action figures sold separately

catching up, here’s a few war-related links, mostly thanks to randomwalks, one of the best sites ever to grace the net.

• RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afganistan

• their 21 Oct report, Eye witness accounts of the US strikes on Kabul
• having walked by the site day before yesterday, Amanda and i can can confirm an overwhelming smell of burning plastic and metal and what must be a heavy load of toxics at the WTC. an intense experience in many ways.
• some good analysis from the nowar collective
• the “Hidden Agenda Behind War on Terror,” by John Pilger
• Maria Tomchick’s detailed piece on u.s. bombing of civilians in Afghanistan

oh my goodness. the rolling ball sculpture in the 42nd street PA bus terminal is amazing. those pix on the database.com site are really not so good and do not do this amazing work justice. i failed to take new and better pix when i was there, and it appeared to be stuck. hope it’s running again soon.

eli and amanda are still in nyc, hanging out with friends, family, walking in central park, working out at the y, missing the grrlz, and having a thoroughly surreal experience at easyEverything net cafe.

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80’s rock and pop going full blast, we are enjoying a chai latte (perhaps a bit too much as you can see from the picture of us above). also note the layout, and how the webcam can be used to take a picture of it’s own interface or of the miles of CAT5 running above our heads. it’s actually a pretty impressive wiring project. on our way to a comix place and paley park.
love n rage,
e & a

sadly, this list of attacks since 9-11 is far from complete…

you and your fancy material world
don’t see the links of chain binding love
our own obsessions
our hungry ghosts
closets so full of bones they won’t close

call it upward mobility but you been sold down the river
just another form of slavery
and the whole man made white world is your master

that’s what tracy chapman had to say to us all, as we pushed to get a good seat on a sold out train. i’m pulling out of d.c.’s union station on the sunday afternoon express to new york. the grafitti art and industrial parks and yards and tired trees and garbage and fences and old roads and gorgeous low hills and failed factories and long shadows and little toeheaded kids waving ‘bye all get me so pensive (and i suppose tracy’s crossroads helps that). after spending a few days with my bro in suburbia, i’m thinking again about the sameness of it all, the utter mundane quality of the dominant culture, and how breaking through that is so vital, and sometimes difficult for so many of us. it’s honestly wonderful to see them, and reconnect with them, and find the small counter-hegemonic salvos, the subtle but significant ways they are in fact breaking through. the boys, charlie and arthur, in all their bigness, keep them saner indeed. oh, and i’d forgotten that the squirrels were so… friendly (bold).

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comixnotes: unbelievable. love and rockets is back. as a huge fan, i’ve been hoping for the return, and i wasn’t paying too much attention to comix in the last several months. well, i was more than pleasantly surprised. l&r’s already in the 3rd edition and penny century’s up to no. 6. gotta catch up. my buddy dj’s also been reposting/linking us to the comics at http://www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/war2.html. zowie. next, adrian tomine, in sleepwalkers and optic nerve expresses the quality of culture i mentioned above so well. there’s something so hauntingly full of malaise, of quiet dread and defeat, yet at the same time so comforting, so totally human in his drawings and words. i finish one and keep wanting more.

why does the air in the tunnel between BWI and baltimore city smell so much like dog food? science diet adult regular in fact. ooh, wait, now it’s an overwhelming coffee smell. no cigarette smoke, however. and as we fly over the susquehana, and into a brief but very woody stretch of semi-rural delaware and the philadelphia outskirts, i can really feel how we are ripping along at, um, one hundred fifty miles per hour. yow. what a way to travel.

attended the last half of “not part of the penalty: ending prisoner rape.” some very valuable discussion and shining light on myths and facts. there were, however, so many voices saying that the penalty itself is just fine, it simply needs some structural adjustment to remove this particular negative outcome. that prisons in general are ok, we just shouldn’t let folks be raped while they’re in prison. it was great to have at least a couple anti-racist and abolitionist voices on hand for the last panel:

• Cassandra Shaylor of Justice Network on Women (their website to be launched in November, check back here or at prisonactivist.org for a featured link) put out a strong message of what prisons are truly for and broke down how prisons actually rely on rape as a necessary part of the scheme of repression.

• Kai Lumumba-Barrow of Critical Resistance East and CUNY’s Center for Community Education, who does post-release work with youth coming out of rikers, and who’s excellent analysis of how prison rape relates to cultural misperceptions and distortion of black masculinity as well as the racist underpinnings of the criminal injustice system truly challenged a lot of the prisoncrats and apologists in attendance.
• Gerald Le Melle from Amnesty gave context and moderated.

watch this space for repostings of their comments and/or news of a new nrp prison desk show that may work in recorded portions.

hats off to Kara and the ACLU National Prison Project for pulling together so many diverse, and at times opposing views. it was llively.

r.e.m. sez: take a break, driver 8, driver 8, take a break, we’ve been on this train too long. we can reach or destination (but it’s still a ways away).

pulling in to nyc soon. of course i’m not posting this from the train itself, but i imagine ethernet ports in some seating (for an extra fee) is not that far off.

don’t be tempted by the shiny apple
don’t you eat of the bitter fruit
hunger only for a taste of justice
hunger only for a world of truth
’cause all that you have is your soul

Went and saw a film called Corps Plongés today- part of the Palo Alto French film festival with my old friend Lynn who turned up last night at El Rio nightclub as I was doing wedding planning research- wanted to see if DJ Jose Ruiz would be good for our event. Wondering if maybe we can find a woman DJ- noticing that El Rio has three women regulars who do Hip Hop, soul, and latin- Chili D, Eldaj, and a woman named Lynnee Bonner, who is described as a womanist/hip-hop historian and DJ for SoMuch Soul Music. Check it out- raw oysters and a cool community space.

I must say, however that last night I wished that folks who were interested in dancing with me would have asked politely and been respectful of my yes or no instead of doing that whole butt in thing on my circle of women friend dancers. Even worse is the approach from behind where you suddenly sense someone a bit too close behind you. Its fucked up and annoying.

Check out some amazing medical links. Turns out AMSA is a super progressive organization. Its motto is “It takes more than medical school to make a physician.” Fuck yeah! They are doing all sorts of stuff with universal health care coverage, fighting med student abuse and working to make training hours safer and more humane. Their group for queer students is for reals LGBT, totally inclusive. They even have a direct action interest group.

Also check out the Physicians for a National Health Program and Doctors Without Borders which has some really good news and information about the food that the US is dropping on Afghanistan and how bogus it is as a “humanitarian” gesture.

Also, my godfather told me about Hangawi, an amazing Korean vegetarian restaurant in NYC. Apparently has amazing atmosphere and totally crazy good and unique food.

So, I’ll be in NYC on Monday! I’m looking forward to it [Especially the seeing the E part!!!] but also wanting to be respectful of the fact that it is the site of a big awful thing that happened. I’m interested, though, in the urgings that we are getting from our polititians such as Shrub and Willie Brown to get out there and SHOP. “America’s Open for Business” posters seen all over Union Square in San Francisco today. So- get out there America, show the world that our spirit is alive by going out and enthusiastically participating in the capitalist economy!

um, how whack is this latest crackdown in the name of “security?” [thanks to judlew from randomwalks].

in the midst of madness, i’ve been relying on clear voices at rc3.org, democracy now!, and indymedia (see list at left).

very deep, lots of mixed messages, seeing The Who playing we won’t get fooled again at the concert in new york. don’t know if they had anything to do with it being used by nissan or if it was a record-industry steal, but it still has so much pre-punk power and adolescent angry young man energy, despite that moment of corporatization.

trying to make some link updates but they may have to wait til we get home, having some trouble getting the web interface to work right from other machines. bummer, even though ssh [a very cool tool] is working fine…

[missing you lots, a. see you so soon! xo, e]

so far a rockin trip.

the conference in minneapolis was good if a bit disorganized. here’s the plenary address i gave, somewhat rough, but covers most of what i said.

so so good to hang with nicola and susan, founders of the Women Prisoners Book Project, or WPBP (just say “wapbap”!) and pals, two-legged and four.

and it was also so so good to hang with vic and tony (futbol freaks and organizers extrodinaire, the folks behind matches and mayhem. (hey you two, or anyone else reading this, what’s some good pages or sources on how american “football” sucks and real football, which we call soccer, rocks - send me any links. you’ve made me a fan. mornin’ tony!)

also while in chill, i got a good dose of the amazing mural art all over town, much by raven and the folks at the university of hip hop. so amazing.

josh, whose art is also amazing, reminded me of these folks at the hacktivist. so that’s this weeks link of the week.

also two other slammin places to go in chicago are Quimby’s and Facets Video.

More soon after our time (reunited!) in nyc. (who wants a knish?)

Drinking a Wolaver’s organic pale ale (my second) while listening to Queen and doing the dishes/cleaning out the refrigerator. Which wasn’t as bad as I thought it woud be.

Since Eli left I have read three novels: 1) “Loving Pedro Infante” by Denise Chavez which is about the secretary of the Pedro Infante Club de Admiradores # 256 in Cabritoville, New Mexico- a fictional town near El Paso. It is sweet and fun- about a woman in her 30’s searching for True Love and learning about family, community, connectedness. 2) “A Dream of Wolves” by Michael C. White about an OB Gyn in a small N. Carolina blue mountain town near Asheville who moonlights as a medical examiner. Kinda the Birth/Death thing that I am so drawn to being an aspiring family doctor. A bit cheezy but sweet- its got a lot of stuff going on, a murder mystery, a love story between this doc and his new love and his old love- a bipolar wife who couldn’t deal after their son died plus a mysteryesque thing involving a hill family and a Cherokee woman. 3) “America the Beautiful” by Moon Unit Zappa- a seemingly semi-autobiography (she says 17.5% autobiographical) about an LA woman dealing with a Big Breakup with a dude named Jasper (one of my favorite names). This woman is dealing with unresolved feelings about her brilliant and famous painter/writer father.

Okay, I was just EXTREMELY relieved that I still had over half of my Queen’s Greatest Hits volumes 1-2 left to go. Clearly my third organic beer is starting to take effect. The “Flash” theme song is playing bringing me sensory memories of watching Flash Gordon in college probably stoned/drunk etc. Queen is brilliant. Why did Freddie have to die? And only just a few years before triple therapy! He could still be around. Rocking out with an undetectable viral load. I am now playing it at a volume to rival my 91 year old very hard-of-hearing neighbor’s TV. She was watching a Telenovela earlier and she doesn’t even speak Spanish. I’m feeling a bit guilty that my poor doglets are suffering through this- I read somewhere that their hearing is much more sensitive than human hearing and that loud sounds are traumatizing. They are SO FLAT, though, because after sitting in my Sky Chair (thanks Holmes and Jill!!!) and reading America the Beautiful I decided to take them to the Beach.

Having dogs is incredible. It is like being in a Relationship with a capital R (Flash, Flash I LOVE you but we have only 14 hours to save the earth!!). My dogs challenge me in the biggest way. They challenge me to be in the NOW: “They are having so much fun frolicking in the waves! They are so IN THE MOMENT- and I am too!” They are bold-faced carnivores, primal ancestral meat eaters/agressors/hunters: “Oh, the horror! They are chasing those dear sweet endangered shorebirds and would eat them only if they had the chance!” They challenge me to face fear of abandonment: “Oh no! They have run so far away from me- will they ever come back??” They challenge me to let go of that tiny shred of life/car mess aversion and the illusion that I am in Control: “No. No! NO!!!! Do NOT roll in that horrible/sad decayed unidentifiable, probable dead seal thing!” And they are Love, purely and completely unconditional love as they lick my face as I am driving and try to herd me around the room like Django- the shepherd mutt mix that she is or as Zelda anxiously checks in with me, makes sure I’m okay and not mad or sad, our dear sensitive doglet. They are so deeply asleep sweetly curled up on their beds while Under Pressure blasts their sensitive ears and their mama person types manically.

Okay, this is a long blog. If I could remember how- I would insert pix of Moon Unit Zappa and Deej and Zelda and so forth. But I don’t. So good night- I am going to finish the dishes and gratefully listen to the remaining 15 songs left in Queen’s Greatest Hits and then maybe give Enterprise another chance. Boy does it suck. And more than that, it makes me really ANGRY with all of the boy-bravado tits and ass Vulcan xenophobia stuff going on. So disappointing.

Meanwhile, the bombing continues and the Berkeley City Council received hundreds of death threats for passing a resolution calling for a swift end to the bombing of Afghanistan and an end to the cycle of violence. Also, justice non-profits like Women in Black are getting visits and calls from the FBI because of our “Heightened Security”. As a medical person I feel obligated also to comment on Anthrax etceteras. Maybe the next Blog.

I’m so tired that I can’t sleep. I ate a donut and two crappy halloween cookies from some sleazy drug reps in the clinic today. Braced myself against the rest of the day with a cup of evil mega coffee. My last day in clinic wasn’t too bad considering how heartbreaking it has been for the past few weeks- today only a very depressed middle aged dude who cried a lot and a very young man who has new onset diabetes. I asked him how he felt about this- “Pretty horrible, I mean its pretty much the worst thing, you know?” I tried to say something like “Well, we’ll help you understand and learn how to take care of yourself so, um, there’s reason to be hopeful . . .” but he really is pretty much right. There was a very very very sweet baby. I didn’t want to let go of him because he was pretty much the best thing ever. It prompted satisfied sighs from the resident I was working with “THIS is what makes family practice all worth it!” I was like “Yeah . . .” feeling like I want to get to a place where ALL of the folks who come into the office, even the most “frustrating”, make me feel that way.

I’ve been too tired to go out for fresh vegetables, too tired to go running- both of which make me too tired in this never ending spiral leading to my ass flat on the bed watching TV and drinking a beer which sloshes onto the hollow spot at the bottom of my neck. I had a frozen organic veggie pot pie and a quesadilla for dinner and watched some horrible european documentary about police car chases- slightly more civilized than the american equivalent Cops and somesuch but only just barely. It was worth it though to hear Dutch policemen nervously exclaiming “Jooo, jooo, jooo, jooo!” while they followed a driver who was shamelessly tailgateing and swerving around a bit.

So this is an example of the websites I get transfixed by when I’m in this kind of mood-
Gothic Martha Stewart Weddings: This site is rad. It is full of tips to make your wedding the most fabulously goth ever. There are links to corsetiers and then some wonderful stories of real gothic weddings, including this site put up by this couple which has- in excruciating detail- a full chronicle of the events leading up to their wedding and then their wedding itself. There are a bunch of broken links- one even gets you to some yucky porn site so beware.

Also, in doing wedding research into how to make our wedding as queer supportive we can (given that it is a “straight wedding”), I came up with the Viva Las Vegas Elvis Wedding Chapel and Villas which is Gay owned and operated and conducts a number of Elvis-officiated queer committment ceremonies. They fulfill an important niche in the Las Vegas wedding ceremony, it turns out, because most wedding chapels in Las Vegas are run by real bible belt types.

Um, so these are kinda dumb mindless things- especially since Afghanistan is being bombed and I am listening to This American Life’s show “Rashoman” hearing a man describe what it felt like to be in Iraq and be bombed by US warplanes and how in the midst of it his three year old son was asking “why are they doing this to us?”. It is a wonderful piece. So check it out. Be active. Learn as much as you can about what’s going on and then do what makse sense for you to do about it. And maybe be kind to yourself as well if, in the midst of all of this Really Important Crazy Insanity, you get stuck reading People magazine in the grocery store or eating drug rep donuts and nodding out over your Evil Conglomerate Coffee in between patients.

On my own, a single parent this week (Doggie parent, that is. A challenge, but definitely not as much of a challenge as human single parenting). Eli is on a train somewhere between Portland and Minneapolis tonight.

I’ve been driving a lot this month- 45 minutes or so each way to my work at San Jose Medical center. As I inch through traffic with thousands of other single occupancy vehicles I see flags flying from antennas, stuck into back windows. Some with catchy slogans like “Fear This” and “United We Stand” and “God Bless America.” Overpasses are draped with flags and similar messages. Many folks’ flags are frayed by all of the flapping about at 80 plus miles an hour and there are tattered flags and flag fragments littering the highways. Is this what the flag is about? The right to SUVs and to internally combust massive quantities of fossil fuel in order to propel ourselves (and ONLY ourselves) to work? There was a message up on one of the overpasses that said “Dissent is American”. It was gone the next day- bits of taped up ripped paper marking its passing. On the side of the road is a roadside shrine, a collection of orange traffic cones, dried up bouquets of flowers, a picture and a motorcycle helmet.

There are folks who go around the country checking out graveyards. Its a subculture, sometimes they call themselves Tombstone Travellers. They have great information about roadside memorials. They are there to mark “a spot where someone died, usually in an automobile accident, and where someone else’s life was irreparably changed by the death of a person they love. At that spot, human bonds were broken, suddenly, unexpectedly, and often senselessly. That ground is the last place the person was alive on this earth, and for some, the place where God called the person home, or where the soul left the body.” In Mexico and the Southwest, these roadside markers are often called “descansos” or resting places, they are there to mark an “interrupted journey on the road of life”.

Thinking about death and suffering a lot these days. The complex interweavings of globalism, power, suffering on a large scale. Also, the individual suffering I have come across with my patients. Well, you know how I’ve been driving to work with thousands of others, alone in their cars? Well, today I had a patient with three kids- another on the way. She keeps missing her appointments- no child care, no transportation, no support. She had gotten to three missed appointments and the clinic called to enforce their policy of kicking folks out after three missed appointments in a row. Luckily her very kind resident doctor intervened on her behalf and she is getting her prenatal care by walking blocks and blocks to the clinic, her three kids in tow. It is the norm that the women patients I see are surviving abuse or rape. One elderly patient was being hit by her son who was taking her prescribed narcotics, taking her in to different doctors to try to get refills. He was there at the appointment, drunk. So much suffering!! I actually helped to teach a class called “Hope and Suffering in the Doctor-Patient Relationship”. The hope part is really hard to come by these days.

Yarg! I’ve been carrying it in my body- feeling sick and run down, my head and neck aching. I’m needing to learn how to keep myself whole and safe and yet not lose my compassion, not harden my heart. One of my beloved mentors suggests sometimes actually physically covering my heart in the midst of it as a reminder to be gentle with it, to protect it. He also thought I should try lifting weights- becoming physically stronger and more grounded.

For now, though, sushi and this week’s taped Buffy are going to be what I’ll use. That and dogs.

love and rage,
A

stop the madness.

hitting the streets: NY Not in or Name | 9-11 peace | protest listing | more at left and on our links pages.

in the last few days, i’ve been reflecting on a few Truly Astonishing Things:

~madness in the streets~ at a stoplight the other day, we all had to wait for a guy in a humungous u-turning Ford Destroyer or Chevy Exploiter (or some such monster) to execute a 5-point turn. why are these massive death boxes so popular? || some anti-s.u.v. pages

~communication breakdown~
i’ve travelled all the way across the u.s. by train or by car something like 8 times. it’s way far. there is so much distance between s.f. and d.c. it takes a long time to get there. yet when i call my brother on the phone, our voices ring back and forth, clearly, quickly, as though he were sitting in the same room. if you think about it, it’s unbelievable. || understanding telephone electronics is a good place to start thinking about it.

~speaking of unbelievable~

“At any given Charlie Hunter show, newcomers are easily spotted. They are the ones looking around the room for the bass player, or maybe the keyboard player, or both! What they soon realize is that all of these sounds are coming from one man and his eight-string guitar…..” || look at the site for more info

and the radioman says it is 5 am
and the sun has charred the other side of the world
and come back to us
and painted the smoke over our heads
an imperial violet

work | play | sweat (or not) | romp

uno: i’ll be speaking next week at the conference “And Justice for Some” put on by the Twin Cities Coalition to Defend Mumia, the NLG and others.

dos: a large herd of new links today (26 to be exact).

tres: still can’t figure out why we are getting those huge spaces in previous posts where we use tables (see below). sadly, the blogger forums have not yet been any help. anyone out there who knows how to fix that, please let me know. thanks.

and lastly, kendall has a good piece at monkeyfist about the scary blank check written by our “representatives” to dubya.