Ciao all! I keep thinking of the phrase ‘in November we remember’, an old Wobbly saying, and also fitting for the month of giorno dei morti / dia de los muertos.

Read on for some reflections on our public intellectuals and the importance and beauty of their work, upcoming classes and music events, some fine reads, and some new videos. See you in class or at an event or around town soon, I hope.

Oh yeah, and go vote on or by November 3! It’s one important part of how we shift things. I make a little voting guide for some of my fam by request, and am always happy to share how I’m voting and why if asked.

Monthly class: November 14

My monthly in-person Mediterranean Movement class is November 14, and you should come if you are in the bay area! All the details and registration info can be found here.

Events

We’re getting together again for the Dia de Los Muertos procession in San Francisco. Reach out if you’d like to join us. We processed in solidarity last year as well, and it was a joy. I shared some of why this is imporatnt to me in the 2025 call to fellow Italian Americans (in the most expansive sense):

We’ll be entering the space as guests, ones made to feel welcome, for sure, while decidedly decentering ourselves to participate just as we are, here on this land, today.

We are joining the procession in the spirit of solidarity with our neighbors; with a spirit of joy as people who also celebrate our ancestors (those of blood, culture, arts, friendship, activism, nature, and land) on November 2; with a spirit of memory as descendants of immigrants and migrants who were once treated shamefully and cruelly; with a spirit of defiance toward our paesanə who choose hold up authoritarianism and xenophobia; and with a spirit of momentary pause for cyclical celebrations that come around just when we need them, and remind us be together when we need one another.

Aswat is playing a big concert on Saturday, November 7, but it has sold out! If you want to see a few of our members play, including me, come to the Arab Film Festival opening Thursday, November 5. You can see the film El Sett, about Um Kulthum, and then enjoy our show after the movie.

I’m a member of the all-volunteer coordinating crew for the Howard Zinn Book Fair, and we have a great program lined up for you on Sunday, December 6. Books are always relevant to this space, and Gruppo Pizzicato will also be playing some tumes at noon. Come sing along!

Inspirations

Joseph Sciorra has passed. He was a special person, a public intellectual, an ahead-of-his-time thinker who was intersectional by nature, and supportive to those who were just coming upon ideas that he had been considering and writing about and researching for decades. Those are ways I would like to strive to be, and it’s hard, though he sure made it look easy. I send my deepest condolences to his life partner, their children, his family and friends, his colleagues, and all of us whose lives he touched with his work. May his way be easy.

I had attended a lecture with Joe put on by the Calandra Institute less than a week before his passing. His work will live on.

Last month, I had a good day. In the morning, I attended a remote lecture with one of my teachers Barbara Crescimanno, speaking from Palermo, about donne che suonano i tamburi dalla preistoria ad oggi (women playing drums from prehistoric times to today). That evening I went to beloved local bookstore Bird & Beckett to hear Gil Duran and Amy Westervelt in conversation, talking about the most pressing issues of our time. A day of being in virtual and physical rooms with people who get why the past informs the future, why art and politics intertwine and are both necessary, why being smart and thoughtful and going deep into research and then sharing it is crucial, was inspiring.

Videos

I have a few new videos over on my Vimeo page - Uelli Uella and Bahlam Beek. The place my band rehearses on Sundays has lots of little rooms and outdoor spaces, and sometimes on breaks, feeling all alive from the music we make, I slip away and dance, and sometimes hit record as I do, and sometimes I share. I spent a lifetime performing in full makeup and glitz, and doing less of that has made me love unpolished in-the-moment dance even more. Dance demands every single thing we have while requiring very little.

Reads

Oh my godx, Wife Shaped Bodies was life-changing. Got it from the library on the advice of a friend and buying a copy to read it again. A book I hugged when I was done, and then journaled a bunch of stuff, and then tried to sit quietly and not think too much for as long as I could to remember how expansive it made me feel.

Also got obsessed with the On the Calculation of Volume books. A freind bought me a copy of the first one when she was visiting and we went to City Lights, and I devoured it and put all the other ones on homd at the library. So much to ponder in these seemingly small but actually vast tales.

Some of you may know my most recommended books of the last few years have been the Memory Police and A Psalm for the Wild Built? the above two are now added to that list.

(By the way both of those above-mentioned friends were named JESSICA, and surely the lesson is that when a Jessica recommends a book to you, you read it.)

Thanks for reading. Hope to see you soon. Let me know what you are up to? And love to you and yours, those still here and those moved on. In November, we remember.