Dislocations

Pipe Organ Restoration Concert

2012-01-30T08:44:00.000-08:00

Praise Him With Organ was the name of a mostly sacred and but still somewhat secular recital in recognition of the restoration of a rare pipe organ housed in St. Michael Church on 9th street. It was one of the most unique music experiences I’ve ever had and it’s not just because classical and choral music have never been on any playlist of mine.

The concert was held in a church, the audience sat in the wooden pews. The organ and the organist were in the balcony and in the back of the church, far above the pews. Unless you turned around and arched your head at a distinctly uncomfortable angle, the organist performed unseen. Even if were willing to risk a neck cramp, you still only caught a few glimpses of the organist’s back, maybe some elbow.

Part of the live music experience is watching a musician play; for musical theater or some other type of show, the orchestra is hidden. The point of those performances is not the music, it’s the show and the story it tells or extravaganza it presents, be it opera or musical comedy. Sometimes at large concerts, even sans show, the charisma of the celebrity on stage, the way he or she personifies the song, can overcome the actual musicality (or lack of it) of the performance.

Here, there was no distraction to the music, no visual point of focus to dilute the aural experience. Surrounded by colorful, stunning religious art – St. Michael is home to some of the best sacred art in the entire state of New Jersey – you merely sat and listened, your mind was what you heard because there was no stage to hold your attention, other than the intrinsic abstractions of your own consciousness.

The story behind this particular organ is fascinating. The church was founded in 1867, serving the then mainly Irish immigrant community. The St. Michael organ is a 1925 E.M Skinner Opus 542, which is similar to the one at St. John the Divine Cathedral in NYC. Similar is the key word because the pipe organ uses pipes – St. Michael’s has 2,702 pipes – which are fluted with wooden resonators, much like a whistle – and the pipes are placed through out the church, literally embedded into the architecture. Because the instrument must be customized to the building, the organs can only be similar to each other, each one is unique. According to notes in the brochure given out at the event, in the 1920s, EM Skinner was a premier organ manufacturer, but the company went out of business during the 1930s and as musical tastes change, pipe organs fell out of fashion. While Skinner made 2,500 (St. Michael’s was # 542) only 190 are believed to still exist and only 20 are believed to be in their original condition, making the St. Michael instrument rare indeed, so rare in fact that the Joseph Bradley Foundation, which is dedicated to preserving Skinner organs, agreed to underwrite the bulk of the cost restoring the instrument – $400,000, a five-year project by Peragallo Pipe Organ Company of Paterson, whose founder of the company first installed the instrument. “We are continuing the history,” said John Peragallo III, the latest generation of a family renowned in the tight knit pipe organ community.

As might be expected, Bach (Prelude in G Major BWV 568) opened the recital, which featured various works of organ specific composition. I particularly liked Carillon, which had a splendidly eerie feel – it’s hard to escape the Cabinet of Dr. Calgari/Phantom of the Opera connotations one has with the pipe organ's inherently spooky sound.

My favorite though was A Grand Instrumental Procession by George Frideric Handel – within a context of a march-type, steady rhythm this folk melody appeared, dancing around the other notes and it was echoed. You see the pipe organ has these things called stop, that create an accent to the sound so the it mimics say a French horn and here the melody would be repeated by a different instrumental mimic, it was almost a dissonance, this strange melody echo, separate but also contained by the main musical theme. Amazing this orchestral fullness was made by one instrument as well as the fact the musician the keyboard was not an octopus.

As the notes to the performance said, the pipe organ envelopes you. You become encompassed by the sound, enhanced by the fact that you are not seeing any performer. The sound was loud, but warm and while electronics are used in some of the keyboard wiring, the amplification is all acoustic, through the touring flutes that align the nave of the church. Hidden behind the organ of course are huge bellows that create the wind for the flutes.

This being an organ in a church, the program's intermission – between the opening and closing musical performances – featured Bishop Thomas Donato, who blessed the organ and the fluteswith holy water form an aspergillum and incense from a censer. The bishop is a downtown Jersey City native, who graduated from the now closed St. Michael’s High School. At the reception after I saw him talking to another born and bred JCite about growing up on 7th near Division Street.

After the blessing was a hymn, which was sung with organ accompaniment, When in Our Music God is Glorified. The song had this striking couplet: “And did not Jesus Sing a Psalm that night/when utmost Evil strove against the light?”, referencing the Garden of Gethsemane the night before the crucifixion. Hey, the concert was in a church, blessing and prayers were part of the program. The finale was a truly grand performance of a Toccata in b minor. According to my dictionary, a Toccata is a composition for a keyboard instrument written in a free style that includes full chords and elaborate runs and is intended to show off the player's technique.

In addition to the reception, you were able to see the organ up-close and I got a chance to ask some questions of one of the Peragallos about the organ, it’s quite a contraption, as much a musical machine as a musical instrument. It has a real steam punk feel because the technology is old fashioned, real vintage yet the sound it makes fills an entire church.

What a unique musical experience. The sound wasn’t just magnificent, it was an aural embodiment of magnificence.

The Little Lebowski… Shop

2012-01-28T04:47:00.000-08:00

The dude abides… on Thompson Street in the village. The Big Lebowski is one of the greatest films ever made. If you don’t agree, you do not understand cinema. In fact, I don’t want to know you; go read another blog. The Little Lebowski is the film's disney store. A cardboard cutout of Jeff Bridges in in the icon icsweater standing there on the sidewalk, plain as day in the winter night.

According to the proprietor, whose name I didn’t get but let me take some pictures and who was a friendly Greenwich Village retailer, the hole in the wall shop started as a comic book store, and what looked like stencils of underground adult comic book adorned parts of the ceiling, a remnant of that incarnation. He said that he carried some Lebowksi items, but about two years ago it started to take off and the store became solely devoted the film.

All the items, which included a lot of t-shirts some of which are exclusive to the store, were quality stuff. The drinking game, the DVDs of course, weird stuff like Walter action figures!, cool stickers with lines from the film, and there were arty film tributes – a toilet with the famed rethort against the rug pissers – At Least I’m Housebroken! On an ctual toliet, 0r the landlord in the tights and leaves, as he was dressed for the recital or a blow up doll representing Marge Lebowski doing her art. An homage to the movie, a fan recreation – the store is a both a desintaiton and a specialty retailer. I don’t really buy this sort of memorbilia, but I am glad I can. Knowing this place exists… is well…. I forgot what I was saying.

The stores claims it’s the first shop for achievers, and proud we are of all of them. The Village, it was always sort of touristy and is still bohemian and it is satisfying to see how well Lebowsky appreciation fits into the timeless funkiness, in the parlance of our times, that will always be Thompson Street, just south of Washington Square Par. The block has yet to be completely assimilated into the NYU Campus. One thing the Cohen Brothers film does is celebrate, through comedy and cinema, the suvival of 60s counter culutre ethos (at least it's an ethos) into the 90s; the Little Lebowski Shop is located in the heart of where people first coalesced around the ideas contained in the ideals to which the Dude dedicates his life.

The Village is the rug that ties the whole room or history together.

In this age of wonders, you can even buy the merchandise on line too. Website: www.littlelebowskishop.com

V. Fiore’s Deli

2012-01-22T10:13:00.000-08:00

This building has been fallow for years. It was an upscale pizza joint, Lombardi’s or something, I can’t remember exactly. Not bad but nothing special. Construction resumed a few weeks ago, progress has been made, big letters on the roof Studio 17, another hair salon. I wish it well. It’s on a peninsula type street, Monmouth, Newark, First. As part of the construction they removed the yellow exterior revealing the colors of the Italian flag, red, white and green, thus revealing the gone but not forgotten original establishment, Fiore’s Deli.

I caught the tail end of their multi-decade reign when I first came to town in the early 90s. I guess now only the bakery on Newark is the last vestige of Italian Village, as old time locals like to call the western side of Downtown near the Heights borderlands. It was only open for lunch; not on Sundays. It was legendary for the quality of its food, simply one of the great Italian delis ever, with the salami, pepperoni, capicolla, and provolone hanging down like delectable stalactites. Fresh fish fillet sandwiches every Friday (or was that only during Lent).

For a few years, during the height of my freelancing period where I was working mainly out of the apartment, I went their weekly. It was around the time the Internet first dawned in a serious way. I had written an articles, actually wrote a coupla three like that, which include a history and glossary of terms like browser and newsgroup. Believe or not, people expected big things back then from the Information Super Highway. Anyway I gave one of the guys (for some reason, only guys worked there) to give to his son who was studying computers. It was still family owned, and there was a location in Hoboken. They were very Italian, gesticulated when they talked but sincerely warm and welcoming and going there was a always fun and enjoyable.

And the food was simply awesome. They had these rolls, man oh man, Italian Break perfection, and fresh mozzarella as creamy as fresh churned butter. The taste buds of my memory can recall the smoked turkey with fresh mozzarella and sun direct tomatoes, drippy with olive oil. The epitome of the ideal lunch.

The born and bred Jersey City folks, talk to them about Fiore’s, they can get weepy.

Seeing the old exterior, chipped, in pieces, back for a while during this rehabilitation phase was a nice reminder and obviously a brief one. Memories I hadn’t thought about for years came flooding back. There are plenty of places in town where you can get a decent sandwich; there are no places where you can get a great sandwich. There is no place like Fiore’s here or in Hoboken and even in New York, nothing like the quality. The family was still running the place when I ate there, had an interest. Seeing the old exterior exposed again, after more than a decade was a unique experience in and of itself, sort of like Charlton Heston seeing the Statue of Liberty head on the beach at the end of Planet of the Apes.

Even then, then being when I first discovered Fiore’s, it had a faux old fashion look, a little corny, almost like somebody’s fantasy of what an Italian Deli should look , but inside was it was genuine. I don’t know what generation of Fiore’s gave up the ghost, why they never expended, extended their hours. The foodie culture, like the Internet, was growing and back then it was so obvious and Fiore’s seemed like such a natural fit, but it was not to be. In fact, I remember the selections getting narrower, one of the guys died. You know you’re in trouble when the beverage refrigerator hasn’t been restocked. But it was part of the city, well since 1912 according to the sign on the wall.

Nothing lasts… if only chipped paint could talk… pretty awesome this echo from the past. I wonder what happened to those guys, that fresh mozzarella, the sundried tomatoes all drippy with olive oil….

Snow on Palisades & Newark

2012-01-21T17:45:00.000-08:00

Autumn had more than six weeks to finish up when we got snow and ice, the winter mix of Halloween 2011. Winter has been with us for a month now, nary a flake nor flurry. In Fact, warm days mostly, few really cold or chilly even, a couple downright balmy, confusing our coat selection. Then the snow came, only a couple of three inches, enough of a reminder of what winter should be.

I had a doctor’s appointment on Palisades, the Heights, more the edge of than square in the heart of the heights; everything went well and as I always do, I walked back to my downtown abode, form Palisades down Newark Ave. It’s a fine walk, past the ominous high school, down the hill, the cemetery, Turnpike overpasses, freight train pond and woods. It’s the borderland, where the hill country of the heights meshes with the lowlands of downtown.

Was this a statement being made? Why would somebody apparently etch AIDS on this rusting lock? The more you keep your eyes open the more you see that’s simply inexplicable.

There’s giddiness when it snows. You want to see the snow, feel it, like when you were a kid and school was called off. What I love about it the most, at least when it first falls, everything is change, transformed, covered with the cold, wet white. It’s fun to take pictures for the sole reason that perceptions are altered along with our familiar terrain.

Pause in Trasition

2012-01-21T08:30:00.000-08:00

Medicaid and Union Health plans are still being accepted by this pharmacy, which has moved two store fronts down, now in a former 99 cents store, which closed instead of adding not including sales tax to its marquee. Well maybe it has to do with land lords, the dominance of development companies on downtown lives and commerce. The pharmacist has been in this storefront a long time, decades, long enough to have this classic storefront sign, optimistic 60s era art deco design. What will happen to this large outdoor sign; obviously it didn’t move with the pharmacist and I can’t imagine a new pharmacy repurposing the sign.

The gate is usually up so this is a rare picture of the inside, now cleared of all the shelving, products and life. Decals left on the door as if they were selling lottery tickets just the day before. Hooks and marks on the walls, shelving gone, the aisles clear of aisles, harsh, bare, fluorescent lighting. Clues galore of what used to be here, giving the appearance the clearing out was sudden and there was no reason to entirely erase the remnants. That will come, who knows what sort of likely yuppie establishment will appear in the irrevocable march of gentrification. I mean, I hope it’s good and I don’t even use this pharmacist and besides the pharmacist is still in business. I’m just saying… otherwise, this picture is a moment in time. What preceded this pause is gone and what will follow that has yet to arrive. We are seeing change, pragmatic, inevitable and a little sad, like the tattered awning with its promise of hablamos Espanola. The new order is here and whatever cannot adapt will be disposed of.

Fruit, Unpeeled

2012-01-21T07:43:00.000-08:00

Winter outside; saw this plate of fruit, unpeeled. I’ve been thinking about it, thinking about what to say about it since I took this picture two weeks ago. I think it was being used as a model for a still life painting by a local artist with Monet (or was that Manet?) aspirations but by the I saw it no artist, paint brush, canvas or easel in sight. Just all this enclosed juicy Vitamin C. Winter outside, this plate reminds us of shipping, the fruit all from southern climes, here for us to prevent scurvy, give us tangy comfort from the chill of facing mortality.

Grab Your Branch and Escape

2012-01-15T05:18:00.000-08:00

He’s being pursued. He grasps a branch, leaves fluttering in the breeze as he runs, leaping above the rooftops... escape... transcendence... ascending... into a pale sky.

On 4th & Brunswick, there is the newest mural in our fair city.
Isaac Fortoul is the artist. Website: fortoulpresents.com and 40owls.com.

He tells me grew up in the city, the man depicted is escaping from the city. He’s holding onto something that is important, trying to save it. The artist is a gentle, soft spoken cat and he seems uncomfortable trying to verbalize what the painting means. Plus it’s cold. The chore of muralizing is more difficult in winter.

People work hard in the city, especially these days where wages are stagnant and often precarious and the one dependable constant is the rising cost of every damn thing. You have to work all the time it seems and someone always want a piece of you –seems that way some days, many days. This painting criticizes the survival of the fittest mentality pervading urban landscapes; it suggests the promise of escape, by showing both the attempt and the anxiety of making that attempt. Maybe the attempt is sufficient enough because in that anxiety Issac includes a tangible feeling of hope.

The illustration reminds me of the work of Don Martin, the Mad Magazine cartoonist. The runner, wearing muted orange jeans, blue jacket and oversized, orange striped sneakers has long, gawky legs. It is not the stride of an athlete, yet he perseveres, bounding over the rooftops, a congested field of hurdles. The running would be easier if he let go of the branches – he might even get away – but if he lets go, why run at all? The suggestion of movement in this mural is uncanny. It feels active, more like an animation clip than a picture on brick exterior. A pretty difficult effect to pull off on a canvas so massive as the side of a building.

The city skyline is drab, dehumanizing, gray and black, the odd geometry of rectangles and partial cylinders is repeated throughout. There’s no deviation from conformity in this Babylon. Claustrophobic and stifling, if the runner’s ascension fails and this nightmarish Gotham swallows him and the precious branch back up, the fate is nothing less than death. One detail I find particularly endearing, at the lower right hand portion of the work, the gray and black buildings spill out of the picture’s frame onto the actual red brick of the back of what is a liquor store, a subliminal reinforcement the relevance of the theme of this mural, a commentary on the urban life in which the physical painting is actually situated.

The branch symbolizes humanity, or perhaps truth. It is grace, the better part of his nature or is he like Prometheus and stolen fire from the gods, or does he carry the branch from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and he’s just another Eden refugee on the run?
While it is not always so apparent, survival is always a moment by moment condition. What strikes me most about this mural of escape, is not in the feeling of being pursued, but the feeling that the man and the precious branch is getting away. He’s going to make it the viewer concludes, at least I do. There’s optimism to the honesty in this witty illustration.

After a few freakily unseasonable warm Saturdays, today winter returned and feels like January. There’s a gelid tinge to the breeze, the sky is overcast. Snowflakes of an anemic flurry appear. The mural, which doesn’t yet have a name, is nearly complete. Isaac is adding only a few small slashes around edges of the building, suggesting welding marks, which echo the stiches around the sneakers and seams of the clothes worn by the figure. The black marks create an almost subconscious symmetry, enhancing the overall balance of the composition, especially the gray and black city which fills half the picture and the upper orange and blue torso against an ultra-beige sky. Although the colors used are muted tones, the sense of movement makes the work seem to shimmer.

Weather permitting, tomorrow Isaac will put a sealant over the exterior to prevent degrading. He’s been out here a few weeks, mainly on Saturday it seems. I happen to pass by this particular corner and it’s been fun watching this mural – and its blend of starkness and transcendence, anxiety and hope, grays and blacks, orange and blues and an ultra-beige – evolve these past few weeks. Isaac Fortoul has made a compelling and original contribution to Jersey City’s growing collection of outdoor murals.

Wall Guy

2012-01-12T04:09:00.000-08:00

Illegibility is still present; see that object that sorta looks like a soda cup with straw, like the kind you would get at a fast food establishment, near his temple. Sorta is the key word, not soda. Illegibility seems to be the aspect that creates the line between street art and defacement of public property. Decipherable or not, graffiti reminds us that our urban landscapes are products of our humanity. We are the city. Otherwise, an impressive illustration. I liked this guy floating on this wall, on the side of building in our warehouse district. Some kind of construction going on, probably won't be around much longer. He looks like he is talking but he looks none too bright, appears agitated, like what he is saying about the subject is not important but he is agitated with good reason and the subject affects us all.

Meter Collection

2012-01-12T04:00:00.000-08:00

An ordinary day, another morning, the day city workers collect change collected in the parking meter. Coins are in the thing that they empty into the locked thing that’s on the thing with the wheels. He never sees much less touch a coin. He’s talking on the cellphone. The winter has been stalled, not as cold as it could be this morning. Hub cap in the foreground, reminding us the night before has a secret to keep.

Terrarium Display

2012-01-12T03:54:00.000-08:00

Terrarium Display on the wall at the Warehouse. I had one once, tried to keep an anole in a terrarium, it lived just a few days, the plants soon followed. These obviously are professional and solely botanical. More ecological than hot house flowers, terrariums contain an ecosystem in a bottle, or a jar. Is life light? If yes, then this indeed catches lightening in a bottle. Speed up that film and you’ll see that it’s true. Mason Jars, candy jars, beverage dispensers, recycling household items of a pre-plastic age into self-contained worlds, the past affirmed in the display by the classic, green tinged glass bottles of Coca-Cola. No terrariums in the soda bottles? Those ecosystems exist on the microscopic level.

Politcal Ideas for Our Political Year

2012-01-02T11:48:00.000-08:00

One of my credos when starting this blog was no porn, no politics. Like New Years Resolutions, credos are made to be broken.

I still do not feel inclined towards overt prurience for prurience’s sake but from time to time, politics has reared its not always ugly head. Credos be damned, 2012 will be a year dominated by politics, so lets get used to that fact from the get-go

Politics – frustrating, often tedious, but unavoidable. We live in a Democracy, for the system to work we must participate. In one way or another, politics eventually must be addressed. During a presidential election year, that discussion will be constant. I just wish less horse race talk and sports metaphor saturated commentary on candidate’s winnability and more discussion of political ideas.

My basic rule for this blog is to write about stuff I feel like writing about. I don’t feel like writing about politics, as they are covered in the news, and the idea of making a candidate endorsement is ludicrous. Examining political ideas, another matter entirely. That’s why the tag on the blog is political ideas, not politics. It’s hard to separate politics from political ideas and even when separate that division lasts much less longer than their comingling, but I’m going to try.

Not everything about politics is bad. Rhetoric can have clever turns of phrase and speeches can contain some of the best writing of the day. It’s easy to say throw the bums out or some other narrow view of politicians and lets face it, the easy way is the road most travel. I resist this easy way, the world is too complicated, the solutions to our problems require too much thought, deliberation and effort. I have found most politicians (I know a few, interviewed more than few) sincerely enter public service to make the world a better place. The paradox is they are human, their iindiviudal ideology may differ from yours and finding common ground can be impossible, and that they can hold contradictory positions of dabbling in corruption, accept some of form – and they’re many forms – of bribery, yet also still retain the conviction they ware working to make things better. Abdicating your responsibility as a citizen by painting them all with the “dem bums” label is anti-intellectual, immature and nihilistic.

I criticize politicians; there are more of them that I hate than like. The ones I love I can count on one hand. When political commentary boils down to Bush Sucks or Obamacare, I roll my eyes, often bile seeps up my esophagus. Here, I will try to be honest, intelligent and focus mainly on ideas. I’m not trying to convince anybody about whom to vote for. I do not care if you share some, all or none of my progressive political beliefs. By reflecting on the issues, and political ideas, maybe we can make better choices with the limited choices with which we are presented.

In 2012 we face what will be a pivotal – aren’t they always thus – presidential election.

Both nationally and locally, 2012 will also be a political coming out party of sorts for Gen Y. Funny how Gen X – the Friends generation – seems not cover as many birth years. Boomers stretch from 1945 to 1964; but it seems that people born after 1974 consider themselves Y, not X. People born in say 1992, who will be voting in their first presidential election, consider themselves Gen X. Well, let the marketers figure out the official designations so they can decide which consumer products to sell to whom, my point is that this cohort is large and more politically aware than Generation X (where was the Friends voting episode or the voting scene in Reality Bites! When did a character in a Kevin Smith film ever vote? These Reagan teenagers can seem indifferent to the fate of the world) Or the Baby Boomers, who might have made a global clamor during the Vietnam era and for whom the voting age was lowered to 18, but they failed to elect McGovern over Richard Nixon and their voter turnout consistently declined in every subsequent election.

Generation Y seems to have a different attitude, both nationally and in town. Their generational peer pressure is to vote, the opposite of Boom/X. They’re a lot more uppity and given the world in which they now enter adulthood, who can blame them.

I make no bones about it, I’m a Democrat. I’m a New Deal Democrat. I like to say that my political beliefs come from the songs of Woody Guthrie and the Sermon on the Mount, which is clever but the truth is complicated, especially when it comes to transforming those beliefs into political action. I believe the role of government is to do for people what people cannot do for themselves. The government must do more than protect private property rights. However flawed or ineffectual the Democratic Party can be, they come closer to my political philosophy than the republicans and voting third party is voting for a republican. Disagree if you want, I’m not saying the situation is ideal, I’m not promising or expect utopia. I’m just stating my feelings about the situation. I am expressing political ideas and the values through which I arrived at them.

I love FDR and I love Bill Clinton. The country was better when they left office than when they took office. That’s just a fact. You may say it wasn’t because of them, but I think you’re wrong and would probably like to have a conversation about say in a bar, but please don’t start with the Comments on the blog. Clinton, at least during my lifetime, was the only president that about can be said the country was better off when he left in 2000 than when he came in, in 1992.

Supply Side Economics was tried and failed. The tax burden on the investor class was lessened; they invested in companies with factories in foreign lands whose workers were and are willing to accept slave wages. In the 80s and the 00s, Real income dropped in the U.S., the middle class was depleted, and the nation’s deficit skyrocketed. In the 90s, Clinton’s “third way” take on Keynesian Economics reversed this trend, eliminated the deficit, created government surpluses, we regained full employment and incomes rose. Bush II reinstated Supply Side with a vengeance, the financial sector, unchecked, has wreaked havoc here and abroad. A truly retarded phrase is being spread about, “Obama Socialism.” The fact is that Keynesianism is still Capitalism. FDR & Clinton, in effect, saved capitalism from itself

I support the Occupy Movement, even participated some but my worry is that they don’t seem motivated to participate in the electoral process. They have the right idea in that participation in a Democracy is more than just voting, but it is also more than just a demonstration too. I follow a few of the Occupied places on Facebook and one time there was a survey, asking about political stuff, including activities like do you vote or have you ever written a letter to an editor. But there was no question about attending a town, city, school board of other type of legislative meeting. People criticize the movement for not specifying issues, although they are affecting the debate and may be affecting our consciousness, but they are falling short of pragmatic actions towards implementing change, at least right now.

Real change takes effort and time. Politics requires consensus, coalitions and compromises. The dilemma is that people starve in the short term, not the long term.

I’m voting Obama in 2012. My lack of enthusiasm for Obama is overwhelmed by my fear of another Republican president at this time in our country’s economic history.

How does a progressive assess the Obama administration? It’s impossible not to feel some disappointment, he’s lost the sheen of excitement of his election campaign. He can still conjure up a compelling turn of phrase, but his rhetorical style, in contrast to Senator Barack, seems fatigued as President. Hard to deny he’s been a little more to the center than originally thought. The economy still sucks; the wealthy, I mean, a-ahem, job creators are getting record high tax breaks, paying record low tax rates and creating no jobs. The healthcare bill, which has a lot of great things, fell short of Universal Care, he caved on the Public option, the benefits of the legislation have yet to kick in and it is uncertain how lawsuits disputing the legislation will pan, except for further delay a just, equitable and effective healthcare system for the citizens of the United States. Buyer’s remorse maybe justified, but what is the alternative?

Are Obama’s personal flaws as a leader to blame or are those shortcomings exaggerated and the real problem has been the hostile congress with its Tea Party, Koch Brothers funded majority and apostate democratic like Lieberman (aka, Gore’s fatal flaw), who undermined every piece of legislation, no matter how potentially effective, especially removing the teeth from the stimulus package thus gelding its simulative power.

If you believe the former, you will have a harder time casting your vote for Obama. If your political beliefs are not strongly aligned with the right or the left – in other words, if you haven’t thought deeply about political ideas and have lived your life with out developing a personal political philosophy, i.e., the so called undecided – you’re liable to vote Republican. Throw the bums out has been a popular sentiment among America’s yahoo segment of the population, a significant portion of the nation. I fear that Occupiers who blame all the administration’s failures on Obama not being the progressive we thought he was will either not vote or vote for some third party bozo like Nadar, adding to the ranks of the undecided who are dissatisfied with the current state of the nation and lack interest in political ideas.

The Occupy Movement may evolve into a 3^rd party, some scuttlebutt implies. Do not repeat the Nadar catastrophe. First field candidates in local and state elections.

Recent Facebook talk posed a statement along the lines of not supporting any politician who isn’t committed to getting money out of politics, an admirable goal. Given the structure of campaign financing and an electorate more interested in TV ads than the discussion of political ideas, this goal does not immediately achievable. It requires not just candidates signing a pledge but office holders to devise legislation that can achieve this objective. If your commitment to such a goal means that one of these Republicans currently seeking the nomination will become President that will be a devastating setback to all the other political ideas espoused by the Occupy Movement specifically and progressives in general.

Politics combines idealism and pragmatism. The perpetual political challenge is that implementing your ideals pragmatically is a process requires building coalitions and accepting compromise. If too many ideals are sacrificed, why compromise? But, if you’re hungry, how can no loaf be better than half a loaf?

Can the occupiers occupy our electoral process without electing one of these republican candidates, who honestly scare me to death? All of them. One is crazier than the next. Imagining this next generation of Supply Siders in power keeps me up at night with fear.

What does my political philosophy, based on Woody's best songs and Jesus’s core scriptural teaching, tell me? I want a country where working people get a better deal, where food, shelter, education and healthcare are constituional rights, where there are more decent paying jobs and more opportunities for jobs, where our infrastructure is broadly defined to include not just physical necessities like roads, bridges and unities that enable our society to function and help make possible life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but people as well. Education and Healthcare are infrastructure issues, and as such must be recognized as rights and given to all because a smart and healthy populace is much a necessity as those roads and bridges. It’s why I vote Democratic because however flawed the party is, they are a lot closer to supporting those ideals than the Republicans. A two-tiered society where the rich have all the power is self defeating and destructive; to get closer to my ideals and a better world will require a tax policy where the more money you make, the higher of a percent goes to the broadly defined infrastructure.

This will be a political year, and hopes the rhetoric we are bound to hear is equal to our passion, to our ideals and principals, to our intelligence. I refuse to give into simplistic cynicism.

May I also remind everyone that there is more to life than politics. A warm winter day filled with light greets another orbit around the sun. Regardless of who is in power and who is not, this day, our earth, that sun, it’s there for us.

2011: My Best Reads

2011-12-31T09:04:00.000-08:00

In March, I had a month long calamity. The apartment above mine had a flood, which severely damaged my abode. The repairs, clean up, dealing with the subcontractor to compensate my losses, basically meant I wasn’t able to read books for a few weeks. But I had some interesting reading experiences so as a first, thought I would try a best of list. These books are worth noting. These are the books that come to mind when I ask myself, what were the best books I read in the, rather arbitrary, period of 356 days. It’s not quite a third of the books I encountered 2011.

My favorite new book of 2011 was Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson. It was one of the few “new” books I read this year. One of the greatest living American writers, I’ve been following his work since Angels, his first novel. Train Dreams is a novella, a gnarly tall tale of America and an individual. He works for a time as a railroad man in the upper Midwest, marries and has a son, but soon die and he lives out his life mostly as a recluse. With sensitivity, intelligence and a sense of wonder, he explores American individuality it a way that makes you feel that it is a new discovery. What a fine writer.

In a review I read of Train Dreams, Seek, Johnson’s collection of reportage and nonfiction pieces, was heavily praised. I had a read a couple things in Esquire or was it GQ, and wasn’t impressed for whatever reason and never picked up this work. Train Dreams was short, I read it twice through first time. I have a collection of his poetry, which was good but the collected poems – and apparently all his collections – are now out of print so I did pick up Seek as well as Shoppers, which is a play, actually two plays. Anyway, the plays were seriously, barely readable yet Seek was also one of the best books I read last year. He reports on the wars in Liberia and a Rainbow Tribes festival where he tries to revive some of his druggy hippie day; a series of essay looks at different deserts. All brilliant writing, as brilliant in their own way as Jesus’s Son. An obvious antecedent might be Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer, but this novelist nonfiction dabbling I think is superior. Word for word, he’s a better writer than Mailer – I love Mailer – also the pieces are more eclectic; who the heck wasn’t writing about the anti-war pieces in the 60s; when was the last time you read an essay on Liberia? That’s what I’m talking about. Well, as far as I can tell, except for one collection of poems, I’ve read all of Denis Johnson. Poetry gets no respect and as far as a serious readership of literary poetry goes – the very phrase and its apparent redundancy, literary poetry makes me sick but in our Spoken Word era what is one to say? – There are too few of us to count. It makes me sad.

Speaking of Mailer, I finally read Tough Guys Don’t Dance and loved it. It’s out of print and wasn’t really trying very had to find a copy, but in the library at my mom’s assisted living facility, which are just donated books, I found a copy. I dug it, better than the weird movie with Ryan O’Neil. Mailer adapted his style to the demands of noir as aptly as McCarthy did in No Country for Old Men, although Mailer was giving props to Raymond Chandler yet Mailer’s weird obsessions with Freud and sex and the failures of the American dream would not be tamed. Best noir, perhaps my favorite genre, I read all year. It’s more than 20 years, that’s sad. Underrated in Norman’s oeuvre, probably his best short novel, and made me want to read the rest of the oeuvre. I miss having Mailer around.

I haven’t read Harold Bloom’s Anxiety of Influence, where he lays out his main literary theory, which looks at literature as a whole with Shakespeare at the center, but I picked up his latest, Anatomy of Influence, where he furthers his theories. I’ve read enough of Bloom, particularly the Western Canon, so I’m hip to his jive. This may be his last major book; he hints as much, the man is in his 8os. The chapter on the poetry of D. H. Lawrence was illuminating, I used to love his poetry in high school but he has fallen out of favor and is known primarily for the novels. Bloom loves Hart Crane and the Montaigne. I soon picked up Hart Crane again; I was mainly familiar with The Bridge, now I went for his collected works – introduction by H.B. himself. I’m not sure, he’s a difficult read. Am I too far gone for poetry? I still read Whitman, not much else though and while I’ve written some rough things, I haven’t been encouraged to flesh out and make a poem again. I don’t know. Montaigne though, I had never read and I got a collection of his essays and found them quite brilliant and familiar, mainly because his influence is so dominant, the guy invented the essay practically, that nearly everyone in his wake owes a debt.

Bloom mainly led to my central reading experience of the year and also perhaps, my life. Shakespeare, perhaps you heard of him. I loved Shakespeare in High school and one of my most memorable College Courses was a Shakespeare class. I have always tried to include classics in my reading and would read a Shakespeare here and there, and figured I would get through them all, eventually. I recommend the Folgers editions, which feature definitions for all the words and phrases that need definitions – yes, just about every other line – as well as brief scene by scene synopsis and an interesting essay about the specific play. They are also cheap, five bucks and easy to carry, small, reasonably plump paperbacks. Perfect reading for the PATH and NYC subway. Huh? You say. Subway reading is filled with distractions and at best, you only get a 10-15 minute batch, the thing with Shakespeare is that the language which is beautiful but inverted, archaic – he anticipates Melville and Joyce, who are probably harder to read – so to really absorb what he has written, small but consecutive doses work best. Reading the plays in clusters – and aside from newspapers, magazines, websites and BLOGS! Shakespeare was my reading. It was my Summer Shakespeare, more than six weeks I reckon. Shakespeare wrote 38 plays and prior to my Shakespeare, I had only read or seen 20. Once I got rolling, I found that I could read about three per week, reading them back to back made the reading faster and easier. Whether reading or see a stage or film production, there is always an initiation period with Shakespeare, your mind has to adapt to not just the language but the way of thinking. With Shakespeare, anything could mean everything. It’s not really a double entendre or taking things more than one way, but everything about the human experience is taken into consideration.

The Merry Wives of Windsor and the Two Gentlemen of Verona are rubbish, but Titus Andronicus was a phantasmagoric nightmare. Anthony & Cleopatra, probably the only major play I had yet to read, seems to anticipate the femme fatale in Cleopatra, more so than Lady Macbeth, a woman the desire for whom drives men to extreme yet is not without love. Pericles had a real yarn about it. The Noble Kinsmen was a thoroughly, unabashed entertaining read. Richard II, the man ill suited to be king, was quite moving. What was really funny that about a week after reading Timon of Athens, I saw it performed in Van Vorst Park. I was able to talk to young actors and their not so young director, in depth, about the play.

Reading the plays in a cluster of about two months was an exercise I recommend. As a guide, I read Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom, where he analyzes each play, enabling me to get the most of out each reading. Also, he gives history of the criticism of each play, so you get an idea of how it was interpreted and where it might stand in the Western Canon. But where does it stand within Shakespeare? This is a fun question. I remember my college Shakespeare teacher saying how Titus was a bad play; it was one we didn’t read. There was always an acceptance that not all of Shakespeare is good. Yet, beyond a core (Hamlet, Lear, etc.) what is the best. It is an open question, one that has to do with trends of fads of any era. Bloom doesn’t like Titus, but admits that he might be wrong, yet I consider Titus, well maybe not Hamlet or Lear but as interesting, entertaining and well written as Macbeth, better even. Bloom says that 12 to 15 of the plays are great, so even he admits to an inconclusive answer. My Shakespeare summer not only was about the plays I read, but, with the help of Bloom, I thought about the plays that I have had previously read as well. The idea of bad Shakespeare started to bug me, Merry Wives not withstanding. Bloom and my College professor were wrong about Titus. I’m not sure what to think of the term Minor Shakespeare, except that it is misleading. Hamlet and Lear are simply incomparable works of genius. Those aside, I guess I would put it, there is a lot more major Shakespeare than is generally agreed upon. Lastly, Bloom writes about how Shakespeare reads us. He talks about the categories of Tragedy, Comedy and History and how Shakespeare actually evades them. So true, all the plays have elements of Drama and Humor, they are a complete experience. Humanity is a funny thing, a mix of comedy and tragedy as we all, together and individually struggle with our fate – we can never chose our parents, the decisions we make within the context of our fate and endure the defining component of humanity – the burden of mortality. As the summer wore on, Shakespeare was reading me.

Looking back now, I realize, it was weeks, probably a month, before I read anything that recall as of value. A prejudice lingered. I did not want to give up that world.

Anyway, for the record, these were the plays in my Summer Shakespeare Festival: Love's Labour's Lost, Measure for Measure, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, The Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night, The Two Gentlemen of Verona The Two Noble Kinsmen, Richard II, Henry VI, Part 1, Henry VI, Part 2, Henry VI, Part 3, Henry VIII, Coriolanus, Titus Andronicus , Timon of Athens , Troilus and Cressida, and Cymbeline.

William Trevor is a contemporary Irish writer, known mainly for his short stories. Love and Summer was one of the better novels I read this year, it’s a few years old, and while it takes place in Ireland it has a real universal flavor. Takes place in a rural setting, a farmer’s wife has an affair with a man who has returned to the town to pack up his dead father’s house. Just a superbly sensitive portrayal of desire, how we cope with loss and how happiness is not just out of reach, but more complex than we realize, especially when we don’t want to admit we have it.

Just Kids by Patti Smith. This literary memoir will move you regardless of how you feel about Patti Smith. She’s a major hero to me, I’m a huge fan and this book filled in a lot of gaps about her life. She’s a true believer in literature too. Mainly it’s about her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, the photographer. There have been friendships and relationships between artists before, both within the same medium or in different mediums. Patti Smith redefined music and Mapplethorpe redefined photography. They were both major and game changers in their individual mediums. I don’t think there is another example of such a close relationship between two artists of such comparable stature. But it’s not about their celebrity, or really their work, it’s about a deep, loyal relationship, against a backdrop of the 60s became the 70s until Mapplethorpe became another victim of the AIDS pandemic of the 80s. Really accomplished writing too. Right on sister!

Cheri by Collette. I had read her short stories, which did not move me. I like French literature (in translation) a lot, but mainly 19th century. A recent film was made of this novel, I haven’t seen it but I read the book instead. Cheri is a young man who is kept by a courtesan twice his age. Early 20th century French society was filled with contradictions, Lea while a kept woman for her youth and unmarried, is accepted to a degree by society. Cheri is pampered and a narcissist. Everything is just below the surface in this novel. The two fulfill each other sexually but they make the fatal mistake of falling in love, the man being the one admired – the descriptions of his body are feverish – the woman being the one who keeps him reverses the more typical man/woman dynamic. They must part because he must marry for money, a woman his own age and because love, true love, is the biggest threat to society. The edition I had included the sequel, the Return of Cheri, takes place after World War I and there is an uncomfortable reunion between Lea and Cheri. The world has changed – more so than Collette cared to admit I think – and love remains, insistent yet neither former lover dare not speak its name.

The Way We Live Now. England is a very odd country, I sort of like Trollope, I mean, I’ve read him, he’s sort of fluffy and while not as gnarly as Dickens or Hardy– who are not as gnarly as Zola or Melville – there’s something honest and infectious about him. He seems to celebrate the Victorian era he lived in more than he criticizes it. I only read this book because it is one of the few classics I still had left of the bucket list, but I enjoyed it more than I anticipated. An undercurrent in the book – the instigating event that sets the plot in motion is an American coming to London to solicit investment in a railroad company that soon goes bust and wreaks havoc in the lives of some brits yearning to remain, at least in appearance, aristocratic – struck a contemporary chord. Europe’s current crisis can reasonably be blamed on the corruption under the Bush administration of our financial system. I don’t know how much I like Trollope, but I enjoyed reading this plump 19th century tale. The realism was more in the story than the writing, which is not always the case, especially as realism became more the standard in literature post-Trollope.

Grand Oaks Books, which I think is a publisher on demand with a deal with Amazon came out with The Fortune of the Rougons by Emile Zola, which may be the first translation of this novel, the first in the Rougon-MacQuart Cycle, which they are calling Zola’s great 20 works of fiction that follow members of a French family in the 19th century. I love Zola, he is one of my favorite writers, although I always thought Theresa Raquin started the series. I’ve read all I can find in English, which is about 17 or 18, as well as some of the ones he wrote after this, his life’s work. The action takes in Plassans, where the peasantry rise up against the forces of Napoleon III; a young peasant couple, Miette and Silvere meet and fall in love and join in the uprising. Dr. Pascal makes a cameo, his story is the last novel in the series where he sums up the previous 19 or so books and their characters. Trains, Farms, Restaurants, Department Stores, Banking, Artists, Mining, Prostitution, Clergy, just about every facet of 19th century French life, falls under Zola’s scrutiny. This lively translation was seamless, the book itself well made, a large photograph adorns the simple cover, large typeface that fills the page, it’s a beautiful paperback. The company claims they are going to publish, for the first time in order, new translations of the Zola cycle. I couldn’t be more excited. They said four a year for five years, but I haven’t seen another edition since this debut, so who knows. Finding a new Zola to read is pure pleasure.

The Age of Reagan by Sean Wilentz, first and foremost, is a great read. I could not put it down. In 2010, I read his book, Dylan in America, which is the best book on Dylan, which isn’t saying all that much because all the biographies stink. He’s a historian and places Dylan within the context of America, really original and insightful work. This book came out the year before, and is essentially a political history of the 80s and 90s, even though he illuminates the strain of conservative politics as it emerged mid-20th century. It’s non-polemical, to such an extent that it may be a flaw; it’s an objective look with telling details, such as Clarence Thomas, never a judge before his objectionable appointment to the Supreme Court, who was an Education Department official in the Reagan administration, gaining popularity by blocking any educational initiative. Another insight I think about was the white flight in the cities and those WWII and Baby Boomer folks who lost allegiance to the City Machine Politics. They voted Reagan in for sure, but a lot of them different vote. Barely 60 percent of the country voted in 1980. The Age of Reagan is marked by drastic drops in voting. Scary and illuminating, this is a well written book entirely about politics in America during basically the era where I grew up. It was published in 2008, I bought it was a cheap remainder at Barnes & Nobles cause it isn’t out in paperback, wasn’t in the J.C. library and I refuse the Kindle. Reading this book the same year the Occupy Wall Street movement began gave me nearly as much new perspective as the immortal Bard.

Best Re-Read of the year: As I lay Dying. It’s been more than 20 years since I did a college paper on this Faulkner. I love Faulkner, I estimate between the college Faulkner class and the reading since; I’m about 80 percent through. Spotted Horses is still my go to, but his multiple narrator work in a stream of consciousness style was fun to revisit. I read Intruder in the Dust right after cause I didn’t want to let ole Bill go so fast. I hadn’t read it before, it was fun, the writing seemed a tad forces, I got impatient. A black man is falsely accused of murder and a lawyer, Gavin, who appears in the stories in Knight’s Gambit, Faulkner’s brand of who dunnits, proves his innocence. Faulkner had progressive views of Civil Rights for his milieu, but could never imagine a world different than Jim Crow south. Unlike To Kill a Mocking Bird, where the black man’s innocence is incidental to his fate under the apartheid system of the American South through most of the 20th century, I didn’t believe it for a second. Yet, it was a full explanation of Southern Mentality of the era, unvarnished and without apology.

Christmas in the Heart

2011-12-24T10:54:00.000-08:00

I love Christmas music, but only just before Christmas. I do not want to hear it before Halloween, before thanksgiving even and if you play it on December 26^th, I might be forced to commit an act of violence we’ll both regret. But today. Christmas Eve, I love it and it is really the only thing I’ll be listening to as I wrap presents and get ready to joyfully fulfill my holiday obligations.

We always hear Christmas songs, hymns and carols long before the holiday. More and more radio stations go all Christmas all the time and going that way earlier and earlier. I heard one or two before Halloween; just like I saw Christmas ornaments and related housewares, albeit a small display, Labor Day weekend at Kohls. After Thanksgiving, Christmas music gradually pervades, until around the third week of Advent that’s all you hear. Christmas music creeps in like a vapor as Fall comes upon us and by the time of Winter, December 21, it’s more than half of the songs you hear.

I can do without Last Christmas, otherwise I don’t mind any Christmas song. I love most of them. I don’t play holiday songs at home until Christmas Eve’s Eve, as we called it when we were kids, actually a day or two before, like the first day of winter. Happy Solstice.

Sometimes you hear holiday songs and they can only annoy, intrude upon your reverie; another harsh reminder of the holidays: spend money, think of gifts, organize and/or attend events with family and friends. The office and job related stuff. End of year madness, everything winding down, lots of reflection, long dark nights, snow and you have to bundle up and trudge day in and day out, everywhere you go; wet socks, cold feet. Who needs it?

I don’t have the time or the money! you scream to deaf ears.

We all feel a little like Scrooge at first, not a full blown bah humbug, but we postpone the hassle and the music initially only reminds us of the inevitable. Eventually you give in, especially after homes, store fronts, and municipal fixtures get all decked with lights and other yuletide imagery, both secular and sacred, mangers and menorahs. You start going to parties and other get-togethers. I learned long ago it takes too much effort to be a professional crank. I am never sorry to see the Christmas Holidays go, but I enjoy them while they’re here.

Yesterday, after leaving work early, I took a break from errands and such, sat in an Argo Tea, my new favorite place, having a Yerba Matte with steamed soy milk and hazelnut flavoring (my new favorite drink), and a version of Santa Claus is Coming to Town came on the sound system. I noticed a woman softly singing along, absent mindedly and outside young people walked by, one in a red santa art, the other wearing reindeer antlers. I realized I hummed the song as well, wiggling my head back and forth. There is a simple joy, a shared joy, holiday music invokes and encourages. Soon or later, it overcomes your cynicism.

I heard just that morning. I play music in the morning, usually as I shower, shave and dress for work, after getting a blast of NPR news. I always play Christmas music from say 12-20 – 12-25, and only then. Even Last Christmas no longer makes me cringe by then, I no longer roll my eyes at Feliz Navidad or Santa Claus is Coming To Town by Bruce and E Street, which gained a special poignancy this year because of the loss of Clarence. But that's part of Christmas too, the tinge of sadness; as remember the childhood joy of Christmas morning, you now remember people who were with you then who aren't with you this Christmas

I play the Elvis Christmas Album, of course. I like the John Jacob Niles album of hymns and carols, The Band's Christmas Must be Tonight Gets a whirl, and this cheap R&B compilation with the likes of Jerry Butler probably gets a play. But, being a hard core Dylan freak, it’s not the holidays now until I put on Christmas in the Heart, Dylan’s Christmas album.

If you don’t like Dylan, if you are unable appreciate the phlegmatic rasp his aged voice has become, you’re not going to like this clever collection of mainly standards. Bob Dylan has a truly awe inspiring knowledge of music, particular American music; it’s not just the eclectic mix he plays on his radio show, but he has made landmark albums in a range of styles: Folk, Country, Gospel, Rock & Roll, Blues; you can even see splashes of reggae, klezmar (Street Legal), and more recently, jazz and crooning. Christmas albums are essentially novelty records and so this is Dylan’s novelty record, among other things. The album features choral singers, and Dylan intermixes with this choir. It is the first time he sang with a choir since he toured with gospel singers, the last time with Tom Petty & The Heart Breakers (he referred to these singers as his heartbreakers) in 1986. Dylan first worked with background singers and choirs on Self Portrait in 1968. The singers here have an oddly 50s incandescent to them, like the Rooftop Singers, even more so than All the Tired Horses or the intro to Days of 49 from Self Portrait. It’s freaky, yet in keeping with the novelty record feel and damned if it doesn’t sound Christmassy. Christmas is about warmth and coziness, glad tidings and peace on earth; it’s one of the few times were mawkishness and schmaltz is expressed without irony or apology. What would Christmas be without a little kitsch and corn? This may be Bob's most fun album, fun all the way through at least.

The only new song, new to my ears I mean, is It Must Be Santa, a rare polka ditty. The song was made into a viral video. I never cared for or about Rock Videos and never will. When I heard this I thought, now I understand where Lily, Rosemary & The Jack of Hearts comes from. Western Swing only tells part of the musical history of that song. The other song that is rare is Christmas Island, but I was familiar with the version by good ole Leon Redbone, whose voice Dylan’s now resembles.

Otherwise, Dylan does the known standards, from Blue Christmas to Silent Nights, even doing a verse in Latin of O Come All YE Faithful. My sister says that Dylan’s voice has gotten so harsh that I’ll Be Home For Christmas sounds like a threat, not a promise. There are times where I burst out laugh. He’s long since shot out his voice. The last time I saw him in concert, I had never heard his range of notes being so limited; he used the rasp effectively on his most recent collection of new songs, Together Through Life, him going through these well known, time honored classics, songs everybody knows, really reveals his vocal uniqueness. Yet, Dylan’s unique phrasing may be tarnished, it’s still there and he puts genuine feeling into these songs.

From Blowin in the Wind up to the present, Dylan songs always echo an awareness of the divine presence. The sacred songs, such as Silent Night seem to resonate with me here, because they echo so many other themes and ideas in Dylan’s vast catalog, hundreds of songs – I’ve been listening to his music literally my entire life. Whatever your beliefs, and I am not one to preach and proselytize, one reason Christmas so permeates the western world is not so much the belief in Jesus Christ, the son of God, but the idea that how clever, how appropriate, that if there is a God who created human beings in His own image, that when he sent his son to save mankind, that son would be born in a manager, in “low estate,” wrapped in swaddling clothes, recognized at the messiah only by local shepherds, three wise men from far off lands, and perhaps a kid with a drum. The Nativity is perfect as story, be it turth or myth or both.

Another rarity is The Christmas Blues, a nice jazzy romp that bemoans, “Santa only brought me the brightly packaged, tinsel covered Christmas Blues”, which features a harmonica riff. Harmonica playing has been rare for America’s bard during this, his late period phase. More importantly, he touches on the melancholy feelings (he also sings I'll Be Home For Christmas) that the holidays also bring and as blues music teaches, humor is the best way to survive sorrow.

Well soon it will be Christmas day. I might be listening to Bob, maybe you go to Frank or Phil Spector (We should all go to Elvis), but basically we are listening to the same collection of songs, give or take. Amazing how we can listen to the same songs, regardless of whom is singing, again and again, especially as we approach the actual holiday.

Today I love Christmas music and so do you. I wish you all the best. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays.

By The Nose

2011-12-24T04:49:00.000-08:00

This, that or the other, nary a week passes without going to Union Square Park. This elephant has been balancing on his trunk since September, on one of those cement islands off to the side, the west side if I recall now, of the park. But for whatever reason I rarely am in that particular corner of this world, so I haven’t noticed until the other day. It’s Gran Elefanret by Miquel Barceló I like the size, it seems about as large as a small elephant, which conveys the intended feeling of mass being self-controlled on what is gravity defying impossible. But maybe in the world of this sculpture it is only seemingly impossible, check out the two back legs there in the air, how they’re unaligned, asymetrical in a realistic position as if the pachyderm is indeed shifting its body so he can be suspended by the nose.

Vertical Exposure

2011-12-24T04:40:00.000-08:00

Pipes make you think subterranean but sometimes pipes must be laid exposed and standing up. Drainage is so important to our system of rooftop gutters. This particular pipe was quite lengthy, yet actually light weight, the two guys in the cherry picker, if that is indeed what they are called, nimbly attaching it to the side of building. New piping all around.

Water Main Maintenance

2011-12-24T04:28:00.000-08:00

Water main breaks are commonplace (here and here) here in Jersey City, which is why this truck caught my eye. National Water Main Cleaning Company sounds good to me. Does this have anything to do with the custom of handing out fliers and similar notices warning against drinking Jersey City Water without first boiling whenever there is a water main break? United Water is to blame my landlord claims. Is this truck a preventative measure? Some fat hose ran from the truck into the manhole, even wider coiled hose was scattered about, probably used prior to my coming onto the scene; how does one clean a water main pipe I wondered although one imagines some sort of flushing out the system must be involved. The truck sort of quivered, rocked back and forth, a lid on the steam pipe like contraption by the cab moved up and down. It was shiny black, never saw a vehicle quite like this before but then, I’ve only seen water main disruption and not water main maintenance before.

Steel Santa

2011-12-17T16:24:00.000-08:00

Santa lost a little weight, but now he’s a real man of steel. How can you not help but smile at this clever bit of Christmas decoration? It’s a real neighborhood thing; I mean who the heck else walks on Cole Street except us locals. His name is Louie, which is not well known but your intrepidblogger found out the true story in July right here. Talking to Peter, welder in chief was truly loads of fun. A really good guy. Christmas decorations like any holiday decorations are temporary in nature. By that same token, they are meant to inspire, well joy. Maybe part of that inspiration is by the simple fact that the routine is suddenly altered. Oh, look, blinking lights in a window, garland on a tree in the living room, where no tree is until it’s this time of year. Dress up the metal man in a Santa suit. How can you help but smile? Dig the beard. My favorite accent is the black tape around the ankles. Attention to detail. Happy Christmas Coles Street!

Spreading Scaping

2011-12-17T16:10:00.000-08:00

Two years ago, in December, the Tree Planters appeared on the eastern sections of Newark Avenue. They make great trash bins and ash trays, atleast until they are filled with dirt and trees. I guess it’s a winter thing, the optimum time or maybe it’s just a coincidence. Street-Scaping, that’s what’s going on. I love that on the notification posters of “Emergency No Parking” specifically state: Street Scaping. The planters, as well as the nifty iron-like benches are the finishing touches. Nice touches. That sort of touch was expected nearer the PATH station, our shovel ready project that started with the dawn of the Obama administration. Heading west, up Newark. I didn’t quite expect that, it’s sort of gets no man land-ish or at least used to be but that’s no longer the case. The planters and benches, aligning sidewalks near one of the few gas stations in town, the splendid “Big House” Fire Station, baseball fields, freight trains, cemetery, but like much of Jersey City, disparate. The street scaping creates more of thematic link, it’s nice to see it spread, it unifies. Newark is our boulevard, now more of it is starting to look it.

What Used To Be Here

2011-12-14T16:08:00.000-08:00

Remodeling going on, new business opening, maybe that recovery in the economy everyone hopes for is finally happening. I saw this and thought, but what used to be there. That’s one of the mental games you are constantly playing when you live in a city because the urban lanscape is one of constant if often minor modification. Now, some places you visit often and when they’re gone, you really notice. That is where the Woolworths used to be, by CH Martin, you remember that although even that recollection has faded so far another year or two you won’t remember. But there are other places that the visits are far more infrequent, often non existent. The Vietnamese bodega on the right I’ve been into occasionally; the video store, I believe the last in the neighborhood, I’ve never used. Funny how you can pass a block just about daily, which is true for here, and never know anything about the shops or businesses there even though they are right next to other establishments that are must visits on any given week, or on roads well traveled during your routine. I think there was a nail salon of some kind, but maybe I’m thinking of another nail salon on the next block. There’s certainly no dearth of those around these parts so maybe it was something else. That’s the game. What used to be here? I’m not asking you; I'm asking me. You may remember and I just happen not to remember and even if you told me I probably won’t remember what you said in a couple of days. Some places you have total recall of, other places like here, for me, nothing comes to mind. Nothing will be missed, but that’s just for me. I’m sure somebody is missing this place that is no more, even though they were not enough to keep it open. A business for whatever reason is no more; somewhere somebody has given up some hope. Now it’s just another construction project, a temporary phase. The next business here you hope will be better, worth spending more time on this block, worth remembering if it goes.

Postcards In & From a Laundromat

2011-12-11T02:29:00.000-08:00

A buddy popped me an email: I saw you on a postcard at the Lucky Laundromat, which is on Jersey Ave. Not something you hear every day, that’s for sure.

Indeed, there is a postcard stand in the Laundromat, something else that is uncommon. While they can be mailed, the cards don’t say Greetings from Downtown J.C. The postcards and stand are the latest manifestation of an art project that I blogged about in September, see here.

I was interviewed, one of dozens by KarinaAguilera Skvirsky for her Laundromat Project, Ask Me: Tell Me. Apparently there’s a video she’s editing of the compiled interviews. She asked how the neighborhood and city has changed. She is interested in community and history, and the contention is that Laundromats are a place that remains as economies and developments rise and fall and populations move in and out. From her website: “My work combines a commitment or interest in aesthetics with an engagement with politics and history. I am interested in low-tech art making strategies that involve the public in the production of my work in order to engage the community about their own histories and memories and to introduce or re-introduce the idea of art making and its value into their lives.”

I suppose the postcards are just one manifestation of the project, which is one of the most original in Jersey City. Postcards are certainly low-tech enough. Turning such an incidental yet widely recognizable item into art has a multi-level effect. From vacation greeting into social commentary art makes the everyday more apparent. Postcard stands in a Laundromat, immediately the context changes for the postcard, thus elevating into a higher aesthetic realm.

Why would postcards be in a Laundromat? Why would art be there?

One goes there to complete a chore; clothes get dirty, need to be cleaned. It’s a universal. Why shouldn’t art be part of this ordinary part of everyone’s life? And, why shouldn’t that art somehow comment on your immediate surroundings? If art becomes associated with this menial task, the task takes on more meaning, then one also must assume, does the art.

I also love the fact the postcard stands are referred to on the project blog as an art installation.

Anyway, I’ve never been on a postcard before. Sort of startling. The light in the Laundromat is so unflattering, but still. I could mail mine out. I may not be on vacation but I’m still thinking of you. But looking through the postcards was a fascinating experience. The images are random – high heels on the sidewalk with C-Town in the background, a woman dressed like everyone dresses when they do laundry, basically something that is clean. A stop sign with stickers. Part of the project included Karina giving disposable cameras to people, who walked around the blocks of Lucky’s and snapped pictures, which I assume account for some of the images. Obviously, they are not typical postcards. Destination Jersey Avenue: See the C-Town! Greetings from a red building.

Why a Laundromat? Why not? Memories, history, community, a shared sense of place, it’s as universal as washing, drying and folding your cloths, in other words, it does what art does best, informs us about our shared experience of being human

For updates on the project and interview excerpts go here

Zuccotti Park Revisited

2011-12-05T03:04:00.000-08:00

Two weeks, has it been two weeks since the New York Police cleared Occupy Wall Street protestors from Zuccotti Park? More you say?

Under cover of darkness, at 1:00 AM in the morning, with the press sequestered “for their protection” a block away, following direct orders from Mayor Bloomberg, cleared the park in a military-style raid. It was an appalling display of political power that belongs in a fascist nation, not in our democracy. Hundreds were arrested for acting on their constitutional rights of freedom of assembly and freedom of speech. Police destroyed lap tops and other personal property as well as threw out hundreds of books (the OWS had set up a library). The park was renamed Liberty Park, had a Burning Man cooperative feel and in and of itself, was a statement against the system the current form of capitalism economy has metastasized into where the middle class is destroyed and the nation’s wealth and power is concentrated into an ever shrinking percent of the population (Bloomberg is proudly part of the 1 percent).

Similar evictions occurred in other cities throughout our land. Evidence indicates that it was a coordinated effort. Other police departments were more brutal, sending scores of protestors to the hospital. One wonders when the last time these officers took a look at their pension funds.

Yet, the movement is still in the news; I encountered two protests this week in Manhattan. Issues raised so far, concentration of wealth, student loan forgiveness, taxing the wealthy, universal healthcare, as some examples, seem actually being discussed where as before, they weren’t even on the radar.

I was in that neck of the woods on Friday. You want to know what it looks like to live in a police state, take a gander. Remembering the hope and joy I saw earlier in the autumn compared to the antiseptic lock-down atmosphere now was like a punch in the stomach. Barricades – two barricades thick – align the entire perimeter of the park. Cops are everywhere along the perimeter line; several vehicles are parked in spaces on one side of the park. The obvious goal is to intimated. You feel like you no longer live in America, it’s a nightmare vision, a dystopian police state only even more horrifying because it is real. It is here, this is now us.

From the Times: “New York City is the city where you can come and express yourself,” the mayor said. “What was happening in Zuccotti Park was not that.” He said the protesters had taken over the park, “making it unavailable to anyone else.”

What a load of crap. He cited health and safety conditions for evicting the peaceful protestors, yet he did so under cover of darkness with the press, under threat of arrest, were sequestered far away from the action. Remember in 2004, this mayor who invited the republican party to NYC for their death star construction celebration, cited the rights of central park grass for not issuing a permit for a rally, offering instead, Queens! I remember that August, I walked over to MSG to take a look, was not allowed to get within two blocks of the public space, and was not even allowed to stand still and try to see some republicans. Keep moving, you cannot stand here, barked a cop.

What happened in ’04 was a lock down; this martial law approach is now in place at Zuccotti. The state of seige has begun. So much for the park now being unavailable to anyone else because of protestors. The park seemed empty and clean, now hardly anyone is there. The barricades and heavy police presence (these protestors were and are peaceful and non violent) means nobody else is in the park, unlike what the movement started.

About a hundred or so protestors were huddled in groups inside, I was told there was going to be a meeting to plan an Occupy Broadway protest. A few straglers were along the perimieters, holding up protest signs. They seemed mostly to be yelling at the cops; a few torusits lingered. The absurdly disporportionate police presence and precautions in response to the tiny number of protestor was shocking; those in power indeed are freakign out. The park is now a containment camp without the camping or other pedestrians prior to the eviction.

This intense monitoring by the personal army of Bloomberg and Wall Street, paid for of course by our tax dollars, is the largest police action I’ve ever witnessed or heard about – certainly more intensive than anything to stop drug trafficaking or other widespread crimes. There seemed to be as many cops patrolling and watching as there were protestors.

You can’t evict an idea was the response to the evictions. At Zuccotti you realize the truth of that statement. The ideas and issues they address are bigger than a park and have spread throughout the land. But you also see the real result of the eviction: a militarized police force protecting those with wealth and power by suppression of inalienable rights.

What do they fear?

Welcome to Jersey City, New Jersey

2011-12-04T16:48:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Jersey City, New Jersey. This week the Atlantic declared Jersey City as the 10^th most artistic city in the U.S. I wonder if they saw this view of our welcome signage. The John Deere Capital of East Hudson County! I love the rust on the plow. It’s from under an an overpass, somewhere north of the Mall near the strip mall, I mean superstore center shopping, Staples, etc. These highway retailers litter most of the highways and even many byways in the land I love the best, undermining the regionalism that took so many decades to develop. But shoot, with national media and the death of independent retailers, homogeneity has been the order of the day within the memory of most of those still alive. No more mason dixon line; all of us are immigrants and pioneers. Doesn’t mean we’re not bland, unique of individuals. What makes the strip mall section of our fair city is that it is so condensed, squeezed into the carbon monoxide land of Holland Tunnel entrances, the ones and the nines. Welcome, indeed.

UFT/OWS

2011-12-01T16:47:00.000-08:00

On 32^nd, heading towards PATH, teachers were being handed blue wool caps and signs. They were joining an OWS rally. The teacher’s union – United Federation of Teachers – was out in force; I saw more than a hundred of the blue skull caps heading towards 6^th avenue, making an identifiable statement, becoming the tail end of the march, heading south towards Union Square, Zuccotti and the subconscious of the 1 percent. The pictures are lousy; I was in a rush. I had a prior commitment in J.C. so I couldn’t march. But the second protest in as many days. Right on! Their message was clear: tax cuts for the wealthy come at the expense of our children, thus our future. The other message is that the progressives may not have a Fox News, but they and the issues they’re raising, are no longer ignored. We’re more unified now than at any other time since the 1930s. This is what the Occupation Wall Street movement has accomplished… so far.

Demonstrating America

2011-11-30T17:59:00.000-08:00

Occupy Wall Street occupied Madison Square Park Monday night, I believe that President Obama was in town for a fund raiser nearby and this was a protest in his honor.

Flags were waved, hand printed signs, ubiquitous and provocative, a few drummers backing up a rousing: “Stop the War, Tax the Rich, we don’t need no deficit.”

This demonstration had more of anti-war emphasis than general OWS actions. I prefer the economic messages but cutting military spending I’m all for. I haven’t been down to Zucotti park in a few weeks. Bloomberg ordered his police force, under cover of darkness, in the wee wee hours, to remove the tents. Basically he took away their constitutional rights to free assembly. It was a shameful act.

A few dozen protestors, cross section of ages. The movement is changing the debate. These issues simply weren’t being discussed before and they are now, not to the extent that is needed, not to the extent that will result in policy. But the start is here. A friend of mine a couple of months ago talked about how consciousness has to change then the politics will follow suit. He’s from the 60s; I am not. I thought it was just recycled 60s leftism, inapplicable to our current state of affairs. I think I may be wrong. Consciousness is changing. We are so comfortable with expecting instant gratification; we live with perpetual impatience. But sweeping change is needed and I’m beginning to feel that more than a single election will be required. Yes, I fear a Republican president because Mitt & Company are scary, incompetent monsters, but even a second term Obama will not be enough.

The last day of November, OWS is not going away. Everybody passing through the park at the moment was thinking abut the issues and thinking about differently, or at least thinking about thinking about them differently, than simply hearing them discussed on the news. They were waving flags. This movement is indeed, America.

Mural Melting

2011-11-27T20:09:00.000-08:00

Okay, there is an irony. The idealized city scape captured by this mural has been blighted just like real cities in decades past were inflicted with urban decay. The truth though is tragic, this wonderful mural, on Marin & Bay, which was painted by Thomas John Carlson, head of the JerseyCity Art School, is slowly rotting away.

I love this mural, written an analysis here and some progress reports here and here. Besides the remarkable composition – Carlson has an extraordinary knack for symetry and balance – of the images as well as the subtle use of muted tones and light, what I like most about this large painting is the prism effect. Outdoor murals tend to be invocative; e.g., invoking a memory of how things used to look, thus reminding those living in a city of our connection with the past, or they invoke a fantastic piece of imagination, the juxtaposition surpises. Carlson’s mural reflects the immediate environs of this building, which is the Power House Lounge and the environs of course is the Power House District, the transition neighborhood where Downtown becomes Newport. The cobble stones streets, the warehouse and factories, the light rail, are all in this diorama, but the more you look the more see, gradually realizing it is as much a reproduction of place as it is a perception of place. If I am nearby I make a point to pass this lot so I can look at this mural; I am sure I'm not alone. It's a brilliant piece.

Well, might want to go by there soon because it is literally falling to pieces, slowly disappearing before our eyes. A significantly large patch, I reckon about 20 percent of the painting is now gone. The building's exterior has fallen off, it’s not just the painting chipping away, but the surface of the structure. In parts of the painting still there, very visible cracks are spreading like thick spider webs.

I asked some folks working in the lounge about the mural’s decay. They were real nice, I spoke with the owner or manager, and he honestly felt bad. He told me that it was either the weather or the vibrations of the music, the thick bass, or a combination of both. When I was there bass-heavy techno type music was on the sound system, although it wasn’t too loud where you couldn’t hold a conversation but it is constant when the club is opened. Of course, another vibration could be coming from the even more constant traffic, which includes trucks, down Manila. It could also be a combination of the climate and the noise.

Anyway, he isn’t sure what will happen. No one knows if the damaged area can be repaired then repainted,or if the entire exterior must be replaced and a whole new painting done. At least he wants to make sure the side of the building features art. It will not be cost effective to do anything until after the winter, he said. You could tell he felt bad, he appreciates what a special work of art Thomas accomplished here.

It’s heart breaking. Maybe it’s time our art friendly town starts paying some attention to preserving these fantastic and unique pieces of urban art. Look at the north side of Columbus twixt Barrow & Grove, the splendid diorama of Jersey City icons (Statue of Liberty, Colgate Clock) has become an eyesore, paint chipping away, construction projects removing entire panels of the painting. Of course it didn’t help one of the buildings burned down.

These murals are part of the community. These images should not be abandoned like chalk marks in the rain; they’re part of the architecture. They enhance the scenery of our daily lives. Art elevates. There simply seems to be no thought given to preserving the work. I’m not saying Power House is at fault; the folks there couldn’t feel worse and what is happening on Marin & Bay was unexpected. Not only is it sad, but frustrating: we have to wait and see how bad it gets before something can be done.

One hopes at least parts of the Carlson Mural can somehow be saved. One hopes our art friendly town takes it as a warning and learns a lesson. Art needs to be preserved as well as made.

Something that used to be

Twilight:Breaking Dawn I

2011-11-27T03:43:00.000-08:00

I have a confession. I have seen every Twilight film the weekend of its release, more often than not, on the Friday. Yes, in the theaters. Yes, Newport cineplex, which in spite of encroaching gentrification, still glistens with an unmistakable ghetto-fabulous sheen that is, in equal parts, both refreshing and annoying.

I was in a sold-out theater filled with pre & post pubescent girls last Friday for Twilight Breaking Dawn I. Unlike other horror films, often packed with teenagers on opening day, there was no rowdiness, talking or texting etc. during the movie. At Twilight the quiet devotion and mesmerized attention these girls displayed resembled morning vespers at a cloistered convent, interrupted by loud sighs and titters when the vampire or the wolf-boy took off their shirts. Want to see well behaved teenage and pre-teen girls at the cinema? Go to opening day of a Twilight movie.

I love Vampire films. It’s a genre I’ve followed and studied. The best recent Vampire film is Let the Right One In, whose American re-make, The Right One was nothalf bad. A recent addition to the genre that should have gotten a better audience was 30 Days of Night.

Son of Dracula, a Universal Horror that was a quasi sequel to Todd Browning’s Dracula is one of my favorites. Starring Lon Chaney, Jr. as the count, the film takes place in a Louisiana planation. Dracula moves to the new world under the name of Count Alucard (read it backwards) because he has fallen in love and turned into a vampire the southern belle who has inherited the swampy estate. The woman turns the tables on the Count; she wants to turn into a vampire her long term boyfriend, so they can live together forever and never grow old. The boyfriend winds up slaying both the count and the girlfriend. Why? Because vampirism is EVIL!!!

In the original Dracula, the Count turns Lucy, a friend of his real target, Mina into a vampire who wanders London sucking the blood of Children before Van Helsing slays her. Two vampires exist at the same time, creating in a sense, a nosferatu community, at least a coven (he also has three undead wives he abandoned in Translyvannia).

In Son, turning the love interest of the count into a femme fatale solidifies the concept of a world of vampires. Vampires no longer were bound by conflicts with mortals; they could have conflicts among themselves. This idea further evolved in the Hammer films, where one bite from Christopher Lee was enough – the concept was so rich there was a non-Lee Hammer entry into the vampire genre called Brides of Dracula, not the plural. The novels of Anne Rice, the Blade Trilogy, the truly awesome After Dark to proto-Twilight flicks like the Lost boys or more recently, Underworld (I saw a trailer for another sequel to the action-packed, relentlessly incoherent vamp vs. werewolf saga).

Vampires live and die by rules, which change for each story teller. The need for blood, the not-dying, the stake in the heart, crucifixes, all the various details shift. As religion became less popular, seems the cross as kryptonite weakness has gone the way of Limbo, but still there are rules to the universe and with rules become social mores thus the community of vampires often have cliques and rivalries. What started as clever pulpy twist on Dracula, made by that most pulpy of genre film studios, Universal, has expanded into a world in and of itself, with little to no relation to the real world. Since the struggle of competing groups for power always resembles High School, why not put the beings who never age in an actual high school where they can meet a precocious, wise beyond her years teen starlet?

As vampire films they’re terrible. As vampire rules go, the ability to walk in the sunlight and have your skin glitters is really ludicrous. I’m not an Anne Rice fan and while I like the idea a vampire can sustain themselves on non-human blood, I do not like the idea of vampires who are not monsters. But we live in different times. What I do like about the Twilight films is the high school part, they take being a teenager seriously. I wish I was happier when I was a teenager. But I remember when so many things were new, important, when the world revolved around me and my problems, my friend’s problems, and my problems with my friend’s problems. The strength of the Twilight films is the teenager experience is not dismissed or made into camp, turned into laughs. There is no condescension about the experience. I find this enriching, if forgettable entertainment – the opposite impact that being a teenager has on life.

Forgettable, yes. Very. I don’t quite remember these movies. I have seen all of them, there are four now, but I can’t tell you the specifics of each. Oh, the first one had that great scene where the vamps enter the high school cafeteria and its love at first sight for this 21^st century Juliet & Romeo. And the establishment of the relationships between the vampires and the Native American werewolves (see MGM’s Return of the Vampire, where Bela as Dracula in everything but name (copyright laws) has a werewolf accomplice). The details of each film blur. Bella, the twilight girl, dated Jacob and hung out with the Native Americans for a while; another one had a trip to Europe where Dakota Fanning was a vampire queen. Teenage rumbles were in a few. These movies are cotton candy. You eat cotton candy at the fair. You remember the fair and since you eat cotton candy at the fair you remember eating cotton candy. Sugary and fun to eat – what else is there to remember about cotton candy, besides the fair?

Vampire films are not typical horror films; while the monster can be horrifying, they are more often merely macabre than actually scary. When successful they also create an unnerving, creepy atmosphere. The Todd Browning Dracula and Marnu’s Nosferatu create that atmosphere successfully, as did Let The Right One In, both original and remake. The Lost Boys, probably the most apparent antecedent to the Twilight tetralogy, barely had anything unnerving or creepy, suspense of any kind was absent. Of course, the director, the guy who killed Batman in the late 90s and made one of the worst films ever made, Falling Down (the one where Michael Douglas, in a performance that calls for pineapples and cloves, spreads havoc because he can’t breakfast at a faux McDonalds), so you can’t really expect a suitable Vampire film from this hack. But Lost Boys was memorable and had a great publicity campaign – sleep all day, party all night, never grow old.

The Twilight films are not overly creepy; it’s all about teen drama and re-enactments of Sharks versus Jets scenarios, between the werewolves and the pallid blood suckers, or the good vamps against the bad vamps. But they are subconsciously creepy because of the way the material addresses sex. Vampirism has always a metaphor for sex.

In the original Dracula, vampirism was the threat against Victorian society (read Dracula Year Ano, which brilliantly develops this idea into a freak-out, way too much fun for a vampire novel, novel)). Who can forget Stoker’s brilliant scene where Dracula, with his grotesquely long fingernails, slices a wound into his chest, which Mina in his thrall, drinks from – drinking nosferatu blood is how you become a vampire – while her fiancé hypnotized watches. Rice most often used Vampirism for homoerotic metaphors. Twilight it is sex and the loss of virginity. Bella is a virgin and wants to become a vampire, but her beloved doesn’t want to go all the way in either way. The compassionate conservative family are actually self-hating vampires, because the writer believes sex is dirty and dangerous. Family values over sexual desire, seen here as self indulgent; they live these values, forever, with the sin on their faces – their skin glitters in the sunlight. There’s no pleasure in living forever and being young. They don’t party all night or sleep all day.

This obsession reaches the literal and figurative climax in the latest film; at her truly bizarre wedding, her now just friend’s Native American werewolf is appalled she is going to have sex before becoming a vampire. She wants to experience losing her virginity as a human. Apparently vampires can’t help but like it rough. The deflowering leaves the bed in shambles and bruises all over Bella. Unlike real-life piercing of the hymen, she achieves an orgasm, mind-blowing but still within PG-13 parameters. But Edward refuses to hurt her. We’ll never have sex again, he declares.

Again, only in the movies, not only was the first the best it was also the last and she’s preggers!

His demon seed has been planted. One night of bliss and vampire baby is on the way. Sexual pleasure must be punished. The gestation is sped up because the plot needed story telling technicalities and it is killing Bella; Like Mia in Rosemary’s baby, she gets thinner, which actually is horrifying. She becomes near-skeleton like, until she learns to drink blood. Bella is given blood shakes, which she drinks from a straw. Then there’s an emergency caesarian, where her new husband must cut the child out of her, something they don’t teach in Lamaze. The only way to save her now is to turn her into a vampire, but one bite won’t do it and her new husband must bite her repeatedly up and down her entire body. In the original Dracula, then expounded on by Anne Rice, is the process of vampirism begins with sucking all the blood out of the body, then having the victim drink vampire blood, and is thus “turned.” In Hammer and other films, one bite does it, unless the victim’s body is destroyed. I suppose this is the turning scenario in Twilight. I suspect the author of the novels was more intent on anti-sex propaganda than specifying the rules of her universe. I prefer pulp to culture war polemics!

Is the baby human or vampire? Stay after the credits because those bad European vamps from the previous films, who actually take pleasure in their monster status and all its privileges, are informed the hybrid baby is born (is there a spy among the good vamps?) and want this result of deflowering by demon seed. Before the credits, Bella wakes up, alive with red eyes. She’s undead.

As cliff hangers go, the set up was well done. We live in an era of sequels, why fight it. These films were made with the idea in mind, and what is fascinating about these films of how they are all of a piece. The first Twilight was directed by the director of Thirteen, contrived but compelling piece of realism in the Cassavettes style and Nativity Story, a satisfying sword and sandal bible retelling; the latest Twilight is by the director of Gods & Monsters, the James Whale bio flick and exploration of subconscious homoeroticism, a remarkable film. I forget the middle film’s directors. Each one had a different director and Thirteen and Gods & Monsters are very different films. The material is bigger than the director; this kind of corporate production, the rule of television is becoming less and less the exception in American cinema. Movies aren’t films, they’re franchises.

I’m not sure this is always bad; although I am positive it is not always good.

The Twilight films touch on the teenage experience with an honesty that other films often fall short in achieving and they have a pop culture at the moment feel to them. They may be ludicrous and forgettable, but they provide insights into the two things I go to the movies for – Subtext and Context.

The return of the horror movie rating system

Twilight: Breaking Dawn I

Scary *
Creepy *****
Jolts **
Suspense *
Believability *
Total: ** (above average? I might have to revise my ratign system, but the reason is that the creepy has to do with subtext not action, a sort of unfair analysis. Vampires are metaphors for sexaulity, here the author’s view of sexuality is creepy. As a horror film, it is way below average. Dang, this rating system just hit a snag! How to rate a horror movie for being creepy for all the wrong reasons?)

How Green Was My Valley

2011-11-23T08:48:00.000-08:00

Of me was the valley and the valley was of me, and every blade of grass, and every stone, and every leaf of every tree, and every knob of coal or drop of water, or stick or branch or flower or grain of pollen, or creature living, or dust in the ground, all were of me as my blood, my bones, or the notions from my mind. My Valley, O my Valley, within me, I will live in you, eternally.
Let Death or worse strike this mind and blindness eat these eyes if thought or sight forget you. Valley of the Shadow of Death, now, for some, but not for me, for part of me is the memory of you in your greens and browns ,with everything of life happy in your deeps and shades, when you gave sweet scents to us, and sent forth spices for the pot, and flowers, and birds sang out of pleasure to be with you.

How Green Was My Valley by Richard LLewellyn

Baby Bumps

2011-11-23T04:52:00.000-08:00

Baby Bump. When it comes to slang and English, no nation is more compulsively inventive than the land of the free and the home of the brave; this predilection has been turned up a ba-zillion notches by our current crop of texting Americans.

Think of how demur we used to be – You’re showing. Lucy & Ricky couldn’t even say Pregnant, back in the day when toilets couldn’t be shown on screens big or small. The base side of being human, the inescapability of nature on our lives, somehow got intertwined with sin and guilt in Judeo-Christian, Western culture and it’s taken several centuries, not to mention Ginsberg & Kerouac, Heffner & Flint and Howard Stern, so that now we can finally dare to speak the names of the our various calls of nature.

Maybe the culture can go a little too much the other way, glorification in the crass, but for the most part this honesty and lack of embarrassment over universal facts of life is positive, a vast improvement over repression. We cannot not only say pregnant without second thought, we can coin a new phrase for the today’s mommies-to-be. Baby Bump. Bling of Flesh. Motherhood is in.

Last summer or the summer before, a real hot day, I saw a pregnant woman on the subway wearing a midriff blouse, her womb and enormous navel swelling in the open air. It was shocking and beautiful at the same time. I can hear the old guard bemoan the lack of decency but in fact, decency when it comes to social mores has been redefined, for the better. Social custom used to force women to disguise their “condition,” during the Victorian era a woman with child rarely left the house. Now Baby Bumps are flaunted. In Your Face Fertility!

This Baby Bump Series were by Laura Dejean, a co-founder and regular vendor and organizer of Creative Grove, our fair city’s Friday Art Mart & Flea Market, where these pieces were exhibited and on sale. Some were self-sculptures of her trimester body. The obvious comparison is to the Death Masks, where plaster was placed over the face of the deceased at the moment they became deceased, creating a sculpture of their face of death. This is the face of life. But the Death Mask was just about the surface, the facial expression. This is about what’s beneath the bump. The Womb, the fetus, the source of all life. Nature devastates and nurtures, it is logical and a contradiction, the mystery and miracle of life. Science, Medicine, biology, they really only tell us so much.

The sculpture with the Got Bump, a funny take on Got Milk and bump always comes before milk is filled with foam and you put it on to feel what it is like to be pregnant. But who can feel the inexplicable? That one had fun with the Baby Bump current coining of phrase, but the others echoed other motherhood themes – fruits of harvest, mother earth and one with men’s hands embracing from behind the bearer of his children.

Two Towed

2011-11-22T13:13:00.000-08:00

You don’t see this everyday, two cop cars being towed; but how often do you see one being towed, or three. I had the camera out so I took a picture. There’s no meaning; I don’t really have something clever to caption. Sometimes something is just obvious. Celebrate the apparent. Two cop cars being towed. The cab of the truck had a Jersey City municipal seal on the door. Maintenance most likely, or something akin to it. You see this, you know this, the whole story; certainly enough info to construct the causes leading up to this effect. Two cop cars being towed at once. How many reasons can there be? Sometimes things just are what you see, worth a hmm, or a huh, a minor occurrence. Not shock, not surprise, but even its obviousness does not detract from the fact it is less than commonplace, two cop cars on one tow truck.

Municipal Snowflakes

2011-11-21T10:23:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving may be just around the proverbial corner but the on the literal corner the Snowflakes are hung on poles with care. A truck with a cherry picker, the guy put them on the telephone pole – I noticed some are also on the faux 19th century light poles – but on Grove Street where I documented the actual affixing of the flakes it was on a telephone pole. The holders were already in place, an outlet available. The lights went on, the one that did not shine was immediately replaced. Then, on to the next pole.

Every year they do this, Municipal, non-denominational holiday decorations. The season always creeps up on you. The holidays always seem to be starting earlier and earlier. I noticed Christmas decorations on sale at Kohls Labor Day Weekend, that ain’t no lie!Some years you resist the season longer than other years; the first Christmas carols can cause cringing. But sooner or later, by December 15th or so, you’re in the mood. Christmas is fun, cozy, saturated with nostalgia and memories and merriment. We all have our rituals, the holiday specials, movies, music. Thanksgiving through Advent. Christmas occurs gradually, incrementally. The ending is abrupt. New Years. Boom! Then Winter then more winter. Baseball seems so far away when January is ending and your socks are perpetually damp from trudging through slush day and night.

Still, focus on the now. Today may be too early to start enjoying the holidays; but sooner or later, enjoy them you will. You have to; Christmas is bigger than you.

I always thought elves came in and put up the Jersey City snowflakes, but no. And unlike real snowflakes were every one is geometrically unique, not only are these identical our municipal flakes are the exactly the same as in other cities.

About an hour after I saw the snowflake hanging I wandered through Grove Street Plaza. The same guys were lighting up the tree. I talked to them. They do this for dozens of cities and towns in the area, as well as shopping malls. They start right after Halloween.

It’s not even thanksgiving and you’re putting up Christmas decorations, we get that all the time,” he said

">How many flakes went up in our fair city?

“We came with 59 and we are leaving with 7, we put them up all the way up Newark, Grove Street and Jersey.”

I didn’t inquire further, about flakes in other J.C. hoods or why only a few blocks (the most gentrified, near the PATH streets) and not others.

People were hanging around the open-air plaza, waiting for buses. The night was warm. It was nice to see the lights achieve illumination on the artificial tree.

Some bulbs remained dark and had to be replaced. It was balmy out, unseasonably warm – two weeks ago we had snow and ice, a real-life nightmare before Christmas. A couple wandered to the tree, holding an infant, his first Christmas. They pointed at the lights. I felt merry for a moment. It was nice

ArtFest/Art House

2011-11-21T10:01:00.000-08:00

Art met commerce long ago. They continue to collaborate. ArtFest, an event held at Art House, which is near Hamilton Park, added a heavy dose of urban community to the equation.

The event was sponsored by Rising Tide Capital, a non-profit organization that encourages entrepreneurship among minority and under-privileged population. Jersey City art events are often multi-ethnic and kid-friendly, but this event was especially fun. There were vendors aplenty, mainly artists and artisans selling hand-made crafts. On one end on the room was a six-inch high stage were musicians and rappers performed. To the side of the stage face painting was going on and by the time I got there, late in the afternoon, seemed all the children already resembled a pre-school production of Cats.

A genuinely enjoyable urban vibe. I noticed that a lot of the contemporary African-American arts and crafts for sale had a Soul Power, replete with psychedelic influences, feel. Very groovy (I mean that sincerely and ironically). I remembered seeing that stuff when I was the age of these kids. Back then it scared mainstream society (i.e., my parents), but now IT IS MAINSTREAM! Well, as mainstream as the Hamilton Park neighborhood gets and let’s not kid ourselves, it’s more mainstream every day. Does mainstream really have the same meaning in our media-drenched, fragmented society. What used to be underground culture is now the culture or a good part of that culture. Let’s welcome that

I guess rap and hip-hop can be considered the same way: an underground phenomena that is now acceptable. I’m not a hater of rap, but I’m not a fan. I have nothing against it, I usually find it very interesting, but a little goes a long way. It’s just not part of mypersonal soundtrack.

At ArtFest my opinion was deeply challenged, and I bought my first “hip hop” CD (that ain’t no lie) Busy is My Best Friend, by Silent Knight who performed with Soul Q’Lock. Seriously, these cats were fun to hear, fun to watch. They reminded me of Jay and Silent Bob as they shimmied and wobbled and did the hand gesture thing. At one point Q’Clock wiggled his fingers in front of his face and S.K. waved both hands I love those hand gestures, I guess they are derived from gang signs. What an affable duo. Peace Out! Representing. It’s fun and infectious no matter who you are. The perfomance entertained on a mulitude of levels.

The song that caught my attention though was Stayin’ Busy. Mostly, rap songs, even the classic ones, often sound to my ears like run on sentences in search of a rhyme. Entertaining, sure but all too often at the expense of craft. Sometimes the cussing, sexism and homophobia can be a distraction. These guys did not dabble in that sort of thing – there were kids present!

Stayin’ Busy is about a guy determined to make his art, regardless of how his friends feel. He’s “straining to sustain” sleeping on couches, staying up all night at the computer.

The narrator is cognizant of the potential and ever-present threat of his urban, working class environment:

“One check away from being on the streets/Or my peeps who are there one check ago.”

What a great couplet, brilliant alliteration. I love the internal rhymes of Street and Peeps. It’s a great song or rap or, well what it is closest to is Spoken Word, even with the beats and musical effects. But those are just classifications to make it easier to write about. I listened to the CD, this song especially. It’s like a mini-opera, a personal tale of struggling to express an artistic vision, not just against the odds but also of personal sacrifice. The rap begins with a phone call where he explains that he is too busy, at another point he dreams of his girl “in those jeans.”

The finale is a call and response with the chorus line:

When you’re trying to see your vision through the final extant

Busy is your best friend

When you’re hoping whatever you’re going through would just end

Busy is your best friend

Throughout a woman sings: There’s a limit to your love.

A haunting reminder of the price artists often must pay. Inspiration is a cruel mistress. There’s an ambiguity too: is the narrator escaping the tribulations of life by staying busy or is him staying busy the real cause of the problems? It can go either way; what a provocative song, rap, poem, whatever! (I’m making a hand gesture to emphasize my point).

Anyway. I’m not getting on the hip-hop/rap band wagon, but this was well-crafted writing, an attention to iambic pentameter which is just a fancy way of saying deliberate amount of syllables within the lines, which were long-breath lines, to enhance the rhythm of the writing. It wasn’t just the pre-recorded samples giving this material rhythm, it was the writing itself, attention to the sound of words as well as their meaning. The dude has something to say and an original way of saying it. His CD was worth spending some time with; my player isn’t sick of it yet!

Check out his website.

My favorite Art Fest contribution to the Jersey City art scene. Tea! I’m a devout tea drinker and there was an honest to God tea vendor, “Taking Tea In Style.” They were selling by cups and bag a quite good Coconut Chai.

Do you drink Chai, asked Sharon Levy, the owner.

Only every morning, I said.

I never drink coffee. I drink many cups of tea a day; I’ve gotten a bit particular and brew it fresh. I am a tea head.

You can get booze, water and coffee at Art Events. But heretofore never tea, especially the high quality tea which I have come to prefer. Apparently Tea In Style is based in Princeton; It’s all fancy tea stuff, but also a selection of gourmet teas. Anyway, I know my chai and this was quite delicious.

Check out the website

The New Order: 7-11 Opens on Madison

2011-11-13T05:01:00.000-08:00

Happened the other day, in New York City, near the day job’s office, on Madison Avenue, a grand opening of a 7-11. During my youth in Bergen County then Atlantic County then Bergen County again I worked plenty of night shifts, filing stories by Midnight and before then, crappy jobs in warehouses and other alienating shit-holes, even once was a cashier at a Parkway rest stop, graveyard shift. The only place still open after 2:00 AM were a handful of diners and 7-11s or their equivalent, Wa-Wa and Cumberland Farm.

In the suburbs and the ex-burbs, here and across the land that I love best, 7-11s were often trading posts at the edges of the frontier, barely embryonic civilization formed by highways and strip malls and jobs that used to be there in factories and mills, later office parks and technical support call centers.

Individuals were unable to invest or unwilling to dream that the service road to the Interstate could someday a well travelled path to employment where workers would stop for a coffee, bear claw and pack of Luckies. Many places a convenient store might be an unfeasible enterprise – an individual store owner would not be able to garner sufficient revenue to make it work, but a chain intent on building a national brand could run a few stores at less than desirable profitability because more locations not just build a brand, but makes it easier to absorb losses due to under-performing stores. Of course as soon as the inability of the independent store to compete on price, selection or hours drives that retailer out of business, that 7-11 location will improve its profitability.

We consumers soon ask ourselves, why not go to the certainity of a 7-11 instead of risking your time at a local general store because you remembered how great the energy drink selection was at that 7-11 on that highway that one time where nothing was opened and you were driving all night and the future was only tomorrow and apprehension filled the horizon. Things turned out all right then, it could today.

I have nothing against 7-11s stores or national chains. Like McDonalds and Star Bucks, 7-11s provide security – no matter where you are in our hyper mobile country, you can be in a place that you know. But New York City (and the NYC area which also means J.C.) is not in the middle of nowhere with nothing else; the city that never sleeps has a plethora of 24 bodegas with beverages and cigarettes and lottery machines. I remember thinking how cool it was that I could get Jolt Cola or a Red Stripe Beer and a pack of Goullaise at 3:00 AM; And they had weird things you never saw anywhere, like this vanilla coconut soda I drank before I had to restrict my sugar intake. An awesome beverage, whose name I can’t remember, that I haven’t seen in 20 years.

I didn’t miss the 7-11s when I went urban, and even though my night owl ways gradually waned I took comfort in knowing that if I ever need weird sodas and french cigarettes during the desperate netherworld twixt midnight and dawn they were there for me. It wasn’t just the convenience of the national branded convenience store that I discovered in the 24-hour bodega and deli republic; it was the individuality of the stores, the personable clerks, often the owners or the family members of the owner.

The 7-11 has a personality too, but it is a corporate personality; the comfort it provides intentionally lacks a knowable individual stamp; in an unfamiliar time or place they are the bastion of familiarity. When it’s the only place opened after all the bars are closed and you are the only one you know awake, you’re thankful for that bland familiarity. But why would anyone need or want that when you have the sea or diversity that is Manhattan’s Bodega and Deli republic?

I recently blogged about a local J.C. store, 24-7, that received a cease and desist order from 7-11 because their awning blatantly mimicked the more famous brand. I realize now why they went for that recognition. Our society no longer values the individual shop owner and his or her personal retail vision. We want stores to be like Subway or McDonalds and a convenient store is no different than a Target or Wal-Mart. Except for the 99 cents, many of which are now chains, how many other independent department stores do you know of, or stores of any real size, except for a few shops specializing in over-priced designer wares. C.H. Martin?

I now realize why 7-11 made such an effort to attack this local business owner; they’re invading inner-cities, that’s the new growth opportunity for national chains. There’s a 7-11 in Journal Square. Bodegas and Delis have proven that there is a huge market here and in other cities for convenient stores; opportunities that no longer exist in our nation’s ex-urbs, where the farms are all shut down and the industrial and tech jobs that replaced them during the last century are now performed in other nations.

New York City used to be a place filled with stores that could only be found there. Exceptions remain but for the most part, Manhattan is now the STRIP MALL ON THE HUDSON.

Another more nefarious cause resulted in this 7-11 on Madison Avenue. It’s the chains that have the investment power. An entrepreneur getting a loan to start a store versus a known brand opening up an outlet, which is the better risk, Mr. Banker? Which loan do Government policies or New York zoning and business licensing regulations encourage?

Regional distinctiveness is an endangered species. The New Order arrives one 7-11 at a time and a city becomes a consolidated Ex-urb.

Memory Mural

2011-11-09T08:24:00.000-08:00

This wonderful, I am assuming new, mural is on Brunswick Street, somewhere north of First Street.

Murals are blooming everywhere in Jersey City and I make note when I feel the urge. This mural is a growing trend of Storefront Gate pictorials, ranging from a clever advertisement for the business, the gate is securing to an art for art sake picture, such as this dramatic gargoyle.

Maybe mural is not the right word but I can’t think of a more appropriate term for this large canvas diorama. The colors seem muted, yet they have a vibrancy without any brightness. The style seems like Edgar Degas meets Edward Hopper, impressionistic, yet illustrative, a little lonely but human, touching, wistful.

A friend of mine, born and bred J.C. person also noticed this painting and clued me in – that’s the old neighborhood. I have no idea what business this gate is in front of now – I took the picture early this morning, most businesses were still closed – but the store fronts depicted -- Todiscos, Lipari Barbershop, Difeo's Pastry – were the actual stores lining Brunswick street back in the mid-to-late 20th century. Even the giant Pepsis bottle cap – which can still be seen on this street – is accurate to the bygone era. Notice how the real door is used as a faux corner and the mural on the right hand sided gate changes its perspective, creating a sense of distance, objects getting smaller, recreating the look of a street corner, bringing the viewer into if not the painting itself, the idea of this depiction. Notice also the tan portions near the top, how the shade mimics the actual beige façade of the building, resulting in a momentary illusion that this work emerges out of the building and is not really a paneled security gate. The ridges of the gate seem also to enhance the shimmering effect, of the colors, the soft-focus impressionism of the style and the fading nostalgia of the internal narration of the actual depiction.

Blurred on the edges, colors fading with every blink of your eye… that’s the way memories look in our mind. Like one of those dreams where you are in a place that used to be, everything is familiar, but as you recognize identifiable landmarks from your past, you also are waking and soon the whole era evaporates. The mural may be of the past, but the sweet if melancholic emotions invoked by the high-level of art here is undeniable 21st Century Jersey City. Memories can inspire our imaginations and feed our dreams. On Brunswick Street, they don’t have to be yours. This beautiful, highly imaginative work of art expands on the past that is collected in our collective memory.

Newport Station Rotting

2011-11-07T13:49:00.000-08:00

Newport Path Station, above ground may look like a sleek, modern transport hub, an illusion sustained with the new turn styles, down the shiny escalators and tunnels lined with tiles and decorative art but once you get to the stairs down to the platform, it’s moldy and decayed. This path station is rotting away. I wrote about Newport Corroding here, a year ago. It hasn’t improved since, quite the opposite. Now the rust, mold and disrepair is spreading from the platform up to the stairwells. It’s gross, unsightly and more than likely a health and safety hazard. It’s more cave than subway station now, the Hudson river leaking through.

New Colors 24/7

2011-11-07T08:21:00.000-08:00

Anybody remember this blog from about two years ago? A new bodega opened with an awning whose green and orange colors seemed familiar and the name 24/7… him seven… what would rhyme with it, hmmm… what says convenience store that never closes and sells everything you can think of plus the widest selection of sugar-laden beverages known to mankind?

Well, no more. Oh the name stays the same but the colors were repainted a couple of weeks ago.

"Why," I asked the owner.

"It’s 7-11," he said.

Apparently there were cease and desist letters, court hearings. The owner told me his lawyer told him that he would win, eventually but he decided to give in and change the colors so it would not appear to look like that famous convenience store.

"I got sick of fighting it, I could have taken it further and won, but what's the use?"

We don’t need a chains or local bodegas that mimic chains. Be a local bodega. You may not be able to get a slurpee but they have a fine selection and a nice deli. The guys who run it are friendly. You want a 7-11 go to Journal Square!

Oh, the memories: A freshly painted awning and an awning-less façade. Nothing survives time or trademark infringement laws.

Puddle Reflects

2011-11-01T09:19:00.000-07:00

I have taken if not a lot, some pictures in this lot or the general vicinity. Maybe I’m in a blogging frame of mind when I cross the paved emptiness; it’s on a habitual wander for yours truly. Puddles (and litter) are not exactly “uncommon” in Jersey City, but maybe the sun was in the right place and who knows what other optics of fate and the universe aligned to provide a near perfect mirror reflecting the building and sky. Notice the snow in the background. Could our October ice storm have enhanced the optics necessary for this effect?

Tree Splits Across First

2011-11-01T09:14:00.000-07:00

While walking east on Newark Avenue on Sunday Morning, I make a right on Monmouth. I’m talking to my sister who lives in Nutley. She is telling me that she still has power, but Paramus where our mother and her children live was hit real bad, power outage, fallen tees

I don’t think we got anything like that in Jersey City. More inland is bad she says, even the Governor is without power. I think I heard something about that on the radio. I wasn’t paying close attention to the news this morning

I guess Jersey City is in a bubble by the River, I say with inappropriate jocularity. I reach the corner of First Street and just as I am saying how Jersey City was spared I see this. Holy crap, Suzanne. There’s a fallen tree across a street. Just like we were talking about, here it is.

I was wrong, Jersey City was not spared.

Holy crap. Holy crap.

The irony of encountering a fallen tree moments after I testified to no such thing was not as shocking as the catastrophe itself. This was no mere downed branch, no loose limb. Practically half the tree, a large tributary of wood and leaves split off at the trunk, had toppled, probably been whole, growing there and lining our streets since WWII or Korea. It had fallen over cars but the branches seemed to prop up the long limb so it didn’t seem to cause any visible automobile damage.

The firemen had arrived, they were assessing the situation. They had chainsaws ready. I had been out for a while, walking around finding snow on pumpkin photo ops, I heard sirens all morning but I didn’t really pay them any mind. The leaves on the tree were still green. We are only a month into fall.

I seem to remember a brief flurry the day after the Mets lost the World Series to the Yankees in 2001, but nothing like this. I don’t remember any snow in October, says my sister, who is older than I. Later I would talk to mom. She was without power, depressed and frustrated about it. She has seen 91 Octobers, does not remember one with an ice storm. News reports called it a rare October snowstorm. Rare? How about first time ever! The leaves hadn’t even turned color, much less fallen. They’re as green as they were in August! It was 80 degrees two weeks ago! From 80 to below freezing in a fortnight.

Rare? No, not rare. The new order is here! We are experiencing the extreme weather events Al Gore warned us of in his excellent documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Weather patterns are not like they were when we were kids, not like they were even 10 years ago and 10 years ago they were more similar to when we were kids than they are to our post-Katrina atmosphere (and us with a Repulican controlling Trenton, Yikes! The poor and middle class are on our own!).

I passed by 24 hours later, the tree was still down (by nightfall it had been removed). I guess the firemen didn’t cut anything. The power lines were intertwined with the branches; dismantling the tree would have to be a painstaking operation. Maybe this was job for PSE&G. Nobody seems to have gotten hurt, the cars too seem oddly undamaged. How many times have we seen a tree, technically half a tree, split at the trunk, here in our fair city? Never up till now. Holy Crap!

Snow on Pumpkins

2011-11-01T08:00:00.000-07:00

Frost on the pumpkin is a saying heralding the advent of autumn and the end of summer. But snow on the pumpkin? Who was dreaming of a white Halloween when they saw this 30 days ago? I have snapped images of local Halloween decorations in the past, so I wandered a bit to catch what I knew would be an unsettling juxtaposition. Snow on Halloween. I guess for Minesotans it’s a common occurrence but for us here it’s unnerving at best, what’s next, snow in August. Expect the unexpected. Remember the Nightmare Before Christmas, the surrealistic stop-animation cartoon that plays with our subconscious experience of the holiday season. Iconic images signify our holidays, pumpkins for All Hallow’s Eve; Snow our winter solstice bacchanal of cozy joy known as Christmas. But these two images are not supposed to inhabit the same place. That was the unsettling clash Burton had cinematic fun with. I feel unsettled. The Saturday Ice Storm was fierce, relentless. Probably the first of many. Usually we see this kind of winter after December, well into January. Slush in October? Taking out the winter clothes before I put the shorts away? Snow on Pumpkins? It’s just so weird. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Saint Jude Novena

2011-10-28T04:55:00.000-07:00

Happy Saint Jude Feast Day!

Saint Jude is known as the saint of lost causes and desperate situations. Congratulations to everybody completing the Saint Jude Novena.

This prayer tradition takes place at Saint Michael Church on 9th street. This Jersey City tradition dates back to the 1930s, here’s some history & mystery about Saint Jude in Jersey City.

From the General Epistle of Saint Jude
20 But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy
faith, praying in the Holy Ghost.

Gospel of Saint John, XIV

22 Judas saith unto him, not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world?

23 Jesus answered and said unto him, he will keep my words: my father will love him, and he will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

24 He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s which sent me.

25 These things I spoken unto you, being yet present with you.

26 But the comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

Help me to live with faith
in the promise that God is always with us.
Help me to live with hope
that God will bring us through our pain and suffering.
Help me to live with love
so I can bring Christ’s light to others.

From Novena Meditations to Saint Jude, Liguori Press

McGinley Square

2011-10-20T09:40:00.000-07:00

McGinley Square, is south of Journal Square. I may have been there once before. It’s named after a Monsignor who built the church and school, Saint Aedan. The square portion, set off from the splendor of the domed Saint Aedan’s and the couple of blocks of urban (i.e. ghetto-fabulous aka what Downtown used to be like) shops, had some pigeons and these two interesting monuments, direclty opposite each other in the circle in the middle of the corner that is in all likelihood, the “square”. New controvesy has come to McGinley Square; the developers are going to get busy. Apparently the eminent domain issue has been resolved, bribes have been allotted, and construction will begin in 2010, so they say, or is it hope? The monuments and the pigeons will likely survive.

American Dream

2011-10-16T15:48:00.000-07:00

An empty, grassy lot, I think on Montgomery Street. Great lettering on The American Dream. Seems sort of placed there for this provocative photo, behind the fence. Is the American Dream doomed because it fails to admit that it includes a fence or is the American Dream failed because the fence is an undeniable fact? Great juxtaposition, made to be photographed. The American Dream, we all have it but what they forget to mention is that mine is not the same as yours. America is not a dream. It’s an idea.

Occupy Journal Square

2011-10-16T15:02:00.000-07:00

Depressing and unpleasant, I am sad to report, was my experience visiting Occupy Journal Square. As readers know, I am supportive of Occupy Wall Street, having blogged about it here, the October 5th demonstration here, and how Jersey City was supporting them here. I consider myself a New Deal Democrat. This movement gives me hope.

Except for a short stint in the Lower East Side of NYC, I’ve lived in New Jersey all my life. And my experience has been that by and large, people from New Jersey, not all, just the majority, have their heads so far up their asses that…fill in the blank.

The head up their ass part is the main constant. Luckily, many have other attributes than their brains being placed deep inside their rectums.

Jersey City is to New York City what Canada is to the United States, the pretty good, e-for-effort place that is forever overshadowed by the last great hope for mankind.

At first glance, that’s what I thought when I saw their encampment, outside of an empty lot where a construction project, knocked down an urban strip mall in the name of development and now has been temporarily abandoned.

Some people folding a tarp, what looked like food was on other table, a few books in a library; it was a miniaturized mimic of Occupy Wall Street. Endearing, at first. Sitting Bull stenciled on American Flag. We are the 99 percent signs. Right on… but… Unlike other places in America or New Jersey, at JSQ you can take a 10 minute Path ride to the real Occupy Wall Street, which the whole world is watching.

JSQ a smaller occupation, less than a dozen were there when I stopped by on Sunday afternoon. I was happy to see it actually happen. A rag tag bunch – I clicked like on their Facebook page – attempted an occupy last week, tried to occupy Colgate park at Exchange Place, but the rumor was that our dipshit Governor ordered the JCPD to barricade. This was just implied in the press, who didn’t bother to get a police confirmation or even quote. Anyway, they tried it at Grove Street Path, on a Thursday, when there’s a Green Market. They pissed off the green market vendors, who told me business was off 40 percent. Where occupiers go police follow. So they wound up at Journal Square, been there almost a week.

I wish I could say right on. One of the controversies of this movement is that it is leaderless and there is no single message – the majority of the messages revolve around issues of Economic Justice, which I am generally an enthusiastic supporter of. But there are tangential and unrelated messages, a minority to be sure, but I feel they can turn people off, even highjack what is trying to be accomplished. At Journal Square, my fears were realized. Several signs were not just turn offs but all I could think of was how easily they could be used by those who oppose economic change too squelch the movement.

Obama is Wall Street was a particularly infuriating one. I mean, do they think McCain would be better, less Wall Street?

Oh he’s just a rock star, it doesn’t matter who is president, I was told.

Huh? Another sign was End Palestine Occupation. Whoa! Where does Israel/Palestine issues come into to the need for U.S. economic reform? That is not a criticism of Israel government or military policies, which I am critical of, nor is it supporting a two state solution. Israel does not have the right exist is the message being sent there, not a return to the 1967 borders. It’s an anti-Semitic statement.

End The Fed Now was another one. For some reason I see this sentiment only in New Jersey Occupy stuff, at least on Facebook. It’s an immature and anti-intellectual statement. Change the Fed, sure, but I mean, what about the FDIC? The Federal Bank is different than the bailout of Wall Street or the fact there hasn’t been prosecution of the bankers who caused our financial mess or unjustly foreclosing on homes. What is that about?

How could I even ask the question an JSQ occupier responds: Do you see how the media is ignoring Ron Paul.

How are they ignoring him? He is allowed to debate with those other republican maniacs, his platform is on the internet. He spouts idiocy, is my opinion.

Oops. The wrong opinion.

So, Occupy JSQ has Ron Paul supporters? WTF?

Global Warming doesn't exist was the next part of his platform. It is a myth perpetuated by Al Gore because he is making money off carbon credits.

So, pollution so has no impact on the environment?

On the environment, but not on the planet.

Interesting distinction.

This dude is wearing a 911 was an inside job t-shirt. I got him started. His argument is that the way the towers imploded proves that Al Queda is media fantasy and Bin Laden a CIA agent.

Seriously, he was serious.

I said what about all the Fatwas issued by Al Queda during the 90s, but the attacks on the Korbel Towers, Tanzania, the Cole. What do they have to do with 9-11?

Huh? They don’t prove that al queda was around before that September?

Seriously, what an infuriating conversation. I never met a 9-11 Inside Job person before, I heard they existed, but nothing can prepare one for encountering the real thing. Conspiracy theorists. Good lord. Of course, he had not been camping there, although he told me people had. He hadn’t attended the New York Saturday rallies.

I was afraid for them, JSQ can be a dangerous place after nightfall. I’m not afraid of the neighborhood, I’m afraid of the police, they have itchy trigger fingers, he said. Sort of a douchey thing to say. He was not camping out, he was just there representing. Ugh.

That’s my experience there at JSQ. Solidarity in my heart, totally for the movement, and I meet Head up their ass Jersey ites – the same lame brains I have known and been ashamed of being from the same state for my entire life.

Ugh!

9-11 was an inside job? Anti-Israel statements?

Ugh!

I asked if any of Jersey City union members came by to show support, I was told no.

Who can blame them?

So, I still support Occupy Wall Street. In the abstract, I still support Occupy Journal Square. But in reality, OJSQ is an embarrassment. Dopes and nut-jobs was my impression, none of the intelligent, engaging discussions one has at Freedom Park.

Occupy Journal Square seems emblematic of the challenge this movement faces. The lack of specificity also means anyone can latch on to the protest to further their own agenda. That’s what I saw happening in JSQ, at least the Sunday I came by. If somebody wants to believe 9-11 was an inside job, inspite of the facts, have at it. But it seems to me to be a dangerous distraction to the change Occupy Wall Street proposes. Welcome to New Jersey! Luckily, the movement that gives me hope was only a PATH train ride away.

Custom Mask

2011-10-14T10:43:00.000-07:00

These are hand-made, custom masks by Benjamin R. Miller, which he sells at Creative Grove. He said that he was drawing on his training in theater. The masks resembled those eerie face covers often used in Greek Tragedy. They caught my eye.

He is not just selling the masks – a product – he is also selling a service. He is customizing Halloween costumes for adults and children, which can feature these masks which are made to the wearer’s face. We’ve seen the masquerade and the masquerade is you!

Contact Ben Miller at info@benmiller.info

Music is Benjamin R. Miller full-time job. He’s a musician of some renowned – he was with Destroy All Monsters, a band I remember hearing about but never heard or saw. They were around back in the hey day of the No Wave or there abouts, which followed Punk and New Wave, an avante garde music movement in downtown 80s NYC, from which the Lounge Lizards, and Sonic Youth, perhaps the best known of the bunch, emerged.

Here is his website: www.benmiller.info

Treesouls

2011-10-11T09:22:00.000-07:00

Do we emerge from nature or do we return to nature – or both – thought of that when I saw this lovely, arbor-oriented couple trying to put down roots in Madison Square Park, near the Flatiron district. A little scary, but also compellingly blunt. Camille Paglia that sex is the nature in all of us, and nature is inevitable. For some reason the squirrel (look closer) rummaging near the roots on the lawn reinforced the inevitability. This sculpture is called Treesouls – according to this website – and is by Alison Saar, who is also doing in the park Feallan and Fallow, a six-piece installation inspired by the ancient myth of Persephone. I’m not sure if the project is there in a another part of the park and I didn’t see it or if it is not yet installed. Is this Adam and Eve trapped or freed or maybe, when it comes to the earth and mortality, there is no difference. Our accepted nomenclature falls short. Here’s something on the artist

Illegible Sky Writing

2011-10-10T13:00:00.000-07:00

Be prepared to squint. No, these aren’t narrow bands of nimbus, not accidental letters formed by clouds. There is a plane in the sky spewing this script. Saw this yesterday somewhere in the sky twixt Newport and Power House, a sky writer. I can’t remember the last time I saw something like that, I don’t think ever round these parts. The pilot didn’t mean to scribble. There was just enough breeze, especially the closer you get to the stratosphere, that legibility just couldn’t be maintained. Or maybe skywriting is such a lost art that the pilot couldn’t manage the words. What do you call illegible skywriting – air pollution? But it’s like life sometimes feels, racing to get your message out but that message evaporates so quickly that it makes no sense, disappearing before you even finish.

Bricks, Like Laid

2011-10-08T07:49:00.001-07:00

Jersey City can be like a pile of bricks. But we don’t need bricks to lay bricks. Old Rail Road & Jersey Avenue corners got some new brick in the street – so soon after being paved – you wonder. Actually, it’s a minor form of alchemy: transmuting asphalt into brick. Not brick stone, brick asphalt. Remember way back last year, another faux brick company put heated grates into the asphalt and formed brick shapes which were then painted brick red. Thus bricks fell on Newark Ave. I assume a similar process is going on here but it sure seems more involved than the brick crosswalk asphalt transformation pf 2010. More guys, an extra step of some kind with cement. The bricks look the same, and even feel the same; just like they were laid.

Silver Rocking Horse

2011-10-06T15:19:00.001-07:00

The Silver Rocking Horse – Silver is not its natural color – was first seen on the veranda of the Warehouse, a local, independently owned coffee shop known for its lively staff and their ability to brew an exceptional Chai Tea Soy latté.

During the J.C. Studio Tour, the horse was moved to the empty lot, looks a little surreal and lonely but in fact, it was a protest. This lot reportedly has been sold to a developer and a 40 story building is planned. I have no way of checking this fact. Actually, there are plenty of ways but I don’t have time to check this fact. The protest, though subtle, argues that the neighborhood should retain its industrial city look and not have structures that clash with that aesthetic. I wish of course they would bring back the freight trains, have the warehouses and factories start producing again, but shoot, where would they put the café if that came to pass?
Also during the tour, this colorful, graffiti-inspired mural was erected on the fence around the grassy field. Taking back the neighborhood, echoes the intention of the silver rocking horse protest.

Solidarity & Hope

2011-10-06T08:06:00.000-07:00

A dream is coming true. That’s how I felt, standing in Foley Square, watching tens of thousands, the vast majority union workers but also students and fringy groups, heading en masse to Occupy Wall Street. A statement was being made. Unions were not just represented. They were represented in force. According to the N.Y. Times, Transport Workers Union, the Service Employees International Union, the United Federation of Teachers and the United Auto Workers were represented. I also saw a Nursing Union Sign. Finally, the long hoped for, dreamt about coalition between progressives and labor.

I hemmed and hawed all day, thinking of reasons not to leave work early to see the demonstration.

I’m just not a protest person, unless you count going to a Central Park for Nuclear Freeze Rally in the 80s and an Earth Day in the 90s.

But Occupy Wall Street has fired my imagination and filled me with hope.

My optimism was only confirmed and increased by the Foley Square to Freedom Park March of Solidarity. I was teary eyed with joy. October 5th was a historical day and one hopes a positive turning point in both the movement and awareness of the need of economic justice in our country.

I first went to what I thought was Foley Square Park, which is actually City Hall Park (it’s the park closest to the great JR). There seemed to be no activity.

Then I went to the Liberty Park. It was a like Student Commons, at least three times more crowded than it had been last week. The energy level was higher, signs were plentiful, in full view, clever, funny, thought provoking.

On one end was a drum circle, rocking steady beats and the other end, kids were sitting in lotus positions and chanting OM. Others were just hanging out, talking, playing chess; they were being young for a good cause. I dug the people, dug the signs. But where were the Union Members?

I was reassured, they are coming, permits were granted.

They will be marching from Foley Square. Where was Foley Square? (Except for a five block radius around my apartment, I have no sense of direction).

There’s a message on cell-phone, my friend, Debra, die-hard New York liberal who also has been captivated by Occupy Wall Street. She tells me lots of people are here, just walk up Broadway, you’ll find it.

Foley Square is right in front of City Hall. It’s the 6th Train stop. I’ve been there before, but only half a ba-zillion times so my disorientation is understandable.

Anyway... tens of thousands were behind barriers. The vibe can only be described as energized joy. Then they began to march. Tons and tons of people.

I met Johanna holding a sign quoting Henry Wallace, who was a pre-Truman Vice President for FDR, who then launched a third party bid for the presidency. We talked a bit, she told me she was named after Visions of Johanna, so of course I recited a few lyrics. What is happening? Lovely young women named after Dylan songs holding signs about semi-obscure labor history moments of the early to mid 20th century. I am in the heaven Tom Joad implies exists at the end of Grapes of Wrath.

I felt like I was dreaming, and unlike the eight years of the Bush administration, this was no nightmare. It was the opposite of nightmare.

I felt incredibly happy. My dream has been for a new coalition, between labor and the splintered progressive groups to join together and bring back the New Deal. Today was the first time I saw a glimmer of that dream come true. The police sanctioned off streets, implemented crowd control that would reduce any possibility of a large group swelling in any one place. But they could not suppress the feeling shared and it seemed most of the cops, union members themselves, were supportive.

Occupy Wall Street has been criticized for not having specific demands, yet.

I think this will ultimately prove to be their greatest strength. They already command the symbols of debate by its location – Wall Street, the literal and symbolic center of Corporate Greed Bush-era policies empowered to rape and pillage the middle class – and by doing so, while not formulating the specific issues of the debate, they have defined the parameters of the discussion. The demands discussion can now begin on their – our – terms.

On the downside, the messages have diversified. One woman had this weird doll, said Screw You Alabama. What does Alabama have to do with Wall Street? This was against the new immigration law passed by the state, she explained, the doll was Dora the Explorer dressed like a Mexican. What? Dora is no Pipi Longstocking! Is it really wise to bring in immigration issues? I felt the same way about a Stop Fracking Sign. Another group called Revolution, purportedly were communists, I think they were a hoax. Another group was self-declared socialist – talk about a buzz words the right can latch onto to criticize this event and justify a crackdown by law enforcement. Another was for the N.Y. Green Party – gee, they’ve been an effective bunch! It seems these individuals were not forming a coalition, or expressing solidarity; they were using the event to promote their own agenda. The potential threat is that they can appear to embody this political movement.

At this time, that potential is small since it seemed way less than 5 percent of the visible signage. Most of the signs were different riffs on the overriding theme – Economic Justice! Rob, who has been sleeping there, aid that the organizers are aware of the potential of these messages hijacking the movement.

He also said the police are becoming more strict about sleeping bags, mattresses and tarps; they’re trying to make the occupation as uncomfortable as possible. A turning point is coming. But today indicates that turning point could turn in a positive direction. I don’t want to be a cynic, or such a realist that I abandon optimism.

Still, I wanted to see the melding of the two groups, the neo new left and the neo union movement, finally joining hands at Liberty Park. That didn’t quite happen to the extent my by then overly optimistic expectations envisioned. Seemed the union folks went to the park then went home. The kumbuyah moment where everyone held hands and sang classics form the Almanac Singers songbook did not occur. I had the feeling that when the march ended, the two groups were still trying to figure out what to make of each other. I don’t really having pictures of them together because my camera stop working, sorry. But, the first step was made.

A kinship was acknowledged, and around that acknowledgement a coalition can coalesce. Also, Unions have declared support and by doing so, augment the seriousness this demonstration Will they be here tomorrow, stay overnight, join in the twice daily marches in front of the stock exchange? Maybe solidarity can be expressed in a more effective way. There’s an Occupy New Jersey now, an Occupy Wall Street in other cities. Hope was kept alive on October 5th 2011, in and of itself, a remarkable accomplishment.

Source of Life

2011-10-03T12:34:00.000-07:00

Source of Life has been an ongoing art project more than 10 years in the making by Marco Runanin, a chef by trade (he has a website for chef services, the Chef Works). He exhibited this ongoing work for public view during the J.C. Artist Studio Tour for the first time. The work mixes materials – wood, stone, metal, etc. – and combines found art with abstract conceptualism.

What is the Source of life? You may want to clarify if you mean this in a general sense or specifically about the project, but the answer could be the same. Marco has an alchemical answer to this metaphysical question. The use of different materials that combine in his words, “permanence with the temporary.”

Pieces of metals that range from a latch from a pier he found on the waterfront to melted pieces of an aluminum pan, branches, sticks and a root system “I found while digging around in my garden.”

The materials are “polyurethaned” which prevents deterioration but gives a unifying sheen to the work, which sprawls from one corner of his (very groovy) apartment through another room, across the wall, to a corner window.

He added other touches such as metal flamingos, tiny elephants, what looks like a chalice, drawings. Just as you think it’s an abstract sculpture assembled with found pieces, you then notice that a table top one is nearly a miniature, an abstraction of a primitive village, early sings of civilization. “Another source of life,” said Marco, referencing early society aspects of this section of the project.

But depicting, even abstractly, early civilization with a mix of materials makes one wonder, at what point along the alchemical evolution of life dies human consciousness emerge? It’s wrong expect an answer to these questions from this work; it’s enough that it poses these questions. It's fun just to ponder them through art.

His bookshelves were aligned with an impressive range of philosophy and mysticism, Joseph Campbell, Bertrand Russell, the Kabballah... the Golden Bough (I’ve always wanted to read that one). He’s has lots of books. Much thought has gone into this project. The Source of Life materials look like they do in nature while also looking like something artificial and man made.

The Source of Life seemed like a molecular statement about that mystical space where substance and spirit overlap. It is a provocative work, especially for those inclined towards mystical thought. “All mystical states start with the body,” he said.

The physical and the spiritual may be separate, but in order to be separate, at some point by definition must be one. All elements began as one, say some Cabbalists.

As I looked at the work spreading like preternatural ivy, I thought that maybe this shows that moment where things begin to separate and stop being one yet before those things are fully distinct and self-defined.

Which makes one wonder if it is indeed abstract at all, or maybe it is entirely abstract, even with the placement of metal flamingos along what looks like a jetty. That’s not stone or a fossil, it’s polyurethaned wood. It’s the type of 3-D, found-art sculpture whose details captivate and it is fun to be lost its labyrinth of inquiry.

Also, he served pastry, and I just have to mention, best damn cream puffs, ever!

Thomas Francis Takes His Chances.

2011-10-03T09:04:00.000-07:00

I noticed the metal shapes first. They seem to defy rules of geometry. Crush was the name of the art/jewelry. Coins and medals, left on the train tracks of our local Freight Train to run over and crush. These newly compressed pieces then have a small hole drilled into them, through which a string is threaded and wal-lah, necklace. Sorta hippie, pretty cool. One caught my eye, a Miraculous Medal of Mary, the impression of the familiar icon was barely visible, giving it a nifty antiquity veneer – was that an impression forming the image of The Blessed Virgin or just a glint that looks familiar.

Come see our band!

Band? The band’s name is Crush?

No. Thomas Francis Takes His Chances.

Sounded like a children’s book title. Everyone has nostalgia for things of their childhood but this current crop of young men and women are absolutely fetishistic about their lost pre-tween years. Maybe it means something else. If there is a reference to this name I do not know it. But they were nice folks. I’m a sucker for enthusiasm.

I was planning to come back to the 4th Street Festival anyway to catch some of the bands. Why not go back a little earlier than I originally wanted to.

Before they went on, the rain started, a pretty healthy downpour. I clambered up a nearby loading dock, within decent view (although obviously not for pictures) and decent sound.

The band rocked, not that they played typical rock and roll. The early songs sounded like progressive rock pop, but with a harder edge, as if the Sex Pistols were playing Queen songs.

The keyboard was the bedrock of the sound, especially when the pop teetered towards very twisted Kurt-Weil-on-meth cabaret. The lead singer, tall, skinny, wild eyed was antic, at times deranged. A lot of jumping around on stage, by the musicians. He was singer and ring master.

Another player, a real multi-instrumentalist, switched from washboard to according to trumpet to trombone – when he played the trumpet, in the middle of a cabaret type number blew forth what sounded like an Alan Toussaint/medicine show horns. They mixing genres freely, madly and yet it all worked. The accordion though was the multi-instrumentalist’s forte instrument;on another song, the dialog twixt the keyboard the squeeze box was a truly interesting, they made the complex seemed simple but there was a lot of substance with their interplay.

Thomas Francis Takes His Chances was having a hot set at 4th Street.

I struggle to describe the music because it was original and a lot of fun, filled with ideas, often zany, sometimes disturbing, always provocative. Out of chaos came order and the shifting back and forth between dissonance and harmony was thrilling to follow.

Towards the end of the set, they went from what seemed like Island record era Waits into spoken word/rap. The lead singer was reading from a notebook. The audience was cajoled into raising their hands, like a house party. Genres collided and then adapted. The collision and the cohesion was part of the fun. You became unsure of when one ended or the other began until the question itself was muted by the sheer intoxicating energy of the music.

One of the few songs I got the title to was Dirty Surfers, which began with a roaring, credible surf rock riff and then it dawned on me how to describe what I was seeing – a Gen-Y B-52s, with better musical chops though. How can they shift gears and mix genres so adeptly? These cats can play!

The downpour got heavy before turning into a drizzle and eventually fading away. The crowd stayed in front of the stage through the entire set. Many already soaked, eschewed the umbrellas and danced. The music was made to make you move. I clambered off the loading dock to get close to the stage, to try and get a better picture but also, I wanted to fully experience this music. The pictures aren’t that much better, sorry.

A few dozen people stayed through the rain to listen and dance and enjoy. How many bands can inspire that kind of commitment? I still don’t have a clue what Thomas Frances Takes His Chances might mean, but their music was extremely entertaining. It was worth being rained on to hear.

My space page:

Music for download:

What looks like an abandoned blog:

Annual Repainting of Holy Rosary Veteran Shrine

2011-10-03T08:08:00.001-07:00

Mike applies a new coat on the Blessed Mary shrine on Brunswick and Seventh (or is that Sixth?). Born and bred Jersey City guy, went to school here at Holy Rosary (The Feast Sponsor).

"My uncle painted this every year, now I paint it. It’s sunny today. You can’t do it during the week, because the kids will mess with it."

Next Month is Veterans Day. Mike said the shrine is painted every year in October. Maybe it’s so this memorial looks its best for that holiday.

The plaque reads: For God, Country and Home... In Memory of All Deceased Veterans of the Parish. The year that shrine was decade is 1952.

The Korean War. How many wars since then? More of years of war than Peace, more young men and women from Jersey City making the ultimate sacrifice.

Inside were candles and flowers, placed there like they have been for decades – the Church itself is over 100 years old – personal expressions of prayer, individual memories of loved ones, a privacy that can’t be invaded, emotions never less than absolutely genuine... and Mike carrying on a family tradition of upkeep so those moments can happen.

Jersey City Supporting Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-03T07:54:00.001-07:00

Momentum for Occupy Wall Street may be growing slowly but it is clearly, undoubtedly, growing.

Laura Dejean, a co-founder and regular vendor and organizer of Creative Grove, our fair city’s Friday Art Mart & Flea Market has set up a supply donation station where residents can contribute to support the demonstrators of Occupy Wall Street. Not dollar amounts; I don't think she is accepting monetary contributions, but stuff that will help them hold out for economic justice: bottled water, non-perishable food, hand warmers, rain gear, batteries.

“I’ll be taking contributions every Friday and driving them to the park Saturday morning,” she said.

“For how long?”

“For as long as they’re there.”

She wore a painted green mask this Friday. She paints faces at Creative Grove and other events. She’s why so many children at our fairs look like cast members of CATS.

I brought some packages of batteries I had hanging around, went to one of the Dollar Stores on Newark, got some ponchos, sterno cans and Ramadan Noodles. Only a few bucks, and I’ll probably do it again next week. It’s an important cause; the historical moment we now face as Americans is a critical one.

I thought of the old labor folk song, one more day, a famous strike anthem popular during the halcyon days of the union movement, then forever memorialized by folk music devotees, is about solidarity and strength, imploring fellow workers to last one day long, until you receive justice.

On Saturday, the police arrested 500 – 700, depending on whose accounts, under dubious circumstances, they were marching across the Brooklyn Bridge. The fact these demonstrators are not going away, that they commanding the symbols – protesting in the heart of our skewed Economic System, Wall Street – is beginning to unnerve the social order. We’re waking up to the realization that in large part, that current social order, is one of suppression. May not be as clear cut as the 60s; you don’t have a draft card to burn. Instead, you have suffocating debt, no job prospects beyond minimum wage or barely above minimum wage service employment which has also become as scarce as professional, middle class wage earning careers.

A few bucks at the dollar store to keep this thing going?

Jersey City is one of the last bastions of unionism in the land that I love best, my country. Municipal workers, cops and firemen, teachers, hospital employees, our supermarkets, the construction workers… unions are not just part the fabric, they are the fabric of our fair city. I would argue the pro-union ethos is one of the things that makes Jersey City a great place to live. No one can get elected here without union support. The artists have made the first step towards city-wide support for Occupy Wall Street. Wither thou goest, Union members? We need to hear the voice of labor! Imagine if they just bring a fraction of the energy and determination union leaders show during contract negotiations – or during the public comment portion of Council Meetings – to a show of solidarity with Occupy Wall Street.
Reminds me of another famous Labor song supporting striking workers and their right to organize unions – Which Side Are You on?

Great Pumpkin

2011-10-03T07:48:00.001-07:00

The weather shifts to Autumn. Leaves turn colors and fall. Pumpkins arrive at our local produce bodegas. It wasn’t a good year they say for Pumpkins, something to do with the new monsoon season created by global warming. But smaller pumpkins are more appropriate for urban residents, although admittedly they are much less fun to smash. Who knew they were delivered in Great Pumpkin boxes. Another sign of summer ending – Charley Brown.

Occupy Wall Street

2011-09-28T08:11:00.000-07:00

I asked Rob why he was here. I know him a little, recognized him, he lives in Jersey City.

“I care about the issue.”

“What issue?”

“The destruction of the middle class.”

This may look like the 60s, especially with the retro hippie hairstyles and garb and surprisingly optimistic vibe permeating the atmosphere, but I believe that is just an easy reference to make. Occupy Wall Street is not simply some revival of some bygone golden era of social activism. This is something very new, a new moment in history that we are seeing unfold.

I liked the basic theme of the protest when I heard that it was being organized, but I was skeptical. I’m simply not a protest demonstrator guy and I’m turned off by media stunts and anti-intellectual ideologies. Then I started to see the reports of police response, and realized they are in their second week. So I had to check out what was christened Freedom Park, which is only a few blocks from the WTC PATH station.

The park, basically a wide sidewalk with a smattering of trees and potted flowers, was transformed into a flea market and camp ground. It reminded me of a sober late 80s/early 90s Grateful Dead concert.

Pushcarts and vendors, who would normally be in the park, were shunted to one side. The perimeter of the park was covered with signs, hand written slogans on shards of cardboard and empty pizza boxes. The statements mainly revolved around the theme of economic justice.

If you make less than 250K you need to be on this side, is a good example. These are not the hell no we won’t militant assertions of yester-year. This is not your Daddy’s (or Grand Daddy’s) sloganeering. These are twitter friendly, texting phraseology at which this tech-savvy generation has perfected,. The sheer amount of signs was awe inspiring. I think I agreed with every one of them.

While the riffs were different, the theme – Economic Justice – was apparent throughout. These were not crazies with puppets and masks wreaking havoc for TV cameras at some WTO conference. They were talking about Glass Steagal – how many fools who voted Nadar in 01 could cite New Deal era policies. This is about the human right to be treated fairly in the wealthiest country in the world.

I was nearly teary eyed, finally some fellow New Deal Democrats.

I hope the Democratic Party and Unions realize what is taking place in this counter culture Hooverville; I hope the other liberal factions – Gay Rights, Environmentalists and Woman Rights to name three that come to mind – realize it is now time to form a coalition with these like-mind brethrens, put your own issues temporarily on the back burner and support this cause.

What is the end game? I don’t know.

One sign said, let’s work shit out. How long do they expect to hold out?

Another guy didn’t put a timeline, but said as long as they keep the park occupied, they have a chance. The numbers fluctuate because a lot of folks are commuting here, as well as lending out their pads for showers and warm food. The point is that the hundreds are not exposed to the elements 24/7 all once; they are almost taking shifts or something equivalent.

I’m not really sure how they are doing this but it was apparent that they have it worked and are peacefully Occupying this space and effectively making a statement relevant to all America. It was remarkable and damn impressive.

Inside the park, kids – and while they were some old leftist types, folks in the 40s and beyond –most were 20 somethings (thus kids to me). This is the generation currently denied entry level jobs and chances for a career. They reminded of me of the friendly and welcoming employees of Star Bucks, perhaps the best job they can hope in spite of their college degree.

They were hanging out, a few guitar players, some dude recited rap poetry. A couple kissing, another person napping, some dude listening to his MP3 player making a new sign… there were a few circles of kids, taking to each other, having discussions about what they were doing and economic policy. They weren’t doing drugs or playing video games or some other mindless activity. They were being nice to each other and engaging their minds and caring together about how they can make the world a better place. This wasn’t some counter culture replay of the decadent 60s, this is the real New Morning in America. It was inspirational.

What do you expect these kids to do? Grin and bear it? Or be like Gen-X and vote Nadar? The destruction of the middle class is not some kind of Marxist belief or radical notion. This was not the ethos of the Weatherman Underground or Yippies or even the naive and ineffective Green Party of the late 90s that denied the Clinton Administration its third term. They’re not Wobblies! This is the America that lifted us out of the Great Depression and brought us the New Frontier.

Among the signs, the food being served, the kids hanging out, were American Flags. The kids in that park, they’re you and me. A library was on one side – I noticed Tim O’Brien’s the Things they Carried – the most radical book (No Das Kapital, Soul on Ice or Steal This Book) was something about NPR. A library! Come, occupy the park, read a book! These are my kind of activists!

Something happening, yeah and while what is still not exactly clear, what is clear is that what was happening was new and while not without precedent, I am suggesting lets not over emphasize the precedents or just assume because of some similarities they are now being reproduced. This is new and different. It cannot be ignored or easily dismissed, which is what the media, both parties and the NYC mayor seem to want to do.

Ted from Queens told me that there were usually more people but twice day, during the opening and closing bell of the U.S. Stock Market, the bulk of the occupiers leave the park and march to the Stock Exchange to demonstrate.

Where is the Stock Exchange?

Wall Street.

Where’s that again? I rarely go south of the PATH station.

I walk to Wall Street in search of demonstrators. I couldn’t find them. The “Street” was only a few blocks away, but people were only allowed on the north sidewalk. Barricades had been erected, there was a significant police presence, alongside security guards.

I asked one of the guards, was this usual. No, there is always security he told me, but not the barricades. The actual street being closed off, just so demonstrators could be more easily dispersed, all in view of a fantastic statue of George Washington, was not just creepy, but a sign of fear. They made this block a mini-police state. They have lost. Impenetrable, of course but the threat is not one of attack, or even disruption, but questioning what are the basic values supporting the system.

I came back to Liberty Park; Cornel West was standing next to Ted, holding his sign.

Susan Sarandon was by, I was told. Tomorrow would be a big march, a walk out at CUNY, unions joining in. I didn’t think they would be here two weeks. I’ve been curious about the event since I’ve heard about it, and I came down here because it was a nice day, I had some free time and figured it would be a good blog.

The cops maced – uhh, I mean Pepper Sprayed – some kids when they tried to march to Union Square. That caught my attention and I felt I should show some support. What I didn’t anticipate how likeable it all was. Go down there and hang out, these are nice folks. Across the street were dozens of cops, they looked like they were starting a shift. It’s obvious the police have over reacted, there were some startling reports of pepper sprays, arrests and alleged police brutality.

The NYPD has a lousy track record with crowd control. This mayor and the last one hated protests or any public assembly that was not a sanctioned campaign rally. The right to freely assemble is not a right they acknowledge. They way police under Bloomberg’s order suppressed protests during the disgraceful 2004 Republican Convention at Madison Square Garden was appalling.

The cops looked sad down by the park. They’ve been over reacting and in their working class hearts, they know these kids are right. This is not a rowdy bunch and their issue is one we all share. The New York Police are part of one of the best, and strongest unions in the nation and they undermine their achievements, and rights as workers when they suppress the rights of these demonstrators. These kids are not troublemakers or disrespectful or anti-American. They are America, and from what I could see, most of them seemed like the young adults you want your kids to grow up to be. Most cops do not want to be brutes or thugs and if Mayor Bloomberg forcibly removes these demonstrators that will be the role they will be ordered to play. The police will not be enforcers of peace and stability, they will be storm troopers enabling the rich and powerful to oppress the citizens and the rule of law they’ve sworn to protect, in essence they will become the opposite of why they became police and why they joined a union to ensure their rights as workers. Well, if you want an easy job with easy decisions to make, don’t become a cop.

Who knows how this will go, what impact it will make. The demonstrators said that solidarity was being shown in similar demonstrations across the country. Not only does this appear to be well organized, it is also smart, intelligent. It seems more about engaging and addressing issues than justifying mere ideological positions. We are at a turning point in history this may be moment it began to turn. I felt strange after I left the Park and realized what was strange. I felt optimistic. It was not a new feeling, but I can’t remember when the last time was that I felt it.

Art Workshop/Art Gallery

2011-09-26T12:15:00.000-07:00

Going into Business was the clever name of this Jersey City Art School sponsored Art Show, held at one of their new satellite branches. Headquarters may still be on 5th Street, on 3rd Street the school leases out workshop spaces to artists, augmenting the community of artists now calling our fair city home with another urban space converting into a spot around which creativity and creative types can coalesce.

A long, garage-like space – I was told it once was a type of stable for horse & buggies, but I don’t know about that – with parts of the ceiling and a wall or two exposed, seemed like a place to get work done. For the event the work shop was turned into an art gallery. You start leasing space, and now you’re a collective. Artists can complain about their isolation, getting lost with their muses and talent. Here, a semblance of an artist colony seems to have formed, augmenting the instruction and other events held by the Art School. Paintings and sketches were on sale; designs were silk screened to t-shirts, tote bags and pillows. The imagery ranged from landscape and portraiture to street art/graffiti inspired illustrations. The work was impressive. The atmosphere was warm and collegial.

People mingled, beverages and lite snacks were served. When I was there, which was closer to closing than opening, a folk musician Pepper Coat (his website is here or myspace), performed some amusing, although dark and sardonic songs on a borrowed guitar. By the end he got the crowd to sing along with This Little Light of Mine, after which they returned to viewing and chatting about art.

Artists exhibiting work at the reception included: Ana Benaroya, Matt Caputo, Thomas John Carlson, Norm Kirby, and Bruce Ledbetter. The Going into Business Art Show will open again next week for the J.C. Art Tour weekend.