The Nuptial Blessing of Molly and Shawheen

Telex from Cuba

My niece Rachel has just published a book (Telex from Cuba) which is a fictionalized account about the U.S. community living in Cuba in the 1950s. When I was 12 my father got a job with a nickel mine there and the whole family drove to Miami and took a ferry boat to Havana with our Studebaker and our pregnant dog named Nelly. Nicaro was a company town about 600 miles from Havana. I graduated from the eighth grade from the one room school house where children from the U.S. engineers attended.Rachel's book is drawing a great deal of attention, with a cover review in the New York Times Sunday Book Review. She also has a web site at http://www.telexfromcuba.com/This is a picture from Rachel's site -- of my father and the men who worked with him at the pilot plant. In the front row are Rafael Vasquez, my father, Fred Drosten, and Ernie Lado. This is a party at our house in Cuba circa 1952. In the front row are (L to R) Mrs. Leal, Mr. McCarthy, Fiona DeFletter, Mr. Leal and someone I don't recognize.
When my sisters and I and Rachel went back a few years ago we spent alot of time with Cleveland, a Jamaican who is being the bartender in the back of this photograph. He is one of the characters in Rachel's novel. Cleveland now lives in a lovely house in the LeVisa section, which was a muddy slum when we were there in the 1950s. After the Revolution the workers received proper housing-- with plumbing, electricity and other amenities which had been left out of the company housing.

The First Amendment

Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping

Protest in Kingston, NY

Coyotes in Willow

In April on the night of the full moon, right before the moon appeared on the horizon, the coyotes were heard throughout the Willow Valley. One coyote (or perhaps more than one) on the slope of Mount Tobias, and the other on the other side of the valley. They had a conversation back and forth. (The tree frogs and/or peepers were also out in force!)

April in Willow

BODY OF WAR OPENS IN DC

On Friday Body of War opened at the E Street Theater in Washington, DC. A great squad of Iraq Vets Against the War showed up, along with directors Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue and of course Tomas Young.Phil says I am the yenta for this movie-- meaning matchmaker. I gave Phil Ellen's phone number and she thought it was a crank call. But I think he also means yenta as in sort of a nag-- making sure it kept its amazing radical edge and that it got out there, hopefully to be used by peace activists all over the country and especially in the military. Actually the 2 CD set that Tomas and Eddie Vedder did is probably what will get to the military quicker. It's already a best seller. Everyone should go to see this very moving intimate film.People waited in line for over an hour.
The audience was standing room only.
The CD set of Body of War music which includes sets by many great musicians was on sale in the lobby and hundreds waited in line for the sold out show.

Non-violent Resistance

Bob Nichols and Nora Paley are preparing a series of on-going tributes to Grace Paley. Bob thought a web page highlighting non violent resistance would be a good idea so I made this page to give him an idea of what that might look like.
Ever since Grace Paley died last year, many people have been looking for various ways to keep her memory alive through furthering her vision of non-violent actions against the empires of war and exploitation. One idea is to have a web site which can record global instances of creative non-violent actions-- powerful gestures in the struggle for peace and justice by people all over the world.
Here are some examples of non-violent resistance from the recent past:
JUNE 2006 ...."Also on Saturday in Rangoon, at least 2,000 monks were watched by plain clothes security officials as they took to the streets. In Mandalay, a monastic centre of Buddhist learning, up to 10,000 monks held a rally. Protests also took place across Burma in the five townships of Chauk, Shwebo, Mongwa, Taung Dwin Gyi and Ye Nan Chaung. There were no reports of any violence on Saturday. On Friday, the Alliance of All Burmese Buddhist Monks branded Burma's military rulers "the enemy of the people" and pledged to "wipe the military dictatorship from the land".
The protests have turned into the largest public show of opposition to the Burmese authorities since the uprising of 1988."The text and pictures are from http://www.thewe.cc/weplanet/news/americas/us/orwell_wisdom.htm

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And from Indymedia Ireland:
Stop the Assault on Gaza: National demonstration, IRELAND
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and from Indy Bay
Berkeley Students Protest Massacre in Gaza Monday Mar 3rd, 2008 6:56 PM
At 11am Monday, U.C. Berkeley students lay down in Sproul Plaza to protest the ongoing massacre in Gaza that is being carried out with US supplied weapons. 2 Israeli soldiers and over 70 Palestinians, most of them civilians, were killed Saturday March 1st in an Israeli operation in Northern Gaza. Organized by Students For Justice in Palestine, students handed out flyers to raise awareness to the plight of Palestians living under Israeli occupation.
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From the New York TimesProtesters from Code Pink while Condeleza Rice testifies in Congress

March in Willow: Currier and Ives and Eleanor

My grandmother, Eleanor Hall Martin, was somewhat of a snob. She grew up on the prairies of Iowa and Wisconsin. Her father was a surveyor staking land for the railroad, and later living "in town" as a banker in Mason City, Iowa. It was a Laura Ingals Wilder sort of life on a recently settled frontier. Eleanor was proud of herself for getting out of "the sticks" to go to college at Northwestern in Chicago and always considered herself much more cosmopolitan than her peers. She would ridicule her neighbors for having "Currier and Ives" prints on the walls of their living rooms. She had reproductions of Salvador Dali and Goya. But she did have some table mats with Currier and Ives farm house scenes-- lithographs of the rural life she had left behind. Using them on her kitchen table let people know she could eat on them, but never consider them "Art". It was sort of like having Sponge Bob table mats-- to her they were high camp. Something she could feel superior to.
And here I am, sixty five years after eating my Cheerios on those farm house mats, living in complete Currier and Ives land.

February on Charles Street

February in Willow

Peter Schickle and friends salute Edgar Allen Poe

I found this clip from the 2006 Christmas concert on my hard drive.

Magna Carta

Body of War Wins Top Doc Prize at NBR

Joel and I went to the National Board of Review award dinner for the film I have helped with by Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro, staring Tomas Young, anti-activist and wounded Iraq vet.

Bob Nichols on the Razing of Trees in Washington Sq Park

TO SEE THE CHAINSAW MASSACRE OF THE WASHINGTON SQUARE TREES GO TO http://www.youtube.com/washingtonsqdestruct
Nichols was landscape architect for the previous renovation of Washington Sq. in the late 60s and creator of the unique fountain theatre and sitting wall -- condemned to rubble and not to be rebuilt (the fountain, yes; the amphitheatre, no). Liza Bear has been making a film, Squaring Off, about the fight to save Washington Square from bulldozing since May 1, 2005, and actively participating in that fight--not just filming the destruction. The more recent chronicle of destruction is just a sad epilogue to the film. Work-in-progress scenes from Squaring Off (2005 on) can be seen at http://squaringoff.blip.tv, http://www.youtube.com/nothingofficial, http://www.youtube.com/washingtonsq.destruct

Outrage at Privatization of Park

Liza Bear has been documenting the destruction of Washington Park. This clip shows how the construction crew needs to cover the scene, so that people won't protest.

Washington Square: Folies Bloombergeres
Uploaded by nothingofficial

January in Willow

Why Move On Sucks

Sonia Malkine, Shady, New York

Sonia Malkine is a neighbor who lives in Shady-- just down the road from my house in Willow. During the 1960's I was living in Bloomingburg, New York, raising three children and a few goats. My lifeline to the larger world was WBAI FM which came in very clearly on our kitchen radio. One of the programs I loved was a weekly show by Sonia Malkine. She would sing and often have folk singer guests from all over the world. She has lived in Woodstock since the 1950s and graces the local scene with her concerts and song. I am working on a documentary about her life-- it began as a Paper Tiger show: Sonia Malkine Reads Anarchist Trading Cards.
Sonia's mother, May Piqueray, was a well-known French anarchist, and I knew that Sonia had known Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, so I showed Sonia a deck of anarchist cards, which I had bought at the Left Bank Book Store in Seattle. Sonia personally knew about half of the anarchists who were on the cards! Since so many young people call themselves anarchists, I thought it would be interesting to look a one woman's involvement with anarchism in the early part of the 20th century.
This clip is a rough beginning of the 28 minute program.

Dia de los Reyes

My friend Papoletto is one of the three kings every year in the procession through East Harlem that commemorates the Christmas holiday in Puerto Rican tradition. This is from the New York Times in 1998: "Papoleto Melendez, resplendent in gold turban and furry white boots as King Gaspar, found hope in the smiling face of each child he encountered on the street. He rushed to the sidelines to greet them, slapping joyous high-fives. Not exactly kingly, but then again, he also wore dreadlocks. (''Hey, one of the kings came from Africa, right?'')

''The Magi went to the manger to see the baby Christ,'' said Mr. Melendez, who is a poet and playwright. ''In modern times, all these children are the new Christ. Each one is the future. They all have the power to change the world. They have to take it. You know, that carpe diem thing.'
I never knew what a big deal the three kings were until I went to the art museum in San Juan. There I found a tremendous collection of art about "Los Reyes": prints, sculptures and puppets. This one includes the star.

Winter Days

This mammal appeared on our pond two winters ago. We don't know if it is a "Fisher" or a "Marten" but one thing I know is that it ate all the carp in our pond! We had five or six large carp there and by spring there were none left, even though in the past they had weathered very cold winters.