the owl of minerva spreads its wings at dusk

Accumulating a stack of grey cardboard

2010-06-27T13:40:00.000-07:00

Accumulating a stack of grey cardboard, more properly paperboard, rectangles is one of the fringe benefits of the job. These are bundled so as to impart their rigidity to the published materials they accompany. I sell used books on the internet. Smaller paperbacks can better hold their shape during their tour of the postal system when packed with slabs of pulp.

Selecting books from the discount shelves of a bookstore or library book sale requires examining one book after the next to assess their potential resale value. Cobweb grey ellipses of dust appear on the finger palps after the first 30 minutes of this activity. By the time the book scout feels he or she has been satisfactorily thorough the grey matches that of the cardboard slab. Like 10 shadows cast by 10 finches eggs arranged stonehenge-like as the sun changes position through an elapsed year. A "dust-henge" erased by wipe and dries purchased at a subway newsstand after confusion over the hand sanitization product requested.

tediously in my cubicle

2010-06-26T23:02:00.000-07:00

My day job is a part time temporary position at a law firm so gigantic you can't even detect the secretarial gossip over the sound of evil. I can walk to the end of the floor and peek out the window at the roof of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; see the idle rich sunning themselves on the rooftop chaise lounges many on the sidewalk scarcely suspect; building maintenance on the next block enjoying a cigarette while leaning against the housing of the air conditioning unit or examine the middle distance to judge the degree yellow/grey pollutants people will inhale that day.

About once every week and a half the window washing scaffold brings equal parts conversational Spanish and nervous laughter, hearty with bluff, 48 stories above a smooth granite courtyard. The first few times it’s startling to see people on the other side of that glass. Now I wonder more if they have a piss bucket aboard and if there is a secret to using it discreetly.

I look down at my work; I look up at the woven synthetic fibers on the face of the cubicle. It's probably the bleach in the pages paper which makes me sneeze. Somehow the sneezes are more satisfying than my metal cylinder of cold water.

Laws change, all the time, so law books have removable, replaceable pages. For the last six months, about two thirds of my job which I work three fifths of the week are occupied with exchanging new pages for old. The design and functionality of the binders which hold these pages varies according to publisher, as does the texture, color and size of the pages. Commerce Clearing House gives the most satisfying onionskin crackle; Matthew Bender the most complex and challenging instructions for removal and insertion; Thomson West the least functional binding mechanism; RIA often stuffs too many pages into a given binder. With other publishers it is usually just a supplement, often on newsprint, or an index or a complete chapter that is updated. This kind of work falls somewhere on a spectrum with absolute tedium at one end and something short of one hundred consecutive games of solitaire at the other.

new poem (revised)

2008-07-26T11:32:00.000-07:00

Squint hard enough and I'm nobody
So send my coffin to work
rule my apartment all day long
you can't rhapsodize your eulogy
like there's a mystery in a whisper
besides what you can't hear
and a pomegranate is a pocket calculator
if you give every seed a name
or tape cores comprise better manacles
when they make the accusation stick

Been a while

2008-06-18T20:18:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been a minute. So I finished the book on ink. Turns out it was from a print on demand publisher and that the text was public domain and available for free download in many places on the web. The author was really more an expert on ink than a writer. He excerpts many other writers and nearly repeats a chapter on tanno-gallate ink. India or Indian ink on the other hand gets only a few pages.
Considering that I wanted to glean some information about coming up with an ink remover suitable for use on books it fell quite short of the mark. The inks described in this book and the ink used today bear little similarity. These days most ink is comprised of coal tar or products distilled from petroleum, as are my keyboard and computer in large part.

The for-sale inventory of cuttlebone books has finally surpassed the 500 mark. At a book sale last thursday I found a small book on horology, the study of time and/or clocks. This book unlike the history of timepieces discussed below appears to have a greater concetration on the technical aspects. It's on a British university imprint that may have been picked up by Dover in the states. I have, visually nearly identical book, in the same series on the subject of chess. I suspect these books, and others similar must have comprised a nice set. I'm kind of torn as to whether to continue to post this horology book for sale or to read it myself. I think I'll leave it for now and once I finish one of the books I am reading decide if I am going to give it a read.

Hitting the ink

2008-04-24T20:01:00.001-07:00

So my wait is over. The book I ordered the other day, Forty Centuries of Ink, has finally arrived. I just can't wait to tear into this one. Hopefully pollen won't intervene. Definitely sidelining Outlaws of the Marsh until I finish this one. I hope it has a bibliography.

Liquid Air

2008-03-15T13:21:00.000-07:00

Hi,
So I've composed a new poem and the working title is Liqiud Air. I may change the title if I come up with a better one.

Krypton, the color of envy
Hidden, green, poisonous
Scraps of a destroyed home
Xenon strangers
Leaving exiled heroes to die
Neonatal argonauts
drawing the shallowest breath
Under distant yellow sun's
Vacant smile in blue nitrogen sky

So, looks like Spiral Bridge has my poems up

2008-02-27T08:14:00.000-08:00

Spiral Bridge, a poets' & writers' guild for northern New Jersey is featuring my writing on their website. See link

New Poem, I am calling this "Carthaginian Fries"

2008-02-05T10:07:00.001-08:00

Hi, I was going to title this one "lonesome logic." I think I am switching to calling it "Carthaginian Fries"

Out of date, out of town, faded in the sun
soggy phonebooks' lonesome logic explains
seagull standing on k-mart circular
stains kitchen chairs, power tools
or toys from last years cartoon
fighting pigeons and crows
over Burger King Fries
starlings sort the Carthage salt
returning for the last crumb
plastered leaves on springtime pavement
windshield shards, 10,000 tires
against white, green, then white again
and I don't know what to do with my hat and coat

Revolution in Time

2008-01-26T05:07:00.000-08:00

I just yesterday finished reading Revolution in Time by David S. Landes. It falls flat as a technical manual for clocks and watches, but the early chapters give a suitable overview of people’s relation to time and timepieces. The authors unit of analysis gets progressively narrower as his subject approaches the present. The details he does give in later chapters don’t give an analogous picture of people’s relation to time and timepieces and their manufacture in the early 80s when the book was published...

The book mentions John Harrison, an early inventor of a clock accurate enough to be used aboard ship to computer longitude. Harrison was a man of humble beginnings and meager resources who taught himself horology and designed and build a number of innovative clocks. His earliest models were composed mostly of wood, which was unusual for the time but very were accurate . Perhaps I'll see if his bio is in print in the U.K. I'd love to read a biography of John Harrison but it appears none is currently in print in the U.S. There's a recent movie/book tie in but a more exhaustive biography of Harrison from 1920 is priced well out of my range. I mistakenly believed that Harrison Birtwistle's musical composition, titled "Harrison's Clocks." referred to the composer but now I think rather refers to John Harrison.

The other person this book has me thinking about, in reference to artisanship and craft, is William Morris. I've got 3 or 4 books by or about him that I may read in rapid succession once I am through with this book. I guess I am trying to get a picture of skilled labor and artisanship. These days, many folks who historically worked, for example, on jewelry or timepieces are finding their jobs deskilled and themselves outsourced or replaced by underwaged immigrant workers. The antagonisms in terms of immediate material interest and in terms of contradictions within the class should be obvious. These people still possess the skills and in many cases the tools of repair and manufacture. Many are working from a bench in their home after work hours. Hairdressers working out of their kitchen would be a similar example. This is bears resemblance to my own experience selling/repairing books. Libraries are shortening their hours and shrinking their collections and bookstores with selections more heterogeneous than Barnes & Noble are being forced out of business or onto the web. People with skills and knowledge relevant to books are forced to ply their craft in isolation. Buying up books at a discount, sprucing them up a bit and then selling them online can bring in a few extra bucks. There is something to be said for not having to answer to management and also seeing monetary returns on the use of skills and knowledge that an employer might discourage or fail to recognize. The downside is that the monetary return on an hour of this work is way below what someone would be paid if they were conventionally employed and that such folks are so atomized as workers that no traditional method of workplace organizing is appropriate.

Similarly it's recently become easier and more popular for folks to engage in "hardware hacking" and "circuit bending" of computers and other electronics. There is in fact a magazine published by O'Reilly dedicated almost exclusively to these "makers." It remains to be seen where artisanship like this will lead. It is easy to imagine, though that folks with enough money would patronize a custom computer or electronics boutique. Web based versions of such boutiques already exist.

So I am probably going to dust off old William Morris in the next month or so. In a direct methodological sense I don't think I will take much away from Morris' writing. I've read a bit of his stuff and he is kind of weak on imperialism and didn't strike me as the best organizer. But I think the books by/about him will give me some context, however quaint, to inform an understanding the human side of this kind of microcapitalist homework.

Cat and Girl

2007-12-13T07:57:00.000-08:00

I saw this cartoon today at cat and girl. I thought it had some commonalities with what I had to say about the kindle. Particularly the idea of a popular intellectual lingua franca.

Are you Kindle?

2007-12-11T07:53:00.000-08:00

Amazon’s e-book device the “Kindle” is an attempt to transition people’s reading habits from the bound codex (book) format to a gadget in the way music enthusiasts have moved from LPs to mp3s over the last decade and a half. Many of us have met people born before LP records. Nobody you or I have met, or that they have met, or that they have ever met have known a time before codex books. Codex books were present in pre-Columbian Central America where they arose independently. It is likely that books were invented in China independently as well. Codex format Books also arose over a millennium in Eurpoe’s late Roman period.

If current reports are believable people read less lately. I think it is possible that a transition from paper to electronic reading media could institutionalize current negative reading habits. I looked closely at the selections for the Kindle on Amazon and they were the kind of books that get cycled in and out of a Barnes and Noble or Borders before getting remaindered and then are for sale on Amazon for a penny and postage. I think that is part of motivation behind this gadget. Why buy something for a penny and postage that you can photocopy, make notes in, loan to a friend, etc when you can pay 9.99 (and to be fair, in some instances less) for a proprietary file that, due to digital rights management, you can read only on your personal Kindle? Marketing written composition in this way puts Amazon in a position to mediate relationships not only between retailer and reader but also between readers. Kindle’s digital rights management prevents loaning or copying a book you download to your Kindle, thus your friend has to go to Amazon, rather than you, for the text. So "nobody reads anymore," nobody has a study group, nobody copies out a particular chapter or illustration, nobody bothers to read what isn’t "on the test," and of course nobody reads books older than the life span of the typical electronic gadget. To a greater or lesser degree the statements in the previous sentence are true, but those are things that need to change. Jeff Bezos claims that the idea of the Kindle (and I paraphrase) is that it gives you that moment when the book "disappears" and it's just you and the ideas of the author. To anyone nearby who is not connected to such a device it is just you and the gadget. An optimal scenario for Amazon is the Kindle user as an atomized individual dependent upon the retailer, not the community, for intellectual stimulation. Whether or not a text can touch a reader in that way is dependent upon the author not upon the salesman or the medium. That moment is not his to sell. What in fact disappears is the latitude mentioned above that a codex bound book gives the reader.

Given what iPods and music downloads have done for the music industry I think it is impossible for books to make the transition to electronic media without either highly restrictive digital rights management or may publishers going out of business. Clearly the transition from the codex format to a gadget is not going to be as easy as the transition from LPs to mp3s. Publishing has a much thinner profit margin than the recording industry did. This is especially true for books occupying shelves more than 10 feet from the cash register of a chain bookstore. Will the publishers of such non-bestselling books or independent publishers more generally be able to survive the iPod-ing of the publishing industry? If they cannot it is very possible that the disappearance of smaller publishers will narrow discourse. Is there an advantage to The Kindle or Kindle-like devices which would outweigh such a homogenization of public intellectual discourse? If similar devices are ultimately standardized or can read multiple formats, books will get hacked and be available for free through file sharing.

An example is available below:

http://tinyurl.com/3cqylm

http://tinyurl.com/26omeh

File sharing of music and software at least 10 years on shows no sign of abatement. Imagine if overpriced college textbooks were as easy to download as the latest Britney Spears song. Given the gauging of students at the beginning of each semester it seems likely that publishers would make every effort to prevent such file sharing.

I'd like something like this to work. It's enough with the trees already and if it could make more books more widely available then it would prove its usefulness. But what is the ecological impact of the manufacture of even the current inventory of these items? Would you rather live down the block from a bindery or the plant that manufactures the plastic? How much space will they ultimately occupy in a landfill, do they contain high levels of mercury, cadmium, lead? If they are recycled will the work be done by federal prisoners on slave wages with no safety equipment, or under similar conditions overseas? The electrical current to charge and produce the item is clean at the wall plug. What is at the other end and what is the ecological impact for the total quantity of energy production for the manufacture and use of all Kindles in circulation? How do these considerations compare with the production of books on paper using current conventional methods? I can and have read books published before my birth. Will children born today say the same thing about Kindle or Kindle like devices manufactured this year 40 years from now? Is there an alternative besides than another gadget? A different process for the manufacture, especially the bleaching and acquisition of pulp for paper perhaps? However, Al Gore aside, capitalism is not about preserving forests or efficient distribution of literature. It is about the maximization of profits. While capitalists may differ about long-term and short term profits there is unrealized profit in the social and intellectual culture that has grown up around codex format books in the last 1500 years. The Kindle is an attempt to expropriate that that value.

New Photos Including Turkey Shots

2007-11-30T15:45:00.001-08:00

Some of these are pictures of the turkey that I saw walking around on my way to work on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Others are just interior and exterior shots.

Booklog and Cheesy pomo poetry

2007-11-08T16:52:00.000-08:00

I think I am pretty much done with the poem in the previous post. I just the other day finished up the book by Anton Pannekoek about the history of astronomy. It took a while to get through but was ultimately rewarding. When I am between books like this I try to think about what I've already read. I am not just showing off, this is for my own personal reference particularly in light of my belief that nobody is reading this. So to that end I am posting a list of what I remember reading in the last year. The list, in chronological order, looks like this:

1) The Great War for Civilization (this was actually started in 2006. But I believe carried over into 2007) by Robert Fisk

after this I started and put down a few books, one about the Narodniki, also back to History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Until late spring or so

2) World Systems Theory (short despite its title but nearly a chapbook) by Immanuel Wallerstein

3) The Colombo Bay (sort of a popular nonfiction book about container ships)

4) Bury Me Standing (about the Roma of Europe and the world) by Isabel Fonseca.

5) The Essential Wallerstein (more Immanuel Wallerstein)

6)Utopistics (more Immanuel Wallerstein) by Immanuel Wallerstein

7) A History of Astronomy by Anton Pannekoek

O.K. enough of the boring news now for some no-effort pomo poetry

New York Times Bestselling suspense author Nora Roberts also writes yet more suspense novels under the pseudonym of J.D. Robb. I thought a great idea for a zero-effort pomo ppoem would be to transcribe the list of titles by J.D. Robb featured in the endpapers of the book and present it as poetry. On the facing page is another list of titles by Nora Roberts proper. I will present both because I like to make an extra effort. As zero-effort pomo poems go the second one, the Nora Roberts titles is, in my opinion, better.

Titles by J.D. Robb

Naked in Death
Glory in Death
Immortal in Death
Rapture in Death
Ceremony in Death
Vengeance in Death
Holiday in Death
Conspiracy in Death
Loyalty in Death
Witness in Death
Judgment in Death
Betrayal in Death
Seduction in Death
Reunion in Death
Purity in Death
Portrait in Death
Imitation in Death
Divided in Death
Visions in Death
Survivor in Death
Origin in Death

O.K. this is the second one:

Titles by Nora Roberts

Honest Illusions
Private Scandals
Hidden Riches
True Betrayals
Montana Sky
Born in Fire
Born in Ice
Born in Shame
Daring to Dream
Holding the Dream
Finding the Dream
Sanctuary
Homeport
Sea Swept
Rising Tide
Inner Harbor
The Reef
River's End
Carolina Moon
Jewels of the Sun
Tears of the Moon
Heart of the Sea
The Villa
From the Heart
Midnight Bayou
Dance upon the Air
Heaven and Earth
Face the Fire
Three Fates
Chesapeake Blue
Birthright
Key of Light
Key of Knowledge
Key of Valor
Northern Lights
Blue Dahlia
Black Rose
Red Lily
Blue Smoke

and by popular demand, a haiku fragment by Nora Roberts and J.D. Robb. This is to say Nora Roberts wrote this book in cooperation with her pseudonym. I guess this was a marketing decision and that perhaps it was the first book by the J.D. Robb persona. Text of the pome follows:

Remember When

another stanza

2007-10-24T12:35:00.000-07:00

(10-25 I just changed a word, I don't like using words or especially combinations of words more than once in a piece. There were 2 "of stone" phrases one of which I've now altered). (10-26 at it again) (10-26 and again) (cut a little 10-27)(Ugh, Iam just nnot happy with the second stanza) (actually it's a little better now. I ditched the word "asymptotic" and I don't have it going from syrinx in the first line to larynx in the 8th and the alliteration in that line was a little gratuitous, so -is fix. I think I will print this out and work on it on the commute)
(also looks like some spelling errors in there which I will take care of)(11-4 at this point I've pared it down and gotten rid of the gratuitous language and actually I am beginning to feel O.K. with it. I let it sit for a few days before coming back to look at it, which was helpful.)

Below is the poem "Tetradrachma" this time with a new second stanza, or as I like to call it the "costanza." I am by no means finished but the embarassment of posting it publicly often jars loose some additions and corrections which I later make.

Skywarmth Down Keyhole Spyglass
Owl pellets and Hailstones
Melt Rehydrated, Quiver Revived
Chimeric Fitful, coughing quill and bone
stiff bristle crests on snaking water
undone through stair step trickle coils
sculpting crescents creekbed descends
Cuttlefish ink, Sargasso's shadow
to blindness final basaltic
twin gaps float in sibling darkness
eyes of the bird pierce shipwrecks unbuilt

Palate and tongue, stentorian sculpting
comfortable clay afflicts the stone syrinx
Echoing the Esperanto of enemies
taproot torn in gearwheels gnawn
peristalstic friction sparks a polyhedral furnace
molten crystal vacuum brittle
Rising sabres of silkworm smoke
through forest's carpet of loam
mules' foals plow a sepia sky
bloody sunsets jaundice the moon
eyes of the bird pierce shipwrecks unbuilt

Cuttlebone Books

2007-10-17T13:48:00.000-07:00

http://www.amazon.com/gp/shops/index.html/102-1894408-1424966?ie=UTF8&sellerID=A2M18W5GUO6Q27

In case the tinyurl feature does not alert google to the fact that this is the best place to buy books in the history of humankind and all preceding intellect in this universe and indeed beyond.

Cuttlebone Books

2007-10-17T13:44:00.000-07:00

http://tinyurl.com/276txw

View the above and mark it in you mind. You will click on that link and you will buy many, many books.

The Living Room

2007-10-17T08:53:00.000-07:00

So now that the weather has cooled off my living room is once again inhabitable. I live on the 10th floor of a high-rise and my side of the building faces the setting sun. Because of this my apartment heats up in the summer, especially in the hours before I come home from work. All summer long I was pretty much limited to my air conditioned bedroom, my computer, book business and exercise bike are located.

So I generally let the living room go to shit over the summer. I've been cleaning it up though, bit by bit. For me this always includes rearranging furniture/decor. I purchased a very nice, I guess it's a, lithograph at a garage sale over the weekend. Including this among iitems hangiing from my wall entailed a little rearranging of the various other pictures and some furnishing as well. The coffee table is now devoid of the dust it was gathering, as are the family heirloom mahogany typing stool, the endtable and the dining table. It looked as though I damaged the dining room table some time in the last few months through carelessness, fortunately whatever it was came off with store-brand furniture polish. Looking forward to scrubbing up the hairball remains on the bare floor followed by working my way to other parts of the apartment. the dresser is definitely going to the hall closet wwhich should free up some bedroom space.
People suggested I put the exercise bike in the living room, presumably so I can watch TV while pedaling. Exercise equipment will most certainly not match the rest of the lving room and the bike is staying in the bedroom. I can listen to music or podcasts while exercising just as easily. I'm alittle disappointed with how boring this blog post turned out but the number of fascinating thhings I can write about housecleaning in this context is pretty limited.

I will though post photos of the living room soon. It's almost like having company.

Ink Remover

2007-10-15T11:29:00.000-07:00

So I've been researching ink remover for the last few weeks. There are very few products available in the United States that can remove ink which are not water-based. The problem is that the water damages the paper so even if applied with a Q-tip you end up wearing a hole in the page. I've spent some time at the county library and have found a formulation for ink remover that calls for one solution comprised of sodium thiosulfate and water and another comprised of some acid combined with water. I've seen formulations that call for either oxalic, citric or hydrochloric acid. Citric acid seems to be the safest and most readily avilable. Sodium thiosulfate is also pretty safe and available for use in photographic dark rooms and also for removing chlorine from tap water for aquariums. The problem is that even these formulations I've looked up still call for water. Now both citric acid and sodium thiosulfate are also soluble in oil of turpentine and acetone. My hope is that I can substitute one of these two solvents, which do less damage to paper. Of the two, I prefer turpentine. It is a safer chemical than acetone. The idea is to substitute turpentine for water in the formulae I have found. I'll start with sodium thiosulfate and turpentine and hope that the acid occuring in the paper activates it. Otherwise I will put together the citric acid component as well. If that fails to work I will repeat those steps, only with acetone. Failing that I will look into stronger acids and more deeply into the properties of turpentine and acetone to see if different proportions are called for.

Meanwhile I've been searching for something manufactured by someone else that I can simply purchase and use. I've found 2 products available, though not widely, in the U.S. and also some products retailed in the U.K. where ink removers are easier to come by.

Disco Nap

2007-10-08T15:31:00.000-07:00

Hi,
This is a poem I composed back in June. Besides Myself, I think only one person has read it. Mostly it was just sitting in my gmail account for the last few months.

Disco Nap

An Hourglass Crushed
at the center of the planet
carbon crystallized
in a glob of molten glass
spherical both liquid and solid
diamonds burn
their smoke pressed into their ashes
into diamonds again
a phoenix with a broken wing the spiral repeats
a fish spins
down a whirlpool
in a spring
in a cave
beneath an island
on the sun
stung by the molten horizon
when would be shadow puppets are taunted
with a backdrop of a single petal meeting sepal
and people, steeping in the refraction
decide whether to meet their dreams alone
or share their company with others before doing the same

Tetradrachma

2007-10-05T11:37:00.000-07:00

This is yet another new poem utilizing my new personal turmoil-free method of composition. I just write it up on my notebook and revise it until I am stasfied enough to post it here. Posting it to the bdoes not imply that this is the final version. The idea of other people seeing it often prods me to do a few more additions and revisions. So I am going to present the very first draft followed by the most recent.

So here goes

Tetradrachma (draft)

Hail melting moistens an owl pellet
quivering, a tiny chimera
coughs out its lives in
whiskers, quills, hair and bone
stiff bristles on the watersnake's coils
undone through stair step trickle
sculpting creekbed crescents
seeks ocean tranches
twin coins pierce similar darkness
eyes of the bird

Tetradrachma (Mark II)

Skywarmth down keyhole spyglass
owl pellets and hailstones
melt rehydrated; quiver revived
chimeric, whiskered, coughing quill and bone
stiff bristle crests on snaking water
stair step trickle uncoils
sculpting crescents, creekbed descends
tributary cartilage through estuary fingers
tracing cuttlefish ink in sargasso's shadow
to blindness final basaltic
twin gaps float in sibling darkness
eyes of the bird pierce shipwrecks unbuilt

I'm a star, baby!!

2007-10-02T18:08:00.000-07:00

Blogging is now uncool enough for me to begin in earnest

2007-09-27T10:04:00.000-07:00

Hey all, and by all I mean all you automated search spiders who find my blog so interesting, I've been going through some crises lately. Found out I have high blood pressure. Fortunately between exercise and diet I've got it under control and may come off the pills in a short while. There were some difficulties switching to a new specialist for an unrelated medical problem. If I really wanted to complain I could about how the ineptitude of the post office and the old doctor's failure to be in his office when he said he would conspired to almost create an situation where I had to go to the ER. An aunt of mine just last week had 2/3rds of her lung removed due to cancer. They don't say cancer anymore and told her she had a "hot spot" on her lung. Were it me I wouldn't want doctors to pull punches with me. If I have cancer say "CANCER!" if I am in a horrible accident I'd rather they not tell my family I've had "decapitation issues." Or something ridiculous either.
Lastly my cat had a suspicious bump on his butt. He had a needle biopsy taken just this morning. The veterinarian reported that it "didn't look fatty" and that it "looked suspicious." Well a little medical honesty is nice, but I am still waiting to see what the lab says.

Before my aunt went in for surgery I sent her a poem I'd written. It's the first poem I've written in a while that I am pleased with. Even so I continued to revise it. I thought I would sow the poems evolution so included below are the 3 major incarnations of the piece.

This first one is dated August 31 2007 but may have been written earlier:

the clarity between moonset and sunrise
silencing all but the sound of footsteps
the wheels of the river end over end
A corkscrew heartbeat along the vertebrae of the valley
lain open, a book's consecutive chapters meet
Across the platen glass however smooth
fingertips still squeek reminding us in sound and sensation
of our mortality

Then the revised version which I sent to my aunt (who is doing pretty well after surgery-thank you) looks likke this:

In the Clarity before Sunrise after moonset
as shells of stars shadows strike the gorund soundless
we imagine the pounnding of footfalls
Turning corkscrew heartbeats
Along the vertebrae of the valley
Lain open llike pages
Where consecutive chapters meet
Across the Platen glass however smoot
Fingertips still squeek
Reminding us in sound ans sensation
of our mortality, infirmity, vitality

After several days and several pages of rewriting in my notebook what I think will be the last revision looks like this:

In clarity before sunrise, after moonset
Stars shed their shadows' shells
Striking the ground soundless
Pounding footfalls unwound
A clockwork Utopia's corkscrew heartbeat
Along the vertebrae of the valley
End over end where chapters meet
Across the platen glass however smooth
Squeek fingertips the same
In sound and sensation reminiscent
Of our mortality, infirmity, vitality

The poem is inspired primarily by a book I've been reading by Anton Pannekoek, the Dutch council communist. he was also a respected astronomer who authored a book on the history of astronomy. Aside from all the numbers and such it's a pretty fascinating read.

The poem is still untitled. I was thinking maybe Moondial or Not Medicine and just it occurred to me that Not Medicine-Moondial would be perfect Hmmm maybe not, I'lll have to get back to you on the title.

Still more photos yet

2007-06-13T10:39:00.000-07:00

More Photos

2007-06-13T10:28:00.000-07:00

photos

2007-06-13T09:56:00.000-07:00

2006-11-02T17:06:00.000-08:00

Dear Fellow Anti-War Organizer,

On November 17th at 7:00 p.m., 3 soldiers who organized against the war
during their recent deployment in Iraq will be speaking at Judson memorial
Church, in Greenwich Village. We anticipate a dynamic panel followed by
an action-oriented discussion about how civilian anti-war activists can
support and catalyze anti-war work within the military. The deadliest
month of the war since the invasion has just passed. It's impossible to
overstate the urgency of this task.

The event is co-sponsored by Iraq Veterans Against the War (New York
Chapter), the Military Project, and New York City Labor Against the War
(NYCLAW).

Endorsing organizations include: Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, Citizen Soldier, GI Special, Military Families Speak Out, Traveling Soldier, Veterans for Peace (NYC - Chapter 34), After Downing Street, Bring the Ruckus (NYC), ConsumersforPeace.org, International Socialist Organization, Left Turn, Not in Our Name (NYC), War Resisters League

The list of endorsers is still being compiled for the event—
and we want you on it!

To endorse, please email Military Project (contact@militaryproject.org) or Katherine Gorell (kgorell@gmail.com).

There are still tables available. They are offered to endorsers on a first come-first serve basis. Tables may not last, so please RSVP ASAP.

Visit Military Project on the Web: href="http://www.militaryproject.org">

Research Links for Radicals

2006-07-22T16:42:00.000-07:00

Hi, I know some of you out there have been on the recieving end of emails of links that I've run across which I've then sent along. I've decided to do this more systematically by creating a yahoo groups newsletter. I don't know why I didn't do this sooner. Subscribe to RL4R name="Click here to join RL4R" src="http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/yg/img/i/us/ui/join.gif"> Powered by groups.yahoo.com

C.R.A.C.K. Article

2006-07-13T19:22:00.000-07:00

Hi,
OK firstly please excuse any typos, I had to retype this after a computer crash and I can't run spell check with 2 blog editing screens opn simultaneously. Secondly thhis is not a recent article it is a few years back.
I submitted this to a few places back when I wrote it. It was/is a bit rough since I was so immersed in writing it I couldn't really get enough distance to go in and edit it myself. It did end up running in Turning the Tide. I was hoping to get it into the Indypendent because at the time C.R.A.C.K. was planning to open up shop in NYC. I did email it as an attachment and as text and showed up at the Indy office
twice with hard copy and the story on a floppy. That was not so frustrating as the folks at "Passive Agressive Monthly" who told me they found something untrue in the article. I believe they said it was either Depo Provera or Norplant were no longer legal in the U.S. Which was news to me because I got my info from the then current PDR. Also they said it was too long, to which I replied "You're the editor, cut it. I am a big boy I can handle it." Apparently they expect you to be passive aggressive back. I will work harder at holding up my end of the deal next time. Anyway the article is below:

C.R.A.C.K. (Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity) is a national
organization built upon the racist hysteria surrounding "crack
babies." These babies are children born to mothers who use crack
cocaine, who are supposedly horribly deformed and unable to function
at a minimal level. Most recent medical research shows that the
long-term effects on children born with a physical dependence on
cocaine were greatly exaggerated and that the prblems caused by
poverty are far greater. This has not deterred C.R.A.C.K. from pushing
ahead. The group is funded by people with close ties to racist social
theories (and yes that is a K in "kommunity.")

C.R.A.C.K. offers people struggling with drug addiction, mostly women
of color, $200 – not to stop uusing drugs but to stop procreating. If
they take the $200 they must agree to submit to sterilization by tubal
ligation, insertion of Normplant, administration of Depo Provera shot,
insertion of an IUD or other similar long-term or permanent
contraception. The group also offers vasectomies to men with drug
problems.

Barbara Harris of Orange county founded C.R.A.C.K. in 1997 after her
efforts in California to criminalize drug use during pregnancy failed.
By the year 2000 the group had an annual budget of about half a
million dollars. Public financial documents list C.R.A.C.K.'s purpose
as "To operate a nonprofit corporation faclity (sic) designed to serve
and care for drug addicted babies and mothers."

The very same document, dating from 1999, reports the group's success
"In getting 99 drug addicts to use birth control" and having "Assisted
7 drug addicts into getting treatment." That is a ratio of 14 people
sterilized permanently or long term for every one addicted person
getting referred to treatment. C.R.A.C.K.'s statement of
accomplishments for the following tax year is identical.

This is suspicious considering the salary of executive director
Barbara Harris nearly doubled in the same time span. More recent
statistics from C.R.A.C.K. do not mention referring anyone into drug
treatment. The organization's website gives a breakdown by ethnicity
of people taking the $200 in return for long term or permanent
sterilization. The comparison, rounded off, goes like this:

Of the 751 people long term or permanently sterilized by C.R.A.C.K.
African Americans are overrepresented by almost 300% in proportionate
to their share of the population according to the US Census. A
majority are people of color. Only 48% of the people who've taken
C.R.A.C.K.'s deal are white, while white people make up 71% of the
U.S. and are more likely to be using drugs. 34% of the people taking
C.R.A.C.K.'s $200 are African American, yet they make up only about
12% of the population. Seven percent of the people permanetnly or long
term sterilized are of other ethnic groups, including Native
Americans, Asians and Pacific Islanders, about 4.1% of the population.

The methods of birth control C.R.A.C.K. will pay people money for
submitting to (and their side effects occuring in 5% or more of test
cases according to the Physicians Desk Reference unless otherwise
noted) include:

Depo-Provera – a hormonal contraceptive injection for women. A Single
shot lasts for three months and can have many harmful side-effects
that cannot be neutralized after the shot is administered. These
effects include; bleeding irregularities and other circulatory
problems, headache, nervousness, dizziness and fatigue.

Lunelle – a Depo-Provera-like contraceptive injection for women. Its
possible side effects include dangerous blood clotting, cerebral
hemorrhage, gallbladder disease, benign liver tumors, hig blood
pressure, heart problems and embolisms.

IUDs (Intra-Uterine-Devices) – Plastic or metal objects placed inside
a woman that prevent pregnancy by causing a low-level infection in her
uterus.

Tubal Ligation – A surgical procedure that renders a woman permanently
unable to have children by preventing her ova from reaching her uterus
through "tying" of her fallopian tubes.

Norplant – Small tubes implanted in a woman's upper arm, which release
hormones into the body over a period of years and can only be removed
surgically. Possible side effects include the risk of heart attack if
the woman smokes more than 15 cigarettes a daily, headache,
nervousness, nausea, dizziness, ovarian cysts, rash, acne, change of
appetite, breast pain, weight gain and abnormal hair growth or loss.

Mirena – A type of IUD. Possible side effects include: 1 ectopic
pregnancy out of every 1000 cases, abdominal pain, vaginal discharge,
headache, vaginitis, back pain, breast pain, depression, high blood
pressure, upper repiratory infection, nausea, nervousness, pelvic
cramps, weight gain, skin problems, decreased libido and sinus
infections.

Vasectomyh – A procedure that renders a man unable to biologically
father children. Vasectomy is surgically reversible through a
procedure priced well beyond the means of working folks. The number of
men sterilized by C.R.A.C.K. lingers in the single digits.

Recreational use of drugs, legal or illegal, is never advisable during
pregnancy. Drug addiction is a medical illness and was first legally
considered such in the 1920s after many WWI veterans returned home
with morphine addictions. In recent years judicial attacks, notably in
South Carolina, against expectant mothers struggling with drug
problems have garnered support of law and order politicians and
anti-abortion forces.

The subject of all this hysteria the "crack baby" is becoming
increasingly mythical as one scientific journal after another steps
forward with studies debunking the existence of the phenomena. An
article in the Journal of the American Medical Association from March
2001 entitled "Growth, Development and Behavior in Early Childhood
Following Prenatal Cocaine Exposure" brought together data from 36
separate peer reviewed studies. The authors concluded "There is no
convincing evidence that prenatal cocaine exposure is associated with
developmental toxic effects that are different in severity scope or
kind from the sequelae [consequences-MC] of multiple other risk
factors." Indicating that cocaine use during pregnancy produced unique
from tobacco or environmental factors.

Eugenics, the science of social engineering through heredity has a
long history. The U.S. populist movement of the 1890s included many
eugenecists, Wizard of Oz author Frank L. Baum among them. Policies
enforced in Nazi germany that provided for the sterilization of
prostitutes, beggars, alcoholics and vagrants left eugenics largely
discredited at the end of WWII. In spite of this, widespread policies
of sterilization similar to that practiced by C.R.A.C.K.'s continue.

From the late 1930s until the end of the 1970s a program in Peurto
Rico left nearly a third of the island's women of child bearing age
sterile. "La Operacion" as tubal ligation came to be known in Puerto
Rico was intended to 'free' these women to work in factories. The
procedure was often performed without the women's knowledge or
consent. Other instances of eugenic policies include sterilization of
over 60,000 people in Sweden during the middle decades of the 20th
CENTURY, the Chinese policy of one child per family and the common
practice in many countries (including China) of aborting a female
fetus where a male child is preferred.

Despite, or perhaps because of the mounting evidence that the "crack
baby" is a racist myth, right win intellectuals are lining up to
promote C.R.A.C.K.'s program. The organization's web page features a
statement of support from talk radio personality Dr. Laura
Schlessinger. Dr. Schlessinger's rabid homophobia and implicit eugenic
views were best illustrated when she said "If you're gay or a lesbian,
it's a biological error," on her nationally syndicated radio show.

Self described "First rate thinker, writer and public speaker,"
venture capitalist Jim Woodhill is a key financial supporter of
C.R.A.C.K. Trumpeted by the business press as one of the "new nomads"
of the information age, his Woodhill foundation supplies C.R.A.C.K.
with considerable funding. Mr. Woodhill is listed as the group's Texas
contact and has spoken publicly on their behalf. His online (auto) bio
describes his favorite hobby as "Personal, one-on-one philanthropy;
providing help to needy individuals selected at random who have
nothing in common other than being extraordinarily attractive women
under the age of 30."

The Woodhill Foundation retains "psychorealist" Chris Brand as an
advisor. His personal website blares the headline "Welcome to the
fight against political correctness, multiculturalism and feminazism –
the war which modern 'conservatives' are too fearful to wage, so it
must be fought by modern national liberals."

He declares himself a proud participant in a foundation which funds
the sterilization of poor people struuggling with drug addiction. His
website ridicules progressive people's "Strange denial of genetic
factors," saying they "Will probably change quickly once a baby's hair
color, skin color, hair crinkliness and future IQ can be chosenby
parents and medical personnel."

C.R.A.C.K. has 23 chapters in 17 states and is trying to expand.
People who stand for justice should fight to stop C.R.A.C.K.

For more information on how to fight C.R.A.C.K. there are two major
organizations involved in resisting and exposing its racist campaign:

Family Watch is a network of groups and individuals concerned about
the impact of drug policy jon families, women and children.

Family Watch
2352 Champlain St. NW
Washington, DC 20009

Contact Person:
Kendra Right

CARA is a grassroots anti-rape organizing project in Seattle that
mobilizes oppressed people to create safe, sustainable and accountable
communities. CARA has been organizing to drive C.R.A.C.K. out of the
Seattle area for nearly two years.

CARA
801 23rd Ave. S. , #G1
Seattle, WA 98144

Contact Person:
Theryn Kigvamasud Vashti

2006-06-27T10:39:00.000-07:00

Hi Folks,thought I would share this--
below are 2 links. I don't know if they are going to be new to you but they are new to me. The first is the military's procurement information site. It has stats for money and corpses broken down by state and some older figures broken down by race. You can get the information there or wait for leftyMcLeftist.org to cut and paste the figures. In addition to the Iraq/Afghan war they have figures going as far back as I think the first world war. The other is a link to procurement data for the Gulf area. I'd be willing to do some digging through the latter if necessary.
http://siadapp.dior.whs.mil/index.html
http://www.acq.osd.mil/dpap/general/hurricane_katrina_relief.htm

Also--I don't know if you are familiar with Stratfor or not. They are a premium "business intellegience" service, basically news for capitalists who need to know it. So it is more detailed and accurate than most outlets. Mostly they've been a premium service, and very expensive to boot. However today I noticed that google news spiders their pages and apparently Stratfor's premium content is available through there.If you go to google news and type in the following:

inurl:statfor

it will bring up some (I don't know how much, maybe all) of Stratfor's premium material.To search for a particular subject try this:

Iraq inurl:stratfor

Instead of Iraq try any other search term as well. Knock yourself out.The results will be in google's order of significance. You can change that to "sort by date" and get up to the minute premium news material.The drawback is that none of links on the Stratfor pages will work, unless you have the login script google news uses. So bringing up those links in google news is your best bet.
mcapri

More Poetry

2006-05-01T18:34:00.000-07:00

Well I have several poems I've been scrawling on the bus between potholes.
Also please check out some of my older postings which are more political.

So here goes with the poetry

this first one may not be the best of the bunch but here goes:

Pretty faces peering up at me from the newstand
Their retinas cupping twin images of the photographer just so
What they see, inverted by their twin lenses
For a moment I am dizzy
Do my size nines hold down the studio floor?
A lonely feeling as I wait
For my fig newton and London Economist
A rhombus of faces
of inviting strangers
frames the cashier's platform
each gladdened by the transaction
the glossy covers slippery tiles
on the path to the unattanable

this next one may be a bit better:

Dark brown brick
stained by decades of rain so bitter
reveals the city's people
like a dog-eared phone book
it's pages swimming in grey
before the eyes of the grandmother
raising an infant just tall enough
to reach breakfast
rain falling in uncounted drops
the city outside moving to its own clipped rhythm
melody and murmur
harmony and buzz
over tarred wires
songs of the claypit and the heat of the kiln
Dark brown brick

Mind the gap

2006-03-14T21:05:00.000-08:00

Hi,
this is a poem that a wrote back in December that I thought was lost when poetism.com changed its format. Fortunately I emailed myself a copy. I feel like this one repeats some of the themes from the one posted below it.

Ghost Bus

Alarm clock in the next room I wake
Mutual invisibility, I walk through walls that don't see me
On the ghost bus seat finds seat
A deep breath,
Assume the color of air,
Still and silvery against my skin
Closing eyes, I feel my minds presence
A glockenspiel I am halved as a stop is requested
Before the first and after the last
The coffee, my thirst, lashed to the mast

New Poem

2006-02-25T15:32:00.000-08:00

As I undserstand someone has actually looked at this blog and even gone so far as to read some of the poetry in an entry from a few months ago. I've been working on a poem for a while now.
I had some of it written and left my notebook at a library and was afraid I'd lost it. Fortunately it was up at the circulation desk. Really thoug it should be at the reference desk. I couls say "Hi are you the reference librarian?" and the reference librarian could say "yes, do you have a question?" and then I could say "In fact I do: Where is my notebook?" Anyway this poem was sort of half done for a while, sort of like a 2 legged table. Hopefully it is compete now. So here it is:

Five O'clock Shadow

Paranoia looses the piranha
amid the soft wrinkles of my psyche
as the mirror looks through me
I feel shame and my wish for opacity
casts a little shadow
the darkness an umbrella
before it is betrayed to the wind
I surrender to the falling water
It tastes of soot, smells of sulphur
but cannot kill the carp
swimming in circles where the water widens
rising to gulp air the surface ripples
the silent glossolalia of its dormant gills
black and silver from the lacquered bell of a submerged oboe
rings of stillness split the reeds
across inverted images of treetops
on the shining brook
otherwise smooth

So that's it, fresh from the notebook. I did a little composing here in the buffer.
I may alter it a bit, but I think mostly I'll leave it alone.

Documenting White Skin Privilege

2005-09-27T11:00:00.000-07:00

I spent about 30 hours last week, from Tuesday evening to Saturday afternoon searching the 1200+ page list of Katrina evacuees in Arkansas. I was looking for members of an organization of families of incarcerated youth in Louisiana.
In addition to this I work at the Ellis Island museum and I am very familiar with the passenger list, known as manifests which were the documents of record for immigrants arriving at the island from the day it opened in 1892 at least as far as 1924. The island was open until 1954 but I am less familiar with documents from 1925 on.
As I was searching through the Arkansas document it struck me that there were some similarities between it and the Ellis Island manifests, at least in terms of format.
I can tell you a few things about the comparative quality of the electronically compiled evacuee list as compared to the largely handwritten Ellis Island ship manifests.

There is no facility analogous to the database of Ellis Island passenger records for African American people. The slave burial round historic site in downtown Manhattan is basically a fenced in area with a tree. Given that the evacuation of the Gulf Coast is the probably the largest, fastest migration of Americans since the civil war, people may at some point in the future want to use the evacuee lists, of Arkansas for example to trace their lineage to New Orleans, which had a free Black community going back generations before the Civil War. For that purpose or even for its intended purpose of locating evacuees right now Arkansas’ document is woefully inadequate.

For example my great Grandfather Calogero Cannizaro is listed on a manifest from 1911. We can see on this document that his next of kin was in his home town, a village outside of Palermo. We can see where he was going; in fact there is a complete name address of the person in Brooklyn whose home he was going to. This level of detail is available on all the manifests after 1907 and is by leaps and bounds more complete than the Arkansas evacuee list. Most of the manifests as far back as 1892 are of a similar quality relative to the Arkansas evacuee list.

Often the Arkansas list will have no information at all listed next to a person’s name. Sometimes there are obvious spelling errors or the same name written with a few different spelling when it is pretty clear the listings refer to the same person. In other instances names, not all of which seem to be too common, are given one row on the document and instead of specific contact information the document states that there are numerous evacuees with that same name and to call a toll free number. I tried it, it was busy. Many, many of the entries are incomplete.

Granted, because the Arkansas document was generated by people using computers it has no handwriting issues also it was easy enough to alphabetize by last name. Unfortunately, since many have the first name and surname transposed this is not always helpful. Given the size of the document printing it out is impossible for anyone without serious financial means. Downloading the document without a high speed internet connection is similarly insurmountable. Viewing it and searching it on a home PC is extremely time consuming. My home PC is an iMac g3 with a 300 MHz processor and 128 Megs of ram and I ended up having to do my work with the document at my computer at work. Anyone with a slower computer or without a fair amount of computer knowledge would encounter even more obstacles.

Many people are familiar with the film Godfather II, some of which was filmed on Ellis Island. In the early flashback sequences we see Vito Andolini (Don Corleone) experience the murder of most of his family. He boards a ship as a child alone to an unfamiliar place and loses even his name along the way. This fiction of European immigration into the US is much closer to the facts of the middle passage than it is to the experience of any white ethnic’s great or great-great grandfather. The current Mafia chic popular among Black youth should surprise nobody.

It is a matter confirmed by historical documents that white privilege was extended to those immigrants at least from the time they were interviewed by the ship’s purser on the dock in Palermo, Bremen, Naples, La Havre etc. More attention was paid to the accuracy of the documentation of their migration, using fountain pens and ledger books, than to the exodus of mostly poor mostly Black folks from the New Orleans area today using computers

And the poets down here don't write nothing at all

2005-09-24T17:38:00.000-07:00

In an attmept to breathe life into my blog I am presenting some of my poetry. These aren't covered by any intellectual property laws so if you have no ethics or talent feel free to pass them off as your own. I will know.

Cost of Living Adjustment

The sugar bitter burning
Down my esophagus
Like soap
But until work I am silent
My words bile
Upon each other
Derelict cars in the junkyard
As the light comes sideways

Trapped in that cell
A one legged bicyclist
Wishing for a pogo stick
Speaking a life sentence
Of office cant
Be that I’m rusted through
The rims of my eyelids
Itch for tears
That never arrive

In the Jersey Meadowlands

Faster dead than alive
A snail descends
The egrets throat
A question mark shadow’s length
from the bulk mailing facility
The grit of its gizzard
Money into paper
Shell into sand
Stamps cancelled
37 by 37 by 37

Fragment

The jet's spotlight tunnel
against the clouds
the moon . . .
A snowball
the kid's not even aiming
doesn't have to
the gun metal gray of winter
is in us and around us like language
pause to purchase pen and pad
outside the temperature slows the ink

Hourglass

Choking on a pearl
as a pencil trapped in a compass
the oyster can tell no joke
as end finds end
sailor twists the knife
and its open again
or shucked at the bar
where strangers throw darts
sawdust like pencil shavings
to cover the shards
of an hourglass with only one grain of sand

Here's another poem about molluscs titled
Nautilus Shell

Whirling dust flood turns
a corkscrew
winding through the
aperture in the center
motion stops
sand leaves a halo of air
enough breath
to fuel swift backwards thoughts
I kick the cat as I wake
like the nautilus never to drown
the turning pipe a cubit long
thumb over thumb
breath forms the glowing bottle
Fire the kiln and smoked glass
Casting half shadow half angry glow

Our speaking turns the windmill
like the slowest lover
millstone caressing grain
to powder to bookpaste
each antechamber anticipates
receding walls
permanent and perpetual
lock arms and spin
to days to years
to powder to bookpaste
it turns again

Reclaimed

Anywhere I go
They smell my fear
The knives pierce my back
A dozen knitting needles at work
Just a part of the process
Straight through
They assert their sharp points
To those before me
The past
its jaws a great suitcase
Closes around me
And I am carried away
Pieces of history reclaimed

Synthesis Engine

We spin through
The sweet and the bitter
A Zamboni’s frosted breakfast
On scattered alphabet soup
The vessel floats
Weighed down by the leaden certainties
Each rotation tills
Fills a storehouse
Spirals down the sandglass
Reaches the sky in a crow’s belly
Inky black from the pen
The smoke rises
Twisting into Knotted strings
To pull the child’s laugh
through the marionette
Illuminating the sundial at sunrise
in a watchmaker’s garden

My Blog Sucks

2005-09-13T10:52:00.000-07:00

Hi,
My blog sucks and I apologize. I just can't get the hang of blogging. I can write, I've written some things that were actually pretty good in the past but have not been able to do the same on my blog. The rules are different, it is sort of stream of consciousness but also should have some structure. I have no expectation that anyone is looking at the blog anyway which I think contributes to my inabliity to add to it in a way that I feel is blogworthy.
matt
Oh, one other thing, here is a picture of John Roberts I found. He looks so bad that I am suprised they used this photo. Or perhaps they are trying to play up the softball questions he's getting into some kind of Mennen speedstick commercial.

Photos

2005-09-01T19:41:00.000-07:00

Good Source for Gulf Coast Info

2005-08-31T10:59:00.000-07:00

Hi,
try this one. I doubt if there is any news source closer to events.

http://www.nola.com/

Biloxi Blues

2005-08-31T09:50:00.000-07:00

News of the hurricane is overwhelmingly bad. There is a plan to evacuate people from the Superdome to the fucking Astrodome. Clearly there will be some kind of broad left response in the NYC area and I want to be part of that. If you want up to date coverage on what is going on try google news. MTV.com had suprisingly comprehensive content. There are a few links on the NYC IMC website and I don't know of any further explicitly left coverage currently available
check it out:http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2005/08/56294.html

I have neither the time nor the resources to improve upon either their coverage or the coverage of the mainstream media.

Hurricane Katrina

2005-08-30T12:28:00.000-07:00

As anybody with access to the internet knows hurricane Katrina has hit the Gulf Coast of the U.S. I've seen numerous articles about the economic implications of this storm. Stratfor sent me the only postings I've gotten from them in months. Both were about the hurricane. The Port of Southern Louisiana is the 5th largest on Earth. It may not be reopened for quite a while. The hurricane could change the course of the Mississippi and dredging may be required. Naturally capitalists will not bear those costs themselves and will pass it along to folks primarily in the New Orleans are but also up into the Midwest and to some degree here on the coasts as well.
The shelter of last resort for folks who couldn't get out of town was the Superdome. Can I just say: fuck that! (?) The most stable shelter for a city along a coast prone to large storms, a city below sea level, is a fucking football stadium. The news page set as my home page here at work has been featuring pictures of looters wading trough chest deep water with cases of beer.
I really hate the stigmatization of looters, who in these photos are African American.
The beer, for example, is bought and paid for by insurance. Seriously if all they're giving you is a football stadium as shelter from the storm-get some free beer. The dangerous thing is that the waters can carry pathogens and invisible currents.
I've recieved an email from a friend of mine in the South telling me that during flood conditions 20 years ago levees were released to flood poor neighborhods in order to save tourist centers and rich homes.
There is not a lot of news abut what people are going through in poor communities beyond the Superdome anecdotes. Keep an eye though on the New Orleans IMC. Their last post was from before the storm hit and can be seen here: http://neworleans.indymedia.org/news/2005/08/3796_comment.php#3797

Just in time for back to school . . .its Male Desparation

2005-08-24T19:13:00.000-07:00

Hi,
been a week or two. I think I've happened upon a subject I can write a bit about.
There are at least 2 films premiering in the next week or so that promise to kid and joke about male desparation. A subject I have a passing familarity with. There is the Steve Carrel vehicle "The 40 Year Old Virgin" and a smarmy looking indy or at least faux indy film called "Baxter." If I can get bootlegs of these 2 I will hopefully be able to come up with some kind of interesting critique. That may not be until the weekend. Tomorrow or Friday I am going to try to come up with something about male body dysmorphia. Something else I have some familiarity with. My younger brother died on an exercise bike in a body building gym. The trick with all this is choosing interesting enough subject matter to avoid sounding like some guy whining.
So, watch this space.
bartelby

Invisible People #2

2005-08-09T10:12:00.000-07:00

OK so not the freshest news but a few weeks back I made a trip up to a college built on the grounds of still existing convent. In the summer of 2002, during a period of underemployment I temped at their circulation desk and it was creepy enough then.
Old nuns, for example, would borrow books and in may instances the library would only get them back upon their death.
There were a few shelves of records from the college’s radio station for sale in the library for 25 cents or so each. Virtually all classical music and I was happy to find Iannis Xenakis' "Metastasis/Pithoprakta/Eonta" as recorded by the French National Radio Orchestra. It is considered one of Xenakis' best. As far as I could tell this college's radio station was big on the classical music of the "Three B's" Beethoven, Bach and Brahms. So it's likely they listened to this disc once and then packed it away. There were a few nearly as amazing finds but now I've pretty much exhausted that place as a source of musical enjoyment. Most of the remaining records, if I wanted them, are available relatively cheaply on CD from Naxos. Anyway I was happy to have made off with a score of records I would never find anywhere else. But that's not really the story.

This college is a Catholic college and was originally strictly for women. Now men can go but few do. Mostly it is a training school for women working as support personnel; nursing, secretarial, paralegal etc and is largely attended by people of color.
The library staff includes some nice folks but also some overt racists.

After working there a few weeks, maybe a month and a half I landed a full time permanent gig at a law firm where I still work.

Anyway on this more recent trip up there for records I encountered this racist dullard I’d encountered before. She was the librarian on duty but the person working the desk was a young nun from Africa.

Here's the thing about nuns. Big surprise, American women do not want to be nuns. Most of the nuns at this place hailing from the US are retirement age or way past it. The younger nuns that I've encountered there are from Africa. This makes sense, if I were a woman in Africa the prospect of being a nun in the US would probably quite appeal to me over say AIDS for instance. I think of it as a little grey market slavery. This nun, who like the place and the librarian will remain nameless (email me if you really gotta know). Is getting food and board from her order in return for working on the campus. Is she getting paid? What is her immigration status? If she violates her vows will she be deported?
I don't know the answers to those but I do know that Miss librarian; mid forties is volunteering to me the fact that she still lives at home with her mom and she possesses a sort of polymorphous perversity familiar to most Catholics that she can only half repress, all of it making my skin crawl. So there I am with an armful of LPs and this woman is engaging me in the most uncomfortable small talk I can recall. Once the conversation ended, a moment that almost renewed my belief in a benevolent deity, she barked orders at the Sister which in a single instant yanked me back to atheism and made me a little sick to my stomach. It was fairly clear that this was business as usual there. The Sister was only too happy to jump up and calculate what I owed for my trove of vinyl.

On my way back to the train station, I repeated to myself over and over in my mind, "That was creepy."

The train came, I got home and I made a B-line for the shower, I didn't even want a little bit of Catholic lurking behind my ear or in some nether region after an experience like that.

Bartleby

PGA Tour (Invisible People #1)

2005-08-08T18:40:00.000-07:00

Hi,
So this morning there was a cop on the platform as I got off the train in Summit, then 2 cops with a dog upstairs in the station, 2 cops on bicycles out front and then even more and more cops. There were a lot of fucking cops. In addition to cops there were many golfers, the PGA tour is doing whatever it is they do at a golf course somewhere in Summit. All kinds of golfers, which is to say a bunch of rich white guys. I didn't see Tiger Woods. They had those cattle fences for these guys to line up to get on yellow cheese buses to the golf course.
The third largest definable group other than commuters in general were Mexican/Central American men on their way to their jobs landscaping and other sorts of menial tasks that nobody without the threat of deportation hanging over their head would do.
On my way to work the train passes a large parking lot in either Orange or South Orange that contains anywhere from 50 to 100 of these gentlemen waiting to be picked up and ride in the back of a pickup truck to any work they can find. Further out along the same rail line are Denville, Dover and Morristown. In Denville and Dover especially the entire downtown basically *is* Mexico. Morristown is more Columbian. Retail stores in downtown Denville and Dover carry Mexican products exclusively, there are Mexican restaurants and everybody you see is Mexican, perhaps some folks from other parts of Central America. Once in a while you see some white guy in a mullet who is looking around and looking furious that his precious downtown is no longer white territory. I've been there, I saw this guy, he's really pissed.
Anyhow on my way home there are more and more golfers at the train station and I notice one Mexican guy with a long ponytail, the golfers are walking past him like he's a stalled golfcart or some other such inanimate object. He's wearing a camoflage t-shirt (maybe it was the camoflage, maybe that's why they couldn't see him) that says "You can't see me, but I'm right in front of you." It really made my day and a big smile crossed my face, I think he noticed because as he left he turned around and smiled back.

My New Blog

2005-08-08T10:47:00.000-07:00

Hi,
This is my new blog. Hopefully it will work out better than my previous blog that laid dormant for so long that the templates became obsolete. Work can be slow at times and I am through google-whacking to pass the time. Besides you would be suprised at the sheer number of websites featuring molybdenum haggis. Of course now there is one more. Looks like thoug I will have to download firefox to edit this thing at home.
bartleby

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