After sleeping on it, I find I'm not quite as inclined to imagine that OBL's tape was a conscious effort to swing the election for Bush. It doesn't seem to me that he understands us quite that well, and it doesn't seem to me that I understand him well enough to be that certain of what he's up to. I think the message might actually have been: "Hi. 9-11 was all my idea. And you haven't been able to catch me, so I'll do it all over again if I decide to. I know you're having an election now, but that won't make any difference either way. In order to make a difference, you'll have to get your government to stop doing the things they're doing that keep me wanting to attack you again. 'Bye."
It gets harder, the more I think about it, to see that causing many of the remaining pool of undecided US voters to go Bush. I think OBL needed a logo moment, though, in terms of the ongoing validity of his global brand, and look what he's been able to pull off, with virtually no outlay: The world's full attention, as both candidates drop everything to respond.
You know who would've completely gotten OBL? Andy Warhol.
From William Gibson's Blog
Sunday, October 31, 2004
Thursday, October 28, 2004
I bought Christopher Reeve's wheelchair on eBay.
"If anything, this shirt is a celebration of the wide variety of items available on eBay. It's not just for penis enlargement pills, phony antiques, stolen goods, dubious diet products, unlicensed pharmaceuticals, and designer knockoffs. Why would eBay choose to distance themselves from a shirt about such a beloved human being like Christopher Reeve? They can only benefit from the publicity. Imagine how many people will go to eBay looking for Christopher Reeve's wheelchair. Even if they don't find it, they'll probably find something they can use, like a hat."
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
Moral Clarity and Devout Spirituality
When young Bush was at Yale in the Sixties, he told the same joke over and over again for two years, according to some of his classmates. One of them still remembers it:
There was a young man named Green
Who invented a jack-off machine
On the twenty-third stroke
The damn thing broke
And churned his nuts into cream
(From Hunter S. Thompson at rollingstone.com)
There was a young man named Green
Who invented a jack-off machine
On the twenty-third stroke
The damn thing broke
And churned his nuts into cream
(From Hunter S. Thompson at rollingstone.com)
More haiku
pink jacket, matching
purse, blue uniform hat and
shirt. not so different?
working class hero
an american princess
match made in heaven
the worst thing I do
when I am riding the bus
is make eye contact
were I president
I would give everybody
good dental plans
I know I’m balding
but at least it’s not as bad
as that guy right there
the adjacent men
are speaking only spanish
I should have studied
I wish I was in
the blue water taco grill
eating a taco
come on trent reznor
can you still be so angry?
it’s been 15 years.
I think that restaurant
has replaced a laid back bar
that I really liked
it is strange and sad
that so many people want
to go to bellevue
is it shame or pride
on the ipod user’s face
at her white wires?
the most important
meal of the day is breakfast
I wish I ate one
george w bush
is such a bad president
I hope he won’t win
oh, soliel moon frye
tv’s own punky brewster
I still have a crush
axe deodorant
is more of a novelty
than a real product
the east-side bound bus
full of drowsy passengers
staring as I write
I am an old man
in clothing and attitude
but with no stories
one thing I realize,
I write terrible poems.
I’m an essayist.
purse, blue uniform hat and
shirt. not so different?
working class hero
an american princess
match made in heaven
the worst thing I do
when I am riding the bus
is make eye contact
were I president
I would give everybody
good dental plans
I know I’m balding
but at least it’s not as bad
as that guy right there
the adjacent men
are speaking only spanish
I should have studied
I wish I was in
the blue water taco grill
eating a taco
come on trent reznor
can you still be so angry?
it’s been 15 years.
I think that restaurant
has replaced a laid back bar
that I really liked
it is strange and sad
that so many people want
to go to bellevue
is it shame or pride
on the ipod user’s face
at her white wires?
the most important
meal of the day is breakfast
I wish I ate one
george w bush
is such a bad president
I hope he won’t win
oh, soliel moon frye
tv’s own punky brewster
I still have a crush
axe deodorant
is more of a novelty
than a real product
the east-side bound bus
full of drowsy passengers
staring as I write
I am an old man
in clothing and attitude
but with no stories
one thing I realize,
I write terrible poems.
I’m an essayist.
Errol Fucking Morris
Remember those Mac switch ads a couple years back? I was surprised to learn recently that they were directed by my 3rd favorite director Errol Morris. Even more interesting is the series of Republican switcher ads for the latetest election.
CHECKITOUT
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
I think the title / would be much more effective / if haiku itself
This is a collaborative reflection effort from Betsy
and Joseph
A haiku is a poem designed to capture a single moment
in time with a very specific structure. While poets
have argued for centuries how best to communicate the
concept of the haiku from Japanese to English, we have
used the basic 5 7 5 syllable structure.
MLK VISTAs
are welcoming and open
to difficult tasks
good people help clean
they presume it is healthy
but is it really?
I'm here to do chores
piles of unknown treasures
now where to begin?
I did not know that
eggs left warm for several months
become black and soft
so discouraging
imagine if it were me
I can't even start
on linoleum
crunching sounds under your feet
must be cockroaches
smells bad, very sad
look at the situation
are we helping her?
the dishes are clean
and the florescent lights work
back at BCC
how has this happened?
what is this person's life like
how does she feel now?
she does not smile
we are invading her space
for her case-worker
we dug out his home
he will not be evicted
this month, anyway
make a difference day
protect against eviction
is it possible?
she once was homeless
jesus I hope that she's not
homeless again soon
a vast swarm of flies
rode a wave of awful smell
when the door opened
hey dave, I got one
make a difference day service
or a paper cut?
what else does she need?
support, luck, a second chance,
community, me?
my friends in Spokane
are gathering cans of food
I hope not to eat
there is way too much
I want her to keep her home
but can she finish?
the man with no shirt
with flies in his apartment
does not want our help
George W. Bush
sent us a support letter
I wish he was here.
and Joseph
A haiku is a poem designed to capture a single moment
in time with a very specific structure. While poets
have argued for centuries how best to communicate the
concept of the haiku from Japanese to English, we have
used the basic 5 7 5 syllable structure.
MLK VISTAs
are welcoming and open
to difficult tasks
good people help clean
they presume it is healthy
but is it really?
I'm here to do chores
piles of unknown treasures
now where to begin?
I did not know that
eggs left warm for several months
become black and soft
so discouraging
imagine if it were me
I can't even start
on linoleum
crunching sounds under your feet
must be cockroaches
smells bad, very sad
look at the situation
are we helping her?
the dishes are clean
and the florescent lights work
back at BCC
how has this happened?
what is this person's life like
how does she feel now?
she does not smile
we are invading her space
for her case-worker
we dug out his home
he will not be evicted
this month, anyway
make a difference day
protect against eviction
is it possible?
she once was homeless
jesus I hope that she's not
homeless again soon
a vast swarm of flies
rode a wave of awful smell
when the door opened
hey dave, I got one
make a difference day service
or a paper cut?
what else does she need?
support, luck, a second chance,
community, me?
my friends in Spokane
are gathering cans of food
I hope not to eat
there is way too much
I want her to keep her home
but can she finish?
the man with no shirt
with flies in his apartment
does not want our help
George W. Bush
sent us a support letter
I wish he was here.
Sunday, October 24, 2004
Make a Difference Day
If Overwhelmed do following
1. Start with garbage bag and clean out fridge of rotten food and old debris. Pick up obvious garbage and food products around kitchen and living space. All surfaces. The more garbage is picked up, the better sorting will go. Be careful of receipts, Rx information, or bills. Ask resident before throwing away if looks iffy.
2. Do dishes in sink. Drain nasty water first, start with clean water.
3. One person can do bathroom, sort like things together, throw away trash. Let tub soak in cleanser.
4. Change gloves often and take trash out as it fills.
I thought that the smell could have been in my head. The smell in Adria’s car of old leather and young friends, of English pubs and American greasy spoons, of college parties and high school barbeques may have been something I imagined. And why shouldn’t it have been? Why wouldn’t I imagine the beautiful smoky smell after the putrid odors of the last 2 hours?
Next I noticed the tiny gray flakes. It could have been dust. It could have been stains left by the car’s previous owner. And even if I was right, I didn’t want to be the one to say anything.
The stress level in the car, while neither unfriendly nor hostile had become palpable.
The smell of the apartment we had just left lingered in our noses. The parts of our body that had been exposed to the rancid air in that tiny residence felt as if they couldn’t be cleaned with an hour under a hot shower and an entire bar of Zest deodorizing soap.
Finally, the cruel still of the moment was broken. Adria said exactly what was secretly on all of our minds.
“I have never wanted a cigarette so badly in my life.”
I reached in to my gray fleece Washington Service Corps vest and pulled out a pack of Parliament Lights.
The mood of the car shifted from edgy discomfort to profound relief.
So we lit our cigarettes. We cleared our lungs of the air contaminated by rotting eggs, rotting milk, and rotting pizza crusts; by dog shit and laundry left unwashed for months, possibly years, and thousands upon thousands of bugs.
As the warm, sweet smoke began washing me, cleansing me from the inside out like Russian Lump incense purifying a confessional where the most egregious of human sins has been forgiven in the eyes of god and the church, I realized both how stupid I am and what a wimp I am.
In my Americorps grays, with my Americorps smile of idiot optimism I had begun the day with a vision of the Volunteer Chore Service experience resembling an equal mix of friendly old people needing help tying up a month’s worth of Seattle Post Intelligencers for recycling and an episode of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
When flies swarmed out upon the opening of the woman’s door, and when we all nearly gagged at the smell, the contrast between real and imagined life became stark.
Last year, for Make a Difference Day I gave books to kids. This year for Make a Difference Day, I nearly vomited down the rubbish chute of a subsidized apartment building.
Most of the time that we spent working on the woman’s apartment, I was running the nearly 200 lbs of garbage from the apartment to the dumpster. Why? Because I am a wimp. I would try to help with the clean-up inside of the apartment, but I would go back to running the trash because the rancid thickness of the air and my overpowering fear of cockroaches made the inside of the apartment unbearable for fragile little 2-showers-a-day me.
As all newly acquainted smokers do, we all told each other how long we had been smoking and lied about how close each of us was to quitting. We smoked and smoked and calmed our frazzled and confused nerves.
There is a right way to react publicly to a situation such as the one we had just shared, and it was exactly what we did. We were calm, cool, and collected. We were polite and we acted as if this was the sort of thing that we did all of the time.
However, internally the correct reaction to such a situation is much more ambiguous.
Can I feel disgusted, admitting that each time I’ve ever used the word squalor until now has been massive hyperbole? Should I feel guilt about my disgust? Should this reinforce my fear of ever living alone (something I have never done)? What about my fear of growing old? Is my fear of growing old linked in any way to my love of smoking?
I took another drag from my cigarette.
Service, I thought, can’t be about me. It can’t be about MY fears, about MY fragile sensibilities; it has to be about the person being served, or in a truly ideal world, about the service itself.
I lit a second cigarette with the butt of my first.
If service is about the servant instead of the served, the focus is necessarily misplaced. So why do we spend so much time on reflection, or as Jesse once put it with such vulgar eloquence, “developing our members?”
Does engaging students, or ourselves for that matter, in service with so much attention paid to the students’ learning, or our reflection and growth by its very nature cheapen the value of the service?
I shouldn’t use my Make A Difference Day Volunteer Chore Service to grapple with my fear of old age. I should use my service to help an old woman clean her house so that she doesn’t get evicted.
We got back to our home base at Jefferson Terrace. I put out my cigarette and worried about the moral implications of the Americorps and Service Learning foci on reflection. I laughed at the irony, because I knew that I would soon write a reflection essay on the subject.
1. Start with garbage bag and clean out fridge of rotten food and old debris. Pick up obvious garbage and food products around kitchen and living space. All surfaces. The more garbage is picked up, the better sorting will go. Be careful of receipts, Rx information, or bills. Ask resident before throwing away if looks iffy.
2. Do dishes in sink. Drain nasty water first, start with clean water.
3. One person can do bathroom, sort like things together, throw away trash. Let tub soak in cleanser.
4. Change gloves often and take trash out as it fills.
I thought that the smell could have been in my head. The smell in Adria’s car of old leather and young friends, of English pubs and American greasy spoons, of college parties and high school barbeques may have been something I imagined. And why shouldn’t it have been? Why wouldn’t I imagine the beautiful smoky smell after the putrid odors of the last 2 hours?
Next I noticed the tiny gray flakes. It could have been dust. It could have been stains left by the car’s previous owner. And even if I was right, I didn’t want to be the one to say anything.
The stress level in the car, while neither unfriendly nor hostile had become palpable.
The smell of the apartment we had just left lingered in our noses. The parts of our body that had been exposed to the rancid air in that tiny residence felt as if they couldn’t be cleaned with an hour under a hot shower and an entire bar of Zest deodorizing soap.
Finally, the cruel still of the moment was broken. Adria said exactly what was secretly on all of our minds.
“I have never wanted a cigarette so badly in my life.”
I reached in to my gray fleece Washington Service Corps vest and pulled out a pack of Parliament Lights.
The mood of the car shifted from edgy discomfort to profound relief.
So we lit our cigarettes. We cleared our lungs of the air contaminated by rotting eggs, rotting milk, and rotting pizza crusts; by dog shit and laundry left unwashed for months, possibly years, and thousands upon thousands of bugs.
As the warm, sweet smoke began washing me, cleansing me from the inside out like Russian Lump incense purifying a confessional where the most egregious of human sins has been forgiven in the eyes of god and the church, I realized both how stupid I am and what a wimp I am.
In my Americorps grays, with my Americorps smile of idiot optimism I had begun the day with a vision of the Volunteer Chore Service experience resembling an equal mix of friendly old people needing help tying up a month’s worth of Seattle Post Intelligencers for recycling and an episode of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
When flies swarmed out upon the opening of the woman’s door, and when we all nearly gagged at the smell, the contrast between real and imagined life became stark.
Last year, for Make a Difference Day I gave books to kids. This year for Make a Difference Day, I nearly vomited down the rubbish chute of a subsidized apartment building.
Most of the time that we spent working on the woman’s apartment, I was running the nearly 200 lbs of garbage from the apartment to the dumpster. Why? Because I am a wimp. I would try to help with the clean-up inside of the apartment, but I would go back to running the trash because the rancid thickness of the air and my overpowering fear of cockroaches made the inside of the apartment unbearable for fragile little 2-showers-a-day me.
As all newly acquainted smokers do, we all told each other how long we had been smoking and lied about how close each of us was to quitting. We smoked and smoked and calmed our frazzled and confused nerves.
There is a right way to react publicly to a situation such as the one we had just shared, and it was exactly what we did. We were calm, cool, and collected. We were polite and we acted as if this was the sort of thing that we did all of the time.
However, internally the correct reaction to such a situation is much more ambiguous.
Can I feel disgusted, admitting that each time I’ve ever used the word squalor until now has been massive hyperbole? Should I feel guilt about my disgust? Should this reinforce my fear of ever living alone (something I have never done)? What about my fear of growing old? Is my fear of growing old linked in any way to my love of smoking?
I took another drag from my cigarette.
Service, I thought, can’t be about me. It can’t be about MY fears, about MY fragile sensibilities; it has to be about the person being served, or in a truly ideal world, about the service itself.
I lit a second cigarette with the butt of my first.
If service is about the servant instead of the served, the focus is necessarily misplaced. So why do we spend so much time on reflection, or as Jesse once put it with such vulgar eloquence, “developing our members?”
Does engaging students, or ourselves for that matter, in service with so much attention paid to the students’ learning, or our reflection and growth by its very nature cheapen the value of the service?
I shouldn’t use my Make A Difference Day Volunteer Chore Service to grapple with my fear of old age. I should use my service to help an old woman clean her house so that she doesn’t get evicted.
We got back to our home base at Jefferson Terrace. I put out my cigarette and worried about the moral implications of the Americorps and Service Learning foci on reflection. I laughed at the irony, because I knew that I would soon write a reflection essay on the subject.
Thursday, October 21, 2004
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Blogger is Piggybacking on to the National Novel Writing Month!
I'm considering giving it a try this year, but I do have a full time job and a life. Who knows?
I'll let you know if I start my novel.
Na-No-Blog-Mo
I'll let you know if I start my novel.
Na-No-Blog-Mo
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Ripped off from boingboing.net
Ben Folds on Shatner
William Shatner's surprisingly good "Has Been" album was produced by alt.pop pianist Ben Folds. BB pal John Alderman just conducted a really insightful interview with Folds for MP3.com.
(Shatner) had so many ideas, and they're ideas coming from a 73-year-old actor. And that's a great perspective. It's moving. We hear kids all the time. Rock and roll is--and should be--a kid's place, and they're coming of age--18 years old--and they're going, "There's something out there. I want to get it. There's something." And those things that they're saying... They've been said over and over, which is OK, because this is their first time living. But what Shatner's saying in the record so much is that he still feels that at 73 years old. It's like you don't just age to 25, 30, 40 years old--and all of a sudden you know everything. It's that perspective that bridges any kind of generation gap you could have in rock-and-roll music.
As I'm saying it, I think it's kind of monumental. I don't know that anyone's ever done that before--actually said, "I'm 73 years old, and I cannot get my s*** together." That's cool!
William Shatner's surprisingly good "Has Been" album was produced by alt.pop pianist Ben Folds. BB pal John Alderman just conducted a really insightful interview with Folds for MP3.com.
(Shatner) had so many ideas, and they're ideas coming from a 73-year-old actor. And that's a great perspective. It's moving. We hear kids all the time. Rock and roll is--and should be--a kid's place, and they're coming of age--18 years old--and they're going, "There's something out there. I want to get it. There's something." And those things that they're saying... They've been said over and over, which is OK, because this is their first time living. But what Shatner's saying in the record so much is that he still feels that at 73 years old. It's like you don't just age to 25, 30, 40 years old--and all of a sudden you know everything. It's that perspective that bridges any kind of generation gap you could have in rock-and-roll music.
As I'm saying it, I think it's kind of monumental. I don't know that anyone's ever done that before--actually said, "I'm 73 years old, and I cannot get my s*** together." That's cool!
A brief reflection piece.
-They say that cigarettes are more addictive than heroin.
-I still think that the bus tunnel is novel and cool.
-When you stop using butter, a hell of a lot of your food will taste dry and bland.
-I don't know who I will miss more, Julia Child or Rodney Dangerfield.
-I shouldn't have done another year of Americorps, and I certainly shouldn't have done another year of Americorps in Seattle, but I am really (mostly) extremely glad glad that I did anyway.
-Spell Check has both caused and saved me from embarrassment many times.
-Alcohol has both caused and saved me from embarrassment many times.
-If all buses were expresses to exactly where you wanted to go, I bet you would ride the bus more often.
-Do you brush your teeth when you fast? 'Cause I do.
-The Electoral College, while flawed, is a much better idea than it seems.
-The most effective use of this "List Reflection" technique ever was on Bruce McCulloch's "Shame Based Man" CD.
-The Least effective use of this "List Reflection" technique ever was in a response paper to "A Separate Piece" in an English class I took in 1996. Sorry Ms. Valach.
-In retrospect, "Titanic" was a really horrible movie.
-I miss Reno as much as I had missed Seattle.
-Nostalgic Longing is as much a part me as my eye color.
-There is NEVER a happy reason for the back of a Metro bus to smell like vomit.
--
Would you like to see Some Interesting Things?
http://home.earthlink.net/~notatyrant
-I still think that the bus tunnel is novel and cool.
-When you stop using butter, a hell of a lot of your food will taste dry and bland.
-I don't know who I will miss more, Julia Child or Rodney Dangerfield.
-I shouldn't have done another year of Americorps, and I certainly shouldn't have done another year of Americorps in Seattle, but I am really (mostly) extremely glad glad that I did anyway.
-Spell Check has both caused and saved me from embarrassment many times.
-Alcohol has both caused and saved me from embarrassment many times.
-If all buses were expresses to exactly where you wanted to go, I bet you would ride the bus more often.
-Do you brush your teeth when you fast? 'Cause I do.
-The Electoral College, while flawed, is a much better idea than it seems.
-The most effective use of this "List Reflection" technique ever was on Bruce McCulloch's "Shame Based Man" CD.
-The Least effective use of this "List Reflection" technique ever was in a response paper to "A Separate Piece" in an English class I took in 1996. Sorry Ms. Valach.
-In retrospect, "Titanic" was a really horrible movie.
-I miss Reno as much as I had missed Seattle.
-Nostalgic Longing is as much a part me as my eye color.
-There is NEVER a happy reason for the back of a Metro bus to smell like vomit.
--
Would you like to see Some Interesting Things?
http://home.earthlink.net/~notatyrant
Monday, October 18, 2004
Sunday, October 17, 2004
This American Life
This is pretty interesting. It is a series of reports that Ira Glass did for NPR.
Saturday, October 16, 2004
Friday, October 15, 2004
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Trandimensnia
This is a link to a text based game I was trying to write as a fourteen year old. I quickly gave up but follow the link to the html version I just made.
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
Monday, October 04, 2004
Reflection!
Forgotten Verse
Joseph Baruch Warren
At the Seattle Cluster Meeting last Friday Erin included in out
agenda, pictures of the gang from Cheers, the TV show about the Boston
bar that, from 1982 to 1983 was broadcast to a nation longing for a
sense of community and camaraderie portrayed among the sometimes goofy
bar tenders and drinkers. The theme of the meeting was "community,"
so the agenda decoration was absolutely appropriate.
People who know me understand that being handed a piece of paper with
pictures of the Cheers gang will, inevitably will lead to me, singing
the theme song.
I started with the opening verse, which everyone knew from a decade of
weekly broadcasts on NBC, and two decades of daily broadcasts on
channel 11 during our most formative years.
Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got.
Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot.
Wouldn't you like to get away?
Sometimes you want to go, where everybody knows your name,
and they're always glad you came.
You wanna be where you can see, our troubles are all the same
You wanna be where everybody knows your name.
This was a definition of community that we could agree upon. The
members of the community get together, know each other, and share each
other's sorrows and troubles.
Then I started remembering the other verses:
All those night when you've got no lights,
The check is in the mail;
And your little angel
Hung the cat up by it's tail;
And your third fiancé didn't show
And
Roll out of bed, Mr. Coffee's dead;
The morning's looking bright;
And your shrink ran off to Europe,
And didn't even write;
And your husband wants to be a girl
As you can, no doubt see, the definition of community we had agreed
upon initially, a bar full of friendly drunks who knew who you were is
transformed. The 'troubles' that are 'all the same' are far from
universal. Transgendered spouses, psychopathic children, repeated
abandonment at the alter; these are pretty specialized and intense
'troubles' to share among all community members. In fact, these are
the kinds of problems that most of us would look at as the problems of
an entirely separate other. We can look at these 'troubles' and, far
from saying that they are the same as our own, we can say, "At least I
don't have those problems, no matter how bad my life is."
But the song tells us otherwise. In this definition of community that
we had agreed upon, our troubles, no matter how severe, were shared at
a fundamental level by everyone in the community. We don't just feel
sorry for the person abandoned by her psychiatrist just as she is
losing the connection that she thought she had with her spouse, we
genuinely share the pain and loneliness she is experiencing. Our
Troubles are all the same. The community truly shares the burden of
the trouble, not just pity or money or booze.
When I got to the second and third verses of the song, everyone
laughed. They had never heard the verses, and thought that I was
making them up. It may well have been the result of the really damned
funny lyrics. It may have been my struggle to remember them after all
the years since the show went off the air that made them think I was
improvising lyrics. But more influential was, I think, the shock of
realization that our seemingly easy-to-agree-upon definition of
community held some very demanding requirements of community members.
Just because we say we can universally accept an idea as a good thing,
does not mean that we are willing to follow through with it when the
idea becomes complex or demanding. Once the rats have been drowned,
we don't want to, um, pay the piper.
One of the examples of this phenomenon that I find most jarring is out
national exploitation of the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Like the first verse of Where Everybody Knows Your Name, Americans can
agree with near universality on the wisdom of King's "I Have a Dream"
speech. But when his speeches and writings (most of which are
shockingly out of print) beyond the "I Have a Dream" first verse
demand more of us, we tend to shy away, or laugh it off.
While we AMEN to "I Have a Dream," most of America refuses to practice
or believe in the idea that vast social change can, and even must
happen through nonviolent means. While we can all celebrate the
possibility that some day the State of Alabama "will be transformed
into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able
to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together
as sisters and brothers," very few of us seem willing to work towards
the fundamental changes needed to fight racist economic, political and
social systems.
Last MKL Day, in fact, the image was delivered of our president,
George W. Bush placing a wreath on King's grave. Bush, a president
who was, arguably, owes his presidency to the systematic
disenfranchisement of African American voters; Bush, who brought his
country to war based on premises that have proved to be shaky at best,
was honoring the greatest hero of the civil rights and antiwar
movements.
When we forget the second and third verses, and the huge tasks that
they require of us to truly belong to a community; when we forget
everything about Dr. King's life that doesn't fall within the four
paragraphs we memorized for 5th grade social studies, and when we see
our National Service as something smaller, and lighter than it really
is, we severely stunt our potential.
When Lyndon Johnson established Volunteers In Service To America, the
first incarnation of National Service as we experience it, the goal
was the elimination of poverty in America. It wasn't to make American
poverty more comfortable, or to reduce the number of people on welfare
by a certain percentage. It wasn't to make poor folk smile. The goal
was to be a fundamental shift in the way the country works.
While the first "verse" of our Service is easy to warm to; people in
grey shirts cleaning streams, working at food banks, tutoring
underserved children, recruiting college aged volunteers, we have to
remember that there is a second verse to the Americorps theme song.
--
Would you like to see Some Interesting Things?
http://home.earthlink.net/~notatyrant
Joseph Baruch Warren
At the Seattle Cluster Meeting last Friday Erin included in out
agenda, pictures of the gang from Cheers, the TV show about the Boston
bar that, from 1982 to 1983 was broadcast to a nation longing for a
sense of community and camaraderie portrayed among the sometimes goofy
bar tenders and drinkers. The theme of the meeting was "community,"
so the agenda decoration was absolutely appropriate.
People who know me understand that being handed a piece of paper with
pictures of the Cheers gang will, inevitably will lead to me, singing
the theme song.
I started with the opening verse, which everyone knew from a decade of
weekly broadcasts on NBC, and two decades of daily broadcasts on
channel 11 during our most formative years.
Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got.
Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot.
Wouldn't you like to get away?
Sometimes you want to go, where everybody knows your name,
and they're always glad you came.
You wanna be where you can see, our troubles are all the same
You wanna be where everybody knows your name.
This was a definition of community that we could agree upon. The
members of the community get together, know each other, and share each
other's sorrows and troubles.
Then I started remembering the other verses:
All those night when you've got no lights,
The check is in the mail;
And your little angel
Hung the cat up by it's tail;
And your third fiancé didn't show
And
Roll out of bed, Mr. Coffee's dead;
The morning's looking bright;
And your shrink ran off to Europe,
And didn't even write;
And your husband wants to be a girl
As you can, no doubt see, the definition of community we had agreed
upon initially, a bar full of friendly drunks who knew who you were is
transformed. The 'troubles' that are 'all the same' are far from
universal. Transgendered spouses, psychopathic children, repeated
abandonment at the alter; these are pretty specialized and intense
'troubles' to share among all community members. In fact, these are
the kinds of problems that most of us would look at as the problems of
an entirely separate other. We can look at these 'troubles' and, far
from saying that they are the same as our own, we can say, "At least I
don't have those problems, no matter how bad my life is."
But the song tells us otherwise. In this definition of community that
we had agreed upon, our troubles, no matter how severe, were shared at
a fundamental level by everyone in the community. We don't just feel
sorry for the person abandoned by her psychiatrist just as she is
losing the connection that she thought she had with her spouse, we
genuinely share the pain and loneliness she is experiencing. Our
Troubles are all the same. The community truly shares the burden of
the trouble, not just pity or money or booze.
When I got to the second and third verses of the song, everyone
laughed. They had never heard the verses, and thought that I was
making them up. It may well have been the result of the really damned
funny lyrics. It may have been my struggle to remember them after all
the years since the show went off the air that made them think I was
improvising lyrics. But more influential was, I think, the shock of
realization that our seemingly easy-to-agree-upon definition of
community held some very demanding requirements of community members.
Just because we say we can universally accept an idea as a good thing,
does not mean that we are willing to follow through with it when the
idea becomes complex or demanding. Once the rats have been drowned,
we don't want to, um, pay the piper.
One of the examples of this phenomenon that I find most jarring is out
national exploitation of the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Like the first verse of Where Everybody Knows Your Name, Americans can
agree with near universality on the wisdom of King's "I Have a Dream"
speech. But when his speeches and writings (most of which are
shockingly out of print) beyond the "I Have a Dream" first verse
demand more of us, we tend to shy away, or laugh it off.
While we AMEN to "I Have a Dream," most of America refuses to practice
or believe in the idea that vast social change can, and even must
happen through nonviolent means. While we can all celebrate the
possibility that some day the State of Alabama "will be transformed
into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able
to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together
as sisters and brothers," very few of us seem willing to work towards
the fundamental changes needed to fight racist economic, political and
social systems.
Last MKL Day, in fact, the image was delivered of our president,
George W. Bush placing a wreath on King's grave. Bush, a president
who was, arguably, owes his presidency to the systematic
disenfranchisement of African American voters; Bush, who brought his
country to war based on premises that have proved to be shaky at best,
was honoring the greatest hero of the civil rights and antiwar
movements.
When we forget the second and third verses, and the huge tasks that
they require of us to truly belong to a community; when we forget
everything about Dr. King's life that doesn't fall within the four
paragraphs we memorized for 5th grade social studies, and when we see
our National Service as something smaller, and lighter than it really
is, we severely stunt our potential.
When Lyndon Johnson established Volunteers In Service To America, the
first incarnation of National Service as we experience it, the goal
was the elimination of poverty in America. It wasn't to make American
poverty more comfortable, or to reduce the number of people on welfare
by a certain percentage. It wasn't to make poor folk smile. The goal
was to be a fundamental shift in the way the country works.
While the first "verse" of our Service is easy to warm to; people in
grey shirts cleaning streams, working at food banks, tutoring
underserved children, recruiting college aged volunteers, we have to
remember that there is a second verse to the Americorps theme song.
--
Would you like to see Some Interesting Things?
http://home.earthlink.net/~notatyrant
Saturday, October 02, 2004
Super Deluxe
Super Deluxe has a new website, a new CD, a new bass player and some new concert dates. The new cd sounds pretty good. It's basically just good to see them in circulation again, but I kind of wish that they played some of the solo songs from Braden Blake's Year In Pajamas.
But that's not the Super D scene.
I hope that they do a christmas show.
Old SD website
other old sd ws
But that's not the Super D scene.
I hope that they do a christmas show.
Old SD website
other old sd ws
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