Boston notes
Jul. 25th, 2004 04:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lapsedmodernistFriday night I went to the "Veterans Address the Nation" event at Faneuil Hall, part of the Veterans for Peace 2004 national conference (filmed parts of it, unfortunately couldn't stay for the whole Howard Zinn speech)
Highlights from the Social Forum include:
The documentary "My Terrorist" which I'd wanted to see for a while
(For the most part) the level of the dialogue at the Media Summit.
The new upcoming Greg Palast DVD; I believe in its BBC incarnation it's called "Bush Family Fortunes" but it will be released here as "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." The preview will be soon available on his website.
Republican Survivor, which you can watch on DTripTV
"Independent Media in a Time of War" + Amy Goodman speaking
um, and then there was a proliferation of "The Wild Animus". With people in costumes presumably enacting the geist of the Wild Animus? But it was raining, so it was just sad.
In the summer of 1969, a disillusioned Berkeley graduate leaves behind a world of protests and riots to follow a wild, inner calling. Sam Altman is an intense young man with an animal energy whose unleashed and increasingly unhinged imagination takes him first to Seattle and then farther north, to the remote Alaskan wilderness.
Sam has fallen deeply in love with the mysterious and powerful Lindy, a young woman who understands his quest, and who will do anything to help him realize it—no matter how bizarre or dangerous. On the unforgiving ridges of Mt. Wrangell, alone with his reckless ideas and a driving need to uncover his innermost self, Sam, who has renamed himself Ransom, gradually transforms himself into a ram—prey to a pack of strangely familiar wolves.
The mad pursuit leads from the wilds to civilization and back again. And when Sam and Lindy return to brave the perilous mountain together, the truth behind his imagined transformation emerges. What they discover in those frozen heights threatens their love as well as their sanity and their lives.
WILD ANIMUS is a search for the primordial, a test of human foundations, and a journey to the breaking point. This is a story of love and sacrifice, of obsession, of finding the limits of the heart, and going one step farther..
So, you know, there were neoprimitivists. And I got flyered by Refuse & Resist, except it took me a second to figure out that it was them, since the flyer was of the NoRNC variety. And there was that guy who kept convinving me to give $ to his pro-Nader group. I was, like, hell, no. He was, like, what's your problem with Nader? So I explained that while Nader's ideas sounded good on paper, they were hardly unique, and in his case, came appended to an egomaniac narcissist who ran an unethical campaign and took aid from the GOP. The guy pouted that he disagreed with my assessment of Nader, but conceded that Nader should reject GOP support. Well, as far as I can tell, Nader's ethically interesting logistical choices are a direct outcome of his monomaniacal meta-campaign. Unfortunately, several groups in the main tabling area had literature that by my assessment borders on anti-semitic, so that was a deterrent from examining other information they were distributing that had attracted my attention. There were some flashbacks to my small progressive Midwestern college.
But the panels at the media summit were productive, and the range of opinions was a check on the didactic rhetoric. It made me happy that there were at least as many practical & logistical issues brought up and discsussed, as there were pontifications on what "progressive" means.
I gave Greg Palast some of the Shocking & Awful stuff and talked to him for a while about the military appropriation of public access stations. He became very interested; I told him he should do a story about it. It would be great if he did; it's an important issue, but one that few people know about. So, the military is taking advantage of the public access stations, where they qualify for air time under both "governement" and "education" categories. This is going on at over 700 public access outlets across the country. While communities are legally entitled to demand counter-programming under "equal time," this is an under-reported story, and few people know about this, and realize that this is one issue where they can affect a practical change on a local , grassroots level.
Also: the Boston IMC has a really swanky computer lab, compared to the Matrix aesthetic of the machines at the NYC IMC. And when I say the Matrix, I mean, like, those machines the rebels have in the Real World. Like, old, and with the wires, and making clickety-click sounds and located in weird spaces with drab gray carpeting. I honestly can't figure out right now if I'm thinking of the Matrix Real World or the IMC space. The gray carpet is confusing me.
I have much, much more to say, but the Chinatown bus journey back to NYC sapped my life force. The bus itself was impossible to find, and during my labyrinthine search with a bag of mushy, dripping Kung Pao Shrimp, and my rapidly disintegrating travel bag* in miserable tow, I encountered the freakiest fucking seagull I've even seen, and please note that with the exception of pigeons, I'm a bird lover. So, like, this seagull was decidedly not drawn to scale, and presumably was spawned somewhere around Chernobyl. If you added some gilded feathers and rubies for eyes, it could have easily been the Golden Bird from this terrifying story I read as a child about a Golden Bird statue on an island; every night the statue comes to life, and walks around, which causes the island denizens to be overwhelmed with fear and to run to each other for comfort. Except, whoops, the bird's other magical power apparently turns all the islanders' arms into swords, so everyone ends up stabbing their near and dear ones. And every morning there are funeral pyres. Neat story, huh? So, I think this seagull wanted my food, and I gave it this look, like, respect the nature/humanity binary, bird, the bird did not seem inclined to respect it, so I actually accelerated my step to "brisk" until I cleared the length of the alley where this freaky-ass bird overlorded. The bus, once found, made up in total darkness for what it lacked in bathroom facilities, but I'm pleased to report that thanks to the driver's commitment to a sustained minimum speed of 95 mph we made it back to NYC in under four hours, and I don't think the potholes did permanent damage to my spinal column, so, y'know, all's well. Over and out.
* There are a few things that tend to happen to me. There could be a psychoanalytic argument that I somehow "do" them, with the pesky agency of my subconscious. Those things include: dropped bottles of wine that produce subsequent low-grade anxiety about chipped glass, accidentally leaving earrings at my lovers' places, and my largest, most packed bag always ripping when I am travelling. When I was leaving Los Angeles, for good, LAX shut down for two + hours because of a bomb threat; during that interim my large "piano bag" (as my father calls it) decided that it'd had enough, and when time came to check it in, it happily ripped in three places at once, including along the length of the zipper. It had to be jerryrigged into submission with a kind Samaritan's duct tape and my shoelaces. When it emerged at baggage claim in Chicago, it looked like a battered pinata, what with my pajamas, bed coverings and towels sticking up and out of the bag, at 45 degrees to the bag and each other.
Highlights from the Social Forum include:
The documentary "My Terrorist" which I'd wanted to see for a while
(For the most part) the level of the dialogue at the Media Summit.
The new upcoming Greg Palast DVD; I believe in its BBC incarnation it's called "Bush Family Fortunes" but it will be released here as "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." The preview will be soon available on his website.
Republican Survivor, which you can watch on DTripTV
"Independent Media in a Time of War" + Amy Goodman speaking
um, and then there was a proliferation of "The Wild Animus". With people in costumes presumably enacting the geist of the Wild Animus? But it was raining, so it was just sad.
In the summer of 1969, a disillusioned Berkeley graduate leaves behind a world of protests and riots to follow a wild, inner calling. Sam Altman is an intense young man with an animal energy whose unleashed and increasingly unhinged imagination takes him first to Seattle and then farther north, to the remote Alaskan wilderness.
Sam has fallen deeply in love with the mysterious and powerful Lindy, a young woman who understands his quest, and who will do anything to help him realize it—no matter how bizarre or dangerous. On the unforgiving ridges of Mt. Wrangell, alone with his reckless ideas and a driving need to uncover his innermost self, Sam, who has renamed himself Ransom, gradually transforms himself into a ram—prey to a pack of strangely familiar wolves.
The mad pursuit leads from the wilds to civilization and back again. And when Sam and Lindy return to brave the perilous mountain together, the truth behind his imagined transformation emerges. What they discover in those frozen heights threatens their love as well as their sanity and their lives.
WILD ANIMUS is a search for the primordial, a test of human foundations, and a journey to the breaking point. This is a story of love and sacrifice, of obsession, of finding the limits of the heart, and going one step farther..
So, you know, there were neoprimitivists. And I got flyered by Refuse & Resist, except it took me a second to figure out that it was them, since the flyer was of the NoRNC variety. And there was that guy who kept convinving me to give $ to his pro-Nader group. I was, like, hell, no. He was, like, what's your problem with Nader? So I explained that while Nader's ideas sounded good on paper, they were hardly unique, and in his case, came appended to an egomaniac narcissist who ran an unethical campaign and took aid from the GOP. The guy pouted that he disagreed with my assessment of Nader, but conceded that Nader should reject GOP support. Well, as far as I can tell, Nader's ethically interesting logistical choices are a direct outcome of his monomaniacal meta-campaign. Unfortunately, several groups in the main tabling area had literature that by my assessment borders on anti-semitic, so that was a deterrent from examining other information they were distributing that had attracted my attention. There were some flashbacks to my small progressive Midwestern college.
But the panels at the media summit were productive, and the range of opinions was a check on the didactic rhetoric. It made me happy that there were at least as many practical & logistical issues brought up and discsussed, as there were pontifications on what "progressive" means.
I gave Greg Palast some of the Shocking & Awful stuff and talked to him for a while about the military appropriation of public access stations. He became very interested; I told him he should do a story about it. It would be great if he did; it's an important issue, but one that few people know about. So, the military is taking advantage of the public access stations, where they qualify for air time under both "governement" and "education" categories. This is going on at over 700 public access outlets across the country. While communities are legally entitled to demand counter-programming under "equal time," this is an under-reported story, and few people know about this, and realize that this is one issue where they can affect a practical change on a local , grassroots level.
Also: the Boston IMC has a really swanky computer lab, compared to the Matrix aesthetic of the machines at the NYC IMC. And when I say the Matrix, I mean, like, those machines the rebels have in the Real World. Like, old, and with the wires, and making clickety-click sounds and located in weird spaces with drab gray carpeting. I honestly can't figure out right now if I'm thinking of the Matrix Real World or the IMC space. The gray carpet is confusing me.
I have much, much more to say, but the Chinatown bus journey back to NYC sapped my life force. The bus itself was impossible to find, and during my labyrinthine search with a bag of mushy, dripping Kung Pao Shrimp, and my rapidly disintegrating travel bag* in miserable tow, I encountered the freakiest fucking seagull I've even seen, and please note that with the exception of pigeons, I'm a bird lover. So, like, this seagull was decidedly not drawn to scale, and presumably was spawned somewhere around Chernobyl. If you added some gilded feathers and rubies for eyes, it could have easily been the Golden Bird from this terrifying story I read as a child about a Golden Bird statue on an island; every night the statue comes to life, and walks around, which causes the island denizens to be overwhelmed with fear and to run to each other for comfort. Except, whoops, the bird's other magical power apparently turns all the islanders' arms into swords, so everyone ends up stabbing their near and dear ones. And every morning there are funeral pyres. Neat story, huh? So, I think this seagull wanted my food, and I gave it this look, like, respect the nature/humanity binary, bird, the bird did not seem inclined to respect it, so I actually accelerated my step to "brisk" until I cleared the length of the alley where this freaky-ass bird overlorded. The bus, once found, made up in total darkness for what it lacked in bathroom facilities, but I'm pleased to report that thanks to the driver's commitment to a sustained minimum speed of 95 mph we made it back to NYC in under four hours, and I don't think the potholes did permanent damage to my spinal column, so, y'know, all's well. Over and out.
* There are a few things that tend to happen to me. There could be a psychoanalytic argument that I somehow "do" them, with the pesky agency of my subconscious. Those things include: dropped bottles of wine that produce subsequent low-grade anxiety about chipped glass, accidentally leaving earrings at my lovers' places, and my largest, most packed bag always ripping when I am travelling. When I was leaving Los Angeles, for good, LAX shut down for two + hours because of a bomb threat; during that interim my large "piano bag" (as my father calls it) decided that it'd had enough, and when time came to check it in, it happily ripped in three places at once, including along the length of the zipper. It had to be jerryrigged into submission with a kind Samaritan's duct tape and my shoelaces. When it emerged at baggage claim in Chicago, it looked like a battered pinata, what with my pajamas, bed coverings and towels sticking up and out of the bag, at 45 degrees to the bag and each other.
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no subject
Date: 2004-07-27 09:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-27 10:42 pm (UTC)i've never been particularly enamored with boston as a city to visit. whenever i go there (or to one of the many suburbs) i get lost. that, and something happens like i get a parking ticket, my car gets towed, or i have a completely forgettable blind date.
that's why i offered for you to come to providence. even though it doesn't have as much to offer as boston, it's right next door to me, i don't get lost there, and i have enjoyed myself (and friends) there more than once.
oh well. next time, i'm sure.