Surmountable – Gruber Media

Billy Cobham•Travel•Writing Coaching

October Travel: Book Signings, Writing Coaching, Friends and Family

September 21, 2019 by briangruber No Comments

I will be on the road for most of October, leaving on the 2nd, returning on the 24th, and look forward to seeing friends and family throughout the visit. Here’s a look at the itinerary.

I will join Billy Cobham, Randy Brecker, and the Crosswinds tour band for their performances, notably,

Jazz Alley, Seattle, October 3-6

Kuumbwa, Santa Cruz, October 10

Blue Note, Napa, October 11-12

I will be signing copies of “Six Days at Ronnie Scott’s: Billy Cobham on Jazz Fusion and the Act of Creation” after each show. I especially look forward to meeting Randy Brecker, one of the world’s great jazz trumpeters, and a featured interview in the book. It will be a particular pleasure to have my daughter Andrea join me at one of the Napa shows, her first time meeting Bill and Faina. Then on to Auburn, for a visit with the now one-year-old Silas.

Also scheduled are coaching sessions with U.S. clients and continued work on the Surmountable protest book project. I will be proud to be attending the launch of my coaching client Wendy May’s book, “Regenerative Purpose” at San Francisco’s Dolores Park, noon on the 12th. Wendy credits the workshop I facilitated at Koh Phangan’s Mermaid Villa with inspiring her to write the book, and our coaching sessions for completing it. It is a terrific work, on sale soon. I am privileged to have written the book’s foreword.

Reading time: 1 min

Books•Surmountable

The Travel Phase of the Surmountable Book Project Is Now Complete

May 10, 2019 by briangruber No Comments

The ‘discovery’ phase of Surmountable, a two month jaunt through scenes of historic protests plus interviews with activists, academics, journalists, people on the street, thinkers, trouble makers, and witnesses is done. I arrived in Bangkok 2am from South Korea, after the final international leg of the trip that took me to Berlin, Kiev, Paris, Tunis, and Seoul.

The final itinerary traveled, four continents, 20 destinations, two months.

Now for the writing.

We have a wealth of raw material. Public thinkers like AEI’s Norm Ornstein, C-SPAN’s Brian Lamb, Adbusters/ Occupy Wall Street’s Kalle Lasn, Columbia University’s Todd Gitlin, historian Stephen Schlesinger. Journalists and authors. Front line activists who put their bodies on the line like Standing Rock’s LaDonna Brave Bull Allard who gave her land and was a leading figure in the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, Kiev ‘squad’ veterans like Anna Kovalenko who led an all-woman group to physically resist attacks by secret police and militia, Tasnim of Tunis who shed the veil to take to the streets and launch the end of long-time dictator Ben Ali and the beginning of the Arab Spring.

It’s a privilege to gather these stories and be in the process of remarkable women and men, sometimes via choreographed interviews, sometimes via odd moments of serendipity as when I wandered into a Tunisian protest from the front door of my hotel into a weekly communist rally honoring the death of a martyred civil society activist.

Adam Edwards and I go into projects like this with certain foundational ideas and the outline of an editorial structure, but with open minds and a fierce desire to explore what is true, what is just, and how citizens might live the American founders’ vision of an active engaged public.

We intend to publish this year. I will be publishing photos and interview excerpts in the coming weeks. Here are a few memorable images from the trip.

LaDonna Brave Bull Allard after picking me up at the Bismarck, North Dakota airport and driving me 90 minutes to the Standing Rock reservation. I had asked how to get to her and where to stay, to which she responded, "Brian, you just don't get it, do you, we're in the middle of nowhere." So she came and got me and put me up next door to her at the Water Protectors House. After two hours of conversation, and a home cooked meal by activists living in the house, she came by at 11pm with her new great granddaughter. "Direct descendent of Sitting Bull." We toured the tribal council, the pipeline and protest sites, the local college and Sitting Bull museum, the tribal casino, and her ancestors' burial grounds. — LaDonna Brave Bull Allard after picking me up at the Bismarck, North Dakota airport and driving me 90 minutes to the Standing Rock reservation. I had asked how to get to her and where to stay, to which she responded, “Brian, you just don’t get it, do you, we’re in the middle of nowhere.” So she came and got me and put me up next door to her at the Water Protectors House. After two hours of conversation, and a home cooked meal by activists living in the house, she came by at 11pm with her new great granddaughter. “Direct descendent of Sitting Bull.” We toured the tribal council, the pipeline and protest sites, the local college and Sitting Bull museum, the tribal casino, and her ancestors’ burial grounds.

I told Pastor Leon Ross of the Weeping Willow Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama that I had beers with four white fellows at the base of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma the night before, and they said things were fine with race relations relations back in the day. He scoffed, "Sure for them they were. We were sick and tired and of being sick and tired." He worked in the Montgomery Improvement Association along with Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., pivotal in the bus boycott started by Rosa Parks. — I told Pastor Leon Ross of the Weeping Willow Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama that I had beers with four white fellows at the base of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma the night before, and they said things were fine with race relations relations back in the day. He scoffed, “Sure for them they were. We were sick and tired and of being sick and tired.” He worked in the Montgomery Improvement Association along with Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., pivotal in the bus boycott started by Rosa Parks.

The Alley of the Heavenly Hundred Heroes, in the square where Ukraine's Maidan Revolution took place. Over 100 protestors were killed as the protests grew in scope and intensity. I walked the scenes of the clashes and the moving, detailed exhibits on the streets honoring the dead and commemorating the events. — The Alley of the Heavenly Hundred Heroes, in the square where Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution took place. Over 100 protestors were killed as the protests grew in scope and intensity. I walked the scenes of the clashes and the moving, detailed exhibits on the streets honoring the dead and commemorating the events.

Tasnm and the Martyr. She walked me to the train like the mother of three she is, insisting on carrying my backpack, and warning me not to talk to strangers. We attended two protests that day, a second in front of the Central Bank as it was anti-imperialism day and students marched through the streets pushing past heavily armed police trying to stop them.

The palace at the far end of Gwanghwamun Square in central Seoul where Koreans gathered every Saturday, first in the hundreds, then thousands, then hundreds of thousands until the president was impeached, turned out of office, and imprisoned with a 26 year term.

Reading time: 3 min

Books•Surmountable

The Surmountable Tour Begins

March 11, 2019 by briangruber No Comments

As so it begins. I begin my interviews of practitioners of the art of protest from Selma to Seoul tomorrow for the Surmountable book project. Thanks to my co-writer Adam Edwards and to our 80+ Kickstarter funders for supporting my travel to 4 continents over the next two months. My first interview will be at the iconic City Lights bookstore in North Beach, San Francisco, Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s shop on the corner of Broadway and Columbus which shocked the literary world with its publication of Alan Ginsberg’s “Howl.” I will talk to the shop’s executive director and publisher Elaine Katzenberger then on to tech writers and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. What would you ask her??

Reading time: 1 min

Books•popular•Surmountable

“Surmountable” Kickstarter Campaign is Funded at $15,001 With 83 Backers

March 6, 2019 by briangruber No Comments

The “Surmountable” Kickstarter project is funded as of March 1 at $15,011 with over 80 backers. The trip to scenes of historic protests around the United States and around the world begins immediately. Thanks to all of our backers for supporting this adventurous and ambitious project. I will be blogging from each destination throughout March and April, starting in San Francisco. USA destinations will include Seattle/ Vancouver, Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, Charleston, West Virginia, Washington, D.C., the Alice Paul Institute in Mount Laurel New Jersey and New York City.

Reading time: 1 min

Books•Surmountable

On the Road: The Projected Itinerary for the “Surmountable” Book Project

March 1, 2019 by briangruber No Comments

Here is a first look at the March and April Travel Itinerary for the “Surmountable” book project. I leave 2 March at 2:10am and will arrive in San Francisco with the Kickstarter campaign completed. I will be blogging throughout the project, sharing interviews and observations throughout.

Reading time: 1 min

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