About this author: Ricardo Guthrie Born in Biloxi, Mississippi, and raised in San Diego, Calif., Ricardo recently received his PhD in Communication from the University of California, San Diego (2006). His dissertation, "Examining Political Narratives of the Black Press in the West: Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett and the San Francisco Sun-Reporter (1950s-60s)", focuses on how political narratives were used by the Black Press to affect Black consciousness during the transition from the Jim Crow to Civil Rights/Black Power eras. A visual artist and writer, Ricardo has exhibited artwork and has published writings in Boston, Mass., and in San Diego. He received master's degrees in Journalism and Afro-American Studies from Boston University in 1984 and a bachelor's degree from Harvard College in 1980. While living in Boston, Ricardo was associate editor for a community tabloid, the ?Roxbury Community News,? producer/host of a public affairs talk show, "People on the Front Line" for Northeastern University's WRBB Radio, and was listed in "Artists of Color in Massachusetts." He designed and produced the premiere issues of the Harvard Journal of Minority Public Health (1994-1996), and was an advisor for the Harvard Journal of Afro-American Public Policy (1991). From June 1998 to Sept. 2000, he was Senior Editor for UCSD's Office of University Communications, and was copy editor for volume one and two of ?An American Health Dilemma: A Medical History of African Americans and the Problem of Race? (Routledge, 2000, 2002) by Dr. W. Michael Byrd and Dr. Linda A. Clayton. (author's photo by: Marilyn Humphries) Contact this author at: raguthrie(at)ucsd.edu

Done

by Ricardo Guthrie
May 2006


Hot & Cold Blues

(For my father, Dr. Robert Val Guthrie, who gave me an old photo of himself at age 17, standing outdoors playing a saxophone in front of a snowman)

Cool papa
played a hot sax / in the snow
while "Frosty" looked on.

Chilly dad, / briefly clad
in topcoat, boots and a brim,
the Arctic winds of winter
didn't bother him.

One icy dude,
blowing / hot, sassy notes
in a snow-banked, / backyard lot.

While his brother struggled /
to hold the Kodak straight--cold burning his hands like fire--
my father's fevered blue tones
echoed higher and higher.

In the frigid plot
my pop played / jazz phrases
fast and furious.
Curious / pigeons paused in midflight,
straining to hear his crazy song / set wrong right.

Transforming a black-white world
into red-hot reality,
my father played the saxophone / in the snow
so that all the crackers would know
what time it really was.
Cool.

How cold it was
one Kentucky morning,
in the old South,
nineteen-
forty-seven.