CLEARLAKE, Calif. – Local entertainer Andre Williams will perform with his talented Andre Williams Trio at Silk's in Clearlake on Thursday, Feb. 10.

The performance will start at 5:30 p.m. and continue to as late as 8:30 p.m. at Williams' Silk's Bar & Grill.

Williams will put his incredible voice to work on old favorites.

Silk's Bar & Grill is located at 14825 Lakeshore Drive, Clearlake.

Call 707-995-7455 to reserve a table, as seating is limited.

Ted Kooser, US Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006. Photo by UNL Publications and Photography.

My grandmother Moser made wonderful cherry pies from fruit from a tree just across the road from her house, and I have loved fruit trees ever since. A cherry tree is all about giving. Here’s a poem by Nathaniel Perry, who lives in Virginia, giving us an orchard made of words.

Remaking a Neglected Orchard

It was a good idea, cutting away

the vines and ivy, trimming back

the chest-high thicket lazy years

had let grow there. Though it wasn’t for lack

of love for the trees, I’d like to point out.

Years love trees in a way we can’t

imagine. They just don’t use the fruit

like us; they want instead the slant

of sun through narrow branches, the buckshot

of rain on these old cherries. And we,

now that I think on it, want those

things too, we just always and desperately

want the sugar of the fruit, the best

we’ll get from this irascible land:

sweetness we can gather for years,

new stains staining the stains on our hands.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2010 by Nathaniel Perry, and reprinted from Gettysburg Review, Vol. 23, no. 1, Spring 2010, by permission of Nathaniel Perry and the publisher.

The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

The entertainment world (or at least that portion of interest to TV writers), as it relates to the fortunes of the NBC TV network, has been greatly affected during the month of January by major events.

First of all, there was the endurance run of the biannual TV critics press tour, where lowly scribes get the lowdown on upcoming programs from network and cable brass.

On the larger stage, TV writers and the general public have seen the nation’s largest cable operator, Comcast, moving forward with acquiring a majority stake in the broadcasting company NBC Universal.

Though the Comcast-NBC merger has now been approved by the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice, the matter was still pending when TV critics had their day with the NBC TV network earlier in January.

For the first time in memory, the NBC Universal press tour day did not include a session with the network’s top executives.

Last summer, we had the give-and-take conversation with Jeff Gaspin, chairman of NBC Universal Television Entertainment.

This month, you were lucky to talk to one of the ubiquitous NBC pages who wear blazers sporting at least multiple NBC lapel pins – kind of like that guy on the “30 Rock” show.

I guess no one wanted to talk about the then-pending final approval of the Comcast-NBC merger. Or maybe they just wanted to avoid unpleasant chatter about former president and CEO of NBC Universal, Jeff Zucker, who was probably one of the least popular TV executives of all time and was unceremoniously dumped last fall.

Another reason not to talk to executives is that apparently all of the NBC midseason shows have been launched.

First, there’s “The Cape,” which should excite fanboys of the superhero genre in a big way. The show has a unique combination of campy, cheesy fun and dark superhero drama.

In the premiere episode of “The Cape,” Vince Faraday (David Lyons) is a cop framed for crimes he did not commit, forcing him to team up with a group of carnival misfits to take a new identity, fight crime and win his family back.

Fueled by a desire to reunite with his wife Dana (Jennifer Ferrin) and son Trip (Ryan Wynott), Faraday becomes “The Cape” – his son’s favorite comic book superhero – taking the law into his own hands and battling the criminal forces that have overtaken the fictional Palm City.

Evil billionaire Peter Fleming (James Frain) is The Cape’s nemesis, who moonlights at a twisted killer named Chess. Political intrigue also comes into the picture when Fleming’s corporation seeks to privatize Palm City’s prisons.

Now that “Boston Legal” had ended its run, writer and producer David E. Kelley returns with “Harry’s Law,” a show that is billed as a legal “dramedy,” a term that implies the combination of drama and comedy.

From what I can tell, this new series, starring the talented Kathy Bates, is more unintentionally ludicrous than it is either a comedy or drama.

The premise is that Harriet “Harry” Korn (Bates) is a curmudgeonly ex-patent lawyer abruptly fired from her blue-chip law firm, forcing her to search for a fresh start.

This leads her to team up with a young legal hotshot (Nate Corddry) that she meets in a car accident and a ditzy assistant (Brittany Snow).

They set up shop in a former shoe store located in a ghetto neighborhood of Cincinnati. It’s a bit lame that they are selling shoes and providing legal services in the same storefront.

One little known fact is that David E. Kelley wrote the part of Harry for a cantankerous grumpy old man. To her credit, Kathy Bates does a good job of turning the grouchy Harry into a crabby Harriet.

“Perfect Couples” is a romantic comedy that is new only in the sense that it stars a bunch of people who did not appear in “Friends.” Otherwise, the story about three flawed couples sounds an awful lot like “Traffic Light,” which will get its start in early February on the FOX network.

At least in the FOX series, one of the three guys has trouble maintaining a relationship any longer than three weeks.

“Perfect Couples” involves three couples struggling through various stages of commitment, whether ideal or not.

Olivia Munn’s Leigh is a self-appointed relationship guru who makes it her duty to mold her jock husband Rex (Hayes MacArthur) and the other couples into her ideal of marriage.

For his part, Rex is a reformed party guy channeling his athletic energy into a competitive drive to be the ideal mate.

Kyle Bornheimer’s Dave and his wife Julia (Christine Woods) appear to be the fun couple worth watching.

The good news for NBC Universal, or should I say Comcast-NBC Universal, is that this media conglomerate also has cable outfits Syfy, USA, Oxygen and Bravo in its orbit. Some of the best series, to my mind, are on USA.

“White Collar,” recently returned for its second season on USA, is a fun crime caper show starring the charismatic Matt Bomer as an ex-con who now assists the FBI.

USA has also just launched “Fairly Legal,” a legal drama that works off the premise that San Francisco mediator Kate Reed (Sarah Shahi), formerly an attorney, returns to the practice of law upon the sudden death of her father, whose law firm is now being run by the evil stepmother (Virginia Williams).

The tension is palpable as Kate must now report to her deceased father’s spouse, a person relatively the same age.

It will be interesting to see how Comcast-NBC rolls out its fall programming during this summer’s press tour.

I am comforted by the fact that Jeff Zucker won’t be one of the network executives on a panel discussion.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Lake County Arts Council is presenting the nineteenth edition of the Winter Music Fest on Saturday, Feb. 26, at 7 p.m., and on Sunday, Feb. 27, at 2 p.m.

The WMF is a fundraiser for the Lake County Arts Council.

Tickets for this program are now available at the Main Street Gallery, 325 N. Main St., Lakeport, at the Soper-Reese Theatre box office at 275 S. Main St., Catfish Books in Lakeport, Lower Lake Coffee and online from www.soperreesetheatre.com.

The reserved seats are available only from the Soper-Reese Theatre’s box office, 707-263-0577, or from the Web site.

This year’s festival will showcase Lake County musicians, some of whom have been on this stage before, and some remarkable new talents as well.

For the last few years, the artists that applied for the show included dancers, jugglers, poets, actors and yo-yo masters, so the Arts Council decided to put on a show modeled on vaudeville.

This year, the talent that presented itself was exclusively musical. While the music is of varied styles, the vaudeville format has been dropped for this show. It will be in a concert format, and we will be lead through it by that splendid MC, Bert Hutt.

The Soper-Reese Community Theatre is an ideal venue for this kind of presentation. Every one of its comfortable seats has an unobstructed view of the stage and the sound system fills the auditorium.

Between the excellent acoustics of the hall and the professional mixing, no music is lost anywhere in the theater. While this year’s Music Fest has no rock-n-roll or country bands, the Soper-Reese can make even such intense music as that a pleasurable experience.

The only large musical groups that will be performing at this year’s Winter Music Fest will be the Mendo Lake Singers and Sax-O-Rama, very experienced entertainers in this area, and never hard to listen to.

That could be said for all the acts in this year’s entertainment. Melodious, intelligent, experienced, interesting, moving … these musicians are all that, but never hard to listen to.

Not every Music Fest can claim that, by any means, but this year one thing we can count on is that every member of the audience will leave feeling energized and positive.

For more information, contact the Lake County Arts Council by phone at 707-263-6658, or on the Web site at www.lakecountyartscouncil.com, or contact the Soper-Reese Community Theatre, 707-263-0577.

Entries are now being accepted for regional winners in the 19th annual National Senior Poets Laureate Poetry Competition for American poets age 50 and older.

The deadline is June 30.

Winning poems of state senior poets laureate will be named in July, following which they advance to final rounds of competition from which the winner of the 2011 National Senior Poet Laureate (500) and runner up ($100) awards will be announced Sept. 1.

The 2010 California Senior Poet Laureate Award was won by Ray Malus of Woodland Hills whose poem “Feast” competed for the national title.

Winner of the 2010 National Senior Laureate Award was Regina Murray Brault of Burlington, Vt.

The 2010 winners can be seen in Golden Words Anthology, along with details about the 2011 Senior Poets Laureate Competition at the sponsor’s Web site, www.amykitchenerfdn.org .

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Former Lake County Poet Laureate Mary McMillan, with the support of the Lake County Arts Council, has again been awarded a grant to fund her work as leader of the Writers Circle, a free public writing workshop held at the Main Street Gallery in Lakeport at 6:30 p.m. on the first Thursday of each month.

The grant supporting the Writers Circle comes from Poets and Writers Inc., through a grant it has received from the James Irvine Foundation.

Many emerging writers, as well as more seasoned authors, depend on the Writers Circle to help them build their skills and connect with other writers.

Some people come only a few times, and others show up every month.

Many participants have been sharing parts of books and other long works they've been writing; others share short stories, memoirs, essays or poems.

The writers are between 16 and 80 years old, and come from all over the county.

Visit McMillan's Web site at www.marytmcmillan.com/ .