Convert Microsoft to LINUX: In memory of Okra P. Dingle

In Memory of Okra P. Dingle

Okra P. Dingle September 30, 1964 - November 25, 2022. I had the pleasure of getting to know Okra over his last year in this incarnation. We played music together in the Bright Moments band, having a public performance at the Alluvium Church in Eugene, Oregon on Juneteenth day 2022. The poem which was read with musical accompaniment you will find here. It is called Bloos in the Face. There is a second poem HalleAlluvium which was not done. You will also find the cue sheet for the performance we gave. I also really enjoyed the literary cultural side of Okra. He was a world traveller and worked at the Strand Bookstore in NYC for many years. It is like the Powell's Books of the east coast, unfortunately no longer in existence. Enjoy!

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Okra in the Circus

Okra often told me about his life in the community traveling circus he was part of. He was an impaler, that is the person who threw knifes at a target, often a women standing in front of a wooden board. He had to be really accurate and he told me he never missed his target. The knife would land just to the side of the head or an arm. Here is a little detail from a NY Times article about this circus.

Straitjackets, Machetes and, Oh Yes, Some Books By Colin Moynihan

Aug. 25, 2003

Shortly after 8 p.m. on Saturday, Tanya Sullivan and Okra P. Dingle walked onto a wooden stage at the Galapagos Art Space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where some 30 people had gathered. Over the next hour Ms. Sullivan freed herself from a straitjacket and lay on a bed of rusty nails. Mr. Dingle removed his shoes and socks and climbed a ''ladder of swords,'' consisting of four machetes in a wooden framework, and then, balanced on the topmost blade, placed a cinder block on his head and smashed the block with a hammer. The performance brought to mind a circus sideshow, but it was the prelude to the New York opening of the Autonomadic Bookmobile, which for two years has traveled the country carrying books by Autonomedia, a small nonprofit Williamsburg publisher that prints criticism by authors like Dwight McDonald, Guy Debord and Michel Foucault.

Lastly from Okra a Beautiful Interview done in 2020

Enjoy, we love you Okra forever and will never forget you!!!
Okra Interview 2020

  

I will have more pics and notes here in the future. This is a work in progress.