Browsed by
Tag: cultural

A Question to the Religious Right

A Question to the Religious Right

A question to the so-called “religious right” who want to abolish separation of church and state altogether:

How would you feel if the religion expressed on the national stage were some equally skewed version of Islam, or Wicca, or … ( – insert your personal choice for “least appealing religious path” here – for me it’s Jehovah’s Witnesses), rather than this particular view of Christianity?

What if they found some “wedge issues” and became the majority in Congress?
What if they rallied their base to write laws, and control the media, and spy on you, and limit your choices and your freedoms?

Would you still think separation of church and state was a bad thing?

Don’t you understand even now that that your freedom of religion is dependent on the state and church being separate?

How can something so fundamental to your own success be so maligned?

Tyranny of religion was opposed by the colonies, and then by the country. A glance through any history book (or newspaper) will give ample evidence of some of the reasons why.

Happy Earth Day – Take Action

Happy Earth Day – Take Action

Happy Earth Day!

Join the Stop Global Warming Virtual March

Read the Progress Report

See the HBO Special “Too Hot Not to Handle“. They have also done a great job of creating a list of resources (including organizations who are committed to fighting global warming).

Reward companies that have a triple bottom line: People, Planet AND Profit. Buy Blue.

Buy Blue

Visit The Wilderness Society’s collection of past Earth Day memories and practical tips for protecting our planet and its wild places.

Don’t Let Them Scrap Cape Wind

Cape Wind: the proposed offshore wind farm that would provide 75 percent of Cape Cod’s energy needs with wind power and kickstart the nation into a clean energy revolution.

On April 6, a conference committee signed off on an amendment to a spending bill that would grant veto power over Cape Wind to the governor of Massachusetts. Governor Mitt Romney is an outspoken opponent of the project and if Congress accepts the bill it will be the end of Cape Wind.

This veto provision is a blatant example of the kind of backdoor politics that Congress has been claiming it is against. The amendment had to be secretly added in a closed-door committee because it would never have passed in open committee debate. This provision is a sneaky attempt to shutdown America’s move toward a clean energy future.

Cape Wind is currently the largest renewable wind energy project in the country and is very important for a strong and vibrant future for wind power in the United States. Congress needs to get serious about addressing our addiction to oil. We need tangible renewable energy projects to reduce our emissions of dangerous global warming pollution.

Don’t let this backroom deal unravel years of hard work to make Cape Wind a reality.

Contact your senators and urge them to strip this disastrous language from the spending bill before it’s too late.

Stop Weyerhaeuser’s Lumber Slash Zones

2,500 square miles of forests, lakes and rivers north of Kenora, Ontario have sustained the people of Grassy Narrows First Nation for thousands of years. Now Weyerhaeuser, the largest lumber company in the world, is turning the American dream of building a home into a native nightmare in Canada. A majority of the wood taken from Weyerhaeuser’s clear-cutting is used in constructing American homes, which are marketed as being “Built Green.”

By the way, VP George Weyerhaeuser Jr. was just appointed to a National Academy of Sciences committee that will evaluate the impact of forest-management practices on the nation’s water quality. Conflict of interest, anyone?

In the 1990s the Weyerhaeuser company dramatically increased logging rates in Grassy Narrows without the consent or proper consultation of the community, regularly clear-cutting huge tracts of land, spraying the land with herbicides and pesticides, and replanting with monoculture tree plantations. Despite decades of negotiations, environmental appeals, protests, and what has become the longest running road blockade in Canadian history, industrial loggers like Weyerhaeuser continue to use wood systematically extracted from ecologically sensitive old growth areas and destroy the traditional way of life of the Grassy Narrows indigenous community who have lived on the land since pre-Columbian times.

Demand the immediate termination of Weyerhaeuser’s destructive logging without consent from the community – and keep your eye out for local actions as well.

Rebuke Office Max and Demand Changes

Southern forests are being rapidly wiped out to meet surging demands for office copy paper and paper packaging. Unless consumers insist that such throwaway products be produced from recycled fibers instead of trees, the great forest that once cloaked the southeastern U.S. is in danger of being into turned into vast, biologically sterile pine plantations.

OfficeMax, the third largest retail office supply store in the US, threatens forests of the south by doing business with the most irresponsible logging company in the region.

Tell them to stop sourcing paper from endangered forests!

The Southern forest region of the U.S. contains some of the most biologically rich ecosystems in North America. It is home to hundreds of forest and aquatic species — especially amphibians, reptiles, snails and trees — that are found nowhere else on earth. What’s more, paper on the shelves of OfficeMax is contributing to the destruction of endangered forests in the Southern US’s Cumberland Plateau and the Canadian Boreal – two of the most biologically diverse regions on Earth

OfficeMax’s two largest competitors, Staples and Office Depot, have already committed publicly to increase recycled content in the paper they sell and avoid sourcing paper from endangered forests.

Urge Office Max to follow suit. Demand that they:

1. Stop sourcing paper from endangered forests, including endangered forests of the Southern US and the Canadian Boreal.
2. Match the standard 30% industry average post-consumer recycled content for all paper grades that OfficeMax sells.
3. Phase out all sales of 100% virgin paper.
4. Stop purchasing paper from suppliers that convert natural forests to industrial pine plantations.
5. Develop and implement environmental paper policies, and reduce overall paper use in internal company operations.

Tell Office Max CEO Sam Duncan to make a commitment to the environment and Southern Forests.

Protect Yellowstone and the Greater Rockies

The Bureau of Land Management has just released a draft management plan that threatens the spectacular wildlife and geological, historical and cultural treasures that make this national monument a unique place.

Urge the Bureau of Land Management to protect the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument, rather than subject it to an onslaught of jet skis, motor boats, airstrips and hundreds of miles of roads.

The Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument is a place of untamed beauty and flourishing wildlife, rich in cultural history and geological wonders, with the wild and majestic Missouri River at its heart. These wildlands have changed little from what Lewis and Clark saw on their westward journey 200 years ago, or from what Native American tribes experienced for thousands of years before that.

The lands and waters of the monument are home to renowned elk and bighorn sheep herds, bald and golden eagles, and numerous kinds of fish, including rare and endangered species. The Bureau of Land Management is proposing to allow an extensive network of roads — totaling almost 400 miles in length — that would imperil this wildlife and destroy the monument’s unspoiled character. In addition, the six unauthorized airstrips and excessive motorboat use that are part of the proposal would further damage the region’s wild qualities.

The Bureau of Land Management is accepting public comments until April 26th.
Please tell the agency to revise its proposed management plan to protect and preserve the special values of the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument for present and future generations to enjoy.

Plant Solutions

Truth Liberty Justice Freedom
Supporting the Return of Democracy to the USA
Take back the USA

The Gaze of Amy Ray

The Gaze of Amy Ray

Monday night I saw Amy Ray of Indigo Girls’ fame at Wahoo! Grill in Decatur.

We were having the rare dinner out, as Ben (5) was otherwise engaged. About midway through our meal, I noticed her walk in with three friends. It turns out that she had been a student of my hubby’s at Emory (!), but he didn’t want me to go over because I had already left to get the cellphone from the car, and the food had arrived. He wanted me to eat with him before the food got cold.

This bugged me because I had been interrupted from acting upon my original impulse – an impulse that only lasts a few seconds – to try to have a word. If I don’t act then – in the moment – then I think about it. If I think about it, I don’t do it (of course, sometimes it’s better for me not to do it). In this case, I had decided not to do it, but then I found myself walking over just to say a quick “thanks” on the way out. It was a strange night in a number of ways – I felt unsettled – and I thought that it would really improve things for me if I rallied the courage to do this. Yeah, it was selfish. Yes, it was rude and inappropriate behavior on my part. I worked one summer on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts and so I know that you’re supposed to “be cool” around famous people – all the more so if you are actually an admirer of their work.

However, I also knew that I’d probably never again have the chance to thank her, especially for two songs that made a big difference to me in graduate school – Galileo and Virginia Woolf. I loved many of their songs, but these were my faves.

I haven’t really kept up with their music lately, but I’m thinking about going to a conference here in September that will include Emily Saliers (the other Indigo Girl – she’ll be with her professor Dad) as well as my favorite Christian, Anne LaMotte. I’ll probably pick up a few CDs in the next week – including Amy’s solo albums.

The Woolf song inspired my major interdisciplinary paper of the first year at Emory (a comparative analysis of J. Hillis Miller and Paul Ricoeur on Woolf), but more fundamentally, their music got me through some of the most difficult parts of my graduate school existence – no money, my advisor’s stroke, the dissolution of my program, etc.

I sang. With the help of the Indigo Girls, Kate Bush, Tori Amos, Sarah MacLachlan, the occasional Blondie or Pat Benatar, and soundtracks like Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar, I was able to keep myself together no matter what went down.

From a distance Amy looked like someone I might have gone to school with – slightly gangly, she looked a bit younger than me. Actually, we are almost exactly the same age. We’ll both be 42 this month (Amy – 12th, Me – 15th).

I wish I would have managed to remember to thank her for her activism as well as for the music, but a strange thing happened and I couldn’t think of that or anything else. It wasn’t really a matter of being starstruck. I’ve had “brushes with greatness” before, and terrific conversations with people I have admired a great deal.

She was actually very gracious to me – especially considering that I had barged into what looked like an interesting conversation.

But here’s the strange thing: When she turned her head to look at me, she looked right at me, dead on, right into my eyes, and an image of her eyes burned through my retina right into my brain, where it remains. So struck was I by her piercing gaze – a kind gaze, but an incredibly direct one – that I felt stunned. Have you ever accidentally walked into a farm’s electric fence? Gotten a shock that knocked you back a few feet? It was like that.

I barely remember anything either of us said. It was a short conversation.

Her charisma depends on a face-to-face encounter, where the space between two people is defined.

I sometimes have a powerful gaze myself – but this was pure lightning.

* * * * *

They did a remake of Jesus Christ Superstar! Perfect – Amy Ray plays Jesus. I’ve got to get a copy of that!!!!

* * * * *
Jesus Christ Superstar: A Resurrection (1994 Studio Cast)


You Should Be In the Indigo Girls


You’re all about expressing yourself through music.
Lyrics are your poetry – Sylvia Plath meets guitar
Scalia Gesture after WHAT mass

Scalia Gesture after WHAT mass

So Supreme Court Justice Scalia made a “Sicilian” gesture toward anyone who might question his impartiality on issues involving the separation of church and state -this as he was leaving a mass in Boston.

But this was not just any mass.

He was attending a special mass for lawyers and politicians at Cathedral of the Holy Cross, and afterward was the keynote speaker at the Catholic Lawyers’ Guild luncheon.

A special mass for lawyers and politicians?

Isn’t that a sign of the apocalypse or something?

He’s also been spewing his opinions about the Guantanamo detention rights case being brought before the court. If he’s already made up his mind, these public statements are an argument for his recusal. The statute governing inappropriate judicial speech states that a justice “shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”

I place the odds that he will recuse himself on this case at something like 98-against (with a +2/-0 variation – hee hee) unless there is a strong public outcry.

How likely is that – at least while anyone is still watching the Sopranos… We seem to care more about entertainment than we care about our reality.

Scalia, what a guy.

Nechvatal Contaminations

Nechvatal Contaminations

Joseph Nechvatal, my friend and intellectual compadre in viral realms, has his latest exhibition in Ohio. “Contaminations” has been extended to run through June 25th at the Butler Institute of American Art’s Beecher Center. The show includes a selection of computer-robotic assisted paintings starting in the mid-1980’s and concludes with a recent electronic viral installation.

Go see!
Joseph Nechvatal: Contaminations

Or if you happen to be in Youngstown, Ohio:
The Beecher Center for Technology in the Arts
Butler Institute of American Arts
524 Wick Ave. Youngstown, Ohio 44502
tel# 330-743-1711

While you’re visiting his website, be sure to see the new nOOlOgy : guilt of a nation. Here is his introduction:

In art, pleasure is a most legitimate aspiration. Still one may not ignore that people all over the world today bend-over painfully and act in accordance with seemingly normal systems of control: noological systems (*) that may seem at the time logically inevitable.

My current chain of history paintings called “the new nOOlOlogy” are based on a fraction of the infamous digital photos from the Abu Graib abuse scandal. As such, they present embedded images of American torture. Here American detainees are punished and humiliated and then adorned through an a-life process of viral attack laden with the latent content of ambiguous bioterror. These digital (computer-robotic) acrylic paintings link together systems of exposed nerves with the torture at Abu Graib – now festooned with miniature hermaphrodites infected by viral attacks that undermine them.

For me they are an attempt at expressing America’s deep demoralization. They are moral acts then, free with the truth of our penchant for desire. As such, these paintings contribute slightly to the downfall of the present reality in that they bury visual memory at the outset.

To those that persist in the amorality of Abu Graib, I shit on you. You have discredited me by creating a rotting nation. Although I have opposed you at every turn, never-the-less, you have made me feel guilty and dirty too, as only a single officer has been reprimanded for this disgraceful display thus far.

This artistic activity, in tribute to Leon Golub, is a conscious response to the world of irrational conventions in which I can find even myself.

Joseph Nechvatal

(*) Noology is the science of intellectual phenomena. n. study of intuition and reason. nooscopic, a. pertaining to examination of mind.

And as if all that weren’t enough, he has a brilliant article (“Jean Baudrillard and a Counter-Mannerist Art of Latent Excess“) in the latest issue of the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies (Volume 3, Number 2 – July 2006).

Intellectual acumen, creative artistry, ethics and tech – this guy stuns me, always. Keep it going Joseph! You are an oasis in the desert.