finally, although internationally acclaimed, DJ BC is not above his local town. "The scene in Boston is cool," he says.. "Its a pretty diverse scene…Somerville [in particular] is a city of artists, from the city light displays to the Kickass Cupcakes, to the DJs, to the bands, to the painters. It's really pretty amazing how many artists there are in Somerville and how cool Somerville is. I love being from Somerville, I'm very proud of it."