Run Off

Post to Open Humanism Mind-meeting group

2011-12-28T03:37:00.000-08:00

[I posted this note and comments to a Facebook group after Anitra joined me to it. I am posting it here because I want to save it, and I don't entirely trust FB to do that for me.]

Anitra tossed me into this group against my will. I am her husband, with whom she does not always agree. Her focus is on her own brand of humanism mixed with form of Christianity. My focus is elsewhere. I'm a polytheist who doesn't believe in gods. How does that work? Well, first off, when I say I don't believe in gods, I mean I don't believe in what monotheists generally consider gods to be. I have my own ideas what purposes the word god should be put to, and my ideas are not accepted by most people, therefore they would say that I don't believe in gods. That is the first answer.

But also, believing really isn't the point. Gods to me aren't to be believed in. Gods are part of the machinery of my seeing. Objectively, when you look around a room, you don't see your eyes. Your eyes and brain are part of the equipment of your seeing. What I *mean* by a god, generally, is a part of my equipment of seeing into the world, or of my engagement with the world. A god is an organ of my subjectivity, that colors my insight. Strictly speaking those are what I would call personal gods. Universal gods also can be defined in at least two ways. A universal god may be an idealization of a form of a personal god. Or a universal god may refer to a perspective that informs subjectivities that can be shared. That is, the god is the shared perspectivity.

Example. A very simple god is found in what the Greeks called Hera. Hera is the god (goddess) who is said to be at work whenever someone runs into a burning building to save a baby, and says they didn't think about it, they just did it. The weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hera made American's enlist in droves. Hera sent firemen running up the stairs of the World Trade Towers. Actually Hera is the universalization of an ideal form of organ of insight. We all have a Hera in us, or we're sociopaths. "Hera" is to those individual Heras, as "The Human Eye" is to our individual eyes. The individual Heras cause us to engage ourselves in the world in a certain way. When I say I don't believe in gods, a subtler meaning of saying that is that I am not a Platonist, so I don't believe in ideal forms, so the universal Hera to me is a fiction. Well, the individual Heras, when imagined as personal beings are fictions, too. But they are fictions of a higher reality. Because if you have had such experiences as I've described you know how it feels and it feels like somebody outside of yourself directed your actions. So the personalization of individual Heras is justified by the utility of conveying the experience. In any case, the individual Heras exist objectively as phenomena. I can say on that level I believe in them.

I don't want to have the best beliefs I can. I want to discover the means to have the best insights. By attending to gods, and distinguishing them, I am gaining in understanding how I engage the world and how others do, too. I don't have to make a religion out of it. I can apply my definitions, look for my very objective organs of engagement and get somewhere with that. But when I was a child I learned another way. That other way didn't detract from what I just described but added to it. I learned that by taking the subjective experiences of gods for granted and responding to the gods as if they were the persons they seem sometimes to be, they become easier to see and understand. This is the method of imagination. That's my religion. It has no dogma. It has no scripture. The church is everywhere. The altar is in my head. My gods eat Anitra's god every morning for breakfast, then spit him out and ask for eggs and toast instead.

Imagining is not only a solitary process, but a group activity. My childhood experience was that, around the age of 3, I encountered and became close friends with a couple of 18 year-old Hawaiian brothers, one of whom was a Hawaiian traditionalist. So he had rejected Christianity for a version of the Hawaiian traditional ways, the Kahiko, that he had learned (against the law in those days!) from one of his uncles. He taught me some of that. As a result, my imagining of gods and goddesses often reflects Kahiko imaginings. Another way to say that I do not believe in the gods, is that I am aware that they are imaginings, and I am aware that they are only scaffolding for my awareness, and I am aware that they come from inspirations of all kinds, and therefore I can pack them all up and forget about them, and go to sleep when I need to. The act of choosing these gods and not those isn't about dogma, it's about love.

Imagining itself is an organ of seeing. And necessary to imagining is the ability to clear one's head, or to tear down imaginings. And necessary to make any use of imaginings, you need memory, to preserve them a while, to use them. There's a nice trinity.

Should mention this corollary: Since the gods are organs of my engagement with the world, and since "I" is a word for that engagement, I am made of my gods. My voice is the combination of their voices. This view tends to make me less than worshipful about them. I have a lot of appreciation for my body parts, but I don't worship my liver. In fact, I actually feel rather superior to my liver, most of the time.

Bored by Typing

2011-12-25T16:58:00.001-08:00

A Thought

2011-05-01T03:28:00.001-07:00

Christians and I agree about one thing: They don't want to convert to my religion, and I don't want them to convert to my religion. I want them to keep to theirs. It suits them.

Meet the Editorial Committee

2011-04-14T19:57:00.000-07:00

[Clockwise from lower left are August Mallory, Wes Browning, Jihad Salaam, Joe Howard, Teresa Reeves, Mary T Andrews, and Anitra Freeman.]

Well, meet some of it anyway. People wonder how Real Change newspapers are put together. There's an editorial department, run by our editorial manager Amy Roe, and including two reporters and a production assistant. Many volunteer writers accept assignments and some submit unsolicited work, which we consider. In addition to all that there's the editorial committee, or the "EC."

The idea of the EC is to provide grassroots input to the paper's content. All interested readers of the paper may apply. The principal activity of the committee is to brainstorm story ideas for future issues. So the main qualification to be accepted as a member is an ability to work well with others while bringing ideas to the table.

Currently the EC has 13 members, of which 8 are fully active vendors, 2 are semi-active vendors, and one (me!) is a highly inactive ex-vendor. (I was highly inactive when I was a vendor, too.) In this particular meeting 7 of us were on hand.

Besides brainstorming, the EC also spends a little time in each meeting looking through the most recent paper for errors that might need correcting, or stories that suggest follow-up.

Then, every month or so, we go over those unsolicited submissions I mentioned above. These are confidential sessions. A volunteer has previously blanked out the author's names on the submissions, so that we can vote to accept or reject blindly. Our acceptance is provisional -- the editorial manager makes the final decision.

This particular meeting was almost all brainstorming. Ideas batted around the table involved an upcoming anniversary of the Frye Hotel, a future guide to being homeless for the first time, a death on the street in Ballard, the relationships between panhandlers and vendors, an upcoming "carve-in," activities of neo-Nazi and similar organizations in the area, and the effects of budget cuts on ex-offender services.

Meetings are currently 2:30 to 4pm Thursdays in the Real Change vendor room, 96 S Main St. Guests and applicants are welcome the last Thursday of every month. Real Change vendors have preference and may apply at any meeting.

Serious Work at Real Change

2011-04-12T21:03:00.000-07:00

Here at Real Change we take everything we do seriously. One of the things we do is have All Staff Meetings every two weeks. Those are meetings in which all the staff sit around a table and meet. In our seriousness about these meetings, we decided to dedicate one of our recent meetings to the question "What are All Staff Meetings for?"

Our Vendor Staff Director, Tara Moss agreed to facilitate that meeting. To prepare us all for the discussion she sent around a link to a video talking about research into the "marshmallow problem," " -- a simple team-building exercise that involves dry spaghetti, one yard of tape and a marshmallow. Who can build the tallest tower with these ingredients? And why does a surprising group always beat the average?"

The marshmallow problem is explained in the video accompanying the link. As a mathematician, I couldn't resist seeing not only whether I could build a reasonably sturdy tall tower of dry spaghetti, but whether I could build one entirely based upon the three Platonic solids having triangular faces. Would that support a marshmallow?

Yes. The picture, taken just before a tragic accident involving the tower and a coworker sitting upon it, proves it. That's Tara Moss herself in the background.

They're BACK!

2011-02-08T02:17:00.000-08:00

This is nice. I wrote about this park and its statues in 2008 in Geese Have It Worse. The statues in the background appeared after a mass killing of geese, show a boy excited to see a Canadian Goose in the park. Yeah, he should be! They murdered them all! Well, not all of them. Here's a couple that WOULDN'T DIE! Call the authorities before they get away! (It looks like the mother is getting ready to take out her cell phone.)

A Sidewalk Feature Takes Me Back

2011-01-25T03:31:00.000-08:00

When Anitra and I walk home from the Real Change office, we regularly meet this, one of my favorite Seattle landmarks. That's the headquarters of the Seattle Fire Department, viewed from the Main St side, looking east toward Second Avenue. From this angle it looks like a joke. Someone decided to split the sidewalk into a high sidewalk and a low sidewalk. So, for fun, when we approach I like to nudge Anitra toward one or the other. Say I nudge her to the high sidewalk. Then I take the other one at the last minute. And see if she breaks into an impromptu travesty of Loch Lomond.

If we look at it from further out, we realize that it's really a wheelchair-ramp to an unmarked blue-green door of the Fire Department.

It happens I remember that the door used to be marked as the entrance to a public restroom, that is now no longer accessible. I always find it locked now. But that's not the triggered memory that I'm talking about in the title. The game I play with Anitra reminds me of an obsession I had when I was 6 or 7 years old

I was caught up with the idea that I had a trajectory. As a body in motion I leave a track. If I pass through an opening, and then later, upon return, choose not to pass through that opening in the reverse direction, then I have wound my trajectory around one side of that opening. In the case of the wheel-chair ramp, if I take the high side going east, and take the low side coming back west, altogether I will have wound my trajectory once counter-clockwise around the railing.

Imagine I was leaving a string behind me, everywhere. One long, long, string, like the drag line of spider, all the way back to the hospital room in Greenville General where I was born, where it would be anchored. Every time I were to wind it around an obstacle, it would be that much harder to pull the string straight, if I ever wanted to.

That's exactly what I imagined when I was 6 or 7, and it horrified me then, that I might be in that fix. Not to be able to straighten out my life path! It would be like being caught in a trap, ready to be devoured by some monster. I wouldn't be able to run freely, my string radiating freely, pivoting around South Carolina.

Fifteen years later I was an undergraduate discovering my own personal proof of the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra (which says that complex polynomials factor completely) and my proof ended up being the winding number proof. It's an approach that derives the theorem by studying the way polynomials map circles in the complex plane to curves, with particular attention to the number of times the curves wind around zero. Discovering that proof drew me further into the mathematics of properties of space that stay the same when you straighten wrinkles, and so I ended up being a topologist. But my original fascination with the subject was rooted in fear of being trapped in a tangle.

I'm now utterly over that childhood fear. I still imagine the drag line behind my life trajectory. The difference is now I love the tangles. Now I deliberately wind myself around things. If you see me walking down the street and I weave first right then left around various sidewalk signs, light posts, and such, you'll know that's what I'm doing. I'm tangling myself in everything, because I've figured out who the monster is, and I'm quite happy with being devoured by her.

Brace for a Return to Posting, Part 2

2011-01-24T14:12:00.000-08:00

OK! That last return to posting went nowhere! This time, however, I believe a have the magic formula that will get this enterprise going again. I now have an alternative to the Photoshop I lost when my last computer crashed. (I'm using GIMP.) Also, I finally got Adventures in Bloggery, my column bucket, up to date. One of the ways my procrastination proliferates is, if I procrastinate on something of high priority, then I feel bad about spending time on something of lower priority, so I end up doing neither. How could I justify posting here while the columns weren't up over there? Now I don't have that argument in my head anymore.

Novel Hints

2009-11-02T02:37:00.000-08:00

Hints as to how the novel is developing (re previous post).

Genre:

Satire, Humor, or Parody.

Synopsis:

A satiric Ugly Duckling story of a man born homeless to housed parents, rejected and therefore out to seek his own kind. Told by his personal Genius with little regard for truth, consistency, or coherence.

Excerpt:

Gene was conceived in the master bedroom of a two bedroom brick house at the end of NE West Parkway Place, off of West Parkway Way NE, Seattle, to Professor and Mrs Charles and Lola Feldman. Charles was a professor at the University of Washington in the history of engineering, who specialized in the history of the non-electrical development and utilization of wire, such as steel wire rope, wire fencing, and barbed wire. He dreamed of some day writing a wildly successful popularization of his beloved subject so that he would have other people about him who would want him to share it with them, other than visiting professors from Switzerland. Lola collected porcelain bunnies, taught Xtreme Unitarian Sunday school, had three children from a previous marriage, and was not very enthusiastic about having a fourth with Charles, but the condom broke, so it was God's Miraculous Will.

Brace for a Return to Posting

2009-10-29T17:36:00.000-07:00

A revival of interest in this "blog" is partly responsible for stirring me to write here again. The other part of it is that I've signed up to National Novel Writing Month, to write a 50,000 word novel next month, and this is a good place to discuss it as I go along. I won't try to write it here, that would entail writing from end to beginning, which I don't feel like doing (this time). But I expect I'll write about the writing.

My first thought was to write a play. I've always wanted to write a play, and the NaNoWriMo definition of a novel is so broad it includes any play that you have the audacity to call a novel providing only that it is fictional. But as the start of the month approaches it occurred to me that there was an actual novel I'd like to write.

I want it to be an extended patchwork of fables about a fictitious homeless person who will certainly sometimes resemble an exaggeration of me, but other times not. The key concepts so far, then: patchwork, fables, homeless.

So - You're About to Become Homeless

2009-06-24T18:48:00.000-07:00

This is an old article I wrote for Real Change in the 90s. It's now very much out of date. I'm putting it here for the record.

So - You're About to Become Homeless....
or How to Hit the Street Feet-First Not Face-First.

Sometimes homelessness happens suddenly. Lightning strikes your house, it burns down, you weren't insured for lightning strikes, SURPRISE!

But usually there are Warning Signs. Say it's May 15, you have $200 to your name, you're an unemployed laborer, you just sprained your ankle dancing, the June rent is $400, and your friends are as broke as you are. You are quite likely to be homeless in four to six weeks, depending on how good your landlord's lawyer is.

If you've been homeless before, you should know it's time to get it together, and know how. This article is meant for all you first-timers who don't have a clue.

To become homeless gracefully you need to convert your assets to resources accessible from your new "residence" - losing as little as possible - and learn to take advantage of opportunities for the poor and homeless that may be new to you.

Let's begin with what you already have.

MATERIAL RESOURCES: I.e., stuff.

The houseless and apartmentless don't have to be stuffless. You need stuff to maintain your sense of identity, to have things to sell later, to prove who you are and what you are entitled to, to maintain yourself daily, etc. You need to put it somewhere.

For the non-day-to-day stuff a good solution is the commercial storage space. Monthly rents are affordable even for the very poor, provided you shop around a little. Usually, the harder the place is to get to, the lower the rent. So don't plan to be visiting your stuff on a regular basis. You can try to wrangle storage space from people you know, but *if you don't pay them, expect an interpersonal cost.* As you will see, this last comment in asterisks has wider applications to your new life- style.

Items that should go into storage are everything that fits that you don't need daily (see below) PLUS copies of ALL legal, financial, and medical records and any other documents you can't bear to lose. Sell the big items that don't fit. Be especially sure to store copies of your ID, social security card, and birth certificate. Loss of ID on the streets is frequent and without backup can be disastrous.

Don't max out your checking account thinking that no one will take a check from a homeless person. Of course they will. Pay your storage fees promptly by mail, with checks or money orders. Checks are cheaper.

Next we come to the day-to-day stuff. There are places in this city where you can find lockers, even some free ones. Unfortunately, I am not allowed to tell you about them, because they aren't intended for you. Exception: there are some inexpensive lockers provided by SHARE located at the Josephinum, 1902 2nd Ave., 2nd floor. For the others keep your eyes open, and try to think, where would lockers be?

This brings us to the debate over the relative merits of backpacks, bags, carts, etc. This is a matter of personal preference and physical ability. Carts and large backpacks mark you, but do what you want or must. My preference was a small backpack for small items and a large but lightly packed bag for clothes and bedding - this gave me a little flexibility if I scored a place to stash the bag. Cheap collapsible carts are available which, being collapsible, are also easy to stash.

What should you carry with you? It depends on who you are. Here's a list of suggestions some of which won't apply to you:

Toothbrush, toothpaste, first-aid kit including scissors and tweezers, penknife, spoon, fork, bowl, can-opener, razors, feminine hygiene products, needed over the counter meds - e.g. antihistamines, ear plugs, plenty of socks, spare underwear, a miniature bottle of shampoo, mace and a whistle, spare shoes, soap and deodorant, a hand mirror, matches, sleeping bag, a warm blanket, spare set of clothes, warm overcoat, hooded parka, work boots, light-weight rain gear, pen and paper, a towel.

For urban street life you shouldn't need a tent or camp stove. Even if you don't get in a shelter, there is plenty of cover from wind and rain in the city. And there are lots of ways to get hot food without having to cook it yourself, or pay for it. You won't starve. Don't haul too many books. Use the libraries instead. Another class of items to carry are what I call sanity-savers. A Walkman and a handful of cool tapes would fall into this category. Without it you are at the mercy of Muzak. One guy I know got himself a pocket shortwave radio. He preferred talk to music. Another one had a Game-Boy. If you like chess, pack a chess set. Very popular: a blank book.

Of course if you have wheels hang on to them as long as possible. There's your storage (or most of it), your shelter, and your locker all in one portable unit. Don't forget to park on alternate sides of the street in residential areas where posted etc. Be discrete - passers-by may report you as a dead body in a car - bringing the police and hassles. As with lockers I can't tell you the best places to park, you'll have to use your imagination. Take extra care not to get towed.

Have children? Don't forget to bring them along. We don't need to inspire a "Home Alone III".

NONMATERIAL RESOURCES.

Your most important of these are friends and family, if any. Start now kissing up to them. You may land couch- or floor-space. Even if only temporary, this can buy time to improve your situation. I once even PAID an ex-girlfriend $160 for 6 weeks of couch-space. By the end of that time another friend agreed to let me take over his room without having to pay him his deposit. As a result, in nearly two months of being technically homeless, I only spent three days with no place to crash. These things only happen to people who HAVE friends.

Also important are your ties to the rest of the community and the world. Right now you may be so embarrassed by your poverty that you wish you could drop off the planet and never be seen or heard from again. RESIST SUCH THOUGHTS WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH AND WILL! Isolation is your worst enemy.

You will need ways to get mail and phone messages. Regarding mail I recommend a commercial mailbox service. Find one in the area you expect to be hanging, rent a box now, and have the Post Office start forwarding your mail there immediately. Send Change of Address Notices to everyone you know including your bank, your lawyer (if you have one), and even to people you aren't particularly fond of, e.g. ex-spouses or adult children you've disowned. My own worse bout of homelessness ended after I inherited $2,000. The check came to my ex-wife who might have torn it up, except that the divorce settlement entitled her to half. So she was motivated to get it to me. I only got my half, but half was all I needed. If I had not let her know how to reach me, I might still be on the streets today, more than ten years later.

PO boxes are much cheaper than commercial mailboxes but can't be used as legal addresses for some purposes. Cheapest still (free) is to tell everyone on your mailing list to write to you General Delivery at your local Post Office. You'll get your mail but no credit for having an address at all. You won't be able to get Food Stamps, register to vote, get GAU or social security benefits, new ID when old expires, or even a library card.

There are a variety of phone message options. You can subscribe to message services providing voice-mail that cost about what your basic home service has been costing you. Or you can rent a pager. When considering a pager, add in the cost of replying to frivolous calls from pay phones. The pager will be more expensive but worth it if it can snag income. Weigh the chances.

The latest rage in homeless empowerment is the e-mail account. The Seattle Community Network, 365-4528, offers free accounts. Additional services come with a low-cost Speakeasy account (see their ad, page ). You can access these at the Speakeasy or with your library card at a public library. By the way, you don't need an account to just access the internet. Consult your librarian.

You should at all costs maintain all your current ties to humanity. If you are in therapy, group therapy, in an AA group, or any other support group, stay there if you can. Continue attending church if you do, clubs, and political groups. Don't think that you have nothing to contribute just because you are now homeless. You will not be an outcast unless you make yourself one.

Speaking of nonmaterial resources: if you like sex I advise you to get laid as often as possible between now and your eviction, even if your partner is going to be homeless with you. You may only have the memories for awhile.

NEW (?) OPPORTUNITIES, an introduction.

FOOD.

I've met millionaires at soup kitchens. They don't do an income check at the door. Therefore it would be presumptive of me to assume that you have never been to one. But if you haven't, now is the perfect time to check them out. BEFORE you lose your home. The money you save now on food will help you pay the expenses of storage and mail and phone services described above, thereby stretching your limited reserves, and you will lose your fear of starvation, relieving you of a mountain of anxiety.

Remember what I said? *If you don't pay them, expect an interpersonal cost*. You have also heard it put this way: "There's no such thing as a free lunch." True but some are more free than others. So - you have to wait in line. So - you have to listen to the sermon. So - figure you're getting paid a lunch in return for an hour's work, consisting of waiting and listening. And you don't even have to listen if, like me, you bring ear plugs. So - quit bitching and enjoy the relatively free food. And be proud, telling yourself, "I've earned this!"

And where are these soup kitchens ("community meals" to the people who run them)? See the White Page's table of contents. Look up Community Service Numbers. My copy says go to pages 2 and 3. Look there for the heading "Food". Call the numbers you see and tell whoever answers where you are. If you are in Seattle and don't have a phone book handy try 723-0647. This gets you the Church Council of Greater Seattle's Emergency Feeding Program. They can help you get food for specific dietary needs, as well as refer you to hot meals.

Also ask for the address and hours of a food bank in your zipcode. Register with them now while you still have a home. Bring ID and proof of residence. They may ask if you have cooking facilities. If you wait to register when you are homeless saying yes with a straight face may be hard.

You may already know where to apply for Food Stamps. If not, go to the "Community Service Office" for your zipcode. It's one of my pet peeves that it's found that way in the Blue Pages of the White Pages, in the Washington State listings. YOU call it the Welfare Office, I call it the Welfare Office, THEY call it the CSO and expect us to know that, even if we've never been there before. Plan to spend an afternoon applying. Bring documentation: Who are you? How much do you earn? What is your ADDRESS? What do you pay in rent and utilities?

At the CSO you can also apply for GAU (General Assistance for the Unemployable). You may be eligible without knowing it, so I'd apply unless I was employed full-time. While there ask about DVR (the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation) if you are interested in getting help overcoming whatever unemployability you might have.

Much of the information here is readily available on the internet. If you have access to the internet, say if you have a library card, try this: First get to Telnet. Then at the prompt enter: o scn.org. Follow instructions to login, and wade through SCN's flood of welcoming information. Then at the main menu enter: go crisis. Choose "Food and Housing Services" from the menu. See what you get.

SHELTER, SHOWERS, LAUNDRY.

In King County call 461-3200. Elsewhere see the Community Service Numbers again, under Emergency Shelters.

One problem here: for now there is no such thing as a shelter that offers beds for night-workers during the day. So if you have a night job consider putting in for the day-shift.

MORE STUFF: clothing, etc.

Look up "Thrift Stores" in the Yellow Pages.

Baby supplies, clothing, and toys are available at low prices at the Josephinum 1902 2nd Ave., 2nd floor.

The Millionair's Club Thrift Store Annex at 2137 2nd Avenue has free racks of clothes ("some limitations may apply"). You may want to stop first at 2515 Western, their main office, MWF 7am-8:30am or 2:45pm-3:15pm for vouchers to obtain certain items not on the free racks, like underwear and socks. Warning: The Thrift Store closes mid-afternoon.

MEDICAL CARE, CHILD CARE.

Go back to the Community Service Numbers. This time look up Health Care Resources, respectively Child Care Resources. Call ahead to determine eligibility, costs if any, drop-in periods.

SOCIAL OPPORTUNITIES.

You can join homeless advocacy groups like SHARE, WHEEL (for women), the Seattle Displacement Coalition, etc. for company and a sense of purpose.

Here is a short list of places in Seattle to be during the day:

Public Libraries.
Angeline's YWCA (for women), 2025 3RD Ave.
First Avenue Service Center NOT on First but Third: 2015 3rd Ave.
Pike Market Senior Center, 1931 1st Ave.
Various parks in good weather.
The Seattle Center.
The University of Washington (but don't try to sleep there).
The StreetLife Gallery, 2301 2nd Ave., 328-5637. (You'll be expected to actually work on art and help with cleaning).
YMCA, YWCA - to exercise, swim, at low cost, 382-5010, 461-4868, resp.
Community Psychiatric Clinic has places to hang-out if you have a mental disability, as well as counseling services and meals. 461-3614.

Hanging-out in Downtown Seattle has the advantage that it is in the Free Ride Zone - free bus transportation within during the day.

This has only been an introduction to the sorts of opportunities available to the poor and/or homeless. Every service that you take advantage of will be able to tell you about ten more, so carry pad and pen with you. You will find out about low-income housing. You will learn what "Section 8" means. You will meet other people in similar situations who will be able to give you more information. Like maybe where those free lockers are, or how to dumpster-dive and why, or what corners are best to sell the Real Change, or where to land odd-jobs.

The streets are full of sad, lonely, embittered people. Most were not like that before they got there. They got that way because they didn't know all the ways that they could preserve their property, health, security and sanity. If you do, it won't happen to you.

To conclude on a lighter note, I'd like to borrow some excellent and pertinent words of wisdom from Douglas Adam's "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (which, by the by, sells rather better than the "Encyclopedia Galactica"):

DON'T PANIC

And: Be hoopy, be a frood - always know where your towel is.

Truman on Newspapers

2009-04-09T03:02:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

Back in 1961, the issue was the morning papers were taking over the afternoon papers!

David Susskind w/ Truman re Newspapers, 1961

Swing Find

2009-04-03T23:37:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

Ooo, nice.

Balboa-Swing Dancing in the short Maharaja (1943)

Echoes of the Present

2009-04-02T02:43:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

Something not quite right here. Too happy for 1933, maybe?

Complete New Deal Rhythm ~ 1933

Miklos Molnar

2009-03-20T00:24:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

Ernie Kovacs Miklos Molnar Howdee Dee Dee Show

I've never seen this before. Love it.

Definitive Minnie?

2009-03-13T18:38:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

I can't get enough of Minnie The Moocher.

YouTube is making this harder for me. Too many choices. We'll see if this works.

De los álamos vengo, madre

2009-02-11T21:44:00.000-08:00

Video Find of the Day

I just realized tonight that this was one of my favorites.

"De los álamos vengo, madre..." de Joaquín Rodrigo

Boop/ Calloway

2009-01-26T20:55:00.000-08:00

Video Find of the Day

The best part of this, in my opinion, is the animation of the singer(s) of St. James Infirmary. They got Cab Calloway down. The description says it was "band".

Betty Boop - Snow White (1933)

Brass Tocatta

2009-01-21T23:27:00.000-08:00

Video Find of the Day

It's hard to believe that this is only 5 musicians.

Canadian Brass: Tocatta y Fuga

Rondo o mondo

2009-01-20T20:57:00.000-08:00

Video Find of the Day

My favorite rondo ever.

"Rondo" - Andres Segovia

Shai-Hulud

2008-12-26T20:55:00.000-08:00

Video Find of the Day

This first Video Find in over two weeks is inspired by all the talk about what Obama has to face in assuming office. He has called up a big one. It is the legend.

Dune....Shai-Hulud

Odissi Dance

2008-12-07T23:59:00.000-08:00

Video Find of the Day

Classical Indian dance. The description doesn't say so, but I getting the idea the performers in these are typically teenagers, at the oldest. The last time I shared something like this, YouTube pulled the video within 24 hours. Hope this gets to stay.

Rahul Acharya, Odissi Dance

Triple Fusion

2008-12-04T23:31:00.000-08:00

Video Find of the Day

A threefer of tribal fusion, by tribal fusionists Rachel Brice (first), (then) Kami Liddle, (then) Kajira Djoumahna.

Rachel Brice and Kami Liddle - vintage 2005 Tribal Fusion

Back to OCD

2008-12-03T23:59:00.000-08:00

Video Find of the Day

Here's a sign that I may be recovering from my week of weak internet. I'm back to back-posting daily video finds! Here's a video from the Onion that was posted to YouTube in July, but is even better now, given the intervening stock market crash.

Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Presidency

Holiday Song

2008-11-23T23:25:00.000-08:00

Video Find of the Day

As we enter the holiday season, it's nice to find videos that tap into the holiday spirit. Here's one of Tom Lehrer doing a song I never heard him do before.

Hanukkah in Santa Monica by Tom Lehrer

Google Street View

2008-11-23T20:44:00.000-08:00

I just noticed Google has finally put up Street View for the Seattle area on Google Maps. Seattle lovers should check it out. There are navigable street views of most every street between north Everett and South Tacoma and between Bremerton and Carnation. They've also done most of inhabited Australia, Tokyo, and Paris. I was beginning to think they were slighting Seattle, but it looks now like they were just trying to be thorough.

A random screen shot of one of the 10s of thousands of street images now available:

Melanesian Choirs

2008-11-22T21:07:00.000-08:00

Video Find of the Day

New information requires me to reassess the nature of Broadstripe's suckiness. On the one hand, it turns out that we have not been suffering from a general outage. Our outage is specific to us (Anitra and I). On the other hand, they told us in an automated phone message that it was. On the third hand, we really should have known they were lying, called back and made them tell the truth. On the fourth hand, we have just now run out of hands between us, now, because we believed their lying suck-ass recorded message, we can't get someone to fix it now until Tuesday.

Meanwhile, one of the Real Change vendors recommended this music to me. It's from The Thin Red Line, a movie about the battle for Guadalcanal I've never seen.

The Thin Red Line - Melanesian Choirs - Compilation

Üsküdar

2008-11-21T22:38:00.000-08:00

Video Find of the Day

Broadstripe still sucks, so I'm resigned to sitting in the office late after hours to use the internet. I'm there now, waiting for some stuff to download to my precious new laptop, which I expect will solve some of these problems, perhaps in a way that involves me spending more time than I wanted in a Starbucks.

Wikipedia says Üsküdar is the part of Istanbul on the Anatolian side of the Bosporus, and it was where Florence Nightingale got famous. These violinists were performing there. I don't know what the music is called.

100 Gypsy Violins, Live in Istanbul - Üsküdar ( Traditional)

Thank You, Broadstripe

2008-11-20T20:19:00.000-08:00

Broadstripe sucks. That's why I'm not doing much these days. I can't get on the internet at home because Broadstripe has crashed and stayed crashed for going on two days, the last I checked. I'm posting this from the Real Change office now. Hopefully I can get back to the usual slogging away by tomorrow.

Everly Brothers

2008-11-17T23:59:00.000-08:00

Video Find of the Day

Oldies But Goodies from a 1961 TV performance. I was out of the country at the time, and walked in on this sort of thing later, after months of hearing Bésame Mucho played in Mexican shops 5 or 6 times a day.

Everly Brothers - Bird Dog - Till I kissed you

Desert Blues

2008-11-16T23:59:00.000-08:00

Video Find of the Day

Another OCD post! 2nd in a week, isn't it? I'm slipping.

Desert Blues -- Music Project from Mali -- Part 1

Chatterjee

2008-11-15T23:18:00.000-08:00

Video Find of the Day

I'd post part 2 but I'm wasted tonight. I don't recall hearing tabla quite like this.

Anindo Chatterjee(part 1)

Hawai'ian Falsetto

2008-11-14T22:25:00.000-08:00

Video Find of the Day

I used to hate this kind of singing. But then, I used to hate onions. Now, a day without onions is like a day without hot peppers. We grow and change.

Nā Palapalai

Internet Terrorism

2008-11-13T02:18:00.000-08:00

I keep hearing about concerns regarding internet terrorism. Do you know how many emails it takes to kill a man? Hint: It's exactly equal to the number of playing cards required to prevent the light from the sun from reaching the Earth.

It's Greek

2008-11-12T23:40:00.000-08:00

Video Find of the Day

I don't know what any of this is about. It sounds like a medley. Google translation says the tag ΔΗΜΟΤΙΚΑ means PRIMARY. This is my only clue. PRIMARY what? ΤΡΑΓΟΥΔΙΑ means SONGS. PRIMARY SONGS? Sometimes tags don't help.

ΦΥΛΙΩ ΠΥΡΓΑΚΗ ... (Το λουλουδάκι ...η Ιτιά ...)

YouTube Contest

2008-11-11T22:35:00.000-08:00

Video Find of the Day

This is an OCD post made exactly 24 hours after the time stamped on it. I had to get to bed at a ridiculously early hour (for me) yesterday in order to get up before the chickens for the 14th Anniversary Real Change Benefit Breakfast that was held this morning. Which went great by the way, I only wish Sherman Alexie's people would let me video him and put the video on YouTube, but we've been through that at other events and I know they won't. That fact has nothing to do with why I think this recent entry from The Onion is so awesome.

The crack about teen violence at the end is great, too.

YouTube Contest Challenges Users To Make A 'Good' Video

Miriam Makeba

2008-11-10T23:59:00.000-08:00

Video Find of the Day

She left us today.

Miriam Makeba - Kilimanjaro

Miriam Makeba-Pata Pata(TV Record,S.Paulo,Brazil,1968)

Miriam Makeba - Oxgam {Studio Version}

Garinagu, Garifuna

2008-11-09T23:59:00.000-08:00

Video Find of the Day

... whatever. They live in and about Belize (formerly British Honduras). If I'm not mistaken, these are some of they, singing.

Nibari - Umalali

What? -- 1935

2008-11-08T23:59:00.000-08:00

Video Find of the Day

OK. This is just weird. What really appeals to me here is the shot of Andy Devine (friend of Froggy on Andy's Gang) as a relatively thin man around 43 seconds to the end.

Down In Coronado By The Sea - 1935

Brahms & Hungarians

2008-11-07T21:47:00.000-08:00

Video Find of the Day

Back to normal? 4 out of the first 5 Hungarian Dances. How normal can we be?

Georges Pretre Brahms Hungarian Dance No.1

Brahms Hungarian Dance No.2

Yehudi Menuhin plays Brahms Hungarian Dance No. 4

Yehudi Menuhin plays Brahms Hungarian Dance No. 5

You Know You Got It, If...

2008-11-06T23:59:00.000-08:00

Video Find of the Day

I'm still winding down from the election. This video helps, as it has absolutely nothing to do with what just transpired.

Janis Joplin 'Piece Of My Heart'

Anvils?

2008-11-05T22:52:00.000-08:00

Video Find of the Day

This one, for a change, could have nothing to do with the recent election. It in no way relates to the expectations now being heaped upon Obama, that were never heaped upon the vanquished party. It has nothing to do with the higher standards that Democrats are held to. It is merely a piece of Classical Music, of no other significance.

ANVIL CHORUS, FROM VERDI´S "IL TROVATORE"

The Election Is Over

2008-11-04T22:34:00.000-08:00

Video Find of the Day

From the point of view of The Onion.

Voting Machines Elect One Of Their Own As President

Dance Off

2008-11-03T23:59:00.000-08:00

Video Find of the Day

Well, isn't this is a good send-off for the election? Why not reduce it to who has the best cgi skills? And, it reiterates what we all need to acknowledge, that Sarah Palin is steaming hot.

Obama and McCain - Dance Off!

Unfortunate Choice Of Words

2008-11-03T20:40:00.000-08:00

Sarah Palin stirring up a crowd at a campaign rally today: "Are you ready to send John McCain on his last mission [for America]?"

I don't think the crowd caught the irony. But I did. (I'm very sensitive to that sort of thing.) Yeah, that's the problem, this could very well be his last mission.

Wassup? Revisited

2008-11-02T22:50:00.000-08:00

Video Find of the Day

Eight years after the original "Wassup?" commercial, a timely update.

Wassup 2008

Old Favorite

2008-11-01T11:59:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

I'm between moods. I'm coming on one year from the last time I heard from Bethe, so...

Bette Midler "Is That All There Is?"

Halloween Video

2008-10-31T22:43:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

I should have known The Onion would have the Halloween video I was looking for.

In The Know: Has Halloween Become Overcommercialized?

Gillespie & Armstrong

2008-10-30T23:59:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

I went looking for a Halloween video and got distracted. I won't try to explain how I got distracted this far.

Not only do you get two jazz greats, you get spit.

Dizzy Gillespie & Louis Armstrong - Umbrella Man

Uyghur Dance

2008-10-29T23:50:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

Builds to a thrilling finish. I really like the old-guy-dancers.

Uyghur dance: Dolan meshripi (CCTV dance competition)

Obama Internship

2008-10-28T23:59:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

Next week: McCain's Retirement.

The Onion: Obama Undertakes Presidential Internship

Segovia

2008-10-27T23:41:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

Long day, starting at 3:30 AM to write the week's column, means I need something relatively peaceful to end with. Maybe not everybody's idea of peaceful, but works for me.

Leyenda [excerpt] Andres Segovia - Issac Albeniz (1860-1909)

Children of the Night

2008-10-26T22:41:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

I saw parts of this tonight on Classics Showcase and remembered how great it was. Truly one of the top 20 movies of all time, for sure, for sure.

"I never drink... wine."

My favorite part of this sequence is the last minute.

Dwight Frye - Renfield meets Dracula (Dracula - 1931)

You're A Mohammaden; I'm French!

2008-10-25T09:00:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

Unbelievably campy opening to a 1929 movie about Moroccan desert fighters. You have a guy in Arab garb who looks like a short bin Laden. You have exchanges like this: "She's only a woman! Give her up!" -- "That's the Oriental in you! You can't understand Western love!" And this is just the beginning of the movie!

THE DESERT 'MELODY' ~ FROM 1929 (one)

Thumpin' and Pluckin'

2008-10-24T21:34:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

Three videos of Larry Graham (Sly & the Family Stone; Graham Central Station) playing snippets, looking like an ad for greatest hits and covers. But it's all good, and you get to learn about fuzz and stuff, if you stick with it.

Larry Graham - Funk Original Pt.1

Larry Graham - Funk Original Pt.2

Larry Graham - Funk Original Pt.3

The Sun Of The World

2008-10-23T23:24:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

"Songs from Nor mgo village, Rtse Khog county, Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai province,PRC."

'tdam gling gi nyi ma (The sun of the world)

Tomatito

2008-10-22T23:52:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

A Flamenco guitar version of the song that gets my vote for best of the 20th Century. Tomatito is a popular name of José Fernández Torres

Tomatito - Bésame mucho

Gay Racehorse

2008-10-21T23:31:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

We loves it.

The Onion: First Openly Gay Racehorse To Compete Sunday

Seth MacFarlane

2008-10-20T23:53:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

Seth MacFarlane is the creator of Family Guy. When the headmaster of his former high school found out, the Rev. Richardson W. Schell, he asked Fox not to run it. MacFarlane's parents, who both taught at the school, resigned in protest. Cool.

Anyway, now Seth puts out a weekly internet short cartoon clip on YouTube at SethComedy. Click on that and you'll see all the clips so far, one after the other. This one below is the current one.

Cat Staff Meeting

Chant, Crowd

2008-10-19T22:03:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

Some rock.

Joe Satriani - Crowd Chant [LIVE]

Four Generations of Flamenco

2008-10-18T23:59:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

A couple of videos from a 2005 documentary called Herencias Flamenca. IMDB has nothing to say about the content of the film as a whole but the video descriptions say it chronicles "four generations of a gitano musical dynasty." The clips show a family reunion. I especially like the kids and the old people.

familia habichuela por bulerias

I couldn't embed the second one -- Los Habichuela -Ketama juerga flamenca, "The Flamenco Clan" -- but it's here.

Old Lautari

2008-10-17T23:14:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

Old recordings of Romanian musicians. I can't believe this is out there. Warning: the transitions from sample to sample are really abrupt. Also, the first video ends with a long period of dead silence.

Lautari of the Past: Part 1

Lautari of the Past: Part 2

Rhapsody Rabbit

2008-10-16T23:59:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

To me this cartoon totally cuts against the grain of the whole Bugs Bunny franchise. Where's Elmer Fudd? Why is Bugs the villain? What's a mouse doing here? Why is the anarchist bunny bothered by the anarchist mouse?

Rhapsody Rabbit

Fannie Mae Guthrie

2008-10-15T23:59:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

Almost 30 years ago a government bailout of Chrysler inspired Tom Paxton to write something called "I'm Changing My Name To Chrysler." Now, Arlo Guthrie has updated it.

Arlo Guthrie/I'm Changing My Name To Fannie Mae

Shorts

2008-10-15T21:09:00.000-07:00

I once belonged to a writer's network that cultivated the art of writing extremely short pieces. Members submitted 200-words-or-less pieces to be voted and commented upon. Cleaning my room tonight I found some printouts of mine. I thought I'd share.

"My Dinner Doggy"

From whence my dinner doggy?
Oh tell me, if I please!
The one who drinks 'til groggy
Then pees upon his knees.
The doggy I call "froggy"
Because I'm such a tease.
From whence my dinner doggy?
Oh tell me, or I'll sneeze.

His butt was 'pon a loggy.
'Twas just about to freeze.
His fur was much too soggy
His tail flapped in the breeze.
And crawling 'bout his noggy
Were sixty-seven fleas.
They'll add fine spice to "froggy"
When I scoff him down with cheese.

From thence my dinner doggy.
Now where'd I put my keys?

"Pizza Dream"

There is the dream of someone else. At first, I may be the star in it. That's how it gets my attention. The hook. There's coffee and pizza, too. But it's just to suck me in. I'm there for minutes, I get some pizza, then I turn into a dog or a cat and then the real dreamer walks in and takes over. Last night I turned into three blackbirds. I woke up with a splitting headache.

Why does this guy want me to be present in his dreams? I'm just present there, I don't get to do anything, I'm just an audience in the form of whatever fauna he's obsessing on at the moment. I don't know this guy. I don't want to know him. I should be in dreams of my own. I have my own wishes that need fulfilling. That should be MY cigar, MY railroad tunnel, MY leap off a tall building to certain death. That should be ME drowning, flying, being chased by an ax murderer.

Our Gang

2008-10-14T23:59:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

This was daily fare for me in the 50s. Our Gang, Spanky & Our Gang, whatever they were called, were always cropping up on daytime TV. This is the cream of situational comedy.

Our Gang Little Rascals "Fishy Tales" (1937)

Puericity

2008-10-13T23:59:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

In the interest of accuracy I should say that this is, by definition, puerile.

The Onion: 12-Year-Old Boy Scouts Offer To Give Breast Exams

Adore The Sid!

2008-10-13T23:34:00.000-07:00

If you look upper right you will see a new "gadget" on this blog. It's an artifact of Facebook, my latest jag.

I am not the only one on this jag. My woman, Anitra "Jagmeister" Freeman is on this jag. My über-boss Timothy Harris is on this jag. Dennis Kucinich is on this jag. And now, Sidney Vicious, the Cat, is on this same jag.

Sid has a Facebook page. If you want to see it, you must be a member of Facebook. If you do that, and go to the "Sid Vicious, the Cat" page, you can become a fan, by clicking on "Become a fan" or some such thing. Please do, because far too few humans have demonstrated their adoration for the One True God.

Your Master:

Rebroff

2008-10-12T23:59:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

Another post brought to you by OCD-delivery.

I cluck melodies out all the time and never get any respect for it. Maybe if I had a better voice when I broke into song between cluckings that would change.

I'm not sure the title is right. It's Poljuschko Polje, for sure, but I thought Cossack Patrol was something else.

Ivan Rebroff - Poljuschko Polje (Cossack Patrol)

Shumba Marimba

2008-10-12T22:19:00.000-07:00

Last night Real Change was among the honorees at a dinner put on by Washington State Jobs with Justice, so we got a table up front. The program included amazing performances by Shumba Youth Marimba Ensemble. This is one of those. You can see our director Tim Harris to my right. He has more to say about the event at his blog.

Robeson & Joe Hill

2008-10-11T23:59:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

Scenes of a protest in the streets of NYC under Giuliani. The background song is performed by Paul Robeson, so you may want to turn the sound down accordingly. He stressed my own lousy speakers.

This may or may not closely parallel anything going on now, anywhere. We'll probably know better in a week or two. The world appears to be realigning.

Joe Hill protest in the Streets

Gypsy Fiddling

2008-10-10T23:56:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

This is the sort of thing that got me hooked on the genre. No regrets.

Virtuoso of the Gypsy Music,Csardas (Sándor Lakatos)

Chot

2008-10-09T22:54:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

About one minute into this video you will see where the idea for LCD displays came from. Fifteen seconds later you'll witness a 1934 precursor of The Wave. Then, out will come Lyda Roberti, who will tell you she is chot (pronounce as in German) and sizzling, and she will sing a song entitled "Take A Number From One To Ten." One video, so much.

Jazzy Musical Number from 1934

Election News Critique

2008-10-08T23:59:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

Recent War For The White House entry by the Onion. Not about the election, but about the coverage. Really, a horrid little video actually.

The Onion: Gunman Kills 15 Potential Swing Voters

Kirk Douglas' Baby

2008-10-07T23:31:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

Spartacus was a cool movie, but my favorite Kirk Douglas movie is also one of my favorite movies ever, Lonely Are The Brave. In this interview in seven parts, Douglas calls it his baby. It's his favorite, too.

I loved it from the first time I saw it at 14. It means more to me now. Having been homeless I've been outside too many fences.

The videos were posted by ChisoxGuy. I've collected them in one playlist that runs about 14 minutes.

Lonely Are The Brave-An Interview with Kirk Douglas, Parts 1-7

We May Survive The Asteroid

2008-10-07T23:06:00.000-07:00

Good news from astronomy today!

A meteoroid blew up yesterday in the earth's atmosphere over the Sudan releasing a TNT-kiloton of energy!

Why this is good news:

It was spotted "incoming" about a day earlier by an observer at the Catalina Sky Survey 1.5 meter telescope north of Tucson, Arizona. This was the first time in history that a meteoroid on collision course with the earth was spotted and tracked prior to collision.

The meteoroid itself was at most 15 feet across. This is wonderful news. If we can spot the little ones before they hit, we can spot the big ones.

We won't survive our own greed or gluttony & we'll destroy the planet we have, but we'll probably have plenty of warning before the Mother Of All Asteroids disintegrates us, in time to divert it with the very last of our resources.

Teapot Brass

2008-10-06T23:59:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

What with the impending depression, maybe the musically inclined among us might want to watch this video and gets some tips on how to carry on.

Eddie Thomas & Carl Scott - My Ohio Home 1928

Nickels Can Kiss My Pink Ass

2008-10-05T23:19:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

The latest news I've seen out of Nickelsville is that the city is prepared to start fining everybody involved for land use violations, and everybody with a name resembling somebody involved, or known to have talked to anybody involved, or having expressed support, or having been rumored to have done so. The Notice Of Violation specifically charges encampment residents John and Jane Doe. They, the Does, as the others, will be subject to fines of $150 per day. I immediately thought, "I'm a supporter. I AM John Doe." Next I thought of this scene, which bears recalling. Fuck Nickels.

Spartacus [Don't have a clue what language the subtitles are in.]

Comfort Music

2008-10-04T23:59:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

When I'm in a foul mood, like after spending 6 hours dealing with insanity, I look for comfort music. My favorite comfort music includes Rhapsody in Blue, various Requia (sp, grammar?) and Funeral Marches (which facilitate lovely fantasies of murder and mayhem) and this classic.

Mozart - Rondo Alla Turca

Doggies!

2008-10-03T22:36:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

I first saw Mon Oncle (France, 1958) on a weak local channel afternoon movie program, ca 1967. It mesmerized me. It was amazingly slow and laid back, and I was not doing drugs or pot, in spite of the times, but yet I was mesmerized. Soul will do that to you. If you can harness soul, you can do anything.

Mon Oncle (1958) [dog scene in opening]

UTU

2008-10-02T21:10:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

UTU (1983) is one of my top five favorite movies of all time. It got very little attention in the US when it was released here. It has generally been treated as either an art film or as an adventure film. It's neither. It's drama, about a clash of cultures and revenge ("utu" is often translated as revenge.) In the first scene of the first video below, TeWheke is a Maori fighting on the side of colonialists near the end of the Maori Wars in New Zealand, when his own village is destroyed by his unit. The movie follows his subsequent revenge. The second scene of the clip shows the opening of TeWheke's personal war.

Utu-TeWheke

UTU is unique among movies that represent a clash of cultures, in that it doesn't try to get the viewer involved by offering a hero he can identify with. There's no Kevin Kostner character in this movie.

Loving Polynesian chant, this next scene is naturally my favorite. In it, we see a unit of Maori soldiers fighting on the colonial side. They are in the hills on the trail of TeWheke and his warriors. They stop for a little uplifting mutual cheer.

Utu - Haka

Too Much Time on Facebook

2008-10-01T23:59:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

Because Timothy Harris, Real Change Director, confessed to joining Facebook, I was deeply concerned, and went in after him, to help shove him in a van and deliver him to the de-programmers.

Once in Facebook I became lost. I made friends with people I thought were already friends. But now, I can poke them, send them kisses, and write on their walls.

Because of the extraordinary amount of wasted time all this represents, today's video find reduces to a plea that pole dancing finally be accepted as an Olympic sport. I mean, look at this. Really. This beats the parallel bars with a two-by-four.

Pantera pole dance act 3 for Hysteria @ noc noc on 7.23.08

Zino Francescatti

2008-09-30T23:59:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

Finally, I've found a video of Zino Francescatti. This is the violinist I named my Green Singing Finch Zino after. Because Zino (the bird) reacted so strongly to Zino the violinist's cassette tape.

La Ronde des Lutins, Op. 25 - Zino Francescatti, Violin

How Bad Is It?

2008-09-29T23:59:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

The Dow fell about 777.7 today, a Biblical number representing infinity in a decimal fraction. Let's put this event in further perspective.

Stock Market crash 1929

Ouch, an 80% loss over 4 years! But the Dow fell only 7% in one day, today. Let's see -- compounded daily, 4 years, carry the one, drop the two, roll the three -- oh shit.

Wait a minute, the Dow is only one index! Yeah, it isn't that significant! It's only based on 30 selected stocks! Let's look at the Nasdaq Composite, based on nearly 3000 stocks. Oh, sure, that will be better.

WHAT? A NINE PERCENT DROP? NEVER MIND.

OK. Let's look at it the other way. So the economy tanks. So we end up like India, which, in spite of having all our tech jobs, has less than a quarter of our GDP per capita. So our middle classes all end up working at Pizza Hut, like these guys in Jalandhar, Punjab. You think that would be bad?

Jalandhar Pizza Hut Bhangra Dancing

The Other Culture War

2008-09-28T20:36:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

The conservatives have hijacked the concept of Culture War. There are other culture wars besides theirs. For example, there is the long struggling but still strong Rebel Alliance against Disney.

Disney Geneticists Debut New Child Stars

Precision Is Sexy

2008-09-27T20:38:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

KING5.com has a news story about the Nickelsville eviction which contains this sentence: "The event was a precision protest by homeless advocates, who insist the mayor has failed the city's most vulnerable citizens."

Now, I need to mention that Nickelsville has always been about survival first, and only secondarily a protest against the sweeps (that make it necessary by endangering survival.) It's like when someone tries to hit you, you might simultaneously duck and also yell "NO!" The ducking is the primary act, the yelling "NO" (the protest) is secondary. First you don't want to be hit. Only secondarily do you want to register your objection to being struck at in the first place.

Still, calling what went down "a precision protest" is pretty cool isn't it? It immediately called to mind Mission Impossible, and made me long for the theme song. And what do you know, some Mission Impossible fan with a VCR in the early 90s and a YouTube account today has edited together the intros to six episodes.

Mission: Impossible Opening Montage 1

Yay! -- Wait. Huh?

2008-09-27T19:34:00.000-07:00

Great news out of Florida. According to an AP story, a federal judge has struck down Orlando's law against feeding the homeless in downtown parks on the grounds that it violates the rights of homeless activists. Yay!

But, wait a minute. The rights of homeless activists? Why weren't the rights of the homeless people to receive the food mentioned in the story? Were they not considered at all? I'm hoping the AP reporter just left that part out. Still, what would that say about the AP reporter then?

One way or the other I can't give this news a full five cheers. It has to be four cheers and one jeer.

Greg Nickels Is A Fool

2008-09-27T01:44:00.000-07:00

The events of the eviction of Nickelsville from alleged city land yesterday felt a little like a Beethoven sonata to me: attack, release, attack, release. Except with a background drone. My description of it for YouTube users is intended to get the idea across to non-Seattleites:

Sept. 26, 2008. Nickelsville, a tent city with ambitions to become a shantytown for the homeless in Seattle. After three and a half days of existence, Greg Nickels, our mayor who hates the homeless, whom Nickelsville is named for, as a dishonor, orders Seattle police to evict the occupants and demolish the camp. The police don't want to do it. They tell the people privately that they know that the mayor is a liar and that there is not enough shelter to house them. They will have no choice but to find yet another place to camp. But orders are orders. In every scene the sound of news and police helicopters overhead nearly drowns out the human voices, but hopefully the sense of the hour is conveyed.

Eviction at Nickelsville

Nickelsville Video

2008-09-26T22:47:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

Not my video. I haven't got around to the editing yet. This one is by Aimee Curl and Laura Onstot (posting as lonstot) for the Seattle Weekly.

Nickelsville in Progress

Nickelsville

2008-09-26T21:22:00.000-07:00

I went to Nickelsville today to take Anitra some boiled peanuts and to check out a news report. I heard that Mayor Nickels was sending homeless activists to do shelter outreach at the same time that he was sending police to break Nickelsville up. I wondered what homeless activists would want to circulate among 150 homeless people and try to tell them all that the meager extra shelter beds that the city has coughed up to justify the sweeps would suffice for all of them.

I found them; they were not really what I would call homeless activists. Social workers in the employ of the Department of Social Services are that: they are social workers. They do social work. They do not necessarily qualify as activists. When I asked one what they were saying to the campers, she told me that they were offering referrals.

So that's how they deal with the cognitive dissonance. They don't actually tell everybody that there is shelter for everyone. They tell each one, one at a time, you call this number on this card, and they can fix you up. They don't ever have to contemplate what would happen if everyone they talked to called the number on the card. Like I say, they aren't activists. Activists would think of that.

Meanwhile I took a bunch of pictures, and some videos. I'll try to post the videos later if they're any good. Here's a few of the still pictures.

When I first arrived I had to find Anitra, of course. She, in turn had to show me her precious pink tent.

Then I ran into some of the other usual suspects, like Joe Martin and friend Hap, and real Change Director Tim Harris, who I got to pose in front of the main area of tents.

Next, I asked just the tents to pose. I didn't photoshop this shot at all. That's how pink they are.

A Freedom Socialist wandered in with a nice sign that met with approval from the crowd.

Since yesterday, and right up to the police eviction today, some permanent structures were being built. Here Anitra is posing with Aaron in front of his pink sheltered pink shelter.

One of the No Trespassing signs the city installed three days ago was lying on the ground when I got there.

Then, the police arrived. There were "negotiations." Anitra took the task of relaying what the police offered to the rest of the "Nickelodeons." It basically boiled down to: if you want to be arrested stick around. If you don't want to be arrested go away.

As it happens, by the time the police came back to conduct the arrests, Nickelsville has word from the governor through her senior aide Ron Judd, that they could set up tents on a nearby parking lot , on state land, safe from Seattle police, at least for a few days. So that may have led some who had planned to let themselves be arrested change their minds. But still 22 people chose to be arrested. By the time I got this shot of the police peacefully, slowly, nudging the crowd back while making arrests, Anitra was already in a police van.

Maybe the last one to be arrested was our Real Change vendor Jewd. She was really into it. I think she ought to be the Nickelsville poster girl.

Campbell Brown Justifies Herself

2008-09-25T23:59:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

I haven't been a great fan of Campbell Brown in the past, but I'm turning toward her.

Campbell Brown rips McCain campaign for sexism

University Priorities

2008-09-25T12:48:00.000-07:00

... or, The Propagation of Idiocy

Another email list I'm on is ALGTOP-L, devoted to algebraic topology news. I never contribute, I just read the posts to try to get a sense of what's going on in my former research field. There's also news about the people involved, some of whom I remember, and conference announcements.

Today there was a conference cancellation announced at a major Midwest university, with part of the explanation being, "With the tightly packed topology calendar this Fall and the hotel constraints imposed by the sports season, it proved impossible to reschedule."

In other words, one of the principle purposes of a university, the dissemination of knowledge, literally was canceled in this case to make room for sports fans.

Idiocy begets Ignorance, which propagates Idiocy.

Email to HPN

2008-09-25T12:19:00.000-07:00

The Homeless People's Network is an email list for homeless and formerly homeless people to talk about whatever, and share information. A lot of the posts direct attention to items in the news about homelessness. Yesterday there were two opinion pieces noted. One was this Seattle Times Editorial, the other was this Las Vegas blog. Both were outrageous and I immediately wrote this in reply, only to find that my email reply function wasn't working. I think I worked around it and the email should be posted to HPN soon. In the meantime, it's here:

I'm having trouble doing email replies in this account, so I'll just respond to the gist of the two posts yesterday regarding Seattle's "pink tent city".

There's some bullshit in both that needs calling out. Both refer to Seattle as one of the most liberal cities in the country with respect to the homeless. This is crap. Until a year and a half ago you could make a case for that claim. In spite of the fact that we've never had more than about half the shelter beds we have needed, we could claim to be liberal because food was easy to obtain and homeless people sleeping outdoors were not often harassed if they stayed away from downtown and away from residences.

But in the spring of 2007 our current mayor, Greg Nickels, SECRETLY initiated a draconian policy of sweeps of outdoor homeless encampments. Even though our One Night Counts have determined that there have been as many as 2600 homeless people in the city in addition to the number that can fit into about 2700 existing beds (these don't count car campers and people who scored couches that night; if you count them there are fewer than half the shelter beds as there are homeless people), even though the mayor has not been willing or able to challenge those figures, he has ordered "cleanups" of homeless encampments. These "cleanups" consist of ripping up tents, sleeping bags, mats, even blankets, and trashing them. People were left with no survival gear, vulnerable to the elements, and no new shelter.

Real Change, the street paper I work with, had to use the Freedom of Information Act to find out what was happening. After we uncovered the policy, which had been hidden even from the city council, the mayor's office "revised" the policy to "take into account public concerns." The revised policy has the appearance of meeting objections, but the fine print contains major loopholes. We have already seen the loopholes exploited since the revised policy went into effect early this year. We have also seen safeguards advertised in the revised policy turn out to be lies.

The revised policy brought with it new shelter, that was touted as the place people swept could go. How many new beds did they provide for the more than 2600 at risk? TWENTY! Not even one percent of the need.

In the meantime, we already have had at least one confirmed case of a man who has died as a direct result of the sweeps. He was driven from a safe spot under a bridge and died from exposure soon after. The fact that they are continuing the policy in the face of that death, a death that was predictable and certainly not the last, is proof that Nickels is a criminal who must be stopped. This policy amounts to attempted genocide, and it has succeeded once so far.

The Seattle Times says Nickels is no Hoover. Given what he has been doing, he is worse than Hoover. He is engaged in nothing short of criminal, unconstitutional, harassment of the homeless population. He has attempted to carry out government policy changes without public view or legislative oversight, a violation of democratic principles of open government. There's nothing liberal about Greg Nickels on this issue, and if Seattle as a whole lets him get away with carrying out these crimes, then Seattle will have lost the right to call itself liberal, too.

As for the pink tents. They're temporary. The plan is to use them only until permanent structures can be built. As for whether they came from a breast cancer charity, I don't know, but I know that Real Change got them earlier from the Girl Scouts of America, and we turned around and gave them to the Nickelsville people. Maybe the Girl Scouts got them from a breast cancer charity, but it's not like a breast cancer charity handed them directly over to Nickelsville.

-- Wes Browning, Real Change News, Seattle

Celtic French Polynesia

2008-09-24T23:59:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

So I was just talking about European influences on Polynesia. Here we have something called Breizh Polynesia. Breizh, if you recall is Britannic Celt for Brittany, France. So what we have is evidence of an interest in Tahitian dance in Celtic France. Why not?

If you're wondering where Lorient is, it's a port city on the Atlantic. If you think of the sticky-outy part of France as a nose, Lorient guards the left nostril.

Breizh Polynesia Lorient

Isla de Pascua

2008-09-23T21:59:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

I'm fascinated by the way cultures impact one another. I've remarked before that I can hear the France in supposedly "traditional" Tahitian music. I think I can also hear the Spain, by way of Chile, in music and dance of la Isla de Pascua, AKA Easter Island, AKA Rapa Nui.

OK, I blow my thesis from the start with this one, a Rapa Nui Hymn. But wait: check out the costumes!

CAROLINA HEHENKAMP TRAVEL Rapa Nui

In this next, the background music has an unmistakable Spanish flavor.

Bailes de Rapa Nui - Isla de Pascua

OK. Well. This next one dashes my sorry thesis to bits. But I must include it as I am so fond of red.

Ula Ula en Isla de Pascua

Haumea

2008-09-23T03:13:00.000-07:00

Astro-mythological news: Wikipedia News reports that on Sept. 17, '08 the International Astronomical Union agreed to name an object one-third the mass of Pluto in the Kuiper Belt Haumea. Haumea is now the fifth recognized dwarf planet in the Solar System, after Pluto Ceres, Eris, and Makemake.

Haumea is the Hawaiian Goddess of childbirth and fertility. Her children include Volcano Goddess Pele, Hi'iaka, and Nāmaka, and some dozen to 40 others. The dwarf planet Haumea has two moons which have thus been named Hi'iaka and Nāmaka.

Haumea has a 4 hour day, very fast for her size, which is believed to make her an oblate ellipsoid as wide as Pluto at her widest, but only half that through the poles. So she is a pregnant icon of fertility. I am very pleased that Hawaiian deities are cropping up in the sky.

[Below: Artist's rendering.]

Theodore Bikel

2008-09-22T23:59:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

A favorite actor, I never knew that he was also a folk-singer until I started finding videos like this on the internet. This was broadcast around 1966 on Pete Seeger's Rainbow Quest, but I didn't see it back then, probably because it ran opposite something more important, like Gilligan's Island, or Lost in Space. But now I can see hours of clips like these, 123 clips in all, provided by the Rainbow Quest Channel on YouTube (user name peglegsam.)

Old Testament - Peace

Back At You, Bartok

2008-09-21T22:14:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

Bela Bartok drew upon all sorts of Eastern European ethnic music, including gypsy music. So it is right and meet that some should draw back from Bela.

Taraf de Haidouks : "Ostinato" music video

Donald Lambert

2008-09-20T23:59:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

I really just wanted a decent version of Anitra's Dance from Peer Gynt. I found this one, from the 1960 Newport Jazz Festival. Terrible video, terrible audio, but you get the idea. This guy couldn't read music, but he was a genius.

Donald Lambert - "Anitra's Dance"

Sept. 19

2008-09-19T23:36:00.000-07:00

Video Find of the Day

... is Talk Like A Pirate Day! Love it or walk the plank!

Talk like a Pirate

Talk Like a Pirate Day: "I'm a Pirate" song