combating election season lies could be a fulltime job

Rez Exchange

Ah, the Coatesville Reservoir.  What a microcosm of community life.  We’ve written about it many times, and there’s always something new.  This morning, there was an especially large amount of trash to pick up.  Lots of people fishing, leaving their crap.  Like Rodney Dangerfield said, the poor Rez “just can’t get no respect”  People come to enjoy its beauty and then trash it like stupid babies. Stupid.  I began cleaning up one popular fishing area on the bank, opposite the country club, and found —along with 5 beer bottles, some plastic bags, and a broken camping chair thrown in the weeds—a broken, but pretty new looking fishin’ pole.  I gave it to Greg, since figured he might want to put it in a sculpture back at the house.  He offered it though, to two guys who had just finished fishing there.  They seemed to indicate that trash was not theirs, and had enough poles of their own.  As we walked down to the next fishin’ spot, there just packing up was one of the regular older men who has been coming here for years.  He  sez to Greg, “Found a pole, didja?”  Greg said he sure did and was he interested in it.  The guy said he was.  He’d fix it and bring it to the local kids’ fishing rodeos to give away. 

So, one of the fastest rez found object turnarounds in recent memory.  Very cool.

In other news, we found Obama’s talk from Afghanistan valuable.   And turns out, as of last night anyway, the agreement that he and President Karzai came up with was one of the few things both party mainstays at least SEEM to agree with.  Many Afghanis believed that after all the spending, killing and destruction, the U.S. wouldn’t care about their future.  So this agreement—noting supports for another ten years— reassures them, and Karzai.  Do I like all the money going out?  No.  But if it’s not for killing but for  support to move on, I’ll go with it.  Obama’s speech , as usual , was well put too.

I Just Had To Go…

So some of you know that I teach organic gardening all over the place including for corporate wellness programs.  Greg and I  often travel into center city Philly by train (much saner than driving).  The last two times this spring we rolled into Suburban Station, there was no holding me back—I just had to get to the bathroom. 

Trip #1, in a stall with the door open for the world to see was a homeless woman doing her business  surrounded by her stuff, talking loudly to herself on various things.  I tried not to look as I did my own thing.   Hey, yer in the city now babe, greetings!

Few weeks later, different day, same station, same time, same bathroom.  Would ya think?  Yeah, there was the same lady doing the same thing, same stall.  It was uncanny.  Guess we both had our regular stops.

Yesterday, different day, different time (going home) same bathroom.  I’d forgotten about that poor soul as I went in.  New scenario.  Young woman crunched up in a sitting position on the floor leaning against the wall, head buried, holding a fading bouquet of daffodils.  Fast asleep.  No luggage, no bags, no purse. Out of a Hopper painting.  I went into a stall and on the floor was a pair of women’s eyeglasses, black as the hair of the young woman.  Coulda been hers.  If not, whose?  Being vision challenged mahself, what would compel someone to drop their glasses in a bathroom stall?

Unlike the old days, the station bathrooms are well-maintained, and in fact a cleaning person came in with her mop/bucket while I was washing up.  She looked in the stall I had just vacated and saw the glasses.  “Yours?” she asked.  I said no.   “Maybe hers?”  She didn’t wake her to find out and I left. 

Which brings me to mind of a song I wrote in the ’80s when Greg and I were in an original rock band called Machine From Heaven.  I wrote it after I saw TV news item on a 15-degree night.  A local news reporter interviewed a guy sleeping on a steam grate.  His name was Willie.   And he symbolized the beginning of a spike in homelessness during that decade.  This later brought about code Blue events (taking homeless people off the streets during frigid weather), and more shelter offerings down the line.

It’s called “Willie Gets Steamed At Independence Mall”

Just down the street from the Liberty Bell— Willie camps out on his own little hell;  

Holes in his gloves and his clothes and his pride—people on the sidewalk just walkin’ on by;  

Reporter asks him what he thinks—  He sez  I’z just like to eat a little meat;

She gets her story, and heads for the truck— while his breath hangs hard in the air of bad luck;

Chorus:  Willie Willie, you’re part of the fall;  Willie gets steamed at Independance Mall.

I ate a big dinner, I’m gonna get fat—better go work out on my exercise mat;

(missing lyric lost to the ages)

Yeah sure I’m glad that I’m not him—having to live on the streets to pay

I’m warm but unhappy just the same—gotta carry my burden some other way.

The Country’s Gone To The Hogs

Why were we pissed off at the polls yesterday?  Read on.

The Koch Brothers are squealing with delight.  The billionaire industrialist/energy biz brothers and funders of all things Right Wing have really screwed politics in Pennsylvania.  The Citizens United Supreme court decision, underwritten by the aforementioned brothers,  brought forth the so-called Tea Party revolution in the 2010 election.  With the help the superpac funding groups, Rove, Limbaugh , the corrupt Murdoch’s Fox News, et al, the any-way-the-wind-blows corporate media, the resultant agit/prop intimidated politically unsophisticated Obama supporters and for that matter lots of other people into not voting for their own interests.     Now through gerrymandered redistricting—they seek to control our state’s and the nation’s politics for the next ten years, along with further cementing control of the Supreme Court. 

So who gets the fallout from all this??  The poor, the unions, the teachers, social workers, the elderly, the mentally ill, fire and police workers, young people, the disabled,Planned Parenthood, ACORN.  How?

1) Using the Bush + Republican Congress-inspired deficit as an excuse,  programs that help people from falling through the safety net have been or will be severely cut in PA. 

2)  Destroying the unions, the only institution left to protect working people.

3) Instituting required voter ID across the nation to disenfranchise the old, young, poor, non-drivers, disabled.    (Karl Rove’s idea).

4)  Take away women’s rights by invading their privacy.  So much for “government off our backs” and ” liberty.”

5)  No New Taxes.  In Pennsylvania that means losing hundreds of millions in Marcellus Shale extraction fees.  The one and done natural resource of our state. Meanwhile, our local property taxes are bankrupting us.  Not for us are there “no new taxes.”

6) Bloviating about “class warfare” when as Warren Buffet said, the rich won that game 30 years ago.  In other words, distracting attention from the obvious.

7)  Saying that Capitalism is the organizing principal of our government and Constitution, rather than Democracy.

8)  If you’re down and out, it’s your fault— get a job.  Where??  E.g. half of the college class of 2012 can’t find a job.  The creme of the crop supposedly.

9) No mention of the wars or the soldiers sacrificing for us.

10)  Draconian cuts to university and K-12 budgets, just when education becomes more important than ever.

These hogs at the trough are so mean-spirited and so addicted to their greed-feed, that they’d rather see the country on its knees than to have us all thrive and have access to success.  If the rest of us animals on this Animal Farm went on strike, they wouldn’t have the paper to wipe their snouts.

What’s this have to do with Deb and I going to the polls yesterday?  We were having a disjointed day as it was and were already angry about having to present an ID to people who have seen us voting in our township for more than 30 yrs.  So outside the polls we were minding our own business walking toward the entrance when a young (we’d been voting longer than the age of this guy) minority person representing the Republican Party asked Deb if she was a Republican.  She just said “no.”  His reply, snidely:  “That’s too bad.”  The person next to him smirked at us.    Deb righteously gave him a piece of her mind.  I kept my powder dry until I left the polls after voting Democratic.  As I left the polling place I gave the kid and his cohorts a piece of my own mind, saying that I can’t believe that the Republican party— is so mean-spirited that they’re cutting programs for the poor, when the benefits for the rich are alive and well.  I hoped that it might make him think before getting snide with the next person.  This is all so disappointing because my parents—community pillars— were life-long Republicans as I was as until the assassinations, civil rights and Vietnam.  It’s why my passion still burns brightly to take on the right-wing bullies.

The Lost War

From the gitgo, the Nixon-initiated “war on drugs” begun in 1971 was a euphemism.  It was/is more precisely a war on the people that Nixon hated.  At that time in history, this included most young people  of all colors who were protesting injustice and war in Vietnam.  Nixon was desperate to crush the counter-culture movement by any and all means and oppress his enemies  (reference  Watergate and COINTELPRO hearings of the early 1970s).  Another one of his ingenious and overt moves to those ends was a declaration of a draft lottery, which also divided and conquered the youth movement.  The people who knew they weren’t going to go to war stopped protesting immediately.

Fast forward 41 years.  57% of the people busted and incarcerated for drugs  are Black, while the majority of drug crimes are committed by Whites, particularly the people who run the drug cartels in the Americas, including the U.S. The cartels in Mexico,  Colombia, Haiti, Guatemala,  et al. have killed and corrupted their way into power.  The conserative presidents of Colombia,  Guatemala , Mexico are begging our government to decrminalize drugs.  These countries have paid the price for North America’s ever-increasing hunger for these drugs and the masses of illegal weapons exported from the U.S. to there.  Not to mention the billions upon billions of drug money that U.S. major banks have laundered over these 41 years. So these powerful interest groups (drugs,  arms, money) don’t want the rug pulled out from under these lucrative , untaxed money business models.

Here are some stats to quantify the drug war’s failure:

41:  How many years the war has raged

40 million plus:  How many Americans have been arrested

$1trillion plus:  The cost of this “war.”

2800%:  How much drug use has risen

1.3%:  Percent of Americans addicted to drugs in the year 1914

1.3%:  Percent of Americans addicted to drugs now

So, do these stats come from some crazy left-wing pothead group?  Nope!  These numbers come courtesy of the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of cops, judges, DEA administration agents, and other drug warriors demanding an end to the drug war.  They call to mind an old axiom, which is that the definition of “crazy” is doing the same things over and over again and expecting a different result.  (Thanks for Philadelphia Inquirercolumnist Leonard Pitts in his 4/21 Commentary)

Just think of the reduction of the deficit from all that new tax money going in instead of bleeding out, the reduction of  violence and corruption; and the reduction of the prison population.  And all this money could go into rehab for this public health issue.  Let’s make Al Capone spin in his grave - the ultimate drug cartel guy who cornered the market on alcohol during Prohibition.

Comment heard tonight re JFK’s killing

So the guy who was Jackie Kennedy’s secret service person for 4 yrs. decided after waiting almost 50 yrs. to write a book. Clint Hill was the agent seen climbing onto the limo moments after JFK was shot, as Jackie was climbing out.  He was interviewed tonight on the corporate cover-up news.  Why was she climbing out, we all wondered?  To escape the killers?  What I thought.  No, she was retrieving pieces of  her husband’s brain that had blown onto the trunk of the car from the impact of the shot on his head.  As Hill got her back in the car, she cried out, “They’ve killed him!”  and moments later,  “They shot off his head!” They??  A revealing comment, no?  She did not say, for instance, ‘Oh my God, who did this?!’  Or ‘Why would someone do this!!’ or even, ‘He’s been shot!’  It is the mysterious “they” in a time of total candor from a woman who just might know something about her husband’s situation.  No conspiracy for this murder??  If there wasn’t, why are the records sealed for , what, 100 years?  What’s the danger on revealing this saga that was such a telling comment about where our country was going?

 People wonder why there is so much cynicism about government, and to me this murder was the demarcation point. The cover-up Warren Report, the ridiculous “single bullet theory”  from our own Arlen Specter, whose career took a strange and immediate jump after that posit.  What further proof was needed than the public murders to come of people trying to change things for the better (Malcolm X, RFK, MLK, and later John Lennon—call me crazy but what was up with that murder too?) People with courage and brains trying to make our country saner, being voices of reason.  And  more cover-ups.  Add the lie of the Vietnam War, and no wonder my generation were left dangling and troubled.  What a sickening example put on us by our parent’s generation (speaking generally).  What a sham.  And what a shame.

Imagine, Create, Innovate at Occupy eARTh

What is Occupy eARTh?

A pop-up community mall of creativity and ideas in the spirit of leaderless events of note
like Occupy, Fringe, TED, Be-ins, and other flash-happenings.
Earth is our global Home. For a moment in time, you can make eARTh your local home.
eARTh (everybody’s ART home) is located on 120 inspirational acres of Chester
County parkland* and is the home of creators Deb Kates and Greg Layton and the
gallery/cultural center of C3A** in Wild West Wagontown.

When: Saturday May 19th, Noon to 5PM. Rain or Shine.
120 Reservoir Rd., Coatesville, 19320

Who is cordially Invited to occupy this FREE-for-all space: You, as part of the 100%

How: Share ideas, listen, demonstrate a skill, create a scene, have an art attack, word
play, learn, vend your products, exhibit, jam, picnic, relax, birdwatch (free tweets!), write,
wander the fields and gardens, livestream, make earthArt, film, and visit the sports park
across the field (w/ tot lot, b-ball, in-line skating, softball, soccer).

Why: Relax, mind-share, network, and have fun.

BYO: friends, kids, pets (& do-do bags); chairs; easy-ups and tents; food; drink;
instruments, artworks; products to sell, new ideas, carry-out trash bags, and good spirits.

Also: Barter & Swap Zone –-X-press Yourself Soap-e-Box (no hatin’) –- Demos for
Take Your Mind Off Relaxation and Let’s Get Dirty organic gardening tips (Got a demo—
bring it!) –-No Stone Unturned Conversation Pit—Johnnyonthespot—plenty of Parking

And it costs what?? Nothing!

*A Kates/Layton land conservation earthArt project which took 10 yrs.
** Coatesville Area Arts Alliance, Inc.

Gregc3a@verizon.net ; Debc3a@verizon.net 610-384-2535; www.CthreeA.org

Rush To Judgment(al) !

“Emotional Fields” by G. Layton

Judgmental people are bullies.  They base their whole existence on stereotyping everybody and stacking them in a pyramid of importance (with them at the top).

Judgment is must more complicated, and therefore underutilized in most societies, especially ours.  This is why the right wing of this great country is constantly bullying and creating stereotypes to divide, conquer and stay in control.  And if we don’t agree with their stereotyping, then we should just shut-up.  This bigotry is and has always been a destructive force of tornado proportions to our social fabric.  Like those horrific scenes this week in the Midwest, everything is just debris and unrecognizable—people walking around in a daze trying to find their center again.  This is how bullies leave our psyches — in a heaping mess. 

So I propose that we move on, stop the hatin’, use our judgment, and respect each others opinions because as I’ve said many times, “where you sit is where you stand.”  Let’s exercise the two most under-utilized muscles in our body politic—  our collective hearts and minds— to start judging people by their character as MLK said. It’s harder than it sounds but anything easy ain’t worth doin’.  Let’s get busy as bees repairing the crazy quilt of our torn social fabric.

The Jazz Baroness Helps Keep It Real

Finished this book recently, which fills in a fascinating hole in jazz history.  In fact, while reading this post, play this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKvVKsJ8sk4&feature=player_detailpage. For those of you who are Thelonious Monk fans , you may be familiar with his famous piece ” Pannonica.”  Turns out it was written in honor of  Pannonica “Nica” Rothschild de Koenigswarter, a true heroine of the modern jazz movement during its nascent days in NYC.  She was born into the famous Rothschild banking family in 1913—at that time the wealthiest family in the world.  BTW the book offers quite an interesting history of the family for better or worse.  And she leads that life for a good while, marrying a French baron in the process.  However she also got a another taste that opened her eyes by working as an ambulance driver and helping her husband organize the resistance during the German occupation of  Africa during WWII.

While in Paris in 1943, her epiphany occurred:  Someone played her Monk’s ‘Round Midnight and her life changed.  She was already a very headstrong person, and the life of a one- tenth -of -one percenter grew more and more  suffocating.  She vowed to find a way to get with this music someday.  And she found her chance when her husband the baron was appointed French ambassador to Mexico in 1950.  They moved there w/ their 5 kids, and as soon as she was able went to NYC, where the modern jazz era was becoming in full swing.  She had actually met Monk briefly in Paris a few years before, but now she started hitting all the clubs on 42nd Street, where the action was at that point, and getting to know many of the greats:  Gillespie, Bird, Silver, Blakey, Tatum, et al.  But it was Monk who somehow connected to her soul.  They became inseparable.  Interestingly, it was platonic —Monk was dedicated to his wife Nellie - whom Nica also became tight with. In a way she and Nellie formed a partnership to help Monk be Monk.  Eventually the NYC trips became too much for her marriage (plus her hubby sneered at the jazz genre altogether) and they separated.  She took her oldest daughter with her, leaving the other children behind, and rented a huge suite at the Stanhope Hotel on Central Park, bought a Bentley sports car, and began another life.

Nica became a…what?  Patron doesn’t cut it, supporter is too bland, and wannabe is too disrespectful for what she did for the NY jazz world.  She became a beacon of love, respect, fascination and yes, some financial largess, within this tight and exclusive group.  There would be jamming at her place till all hours almost every night after the clubs closed with  Monk holding center stage piano.  Several other musicians wrote songs dedicated to her:   Gigi Gryce’s “Nica’s Tempo”, Sonny Clark’s “Nica”, Horace Silver’s “Nica’s Dream”, Kenny Dorham’s “Tonica”, Kenny Drew’s “Blues for Nica”, Freddie Redd’s “Nica Steps Out”, Barry Harris’s “Inca”, Tommy Flanagan’s “Thelonica” and Thelonious Monk’s “Pannonica.”    She supported Monk absolutely, first with her heart, then by  helping him w/ money here and there, going to gigs, talking him up, traveling with him on a few road trips.  One such road trip ended in arrests in Newark DE in fact.  You know, the Black White thing in the ’50s.  They fulfilled something in each other, this unlikely duo.

One  incident got her worldwide notoriety soon after she moved to NYC.   In ‘53 Charlie Parker died in her apartment.  She had been a supporter, and when he had no place to live and showed up on her doorstep very ill, she took him in.  Even though the club Birdland was open, and his music had exploded, his heroin habit had gotten so bad that no one wanted much to do with him.  Even his own club (mostly owned by  The Mob— not him— anyway).

It was an incredible scandal and a sad  story.  He died there 5 days later. 

Unbowed by her great wealth, at first these cats thought:  What’s this babe’s real interest, and who’s she sleeping with?    But she gradually won them all over, incredibly, and she was seen as the real deal.  She was fixture on that music scene for the next 35 years. Without her deep support and friendship, it was most likely that Monk would have self-destructed long before his last public appearance in 1976. He was bi-polar and depressed, and being Black in bigoted America was a bad push for him of course.  He died at her home in  1982, where he’d lived for the last 10 years of his life.

Nica’s all night jams got her kicked out of two grand hotels, and she finally bought a house across the Hudson on the Palisades.  That house alone was worth the book - an early  Bauhaus masterpiece (not my favorite type of architecture, but still a very cool look) which became the “Cat House.”  The double entendre was funny because the woman, from 2 Siamese she bought, ended up with more than 50 cats roaming the place and mixing with the cool cats playing music there all the time.

Also, the  ferment and foment of the modern jazz movement helped breed the modern art and lit movements of Ginsberg and Kerouac, Frank O’Hara, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollack, Helen Frankenthaler and others working new magic in an amazing stew of creativity.  At the clubs like the Five Spot they all gathered  to water and exchange ideas and criticism.  Anyway, you will love this book if you love jazz.

Stolen, Found, Stolen

Here’s the next episode of last week’s nail biter of a post:  Greg and Deb get their two newspaper boxes stolen!  Not quite a federal offense.   Getting anything stolen , no matter how seemingly inconsequential, can be unnerving though.  Plus, as our readers may know, we love our papers, dinosaurs that we are. They’re tactile, offer an amazing amt. of info without searching all over the web or getting eyefreeze, etc. etc.  Plus we appreciate the time, money and effort it takes to put them out, sending their reporters all over the world.

Anyway, the perp(s) had to go to some trouble, since the 2 metal poles were dug in pretty well and covered around w/ rocks.  Well, not da end of da world after all, but we notified Curt Martinez our local police chief just to see if there was a rash of similar in our neighborhood.  Then lo and behold Greg then found them in the field opposite the boxes, near the road a few days later.

So he put them in again, extra deep with extra rocks, and it was like, yea!  One less thing to hassle.  Two days later, oops, they’re gone again.  Now this was intimidating.  Someone was trying to make a point.   After all, our mailbox was unmolested, after four past smash-ups over the yrs. which we replaced without reporting. Hmmm, maybe it was the online dept. of the Inquirer and the DLN to discourage us LOL.  So we emailed Curt and he wanted us to make a report and sent a nice young officer, Adam, over for us to do so. It seemed like overkill, but then if something else happens, like someone steals our driveway, we’ll have a record. Kudos to Curt and Adam for taking our concern seriously though it was minor.  It made us feel that  they are here to serve and protect for any eventuality.  Since we have no known  enemies Greg suggested to the officer that recently we had discovered an illegal deer blind and camping chair at the edge of our property near the Rez,  which Greg dismantled.  Turns out the township police had busted someone for illegally hunting in that area already.  So that may have been a connection to our mystery.    As the band Jethro Tull so memorably said  many years ago, “Nothing is easy.”  Or, as Greg and Deb like to say, “this is action in the country.”