the cannon

Antisemitism and Arrogance

2009-06-12T08:33:00.000-07:00

Wednesday's shooting at the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. was a tragedy, but to see in it only the shameful face of antisemitism is to have selective vision. Though James von Brunn targeted a Jewish institution, he likely planned for the consequence of encountering a security guard. He knew he wasn't going to get to shoot a Jew. He knew this because he had an understanding (albeit a twisted one) of the relationship between race and social status, and despite his other inaccuracies and fringe-element tendencies, he got one thing right. Unless it's Israel, Jews don't work security.

The Washington Post came close to the mark today, the second full day of von Brunn's fifteen minutes of infamy: "They're often derided as rent-a-cops, the hall monitors of law enforcement, whose uniforms suggest professionalism and proficiency even if they don't always garner respect." Special Police Officer Stephen T. Johns certainly didn't fit this description, and the justified horror at his death - along with his instant canonization by a media in desperate need of heroes - indicates that this derision is far from the minds of the public. But derision and worship are two sides of the same coin, easily flipped. How long ago were the white-collar museum employees thumbing their noses at Officer Johns, or perhaps casually giving a fist bump as they passed through the metal detectors, only to reveal their true feelings with an inappropriate utterance, a "yo" or a "bro" thrown in for good measure?

I ask because my own experience working at New York City's Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust taught me that the blatant Jim Crow racism of our parent's generation has been replaced by the soft feudalism of an economically and racially determined caste system. The division between those in the office and those in the lobby was as clear as the Museum's plate-glass doors, and contemplated just as much. Which is to say not very much at all, at least not on the office side of things. As one of the few Jews working on the museum's first floor, I like to think I reflected a better part of our heritage - we were some of the first Freedom Riders, after all, and the Jewish ideal of tikkun olam is often rightly interpreted as a call to heal the wounds of racial division.

There is another part of our heritage, though, that is at odds with the pluralistic society in which we live. It is exceptionalism, the belief that we are the chosen few, and it finds expression in the arrogance of those on the museum's top floor, their unquestioning belief that they belong there, and that those on the bottom, well, they belong there too.

D.C.'s Holocaust Museum is well-funded, and this incident is sure to guarantee the jobs of its security staff for years to come. New York's museum is not quite so lucky. Poorly managed finances and inadequate leadership (whose arrogance is just an element of their general decline from respectable academics to self-righteous egotists) means that reductions in staff are inevitable. In fact, New York's museum has cut approximately ten percent of its staff in the last year. The first cuts, of course, were made in the security and cleaning staffs. Whether from downsizing or violence, in American Jewish institutions, the first victims are sure to be minorities.

Antisemitism certainly still exists, but if that's the main lesson we've learned from von Brunn's hideous acts, then we're missing the point. The Post quotes FBI agent Todd Blodgett as saying "Von Brunn is obsessed with Jewish people... he had equal contempt for both Jews and blacks, but if he had to pick one group to wipe out, he'd always say it would be the Jews." Von Brunn based this obsession on his belief that Jews were exceptionally powerful and therefore deserving of an exceptional hatred. If we continue to set ourselves apart, we simply give fodder to men like Von Brunn. Instead we should acknowledge, as Jews before us have, that nobody is safe until we are all safe.

And we should stop thinking that Officer Johns died for us. He died because a crazy man was full of hate, and despite our dissections and categorizations, hate remains a singular force. Dividing von Brunn's into anti-semitism and white supremacy, like dividing the world into Jew and Gentile, only reinforces our own arrogance. If we insist on standing apart, we will be alone when we fall.

The L Loves Cool Literature

2007-02-08T14:10:00.000-08:00

http://www.thelmagazine.com/index.cfm?listings_id=111932

from the site:

Literary Upstart 2007 Is Coming! Literary Upstart 2007 Is Coming!
Ladies and gentlemen, writers and lushes, lend us your ears: The L Magazine is proud to announce our third annual Literary Upstart: The Search for Pocket Fiction competition. For those of you unfamiliar with the deal: you send your short stories; we read them; we invite four or five submitters to read at one of our three booze-soaked semifinal readings, in front of a panel of judges (consisting of editors, agents, and other literary types), who will hold forth, American Idol-style, on the stories, and announce a winner, whose story will be published in the L's annual Summer Fiction Issue, and who will return for the final reading to compete for a Cash Prize with the other semi-final winners. I should also mention, in the interests of full disclosure, that the events are hella fun to attend, and usually involve various L Mag staffers getting drunk at yelling at the emcee to "take off [his] shirt!"

This year's panel of judges includes the New Yorker's Ben Greeman; last year's Literary Upstart winner (and current Gawker columnist/pin-up) Gabriel Delahaye; Random House/Doubleday's Christine Pride; the Curtis Brown Agency, LTD's Katherine Fausset; and the L's very own Adam Bonislawski. The first reading will be held March 29 April 12, so get cracking.

And now, here it is, our Call for Submissions:
Stories (please limit yourself to two submissions) should be 1,500 words or fewer, and previously unpublished. Style and content are at your discretion.
Please send your stories as Word attachments, in a standard 12-point font, to fiction@thelmagazine.com. You may also mail them (please include your email address) to:

Fiction Editor
The L Magazine
20 Jay Street, Ste. 207
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Since the live event is such a big part of the competition, please don't submit stories unless you can arrange to be in the NYC area for a reading or two between March and June.
Happy writing, everyone.

Facebook Goes to Washington

2007-01-09T14:46:00.000-08:00

“we will be creating profiles for all sitting U.S. Representatives, Senators and state governors. Any politician who wants to maintain an ongoing relationship with their younger constituents will be able to on Facebook.” – From Ezra on the Facebook blog

Somehow I just can’t see Nancy Pelosi on Facebook.

Will the politico’s mini-feed cover votes? If they are our friends, will our mini-feeds cover their votes? Most importantly, will they post scandalous pictures of beerpong and drug use?

Exciting times ahead…

Second Avenue Deli Redux

2007-01-04T07:42:00.001-08:00

http://www.gothamist.com/archives/2007/01/04/2nd_avenue_deli_2.php

The Second Avenue Deli is (possibly) reborn!

Well, that exclamation point is a bit forced. I never went there. I passed by years ago, unaware of the hooplah, and only realized what the big deal was recently. Then it closed. Too bad, I never got the chance to pay fifteen dollars for a corned beef and tongue sandwhich.

Anyway, a Brooklyn location might lower the prices and the tourist vibe. And, generally speaking, I have a pro-deli policy, so maybe the city will get lucky on this one.

Warsaw de Deus

2006-12-21T08:05:00.001-08:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6200539.stm

"Polish MPs bid to make Jesus king

A group of Polish members of parliament have submitted a bill seeking to proclaim Jesus Christ king of their overwhelmingly Catholic country.
Forty-six deputies - 10% of the lower house - signed the bill, which was tabled earlier this week, reports say.

Some Polish clerics however have criticised the move as unnecessary.

If the bill becomes law, Jesus will follow the path of the Virgin Mary, who was declared honorary queen of Poland by King John Casimir 350 years ago.

The motion has been backed by MPs from the far right League of Polish families (LPR), the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party and the Peasants' Party (PSL).

They argued Jesus should be made king on both theological and historical grounds.

PiS deputy Artur Gorski said colleagues were "praying in the parliamentary chapel for [Jesus'] coronation", Reuters news agency reported.

But Monsignor Tadeusz Pieronek, a member of Poland's episcopate and rector at Krakow's Papal Academy of Theology, dismissed the move.

"Christ doesn't need a parliamentary resolution to be the king of our hearts," AFP news agency quoted him as saying.

"These lawmakers would do better to look after their constitutional prerogatives and let religious institutions and the Church do our work," he said."

In other news, there's a guy behind me talking really loudly on his cellphone to someone named Laurence. Strange. But the mofo is stopping me from coming up with something funny to say about the Polish-Jesus-King story. I mean, c'mon...

NYC 2030: City of Gloss

2006-12-19T08:09:00.000-08:00

I usually throw out the glossy pages hiding between the folds of my New York Times – especially when, like today, they fall on the grimy floor of the L train – but I found these particular pages of interest. Ten of them, glossy as previously mentioned, filled with photographs, regular graphs, and witty captions about Plan NYC’s plan (or lack thereof) for the next twenty-five years. Factoids, too – did you know that a third of New Yorkers pay more than half of their income towards rent? Or that two million New Yorkers live more than ten minutes from a park? Or that together we can create a sustainable city? Alright, the last one isn’t a factoid, but it is in the report, and it does sound nice.

The insert – which I saw on the ground again later in the day, this time on Jay Street, glossy pages too heavy to flap in the Dumbo wind – is heavy on the statistics and heavy on the idealism, asking (and answering): “By 2030, will you still love New York? It’s up to you.” And just so we take things seriously, page three features the following admonition: “We should be proud. But we should not become complacent.” The insert continues: “Previous generations looked ahead… now it is our turn.” So, one asks, what is the modern equivalent of the forward-looking thinking behind Central Park, the subway, and the water tunnels? And must it involve glossy inserts?

Well, the Mayor’s Sustainability Advisory Board will tell you, first you’ve got to get a handle on the problem. To provide this handle, they list the “top three things you should know about New York over the next 25 years,” a list I actually like (in an intellectual way – the reality of the situation is depressing): First, one million new New Yorkers; second, aging infrastructure – subway signals from the ‘40s, water tunnels from the ‘30s, energy grid from the ‘20s; third, pollution. The urbanophile in me is tickled pink, but the flaneur is a sickly green from imagining hoards of dirty people on deteriorating trains drinking contaminated water. Something must be done.

Unfortunately, for all the worthy goals in the insert’s conclusion, the particulars are lacking. Not that such an insert needs to be a call to action, but its silence on specific projects indicates a timidity, a refusal to engage in the brick-and-mortar (or, if Frank Gehry has his way, the steel-and-glass) politics of the day. Any “official” document dealing with the future of New York City must either deal with these, or become a historical footnote. Or blog fodder. Or both. (To its credit, Plan NYC’s website attempts to give some specifics, though most are limited to the household.) Pretty pictures notwithstanding, this publication is an invitation to think of urban reality as larger-than-life, or, at least, larger-than-me.

Clearly, I’m a pragmatist. I find this idealistic vision of the city standing in the way of necessary action. It either inspires overly large urban transformations – Atlantic Yards anyone? – or leads to impossibly long delays – the Second Avenue Subway and East Side Access, a LIRR tunnel to Grand Central, have both been on the books for decades and are just receiving necessary funds. The Mayor’s Sustainability Advisory Board is too optimistic – their glasses are half full because the subways are only half full, though they say that, without improvement, the subways will be all full by 2030. Then the advisors’ glasses will be half empty, or all empty, jostled by elbows and winter coats on a downtown 6, because nothing will have happened besides more press conferences, publications, and public hearings. As things stand – which is to say, clutching a pole while trying to do a crossword puzzle with one hand – the City of Dreams needs to wake up and go to work.

Hey Young World

2006-12-11T21:47:00.000-08:00

I’ve been linked. In honor, I’ve taken the whole link thing one step further. I’ve distilled this gem (crumb?) from the link after mine in GL’s Monday Brooklinks section, a New York Times article about a suspected murder-suicide:

“It was also unclear how long the four had been dead. A neighbor, Ana Tirado, said Ms. Soto came to her apartment on Dec. 1 with an uncooked chicken, asking that Ms. Tirado prepare it with her own popular recipe, but that Ms. Soto forgot the ingredients for a sauce and left to get them.

“And then she never came back,” Ms. Tirado said. “I got a little worried, but I thought she took the kids to her mother’s.”

Eventually, Ms. Tirado ate the chicken, not wanting it to go to waste, she said.”

The sick thing is, I think Michael Wilson and Ann Farmer – or, more likely, the copy editors and style guiders – thought it was funny when they wrote it.

“Crumbs…” – Slick Rick

What You Doin? Gettin Shot At

2006-12-07T17:01:00.000-08:00

Last week, on the B6 heading up Glenwood to Flatbush Junction, I looked up from the new Lil’ Wayne and Birdman album because I felt the bus turning before it was supposed to and, sure enough, those were sirens at the Junction. I say sure enough because an innocent bystander was shot two weeks ago outside the Rockaway Parkway L station, and because once I hit the second bodega and picked up my New York Times, before I realized I had lost the Arts Section and thus the crossword puzzle but didn’t really care because it was Monday, I read a metro brief about a shooting around the corner from me. Saturday. I was in Virginia.

Virginia freaks me out. So do shootings. As I crossed the street near the taped-off grocery store I heard a guy say “Somebody got popped. I think he was in a wheelchair.” I couldn’t help but wonder if Mercury were still in retrograde.

Later in the day, after detailing the three incidents to my coworkers, one of them asked me, “is it always this bad?” I couldn’t really say. I told her that on the New Year and the fourth people shoot their guns into the sky, and I was going to mention the soldier home for Christmas from Iraq shot in a club a few blocks from my house. I also thought about mentioning the exploded car around the corner, the police chases over the garage, and the dead body on the neighbor’s fence, but I didn’t think it prudent.

The fifty shot Dialou rehashing should come as no surprise to anyone from Brooklyn or to anyone whose head isn’t buried in sand for that matter. And there might just be sand soon, because this place in turning into the Wild Wild West. Gun violence is a party and everybody’s invited. Soldiers and SWAT units with automatic weapons don’t help anything, they only encourage the idea that more bullets means more good.

Lil’ Wayne’s got guns. Why do I trust him more than NYPD?

New York Big City of Dreams...

2006-11-28T13:07:00.000-08:00

...around here cats be doing plenty of things.

At least I think that's how it goes. Another BK link, this one from Brownstoner:

http://brownstoner.com/brownstoner/archives/2006/11/what_if.html#comments

They ask:

What if you were a wealthy philanthropist who could write a $100 million check to fund any infrastructure or public project in Brooklyn? What would it be? A selective high school to rival Stuyvesant in Manhattan? Hundreds more patrol officers on the police force? A monorail above Atlantic Avenue? Let your imagination run wild.

I answer:

"Mass transit in southeastern Brooklyn = Saving brownstone Brooklyn" True.

Resume L service to Canarsie Pier. There used to be a trolley that ran from Rockaway Parkway to the water, but as trolleys tend to do...

But here's the kicker - ha - build a soccer stadium and training complex for a Brooklyn soccer team. Something small and as far away from Gehry as possible.

Once I finish this piece I'm working on, I'm going to see if these blogs I'm starting to link would consider linking mine. Expand my audience past the number of fingers with which I type, perhaps?

"Coney Island Scale-o-Matic" from gowanuslounge.blogspot.com

2006-11-18T09:43:00.000-08:00

This is what's going to happen to Coney Island - except there will be four of the skyscrapers.

Atlantic Yards type developments are taking over the borough. I'd like to see GL do a graphic on Frank Gehry's Miss Brooklyn vs. the Williamsburgh Savings Bank.

Angel on the Block

2006-11-16T07:56:00.000-08:00

Remember that crazy couple Dave Chapelle had in his movie? The one with the incredible (and apparently dangerous) house, the Broken Angel? Well, they've been forcibly evicted. A link:

http://gowanuslounge.blogspot.com/2006/10/broken-angel-standoff-clinton-hill.html

Let's hope Bruce Ratner doesn't try to build a stadium after they tear down the building...

Stuck in the Blogosphere

2006-11-14T14:21:00.000-08:00

At my internship, looking for blogs that could be useful in promotion for the magazine, I found this one:

"The Only Thing I'm Going to Say About 9/11

Sep. 12th, 2006 at 10:31 AM

Is about art.

Julian Laverdier's Towers of Light was hailed by a lot of people as a gorgeous memorial, ethereal, and beautiful.

I went to school with him. He was a graduate student at Yale when I was undergrad. He is very intereested in historical monutments and architecture -- in particular the architects of the fascists.

He said in an interview in Art in America, that the Towers were inspired by Albrecht Speer, aka "Hitler's Architect", and a project he did for the 3rd Reich, a gathering space where rallys were held. He sought to create a "Cathedral of Light", it was the site of the 1936 Neuremberg Rally.

When I consider how our government has co-opted the tradgedy of what happened 5 years ago, when I consider the moves that our government has made - secret torture chambers, prisons, oil wars, and the fact that the trains are running on time -- I think about Julian and his Towers.

I think about them, and I think they memorialize something else: Not the tradgedy that happened in 2001 -- but the one that is happening now."

The blog, Welcome to Spazzville, is at nex0s.livejournal.com.

“Democracy? Dem All Crazy.” – Fela Kuti

2006-11-13T18:08:00.000-08:00

Yay, we won. Break out the ’92 Cabernet, set up the fondue set. Time to party.

But I’m already late – the party’s over, Rumsfeld resigned, and all that’s left is to wait for the action-packed first hundred hours of the 110th Congress. There’s a six-point plan (http://www.democrats.org/agenda.html) that includes the electorate-pleasing minimum wage hike alongside some a few serious new ideas, things like healthcare for all, renewable energy, and open and honest government. Imagine that, health, energy, open and honest government. It’d almost be like living in a functional, or at least sane, democracy.

Though Foley’s folly has given the open and honest idea new meaning, I’d like to see the Democrats maintain the high road they took during the scandal and pursue corporate profiteers over closeted pedophiles. To be clear, I don’t like pedophiles. But when KBR and Halliburton, Cheney’s old crew, make millions for keeping oil tankers parked and unused in Kuwait, and when Enron crashes, the people responsible for bringing California rolling blackouts taking with them the livelihood of thousands, all I’m saying is that Jeff Skilling deserves what he gets. They should even send his dog to dog jail.

As for Halliburton, Cheney isn’t the only one connected. We didn’t need Jack Abramoff to tell us how big the trough is. The parties are like twin balls of lint – in the same pockets.

And as for Iraq, just because this election was a referendum of sorts does not mean we should expect a major change. Talk today of a six-month phased (fazed?) withdrawal will be met by a lot of resistance, chiefly from the President and his attack dogs. I expect Cheney on the television shortly, followed by another hunting accident. I can only imagine.

There are also two other aspects of reality with which the Democrats must contend. One is the reelection of Senator Joe Lieberman. His victory over Ned Lamont, after losing to him in the Democratic primary and running as an independent, signals that not all Democratic voters are ready to abandon the effort. The other is that the victorious Democrats were, in many cases, closet Republicans. Pro-gun and anti-abortion, I don’t expect them to risk their new constituencies by going along with any withdrawal plan with as short a span as six months.

So I have a hard time imagining open and honest government, and an equally hard time imagining a successful and succinct end to our involvement with Iraq. But I once read a Margaret Atwood novel, a post-apocalyptic type tale of female subjugation, and I can imagine that. Fundamentalism, of the Born Again Christian variety, is taking hold. On the Daily Show, Howard Dean brags about winning one third of their vote, but doesn’t really recognize what impact they’ll have on policy.

Organized and experienced, the Christian Right makes the fundamentally voters believe in fundamentally crazy ideas. The current standard-bearers of the movement – Pat Robertson types, the President, the newest Democrats – apply their religion to government in ways that literally defy rationality. But if they’re talking to God they’re not talking to me. And they have no business talking about laws.

Mishuggah.

No, Scrubs

2006-10-23T16:58:00.000-07:00

Scrubs – and Arrested Development – were just too good for TV. Without the sophistication of HBO and Showtime, without the edge of Comedy Central or VHI, they existed in the netherworld of the networks, where Family Guy gets cancelled. And then resurrected. And since nobody appreciates genius less than those boneheads and their ilk, Arrested Development and Scrubs were, from the start, bound to the same fate.

Luckily, both have found homes: Arrested Development on G4, the video game channel, and Scrubs on Comedy Central. Kind of a stretch, a new thing, for both channels. Bold forays into the network’s 7 and 11 timeslots and their endless repeats of Seinfeld, Friends, the Simpsons, and Everybody Loves Raymond. And good ones, too.

Arrested Development – the classic(ly?) dysfunctional family, Family Guy brought to life. Narration and the willingness to build and break layers of stories. Scrubs is ER plus candyflipping – hallucinatory fantasies within an easy, feel good frame. Again with the narration, and the same playful attitude towards its presence in the story.

Friends? No, Scrubs.

I'm Totally Lost

2006-10-19T18:29:00.000-07:00

I’m totally lost.

Totally. Despite the tiny size and the loud commercials of ABC’s web replay, I’m once again hooked. Brooklyn basement a long ways away from Vassar, but still, these mysteriously intricate plotlines and character back-stories get through. Lost touches the deepest strings of my heart. It is a resonant bass tone vibrating in the key of formulaic. It is everything I need when I get home from work, so don’t call, don’t email, and don’t IM. Busy.

Favorite character is Hurley. Locke and Charlie find him wandering back from – well, that’s a long story. But Hurley’s hushed tone, his newly defeatist but still humorous dialogue, are a perfect counterpoint to the quasi-melodrama of the Sawyer-Kate-Jack triangle. He’s the backbone of my personal connection to the show, the most normal – incidentally the most rich – person on the island. Plus he often assumes the role of audience member and speaks as if reading our minds. This is, of course, exactly what he’s doing when Locke and Charlie find him in the jungle. For Hurley recapping comes naturally.

Of course there’s a new mystery. Seems like Desmond might have done something to the space-time continuum. Don’t worry, I know a guy.

P.S. Oprah, buy me Tivo…

Who gave them all the get out jail free cards?

2006-10-09T09:57:00.000-07:00

“Outcry at N Korea ‘nuclear test’” (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6033457.stm)

Our President is working to confirm North Korea’s first nuclear detonation, an event, which if true, he will declare “provocative.” The Russians and Japanese, however, have already offered such confirmation; Russian officials, for instance, are “100% positive.” I hope Bush had his copy of My Pet Goat to keep him busy while other countries did our business for us.

From financing revolutions and coups to “extraordinary rendition,” that wonderful euphemism for outsourcing torture to less scrupulous countries, the truth is that the administration’s “aggressive” posture is in fact a cowardly, half-assed attempt to remake the world in its own image. If Bush were actually a cowboy, he would be in Pyongyang already, having said to hell with Saddam, let’s go after somebody who could actually hurt us.

But no – we’re in Baghdad, surrounded not by barrels of anthrax but by the barrels of hundreds of AK-47’s, the smoky tracer trails of thousands of RPG’s, and the shrapnel from a million IED’s. And still, no WMD’s. Only acronyms, endless acronyms.

This cloud of abbreviations, however, has a silver lining. Had we attacked North Korea instead, we would likely have a fiasco very similar to Iraq – not enough troops, not enough security. And North Korea would certainly have put up more resistance, especially in the first phases of the war, before the aircraft carrier landing and the “Mission Accomplished” banner.

So let’s be honest about this administration’s image, about how it will be remembered. What history will say, as Bush likes to ponder. They are certainly a war-making bunch, Titans of the Military-Industrial Complex, but they are more Kennebunkport than cowboy. They are martini-sipping, monocle-wearing monopoly men. North Korea and (let’s face it) China are their Broadway and Park Place. Best to start small, they think, best to not be brave. Don’t want to end up in the poorhouse. They’ve already got the railroads, so they start to gobble up the purples, the blues, the light oranges…

The Community Chest is cut open for a triple bypass. And we all know how Chance is.

A Letter to Erstwhile Benefactors

2006-10-06T15:25:00.000-07:00

Dear Oprah and/or Tyra Banks,

Let me begin by saying that I respect what you do. At least, I think I do. Even though your audience had to pay taxes on the cars you gave them, I support your policy of giving away free shit. So here’s my wish list in case you can get around to it:

- A new computer for my dad
- New fabric scissors for my sister
- A new camera for my brother
- A headstone for my mother
- Start up capital for a magazine
- A set of quality speakers
- A Playstation 3
- A hybrid minivan
- Some truffles
- A lightsaber

I know the last one isn’t real, but maybe you know some people who know some people. The rest, I think, are doable.

I’ll even come to the studio to pick it all up. But I will not, under any conditions, pay taxes.

Thank you,
- Laurence Wooster

Bombay, Alaska

2006-10-02T11:19:00.000-07:00

A short story I'm working on...

I’m looking at the Pacific Ocean, pack on the dock behind me, and this guy comes and sits down next to me. He’s got long hair and a long beard. Obviously been a long time out. He smells like skunks, and shoves his pack, which smells like dead skunks, next to mine. He stretches his feet out over the dock’s edge, and, reaching into his pocket, produces a silver cigarette case.
How goes it stranger.
Nothing but some sitting in the morning sun.
Like that song.
True, like that song.
For a while he didn’t say anything, just looked out at the ocean, smoke poised and unlit.
Mind if I sit here a spell? Just walked in from up north and boy are my feet cold.
Only if you stop talking like a fool. And if you got an extra one of those smokes. Those, stranger, are my conditions.

*

My mom yells at me a lot.
Did you do the dishes? Did you? Good, now go outside. Can’t have a moment of peace with you in this house. Go clean the spears. The spears have blood from yesterday’s hunt and I won’t have blood in here. Just cleaned the floors. I know you didn’t put it there. But you might put it here with all that fucking around by the stream. And since you’re not old enough to hunt its your job to clean the spears, now clean the fucking spears and then clean your fucking hands because you better not bring any bloody hands inside this house.
It’s not that bad. Out in the back of the house there’s a stream, it runs behind all the houses on our block. Mountain water. The mountains are behind the stream – horizon to horizon, tall, Mount Stephen twenty thousand feet easy according to the other people on West End Avenue. Snowcaps even in summer, deep green tree cover down to the streams and the town.
West End Avenue the western edge of Bombay, a town that hides at the bottom of its mountain. The human presence in a Japanese painting. The town has two art museums and a sushi joint we sometimes go to with fresh salmon from where our stream meets some other streams and becomes the Stephen River. Dad said he’d take me fishing there when I’m old enough. He also said he’d take me to hunt the buffalo.

*

Heavens am I hungry.
Ocean full of fish in front of you.
They say Lewis and Clark came through here but were so sick of eating fish they ate their horses instead.
Then they put what’s her name, their guide, on a coin.
Sacagawea. I have one of those. Ugly.
Ugly?
I mean, coming from a collector’s point of view.
But Sacagawea was totally desirable. I mean, coming from a hunter’s point of view. You, with your coins, you’re clearly more of the gatherer type.
Well fine, I’ll just gather up my weed and walk right down the road where I was heading then. Nice to meet you.
I’m just kidding. Don’t want to see you walk away. Now what were you saying, about Lewis and Clark, I don’t think they came through Alaska.
Sure they did. Book I read said they explored western America to the Pacific Ocean. Seeing how Alaska’s as west as you can get and still be in America, and seeing how from where we’re sitting on this dock we could spit into the Pacific Ocean, I think its true.
Not true. Funny, but not true. And I’ll tell you why if you pass that smoke this way.
Let’s hear it.
Well, I read some books too, and they said that Lewis and Clark explored lands that America bought from France. So how come there aren’t any French people around here? And how come there are so many Russians?
Sure are a lot of Russians. I got stories about Russians. And Japanese? Forget about it.
Hey, watch out. My mom was Japanese.
No shit. So, my half-Japanese brother, where you heading?
Town called Bombay. Inland, cross the Stephen. I hear they have good sushi. Tuna even.
Tuna, shit. Mind if I come with you?
Don’t mind at all. I got some wine if you got some more of that sticky.
Sure thing. Bombay or bust.

*

Past the stream is where Dad goes to hunt – and where I go and follow – because the buffalo sometimes try to sneak between the town and the mountain. That’s where I go after I clean the spears, in the time when the sun makes a silhouette of Mount Stephen and then finally sinks behind, when my vision starts failing at surprising distances and then I know its what Dad calls the magic hour. Can’t hunt then, but like he says weird shit happens and there isn’t nothing to explain, and that’s why we have gods, because if you think you see your dead grandmother out the corner of your eye, its just a god sending you an apparition. That’s how they work, gods. In the peripherals.

*

He’s a good boy.
No buffalo and mud all over the fucking carpet.
He’s a little queer, but he’s a good boy. Well intentioned.
Nelly’s going to hurt himself fooling around at night out there by the stream.
Worst he could do is drop in the water or stub his toe. Nothing dangerous out there. And don’t call him that.
Nothing edible out there seems.
Nothing edible? Are you trying to be a wise-ass?
I think I’m succeeding in being a wise-ass. You, on the other hand, are a total failure of a man. My mother was right, I shouldn’t have married a Jew.
Now this is about my religion? Who the fuck do you think you are?
I’m your son’s mother and I’m telling you, I’m this close to selling him.

*

The stream and West End Avenue behind me, pine trees and snow in front of me. In Bombay the fall brings a wet breeze and a slight chill and it starts to get dark early. The magic hour becomes harder to catch but now I can just grasp it. I’m going to kill a buffalo, and while he’s trying to be sneaky at that.
My boots are laced up to the knee, the bottoms of my pants tucked in, my shirt and coat buttoned with the cuffs tucked under my gloves and my scarf. A matching set, wool from Russia. Bombay’s got actually got some nice shops, but Dad says the Chamber of Commerce is a bunch of douchebags cause they won’t let the hunters and the fishermen in. Still, good bow and arrow shop too where I got my black leather quiver and the finest eagle feather arrows.
Ease the spring-loaded back door shut, set out towards the fallen log upstream in the Mayor’s property. Derek Yamasaki. The gods of the forest have a sense of humor, I guess, making a natural bridge in a construction magnate’s backyard. The stream’s shallow enough to wade but I don’t like to get my feet wet, and anyway, the sneaking around is fun.
Cross the log bridge, pull out an arrow and ready my shot. Eyes adjust slowly to the lack of light. No moon. Lots of stars. Scrubby land rising to mountains in which there doesn’t seem to be much buffalo.

*

We crossed the river, wandered down it, and up an, um, tributary. But I think we might need to cross the tributary at some point.
Nothing but a stream.
So.
So these Japanese guys are working on this fishing boat. They’re on the ocean catching tuna.
Tuna – like the kind they have in Bombay?
Well yeah, but these guys are using this huge boat with huge nets, the kind you don’t see anymore. They processed their catch and put in cans right there. So this one crew is on this boat, a cannery boat, and they’re in the ocean near Japan.
The Pacific Ocean.
Right. Now simultaneously, a film producer is leaving New York – that’s in Eastern America – and going to an island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.
With the cannery boat.
No. They’re different kinds of boats entirely, on different missions. The film producer –
What’s a film?
What’s a film?
Yeah, what’s a film?

*

I find some white rocks and make a little circle, inside of which I put some dry brush – easy to find this time of year – and start a small fire to sing my prayer.
Please, gods, send me buffalo, so that I may live long and prosper.
Please, gods, send me buffalo, so that I may eat of its flesh.
Please, gods, send me buffalo, so that I may use its hide for shelter.
Please, gods, send me buffalo, so that I may use its bones as tools.
Please, gods, send me buffalo, so that I may live long and prosper.
The prayer is old and has to be sung loudly and clearly, so that the gods, who are somewhat hart of hearing, can understand. Then they may or may not send a buffalo, and they may or may not send many buffalo. My mom says the prayer hasn’t worked in a long time, that the gods must have lost their hearing entirely, or fallen asleep, or worse, died. But my dad keeps telling me about the peripherals, so I keep looking at the places I’m not looking, focusing on the edges of my vision so hard my eye muscles hurt. But sometimes in the magic hour I see things.

*

I can’t believe you never heard of a film. You must be from the boonies. I’m a little bit scared, I’ll be honest, but since we’re both almost stumbling I figure I’ll be alright.
What was that?
I didn’t hear anything.
Smoke. Look. In front of us, to the left, a thin stream of smoke. Hard to see in the starlight isn’t it. Be quiet – listen.
Swinging his hair back, smoothing down his beard, he tilts his head up and closes his eyes. He seems to recognize what he’s hearing. He hums along.
We must be close to the edge of town.
What was that all about?
Just an old hunter’s prayer. But look, that fire is out. Let’s try to find whoever lit it.
You sure we should do that? If that’s a hunter, I mean, it is getting dark.
Come on, we’ll be the charming travelers and get a place to stay for the night, maybe even a meal. I got the whole shtick down.
Shtick? I didn’t say that, just followed the stranger towards where the fire was lit.

The Air Down There

2006-10-01T16:15:00.000-07:00

The New York Post, along with the Metro commuter newspaper and several television stations, recently carried the story of Amit Friedlander, a young adult diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease.

Amit was president of my class at Stuyvesant High School. Intelligent, athletic, and with a charming tone and cadence to his speaking voice, he was a natural leader. Destined for success. Four years later, his disease, though unlikely to be life-threatening, has called this into question.

Today I saw Amit for the first time since he introduced President Bill Clinton at our graduation in 2002. In 2001, we were two of some three thousand students told to run north as the second – not the first – of the Twin Towers collapsed. Another one of those students, Lila Nordstrom, brought a few of us together for a news conference to discuss Amit’s condition. Though work made me miss the actual conference, the fact that so many of my former classmates were still there to fill me in is telling. Because so many years after the fact, it has taken Amit’s case to shock us all into demanding answers.

We hope that his case is isolated, but we fear it is not. Why did they send us back to school so soon, fires still burning, toxins still circulating in the air? Who made that call and why did they make it? And, perhaps most importantly, who will be held accountable for the impending financial consequences of this public health debacle?

Lila’s pet cause is health care and insurance, and as she filled me in on the news conference, she made a scary point. As Stuyvesant’s class of 2002 emerges from their college bubbles to seek employment, many of us will find jobs – if we find jobs at all – that have poor or non-existent health insurance. Like the very young and the very old, we are a population in dire need of governmental aid. Yes, we may have all sorts of fancy degrees and titles, but that doesn’t change the fact that we’re broke.

There’s millions floating around out there, going to this or that 9-11 cause – widows, firefighters, widows of firefighters. In their time of emotional and financial need, millions of Americans stepped up to help them. Somehow, though, thousands of New Yorkers were overlooked. If a widow’s pain and loss of income can merit monetary aid, then Amit’s pain, and our risk of pain, certainly does. Perhaps not cash-in-hand, but a cost-free health insurance plan for all those who had to breath in air that was dangerous for months after Condoleeza Rice’s office declared it breathable.

The summer after I graduated I went back to Stuy and peeked in the front doors. The entire building was sealed off, from the inside, with plastic tape. Apparently the asbestos levels were so high that the building required a thorough cleaning – the type of cleaning sometimes avoided because it can actually stir up more asbestos than already present. In Stuy’s case, however, the levels were already up there. Guess where they were the highest? The upholstered seats of the auditorium, the auditorium me and two hundred other seniors spent two months in preparing the final SING! of our high school careers.

I’m going to the doctor, and I’m sending Condy my bill.

Shepherds Pie? I Prefer Humble…

2006-09-26T10:20:00.000-07:00

(http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/update/bn091806.htm - Allen’s article from which his op-ed is drawn. The op-ed is restricted access so most quotes are from the article.)

John L. Allen Jr., the National Catholic Reporter’s Vatican correspondent, was recently on the op-ed page of the New York Times defending Pope Benedict’s controversial comments on Islam. “Seen in context,” Allen writes, the Pope’s citation of Byzantine emperor Michael II Paleologus was “not intended as an anti-Islamic broadside.” Instead, Benedict’s real target was “not Islam but the West, especially its tendency to separate reason and faith.” Allen calls this “German professor meets soundbyte culture.”

I do sympathize. Modern media (except, of course, our beloved blog form) can be cruel and unforgiving when it comes to issues of context. But Allen’s context, drawn from his years of experience covering the Vatican, might be better called gloss – he only quotes the speech’s most controversial five words (“things only evil and inhuman”), focusing most of his column space on this Pope’s more “muscular” and “hawkish” stance towards Islam than his predecessor, the late, great, John Paul II. Benedict’s words are but the grain of sand at the center of Allen’s pearl.

The National Catholic Reporter is unaffiliated with the Vatican, but Allen’s article (much of which appeared on the NCR website) is one of many that defend this Papal Bullshit. And there is a pattern to their spin: the tacit acknowledgment of guilt, or at least that such comments might be inappropriate, and then a redirection, reaffirming the Orientalist legacy of our early scholars. Maintaining their Manichaeism.

Allen offers what should be an even more damning quotation, as it comes directly from then Cardinal Ratzinger, unfiltered and unframed: "One has to have a clear understanding that [Islam] is not simply a denomination that can be included in the free realm of a democratic society.” Allen then explains, in what almost sounds like an excuse for the Pope’s radical views, that the issue is one of reciprocity. “The most notorious example,” he writes, is that “the Saudis contributed $20 million to build Europe's largest mosque in Rome, [but] Christians cannot build churches in Saudi Arabia.”

This demand for equivalency is presumptive, arrogant, and reveals the worst kind of evangelical sentiment. I believe in the right to worship, but I also believe in the right of self-determination. And isn’t the export of Western liberal ideals what got us into this mess in the first place? The irony is that Benedict’s radicalism regarding Islam means that he and bin Laden, who (apparently) just called on Westerners to convert, have more in common than they thought.

George W. Bush was recently heard speaking of a “Third Awakening,” a new era of religious activity. In the realm of politics, certainly, this much is clear. From Islamic Republics to Benedict’s policy recommendations to Bush’s own personal crusade, religion – often times apocalyptic in focus – is infusing the debate with radicalism and a fundamentally anti-democratic spirit. It is not religion itself, but the inability to compromise associated with its leadership, that is at fault.

Amidst all this, the Bush administration is bringing the executive branch to unprecedented levels of dominance in a government previously of checks and balances. Benedict seems to be aiding this process, if not literally, than at least ideologically. His arguments against the dehellenization of Christianity, that is, “stripping it of its Greco-Roman encrustations and returning it to a state of "pure faith," actually strengthen his own executive position, including secular affairs in his own spiritual authority.

This is not a clash of civilizations – it is a battle of shepherds, and the sheep stand to lose.

Bombay Teaser

2006-09-25T07:32:00.000-07:00

My mom yells at me a lot.

Did you do the dishes? Did you? Good, now go outside. Can’t have a moment of peace with you in this house. Go clean the spears. The spears have blood from yesterday’s hunt and I won’t have blood in here. Just cleaned the floors. I know you didn’t put it there. But you might put it here with all that fucking around by the stream. And since you’re not old enough to hunt its your job to clean the spears, now clean the fucking spears and then clean your fucking hands because you better not bring any bloody hands inside this house.

It’s not that bad. Out in the back of the house there’s a stream, it runs behind all the houses on our block. Mountain water. The mountains are behind the stream – horizon to horizon, tall, Mount Stephen twenty thousand feet easy according to the other people on West End Avenue. Snowcaps even in summer, deep green tree cover down to the streams and the town.

West End Avenue the western edge of Bombay, a town that hides at the bottom of its mountain. The human presence in a Japanese painting. The town has two art museums and a sushi joint we sometimes go to with fresh salmon from where our stream meets some other streams and becomes the Stephen River. Dad said he’d take me fishing there when I’m old enough. He also said he’d take me to hunt the buffalo.

Happy Patriot Day

2006-09-16T11:28:00.000-07:00

So, happy Patriot Day.

What, you didn’t know? By official proclamation, September 11th is known as Patriot Day. And so it has been for a number of years, making the national holiday one of the few disappointments in a string of linguistic victories – your Death Taxes, Enemy Combatants, and, of course, Freedom Fries. And though I’m tempted to say enough already, that these words sound hollow and bureaucratic, that the game is played out, I can reluctantly agree in principle to the President’s strategy. It is, after all, the natural course of government to bend language to ideology. Until this, the fourth (fifth?) Patriot Day, this lazy ignorance mixed with quiet acceptance suited me fine.

But behind the allegedly apolitical nature of the day’s events – Chris Matthews was quick to inform us that President Bush, placing a wreath in a memorial pool, was acting as a head of state, not as a member of the GOP – I found a distinctly political reflection in the shiny patriotic gloss, one I think my fellow unconvinced ought to find distasteful. Ann Coulter was right to spit her venom, though she had her target wrong. It is not the “9-11 Widows” that are to blame, it is the architects of Patriot Day, manipulating our worst fears and biases.

That many used September 11th for political purposes is an obvious, almost trite thing to say, and today’s events should have been nothing new, but the GOP’s attempts are often disguised, mostly from themselves, by a fundamentalist interpretation of country as homeland, or, better yet, mother/fatherland. To those behind the Patriot Act, and to those forced to do the Patriot Act (that’s Jeffery Ross’s material), waving a flag is as natural as burning one is a perversion of nature. Like the defense of the hetero-normative white wedding: Adam and Eve, man, not Adam and Steve.

In this second-grade rhetoric, however, the newly empowered morals movement forgets that it is itself like Adam, given the right to conquer his xenophobic fears by naming God’s numerous, unknown, unclassified, wild and possibly dangerous creations. Because this is not just a struggle of civilizations, it is a struggle for civilization – Western, particularly American, civilization. And just so we’re clear, America’s a woman – a blonde, corn-fed, Daisy Duke Desdemona – who needs our devoted protection, from walls to government departments, and two days worth of pampering. Why not make Independence Day and Patriot Day the new Memorial Day and Labor Day, and just call summer the Patriot Season? And when it’s over, you can’t wear white, or red, or blue.

God named her woman, man tucked inside the word as neatly as Adam’s rib inside Eve; it was Shakespeare who called her Desdemona, and gave her Iago as a defense against what racial pseudo-science would later call miscegenation. Now the cabal in the White House has sublimated the storyline, but still, we have Jessica Lynch, an over-hyped reminder from the second of our revenge fantasies. A true Patriot, that Jessica Lynch. Went back to the hospital just so we could rescue her. And her name, how can you not love her?

Patriot Day is about indulging these revenge fantasies, reveling in them, rolling around like a pig in shit. And the fantasies are delusions, because the entire thing has taken on the quality of a dream, aided by the barrage of televised reenactments and dramatizations. Amidst all this, however, a critical tone is developing, one I think is important. On the safely pro-establishment side of things, the controversy over ABC’s miniseries shows that some facts are up for interpretation, and at the most extreme, films like “Loose Change” are completely rejecting the government’s explanation of the events. Resistance to the linguistic ascendance of Patriot Day and all that implies has made strange bedfellows of these different sorts of doubters.

Perhaps it is a libertarian reaction – keep your filthy paws off my calendar. Or perhaps it is a bias against unilateralism – people from almost two hundred countries died that day. But mostly I think it is a defense of emotional property, of the right to react and cope how one will. Because once the revenge fantasy is indulged, the neoconservative mindstate is achieved and the victory becomes psychological.

I do consider myself a patriot, in some sense of the word, but not the kind they made a day for. Because in the past two months over 3,000 Iraqi civilians have died, and though it doesn’t mean exactly the same thing to me, it is still enough to make me doubt the blind faith and hero worship of Patriot Day.

So happy September 11th. Next year in Damascus?