Light Warriors

2011-11-23T06:48:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving Day in America:

Blessed be this precious day of gratitude for God's bounty, this tragic and bloodstained National Day of Mourning for Native Americans, this toxic day of gluttony and family drama. Give a Turkey a break; may all living beings walk together in peace & dignity, Amen.

2011-11-17T09:47:00.000-08:00

A Specter is Haunting America

A radical shift in the zeitgeist: The petition (see below) to kill off the Kardashian franchise on E! is a collective response, a significant historical shift away from idiots who have epitomized the banal culture of selfishness, greed, commodity fetishism, and conspicuous consumption. Sadly, a generation of young people have embraced these vapid, gluttonous people as role models. Parents have felt powerless to fight the nonsense pumped into kids' brains since Paris Hilton dominated the news. But there's a blast fresh air wafting through America, clearing out all that is rotted and rancid---a specter is haunting America, it's a call for economic equality, social responsibility, accountability, meaningful culture, full participation, and authenticity.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/celebritology/post/kardashian-boycott-petition-implores-e-to-cancel-familys-reality-show/2011/11/17/gIQApp9CUN_blog.html

2011-11-06T05:30:00.000-08:00

Begin the Beguine

By Donna Gaines

As economies and societies transform and reconfigure, how thrilling it is to witness a social movement in formation. One so uniquely 21st Century; leaderless, open-ended, global, propelled by social media; Arab Spring meets Burning Man. The OWS movement is oft criticized by the mainstream dorkocracy for being unformed and vague, unable to articulate a clear agenda. But honey, don't ya know the USA is one of the most difficult places for peeps to penetrate the veils of oppression. So skilled, invisible and entrenched are the ideological and repressive state apparatii, who knows WTF is going on. So dulled are we by malnutrition (dead animals and corn syrup), illuminati hegemony, false consciousness, reality TV, consumerism, Bad Religion, faux democracy, etc. what would you really expect? Hell, the metaphysicians have seen this one coming for years, as Pluto in Capricorn (oligarchy) collides with Uranus in Aries (youth revolt ). The corporate era gobbled the wealth, the food and water supply, and the imagination, leaving us fat, stupid and terrified. But we're waking up from the collective coma, and life will never be the same, the kids are the harbingers of change, let's Begin the Beguine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ_Y3AGYRs8

***OWS commentary published in www.firstofthemonth.org

2011-05-05T09:54:00.000-07:00

Out of the Vinyl Depths by Ellen Willis (1941-2006)

Check out the new anthology by America's first feminist music critic, journalist, editor and educator. Ellen Willis has inspired generations of women who write rock--she was our Janis Joplin!
Publish Post

2011-03-29T11:39:00.000-07:00

"American by Birth, Rockaway by the Grace of God: A New York Surf Story"

Essay by Donna Gaines

http://www.firstofthemonth.org/archives/2011/03/america_by_birt.html

This is a review essay based on two exceptional Rockaway surf documentaries that debuted last Fall. Like the Ramones, Kryssa Schemmerling's "Our Hawaii" and Thomas Brookins "Shadows of the Same Sun" both celebrate the glorious surfing legacy of my hometown, Rockaway Beach. In very different ways, each filmmaker explores Rockaway's weird geography and often brutal social history through archival footage and compelling oral histories. For scholars, surfers and Rockaway kids alike----anyone interested in surfing subculture, urban studies, oral history, policy planning, ethnography, localism and ocean activism---these docs are Surf-It-Deep Sociology!!!!

See ya in the water-

Dr. Donna

2011-01-27T14:43:00.000-08:00

Our Hawaii
A surf documentary about Rockaway Beach, Queens.

Our Hawaii follows a group of neighborhood surfer buddies, now in their 40’s and 50's, as they re-visit key moments of their lives spent riding the waves of Rockaway Beach, Queens. Within a conservative, blue- collar community cut off from the rest of New York City, Rockaway's bleak beaches offered these locals a place of freedom, self expression and bonding. Against the backdrop of a once-vibrant seaside resort area turned urban wasteland, Our Hawaii chronicles how – through the upheaval of the Vietnam War, the losses of 9/11 and all the changes in between – their connection to each other has been kept alive by a love of surfing. (2010, 58 minutes)

2011-01-13T11:03:00.000-08:00

Anthony James Mixon III

At the Nightingale, NYC

On December 30, 2011 my beloved friend Anthony passed away of a massive heart attack. He was 52. Featured in A Misfit's Manifesto as well as several Village Voice articles, Anthony was a statistician and a music fiend who settled in Flanders, New Jersey, collected cars, loved strip bars, Herbert Spencer, Binary Science, Lou Reed, the sociology of religion, Eraserhead, cigars, and his collection of 40 precious guitars. Tattooed from head to toe, by day Anthony worked at Novartis as a management marketing VP. He was also a dedicated power-lifter.

Anthony's father once said his son had "a brain like a snapping turtle." A quantitive sociologist, Anthony was brilliant and kind, generous with a heart the size of Texas. In the early 1980's, we met in graduate school, after hours in a parking garage. Anthony was sitting alone in his car listening to Pere Ubu when I handed him a homespun cassette tape that featured Led Zep and Public Image Ltd. That sealed it in blood. We spent many years hanging out in NYC's punk & hardcore scenes, following bands and buying each other spikes and leathers and shots. The CorpseGrinders called him "the Genius Biker."

Several years ago, Anthony met the love of his life, Joelma, a Brazilian dancer and stylist he referred to as the Mona Lisa. He wrote poetry for her, and the couple bought land together in Joelma's native Brazil; they planned to marry and relocate near the equator. Anthony was one of the most humble, and honorable men I've ever known. An atheist and altruist, Anthony's ashes were spread in Bonifay County, in the Florida panhandle where he grew up. For comfort, he often sat alone in the woods with a bottle of Johnny Walker, listening to Berlin, thinking about Lou Reed, Ellen Willis and New York City. How blessed we were to share his time on Earth---I will miss him for the rest of my life.

Anthony, center, with CorpseGrinders

2010-10-21T07:12:00.000-07:00

Don't Kill Yourself, Make the Bullies Pay

A death in the family, surf season and major surgery had me on hiatus as a rash of queer and bullied kid suicides dominated the public imagination. Suicide rates among LGBT and Native American kids have always been 4-5 times higher than the rest; hopeless, helpless, ashamed, isolated, death seems the only way out. Several noble adults have come forth to help the kids, offering love, hope and encouragement; most recently, Hillary Clinton.

Unless it kills you first, life after the toxic family, high school or community life always gets better for the outsider, the gay child, the fat girl, the slut, the geek and the poet. We move away from the stupidity, the insanity and misery and find our own truth. We find each other, we survive and together, we create. Yes, kids, it will get better, eventually.

But why are we asking the bullied children trapped in these childhood gulags to bear the burden of survival alone? Are we not a society? Hey, it will get a hell of a lot better when our moronic schools, the bullies and their clueless parents are held financially and legally responsible for making life miserable for innocent, vulnerable kids. So hang in there kids, until the laws and penalties for institutionalized homophobia and cruelty bankrupt the assholes. Meantime, learn karate, firearms assembly, organize civilian defense leagues and please forgive your country and your appointed caretakers for abandoning you every fucking day.

2010-07-30T09:49:00.000-07:00

El Pueblo Unido Jamas Sera Vencido!

Huge victory, our precious NY waterways have been protected and defended by a coalition of surfers, ecologists, residents and elected officials. Oil spills, fracking, liquid natural gas terminals, we the people won't bend over while corporate greed and stupidity poisons us, eats our natural resources, and destroys our planet.

from: http://nycitychapterevents.wordpress.com

The Atlantic Sea Island Group has withdrawn its application for a proposed Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminal 13 miles off Long Beach! The NYC Chapter of Surfrider Foundation has been working on a campaign against this terminal since 1994. We’ve put in countless hours rallying, pounding the streets with petitions, sending in postcards, emails, letters to press and all but shouting from the rooftops NO LNG!

"Congratulations and THANK YOU to all of our supporters, to our sister Chapters in Central and Eastern Long Island to the Jersey Chapters. Special thanks to Kui Nakamura and Gene McLoin for bringing awareness to this issue and starting up the campaign. Also thanks are in order to Andy Stepanian, Assembleywoman Audrey Pheffer for being the first to stand up in opposition with us, NY Legislator Denenberg’s Task Force, NY Governor Christie, Clean Ocean Action and everyone else who rallied to get this job done. *high five*!!"

The People United Will Never Be Defeated!!!

2010-07-15T07:04:00.000-07:00

Trocadero: Walter Combs classic 1944 film tells the story of the Hollywood music scene during the Big Band era. About eight minutes into the story my mother, Betty Bradley appears singing "Bullfrog". The vocalist with the Bob Chester Orchestra, Betty Bradley also sang with Milton Berle and Rudy Vallee.

2010-06-21T12:38:00.000-07:00

Surf it Deep!

Also: GASLAND
Josh Fox's documentary on the hazards of hydraulic fracturing & natural gas drilling.
Monday June 21, HBO 9pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZe1AeH0Qz8

2010-06-19T07:28:00.000-07:00

Apocalipsis 2010:

John's Revelation details an unfathomable ordeal of death and destruction. But actually, the Apocalipsis is a good thing---it speaks to a ripping away, an unveiling of false consciousness. Like the Tower, tarot card of the major arcana, our structures have been built on faulty premises, they are collapsing under the weight of our human folly. Stuck by a bolt of lightening, we are illuminated, inspired from above. Spiritual awakening follows a collective Dark Night.
As corporate arrogance and negligence decimates the life and livelihood of the Gulf of Mexico, we witness the hazardous consequences of fracking (hydraulic fracturing) our mountains as drilling for natural gas spews up yellow, toxic, flammable water and the cancer rates rise, and our precious watersheds are compromised, there will be no more lies, no delusions, no excuses. As we witness the collapse of our economy, our ecology and our society, we understand how we have created our own doomsday. We see the face of the devil staring back at us in the mirror, in the face of our unbridled human greed and recklessness. But even we cannot kill God.

Some Native American tribes believe that the turtle is sacred, a female manifestation of God, she carries the Earth on her back. The gulf oil spill suffocates the God in us every day. This is a Holy War, a battlefield of life against death, from Louisiana, to the Northeastern Marsallus Shale, to Liquid Natural Gas drilling proposed twelve miles off the coast of Long Beach, NY. Each day, the acid eats away at our stomachs, the fear, the shame and tears drain us of hope, we have one choice---change or die.

2010-06-06T09:40:00.000-07:00

in Japan & the Gulf, we will stand by you.

2010-04-21T13:15:00.000-07:00

Happy Earth Day 2010

Growing up in Rockaway Beach, NY, I remember when the ocean got so polluted all the surfers got impetigo. The shoreline was so filthy with medical waste the sand crabs gave up and disappeared. For years, if I saw someone liter the beach, I'd scream "Yo asshole! You just shit on God's face!!!" But the God of my understanding commands me to love my neighbor, so eventually I traded my big mouth for a wad of recycled trash bags. Few acts of love and service make me happier than casually patrolling the beach off-season, after a storm or holiday weekend, picking up everything that does not belong there; plastic bottles, broken glass, styrofoam cups, beer cans, candy-wrappers, towels, shoes and debris dumped by boats. To misuse or mistreat any of God's gifts is a sin, an act that underscores profound separation from source. But most people don't intentionally trash the beach, pollute the rivers and willfully plunder God's creation. Most often, they just don't know; they aren't thinking.

The Surfrider organization (www.surfrider.org) has organized beach clean-ups for years, coast to coast, locally and globally. Whether organized or impromptu, collective or solitary, a beach clean-up can be a most rewarding spiritual practice. Young people are especially green-hearted, and that makes me happy every day. When we care for living things, loving God's creations as God loves us, it doesn't matter if we're Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Atheists or Pagans; we're just here together, doing the next right thing.

Respect the Beach

2010-02-17T07:33:00.000-08:00

Warriors for Light

My name is Donna and I am a sociologist. Several years ago I set up this blog as a tribute to the New York scene I loved. Following 9/11, the fall of CBGBs, the deaths of three Ramones and so many others who built our city from the heart up, I wanted to keep my people with me. In recent years I've become increasingly focused on the hidden injuries of youth, the damaged collective core, the inner life of the child--the scars we carry with us, unseen, unspoken. As above so below, inside, outside, individually, collectively, there are no limits to the pain we can endure, and no boundaries to our capacity for healing.

These darks times demand more love and service than ever before. We misfits, outcasts, cretins and warthogs who have survived the darkness--shame, social stigma, abuse, addiction, alienation, body hatred, mental illness, war, loss and illness are challenged to "live it and give it" as never before. God has made of us the true fishers of men and women--regardless of how we define God--or don't. We are at the front lines of a new age, working for the greater good, wounded healers, altruists, soul surfers, warriors for light. Hey ho, let's go!

2010-02-13T06:50:00.000-08:00

What Love is: Happy Valentine's Day

Originally published as

Dr. Love: Erich Fromm’s Art of Loving by Donna Gaines
(Voice Literary Supplement, April-May 2000, p. 139.)

One: Thou shall never love another.

Two: And stand by me all the while.
Three: Take happiness with the heartaches.

Four: And go through life wearing a smile...

Oh happy we will be if we keep the Ten Commandments of Love.
—Harvey and the Moonglows (1958)

One man, one God. These are the laws of Moses and Israel, but I learned them from the doo-wop masters of my childhood. Here’s how it works. You see him, he glows. He’s the one. With the first kiss, the touch of his hands on your face, your soul melts into his and your bodies become forever entwined. But what’s really going on? A state of unconscious bliss we just fall into, intoxicating and overpowering, like drug addiction or alcoholism? Or is it mystical, divine, non rational, that unknowable part of human experience? Published in 1956, two years before Harvey and the Moonglows decreed the Ten Commandments of Love, Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving posited an equally rockin’ critical theory of human love.

The Frankfurt School psychologist-in-exile argues that human separateness from nature— the expulsion from paradise—is at the root of our torment. Our deepest human need is to leave the prison of our aloneness. Fromm says, "The awareness of human separation without reunion by love is a source of shame. It is at the same time, the source of guilt and anxiety.“ It is inherent in our search for that "special someone,“ in all our rituals of dating, grooming, deodorizing, liposuction, Weight Watchers, Viagra, and body art. It fuels our desire for hot cars, cool clothes, sleek appliances, success, fame, power, and booty. We will go to any length to kill that pain.

When orgiastic states, autoinduced trances, or drugs and sex are part of tribal rituals, there is no guilt or remorse. But, Fromm maintains, in nonorgiastic cultures like ours, when drugs and alcohol are used to escape from separateness— well, we all know what hangovers feel like. False salvation is also found in conformity. As part of mass society, we forfeit our individuality to feel that connection, anything to avoid the frightening experience of our aloneness. Or else we work ourselves hard to forget our suffering, subordinating our inner lives to the corporation, the profession, the job. Routines and activities, too, soothe our constant cravings. We escape into "fun“ or "leisure,“ sports, manic workout rituals, shopping, cleaning. Creativity might help to reconnect us, but everything is so bureaucratized and alienated, we’re still left dazed and confused.

The Art of Loving is one of the original self- help books. By now, most of what Fromm says has been vulgarized, diluted into a banal cottage industry of books, tapes, gurus, workshops, and retreats. We have Oprah, The Rules, treatises on Mars and Venus, Melody Beattie, 10,000 silly love songs clogging the airwaves, and we still can’t dance. But Fromm was on top of the beat: He dismisses most of what we buy into, from Hallmark to Hollywood, as infantile and narcis- sistic, the stuff of immature symbiotic union.“ Actually, he argues, love is the mature answer to the entire problem of existence. The desire for interpersonal fusion is the most powerful striv- ing in man. The force which keeps the human race together.“ Like most of my Love is all you need“ generation, I read Fromm’s most famous work in my teens, alongside Siddhartha and Be Here Now. Thirty years and six million sold copies later, here we are. Boomer divorce rates have generated offspring who swear they’ll never get married. It’s as if the institution itself represents nothing more than socially sanctioned humiliation and degradation. The rates of de- pression among children reflect a lonely crowd with little hope of resolving the existential dilemmas Fromm addresses.

If we had actually listened to Uncle Erich the first time around, we might have saved precious time and money on therapy, rehab, alimony—not to mention years of alienation and misery. Fromm embarks upon a critical analysis of love structures: sexual, parental, fraternal, motherly love, self-love, and love of God. He traces our historical progression from the unconditional love represented in our early matriarchal deities to the conditional love of our wrathful patriarchal sky gods. Eventually we grasp a universal truth that radiates from within. Don’t cringe: Fromm says, "Having spoken of the love of God, I want to make it clear that I myself do not think in terms of a theistic concept. ... The concept of God is only a historically conditioned one, in which man has expressed his experience of his higher powers, his longing for truth and for unity at any given historical moment.“

Although mired in cranky old Marxian polemics, The Art of Loving will appeal to our nation’s spiritually oriented youth with their instinctive mistrust of organized religion. While Fromm is guilty of a snobbery toward popular culture typical of some Frankfurt Boys, his central propositions remain valid and timely. Of course, the high-minded 120-page manifesto is steeped in much of the dopey hetero-speak of Fromm’s day. Still, the young casualties of aborted boomer marriages and their wounded parents will find in Fromm both a love letter to the human race and practical guidelines for living more deeply and fully. I’ve spent months trying to learn how to love someone without wanting to shoot him up my arm—how to be loved without being taken hostage. After a lifetime of viewing love as something I do in between deadlines, at the end of a shot and beer, I had to find another way. Like the Moonglows, Fromm makes a fine mentor.

Unlike the theories in most self-help literature, Fromm’s are historically rooted, philoso- phical, macro-analytic, moving gracefully between the personal, the political, and the meta- physical. He demystifies our prevailing notions of love as a chemical reaction or something that just happens. "A radical theory of human loving seeks first to abolish the old way of thinking, to kill it off at the root. If love is to be practiced as an art, Fromm contends, it demands dis- cipline, concentration, patience, and a "supreme concern with mastery." Like any other art, love must be perfected on a daily basis. It requires much more than a manicure, a pedicure, and a douche. The idea of taking on yet another job in our already overextended, frantic lives may seem daunting, even dull. Fromm offers us a powerful but simple program for sobriety in love. One day at a time, we can get back to paradise, if we are willing to do the work.

2010-02-10T12:50:00.000-08:00

The Sugar Beast

When I had five years of continuous sobriety, something set me off, I had a slip, but I didn't drink. I picked up ice cream, candy, cake and soda instead. My sugar binge lasting three days. I woke up depressed, and hungover; the same way I felt when I drank. Puffy, angry, drowsy, I started crying in the ocean, even though the waves were awesome that day. I ran this scenario by my sponsor, she knew the drill, "Good news is, you didn't pick up a drink. Bad news is, sugar is one molecular structure away from alcohol, so you don't have to count days but you might want to watch the sugar."

That day, July 28, 2002, I swore off the evil cane. I started counting days from my last cookie, got a temporary "sugar sponsor," went for acupuncture, and prayed until it lifted. Almost immediately, I lost weight, slept better, and all desire to eat compulsively ( a lifelong struggle) has been gone ever since. I read books like Sugar Blues and changed my eating habits. That meant eliminating trashy carbs like white rice, flour and potatoes that are quickly converted to sugar and can wreak havoc. My mood swings subsided, and I gradually embraced a holistic lifestyle.

Today, so many years later, AOL News reported the findings of a new study conducted by scientists at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, published online in the journal Addiction. Apparently, "children are more likely to have an intense sweet tooth if they have a family history of alcoholism, or if they've suffered from depression themselves" I'm glad to see this in writing, but folks in recovery and the people who treat them have known this for years. One friend with over 25 years of sobriety says, "Essentially booze is the Bastard Child of Mother Sucrose!" Her source? When she had eighty days, she heard Father Martin explain the correlation in one of his "Chalk Talks." (www.fathermartin.com)

I was a depressed child, a compulsive eater who self-medicated with sugar. It made me fat, moody and it rotted my teeth. Like any addict, I sometimes stole to get more sweets. As I got older, I traded the candy for bourbon, and wondered why I could never have "just one" of anything.

According to the study "Sugary foods and alcohol trigger many of the same reward circuits in the brain, so scientists in this case decided to test the sweet tooth of children with a family history of alcohol dependence. They also hypothesized that children who suffer from depression might be more likely to crave sweets, because they make them feel better." So tell me something I don't know. (http://www.aolnews.com/health/article/study-links-childrens-sweet-tooth-to-alcoholism-depression/19351889)

DISCLAIMER: People in early recovery are often advised to eat ice cream to ward off the cravings for booze. I still think it's a helpful suggestion. First things first; unless you're a diabetic, booze will kill you long before the sugar will.

2010-01-26T15:22:00.001-08:00

Redemption Songs for Addicts

Rihanna's gracious cover of Bob Marley's epic prayer has been wafting through my brain for days. It speaks the unspeakable sorrow and brutality of Haiti's history, and with all oppressed peoples' struggle for dignity, freedom and justice. But I kept fixating on this one line; "Free yourself from mental slavery." That's something every addict does every day. We do it to survive, like any of the other conquered peoples of the earth, we long to make whole that which has been broken.

Slavery is the endgame of our human capacity for sin and separation from God. As cruel exploiters of the vulnerable we come to serve our Lower Power; greed, arrogance and self-centeredness. Alcohol too, is a slave master, a colonizer who takes us against our own will. The debasement to the psyche from ongoing toxic assault--whether from imperial domination, institutionalized world racism or global impoverishment---is familiar to the addict. We too are the wretched of the Earth, condemned as hopeless losers--isn't is our fault that our lives are so miserable?

Addiction will rob anyone, anywhere, anytime. The captain of another kind of merchant ship, it's a greedy pirate, a rapacious creditor who kidnaps us and remands us to servitude. We long for freedom, but we're outnumbered, weak and powerless. Addiction is a bottomless pit, a dark, sad space where millions will suffer and die alone.

Like the Haitian slaves who stood up together in revolt against their French oppressors two centuries ago, in recovery we are bound together in a common struggle, we are brave and we are not alone. We have each other and a loving God to guide us. But their hands were made strong, By the hand of the Almighty, They flourished in this generation, Triumphantly"

2009-10-23T12:08:00.000-07:00

Palo Alto Suicide Cluster

Sorrow is the news today with the loss of yet another student in what experts are calling a teenage suicide cluster. My thoughts and prayers are with the people of Palo Alto who've lost four kids in six months, individually, yet each laid out on the railroad tracks. On the surface, Teenage Wasteland, my case study of an "upper poor" town in Northeastern NJ, in 1987 seems light years away from Henry Gunn High School in Palo Alto, 2009. Twenty-two years later, the world is such a very different place.

But young people still struggle to fit in--at home, at school, in theor own skin, and in the world. They labor against shame, fear, body hatred, depression, addiction, abuse, bulllying and existential dread. They triumph through peer solidarity, subculture, loving families, dedicated teachers, hope and faith.

We can never know for certain "why they did it" then, or now, and it would be reductive to explain away suicide by any one factor. But I can't help wonder if the suicides were motivated by a similar sense of hoplessness, an apocalyptic vibe that crosses lines of race, class and gender, and appears in every region. It can't be articulated, seems mystical, but is grounded in material reality.

The anomic drift, alienation and the fear of economic and social insecurity that haunted working class kids a generation ago has bubbled up. Suicide is a symptom of devastating economic decline, again, now, in 2009, in California, in Palo Alto, on a commuter line out of Silicon Valley.

2009-09-05T06:51:00.001-07:00

Conversion Experience

Living sober after a lengthy career in alcoholism was a surprisingly smooth transition; I was dying and recovery offered hope, practical solutions and the possibility of a new life. Likewise on September 28, 2002 my baptism felt as natural, as nourishing & as close to my soul as the Long Island surf and sand I've walked in all my life. But not all conversion experiences are seamless and organic. Today I am expecting a FedEx shipment from Shanghai that promises to be life altering: I've renounced PC and embraced Mac.

I've been computing since 1981, when brutal mainframes offered sado-masochistic kicks to downtrodden graduate students and quantitative sociologists alike. In fact, bad computing experiences may have triggered more drinking binges than any other of life's trials & tribs. My first computer was a Kaypro, I resisted switching to DOS, and have hated Windows forever---Vista was the last straw. Enough of freezing up, crashing, and chronically viral and buggy systems--who has time to write books when half the day is spent rebooting, patching and reconfiguring? Thanks to a methodical left-brain Saturn in Virgo, I can actually fix most of this crap. Hey, I'm a survivor. Back when Mr. McAfee & Peter Norton were the geek studs of the scene, I was on the guest list. But I'm over that now.

Computing is a collective experience. You really need to be compatible with your tribe. Once upon a time at Big Science University I hoped to crunch huge data sets for Durkheim and sociology. I needed a math coprocessor, and Macs were for dreamers. All my pals had PC's. I wrote about our bourbon-fueled binary bashes in what was once the Village Voice, in a column called "She's Gotta Hack it," long before most of us were born. Like my drinking, which started out as fun, life with PC finally deteriorated to the point of hopelessness. Daily episodes of freezing up , crashing, hours waiting for virus, spyware and malware preventions to kick in. I knew life with parasitic Vista would be more misery. So I posted a query on Facebook, asking my 600 so-called pals: "Go Mac or PC?" To my astonishment, only one friend urged PC---and he's an engineer. Everyone else, including my surf buddies, my priest, nieces & nephews, ex-boyfriends, cousins and acclaimed sociologists urged me to go for it: "Mac!" "Mac!" So I took the suggestion, and surrendered. Now I'll be heading out to the genius bar, I already got a sleeve.

Sobriety and a (progressive) faith-based life have taught me that we all deserve joy, unconditional love, comfort and care. Sometime today or tomorrow, a MacBook Pro will arrive and I will be released.

2009-05-06T08:08:00.000-07:00

Age of Aquarius Kicks In?

Oh some say it won't happen for years but the Obama election signified a shift in the zeitgeist, a leap towards a very different world order, a new energy, a new social order. The collective consciousness has been irreversibly altered, and sociology never mattered more----even as there are no jobs for professors, and no funds for student enrollment. But the school of the street is rich and properous with truth and agency. Love Thy Neighbor, this time for real.

Global capitalism, the ecology and the ideology of individual greed is washing out to sea giving way to a new era of social responsibility and mutual respect. Each day the fear and confusion is tempered with new hope and possibility. The youth are the harbingers of what is to come, and I have never been more proud to be an elder in this land, to see what happens next.

2009-01-19T05:57:00.001-08:00

A Prayer for the Nation and Our Next President, Barack Obama
By The Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire
Opening Inaugural Event
Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC
January 18, 2009

Welcome to Washington! The fun is about to begin, but first, please join me in pausing for a moment, to ask God’s blessing upon our nation and our next president.
O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will…

Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.

Bless us with compassion and generosity – remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.

And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.

Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for ALL the people.

Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.

Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.

Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.

Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.

Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods.

And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we’re asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand – that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.

AMEN.

2008-12-22T17:27:00.000-08:00

Live From Slugland

2008-11-20T09:07:00.000-08:00

Johnny Thunders' Higher Power

"So Alone" Live at the Lyceum, March, 1984

2008-11-16T10:18:00.000-08:00

America Alcoholica

Remember, O Lord, what has happened to us;
look, and see our disgrace.
Our inheritance has been turned over to aliens,
our homes to foreigners.
We have become orphans and fatherless,
our mothers like widows.
We must buy the water we drink;
our wood can be had only at a price.
Those who pursue us are at our heels;
we are weary and find no rest.
Lamentations 5:1-5

In the transition from capitalism to socialism there’s an interim period of history known as alcoholism. Typically described as self-centered, self-seeking, and arrogant yet filled with shame, the active alcoholic is a fear-based and narcissistic creature—sort of like America.

As advanced capitalism slams through an inevitable end-times collapse, we’re hung-over, reeling towards a terminal state of anomie; stranded somewhere between another drink and the promise of living sober. As any addict can testify, the morning after always feels apocalyptic; the daylight bores into us, drilling down to the core of our soul-sickness. Cold terror sets in, we're nauseous with despair. Depleted, ashamed, hopelessly alone, we cry out for salvation, Lord I just can’t face another day. We pray for a miracle—a bailout, a regime change, a new messiah. We bargain with God, with fate, with history, making a thousand more promises we'll never keep; liberty, freedom, equality, dignity, democracy.

Alcoholism is an individual malaise; sober living is a we proposition—a social project that requires binding fellowship. We’ve fallen so short, nullified sacred social contracts and sold out future generations. Wallowing in personal loss, debt and self-pity, now we play the game of blame and shame. Mostly, we betrayed ourselves. We followed a false god and here we are, spiritually and materially bankrupt.

We admitted we were powerless…and that our lives had become unmanageable. Yes, the last eight years have been brutal. But a hard bottom can be a blessing to a sick and suffering alcoholic. From the personal to the social, from the individual to the collective, profound desperation often precedes radical transformation. Yet even as we are dragged kicking and screaming into a better world, we resist. There is no great man of history who can save us now. We need a change of heart.

For the late stage alcoholic, the alternative to recovery is a slow, stinking, death. Bush is not Satan, McCain is not Bush, and Obama is not Christ. Denial is not a river in Egypt or a new club in Dubai. Analog or digital, PC verses Mac, either way, the party’s over. It’s time for us to rise up, suit up, show up, and grow up. Come November 4, America goes to rehab.

*reprinted from: First of the Month
http://www.firstofthemonth.org/archives/2008/10/choosy_beggers_1.html

2008-11-01T11:20:00.001-07:00

My American Prayer

2008-10-22T08:20:00.000-07:00

Kill Proposition 8

Speaking out against the Proposition that would ban same sex marriage, Episcopal bishops of the dioceses of Northern California, California, El Camino Real, San Joaquin, Los Angeles and San Diego, said, “We do not believe that marriage of heterosexuals is threatened by same-sex marriage. Rather, the Christian values of monogamy, commitment, love, mutual respect and witness of monogamy are enhanced for all by providing this right to gay and straight alike. Society is strengthened when two people who love each other choose to enter into marriage, engaged in a lifetime of disciplined relationship building that serves as a witness to the importance of love and commitment.”

2008-09-12T09:55:00.000-07:00

9/11 Prayer for NYC

2008-09-08T18:34:00.000-07:00

Sarah Palin Champions Barbaric Hunting of Wolves

2008-08-09T08:53:00.001-07:00

2008-07-31T09:18:00.000-07:00

Eclipse of the Sun

"High on her speculative tower,
Stood Science waiting for the hour
When Sol was destined to endure
That darkening of his radiant face
Which Superstition strove to chase,
Erewhile, with rites impure."
--William Wordsworth, 1820

2008-06-24T11:35:00.000-07:00

For Betty, Tenderly...

2008-06-05T05:48:00.000-07:00

Daily Breadbox Quotations

"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."-- Dr. Seuss

"No government has the right to tell its citizens whom to love. The only queer people are those who don't love anybody."--Rita Mae Brown

"God is dead....But my hair is perfect."--Bernard Henri Levi

“That this social order with its pauperism, famines, prisons, gallows, armies, and wars is necessary to society; that still greater disaster would ensue if this organization were destroyed; all this is said only by those who profit by this organization, while those who suffer from it – and they are ten times as numerous – think and say quite the contrary.” -- Leo Tolstoy

"When the rich make war it's the poor that die."--Jean-Paul Sarte

“The man whose whole activity is diverted to inner meditation becomes insensible to all his surroundings. His passions are mere appearances, being sterile. They are dissipated in futile imaginings, producing nothing external to themselves.”---Emile Durkheim

"And I guess that I just don't know."--Lou Reed

"Everything living dreams of individuation, for everything strives towards its own wholeness."
--Carl Jung

"Little girls never say no, and big girls--they always want more."--Johnny Thunders

"The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science."--Albert Einstein

"Anyone too clean has no mind."--R. Jalbert

2008-05-31T10:17:00.001-07:00

Lauren Nicole Zussman 1982-2008

A truly Aquarian soul, Lauren was a gifted healer who got sober at 19, and dedicated her short life to love and service--showing all of us how to "live it and give it." A breathtakingly beautiful Ford International model and SoCal girl, she radiated pure light from within. Everyone who knew her described her as their best friend or sister, always present, ever faithful. A woman of great dignity, spiritual power and grace, we, the members of her soul family on earth mourn her recent passing. On Memorial Day, she was jogging in Central Park with her beloved Alex when her heart gave out; it was the heart of the world.

2008-05-22T15:13:00.001-07:00

BubbleBoy

Steve was rescued from a Chinatown schlock store off Grand Street, around the corner from Happy Ending bar. He's a steel blue Betta---"Siamese Fighting Fish" are the perfect Aries water-warriors. Male bettas must be isolated from other fish, or they will attack (anti-social). They are very "affectionate," fiesty and curious (bipolar). If they get too wired, they jump the bowl (suicidal tendencies)---and they require a dark space to hide out (an after hours bar). When they are happy, they create nests out of bubbles and strut their stuff, glamboy style. But if a potential mate shows up, they'll attack. Completely AQUAHOLIC!!. Steve's favorite band is FLIPPER ("Go Fishy"). He loves mosquito larvae and shrimp flakes. Christened "Steven Patrick Morrissey," we call him BubbleBoy.

2008-05-03T13:54:00.000-07:00

Teenage Wasteland 2008

http://www.ellenwatsonphotography.com

2008-04-19T12:10:00.000-07:00

My City is Gone

Yes, we fought hard to save CBGB's, and we lost. Landlord greed and gentrification wiped it all away. Last week, I attended the opening, a Vh1 benefit for Save the Music with a lump in my throat. Who are these people, and why are they here? I wondered aloud to my friends.

As a local protest mocked the hip capitalists, crying for lost art's sake, for community, my tears fell for the faces and sounds never to be seen or heard there again. Bowery was a place where outlaws created culture, where at the turn of the 20th Century, immigrant youth broke from European traditions and created their own and called it America. It's where we, the unwashed and unspectacular roamed in search of pleasure, danger, hair products and other dry goods. Now there's a Chase branch, and it's clean, and it's somebody else's American dream, but not mine.

Walking into the Varvatos space, there's an alter of candles, a shrine--it's where Hilly usually sat. Over the years we've lit candles for Joey, Dee Dee, Johnny, for Stiv, Wendy O., Johnny Bully, many New York Dolls and Heartbreakers too. John Varvatos' high-end retail clothing shop is beautiful for what it is: a store. Who else could afford the rents? By all accounts the designer's got a genuine rock & roll heart. Word is, other fundraising events will follow. Given what abominations might have replaced our Punk Mecca on Bowery, (Duane Reade, another NYU dorm), I'm grateful for what we got. I will support any good that comes of this.

As we mingled with all the rich, pretty, shiny happy fashonista kids, I thought about the other half of their generation---the ones deployed in hell, coming back over & over again, sick, crazy and suicidal; disposible heroes, homeless, broken and as quicky forgotten as the stench of sweat, beer and piss that drove the narrative for over 30 years at CBGB's. Maybe we can raise a few million for the kids in the basement too.

We of the ancien regime---old school punks, rockers, bikers, scribes and scene matriarchs---stood off to the side, enjoying "the house band," Loser's Lounge and a rotating pool of awesome talents. There to launch Varvados space, raise some money to keep music in the schools and lend the space some cred, we're working through the final stages of grief. Joey Ramone once said "Everything changes, nothing stays the same." That's the power of history--and the way of the Tao.

Ushering in a new order was a spectacular DGeneration reunion, then Slash, Joan Jett, Cheetah Chrome, Jesse Malin, Daniel Rey, Ian Hunter, Ronnie Spector, Clem Burke and Dick Manitoba. We stood there watching, old friends, exiles in Babylon, humbled, longing for Zion, grateful for a drink of cool water before hanging up our harps.

2008-03-17T06:32:00.000-07:00

Das Capital NYC

Several construction workers were killed and many more were injured in the worst construction accident in our city's history. An unstable crane crashed through 3 buildings on the East Side. Three blocks are now shut off in an area of NYC best known for being atypically quiet, clean, and uneventful. In the last five years greedy developers have systematically polluted the landscape with high rise buildings few Americans can now afford, cutting corners on labor and safety codes. Now there's police, TV crews, tourists, Red Cross and neighbors, and an eerie white floodlight that shines day and night, particuli and the sound of grinding industrial metal fills the air, and there's blood mixed with mortar, and it smells like 9/11.

2008-02-28T13:01:00.000-08:00

Celebrating Thirty Years of Sluglife!

2008-02-18T16:39:00.000-08:00

Meat is More Than Murder

I read this in the news today; "A California meatpacking company has issued the largest meat recall in US history—143.4 million pounds—after revelations that the firm mistreated cattle and violated the federal ban on putting disabled or "downer" cattle into the human food supply....The recall stems from an undercover investigation by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), which on Jan 30 released video footage of Hallmark/Westland workers mistreating downer cattle to make them get up. Workers were shown spraying water on cattle, shocking them with cattle prods, and ramming them with a forklift." Meat is more than murder, it's torture, and plunder, and it's a sin. Please, if you love life, and you value the world we share, stop eating misery.

Then God said, "Let us make man in our own image, in our likeness, and let them reign over the fish of the sea, and the birds of air, and the cattle, and all the land, and all the creatures that crawl upon the earth."

2008-02-05T21:41:00.000-08:00

Tony Castro's Rockaway Video

"You can never go home anymore" --Shangri-las

http://www.farrockaway.com/tonycastrovideo2.html

2008-01-31T17:22:00.000-08:00

A Salute to Grammy Winner Amy Winehouse & Her Hair

Ronnettes portrait by R. Jalbert--Celibrating great rock & roll hair from Ronnie Spector (center) to Johnny Thunders, and hair apparent, Amy W.!!!!

2008-01-29T09:57:00.000-08:00

A Prayer For Amy Winehouse (and Britney, Lindsay, Nicole, Paris...)

Getting clean and sober is hard enough, but rock stars and celebrities carry a heavier cross—first, they are rich, insulated from reality, surrounded by false securities, they may embrace their own mythologies as their truth. If they die, we fans will immortalize them, setting up shrines in perpetuity. But their kids will grow up with a gaping empty hole in a place where a mommy or daddy should be.

All creative types are little imbalanced, it’s what compels us to generate art, to emote, and contribute. Writers have the highest rates of alcoholism & addiction, attributed to the isolation of our labor process, the grandiosity of our hopes, and the trauma of our failures. But actors, musicians, painters and dancers too, are high risk.

Britney, Lindsay, Paris and maybe Heath. And please, let's never forget forget Kurt, Sid, and Bon Scott. Hey, I’m old enough to remember John Bilushi, Janis, Jimi, Jim and Judy Garland too. And then there's Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker and Bukowski. For all the down-in-flames dead celebs, writers and rock stars, are many who are clean and sober. Recovery is a private and personal journey, but in coming months, you’ll get to meet a few of them. Dee Dee Ramone died a drug-related death, but Joey died a sober man. There are many people who have found the promise of recovery far more satisfying than a life of hopeless addiction. I’m one of them too.

There’s something about Amy Winehouse that reminds me of Johnny Thunders---seminal New York Doll, Heartbreaker and ruler of my finer New Yawk musical sensibilities. Maybe it’s the post-Ronnette's hair, the grease & glam, or the shnozzz. Or the way people delight in watching her go down. I can remember hecklers egging Johnny on, wondering if he’d die onstage for them. We never dared miss a show, perpetually convinced it would be his last. Johnny Thunders finally died in 1991, alone, in a seedy New Orleans boarding house, of drug related causes—too much junkie business. Addiction never has had a happy ending.

"Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." These gospel words also apply to addicts and alcoholics. Until we bottom out totally—financially, emotionally, physically and spiritually, lose everything--including ourselves, we are unlikely to surrender. While our safety nets and buffer zones enabling our self-destructive behaviors, we’re likely to stay sick. I'll never forget watching Aerosmith at the Grammys thanking their Higer Power. Our beloved Dee Dee Ramone died of the disease, but Joey died a sober man. Hell is a place called addiction. Having retired from "the life" eleven years ago, I'll testify with gratitude and humility that a clean and sober life is my Kingdom of God--on earth, right here, right now.
Oh yeah, oh yeah...(Ramones version of AMEN)

2007-12-29T10:16:00.000-08:00

One Love--Soldier's Prayer

Judge me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation: O deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man.
For thou art the God of my strength: why dost thou cast me off? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?
O send out thy light and thy truth: let them lead me; let them bring me unto thy holy hill, and to thy tabernacles.
from Psalm 43

2007-12-24T06:58:00.000-08:00

Hey, Scholar, Leave the Kids Alone!

NY Times
December 24, 2007
Letters
Re “On Facebook, Scholars Link Up With Data” (front page, Dec. 17):

To the Editor:

Leave the kids alone!

As your article rightly observes, though gorgeous research possibilities for networking theory have exploded via explorations into Facebook, this type of fieldwork poses many compelling ethical and methodological issues — the rights of the researched, data collection from self-selected populations and, of course, privacy issues.

But one glaring unintended consequence must be considered: the reckless intrusion of adults into one of the few remaining sacred spaces where young people congregate for the creation of subculture, meaning and community.
Sites like Facebook offer connectivity, identity and refuge beyond the gaze of an ever-expanding, increasingly repressive and indifferent adult authority structure.

Before we proceed as scholars, let us first be citizens.

There needs to be a serious and lengthy conversation among scholars and youth activists about power and rights of access. The intergenerational politics and ethics violations inherent in this work are not so pretty.

Donna Gaines
New York, Dec. 17, 2007
The writer is a sociologist and author on youth culture.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/24/opinion/l24facebook.html?ref=opinion

2007-11-18T10:20:00.000-08:00

The Moral Obligations of Stewardship

"As leaders of different religious and faith traditions,we recognize the unique opportunity we have been given to effect profound and lasting change for the sake of animals. As stewards of God’s creation, we accept and embrace our duty, responsibility, and moral obligation to both protect the lives of animals and assure that those lives reflect the respect and dignity they are to be afforded as part of God’s creation. We therefore invite all people of faith, under the guidance of their various faith traditions, to take up the mantle of compassion towards all of life and recognize that, as human beings, we are only part of God’s creation and cannot presume to be all that matters in it. Indeed, because animals are an inextricable part of our social and natural environments, we therefore affirm that any lasting effort for change on any level will only be complete insofar as it pays attention to and advocates for animals and their well-being. Finally, we call upon religious leaders of all traditions to honor and encourage those in their faith communities who make compassionate food and clothing choices and who work for the benefit of animals."

-- Multifaith co-authors of A Religious Proclamation for Animal Compassion

http://www.episcoveg.com/

2007-11-12T07:20:00.000-08:00

...And The War Drags On.

Veteran's Day, 2007

2007-11-01T06:56:00.000-07:00

In Memory of Linda Stein
Honoring a truly great New York Woman; music entrepreneur, punk matriarch, real estate powerhouse, breast cancer and A.I.D.'s warrior and beloved mother.(seated with Joey Ramone).

2007-10-09T11:13:00.000-07:00

An Open Letter to Britney S., Lindsay L., Nicole R., & Paris H.

Dear Ladies,
In an unrivaled Age of Stupidity you have mastered the art of Bread & Circuses, taking our minds off corruption, war, starvation, ecology and torture. But the zeitgeist is changing and it's time to get real. We all need to wake up, clean up, grow up and suit up to meet the challenges of these dark times. Alcoholism is a self-diagnosed disease--only you know if you've got a problem, but it's kinda looking like it. I can't imagine what it's like trying to get sober in public, how any celebrity separates mythology from reality, spin from truth. But you are not alone, and once you surrender, you will never be alone again. Over a million drunks, all over the world are here love you until you learn to love yourselves, with and without all the grease & glamour. Amy W., Owen W. and Kiefer S., this goes out to you too. See, I really miss Johnny Thunders, Dee Dee Ramone and too many friends who also died alone and afraid, from too much too soon. So if you do ever get here, please keep coming back.

2007-10-02T06:45:00.000-07:00

What Would Jesus Do? Bless Queer Marriage!
The legal, moral challenge of LGBT Americans and all who support their struggle for full citizenship--is a premiere civil rights issue of the 21st Century. No nation, sect, denomination, religion, political or cultural institution has the right to condemn an entire class of people to the margins. To willfully and knowingly attempt to block a soul's connection to the Divine is the worst of sins, because the definition of sin is separation from God. Below is a clip from a new film "For the Bible Tells Me So," opening in NYC on Friday, Oct. 5 at the Quad Cinema (34 West 13th St.). For more information, please go to: wwww.forthebibletellsmeso.org

2007-08-30T05:54:00.000-07:00

R.I.P. Hilly Krystal, Founder of CBGB's, 1932-2007

Dear Hilly,
From 1973 until the day we lost our punk Mecca to the cancer of real estate greed, you gave us a place to create, cavort and convene. You believed in us, and our potential to create culture. Unlike too many hip entrepreneurs who sold short on their boomer dreams, you always cared more about building community than capital accumulation. You gave everyone a chance. CBGB's was our salon, a mold-spore emporium for rowdy boho kids. There, raging bridge & tunnel fevers found a respite, space in a funky, arty, piss factory--your beautiful big house on the Bowery. Some say it wasn't really lung cancer that did you in, but a broken heart. A heart big enough to see the good in us, to take a risk and give the untamed, unwashed and untested a chance at our own version of the American dream. The good, the bad, the ugly, we came, we stayed and we flourished.

Hey, I always loved seeing you out of context---like, in daylight, munching down Tex-Mex at the surfy Blue Parrot in East Hampton. It was an honor to work with you to save CBGB's, to preserve the sanctuary you built for all the kids around the world who still dream of la vida libertad in NYC. In recent years we've lost every precious thing--our clubs, our Ramones, our turf and now you. But CBGB's transformed us, through our music, fashion, values and sensibilities. You left your mark on us forever---culturally, historically, politically, socially, and personally.

You never got to Las Vegas--I guess you knew it was never punk's promised land. No, you departed from NYC, from the scene you launched into cultural history. And the night you passed over, surrendered at age 75, during the full moon eclipse, the heavens opened up and God said "Hey Hilly, it's time to come home." Your work on earth was done and went back to Spirit. We will miss you and we'll keep the flames high for you, upholding your inclusive vision of community, for CBGB's and punk, for NYC and the great family you helped spawn---two generations, cross-cultural, multiracial, and forever genderfucked. You lent us a playground, a counter-cultural post-hippie Utopian landscape and we dressed it in sneering, snarling spit & leather. For this and so much more, we are grateful to you. Say hi to Joey, Dee Dee and Johnny, and when I get there, can you please put me on the house list?
Love, Donna (fangrrrl and scribe; Post-Ramones Empire, NYC)

2007-08-08T15:27:00.000-07:00

See ya in the water!!

2007-07-27T20:51:00.000-07:00

"How to Create an Angry American"

2007-06-11T17:28:00.000-07:00

Just got back from a long visit to San Francisco, hanging with my friend Rev. Mary Haddad, Canon Pastor at Grace Cathedral (www.gracecathedral.org/).
Toured the mountains on sociologist John Sumser's BMW R1100 Sportster (www.bookslut.com/nonfiction/2006_09_009906.php), lunched at Half Moon Bay, checked the waves at Stinson Beach, caught a startling performance of First Person Shooter at the SF Playhouse(www.sfplayhouse.org/season0607/firstperson.php), enjoyed a public conversation between author Christopher Hitchens and Grace Cathedral's Dean Alan Jones at the Herbst Theater (www.cityarts.net/n.hitchens.html), picked up a purple Balinese Flying Goddess in the Haight, gave a cat some Reiki, hiked through Muir Woods and cruised Golden Gate Bridge in a red Miata. Spent many days and nights feasting with family and friends, wailing Califonia Uber Alles loud enough to raise the Dead Kennedys. So why don't I just move back to Atlantis?

2007-03-15T18:13:00.001-07:00

God Bless Rockaway Beach

2007-03-04T16:36:00.000-08:00

Peace Now (again)!! With love from 1972.

2007-02-27T16:46:00.000-08:00

The Next Right Thing

CBS's Craig Ferguson speaks from the heart on his past problems as an alcoholic and why he will not ridicule Britney Spears or other vulnerable people.

2007-02-17T09:47:00.000-08:00

Britney Spears Bottoming Out

So Britney shaved her head---got a tattoo and told us all that she's tired. Tired of hair extensions, tired of people touching her, tired of herself and of us. The troubled star has been a commodity form, a market fabrication since childhood. Her public forays into oblivion, while terrifying to watch, may be the best thing that's ever happened to her. Whether we're rich & famous or obscure and impoverished, sooner or later we face a choice: be true to who we really are or die.

Some part of Britney Spears is dying to herself. Transforming, like so many of us do, she's acting out this loss of an obsolete self through self-destructive activity. Some may view her shaved head as the act of a lost soul, a deperate attempt at reclaiming lost power. Yes, it's all those things, but it's also possibly this: A baptism of renewal, a new start, a step forward towards a new beginning. In time, if she gets help and support, she'll clear out all the wreckage of the false self--including bad relationships, addictions, and fear. Let's pray for her--and anyone else who's bottoming out.

2007-02-07T05:40:00.000-08:00

Matthew Fox's Reformation

Matthew Fox believes the Roman Catholic Church in its current form needs to die, so a new Catholicism can take root. For this, he has been called a heretic. An outspoken American priest and theologian, Fox explains his controversial spiritual philosophy:

2007-01-29T06:50:00.000-08:00

The Great Mother Ramone
Charlotte Lesher 1926-2007

On Sunday January 28, Charlotte Lesher, mother of Joey Ramone suffered a heart attack in her home in Rego Park, Queens home , and passed away. "Mama Ramone", as Joey called her, was 80 years old, but her youthful sparkle and lust for life kept her looking and feeling half her age. Charlotte is survived by her younger son Mickey Leigh, a first class guitarist on the New York scene.

An artist and bohemian with a diamond wit, razor intellect and a heart bigger than the ocean, Charlotte was instrumental in nurturing the talents of the early Ramones. During the 1970's, she owned a gallery called the Art Garden in Forest Hills. Joey and Dee Dee practiced in the basement, grew pot plants and sometimes they slept there, barricaded behind cartons to avoid detection. After Joey died in 2001, Charlotte and Mickey honored his memory by hosting an annual birthday bash that would become an in-gathering of the Post-Ramones Empire, featuring some of old school and neo-punk's greatest bands.

Charlotte Lesher was instrumental in getting a street sign erected at Joey Ramone Place on East 2 and Bowery, near the former site of CBGB's. She had been a passionate and vocal supporter in our campaign to save CBGB's from closing last year. Charlotte was a scene matriarch, as beloved by us as the Blessed Mother herself. Over the years she gathered two generations of brokenhearted Ramones fans who sent her letters, cards, gifts and flowers. Charlotte rarely missed a gig, no matter what time the band went on--if her sons were playing, she was right there, turbo-charged, alive and kicking.

Fierce like a lioness in her devotion to her sons, protective of anyone she loved, Charlotte was one of the strongest women I've ever known. A petite, powerful and charismatic presence. Married three times, in the pre-feminist era when women were expected to be coy, submissive and cooperative, Charlotte kicked down the doors and shouted out her own version of "Hey ho, let's go!" Though she survived the violent death of her beloved husband Hank, a bout with cancer, and the loss of her firstborn son, Charlotte never crumbled.

I will always remember my sweet, beautiful friend this way; it was summertime, were standing outside watching the sunset on a deck near Woodstock, where she had her summer home. The Great Mother Ramone looked out at the pink cloud formations, her pixie eyes twinkling, exhuberant, bursting with chi she declared, "Donna, I love life!" This great spirit is as undefeated in death as she was in life.

In lieu of cards or flowers, the family requests donations to the Joey Ramone Foundation for Lymphoma Research: P.O. Box 1107 Cooper Station, NY, NY 10276.

Donna Gaines, NYC
www.donnagaines.com

2007-01-23T17:26:00.000-08:00

Scholarly Paperback
Available April 2007, Rutgers University Press

2007-01-03T16:34:00.000-08:00

"[Animals] were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men." Alice Walker

"The time will come when people such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of people." Leonardo da Vinci

"The average meat eater is responsible for the deaths of some 2,400 animals during his or her lifetime. Animals raised for food endure great suffering in their housing, transport, feeding and slaughter." J Motavalli

"So You're an Environmentalist; Why Are You Still Eating Meat? I feel very deeply about vegetarianism and the animal kingdom. It was my dog Boycott who led me to question the right of humans to eat other sentient beings." Cesar Chavez, United Farm Workers

"I encourage the Tibetan people and all people to move toward a vegetarian diet that doesn't cause suffering." Dalai Lama

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." Mohandas Gandhi

"The human appetite for animal flesh is a driving force behind virtually every major category of environmental damage now threatening the human future: deforestation, erosion, fresh water scarcity, air and water pollution, climate change, biodiversity loss, social injustice, the destabilization of communities, and the spread of disease." World Watch

"Nothing will benefit health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as the evolution to a vegetarian diet." Albert Einstein

"There is a direct relationship between eating meat and the environment." Andrea Gordon

"If anyone wants to save the planet, all they have to do is just stop eating meat. That's the single most important thing you could do." Paul McCartney

2007-01-02T08:54:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidaze 2007

GRATITUDE--Bill W. & Dr. Bob, co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous

Ten years ago on January 26, I had my last drink, it was a Merlot. New Years Eve 1997 had been spent at Coney Island High. The mighty Sea Monster pounding through the night, white powder, and twelve hours of drinking resulted in another blackout. "Heavy social drinking" had become alcoholism. I was at a spiritual, mental and physical bottom. But then something happened--and like so many drunks before (and after me) I found myself uplifted, saved, born again. In 2007 life is sweeter than ever, the Promises of sober living are endless, and love is everywhere--in me, in you and in the world.

In 2007, SoulSurfing will continue to ponder the complex relationship between the sacred and the profane, the mystical and the mundane. The thing is, after a while, sociology of culture and sociology of religion start to look very much alike. The Ramones and Rachmaninov seem equally compelling, and it becomes increasingly clear that "life is the only thing worth living for."

2006-11-18T08:52:00.000-08:00

Love is All We (All) Need (Love)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diccc7je8tg
http://www.myspace.com/freehugscampaign

2006-11-13T08:21:00.000-08:00

Lamentations 2006

"My deepest impulses are optimistic, an attitude that seems to me as spiritually necessary and proper as it is intellectually suspect."
--Ellen Willis Beginning to See the Light

Maybe we're already in the Rapture, and God just wants the angels back and that's why you left so soon. I miss you so much, my precious, brilliant friend. You made the world (and us) so much better. I'm sure the Ramones are glad to see you, not to mention Janis.

Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the LORD hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger. Lamentations 1:12

2006-11-09T15:52:00.000-08:00

The Original Riot Grrrl: Ellen Willis (1941-2006)

On November 9, Ellen Willis died following a sudden relapse of lung cancer. I remember the first time I saw her byline--the policeman's daughter from Queens didn't hide her sex as "E.Willis" or stick to "women's issues." There she was, Ellen Willis, feminist, rocker, smart, cool and determined. In New Journalism, writers like Ellen Willis, Tom Wolfe and gonzo Hunter Thompson dove right in, they read the social world like a Zap comic, like the Ramones. Willis wrote about the family, Lou Reed, Janis Joplin, Israel, Elvis, about everything. The first feminist critic, she was an avowed New Journalist who fought for the rights of the first-person narrative. After leaving the Village Voice, she became a professor in the journalism department of New York University and the head of its Center for Cultural Reporting and Criticism.

I remember the first time I met her: Willis opened the door to the Park Slope Apartment she shared with her longtime partner, distinguished sociologist Stanley Aronowitz, their daughter Nona and Icy the cat. She appeared like a vision, a pre-Raphaelite goddess. Her long blond curls framed a serene, translucent, delicate face. Reading her work, I had always imagined her as someone small, intense, dark and nervous, chain-smoking. But she was sensual, electric, and very funny.

After beating the sociologese out of me, Ellen assigned me to write about Long Island's suburban subculture and later sent me on assignment to Bergenfield. Both of my books, and everything I know about writing were born out of this editorial relationship. Even today, I can hear her screaming over my shoulder, "You're over explaining!! Just say it!!!".

A brilliant political essayist, journalist, and music critic, in the late 1960s and 1970s, Willis was the first popular music critic for the New Yorker, and also wrote for the Nation, Rolling Stone, Slate, Salon, and Dissent where she was also on the editorial board. She was the author of several books of collected essays. Willis attended Barnard College and The University of California, Berkeley.

According to her biographers, Ellen was a founding member of the radical feminist Redstockings. She broke the gender barrier as a music writer. Then, starting in 1979, Willis wrote a number of essays that were highly critical of anti-pornography feminism, criticizing it for what she saw as its sexual puritanism and moral authoritarianism, as well as its threat to free speech. These essays were among the earliest expressions of feminist opposition to the anti-pornography movement. Her 1981 essay, "Lust Horizons: Is the Women's Movement Pro-Sex?" is the origin of the term, "pro-sex feminism". She was also a strong supporter of women's abortion rights, and in the early 1980s was a founding member of the pro-choice street theater/protest group No More Nice Girls. When and where she entered, the doors ripped off the hinges and we followed madly.

A self-described anti-authoritarian democratic socialist, she was very critical of what she viewed as social conservatism and authoritarianism on both the political right and left. In cultural politics, she was equally opposed to the idea that cultural issues are politically unimportant, as well as to strong forms of identity politics and their manifestation as political correctness. Coming from a Jewish background, she wrote a number of essays on anti-Semitism, and was particularly critical of left anti-Semitism.

Willis saw political authoritarianism and sexual repression as closely linked, an idea first advanced by psychologist Wilhelm Reich; much of Willis' writing advances a Reichian or radical Freudian analysis of such phenomena. In 2006 she was working on a book on the importance of radical psychoanalytic thought to current social and political issues. Today we lost a great American intellectual, a personal hero, friend and warrior goddess, first battalion.

2006-11-02T06:30:00.000-08:00

War Pigs Reduxe

Generals gathered in their masses,
just like witches at black masses.
Evil minds that plot destruction,
sorcerers of death's construction.
In the fields the bodies burning,
as the war machine keeps turning.
Death and hatred to mankind,
poisoning their brainwashed minds.
Oh lord, yeah!

Politicians hide themselves away.
They only started the war.
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor, yeah.

Time will tell on their power minds,
making war just for fun.
Treating people just like pawns in chess,
wait till their judgement day comes, yeah.

Now in darkness world stops turning,
ashes where the bodies burning.
No more War Pigs have the power,
Hand of God has struck the hour.
Day of judgement, God is calling,
on their knees the war pigs crawling.
Begging mercies for their sins,
Satan, laughing, spreads his wings.
Oh lord, yeah!
--Black Sabbath, War Pigs

2006-10-17T15:39:00.000-07:00

CBGB's--Punk's Temple Falls.

"I heard a cry, like a woman in labor, a scream like a woman bearing her first child. It was the cry of Jerusalem gasping for breath, stretching out her hand and saying 'I am doomed! They are coming to kill me!'"
(Jeremiah 4:31)

"If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth. If I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy"
(Psalm 137)

2006-10-16T14:14:00.000-07:00

Guns, God & True Love

After my mother died in 1989, my dad and I were looking for father-daughter bonding activities, and it was either gonna be this or bowling, so that's how I became shooter. Besides, Mr. Moe looked so great with my black leather trenchcoat and big blue-black hair. On Long Island, heavy metal is heavy metal. Even after I blew out the tweeters in my right ear shooting at Eastern Long Island's Calverton range, I still loved Mr. Moe. That shotgun is still as beautiful as ever, but I changed and so did the world. Our relationship just wasn't working, me & Mr. Moe had drifted apart.

I got sober in 1997, trading fire power for a higher power. A growing faith replaced gnawing fear, abiding love expelled hatred, anger gave way to serenity and behold, almost ten years later I'm all fired up---a warrior for light, not death. We broke up at MBI Firearms in Mineola. I sold Mr. Moe to Michael Britt, an old-school gun dealer I've know for years. I spent the money on my favorite vegan delicacies---nutbutters, tempeh and organic apricots. Picked up some rose-scented candles and pink quartz healing crystals too. I guess that's what happens when God comes into your life. You get a whole new set of toys.

"And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."
Isaiah 2:4

2006-09-26T08:04:00.000-07:00

Flipper's American Hardcore.

Just as I was about to slit my wrists over local club closings Flipper flew into town. Here for a last slam at CBGB's and then the screening of American Hardcore. The documentary covered every local scene from NY to Orange County, explaining it in general terms, as a response to the Reagan years. Filmmakers gave fans and bands their due props, as young people resisted, creating community through subculture, style and sounds. But we got bored as they glazed over the critical issues that incited young white males into a crisis in masculinity----disinvestment, the decline of the American working class, rise of the service sector and the impact of deskilling. M.I.A. along with hardcore analysis was Jello Biafra but Henry Rollins was in top form--and the music said the rest.

At the after-party at Stereo, Moby sat in with Flipper, and the audience included the likes of Jism Ism, Steve Buscemi and Bob Gruen. I've been a Flipper fan since 1979. I met the fish freaks in San Francisco, bought the t-shirts and at least five back-up copies of generic Flipper in vinyl. Though they sound as hard and sick now as they did then, something has changed. Hardcore was always strictly boyztown. In the early daze the grrrls just sat on the sidelines (yawn), out there on the margins, watching. Waiting on our guys, holding their beers and leather jackets while they worked the pit for Murphy's Law, 7 Seconds, Agnostic Front, Ism, Minutemen, Bad Brains, and M.D.C. Then one day--I'm not sure when--the grrrls jumped in for themselves, leaving the jackets in the dust. Empowered by sweat, beer & antihistamines HC shows taught us all how to claim space for ourselves. For this, we are forever grateful.

2006-09-24T10:59:00.000-07:00

Last Dance at Continental NYC

Sunday, bloody Sunday 9/17/06 was the last night of live bands at Continental, a last picture show for old school punk featuring the Bullys, Dick Manitoba, Charm School, Lenny Kaye, Walter Lure, CJ Ramone and Daniel Rey. The show sold out, alternatively cranky, morbid and jubilant, we came to honor our heroes and our dead. Like so many before us, we the unwashed of the bridges and tunnels scrounged the available resources of soul-numbing burbs and boroughs generating culture from social garbage. Angry, non-affluent and chemically imbalanced, we created beauty from nothingness, truth from meaninglessness. On the last chord of the Heartbreakers' "Born to Lose" (Daniel Rey's Guitar, Walter Lure's vocals) I walked out of the Continental for the last time. "We had a good run," I said to a friend, proud of what we'd done. But I also know this: I will never hear live music like that again, not in this city, not in this life.

A few nights before the final curtain, Jesse Malin's sublime acoustic set packed the Continental with hipsters, college kids. Maybe it's the changing of the guard, a paradigm shift, gentrification, class war, hell, I dunno. But everyday I get emails from kids, latter-day punks, teens stuck in America's wastelands dreaming of the day they can emigrate to the Sovereign Nation of NYC. Holding on to the promise that someday they'll visit CBGB's,see a band at Continental, or just walk down St. Marks Place eating a slice of pizza like Joey and Dee Dee. "I thought I was a champion...but I found instead..it was just another dream....just like any other dream..." the Professionals said that a long time ago, in another country--mine.

2006-09-14T08:09:00.000-07:00

Fashion Industry: EAT IT!

The great goddesses were not two sticks with a hole, starving themselves to people please. All hail the Spaniards (see below) for standing up to fashonista tyranny that turns models into anorexic, chain smoking crankheads. Setting the standard for beauty at a size 2 desexualizes and desensualizes women, trains them to hate their bodies and themselves. "Looking good" is culturally determined. It's socially constructed---invented. Let us redefine what is beautiful. A healthy, toned, strong beloved body is a tribute to God's glory. "Give us this day our daily bread" Starvation (shame) and gluttony (greed) take us out of balance. Beauty is an inner truth reflected in an outer state. God's abundance is a blessing, food is good, human flesh was made for work, love and joy, not punishment. Let the fashion industry eat cake!!!

MADRID (AFP) - Excessively skinny fashion models will be barred from a major Madrid fashion show later this month for fear they could send the wrong message to young Spanish girls, local media reported. Madrid's regional government, which is co-financing the Pasarela Cibeles, has vetoed around a third of the models who took part in last year's show because they weigh too little.

The authorities collaborated with a Spanish health organisation to come up with a minumum body mass -- a height-weight ratio -- of 18 for the models. Spanish daily ABC said it was the first time such restrictions had been imposed on a fashion show, although a recent wedding dress exhibition in Barcelona banned fashion models who took a dress size below 38 (British size 10, US size eight). Several models at last year's show provoked a row when they claimed their careers would be under threat if they put on weight.

Organisers said they wanted to "help ensure public opinion does not associate fashion, and fashion shows in particular, with an increase in anorexia, a disease which, along with bulimia, is considered ... as a mental and behavioural problem". The event will take place on September 18-22.

2006-09-09T16:25:00.000-07:00

Patriot's Day, September 11, 2006

Remembering all soldiers today--here and in the Kingdom.

CLICK THIS:

2006-08-28T11:32:00.000-07:00

Mendocino Seen Report

Nada surf for this aquaholic due to the Pacific's sick rips, nasty sharks and icy arctic waters---they say ya need a drysuit anywhere north of Maverick. Or at least a 5/4 and all I got is a 3/2 so I went hiking instead. Nitelife; homegrown music at the Headlands coffee house in nearby Fort Bragg, Celtic, piano jazz, or Reggae night at the Casper. Went searching for the spirit of Bennett Berger--could he be hovering above the communes of Albion?

Desperately seeking sociology, Madame Chinchilla's astonishing Triangle Tattoo Museum was the commotion in my ocean--on display were all manner of art and artifact from the Japanese, Maori, from India, the circus, American patriots, Russian convicts, and the involuntarily inked--concentration camp inmates. Madame Chinchilla and Mr. G authored a host of tattoo books and several walls of client photographs. You can't get into the salt water with fresh ink so I held out---there's still a month or two of surf waiting for me back in Long Beach, NY. But maybe when the whales come round, I'll return to Ft. Bragg for a new design.(www.triangletattoo.com).

Soul surfed the black sand, sea lions and stunning sunsets at Cleone, great recovery scene and 47 acres of God's love at the Botanical Gardens by the sea(www.gardenbythesea.org). Bought a Mary-as-Goddess print, "Our Lady of Everything" at Wisdom House Gallery (www.colorofwoman.com) in Mendo. Glass Fire Artglass Studio blew my mind--blown glass marine art made by waterpeople who surf it deep (18320 N. Hwy One, Fort Bragg, CA 95437 Phone: 707-962-9420 ). Spotted deer and wild turkeys in the redwoods of Russian Gultch, rode the Skunk Train (www.SierraRailroad.com) along the Noyo River to Northspur as Greg the train singer crooned Johnny Cash and Dylan. Ate fresh blackberries, plums and apples off trees, chilled under eucalyptus branches with a dancing Dalmation named Sam.

Fresh air, sunshine, marine layered skies, I threw away my azma meds after three days. On the tenth week of Pentacost, and the eleventh, I took communion at St. Michael and All Angels Episco Church and gave a Reiki treatment to a friend. Green and veganized, I found raw food treats and carrot juice at Living Light Culinary Arts Center (www.rawfoodchef.com). Warded off psychic vampires with sacred crossing oil from Lady Rhea, High Priestess of the Bronx. Took a hot bath in rose petals from Brother Tommy's garden of 3000 rose bushes. Surfsick and homeward bound, I was sipping a blueberry smoothie in the JetBlue terminal at Oakland airport when I ran into the guys from Flipper. We of NYC look forward to their show next month at the doomed CBGB's.

Landed at JFK around midnight with a redwood burl, wildflower seeds and a pocketful of snails. Thought about going bicoastal, like Jeff Stryker in the 1980's. I can breathe free on the left coast, but I need the right one too. Upon my return to NYC, twelve blissful daze of Mendomellow gave way to a sinus infection, azma attacks, war all the time, crowds and joyful reunions with friends. Yeah, NYC is old, tough and scuzzy, and the Ramones, the clubs and the towers ain't ever coming back. But in the words of the immortal Johnny Bully, aka FF John Heffernan, "It's still my home."

MENDOCINO SEEN PHOTOS: http://s114.photobucket.com/albums/n272/donnagaines/

2006-08-07T06:39:00.000-07:00

Sociologist Bennett Berger--Memorial Tribute

In November 2005, a precious lifetime guide passed over to the other side. In his work and his life, Professor Emeritus Bennett Berger illuminated the gnarly problematic of individuality within community. Without him, my understanding of the generations would have been impossible. When I started out, Berger's critique of Erik Erikson's stage theories freed me to view my life as a creative sociological journey. We shared a lurid fascination with suburbia and the necrosis of life in academe. Years later, at midlife, when I'd hit a brick wall, Berger's sociological imagination showed me my intuitions were on target. When I finally met him, embracing me as one of his people, Bennett Berger showed me some fine San Diego surf spots. Someday soon, I hope to revisit the break at Cardiff-by-the-Sea to surf it deep--a tribute to a sweet friend and mentor.
Above, in NYC, circa 1997.

2006-07-11T13:51:00.000-07:00

Syd's Kids

Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd co-founder died on Tuesday at 60. A misfit's misfit, Syd brilliant, reclusive, crazy as a loon, damaged, imbalanced, too familiar with darkness and fragile. Addiction masks mental illness, sometimes it triggers it too. But we've all lost loved ones along the way---dead and alive, precious people who don't fit in, who never feel right, and can't figure out why. They stay inside us, nurtured in memory, protected, beloved. Nothing we could do or say could convince them of this---unrequited in life, but not in death.

"Shine on You Crazy Diamond" was the band's tribute to a lost mate, it's the song I sing in my heart whenever a friend opts out---whether by overdose, or comatose, by suicide, or psychotic break. Syd gave us someone to believe in, a hero for the walking wounded. May the love and light you couldn't feel on Earth surround you now, like a sweet song.

2006-07-02T08:00:00.000-07:00

Why do fools fall in love?

In the chain of fools, everybody's somebody's baby, everybody's somebody's fool. Such is the way of the Tao; the Laws of Karma are the lyrics of do wop. Hey hey my my.....

2006-06-18T18:35:00.000-07:00

One More for the Goddess

Today the Episcopal Church in America chose Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori as its first woman leader. Her election came 30 years after the Church approved the ordination of women to the priesthood. This is world-historic, unprecedented in the Anglican church and likely to blow a fuse in a faith already divided over the ordination of an openly gay bishop.

Most other Anglican communities, including the Church of England, do not allow women bishops. Three years ago, a majority of U.S. bishops backed the consecration of Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the first openly gay bishop in more than 450 years of Anglican history. When and where Bishops Robinson and Schori have entered history, millions will follow, pouring in from the margins---the backrooms, basements, attics, closets and shadows.
Happy Father's Day---let freedom ring!

2006-06-03T08:20:00.000-07:00

Dear Big Mean Fat America,
Like any other alcoholic, cross-addicted, my drug of choice is MORE--more food, more booze, more drugs, more power, more money, more sex, more shoes, more eye shadow, more parties, more fame, more music and it goes on and on as long as that empty gnawing inside is allowed free reign. Gambling is the only addictive obsession I don't have and that's cause I never win. It's almost ten years since my last drink (thank you God) and it's taken me that long to understand what's meant in the Lord's Prayer "Give us this day our daily bread."

It means moderation, taking what is needed--not more, and also not less. Self denial, self-abasement, self-loathing are as "sinful" as gluttony, greed, pride and arrogance--(if we define sin as separation from self and the Divine). As part of a ten year jubilee I decided to purge. Cleared out closets, book shelves, kitchen, work station, body and psyche, let go of surplus, opening more space for light to enter. There's a seamless link between all our big fat SUV's, huge platters of greasy fries, corporate take-overs, body fascism, Iraqi war crimes and global warming. Why not just take what we need from the stream of life, throw back the rest and see what happens?

2006-05-19T13:41:00.000-07:00

Holy Week(end)in NYC

Friday, 5/19: Joey Ramone's Birthday. Worldwide celebrations, including the annual (sold out) show at Irving Plaza hosted by Mama Charlotte and Brother Mickey, featuring Strokes, Wayne Kramer, George Tabb, Mickey Leigh, some Bullys, Tommy & Richie Ramone. A procession from Williamsburg honoring Punk's Patron Saint will culminate at CBGB's, including marching band music from Hungry March Band.
Saturday, 5/20: Bob Gruen Print Sale benefiting The Joey Ramone Foundation for Lymphoma Research. At Morrison Hotel Gallery Loft, 116 Prince St. 7PM-Closing. Donation: $20 (cash or check only at the door)

Sunday 5/21: At 2 pm, Trappist Monk Father Thomas Keating speaks St. Bart's Episcopal (Park Avenue & E.51 street) about Centering Prayer. At 7pm St. Bart's new EMERGE service, where ancient meets urban worship in an elegant, serene, sacred, totally pomo service.
What a wonderful world!!!

2006-05-17T08:07:00.000-07:00

Return of the CorpseBrides

One thing about addiction is, over time, if it doesn't kill you, it will kill all your friends. Once upon a time, Susie was married to a CorpseGrinder, an amazing punk power chord band, the CorpseGrinders descended from the NY Dolls via Killer Kane. I was a Slugwife, married (in a dope-fueled ritual) to a Slug. We met at a party in Sea Cliff around 1980. We looked alike--like Chrissie Hynde & Lydia Lunch--and shared an interest in the occult, black clothes, silver amulets and dark elixers. We became instant friends, introduced our mates and their bands merged; Slugs became CorpseGrinders, CorpseGrinders became Slugs. The CorpseBrides joined the Slugwives dancing at the foot of the stage--the space we now call the pit. By 1995 Susie and me were the last girls standing----dope, crack and booze had wiped out all our sisters. Women seem to die sooner in the valley of fear.

Last week Susie CorpseGrinder became "Susananda," a nickname bestowed in honor of her completion of yoga teacher certification training. She now teaches yoga to women in the serene gardens of the North. Next week I complete my Reiki Master training. My healing practice, Magna Dea Intuitive Healing Arts, offers energy healing, social work wisdom, auric cleansing, psychic empowerment and spiritual counseling. Wounded healers are we.

The CorpseBrides have risen!!!

2006-04-28T11:50:00.000-07:00

Mentoring

This subject came up on "girlgroup" a discussion group on yahoo for women journalists, and seemed blogworthy. Mentoring is a sacred trust, like parenting. Barbara Ehrenreich and Ellen Willis were two great goddesses who showed me the way--these two intellectual powerhouses were fired up with social justice, not ego concerns or careering agendas. Through them I learned the craft, the game and also the ethics of intellectual labor. Joey Ramone too, devoted himself to nurturing the local scene and never cared if it was trendy or topical--it was from the heart and that made it real. Up until his death, he loved the world and tried to make it a better place. He mentored young musicians, and helped bring Ronnie Spector to an new generation of music fans.

I'm trained as a sociologist and was also employed as social worker in child welfare for many years before I ventured into journalism, which I saw as a means to an end: making social theory more accessible, and reaching more people on critical issues like youth suicide, class, and the redemptive power of subculture (i.e. music).

Early on, my work put me in an unanticipated role as a mentor and "auntie" for young people who continue to seek my advice on everything from career opportunities to body hatred, love, sexuality, creativity, family violence, addiction and faith. I've found much more joy in this than any of the big New York stuff we come to think matters so much. At the end of our days it won't matter if we had 2 books or 20, wrote for Rolling Stone or the local Pennysaver, appeared on OPRAH or made the guest list. What will matter most is the love we made, what we gave back of ourselves to the stream of life. Be generous, the more you give, the richer you are.
Happy Birthday Joey Ramone, May 19.
"Today your love, tomorrow the world"

2006-04-14T18:36:00.000-07:00

Good Friday in Iran

Today's news reports quote Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying Israel a "permanent threat" to the Middle East. "Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation," he said. "The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm." Last October, Ahmadinejad said Israel should be "wiped off the map."

Armagiddeon time. With the fall of Masada in year 73 CE, the state of Israel came to an end for a period of almost 1,900 years. 1000 people--men, women and children, chose to die rather than surrender to the Romans. Then came the Inquisition, the pogroms, and all that Nazi stuff Mahmoud swears "never really happened." Honey, if Israel goes down again, it'll be the last dance for everyone---they'll take the planet with them. God chose Israel to be a light among the other nations; to nuke us all to Kingdom Come? Easter's coming....

"And He shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."
----Isaiah

2006-04-07T08:48:00.000-07:00

33 to Nothing--a Sociological Theater Review

Grant James Varjas' new play, "33 to Nothing" is set in a rehearsal studio in Hoboken. Running through April (Bottle Factory Theater, 193 East 3rd), it explores the lifeworld of the rehearsal studio through musical performance and theater. We watch as an indie band disintegrates. Directed by John Good, the performance offers a snapshot of familiar cultural history to the millions of unsigned bands that erupted after punk liberated the means of production for the kids. Signed or unsigned, our musical tribes offer members a vision of possibility, a reason to live.

Through the social group known as the rock & roll band, aimless and shiftless spirits find focus and purpose. Like religion, this subcultural formation gives members hope, meaning something to believe in, and momentary transcendence from everyday misery. The "gigs" give the band's friends a scene, something to do. Music, status, fun, drinking and drugging, meaning, community, sexual opportunity and social mobility propel the band to labor on, even when the chance for commercial success is unlikely. In the warped-tour version of the American dream, some do make it, but most never break beyond the local.

With five bandmates holed up in a crusty studio for a rehearsal prior to the last show, "33 to Nothing" mixes interpersonal politics, sexual psychodrama, addiction and creativity in a setting that will be warmly familiar to anyone who's lived through this particular youthful rite of passage.

Varjas, who wrote the music and the play sounds a lot like Lou Reed. His lyrics tell us as much about the inner life of his singer-songrwriter character, Gray, and the band's interpersonal dynamics as the dialogue does. Typical of many emotionally stunted creatives, the singer-songwriter is unable to articulate or relate except through the music. Gray is a proud rock & roll queer, a slacker and a fuck up, unemployed, alcoholic, and effectively homeless, currently living in the studio. Bitter and needy, he rides earnest and indulgent former lover and bandmate Brian (Preston Clarke). Brian is present emotionally, Gray is in the same room but miles away; he mourns his mother's recent suffering and death, and hoses his bandmates with humorous contempt for the hetero-monotonous mainstream, exemplified by his best friend and guitarist, Tyler, now married to Alex,the band's self-confident post-riot grrrl bass player.

We know these people very well---five bandmates, factions, sexual intrigues, betrayals, lies, unforgiven woundings, ripoffs, and the de rigeur collective dumping on the clueless drummer. Death is coming in for the band; Brian has a new lover, Alex and Tyler have had enough---for them, slumming is over. They're quitting the bend, fed up with Gray's alcoholic bullshit, Alex confronts him that it's time to "grow up". Time to move from bohemia to Montclair, NJ to start a family. Marriage and domesticity have long been blamed for band-break-ups ever since Yoko entered the sacred boyz club--the Beatles recording studio. But this is as much about class as it is about gender.

For Alex especially, domesticity is a safer bet than artlife; stability, and responsibility-- "growing up"---means becoming middle class. Adulthood means conformity and mainstreaming. For Gray, rock & roll is for life. It's not a bourgeoisie rite of passage, or a transitional stage of development in the life course, it's art, and it's forever.

"33 to Normal" ends with Gray bottoming out--he's lost his lover, his mother, his home and his band. But he still has the music. Onstage for the last show, it's the end of an era. But for Gray, music is neither a hobby, a rite of passage or a way to avoid the day shift, it's the life force.

*Dedicated to Raymond on his Birthday. Artlife 4 Ever!!!

2006-04-01T07:51:00.000-08:00

A Lenten Sacrifice

Hal, a wild coyote from the North who migrated to Central Park just died in captivity---following a chase, tranquilizer gun and transport--bound and muzzled. What killed this graceful, innocent, vibrant creature who asked for nothing more than his right to roam God's Earth? Fear---his and ours. Hal died terrified of us, exhausted. We kill God every day trying to dominate, control and possess that which belongs to God, not us. We are guests on this planet, not landlords. That's God's job, not ours. We are entrusted, not empowered. God's a Green, y'know.
Amen.

2006-03-15T06:42:00.000-08:00

American Taliban 1955

*click on newsclip to enlarge.

2006-03-12T20:22:00.000-08:00

Letter to S.Dakota

Dear S. Dakota

I understand how you feel about abortion and the rights of the unborn, the powerless, and the weak. I feel that way about children, the poor, the sick and the animals. Especially the ones tortured in medical experiments used to cure cancer, the epidemic of post-industrial toxicity that killed my parents and all my grandparents.

It's been a generation now, and we've come a long way, baby---from coat hangers to in-utero fetus mutilation to throwing our newborns in the trash. Abortion sucks. It's a brutal solution nobody enjoys. But making it illegal in the name of God is a devil's bargain. It condemns our children for the sake of our grandchildren. Abortion was illegal back in America's Taliban days, when my great grandfather was incesting my grandmother and her three sisters. It was still illegal when I was growing up. The rich girls went to Puerto Rico to abort and poor girls threw themselves down the stairs. Teenage mothers stayed poor and their kids grew up hard, feeling unwanted, angry, hungry.

A true pro-life ethic would rightly include no abortion, capital punishment, death penalty, or war. It would encourage cruelty-free science, animal rights and a vegan diet. It would outlaw imperialist plunder, and restore the American virtue of greed as a deadly sin. Someday, science,technology and world religion will converge, and a humane solution to the problem of unplanned human procreation will be found. Maybe Martians will hunt us all into extinction. Meantime, the state has no place making these decisions.

Let us not love
with words or tongue
but with actions,
and in truth
I. John 3:18

2006-03-02T14:02:00.000-08:00

Love Thy Neighbor

"Meat is Murder"
Smiths

"For that which befalls the sons of men befalls beasts; even one thing befall them: as the one dies, so dies the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man has no preeminence above a beast: for that is vanity."
Ecclesiates 3:19

“For I desire mercy, and not sacrifice….”
Hosea 6:6

2006-02-04T15:43:00.000-08:00

To an Amazon Warrior Queen

In writing her 1963 best-selling manifesto "The Feminine Mystique" Betty Friedan laid the groundwork for the modern feminist movement. Her book shattered conventional gender mythologies--- as the mainstream stoked the dull-normal landscape with suburban dreams of domestic bliss. Betty Friedan died on her Aquarian birthday, January 28, at age 85.

Betty, because you spoke feminist truth to patriarchal power I had a better life than my mother and my grandmother. I've experienced the world as whole human being, born free, with choices, opportunities, visions, and dreams. At 16, I knew I wanted my own life. You and those who followed---Brownmiller, Dworkin, Willis, Morgan, Greer, Eherenreich---showed me I had the right to think, work, love and live on my own terms.

You taught us all how to value ourselves and gave us back our bodies, to know our worth and walk in dignity. Sometimes, when I see female children caught in sexual slavery, battery, cutting, anorexia and body hatred, I try to remember that real social change takes more than a generation. I cried when I heard you died, but when I look at all our strong, smart, beautiful daughters, proud soldiers, mothers, lawyers, partners, healers, diplomats and scholars, I see your fire in their eyes.
You are our Martin and our Malcolm.
Thank you, great Amazon Warrior Queen.

2006-01-24T07:39:00.000-08:00

James Frey, Random House & Hazelden.

In selling the rights to his book, A Million Little Pieces, James Frey originally wanted to publish this book as fiction, but that's a harder market, and non-fiction is what sells. Typically, Random House lawyers and editors go over the material ("vetting") to see if it's libelous. As fiction, Frey's descriptions of addiction and recovery would have been a good reflection on the inner hell an addict goes through in bottoming out and coming back to life---a poetic account of letting go of the devil himself. Portrayed as a non-fiction (true account) event, Frey's description of the agonizing days at Hazelden Frey could make seeking help even harder for many desperate people.

I've been to Hazelden for workshops and retreats, sat in meeting with alumni--as have millions of my fellow addicts. People return for rehab, workshops, follow-up services and retreats. It's heaven on earth--a safe place where addicts and their families can face the truth in loving arms, where so many find grace and light. Hazelden is an oasis, we always know it's there, whenever we feel broken and hopeless, we can count on renewal.

If you need help, please get it. Don't be afraid. Hazelden is a safe, professional, caring institution. It's the Harvard of recovery. Please don't let New York's joyless, clueless, corporate publishing industry and an easily seduced, fame-seeking writer stand in the way of your recovery. It's a matter of life and death, not reviews, book sales or Oprah and Larry King gigs.

2006-01-19T17:28:00.000-08:00

L.A.M.F. Revisited

In the pre-Beatles era, D.T.K. L.A.M.F. was a menacing gang tag painted on schoolyard walls, subways and soda machines from Rockaway Beach to Astoria, to stake out turf. By naming the Heartbreaker's first album L.A.M.F., former gang member Jerry Nolan and Johnny Thunders gave props to the Queens streetlife that spawned their punk aesthetics. But that was another century. One of the challenges aging hipsters face is how to avoid embarrassing ourselves with age-inappropriate styling. Had they survived, Thunders & Nolan might have gone the way of Quentin Crisp or even Sinatra. Me & Nick, my longtime junko partner, spend lots of time thinking about this. How do you grow old with a rock & roll heart?

After I divorced Jack Daniel's, and blew off Jim Beam and Johnny Walker it got a lot harder to stay up past midnight. And bunions in in spike heels? Crazy Color and a mini-skirt on the threshold of menopause? After twenty-five years of Sluglife, CorpseGrinder Nick can't stand live music unless it's k.d lang, Morrissey, or Elvis C. So what's left? Kooks of the theater, we joined MOMA. High art is for old farts. Well kids, we're there. But Nick insists we're still D.T.K. L.A.M.F ---- Dressed To Kill, Literature, Art, Music and Film. Sluglife is Artlife.

2006-01-04T14:49:00.000-08:00

Columbia is Bleeding

While we're on the subject of Big Science---corporate cruelty, university research grants and institutionalized evil, please go to www.columbiacruelty.com. And then go see that sweet sentimental inter-species love story, King Kong. A PETA investigation revealed abuses at Columbia University primate labs where baboons (probably friends of King Kong) continue to endure hideous invasive surgeries. And then they are left to suffer and die in their cages without mercy, or even painkillers.

"Columbia's Bleeding" is a 21st Century protest song fresh off Nellie McKay's Pretty Little Head album. At her New Years Eve performance at ARS Nova, dressed in her best vegan vintage blonde, songbooks in hand, McKay celebrated what was good about 2005. Well, not much, but there were two animal rights victories; J Crew backed off plans to sell fur, and the Arctic Wildlife Refuge has been spared drilling. After covering John Lennon's only-women-bleed "Woman is the Nigger of the World," Miss McKay made a wish for 2006; that Columbia labs would stop torturing the baboons----"write letters" she pleaded with us, plinking her piano, crooning sweetly like she was Fay Wray.

2005-12-14T09:58:00.000-08:00

Big Science is Murder
I was recently asked to comment on the role alcohol plays in teen culture by the alumni magazine of the State University of New York at Binghamton--my alma mater--where Linda Patia Spear is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology. Dr. Spear is known for "her pioneering work in the field of developmental pharmacology." Spear's current research into the neurobehavioral and developmental effects of alcohol and cocaine exposure is funded at about $1.5 million, largely through national grants. This research involves animal experimentation, mainly getting rats addicted and checking out their brains. Apparently, the brains of rats and kids are similar.

I declined the interview, asking why the dedicated Dr. Spears didn't experiment directly on teenage runaways, or poor people, or inmates, or homeless Americans---why not test our important theories on powerless human life forms? Now that our government condones torture of suspected terrorists, we have even more prospects for advancing Big (corporate) Science.

And what about the relationship between animal cruelty and teen culture? Under the banner of science, America's large research universities have been steadfast contributors to the institutionalized suffering and misery of animals. Of course human addiction has biological, cultural and social origins, but the level of insanity and alienation inherent in animal experiments is glaringlydisturbing to young people. Does Dr. Spears know how many teenagers today are vegan, green eco-activists? Opposed to all forms of animal testing? Does anyone really think this research will impact young people now embarking upon high school drinking and drugging careers? Will the complex constellation of variables that contribute to underage drinking be altered as a result of hapless rats are being systematically shot up, strung out and tossed in Binghamton?

Last weekend, The Open Center (http://www.opencenter.org) hosted a three day conference featuring postmodern theologian Matthew Fox, energy medicine's pioneering Dr. Carolyn Myss and mystic activist Andrew Harvey. These Buddheo-Christian light warriors mapped out the broad-based spiritual activism needed as Apocalyptica explodes around us. Science and faith are converging in the new century. I'm sorry Sr. Spear couldn't attend. Maybe I'll send her some reiki on a prayer. May God's loving kindness cleanse your heart and your labs, Dr. Spear. May you learn to use your gifts to uplift the planet, not plunder it. Do it for the rats and the kids, okay?

2005-12-09T11:54:00.000-08:00

St. John of Liverpool

"You know, give peace a chance, not shoot people for peace. All we need is love. I believe it. It's damn hard, but I absolutely believe it. We're not the first to say, 'Imagine no countries' or 'Give peace a chance,' but we're carrying that torch, like the Olympic torch, passing it from hand to hand, to each other, to each country, to each generation. That's our job."
-John Lennon (Rolling Stone magazine Dec. 5, 1980)

Photo Courtesy of Professor William DiFazio
Text Courtesy of Rev. Mary Haddad

2005-11-29T07:15:00.000-08:00

Apocalyptica

Out of the closet, into the streets. So there's been a shift in the zeitgeist again. The Bush legacy's chill on free speech has melted and we now hear the voices of dissent echoed in popular culture--film, public forums, TV and we see people standing up and saying NO.

Mean season: How did we get there---to a place where we openly (as opposed to covertly) endorse the use of torture? The Mother has had enough, she's flooding and battering our shoreline. Showing us the flesh and blood of social inequality in the bloated black bodies floating in New Orleans' toxic waters. The humble, hardworking, pious and poor brown people who clean our filth to avoid starvation now ascend---En Estados Unitos Hablamos Espanol!!!

In Africa poverty, disease and hunger rupture the quaint tranquility. Even at a size two, we're still obese, encumbered by STUFF. Are we there? Is this the Apocalypse our thrash metal bands predicted? Is God stripping the veil, opening our eyes, turning our hearts of stone to flesh, showing us the way to the Kingdom---you know, like Johnny Cash?

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes;
and there shall be no more death,
neither sorrow, nor crying,
neither shall there be any more pain:
for the former things are passed away.
Revelation 21:4

2005-11-24T09:54:00.000-08:00

Advent--Sacred & Profane

From now until Christmas Eve the postings on SoulSurfing will be dedicated to Advent, a time marked by expectation, anticipation, preparation, and longing. Regardless of faith, we all yearn for deliverance from the evils of the world. This is the cry of all who have experienced the tyranny of injustice under the thumb of sin yet who have hope of deliverance. It is that hope that anticipates anew, the reign of an Anointed One, a Messiah, the enlightenment who brings peace and justice and righteousness to the world. May God's love wake us up from slumber, rip us away from our lower chakra fixations, raise us up and open our eyes to see. Wake up, get up, stand up!

Part of the expectation also anticipates a judgment on sin (OK, just think of sin as separation from God,falling short of higher intent, truth--not the social control stuff you learned in school). As activists, educators, parents, whether spiritual or religious, we work for social justice, we long to set the world right, to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to Earth by our faith and our action. Advent is a calling of the world to accountability before God.

Anticipation of the Coming of the Messiah throughout the Old Testament and Judaism was not in connection with remembrance of sins. Rather, it was in the context of oppression and injustice, the longing for redemption, not from personal guilt and sin but from the systemic evil of the world expressed in evil empires and tyrants. It is in that sense that all creation groans for its redemption as we witness the evil that so dominates our world (Rom 8:18-25).

May God's love be with you, Surfinbrrrrrrds.

2005-11-18T10:59:00.000-08:00

French Toast

Youthquakes are karmic eruptions. The inevitable false promises of the old regurgitated like bitter bile by the young. Looking around at the world their elders have left them, they rant "You lied to us, you betrayed us, you sold out our birthright." The power-relations, between parent and child is echoed in the drama of domination and subordination between Imperial France and colonized North Africa, between master and slave. "You used us--as labor, as fodder, as garbage collectors. You starved us and raped us and beat us and used us up and now you throw us away."

Colonialism is bad karma---an abomination of greed, pride, arrogance and sloth. The Wretched of the Earth suffer, the imperial power gets fat. 2005, and the foix gras has come home to roost, the goose explodes and Paris is burning.

Bondage-up-yours! The brown kids of Clichy sous Bois are caught between a liver pate and a sand dune. Neither truly French or really African, they can't move backwards or forward. Anomic, alienated, angry, shiftless, they're stuck, stranded, without hope, all they can do is explode--inward or out.

"There is you FIRST and then I am what you let me be."
--Charles Manson

2005-11-08T10:10:00.000-08:00

A Lover's Concerto

The Village Voice recently celebrated it's 50th anniversary with over 200 pages of greatest hits covers and stories, celebrating a legacy of activism, attitude, and influence. But it's bittersweet; like NYC's most precious downtown institutions---the Ramones, the twin towers, CBGB's, the Village Voice too, is fading into cultural history, making ways for new bands, new buildings, new clubs and new media.

When does love die? Long before you'll admit it. Was it the day the first-person narrative was outlawed, or when you saw a beloved editor get canned? Or when you realized the copy you were so proud of was really just fancy filler between ads? Or was it when they made it a free paper, something folks grabbed to pick up dog shit?

When I started writing for the Voice in 1987, I was still in school. My dissertation Chair, sociologist Lewis Coser, himself a former journalist, lamented the paper had seen it's glory days. I winced---for me, the Voice was still viable, important, compelling. Growing up, the "commie rag" was outlawed by my paramilitary dad. "It's unAmerican," he'd rant. Like my editors, I came across the bridges and tunnels, a refugee seeking meaning, freedom and funtime. The Voice told me where to find it, what it looked like and why I loved it. It was the instruction manual for the life I was called to.

The Voice was considered a "writer's paper." That meant you got quality time, editors nurtured your innate talent, didn't bend originality into canned prose. The place remained young and snotty well into menopause. The paper respected a writer's voice, helped you to hear it yourself, then gave you endless space to let it rip. The paper wouldn't change a single word without asking you first. You got to work with editors who were passionate, activists, scenemakers, hipsters, dreamers, people like Willis, Goldstein, Christgau, Kennedy, Simmons, Press, Eddy and Powers. I've never taken a writing course or even an English class. I learned everything from them.

Around 1997, during the Stern regime, I was hired as a consultant by management to set up the short-lived Long Island Voice--- to give suburban bohemia the Voice it needed. One day, up on the Executive floor, I heard a suit refer to the paper as a "Media Property." I realized then that no matter how much the paper meant to me, how crucial it had been in forming me, in the end it was just another jazzed up commodity form, a product, like Nike or Starbucks.

In the November 11th issue of New York, on the heels of the New Times merger, I love the way former Voice writer Mark Jacobson describes the paper's legacy, "This was the realm of the non-J-school, self-invented, pop-cultural, autodidactic, a place where the high tone met the vulgar and an Everyman could hawk his expertise." Every woman too.

2005-10-28T19:25:00.000-07:00

Das Boot

How many times can you repeat the same story without burning out precious brain matter? The gods were kind enough to crack my ankle, giving me much needed "alone" time to work, and opening my eyes to the endless fashion possibilities of the temporarily injured. About four weeks into my slow recovery from a broken foot and ankle of September 16, I got really bored explaining "What happened" to every person I saw.
At first I told the truth--"NYC streets. Tripped on my chunky platform heels..." Then, during the recent brutality season of Katrina and the Waves, I'd look down at my foot and reply proudly, "Yeah, surfing accident." Now that surf is winding down, and the air is crisp, and I've gone from a cast to a boot, I've changed my story with the season. "Wiped out on my bike, totally demolished it... "
Fashion wise, I've gone from a sunny surfy look--colorful sarongs, Hawaiian shirt and a green wrapped cast, to a slick leather jacket (sleeve) and a tough black boot (circa Mad Max). If this drags on into December, I'll be in a red parka with matching knitted ski cap, "Skiing...yeah, Utah..."

2005-10-24T14:27:00.000-07:00

Piss on God?

On Sunday, 10/23, the New York Times covered a court case involving Native American tribes and developers. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/23/national/23peaks.html. The subject of A SNOWBALL EFFECT, a documentary by Blackfire's Klee Benally, Native Americans believe Kuchinas--spirits--live the San Francisco Peaks, 12,000 feet up, on top of the mountains. Although it's on federal land, not reservation, the mountain is considered holy ground for 13 tribes. Twenty-five years ago, developers decided Arizona needed a ski run on one slope. How does the Arizona Snowbowl make snow for skiing in Arizona? With treated wastewater---a euphemism for reclaimed piss & shit water piped up from Flagstaff to the mountain.

To the tribes united around the law suit, this action is like a Priest watching someone take a leak in a confessional in the name of recreation and free enterprise. Even Christianized Native Americans---many of whom survived the brutality of the boarding school system a generation ago, and have few ties to the old ways---view the peaks as living deities. For the devout, even speaking about their rituals is forbidden; hearing one's sacred spirituality analyzed and picked apart in a federal courtroom in Prescott, Arizona, by agents of a forked-tongued conqueror is soul-killing, sorrowful and profane.

At issue in Judge Paul Rosenblatt's court is the "Religious Freedom Restoration Act" amidst claims by the Forest Service and Arizona Snowball that the piss-snow does not constitute a "substantial burden" on the tribes because it only impacts a small area of the mountain. To an unfractured Native American psyche, the Peaks are a whole entity, an organic totality---i.e. you cannot subdivide (rent, buy, sell, or own) the Great Spirit. Any contamination would violate the sacredness, and nullify crucial rituals. Moreover, as Navajo activist (and Blackfire bass player) Jeneda Benally argues, to the Hopi tribe, the "reclaimed" faux snow threatens to drive the Kuchinas away---the spirits make snow & rain. If "man" is now making it, the people fear their deities will depart. For more on the trial, the Peaks and the cause, go to: www.savethepeaks.org