Elysian Fields

Went to gut a house in New Orleans today. Most of the house was stripped down to the studs, most of the ceilings were out, most of the particle board floors were out. Looked like it was well on it's way. I'll tell you this, the next time I build a house in the land of hurricanes, I'm not going to use that particle board flooring. I'm going to make it a house that is easy to take down. We still haven't finished the finishing work on it.

I estimate that this particular house has seen 180 person hours to punch out both ceilings, pull everything out-- washing machines, refridgerators-- get up that nasty floor and drop ceiling, cart out hundreds of square feet of fluffy insulation. Some houses aren't this labor intensive, some are. And I couldn't help thinking while I was there about how many houses like this there are.

Driving from the railroad tracks to Elysian Fields and back on to I-10, back to the Hands On base in Center City, we passed hundreds of houses. Some of those people have the money to gut them. Some have been sold to the folks advertising quick cash for houses. Some are, I guess, still waiting to be pushed into a hole and buried. Some are being done by volunteers. I feel like a little mouse with those soft little feet scraping away at a big cement wall. The houses blipped by like I was in a moody driving shot in a movie.

Comfortably Numb came on the radio and Chet turned it up. I thought right then that probably the people in our government have no intention of seeing this city put back. US Housing Secretary Alfonso Jackson offers that "only the best residents" should return and he's supposed to be an advocate for the low income housing program. Why haven't the enormous resources of this country managed to make a bigger dent in this disaster in half a year? Why do I feel like it's up to us? Something about today just made me shut myself in a bathroom stall for a short minute and cry, first day in New Orleans slump moment, but I'm back now and soon I'll be carrying on and having a good time with the fresh happy group of volunteers from Boston Cares (YAY FOR THEM) and I'll think encouraging thoughts because New Orleans needs all of us, all the help she can get. Otherwise her people can turn to the "Big Money Blessing" on WILD 13-something AM where they're wild for Jesus (we could only pick up AM stations today at the job site). If she prays hard enough maybe she'll win ten grand on the radio.

I'm looking forward to the weekend. I'll get out of the ghost-neighborhoods and see the live part of New Orleans for Jazz Fest, really really lively.

Woody Guthrie at Hands On, part 2

A few nights ago, I heard John read “Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie,” and I wrote “Woody Guthrie” on my hand in blue marker so I would remember it in the morning and tell it to you. When I wrote those words on my hand, I thought that just giving you Dylan’s thoughts might be able to sum it all up. And in the morning, I thought, 'well maybe not.' It gets at the feeling I'm talking about, but I guess the details make the telling.

The story starts with a open mic night that no one signs up for but a brave new Christian, saved from Lortabs and booze and given wisdom, that looks like it will fall to nothingness but is tended and grows and swells up into something that vibrates in the air, that will vibrate in the air far from here in time and space when people remember it, because of talented people, all of their moments contributing to the experience of John, cigarette dangling, red eyed, reading on and on to a rapt audience perched on picnic tables and tailgates, channeling Dylan. Everyone’s moment on that little plywood stage made everyone else’s moment mean something. That’s called community.

Later, the founder of Hands On came into town, set up late into the night with ten of us and a cooler of beer out in the Spin Cycle, the concrete laundry room with a couple of old square tables that look like they came from a church basement (I guess they did) covered in marker graffiti. Founder Dave is looking for the next step for Hands On, and he asks us what we think, and hears from all of us, and listens.

I’m typing this stretched out on the loft floor on my sleeping bag. A grey haired fellow volunteer, a sleep-neighbor just came by and he introduced himself and when I got to my feet, he hugged me instead of shaking hands and within our three minute conversation he said that there was no better place than this for care and respect. And he can use the words “care and respect” and it doesn’t sound heavy handed and it is not tinged with irony. A piece about the Duke rape by a sports columnist for the Birmingham News said this:

"Near the end of a rather long article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about how Duke University is looking for answers to the bigger picture of athletes' behavior, a freshman named Jason Pate is quoted. 'You have to make caring popular, as idealistic and ridiculous as that might sound.' It's too bad that such idealism can sound ridiculous."

Here, that sort of idealism makes sense.

The way I’m writing this reminds me of the evening meeting two nights ago. The rabbi from the congregation who is also sharing this space with the Methodists since the hurricane gave a speech about how good this place was and it went on forever. It went on forever. And every time he would say one thing, it would remind him of something else, and nothing seemed to contribute to whatever his end message was, and people were reminded of their grandfathers, and maybe the reason that it went like that and the reason that my story wanders in the same way is that the end message, the real point that we want to communicate is a feeling and you can’t cut to the chase when you’re talking about love. That meeting was wild, so feel-good that with some mild substance abuse you could really enjoy all two hours of it after dinner. Rose stood up and asked the real grown-ups to plug the place in letters to the AARP magazine because “there is no age gap here.” That’s what she said and what I guess she has experienced. Cool. And so we tell more wandering stories and try to invite more people to discover this spot.

Not that people don’t get tired, not that there aren’t hard words sometimes and hard days and problems that look like they can’t be solved. I wish you had all heard Guillermo (Will Olivos, look for whatever he ends up publishing) reading his black mold soul killing blues last night. Mold is hard to kill, and it's after you.

And sometimes it’s hard to keep 150 people peaceful in a place, but it mostly can be done and the products of this place are well worth the effort. And sometimes the love comes out it kind of dark ways for people who feel the intensity of this disaster and of whatever bit of life preceded their arrival here and some are escaping something when they come here and Sue tells me that in the car to take one of our own to the airport, one who was leaving hard, “all those boys started burning each other and I started just crying because those boys loved each other enough to be burned, putting their cigarettes out on each others' arms. . . " She adds,"now I don’t love any of y’all that much.”

So Dave is looking for the next step, and after discussing the upset win of first-Hands-On-marriage against first-Hands-On-baby and the end of that running bet, we got to the business and Dave said he wants to go to Darfur, and he wants to invite his volunteers to start a core there and he wants to use his MacGeyver plane model over there. Darfur makes him mad as hell and he thinks that this very flexible, passionate and fairly gutsy organization (he landed on the Gulf Coast with no plan and no place to stay and a big chunk of cash and confidence that he could attract volunteers) is the way to make good change there. And we all agree that something is working here, and that there is need and opportunity for Hands On elsewhere, somewhere. And then we get to the Darfur idea and most of us respond that it's completely nuts, but I’ll be damned if Ike didn’t say that he would go, and mean it as sincerely as Dave meant it when he proposed the idea.

Ike is a 47 year old painter, former military, with a grey handlebar mustache, an empty bank account, and a beer in his hand. He half-jokes that he isn’t a good volunteer because he slept-through cooking breakfast and is rowdy and tough and he hollers “Good Morning Vietnam!” when you walk by him with his first morning cigarette and wouldn’t fit in too good at the Salvation Army, but he is a damn fine painter, he has a skill, he can lead, he can seal five houses in a day to stop mold regrowth. And so at Hands On, he is the perfect volunteer just like the rest of us are in our ways. And he would follow this scene to Darfur if it went. He would lead this scene out into that scary unknown. He said to me this morning, “Hell, that guy last night was serious. I haven’t heard anyone talk like that since the sixties. And maybe it wasn’t really just what the sixties sounded like, the semi-corporate lingo about flexibility, the talk centering on gaining media time, but the feeling must have been familiar to Ike, that feeling I keep talking about, the one that Hunter S. Thompson said like this:

"There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting - on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave."

If we don't have the universal sense that we are winning, at least we have the sense that what we're doing is right, and that we're doing it as good as anyone has yet. For Dave, it seems like that feeling, and his cash without many strings, is what makes this organization different from any other and what would make us succeed at some as yet unknown goal in an as yet unknown place. He asked us what the residents would think if Haliburton came in and did the work we were doing at the pace we were doing it. He said they would bitch and complain, and he is right. We can do the work and be loved for it because it comes as a gift and not an obligation. People feel the gift in what we do.

Back to the rabbi's thank you speech: If it's not obvious from the rambling tales above, there's no summing this up. Come down here.

And last, in this piece I spent a lot of time talking about this organization and no time talking about Biloxi and you should know that there is still all the work anyone can do down here on the Gulf Coast and of course the government is mostly leaving it to the volunteers, so come work, and I’m going to also post something I wrote about my December trip to Hands On that talks more about the world outside this little tent city off Pass Road.

Biloxi in December

The New Orleans bus station has stopped serving as the jail. Our writer friend who lives in Marigny just outside the Quarter has hot water and no longer requires special chocolates for “fortifications” (having moved on to beer and Dr. John’s Katrina album). In Biloxi, you can still drive backwards down the highway 90 exit ramp, but you probably can’t drive backwards down highway 90. The Gulf Coast is beginning to rebuild, but if you think three months is a long time when it comes to remaking 150 miles of coastline that went under in Katrina’s storm surge, think again.

What I mean is, in East Biloxi the Thursday before Christmas I spoke to a man sitting on his front porch in work clothes beside a rusted out blue pickup and a neatly gutted house. He said he had been working on his house since a week after the storm hit, steadily, without applying for a trailer or asking for help from anyone because, he said “I didn’t want to get comfortable with an arrangement that I knew I couldn’t stand.” After three months of steady work by this man who framed up this house himself thirty-four years ago, the sheetrock was just going up. Meanwhile, there are plenty of homes all along the Gulf Coast that people have not even entered since the hurricane, that still house wet couches, foul-smelling fridges, pictures on the walls. This is especially true in New Orleans where uncertainty surrounding forced demolition means that people are unwilling to invest emotionally and financially in the process of gutting their homes. Neighborhood after neighborhood persists in an eerie suspended animation, a sort of brown haze over whole blocks, the waterline still visible just short of the eaves of sweet little yellow houses. Many of these families haven’t got the money to hire professionals (remember they just lost everything they owned); the way it looks now. . . thank god for the volunteers.

For many casinos, the rebuilding process has almost finished; at least three in Biloxi just reopened. It’s amazing what money can do. They were missed. Before the storm, 14,000 people worked in Mississippi’s twelve Gulf Coast casinos. Every day that they are closed, the town of Biloxi loses $54,795 in tax revenue and 14,000 Mississippians continue to go without a paycheck. They are part of the fabric of Biloxi as much as any fishing boat or home. Still, there is some fear that they have an appetite for land that threatens community members’ right to live where they do, in a relatively poor community that has managed to keep its place even though it is only blocks from the water, in a country where waterfront property belongs to the rich. With help, the locals can rebuild and maintain their right to live alongside the casinos and hotels.

In Biloxi, Hands On USA has been hard at work, being this help. Working with Hands On, I had the satisfying feeling that people were doing exactly as much as they could do--- putting in eight hour days ripping out drywall and plumbing and nails, scrubbing and vacuuming mold, hauling out trees to clear lots for FEMA trailers, helping people file their paperwork and learning what they lacked, delivering Christmas gifts to families with children who couldn’t afford Santa Claus--- and coming back to base ready to make merry before they started up again the next morning.

I want to interject here to correct what I think is a misconception about the wisdom of rebuilding along the Gulf Coast. When I told a Kentucky friend about the volunteer work in Biloxi, she responded incredulously--- “They’re just rebuilding right where they were before?”--- as though this were a terrible affront to Mother Nature and Good Sense. Yes. Communities are trying to get back on their feet right back on the coast. Some of the houses on the Mississippi Gulf Coast have been there for more than a century. Katrina was unique in those parts because of her enormous storm surge that made the water damage so extensive. People are rebuilding with the hope that Katrina will continue to be remembered as unique. In New Orleans, there will have to be more substantial re-thinking to decide what gets rebuilt where and how the city will drain. Still, it’s worth remembering that if the levees hadn’t failed, Katrina would not have been a catastrophe for New Orleans, and the levees would probably not have failed if it weren’t for a long list of preventable human errors related to pressure to cut costs and a murky chain of command during construction and inadequate annual inspection of the levees thereafter. See The Times-Picayune “Evidence points to man-made disaster” from December 08 for more on this.

The last step before rebuilding is getting out the mold. At Hands On, Mold is what I did. I still dream about demolding houses. January looks like a critical month. The house-gutting work may have peaked already, at least in Biloxi, and Hands On is starting to branch out to other needy communities; mold though, is still a force to be reckoned with there. At Hands On, we reckoned with it in the most labor-intensive gritty tough way you can. We scraped at it with wire brushes, vacuumed spores, wiped with Shockwave and primed with Kilz under the tutelage of a former navy seal, current mold expert and (at least this was the word on the street) shooting coach for the LAPD. He was a tough boss, and we did professional quality work. The trouble is that there are way more houses to rebuild than there are crack teams of volunteers.

Some houses will be demolded the expert way, and it will work some amount; others will be done with power-washers and fans, or with x chemical, and will have some amount less mold. It will be done haphazardly with little regulation--- like commerce in a place that sat underwater just a couple of months ago. The Gulf Coast will rebuild for better or worse with more or less mold. It’s hard to make scientific goals and measurements of success because, as the tree guys at Hands On put it: “the mold always wins.” In any case, there is a breathtaking amount of work and a lot of need for volunteers to be doing the dirty and mostly tedious work of getting out (enough of) the mold.

As much as I love to hate mold, last week I went with a group of volunteers to the St. Rosa de Lima Catholic Church in Bay St. Louis to listen to the gospel sounds and take a morning to not-demold. After the services, on the way to our car, a friendly nod to a gentleman picking up free supplies lead to an hour-long accounting of his family history. It began with the educational careers of 11 brothers and sisters who had been to this prestigious medical school or law school or who did undergrad at Harvard and now head up Peace Corps in West Africa, and... and look, here that brother comes now, look here we all are, coming from this small town, here we still are in this small small town on the Gulf Coast. We drank a glass of water in this brother’s house which was saved by a matter of inches from having water on the first floor. His grandfather had built this yellow frame house miraculously just tall enough and just far enough inland. As we started to depart, the man revealed the moral of his story, made sure we took away what he meant for us to take away. “When you’re working on these humble little houses,” he said, “remember that from these humble houses can come great things.”

His moral also could have been that these Gulf Coast families have deep deep roots in the Gulf Coast soil. Driving along the beach road, this contrast struck me every time. On one hand, you could pass a casino boat looking like a 20 story building, concrete and steel twisted by the uprooting water which left the giant barges a block inland, tossed like toys. And on the other hand were the live oaks, debris tangled in their great branches, holding tight along the coast like they had for hundreds of years. This is me believing that the communities of Louisiana and Mississippi have roots as strong as the live oaks have, and reminding you that these good people can use your help while they reach for the renewal of spring.

Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie

Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie
by Bob Dylan

When yer head gets twisted and yer mind grows numb
When you think you're too old, too young, too smart or too dumb
When yer laggin' behind an' losin' yer pace
In a slow-motion crawl of life's busy race
No matter what yer doing if you start givin' up
If the wine don't come to the top of yer cup
If the wind's got you sideways with with one hand holdin' on
And the other starts slipping and the feeling is gone
And yer train engine fire needs a new spark to catch it
And the wood's easy findin' but yer lazy to fetch it
And yer sidewalk starts curlin' and the street gets too long
And you start walkin' backwards though you know its wrong
And lonesome comes up as down goes the day
And tomorrow's mornin' seems so far away
And you feel the reins from yer pony are slippin'
And yer rope is a-slidin' 'cause yer hands are a-drippin'
And yer sun-decked desert and evergreen valleys
Turn to broken down slums and trash-can alleys
And yer sky cries water and yer drain pipe's a-pourin'
And the lightnin's a-flashing and the thunder's a-crashin'
And the windows are rattlin' and breakin' and the roof tops a-shakin'
And yer whole world's a-slammin' and bangin'
And yer minutes of sun turn to hours of storm
And to yourself you sometimes say
"I never knew it was gonna be this way
Why didn't they tell me the day I was born"
And you start gettin' chills and yer jumping from sweat
And you're lookin' for somethin' you ain't quite found yet
And yer knee-deep in the dark water with yer hands in the air
And the whole world's a-watchin' with a window peek stare
And yer good gal leaves and she's long gone a-flying
And yer heart feels sick like fish when they're fryin'
And yer jackhammer falls from yer hand to yer feet
And you need it badly but it lays on the street
And yer bell's bangin' loudly but you can't hear its beat
And you think yer ears might a been hurt
Or yer eyes've turned filthy from the sight-blindin' dirt
And you figured you failed in yesterdays rush
When you were faked out an' fooled white facing a four flush
And all the time you were holdin' three queens
And it's makin you mad, it's makin' you mean
Like in the middle of Life magazine
Bouncin' around a pinball machine
And there's something on yer mind you wanna be saying
That somebody someplace oughta be hearin'
But it's trapped on yer tongue and sealed in yer head
And it bothers you badly when your layin' in bed
And no matter how you try you just can't say it
And yer scared to yer soul you just might forget it
And yer eyes get swimmy from the tears in yer head
And yer pillows of feathers turn to blankets of lead
And the lion's mouth opens and yer staring at his teeth
And his jaws start closin with you underneath
And yer flat on your belly with yer hands tied behind
And you wish you'd never taken that last detour sign
And you say to yourself just what am I doin'
On this road I'm walkin', on this trail I'm turnin'
On this curve I'm hanging
On this pathway I'm strolling, in the space I'm taking
In this air I'm inhaling
Am I mixed up too much, am I mixed up too hard
Why am I walking, where am I running
What am I saying, what am I knowing
On this guitar I'm playing, on this banjo I'm frailin'
On this mandolin I'm strummin', in the song I'm singin'
In the tune I'm hummin', in the words I'm writin'
In the words that I'm thinkin'
In this ocean of hours I'm all the time drinkin'
Who am I helping, what am I breaking
What am I giving, what am I taking
But you try with your whole soul best
Never to think these thoughts and never to let
Them kind of thoughts gain ground
Or make yer heart pound
But then again you know why they're around
Just waiting for a chance to slip and drop down
"Cause sometimes you hear'em when the night times comes creeping
And you fear that they might catch you a-sleeping
And you jump from yer bed, from yer last chapter of dreamin'
And you can't remember for the best of yer thinking
If that was you in the dream that was screaming
And you know that it's something special you're needin'
And you know that there's no drug that'll do for the healin'
And no liquor in the land to stop yer brain from bleeding
And you need something special
Yeah, you need something special all right
You need a fast flyin' train on a tornado track
To shoot you someplace and shoot you back
You need a cyclone wind on a stream engine howler
That's been banging and booming and blowing forever
That knows yer troubles a hundred times over
You need a Greyhound bus that don't bar no race
That won't laugh at yer looks
Your voice or your face
And by any number of bets in the book
Will be rollin' long after the bubblegum craze
You need something to open up a new door
To show you something you seen before
But overlooked a hundred times or more
You need something to open your eyes
You need something to make it known
That it's you and no one else that owns
That spot that yer standing, that space that you're sitting
That the world ain't got you beat
That it ain't got you licked
It can't get you crazy no matter how many
Times you might get kicked
You need something special all right
You need something special to give you hope
But hope's just a word
That maybe you said or maybe you heard
On some windy corner 'round a wide-angled curve

But that's what you need man, and you need it bad
And yer trouble is you know it too good
"Cause you look an' you start getting the chills

"Cause you can't find it on a dollar bill
And it ain't on Macy's window sill
And it ain't on no rich kid's road map
And it ain't in no fat kid's fraternity house
And it ain't made in no Hollywood wheat germ
And it ain't on that dimlit stage
With that half-wit comedian on it
Ranting and raving and taking yer money
And you thinks it's funny
No you can't find it in no night club or no yacht club
And it ain't in the seats of a supper club
And sure as hell you're bound to tell
That no matter how hard you rub
You just ain't a-gonna find it on yer ticket stub
No, and it ain't in the rumors people're tellin' you
And it ain't in the pimple-lotion people are sellin' you
And it ain't in no cardboard-box house
Or down any movie star's blouse
And you can't find it on the golf course
And Uncle Remus can't tell you and neither can Santa Claus
And it ain't in the cream puff hair-do or cotton candy clothes
And it ain't in the dime store dummies or bubblegum goons
And it ain't in the marshmallow noises of the chocolate cake voices
That come knockin' and tappin' in Christmas wrappin'
Sayin' ain't I pretty and ain't I cute and look at my skin
Look at my skin shine, look at my skin glow
Look at my skin laugh, look at my skin cry
When you can't even sense if they got any insides
These people so pretty in their ribbons and bows
No you'll not now or no other day
Find it on the doorsteps made out-a paper mache´
And inside it the people made of molasses
That every other day buy a new pair of sunglasses
And it ain't in the fifty-star generals and flipped-out phonies
Who'd turn yuh in for a tenth of a penny
Who breathe and burp and bend and crack
And before you can count from one to ten
Do it all over again but this time behind yer back
My friend
The ones that wheel and deal and whirl and twirl
And play games with each other in their sand-box world
And you can't find it either in the no-talent fools
That run around gallant
And make all rules for the ones that got talent
And it ain't in the ones that ain't got any talent but think they do
And think they're foolin' you
The ones who jump on the wagon
Just for a while 'cause they know it's in style
To get their kicks, get out of it quick
And make all kinds of money and chicks
And you yell to yourself and you throw down yer hat
Sayin', "Christ do I gotta be like that
Ain't there no one here that knows where I'm at
Ain't there no one here that knows how I feel
Good God Almighty
THAT STUFF AIN'T REAL"

No but that ain't yer game, it ain't even yer race
You can't hear yer name, you can't see yer face
You gotta look some other place
And where do you look for this hope that yer seekin'
Where do you look for this lamp that's a-burnin'
Where do you look for this oil well gushin'
Where do you look for this candle that's glowin'
Where do you look for this hope that you know is there
And out there somewhere
And your feet can only walk down two kinds of roads
Your eyes can only look through two kinds of windows
Your nose can only smell two kinds of hallways
You can touch and twist
And turn two kinds of doorknobs
You can either go to the church of your choice
Or you can go to Brooklyn State Hospital
You'll find God in the church of your choice
You'll find Woody Guthrie in Brooklyn State Hospital

And though it's only my opinion
I may be right or wrong
You'll find them both
In the Grand Canyon
At sundown

Forget transitions

A couple of weeks ago, I heard writer _____ (hm. have to get frank to remind me of her name) speak and she said that since she’d gotten older, she didn’t have time for transitions-- not “like her brother, she loved sand castles, too” and not “meanwhile across town.” She said that in real life, events just butt up against each other and vie for attention.

So the other night, I was playing guitar in my backyard, and as I tried to get the rhythm right on Aeroplane Over the Sea, the coyotes across the street started up, huge noise, and I was telling Dad about it later and he said, “speaking of the coyotes across the street, have you done your taxes?” and I thought that was a good punchline. I’m full of transitions, I think it’s part of what we do, but she’s on to something, too.

I picked up a guy on the interstate today; an old black man with a broke-down old station wagon waving a gas can. I want to live in a place where people (with some careful eyes to survey a scene mind you) can pick people up and be picked up if they are in trouble stranded on the highway miles from the nearest exit. So I act like the person I want to see out there. His name was Charles. Of course the first thing he said was, “you know God is going to bless you” and I said that that wouldn’t hurt and that was fine and he was glad and I was glad if healthily wary and onward to the gas station. And then he had to start in on how pretty I looked. And I guess the idea might have been to flatter me, but I think it’s usually more about what the guy wants than about kind words. So, look folks, if I give you a ride I don’t want to hear it. It is not polite to want me. If I look pretty, I know it and when strangers say it, it says a lot more about them than it does about me. Oh and I asked Charles how it was living in Oklahoma. He said, “Bad. But there were a lot of Indians.”

I think Dairy Queen would have gone out of business years ago if it hadn’t been for the Blizzard. On Highway 259 in Smith Grove, Kentucky-- at least I think that’s where I was; I went from Western KY to Birmingham today-- I saw one advertising a “Dream a dream pie” Blizzard. Kentucky was a dream a dream pie for the eyes this morning. She has a special way of bringing together burnt orange grass stalks with new green growth starting up below and blue skyline cut diagonal by the hilly horizon, stately red barn standing with its feet a little wide apart on either side of the barn door, a little knock-kneed in its old age, little strip malls each with their storefront churches. “Nothing Fancy Church” sticks with me. I passed three billboards of the ten commandments before I hit Tennessee. I wondered whether they were Really trying to tell me to honor my father and mother, or just trying to warn me that this was God’s country and that I had better repent or keep driving. My friend out in that neck of the woods has become a serious person of faith and an evangelical in a way that perhaps Western Kentucky inspires. I think that maybe being an Evangelical is hard on believers-- when your faith demands that you convert others, you have to translate the silent language of belief and simple faith into all sorts of words, into all sorts of apologies and arguments. You have to speak History and Psychology and Philosophy besides just the Language of the Heart. I thought about it a little as I rolled along in the early morning cool, until I got to one of those vistas that lay out miles of hills and valleys before me and the rose of the new sun, horses grazing quietly, and in that moment, the Language of the Heart, of pure blank belief was all I could feel.

Tennessee and Alabama had things to say, too, although they don’t speak as clear to me as Kentucky does. Tennessee Highway 431 reminded me that it is IMPOSSIBLE to imitate old money houses without OLD TREES. The tottering little cottege that hasn’t been painted in fifty years outshines the new brick stuff on trees alone. And Decatur says that we should build more highway bridges low to the water so folks can fish off of them. And check out the rocket at the Huntsville rest stop. Who in their right mind would believe that that thing could get to outer space. Strange world.

And if you’ve just found this because I said, “Hey guess what I have a blog now,” welcome!

In other news.

Back to that "black wind" that Glenn Powell mentioned. . . Maybe I'm in this upbeat mood because I'm writing from my room at the farm with the spring breeze blowing in the window and the horses grazing in the field and the leaves peeking out on the ginko tree, BUT I've been finding all kinds of signs of hope in the paper lately.

Reading the sunday Times weeks late, I got to hear about Michelle Bachelet, "a Socialist, pediatrician and former political prisoner and exile" being inaugurated as President of Chile. "In a country where the Roman Catholic Church wields great power, Ms. Bachelet is also openly agnostic, and when she took her oath of office she promised rather than swore to uphold the Chilean Constitution. She has also promised a government that focuses on social equality and respect for human rights. . . Ms. Bachelet has already fulfilled another of her campaign promises: sexual equity in appointments to government posts. She has appointed a cabinet of 10 men and 10 women, and designated the governors of the country's 12 regions on the same basis. . . "I've given clear instructions, and here I take advantage to do a commercial," she said. 'Chile is going to be the first country that will have, in public sector decision making positions, total parity' between men and women."

Below, in "US Rethinks Its Cutoff of Military Aid to Latin American Nations" is the satisfying image of Condaleeza Rice strumming a guitar decorated with coca leaves. Check it out:
"The newly installed Bolivian leader [Evo Morales, onetime head of Bolivia's coca growers' union] favors the legal cultivation of coca, the plant used to manufacture cocaine, but says he opposes cocaine and has agreed to let American antidrug officials remain in the country.
In a friendly but pointed gesture, he gave Ms. Rice a small guitar decorated on the front with real leaves from a coca plant in laquer. Ms. Rice, perhaps not realizing that the decoration was from the plant that the United States sought to eradicate, then smiled and strummed the guitar for television cameras."

Meanwhile, "A Sharp Debate Erupts in China Over Ideologies: capitalist path disputed, rising income gap raises concerns about a law on property rights."
The origins of the critique of capitalism? Well a big piece of it came from a professor who "accused the legal experts who wrote the draft [of the pro-capitalist property rights legislation] of 'copying capitalist civil law like slaves' and offering equal protection to 'a rich man's car and a beggar man's stick.'" Even some from the pro-market camp over there are willing to admit (as our own leaders will not) "A widening gap between rich and poor is not the fault of market reforms, it's the natural result of them, which is neither good nor bad, but quite predictable."

Also front page: "Bush Troubles Weigh Heavily As Party Meets" and an expose of a huge price increase for a cancer drug that has nothing to do with production costs and everything to do with drug company profits.

And today, when Chirac backed down on the new labor law, the young French folks were presented not as lazy nut-balls who were attached to their job stability because they were unwilling to work, but as people who have been "resisting economic reform," in multiple instances-- "In France, an Economic Bullet Goes Unbitten"-- refusing to bite a bullet, because who would want to bite a bullet anyway?

pro-immigrant rallies

Here is the report on the one that happened here at home--http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/14313651.htm-- and it is so exciting to see them happening all across the country. What a heady day yesterday!

On Saturday, Glen Powell from Winchester wrote to the Herald-Leader regarding the immigration debate,

"There's a black wind blowing through America, politically, economically and socially.
When will it end?"

Perhaps the wind is changing some. Not that there weren't pages of negative redneck responses to the rally. One web post in response to the article covering it read, "heres an idea, put an electrical wire in the rio grande. when they try to cross....sizzle and fry." stupid SOB.

Here is my letter (hopefully published in tomorrow's paper!) to the editor:

The anti-immigrant position fails on both humanitarian and economic grounds. Negative responses to the rally downtown have been filled with fear and hate towards millions of people just because they are foreign and willing to work for low wages. Additionally, the send-‘em-home position fails to recognize that cheap labor is a necessary part of our economic system; it is the only way to produce the cheap consumer goods that we buy every day. We vote for underpaid immigrant labor here in the USA-- and for low-cost overseas production that exploits these people in their home countries and drives them here seeking a better life-- with our shopping dollars. There is no closing our borders to a flow of people from the South without fundamentally restructuring the entire global economic system.

Instead of struggling without success to close the borders, we should protect the health and dignity of all people in the USA by granting citizenship to immigrants. Some argue that, as non-citizens, immigrants are in no position to make demands on our government. The purpose of a civil rights movement is to demand an equal right to live and have a say in government, in spite of powerful forces who believe you do not deserve it.

Alice Johnston
Winchester, KY



I think this is a big deal that is just going to get bigger. Peace and dignity, folks.

Virtual Tour of 119 West Virginia

"If you don't have an oil or gas well, Get One!" --Waco Oil and Gas, Glenville, WV

Our report begins when I turned off of I-79 and onto state highway 119 near Weston. Soon I was far from the simple straight-shot of interstate and was reminded that West Virginia a'int Kansas anymore, and is especially not New York or Connecticut. You'd have to enter some sort of fourth dimentional space for the road to get any more twisted up in the steep hills, and it seemed that most of the people I passed were large men in tiny teal Geos slowly falling to pieces, on their way home to trailers and fighting cocks or out to Good Time Charlies aka Susie's backyard bar. Otherwise, it was me and the thirty wild turkeys camped out between Pickle Street Unincorporated and Burnt House (incorporated?). The far out-ness of this place was really driven home when I got to the Welcome to Clay County sign, "Home of the Golden Delicious Apple" and to a lone sixteen year old in a Nickleback shirt walking down the road with nothing to do probably but drugs and TV (wait. drugs and TV. this is familiar. click your heels three times saying "there's no place like home," spark up a bowl and there you are, whereever you are?) Anyhow, Golden Delicious is not enough to keep this character occupied from birth until he gets out or gets married. (There was that rusty suit of armour and all the metal and bus parts and lamps and implements at that one house, but the chain across his driveway said KEEP OUT, well maybe locals can ring the bell with the pull-cord with the sign with the finger pointing to it to announce themselves and then they can play in his sweet metal collection, but it definately was KEEP OUT to me, but. . . ) What really topped off the trip though were the sights in Glenville. Part one: Giant Gas Money Mansion. This guy sort of has a predicament. He has obviously made a shit-ton of money in oil and natural gas. His neighbors obviously have not. He can a) move out of the county and be absentee boss to everyone b) display his sort of hideous ostentatious taste right next door to his crews, a house trailer on either side of his property. In any case, I just looked this guy up-- I know he is IL Morris because it is emblazoned in giant letters on his barn-- and it looks like he's a pretty stand-up guy:

"Morris serves both the College and Gilmer County communities through his active support and financial gifts. As the owner of Waco Oil & Gas Co., Inc., Morris employs over 50 area residents. Through hard work and dedication for over 40 years, he has built a successful business.
In addition to his many gifts to Glenville State College, Morris serves on the Board of Directors of United National Bank in Glenville, is a former Board member of Alliance Petroleum Corp. in Canton, Ohio, the West Virginia Oil and Gas Commission, is past president of the Glenville Golf Club and is a member of the First Baptist Church of Glenville. He has been honored as the 1994 West Virginia Oil & Gas Man of the Year and, most recently, has been named as the Honorary Italian Man of the Year for the 25th Annual West Virginia Italian Heritage Festival to be held in Clarksburg, West Virginia.
Morris serves as a Partner in Education with Gilmer County High School, contributes to various other educational and philanthropic endeavors and, in 2001, provided the funds for the installation of artificial turf at the Glenville State College football stadium, now named Morris Stadium. His unselfish service and dedication to Glenville State College and his commitment and perseverance have significantly improved education and intercollegiate athletics and services to our students."

When I passed the Waco Oil and Gas sign about 5 or 6 miles down from his place "If you don't have an oil or gas well on your place, Get one!" I knew that that was where the money came from and sure enough he owns it. Anyhow, there was an ambulance at his place, hope he's doing alright.

Meanwhile, the West Virginia Highlands Forum informs me that ol' Morris was seeking a permit to strip mine the top off of Browns Mountain, on a parcel of land near the Monongahela Forest and the Devil's Backbone arch-- "They plan to remove at least three hundred feet of rock from the east side of the mountain to obtain the Tuscarora Sandstone (or White Medina Sandstone), which is used as a non-skid aggregate in road construction." According to the preservation guys, "What they are proposing is the equivalent of mountain top removal in an area with no coal and no other mining. The water gap formed by Knapps Creek as it cuts through Browns Mountain is one of the most scenic areas in West Virginia. Knapps Creek, a tributary of the Greenbrier, is stocked with trout by the DNR. Strip mining in this location would create a permanent scar on the landscape and probably destroy the creek for trout fishing downstream of the quarry."

At some point on this drive, I was at least 45 minutes from the Interstate no matter how you cut it. It was the kind of trip where you sort of wish you could hurry up the coming back part, but there's only one road and you can't rush it and you just have to wait it out to get back to familiar territory. When I got back on 79, I tried to shake off the feeling that I had just spent a big chunk of time driving without getting much closer to my destination with Sub and Basement Jaxx and some faster driving, but West Virginia just doesn't stand for it. I put on some Ricki Lee Jones instead until the sun set and the road was anonymous enough for techno.

Hopefully on my way back up north, I'll pass through on a Friday or Saturday night-- a couple of spots in this 50 mile stretch advertised live bluegrass jams on weekend nights-- It would be a strange place to be an outsider maybe, but probably worth hearing what these people have to sing. If you're ever in Glenville or Chloe (down at the community park), keep your eyes (ears?) peeled.

Last but not least, as of 2003, the sandstone quarry for Browns Mountain had failed to get its permit thanks to some uproar from the West Virginia Environmental Council and citizens of Pocahontas County. "The names Hamilton, Heinlein, Hemple, Henritz, Hogbin, Johns, McCarty, Pomerantz, Rose, Rice, Stump, Wagner, and Young who helped pave the way, were but a very few who sought protections during the 2000 lawmaking effort - protections that now have been effectively applied by DEP and Pocahontas Countians. . . Hats off to the many citizens of Pocahontas County who stood up, used the 2000 quarry law, and demonstrated how communities can protect their future interests." A slightly rosier note for you.

Alice

PS-- Honorary Italian of the Year?

a species considered to be among the planet's smartest

Armed marine life trained for attack-and-kill missions really do not take up that much of my brain space, but I thought that this pair of articles really gets at. . . something. . . one of those great mystery type things.


Armed and dangerous - Flipper the firing dolphin let loose by Katrina

Mark Townsend in Houston
Sunday September 25, 2005
The Observer

It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico.
Experts who have studied the US navy's cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying 'toxic dart' guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet's smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing.

Dolphins have been trained in attack-and-kill missions since the Cold War. The US Atlantic bottlenose dolphins have apparently been taught to shoot terrorists attacking military vessels. Their coastal compound was breached during the storm, sweeping them out to sea. But those who have studied the controversial use of dolphins in the US defence programme claim it is vital they are caught quickly.

Leo Sheridan, 72, a respected accident investigator who has worked for government and industry, said he had received intelligence from sources close to the US government's marine fisheries service confirming dolphins had escaped.

'My concern is that they have learnt to shoot at divers in wetsuits who have simulated terrorists in exercises. If divers or windsurfers are mistaken for a spy or suicide bomber and if equipped with special harnesses carrying toxic darts, they could fire,' he said. 'The darts are designed to put the target to sleep so they can be interrogated later, but what happens if the victim is not found for hours?'

Usually dolphins were controlled via signals transmitted through a neck harness. 'The question is, were these dolphins made secure before Katrina struck?' said Sheridan.

The mystery surfaced when a separate group of dolphins was washed from a commercial oceanarium on the Mississippi coast during Katrina. Eight were found with the navy's help, but the dolphins were not returned until US navy scientists had examined them.

Sheridan is convinced the scientists were keen to ensure the dolphins were not the navy's, understood to be kept in training ponds in a sound in Louisiana, close to Lake Pontchartrain, whose waters devastated New Orleans.

The navy launched the classified Cetacean Intelligence Mission in San Diego in 1989, where dolphins, fitted with harnesses and small electrodes planted under their skin, were taught to patrol and protect Trident submarines in harbour and stationary warships at sea.

Criticism from animal rights groups ensured the use of dolphins became more secretive. But the project gained impetus after the Yemen terror attack on the USS Cole in 2000. Dolphins have also been used to detect mines near an Iraqi port.

stealth sharks and killer dolphins: beginnings

"We believe we are the first to record neural activity from a monkey doing a somersault," (Mavoori says).
-----The New Scientist; March 1, 2006
http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/mg18925416.300.html

"IMAGINE getting inside the mind of a shark: swimming silently through the ocean, sensing faint electrical fields, homing in on the trace of a scent, and navigating through the featureless depths for hour after hour.

We may soon be able to do just that via electrical probes in the shark's brain. Engineers funded by the US military have created a neural implant designed to enable a shark's brain signals to be manipulated remotely, controlling the animal's movements, and perhaps even decoding what it is feeling.

That team is among a number of groups around the world that have gained ethical approval to develop implants that can monitor and influence the behaviour of animals, from sharks and tuna to rats and monkeys. . . More controversially, the Pentagon hopes to exploit sharks' natural ability to glide quietly through the water, sense delicate electrical gradients and follow chemical trails. By remotely guiding the sharks' movements, they hope to transform the animals into stealth spies, perhaps capable of following vessels without being spotted. . . the team's next step will be to implant the device into blue sharks and release them into the ocean off the coast of Florida."



THE WORLD IS A STRANGE PLACE
KEEP YOUR EYES PEELED