July 31, 2002
more get your war on
The wonders of the internet brings us still more from one of the people who might yet save the country, if not the world....
July 30, 2002
hot town Summer in the City
[Miss Scarlet must have been told that a lady does not sweat in the summer. She glows. How were us northern folk supposed to know that? It would'a made all the difference for a lot of us, surely.] The NYTimes...
really natural gardening
I came across this amazing site yesterday, but I doubt that we will have much call for the products it offers.No matter what critter is eating up your garden or invading your yard, we have the proven, all-natural solution: 100%...
arms parity for moral parity?
Letters in both the NYTimes and the Daily News this morning try to draw a distinction between the morality of the recent Israeli murders in Gaza and that associated with Palestinian bombers.There is a world of difference between the civilian...
July 29, 2002
a garden! a garden!
Our tree arrives wednesday, and I feel like an expectant father! I'm sure what follows then will be like a new career. I've been without a garden since leaving the little 1760 house in Providence. While New York certainly has...
Lieberman supports "malefactors of great wealth"
And just why do you think that's a bad move at this time, Senator Lieberman? The conservative Democratic believes his presidential running mate, Al Gore, shifted too far to the left [sic] during the 2000 campaign.In recent weeks, Mr. Lieberman...
leaving Palestine, and taking their hopes with them
Our policy throughout the Middle East has succeeded in creating enemies and weakening real or potential friends, in building-up repressive, violent and aggressive regimes and destroying the hopes of reformers and democrats. Perhaps nowhere else at the moment is this...
what year is it now?
Orwell's 1984, written decades before the date, projected what the year 1984 would look like. At least we made it to 2002, even as the book has been stuck in my consciousness since Dubya was voted president by the Supremes....
July 28, 2002
tin patriots or true?
Is it American to give up liberty to be safe, or to give up safety to have liberty? Don't bother asking the gang in Washington.The administration consistently reminds us that we must take these steps [eroding our fundamental freedoms] to...
a very good match indeed
Two very, very good men are together about to make a very big difference in South Africa--and the world. South Africa's most visible HIV activist, Zackie Achmat, and its undisputed moral leader, Nelson Mandela, are joining together to create a...
the call of the wild
Ok, what's this one spunky cicada doing outside our windows on 23rd Street at one o'clock in the morning? We're astonished we can hear him well above the ambient sounds of all kind of traffic late on a saturday night,...
July 27, 2002
two views of Barcelona
The Barcelona AIDS Conference can be seen as the latest, problematic worldwide attempt to come to terms with what is expected to be the worst epidemic in human history*. Unfortnately it can also be seen through the demented eyes of...
July 26, 2002
public service announcement
[note: This post is not intended to suggest any obligation to contribute to or vote for Ralph Nader, the Green Party or any of the other alternatives to orthodoxy locked out of the commercial media; we have to remember this...
July 25, 2002
Ernestina the ark
I lived in Providence, Rhode Island, for twenty years, most of that time very much in the midst of an extrordinary community of Cape Verdeans. Cape Verdeans? Most Americans have no reference whatsoever for this part of our immigrant history...
Move it!
That is, move the location of square footage lost with the destruction of the World Trade Center. One important re-imagining of a solution has West Street buried entirely from below Chambers Street through old Battery Park until it joins FDR...
defend America's freedom to torture!
Do we have something in mind that we want to keep hidden from the world? We'll almost certainly never know now.The United States lost a bid today to rewrite a United Nations plan intended to reinforce the 1989 convention against...
. . .and must be regularly and lovingly nourished
"The male ego is not a hardy perennial; it's a very delicate flower." --David Rudgers, a 22-year veteran of the CIA, and author of Creating the Secret State, speaking about the U.S. military's pricklish attitude toward gays and lesbians in...
July 24, 2002
Call in the army!
Let's see what else can we do to destroy the country while no one is looking? The Cheney administration hasn't gotten anything right yet. It seems to be (fortunately) doing pretty well at messing up even its own pet projects...
on losing God, our sponsor
With the elimination of the phrase, "under God," from the Pledge of Allegiance, and the brand recognition that went with it, does the country risk losing its marketing powers?The U.S. Justice Department, assigned the difficult task of finding a replacement,...
New York, a great place for hiding out!
(at least for a few million years) Researchers have announced the discovery of an entirely new genus and species in the Ramble in Central Park. "We didn't know what was out there," Ms. Johnson said. "We wanted to see who's...
July 23, 2002
last chance for the Democrats?
I for one don't think there is a chance, a chance that they will pick up the challenge, but here's the case outlined.The big, unacknowledged picture is this: The people in power represent an economic clique whose interests are only...
book activism
"Spiritual autobiography" is not my thing, but still, the mind reels, thinking about the other possibilities, after reading an author describe how he simply slips his own books onto store shelves, rather than wait for the middleman to get to...
"Metrosexuals"
Are we dizzy yet? Some people were just beginning to sort out the old categories, but new species seem to be popping out all over, contributing to a delightful confusion for those who welcome life, and a nightmare for the...
July 22, 2002
in this together
Pete Hamill's account of saturday's town meeting (see the log below) ends with a New York story worthy of standing alone.Then came news of the Con Ed power failure. My subway lines were closed, and I jumped into a taxi....
We the people
[I admit that I missed it because I had assumed it was just window dressing, a set-up, designed by the money and power people. At best, I believed that the crowds would mean it would be an exercise in frustration,...
slaves, what slaves?
Not in our neighborhood, surely?The opening in Battery Park City of a memorial to victims of the Irish famine of 1845-52, near the Living Memorial to the Holocaust, suggests that Americans are more comfortable remembering others' violations of human rights...
TIPS for tyranny
It's painful to even have to describe the Dubya team's latest assault on a formerly free society, TIPS, enlisting citizens spying on citizens. I thought I had already read of the proposal's actual demise, and had thought it unnecessary to...
July 21, 2002
SURPRISE! WE GO TO WAR NEXT MONTH
This is only the speculation of many people who pay attention to these things (meaning not most Americans), but were I a gambling man myself, my money would be on August. Yes, that's just next month! My own reasons for...
living in New York, even in memory
Kate Mayne, a wonderful friend of ours, although not an American, lived here for a couple of years prior to moving to Antwerp a few years ago. She wrote a response to my posting, "wanna make it in New York?"...
July 20, 2002
"Corporate Socialism"
Sound like a pinko conspiracy? Well, Ralph Nader sees it as a pretty fair description of what we already have. "Safety net" hardly begins to describe the extent of the care our government takes for the welfare of big business,...
an abomination of an alteration
The City has given outright to the American Craft Museum the distinctive 1964 building, 2 Columbus Circle, now vacant, which was originally designed for Huntington Hartford's Gallery of Modern Art (his private collection of modern, non-abstact art--a fascinating story in...
can you run that name by me again
In the category of, "there will always be an England," or, "is the Times running fiction in the obituary section now?"Setting off down the Thames in a bright red boat on Sept. 2, 1979, from the east London borough of...
July 18, 2002
Simply ineffable
My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror. W. Somerset Maugham [Thanks to Louise]...
When do we leave?
Unfortunately I can't locate the documentation for this at the moment, but a recent poll of Berliners found that fully 61 percent believed our dear Shrub is a dangerously incompetent maniac. I don't know any people who might be better...
A-ha! Of course, it's still about oil!
Sure might help to explain why we're willing to risk world conflagration by wiping another country off the map in an unprovoked and very aggressive act of war! "Washington" is very concerned about diversifying sources for our present dependency on...
July 17, 2002
nothing's changed at the White House after 12 years!
For those who have been following the scuttlebut about the Barcelona AIDS Conference, this partial account from James Wentzy, ACT UP New York veteran, of one of its few dramatic moments may be enlightening. [Note from Dean Lance's 1990 letter...
President says Vice President did no wrong
A headline like this works on Lefty depression like a genuine palliative.BUSH SAYS CHENEY DID NOTHING WRONG AT HALLIBURTON "I've got great confidence in the vice president. ... When I picked him, I knew he was a fine business leader...
LMDC says fuck you, New York !
I'm posting the NYTimes' editorial take on the just-released Lower Manhattan Development Corporation's draft proposals for the reconstruction of the World Trade Center site, because, coming from the establishment newspaper, it clearly shows the scale of the insult hurled at...
July 16, 2002
living for art
Dean Daderko either does or does not have the hottest gallery in New York, and Toni Schlesinger either does or does not just write a regular column about where people live in New York. I would say yes and no,...
all the news not fit for the other place
Finally, our very own ZNN (sic)! Don't forget to come up for air.ZNN provides a contrast to CNN. ZNN is maintained as a sideline project of Tim Allen of ZNet, with a little help from a volunteer now and then....
Wanna make it in New York?
A savy and amusing navigation of the perils in store here for those who just can't take it elsewhere any longer, and it's not just for gypsies.I can't help quoting from Kirk Wood Bromley's recent play about The American Revolution:...
We won't be saved by the Democrats
"But (he or she) did it first!" goes the plaintive rationalization with which every parent is familiar. Don't expect anything better from the so-called oposition party in the campaign to return government to the voters, or the voters to government....
July 15, 2002
Clinton says he's accountable!
Clinton, the master of missed opportunities and political cowardice [ok, there have been and will be worse, but few from whom we could have expected as much], said friday in Barcelona that he did not know how anyone could explain...
Cold coke but not medicines?
Now that's a sound bite! Can we package this guy? Dr. Joep Lange reduced the problem to its essentials with an analogy he made in addressing the Barcelona AIDS Conference just ended:He said that expanding treatment for infected people in...
Hey girlfriend boyfriend!
This from a blog (belonging to a beautiful woman who writes as Bazima) which I clearly visit with not enough regularity:Friday, July 12, 2002 An Important Message from My Gay Boyfriend I noticed that my two "straight" male friends now...
July 13, 2002
something for everybody
Great art for you, emergency medical relief for a beleagured Palestinian population, and a little recognition for some brilliant and courageous artists and the people who organized an extraordinary event at White Box gallery over the last several weeks: The...
July 12, 2002
Hope?
Yes, I think so! Not since the last almost-presidential election have I been so hopeful about the ability of our polity to turn itself around, or correct (at least part of) itself, as I am tonight! Except that I've been...
trial by junta, in the storied land of the free
So, it's up to the person posing as president to decide who is an American and who has a right to a lawyer, so long as he says he's protecting us![The judge] said the executive branch of the government is...
the national soul bought and sold
We are being misled, and all is not what it seems.And it's becoming increasingly difficult to find anyone but the truest I-believe-everything-Ari-Fleischer-says jingoists who actually believes this "war" has become anything but a grand excuse, a marvelously leveragable plaything which...
making fools of ourselves over healthcare
Government in the U.S. today spends more per capita on health care than any nation on earth, including those with national health insurance.Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, [an author of the Harvard Medical School study published in the journal Health Affairs] and...
July 11, 2002
rights trashed for all
Good news! Our trusty fascist government is no longer holding most of those arrested in racist sweeps after September 11! Nope. The bad new is that we threw them out of the country without hearings or trials, ensuring they will...
July 10, 2002
We should want out, not in!
One of the founders of the modern British gay movement reminds us that in the first years after Stonewall we wanted to change society, not conform to it.There would be sexual freedom and human rights for all – gay and...
July 9, 2002
Don't take their insult!
Alright, how's this take on what passes for our pretended chief executive? I know, it's wasted upon you, dear reader (preaching to the converted is stangely both immediately satisfying and ultimately unrewarding), but I gotta ask it anyway, and this...
the Shrub in his own words
"I also understand how tender the free enterprise system can be."—White House press conference, Washington, D.C., July 9, 2002 [from The Complete Bushisms]...
ker-plop!
[the impact of Bushie's speech on Wall Street today] I really love the BBC site at the moment. The lead story is that speech, and even in the skeletal form of their headlines they've taken the opportunity to tell it...
the last intelligent patriot
Gore Vidal, described in an interview as also perhaps the nation's last republican [small "r"], has a chance to do what he does best, elegantly cut through the muck of ignorance and mendacity to describe what really is happening to...
point of information
[excerpts from a letter to the editor in today's NYTimes]What to do when it appears that the president engaged in financial misdealings before taking office? We know what steps the Republicans think appropriate: hire a political appointee from the opposing...
July 8, 2002
in the American tradition, telling it like it is
We just don't hear enough from independent and courageous people any more, and in fact we cannot ever hear enough from them. So, does everyone else really believe it's unamerican to do anything but cheer the chief?"We have a president...
[JAW---words fail me here]
Can the writer to the Daily News really be wondering how the 9th Circuit Court feels about religious oaths?Bronx: The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California says reciting the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional because of the words "under...
July 7, 2002
Boeings and big bums
Great headline, but still, it's a serious subject for anyone but the diminutive. As far as I'm concerned, I'd now rather be drugged unconscious, slipped into a tube and shipped off to my ultimate destination than fly any skies no...
"Hand-Dipped Zeppole," and much more!
We made it in time this year! Saw the Williamsburg "Dancing of the Giglio" this hot sunday afternoon. Not just saw it, but were almost in the middle of the 100-plus beefy Italian guys who shouldered the four-ton monster tower...
our high priest not quite off-duty
This headline and story beggars comment.[At the Bushie vacation palace's local Kennebunkport church] Chaplain M.L. Agnew, in honor of his powerful guests, diverted the congregation from the usual service briefly to lead them in the Pledge of Allegiance, a pledge...
July 6, 2002
not quite free at last
Yes, Arkansas's Supreme Court has overturned the state's sodomy law, but too many people have had no real problem living for 25 years with its appalling assault on queers, and in fact on human rights everywhere. Neither Arkansas nor the...
July 5, 2002
saved by colorful arms and wings
Before I walked into my local U.S. Post Office (or whatever official semi-autonomous profit-center designation it may go by these days) to update my stash of obsolescent 34-cent stamps this afternoon, I was prepared for at least the possibility of...
white in a white world, but still an outsider
He's worked for decades, with his heart and with his mind, as an effective advocate for racial justice, but he admits that even today he often feels like an outsider."I live basically in a white world, day in and day...
Fouling our nest...
...to fill their piggy banks even further. The Administration's plans to cut funding for the cleanup of 33 toxic waste sites in 18 states are only the latest in a tragic run of disastrous attacks on the environment which belongs...
the Israel we love---the Israel we want to survive
It's been ten months since September 11, but in the U.S. political humor is still not safe. In Israel however, in a society far more deeply threatened by the terrors originating both from its own government and from others, it...
July 3, 2002
light at the end of the tunnel?
Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but there may be signs that sanity, and the courage of sanity, is returning to the people. Keep those cards and letters (and the questions, and the demonstrations) going, and don't let the highjackers in...
to us, just "a big dumb gas station"
Somebody needs a jump start, and right away! The Arab world is a mess, and we're part of the problem. [The UN has just published a report "written by a group of distinguished Arab intellectuals"] analyzing the three main reasons...
priests doing the right thing
Sometimes a man of the cloth can warm an atheist's heart. Of course, I'd like to think it's already warm, without benefit of clergy, so take that introductory sentiment as just a figure of speech.On July 8, both priests will...
Martha Stewart's smaller world
I don't know how it happened, but I swear that I didn't know who Martha Stewart was until just about four years ago. Never heard of her. Now, of course none of us can get away from her and the...
July 2, 2002
naked fool of an emperor
More than a few sane words have been delivered by an Israeli who bears really extraordinary credentials for these times, and these places. How can we as Americans deal with our shame as a people saddled with this government? How...
voices in the wildernesses
A brief check with a reporter on the scene in Gaza today.Gaza is completely fenced in. It's like the world's largest prison. .... Gaza is a land mass of 360 square kilometers. Of that, 58% is in hands of Palestinians;...
