Well hello this is the first posting I have made, we’ll see how it goes!

Recently returned from Brazil where in Sao Paulo it is true, there is ABSOLUTELY NO public advertising. I found this extremely hard to believe for the 3rd largest city in the world. It was a beautiful thing. It gave the stunning graffitti that is everywhere more space to shine. For a place as fucked up as Brazil in terms of the economy and poor vs. rich they are far ahead of the U.S. with their use of Ethanol at every gas station and the new ban on public advertising. Good job Brazil.

Also in Sao Paulo hung out with some punk, feminist lesbians who have been active politically for many years now with their music and organizing efforts. They started the first Ladyfest Brazil last year. My friend Elisa Gargiulo who hosted us is one of the founders of the band Dominatrix.

She introduced me to one of the old school lesbian punker Vange Leonel who I photographed on the rooftop of her apartment. It was great.

The best part of the trip was going to see the two most famous all female samba bands. The Hangover Girls and Rainha do Samba (queens of samba) and dancing all night with some of the most excited people I have met. How I wish I had been morn dancing the samba….

Now back in LA with my new to me 1981 Peugeot 505 diesel. It was the car I bought after my 1987 Camry got stolen and then found in pieces. The insurance gave me a whopping $450 for my car! My plan is to turn it into a veggie oil car. Thanks to my friend Stanya there is someone who can hopefully help me do the conversion for cheaper than Lovecraft in Silverlake. I can’t wait.

Yesterday in my garden I planted quinoa, foxglove, carrots, kale ( I know it’s off season), fava beans and more. I am reading a permaculture book called Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway, Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden And Your Neighborhood into a Community by H.C. Flores and Urban Wilds: Gardeners’ Stories of the Struggle for Land and Justice. They are all extremely helpful and interesting so far. Thanks for reading.

x Eden

Los Angeles Times

Family: a place for avant-garde lit, music and clothing on Fairfax

The new independent book, record and clothing store on Fairfax has a Left Bank feel.

By Jeff Weiss, Special to The Times
April 26, 2007

The often-parroted line is that indie bookstores are DOA in the 21st century, fallen victim to the formidable onslaught of Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com and continued reader apathy. And the statistics on the ground would seem to confirm that thesis, considering the recent closures of Angeleno institutions such as Dutton’s North Hollywood, the blink-and-you-missed-it Dutton’s Beverly Hills and the possible uprooting of the Brentwood Dutton’s store.

But don’t tell that to the crowd of twentysomethings gathered at Family, a recently opened independent book, record and clothing store on Fairfax Avenue, where a capacity crowd spills out onto the street on an unseasonably hot Sunday evening. At the moment, they’re listening to a reading/slide show presentation of Ian Svenonius’ new book, “The Psychic Soviet.” But the week before, the store hosted a wake for the shuttered cult magazine Arthur. And the week before that, hundreds flocked to the Family launch party for a set by local indie-rock royalty Lavender Diamond.

If you look closely, you can see the fledgling beginnings of a new Los Angeles scene, one removed from the hipster enclaves of Silver Lake and Echo Park and including this unorthodox bookstore, the brainchild of cartoonist Sammy Harkham and his wife, Tahli, along with their friend and partner, writer-journalist David Kramer.

“It’s a real counterculture of what’s happening in L.A. right now,” said Harkham, a co-owner of the recently revitalized Silent Movie Theatre. “Interesting things are happening between the Arthur connection and the bands. A real scene is emerging and coming together. This place is working as the hub. People can see and feel our aesthetic.”

Indeed, the store’s aesthetic reflects the owners’ left-field sensibilities. A new Dave Eggers book lies next to an obscure 7-inch noise-rock record, next to a Daniel Clowes graphic novel, next to a DVD of the 1983 comedy, “The Man With Two Brains.” Stuff there one week will be gone the next, as Family’s owners don’t do reorders and are obsessed with making sure that the bookstore isn’t stagnant.

As for the “counterculture” crowd, it consists of a mishmash of various underground scenes: noise rockers, antiwar kids, bearded and bespectacled Eastside males, arty Bohemian girls in black leggings and striped shirts — and even the occasional senior citizen strolling in off the street after chomping on stuffed cabbage at Canter’s. The address might say Fairfax Avenue, but the vibe is more Parisian Left Bank.

According to the owners, the store has been bustling so far; the throngs who pack into the store during special events certainly are an encouraging sign. Yet the owners maintain that when they conceived Family, their only goal was to create a space that would make their 14-year-old selves proud.

“I never tried to have a do-it-yourself aesthetic. We just wanted to get the most awesome stuff around, the stuff that people don’t see,” Kramer said. “We told people we were going to sell obscure experimental European literature, and people told us that we must be crazy because no one reads in L.A. People here don’t get enough credit. People are into the weirdest, strangest stuff that we sell.”

One of the store’s patrons, Alex Klein, agreed: “The selection here is just impeccable. When I walk in here, it feels like I’m at a farmers market in France, knowing that every apple and every avocado has been hand-selected personally. L.A. has needed a place like this for a long time.”

The owners aim to nurture the scene by hosting events several times a month — next is a signing by psychedelic comics guru Kim Deitch. Additionally, using San Francisco’s City Lights as an inspiration, Family plans to go into publishing later this year, initially focusing on high-end art books.

Understandably, many in Los Angeles’ underground scene seem galvanized by this new bookstore with avant-garde leanings. In particular, Jay Babcock, the publisher and editor of (the now-revived) Arthur, gushed effusively about Family’s potential: “Family is the most exciting commercial space in L.A. I get a feeling when I walk in here that I have walked into the best curated bohemian library I’ve ever been to. It feels like home. It’s ground zero for a new Edenism.”

thank you katie smith!

New York Times – April 25, 2007

Preserving Fossil Fuels and Nearby Farmland by Eating Locally
By MARIAN BURROS

JESSICA ABEL may have gone to extremes when she collected seawater from Long Island Sound and boiled it down to make two cups of salt. But people who are determined to eat only food made within 100 miles, give or take, sometimes find themselves reaching for creative solutions.

Ms. Abel and her husband, Matt Madden, cartoonists who work at home in Sunset Park in Brooklyn, have given three strictly enforced local-only dinner parties over the past year. A fourth scheduled for next month will feature fiddleheads, ramps, new fresh cheese and baby lamb.

“Last summer it was goat stew with peaches and onions, and in the middle of winter it was an all-butter, all-the-time meal,” she said. “We all missed white flour and sugar.”

Ms. Abel and Mr. Madden are dabblers in a small but increasingly popular effort to return to a time before the average food item traveled 1,500 miles from farm to table. In that sense, the only thing new about the phenomenon is its name, locavore, which was coined two years ago in California. But the appearance of the word seems to have given shape to a growing subculture. Weeklong locavore challenges have been popping up all over the country, even in places like Minnesota and Vermont, where it would seem to be pretty hard to eat local foods in the dead of winter.

Many drawn to the movement say they have been eating that way for years and had never thought about the implications beyond the flavor. “Initially it was the taste thing for me,” said Robin McDermott, who lives in Waitsfield, Vt., where locavores call themselves localvores. “But now when I think about what it takes to get lettuce across the country so I can eat it in the middle of winter, between the fuel costs and the contribution all the transportation is making to global warming and climate change, I just can’t do it. It’s not sustainable and I don’t want to contribute to it.”

Those who think this is another harebrained scheme of the food fringe may be surprised to learn that locavores are poised to move into the mainstream. Barbara Kingsolver, the best-selling novelist, has written one of three books out this spring about eating locally.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (HarperCollins) recounts her family’s adventures during the year they spent eating food raised in their corner of southwest Virginia. Her book and others are successors to several earlier books including Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods by Gary Paul Nabhan and “Full Moon Feast: Food and the Hunger for Connection” by Jessica Prentice, who coined the word locavore and founded the Web site locavores.com.

Ms. Prentice’s group claims to have started the grass-roots locavore challenges that sprang up in California in 2005. Participants exchange recipes and advice.

Some locavores follow the 100 Mile Diet, created by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon, authors of the just-released Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally (Harmony). They spent a year in British Columbia eating only food grown within a 100-mile radius.

It wasn’t easy. Faced with potatoes, once again, for lunch, Ms. Smith recounts her feeling that “I’d kill for a sandwich.” When Mr. MacKinnon said he would make her one, she couldn’t imagine what he had in mind because they had no local flour for bread. But soon enough he produced greenhouse-grown red peppers and fried mushrooms with goat cheese between two golden brown slices of something. Something turned out to be turnips.

The authors held so strictly to their plan that when they eventually found locally grown wheat they took it even though it was filled with mouse droppings. Mr. MacKinnon painstakingly separated the droppings from the wheat with the edge of a credit card.

The plan outlined in Ms. Kingsolver’s book is much less strict than the one in “Plenty.” The author said that in her attitude toward food she is something between a Puritan (“I’m going to be holy right now”) and a toddler (“I want absolutely everything every minute and the idea of not having fresh peaches in January is sort of horrifying”).

Each member of her family was allowed one luxury item that came from far away. Her husband chose coffee, her children hot chocolate and dried fruit. Spices were Ms. Kingsolver’s indulgence.

“Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” gives no sense of privation or even boredom. Ms. Kingsolver spent a fair amount of time putting foods by when they were in season so that the larder was stocked.

But most readers would have trouble following her program, which included raising much of what the family ate on their farm, including chickens and turkeys.

“We undertook this project because it brings together so many compelling issues of the moment: carbon footprint, global warming, the local economy, the nutritional crisis and community,” said Ms. Kingsolver. “Community is very important to me and every book I’ve ever written is on this subject: what is the debt of the individual to the community?”

“We wanted to see if we could show that it’s possible and even a lot of fun, not just an experiment in sacrifice,” she said. “It was so much more fun than we expected it to be.”

Most locavores are not strict constructionists. They tend to make exceptions for coffee, pasta, spices, salt and flour.

While West Coast residents can use olive oil, Ms. McDermott had to substitute sunflower oil made in Vermont, which has obvious drawbacks. “It definitely tastes like sunflower seeds,” she said, “but another alternative is to make ghee from local butter.” Wheatberries take the place of rice, and ground cherries or gooseberries, she said, “can kind of pass for raisins.” A birthday cake of mashed parsnips was sweetened with maple syrup and maple sugar.

Ms. McDermott, who designs Web-based training for manufacturing companies with her husband, Ray, started one of the several localvore groups in Vermont last year in the Mad River Valley. During their first event in September, 150 participants took the pledge to eat locally for a week. Only slightly fewer tried it again this January, and more events are planned this year.

“The two biggest barriers to eating local are time and cost,” she said. “A lot of people think this is somewhat elitist because if you buy a local chicken it is $3.50 to $4 a pound and you can get them for a lot less in the supermarket. If you want boneless chicken breasts you’ll go broke, but if you buy a whole chicken it’s affordable because you will use it all. The same thing with lesser cuts of meat. You do need time and a desire to cook something.

“And you need a freezer, something like a root cellar. Last year I got into making kimchi and sauerkraut as a way of preserving of food.”

By far the most pragmatic of these locavores is Ms. Prentice. “To restrict yourself to eating locally is an interesting exercise,” she said. “It’s consciousness raising to see what you’d be living on, but I don’t think of it as a necessary or practical solution of our globalized food system. I am not opposed to any importation, but what we can grow locally we should grow locally.

“We have a situation in California where we export as many strawberries as we import. It’s gotten ridiculous.”

People who have tried to eat a strictly local diet, even those like Ms. Abel who are dabblers, say it has been a life-changing experience. “One of the things about having this party is becoming aware of how far things have come,” she said. “So now we are eating differently. Having a dish of eggplant, tomatoes and zucchini in February is weird to me. We are eating a lot of kale and root vegetables in winter and buying a lot of stuff at the Greenmarket year round. It’s not a life philosophy but it’s not a game.”

Though eating locally can be a difficult feat, in many parts of the country it is easier than it was five years ago. Farming land continues to disappear as larger farms go under, but the number of small farms that cater to their neighbors has increased 20 percent, to 1.9 million in the last six years. The number of farmers’ markets and farm stands, food co-ops and community-supported agriculture groups is growing. In his new bookDeep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future (Times Books) Bill McKibben writes that the number of farmers’ markets has increased from 340 in 1970 to 3,700 in 2004.

New Seasons, an eight-store supermarket chain in Portland, Ore., has made its name as a place where local food is king. Byerly’s and Lunds in Minneapolis also feature local products.

Schools are catching on to the idea. In 2002 400 school districts in 22 states had farm-to-cafeteria programs that provided students locally grown food. Today 1,035 districts in 35 states participate.

But before locavores take too much credit for the phenomenon, there are a bunch of back-to-the-landers in Vermont who ate local foods 30 years ago. “There are a lot of people here who call themselves yokelvores,” Ms. McDermott said. “They get their food from within 100 feet of their homes — homesteaders who have their own cows, chickens and grow their own vegetables. They consider people like us as Johnny-come-latelies.”

New York Times – March 25

N.Y. Police Spied Broadly Before G.O.P. Convention
By JIM DWYER

For at least a year before the 2004 Republican National Convention,
teams of undercover New York City police officers traveled to cities
across the country, Canada and Europe to conduct covert observations of
people who planned to protest at the convention, according to police
records and interviews.

From Albuquerque to Montreal, San Francisco to Miami, undercover New
York police officers attended meetings of political groups, posing as
sympathizers or fellow activists, the records show.

They made friends, shared meals, swapped e-mail messages and then filed
daily reports with the department’s Intelligence Division. Other
investigators mined Internet sites and chat rooms.

From these operations, run by the department’s “R.N.C. Intelligence
Squad,” the police identified a handful of groups and individuals who
expressed interest in creating havoc during the convention, as well as
some who used Web sites to urge or predict violence.

But potential troublemakers were hardly the only ones to end up in the
files. In hundreds of reports stamped “N.Y.P.D. Secret,” the
Intelligence Division chronicled the views and plans of people who had
no apparent intention of breaking the law, the records show.

These included members of street theater companies, church groups and
antiwar organizations, as well as environmentalists and people opposed
to the death penalty, globalization and other government policies.
Three New York City elected officials were cited in the reports.

In at least some cases, intelligence on what appeared to be lawful
activity was shared with police departments in other cities. A police
report on an organization of artists called Bands Against Bush noted
that the group was planning concerts on Oct. 11, 2003, in New York,
Washington, Seattle, San Francisco and Boston. Between musical sets,
the report said, there would be political speeches and videos.

“Activists are showing a well-organized network made up of anti-Bush
sentiment; the mixing of music and political rhetoric indicates
sophisticated organizing skills with a specific agenda,” said the
report, dated Oct. 9, 2003. “Police departments in above listed areas
have been contacted regarding this event.”

Police records indicate that in addition to sharing information with
other police departments, New York undercover officers were active
themselves in at least 15 places outside New York — including
California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts,
Michigan, Montreal, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas
and Washington, D.C. — and in Europe.

The operation was mounted in 2003 after the Police Department, invoking
the fresh horrors of the World Trade Center attack and the prospect of
future terrorism, won greater authority from a federal judge to
investigate political organizations for criminal activity.

To date, as the boundaries of the department’s expanded powers continue
to be debated, police officials have provided only glimpses of its
intelligence-gathering.

Now, the broad outlines of the preconvention operations are emerging
from records in federal lawsuits that were brought over mass arrests
made during the convention, and in greater detail from still-secret
reports reviewed by The New York Times. These include a sample of raw
intelligence documents and of summary digests of observations from both
the field and the department’s cyberintelligence unit.

Paul J. Browne, the chief spokesman for the Police Department,
confirmed that the operation had been wide-ranging, and said it had
been an essential part of the preparations for the huge crowds that
came to the city during the convention.

“Detectives collected information both in-state and out-of-state to
learn in advance what was coming our way,” Mr. Browne said. When the
detectives went out of town, he said, the department usually alerted
the local authorities by telephone or in person.

Under a United States Supreme Court ruling, undercover surveillance of
political groups is generally legal, but the police in New York — like
those in many other big cities — have operated under special limits as
a result of class-action lawsuits filed over police monitoring of civil
rights and antiwar groups during the 1960s. The limits in New York are
known as the Handschu guidelines, after the lead plaintiff, Barbara
Handschu.

“All our activities were legal and were subject in advance to Handschu
review,” Mr. Browne said.

Before monitoring political activity, the police must have “some
indication of unlawful activity on the part of the individual or
organization to be investigated,” United States District Court Judge
Charles S. Haight Jr. said in a ruling last month.

Christopher Dunn, the associate legal director of the New York Civil
Liberties Union, which represents seven of the 1,806 people arrested
during the convention, said the Police Department stepped beyond the
law in its covert surveillance program.

“The police have no authority to spy on lawful political activity, and
this wide-ranging N.Y.P.D. program was wrong and illegal,” Mr. Dunn
said. “In the coming weeks, the city will be required to disclose to us
many more details about its preconvention surveillance of groups and
activists, and many will be shocked by the breadth of the Police
Department’s political surveillance operation.”

The Police Department said those complaints were overblown.

On Wednesday, lawyers for the plaintiffs in the convention lawsuits are
scheduled to begin depositions of David Cohen, the deputy police
commissioner for intelligence. Mr. Cohen, a former senior official at
the Central Intelligence Agency, was “central to the N.Y.P.D.’s efforts
to collect intelligence information prior to the R.N.C.,” Gerald C.
Smith, an assistant corporation counsel with the city Law Department,
said in a federal court filing.

Balancing Safety and Surveillance

For nearly four decades, the city, civil liberties lawyers and the
Police Department have fought in federal court over how to balance
public safety, free speech and the penetrating but potentially
disruptive force of police surveillance.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Raymond W. Kelly, who became police
commissioner in January 2002, “took the position that the N.Y.P.D.
could no longer rely on the federal government alone, and that the
department had to build an intelligence capacity worthy of the name,”
Mr. Browne said.

Mr. Cohen contended that surveillance of domestic political activities
was essential to fighting terrorism. “Given the range of activities
that may be engaged in by the members of a sleeper cell in the long
period of preparation for an act of terror, the entire resources of the
N.Y.P.D. must be available to conduct investigations into political
activity and intelligence-related issues,” Mr. Cohen wrote in an
affidavit dated Sept. 12, 2002.

In February 2003, the Police Department, with Mayor Michael R.
Bloomberg’s support, was given broad new authority by Judge Haight to
conduct such monitoring. However, a senior police official must still
determine that there is some indication of illegal activity before an
inquiry is begun.

An investigation by the Intelligence Division led to the arrest —
coincidentally, three days before the convention — of a man who spoke
about bombing the Herald Square subway station. In another initiative,
detectives were stationed in Europe and the Middle East to quickly
funnel information back to New York.

When the city was designated in February 2003 as the site of the 2004
Republican National Convention, the department had security worries —
in particular about the possibility of a truck bomb attack near Madison
Square Garden, where events would be held — and logistical concerns
about managing huge crowds, Mr. Browne said.

“We also prepared to contend with a relatively small group of
self-described anarchists who vowed to prevent delegates from
participating in the convention or otherwise disrupt the convention by
various means, including vandalism,” Mr. Browne said. “Our goal was to
safeguard delegates, demonstrators and the general public alike during
the convention.”

In its preparations, the department applied the intelligence resources
that had just been strengthened for fighting terrorism to an entirely
different task: collecting information on people participating in
political protests.

In the records reviewed by The Times, some of the police intelligence
concerned people and groups bent on causing trouble, but the bulk of
the reports covered the plans and views of people with no obvious
intention of breaking the law.

By searching the Internet, police investigators identified groups that
were making plans for demonstrations. Files were created on their
political causes, the criminal records, if any, of the people involved
and any plans for civil disobedience or disruptive tactics.

From the field, undercover officers filed daily accounts of their
observations on forms known as DD5s that called for descriptions of the
gatherings, the leaders and participants, and the groups’ plans.

Inside the police Intelligence Division, daily reports from both the
field and the Web were summarized in bullet format. These digests —
marked “Secret” — were circulated weekly under the heading “Key
Findings.”

Perceived Threats

On Jan. 6, 2004, the intelligence digest noted that an
antigentrification group in Montreal claimed responsibility for hoax
bombs that had been planted at construction sites of luxury
condominiums, stating that the purpose was to draw attention to the
homeless. The group was linked to a band of anarchist-communists whose
leader had visited New York, according to the report.

Other digests noted a planned campaign of “electronic civil
disobedience” to jam fax machines and hack into Web sites. Participants
at a conference were said to have discussed getting inside delegates’
hotels by making hair salon appointments or dinner reservations. At the
same conference, people were reported to have discussed disabling
charter buses and trying to confuse delegates by switching subway
directional signs, or by sealing off stations with crime-scene tape.

A Syracuse peace group intended to block intersections, a report
stated. Other reports mentioned past demonstrations where various
groups used nails and ball bearings as weapons and threw balloons
filled with urine or other foul liquids.

The police also kept track of Richard Picariello, a man who had been
convicted in 1978 of politically motivated bombings in Massachusetts,
Mr. Browne said.

At the other end of the threat spectrum was Joshua Kinberg, a graduate
student at Parsons School of Design and the subject of four pages of
intelligence reports. For his master’s thesis project, Mr. Kinberg
devised a “wireless bicycle” equipped with cellphone, laptop and spray
tubes that could squirt messages received over the Internet onto the
sidewalk or street.

The messages were printed in water-soluble chalk, a tactic meant to
avoid a criminal mischief charge for using paint, an intelligence
report noted. Mr. Kinberg’s bicycle was “capable of transferring
activist-based messages on streets and sidewalks,” according to a
report on July 22, 2004.

“This bicycle, having been built for the sole purpose of protesting
during the R.N.C., is capable of spraying anti-R.N.C.-type messages on
surrounding streets and sidewalks, also supplying the rider with a
quick vehicle of escape,” the report said. Mr. Kinberg, then 25, was
arrested during a television interview with Ron Reagan for MSNBC’s
“Hardball” program during the convention. He was released a day later,
but his equipment was held more than a year.

Mr. Kinberg said Friday that after his arrest detectives with the
terrorism task force asked if he knew of any plans for violence. “I’m
an artist,” he said. “I know other artists, who make T-shirts and
signs.”

He added: “There’s no reason I should have been placed on any kind of
surveillance status. It affected me, my ability to exercise free
speech, and the ability of thousands of people who were sending in
messages for the bike to exercise their free speech.”

New Faces in Their Midst

A vast majority of several hundred reports reviewed by The Times,
including field reports and the digests, described groups that gave no
obvious sign of wrongdoing. The intelligence noted that one group, the
“Man- and Woman-in-Black Bloc,” planned to protest outside a party at
Sotheby’s for Tennessee’s Republican delegates with Johnny Cash’s
career as its theme.

The satirical performance troupe Billionaires for Bush, which
specializes in lampooning the Bush administration, was described in an
intelligence digest on Jan. 23, 2004. “Billionaires for Bush is an
activist group forged as a mockery of the current president and
political policies,” the report said. “Preliminary intelligence
indicates that this group is raising funds for expansion and support of
anti-R.N.C. activist organizations.”

Marco Ceglie, who performs as Monet Oliver dePlace in Billionaires for
Bush, said he had suspected that the group was under surveillance by
federal agents — not necessarily police officers — during weekly
meetings in a downtown loft and at events around the country in the
summer of 2004.

“It was a running joke that some of the new faces were 25- to
32-year-old males asking, ‘First name, last name?’ ” Mr. Ceglie said.
“Some people didn’t care; it bothered me and a couple of other leaders,
but we didn’t want to make a big stink because we didn’t want to look
paranoid. We applied to the F.B.I. under the Freedom of Information Act
to see if there’s a file, but the answer came back that ‘we cannot
confirm or deny.’ ”

The Billionaires try to avoid provoking arrests, Mr. Ceglie said.

Others — who openly planned civil disobedience and expected to be
arrested — said they assumed they were under surveillance, but had
nothing to hide. “Some of the groups were very concerned about
infiltration,” said Ed Hedemann of the War Resisters League, a pacifist
organization founded in 1923. “We weren’t. We had open meetings.”

“If the police want to infiltrate and waste their time — well, it’s a
waste of taxpayer money,” Mr. Hedemann said.

The war resisters announced plans for a “die-in” at Madison Square
Garden. They were arrested two minutes after they began a silent march
from the World Trade Center site. The charges were dismissed.

The sponsors of an event planned for Jan. 15, 2004, in honor of the
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday were listed in one of the
reports, which noted that it was a protest against “the R.N.C., the war
in Iraq and the Bush administration.” It mentioned that three members
of the City Council at the time, Charles Barron, Bill Perkins and Larry
B. Seabrook, “have endorsed this event.”

The report said others supporting it were the New York City AIDS
Housing Network, the Arab Muslim American Foundation, Activists for the
Liberation of Palestine, Queers for Peace and Justice and the 1199
Bread and Roses Cultural Project.

Many of the 1,806 people arrested during the convention were held for
up to two days on minor offenses normally handled with a summons; the
city Law Department said the preconvention intelligence justified
detaining them all for fingerprinting.

Mr. Browne said that 18 months of preparation by the police had allowed
hundreds of thousands of people to demonstrate while also ensuring that
the Republican delegates were able to hold their convention with
relatively few disruptions.

“We attributed the successful policing of the convention to a host of
N.Y.P.D. activities leading up to the R.N.C., including 18 months of
intensive planning,” he said. “It was a great success, and despite
provocations, such as demonstrators throwing faux feces in the faces of
police officers, the N.Y.P.D. showed professionalism and restraint.”

For the past seven years I’ve searched for the most refined and complete version of Warren Zevon performing Werewolves of London live. Recently, I came across the definitive version and and would like to share my findings.

The beginning of the song is well known and seems to vary only slightly from time to time. This version is live June 12th, 1986 in Buffalo, New York and Warren makes a few regional adjustments.

I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand
Walking through the streets of Buffalo in the rain
He was looking for a place called Lee Ho Fuk’s
Gonna get a big dish of…chicken wings

Howls…

Chicken wings are typically served in bowls.

The main refrain continues and the crowd is amped, excited to hear Warren sing his most popular tune. I remember seeing Warren Zevon once on David Letterman and he said that everyone always yelled for him to play Werewolves of London. He even sublimely goofed himself on Larry Sanders. But this recording is years before all of that, back when HBO was for perverts and Michael Milken had more money the Roman Catholic Church.

At first the song remains the same, but toward the end, things start to get perverse. Everyone knows that Warren was a smart, super talented, hedonistic, over the top, friend of Hunter and all around notorious bad guy of the singer songwriter set, but I think it’s fascinating to think about him creeping around Buffalo in the height of the Reagan years thinking up new ways to make a hit song more interesting to sing while not being self-effacing. That seems like quite a life, also one that seems increasingly distant in today’s cross-platform society. Maybe that’s why he wrote Transverse City? Ok, back to the topic at hand…

You can hear him howlin’ ’round your kitchen door
Better not let him in
Little old lady got mutilated again late last night
Werewolves of Buffalo again

Crowd joins in howling…

He’s that hairy handed gent,
who ran amok in Kent.
Lately, he’s been overheard in Mayfair.
You better stay away from him;
He’ll rip your lungs out Jim.
And he’s lookin’ for James Taylor.

James Taylor gets into swimming in the mid-80s.

Whoa!! He’s sinking his teeth into James Taylor?!? Did Sweet Baby James steal Warren’s dope on the road? Because he pissed in Carly Simon’s cornflakes? What happened here? True believers, this is only the beginning. Say tuned because before the tirade continues, he name checks The Dude back before actors like Jeff Bridges needed to slum around in baggy shorts.

I saw Jeff Bridges tryin’ to buy a used car in Del Mar.
It was a blood red coupe deville.
Said he was drivin’ it to Mexico.
Going down to Tijuana to kill somebody in the films.

Directed by Hal Ashby (1986) – Incredibly underrated

It’s amazing to think about Warren and Jeff Bridges in Del Mar, much less hanging out before he went to shoot 8 Million Ways to Die. Not only was it directed by Hal Ashby, but the screenplay was written by Oliver Stone. It’s as good, if not better, than Scarface. I know that’s a bold statement, but give it a chance. There’s an amazing scene with Andy Garcia and a trunk filled with ice cream long before he started slumming in the movies with blondes and drunks. Check it.

The lyrics continue, but the sharpness of the barbs increase…
The Queen City crowd’s interest is noticeably piqued as the main chorus, untainted, rings out.

Lon Chaney, Jr. as the Wolfman

I saw Lon Chaney walking with the Queen.
They were doing the Werewolves of London.
I saw Lon Chaney, Jr. walking with the Queen.
They were doing the Werewolves of London.

I saw Bruce Springsteen walking with the Queen.
They were doing the Werewolves of London.

Well, it’s no surprise that Bruce gets led to the slaughter, but up next is peacenik and long time friend of Warren: Jackson Browne.

I saw Jackson Browne walkin’ down Sherman Way.
He’s just tryin’ to get along.

Ok, let me pause here for a moment and reflect on the 1980s, politics and folk singers. First, I am proud to be the first person on the Magpie to say that Jackson Browne rocks. He is an incredible songwriter, singer, performer and all around amazing dude. He wrote heartbreaking songs like The Circle Game and Shadow Dream Song while still in high school (like Brian Wilson) and he’s featured on the Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Taxi Driver soundtrack. His songs have been covered by Tom Rush, Linda Ronstadt, the Eagles and, famously, by Nico. He wrote whole albums (filled with award winning hit songs) that directly criticized the Reagan administration’s policies in South America. If you want to check him out and get directly to the good stuff, check out Sleep’s Dark and Silent Gate and Linda Paloma.

But back to the song…

I don’t think that Warren is openly goofing Jackson, but instead using him as a gateway to elevate how harsh those years really were. The times they were a-chooglin’…

Jackson’s goin’ over to Gary Gilmore’s house,

Crowd starts to realize what’s happening…more clapping and cheers!

Norman Mailer writes in cold blood about Utah bad man Gary Gilmore’s stay of execution.

Gary Gilmore in happier, hippier times.

and Gary’s gonna teach him The Executioner’s Song.

Piano continues and song ends…
The crowd at the Tralf emphatically claps for Mr. Bad Example and his rougher than leather songwriting skills.

To conclude, the reason why I feel this is the quintessential version is precisely because of this ending. As a songwriter, Warren found a way to make a hit song MORE relevant by bringing together the personal influences in his life with what was currently happening around him at the time.

It should be no surprise to anyone that the death penalty in the 80s was an extemely hot button topic. Gary Gilmore was the first person executed after a reinstatement of the punishment in the 70s. He was from Utah, he killed two people, he could either choose hanging or the firing squad and so: he chose the firing squad. No appeals, no reprisals.

At the time, the press and those concerned jumped all over this case looking to help, aid, abet, capitalize and understand. Gary Gilmore had no remorse, YET he tried to commit suicide in jail which gave him a stay of execution. His last meal was a hamburger, hard-boiled eggs, a baked potato, a few cups of coffee, and three shots of whiskey.

I’ve heard all sort of people referred to during this ending refrain. Oliver Reed, Glenda Jackson, Jack Nicholson, Carl Douglas…but the harshness of putting Jackson and Gary together, just as literary tropes, is devastating. It’s like the The Clash of the Titans of 70s and 80s counter to the over-the-counter cultural figures at the time. Many people tried to capitalize on Gilmore’s story at the time, including Mailer, Larry Schiller, etc., so many that it became absurd. Gilmore’s case, at the time and today, clouds the mind and when focused upon replacing decency and common wisdom with bleak confusion.

AND that’s why this is the GREATEST live version of The Werewolves of London ever recorded.
Kudos to Warren, long may you dig in the dirt.

DOWNLOAD AND LISTEN YOURSELF:

Warren Zevon Live at Tralfamadore Cafe on 1986-06-12 (June 12, 1986)

Werewolves of London (mp3)

Q&A: Why Soldiers are Deserting the Army

The number of soldiers deserting the U.S. Army is rising. A defense lawyer discusses what they’re saying about leaving their posts-and whether they’re likely to find sanctuary in Canada.

By Sarah Childress, Newsweek

March 27, 2007 – Why are so many soldiers deserting their posts? This week, the Army announced that 3,301 active-duty soldiers had deserted the Army in 2006— over 800 more than had been previously reported. (The initial figure, the Army said, had been tallied incorrectly.) It’s hardly at Vietnam-era levels, but it’s still a significant number given that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are being fought by an all-volunteer military.

From the American Revolution through World War II, U.S. Army deserters, defined as those who abandoned their posts without permission for at least 30 days, faced harsh penalties if they were caught. Death is still the maximum penalty for deserting in wartime, but no one’s been executed for leaving the current conflicts. They’re more likely to face up to five years in jail and a dishonorable discharge or another deployment into a combat zone, as commanders are more focused on filling their ranks than punishing prodigals. Still, the 101 convictions last year were at the highest they’ve been in nearly a decade. “It’s a more serious offense during a time of war,” says spokesman Robert Tallman in an e-mail. “A soldier who deserts the Army and thus his or her fellow soldiers, has a negative impact on unit readiness and morale.”

Today’s deserters are different than their conscripted counterparts from previous wars. According to Jeffry House, one of the most well-known defense lawyers for these cases, the troops usually have served a term or two in Iraq and Afghanistan already, and don’t want to go back. A Vietnam-era draft-dodger now living in Toronto, House currently represents over 30 American military personnel who are seeking refugee status in Canada to escape prosecution for desertion. He spoke to NEWSWEEK’s Sarah Childress in between cases. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: Why are so many soldiers deserting?

Jeffry House: The common idea is that the war in Iraq is going nowhere, and it’s bogus, as I’ve been told [by soldiers] many times. In other words, there was no justifiable reason to attack Iraq in the first place. People are now telling me stuff like, “We clear out a section of Baghdad, hand it over to the government, and the next day 70 bodies would appear.” They feel like they’re helping the Iraqi government, which [they feel] actually is a bunch of death squads in disguise. So they begin to feel responsible. People can’t justify to their own selves what they’re doing there, it just seems wrong, wrong, wrong to them. I have a couple of guys who actually finished a six-year commitment. They were given an honorable discharge. They got nice medals and a nice party, and when they drive up in their driveway at home there’s somebody giving them a stop-loss document, which means you’re back in [the service] at the [military’s] pleasure. People are very disheartened.

Have you been seeing more since the war began?

We did have a surge at the same time that President Bush announced his surge [in troop numbers]. We had 15 within two weeks. I’d say it’s just steady. I wouldn’t say it’s gone up. The raw number goes up but that doesn’t mean that we’re getting vast new flows.

The soldiers who flee to Canada claim refugee status. What’s the argument there?

They’re arguing that it is persecutory—it is persecution—for them to be jailed for refusal to serve in Iraq. That is so if either the war itself is illegal—that’s our argument—or if they’ve come too close to violations of the Geneva Conventions. Joshua Key [one of the deserters], in his testimony, he said they were raiding houses at night, they’d take all men over five feet tall, hood them, handcuff them and throw them on a truck. They’d be taken to Abu Ghraib prison or Camp Bucca and never be heard from again.

Have any of these soldiers tried to claim conscientious objector status?

It is possible to claim conscientious objector status. Unfortunately the way the U.S. system works, it depends in part on the army’s manpower needs. If you read the actual policy, it says at the very end, subject to needs for soldiers. Now they have this incredible need for soldiers… The other thing is the conscientious objectors have to object to all wars. If your real objection is to this war—say you’re somebody who’s served in Baghdad—you’re really not objecting to all wars.

What’s your sense of what these soldiers are going through mentally?

It’s very wrenching for them. A lot of them had a certain concept of what a soldier is, and that concept has been blown sky high. I have one fellow here who was educated at the Citadel [military school.] He says when he went overseas to Afghanistan, he was given an axe handle and told to beat prisoners. [His commanders told him,] ‘These guys caused 9/11, so don’t hit them in the back of the head ’cause you’ll kill them, but give ’em a good beating.’ It’s contrary to any traditional understanding of what a soldier is supposed to do. It ruins their mental image of themselves. They no longer know who they are because they had some idea that they were going to fight for truth, justice and the American way.

What happens when a soldier asks you to defend him?

I’d like to know why. If they tell me, “I’m now opposed to all wars,” I tell them they do have a possibility of making that claim in the U.S. and should make that claim there, as a first step. If they say, I’ve been too close to war crimes, I feel like I’m a war criminal, I’ve seen too many things and I feel the war is illegal, I’ll say many people are making refugee claims. We’ll see how that goes. I tell them I can probably assure them a number of years here, and at the end of that process I believe we have the stronger argument, but it’ll be determined by the Supreme Court of Canada. It’s a hard decision for lower courts to make, to say, “Yep, the war in Iraq is illegal so therefore, all American soldiers can come here.” They seem to be hesitant to make that call. We often talk about other possibilities. Some people do university educations that will keep them here for four years. Others try to get work permits, which are harder to get but if you have a specific skill you can get them. Some have married Canadians. I believe a chunk are just here illegally. The reality is that it’s quite easy to meld into the background in Canada if you’re white, English speaking from birth. This is all illegal and I’m not saying I’m telling them to do this, but it’s openly known.

You’re waiting for an appeals court ruling on two cases right now. Do you think you can win by arguing that the war is illegal?

I believe everyone will eventually stay [in Canada] if they want to. It’s certainly not 100 percent, and I tell people that. Right now it’s being done through the courts, and if they can’t decide whether the war in Iraq is illegal or not, I think it will become a political issue. We’ll see who wants to be saddled with the burden of being a George Bush supporter. I don’t think too many of our politicians are comfortable with that.

So if you succeed, any American soldier could be granted refugee status in Canada.

That’s their fear. That’s why the lower courts have been dancing around the issue. I would think you’d have to establish some basis to show that you actually thought the war was illegal. You’d have to show, in the same way a conscientious objector has to show a history of conscientious objection. Obviously it would open the door to a lot more people.

What happens if you lose?

If we can’t make the argument legally then it’ll be a political argument and that depends on the politics of the day. Right now we have a minority conservative government but they’re trying to distance themselves from the U.S. conservative government, so it’s an open question what they would do… Losing your refugee case does not necessarily mean you’ll be removed from Canada.