Somewhat Musical Wednesday
Since Tim our musical director is out with a terrible case of debilitating euphoria this week, I am filling in on the music tip. Trolling the world wide internet, I came across the perfect thing for a nasty week of deadlines and constant rain (though, like me, you may only have one of these conditions – not both): the One Minute Vacation.
“One-minute vacations are unedited recordings of somewhere, somewhen. Sixty seconds of something else. Sixty seconds to be someone else.”
So, sit back, strap on your best hi-fidelity headphones, and take a brief audio-vacation to somewhere else. And if that is not enough, there is an archive of three years worth. That ought to hold you. Vacations provided courtesy of quiet american, which is the website the link travels you to.
Lately I have been itching to rent The Towering Inferno (if you were around for the 70’s at all you probably remember it)- but I think I will wait until “WHEN TIME RAN OUT on THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE to THE TOWERING INFERNO because an EARTHQUAKE unleashed THE SWARM on a ROLLERCOASTER near the AIRPORT” comes out. Seen at Coudal, of course.
I knew this was coming – or at least I had hoped. Knight Rider is coming to the big screen.. at some unspecified time in the near future. The best TV show of my childood, without a doubt. Perfect for the elementary school boy in you.
The Morning News, my favorite news source in the morning, has some words of wisdom for those about to graduate. Of course they also apply to those of us who have already graduated, many times over, and are done with that whole thing.
This especially struck home:
“When you go out into the world, remember that you will stumble, you will fall, you will get up, you may fall again—but you will still get up, because you are first a graduate of this University, and second a debtor to Fannie Mae—and you will never be able to afford not to work.”
Too true, dammit, too true.
There is a sad and frustrating debate going on in Providence and Olneyville right now about gentrification, specifically, about some lofts in a former mill called Rising Sun. The rhetoric is very angry, from both sides, and therefore, amazingly one-dimensional and sad. I dont know how my city will heal after this debate, but I hope it does. These are large issues, for sure, but I dont think blogs and bulletin boards are a very productive way to have a dialogue. Or maybe it is… maybe people are more themselves, or more at liberty to be blunt and mean and angry. Either way, I hope the anger will subside and some real conversations will start after all this.
In college May Day meant we built a half pipe in the sculpture studio and played in the grass between the 2D and 3D buildings on a clay slip and slide. Today, May Day 2006, I participated in the march through downtown LA in support of immigration rights.
Today I marched with Holly Tempo in honor of my great-grandmother, Pauline Kahn. Holly carried an American flag while I carried an enlarged Photo of Bubbie Pauline with text announcing “MY GREAT-GRANDMOTHER CAME HERE FROM RUSSIA ON A FAKE PASSPORT.” I felt so much pride in supporting the immigrants today. Many people after reading my sign took my picture, put their arms around me, shook my hand, and gave me high fives, thanking me for my solidarity and support of them. My feeling is that I am just raising the point that not all illegal immigrants are Latinos. There are a lot of racist ideologies in the immigration debate now. I am also trying to honor the fact that if she had not come here, more of our family could’ve perished in the Holocaust.
I do not know the best solution, but I do think that the current policy needs to be re-evaluated. Yes immigrants should learn English. However I do find it problematic that we are really the only developed country that does not require/encourage its citizens to be multilingual (I’ve been told that Bubbie spoke Russian, Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish and English.) The founding Americans (read Colonialists) came here illegally and stole land from the Natives. The people arriving here from Latin America are coming here to start a better life, just as my Eastern European ancestors did. Many of the children who were brought by their parents illegally are now in high school or college. They now suffer because of their parent’s actions. Culturally they are just as much American as anyone, because they were raised here. Should they be deported to a country they do not know?
I do understand that times have changed since the late 1800’s and that our country cannot take care of everyone. Yet we invade other countries to “liberate” the people, which is a whole other issue. Don’t get me started…
One last note…I was offended this weekend by the altered flyer advertising the march and boycott that was posted in the mailroom in my building. It appropriated the flyers made by ANSWER LA and added racist statements against Mexicans in the small print. When I took it down and replaced it with the actual ANSWER LA flyer, the racist tenant replaced it again. Finally I tore up their flyer and left the bulletin board empty. Holly suggested I report the illegal hate speech to the building management.
* Pictures from the march will be posted soon.
May 1 Boycott & LA Marches for Immigrant Rights
No Work! No School! Take To the Streets!
Who’s coming with me?
We can meet at my place downtown and either walk or bike to Olympic and Broadway.
This is important to me because my great-grandmother, Pauline Kahn, immigrated to the US illegally from Russia on a fake passport belonging to someone who had died. This was the only way she could get to New York, as anti-Semitism grew in Eastern Europe in the decades before World War II.
Please join me in support of immigrant rights!
Man, The Hubble telescope rules. I check in on it now and again to refresh my space themed desktop at work. Today they release an image of “the magnificent starburst galaxy, Messier 82 (M82)” to celebrate Hubble’s 16th anniversary. Wicked pissa. happy Birthday Hubble.
From the website:
“The Hubble, almost by itself, is this instrument which allowed us … to understand that it is quite literally true that we know nothing about 95 percent of the known universe,”
“Seventy-five percent of it is dark energy, 20 percent of it is so-called dark matter, and the remaining 5 percent is what we can see. That is an understanding so profound as to rival with Einstein’s development of theories of relativity and so forth. So it has been an extraordinarily valuable instrument.”
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