Westminster Mall Small Wonder

Marc's Trip to the Middle East, 1975

This is a preview from Marc Emery’s autobiography that he has been working on in prison. (Read the first chapter, "The Prophecy", here .) His life-changing high school trip to the Middle East at age 17 ended with Marc dropping out of grade 12 to open his first bookstore. Here, he describes the incredible journey.

In November 1974, Don McQueen, my favorite teacher at Sir Wilfrid Laurier Secondary School in London, Ontario, announced to my history class that there was a Board of Education sponsored trip to the Middle East in March 1975 for select students in London high schools.

It would be a two-week trip, flying from Toronto to London, England, staying there for two days, and then flying to Dubrovnik (later changed to Split) Yugoslavia (and now Croatia). Next we boarded the S.S. Nevasa, a Pacific & Orient (P&O) ship under British flag. We students stayed in what was called fourth class, in bunks at the bottom of the ship. Except for the time the ship spent crossing the Mediterranean for 36 hours, we were on shore during the daytime, while the ship traveled the Mediterranean at night. Once departed from Split, we cut across to Alexandria, Egypt, boarded busses to Cairo to see the Great Pyramids, returned to ship by nightfall, traveled over to Beirut, Lebanon at night, and stayed one day in Beirut. Then the ship traveled down the coast to Tel Aviv, where we boarded busses in the morning to go to Jerusalem and Bethlehem for the day. Returning to the ship, it went north to Izmir, Turkey, where we spent the day visiting the Roman aqueducts at Ephesus. Returning at nightfall, the ship went to Piraeus, the port city adjacent to Athens, where we stayed for three days, exploring the Acropolis and the Parthenon in Athens, and the Temple of Poseidon at Sounion. Then we flew back to Toronto via London, England.

The total cost, Mr. McQueen announced, for three weeks abroad, was $800. A bargain, I immediately understood.

I was excited. I was 16, turning 17 in February, and had only ever left Canada to see the Detroit Tigers play, or go to comic book conventions in Buffalo or Detroit. I had not seen any of the world as a young adult beyond a 150-kilometer radius of my hometown of London, Ontario.

When I told Dad and Mom about this trip, I was making good money, as much as $100-$300 profit weekly, which I did tend to reinvest in my thriving comic book business, Marc's Comic Room. Dad proposed that if I would pay half, he would pay the other $400. My Dad, Alfred, was thinking that in many aspects, this trip mirrored his own fond recollections of these places he traveled in the Mediterranean theatre of war during WW2. Dad had medals indicating service in the Suez (Egypt), Palestine (Israel), Italy, France, and North Africa, and he had been in Jerusalem, Cairo, and Alexandria. Dad was a voracious reader of history and military books, and I too imitated him in reading many of the same books when I wasn't working on Marc's Comic Room. By this time I had already read dozens of books on ancient history and military histories including William Shirer's 1,000-page tome The Rise & Fall of the Third Reich – the seminal book on WW2 in its day.

Janine Gilbert-Carter Performs at Westminster Presbyterian: D.C. ...

. Moreover, it's overflowing with soul; let there be no question that Gilbert-Carter has her roots in gospel, having sung in the church since her childhood in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. The intensity of her sound would not be out of place in a blues joint, either—we're talking the archetypal blues joints of period movies, where the singer has to outdo the hubbub of bartenders and rowdy audiences to be heard at all. She does that work, too, and often doesn't distinguish between the two modes. But that, as we know, is what constitutes jazz at its most rootsy and expressive. Small wonder that Gilbert-Carter portrayed similarly outsize Dinah Washington in the acclaimed stage show Sistas Can Sang, A Tribute to Female Jazz Legends It might not be out of line to suggest that Ben Williams is the face of a new golden age in D.C. jazz. The New Yorker-by-way-of-Michigan Park came up working with local bass gurus Michael Bowie, Herman Burney, and Carolyn Kellock before moving onto Michigan State University, Juilliard's Jazz Studies program, and finally the Big Apple jazz scene, where he played with edgy young musicians like Stefon Harris and Marcus Strickland, as well as straightahead artists like Jacky Terrasson and Terrell Stafford. Then he won the 2009 Thelonious Monk Competition for bass, and immediately graduated from insider's favorite to The One To Watch. Well, this week in D.C., your chances to do exactly that are double. Williams' dynamic debut recording as a leader, the fittingly titled State of Art would be better applied to the sound of Greg Boyer 's trombone. As I've said many times before and will gladly say again, Boyer could blow a hole through a brick wall. He's got power like you've rarely heard in your life, and he harnesses it to a spectacular sense of melody and funky groove. That's how you get a gig being the lead trombonist and horn arranger for none other than Prince , Boyer's erstwhile boss; he also did some time in the Bohemian Caverns Jazz Orchestra, and also plays behind Chuck Brown , Big Band Caliente, and his own funk-jazz bands, Greg Boyer Peloton and Greg Boyer Pocket Jazz. Less traveled for Boyer, however, is the solo route; that's where the Sunday Jazz Lounge comes in. The weekly showcase for the Joe Herrera / Rodney Richardson Quartet and a rotating cast of solo openers has been on a monthlong hiatus throughout June, but in July they're back with a vengeance—and a permanent home. It starts at 8 p.m. at Twins Jazz, 1344 U St. NW. $5.