Stardate 11212003
The Revolution Will Be Green
There is a part of me that wants to live off the grid on some land in Sonoma County and grow organic food and raise free-range chickens while writing books for an urban audience. I have no fantasies that we will return to an agrarian society. No, we are desperately in the thick of a post-industrial economy. But some things are apparent. The current paradigm no longer works. There are holes in the ozone. We are in a war. Something is wrong.
Thousands of concerned people came out to the 2nd Annual San Francisco Green Festival to find ways they can help cure the pathology of our current way of living. I call it a pathology because our way of living functions like a disease.
The Green Festival is the largest event of its kind that brings together leading green thinkers, activists, businesspeople, politicians and merchants. The two-day event featured numerous speakers, and the exhibition floor was a showcase of eco-friendly products. The Green Home section showcased less toxic paints and varnishes, industrial grade carpets made from recycled plastic and furniture designers using reclaimed and sustainably harvested wood.
The clothing section had a wide array of organic cottons and wools. Every aspect of our lives as a consumer was represented and rather than assume that we were going to give up the comforts we are accustomed to, the consumer was presented with eco-friendly alternatives. Environmentalism apparently isn’t just for hippies anymore.
Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich held a rally on Saturday night. He is a leading favorite of Greens and other progressive idealists even though Howard Dean is the favored “compromise” candidate. I gotta hand it to Dean, he is doing all the right things to be a populist candidate, eliciting small donations from private citizens rather than having his coffers stuffed by corporate donors who will of course, expect a payback on their investment.
Besides politics and seminars on green economics, there was a huge permaculture exhibit and somebody brought chickens in a chicken coop made of hand-woven twigs. Some day I’m going to go live “out there” and use solar power and wash my clothes in a hand-turned washing machine and live in partnership with the land.
Permaculture is a sophisticated system theory that looks at the aggregate energy use of any agricultural task to redesign the entire organic farm “eco-system” to make the best use of all available space, energy and land, animal and human constituents in order to minimize waste and pollution. Practitioners of Permaculture utilize organic farming methods and incorporate sustainable, renewable energy resources wherever possible. Permaculture seeks to integrate the human presence in the natural world in as soft a way as possible to bring back stewardship of the land and reconnect the industrialized first world with the land. Permaculture doesn’t just look at human/nature inter-relationships but also human inter-relationships in the production and supply chain.
Supporting Organic Farming
There was a documentary on PBS about an organic farm in Goleta, California that was in danger of folding until the community came along and saved it by helping the farm by the land it was using. This Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is just one step, said the farm’s owner. He also said, “We need to go beyond organic. Lots of farms that are organic do not take care of the soil or they have exploitative labor practices.” He suggested that we need to look at the whole spirit in which food is grown and distributed and the energy use of raising those crops and getting them to market.”
I’m sure it’s possible to cure the insanity of the world by simply growing a small plot of organic food in your backyard. I was talking to one of the staffers at the Co-Op America booth. Co-op America is one of the co-sponsors of the Green Festival along with Global Exchange. We both agreed that all anyone had to do was make one small change and that would have a huge impact. Just swapping out your petrochemical dish detergent for a vegetable-based detergent would have an enormous collective impact. Not to mention that taking care of ourselves as a species is an act of love with wide-reaching spiritual impact.
Healthy Home, Healthy Heart
Getting rid of your Windex and using vinegar and water is not only cheaper, but healthier for you, gets your windows just as clean and is healthier for the environment. We are literally drowning in toxic chemicals that we somehow came to accept as “normal.” It’s not normal, it’s very abnormal the extent to which we poison ourselves. We bring gallons of toxic chemicals into our homes which we then spray all over the place, basically eating it, feeding it to our kids and our pets. And that’s just INSIDE. It boggles the mind to think of how many toxins are surrounding you constantly, all day, everyday, everywhere you go.
One of the really great things I picked up at the festival was a tiny pamphlet about guerilla urban gardening. I wish there was a website with this information. It shows you how to plant trees and shrubs in urban settings including how to take up a piece of concrete to prepare a spot for planting. One piece of advice was to choose native plants and plant them in places that are have a ready source of water, like areas surrounding highways which often have a sprinkler system.
I also found a little booklet about native plants and grasses of California published by Larner Seeds to help the home gardener propagate native species in their yards. It never occurred to me when I was growing up that my backyard in the suburbs was a part of nature. Nature was in Yosemite.
I’m super lucky to live not far away from the redwood forests of the Pacific Northwest. Those trees are the oldest trees in the whole world (however endangered they are by logging) and walking amongst them is awe-inspiring. There is a candle company called Bee Bright that makes natural, not synthetic, redwood scented beeswax candles (the Redwood Forest candle) that smell just like the cool sweetness of the redwood forests.
There really isn’t much organic, native flora in most cities and suburban areas. I think that our ancestors were desperate to master the natural world because it was the biggest, scariest, most chaotic thing they had to contend with for their survival but then they overdid it and now we have forgotten how to live with nature and now the biggest, scariest, most chaotic thing we have to contend with for our survival besides other humans are the toxic waste products of industrial civilization. I would include the toxic psychology of our culture as well as the actual, physical poisons in that “waste product” category.
The Green Festival went way beyond just being a merchandise showcase for eco-friendly products and the eco-sensitive consumers. The most practical application of community building was the Conversation Café. The people who came up with the Conversation Café formula set up tables and all day long people joined the conversations according to a set of simple guidelines.
- Acceptance: suspend judgment as best you can
- Listen: with respect
- Curiosity: seek to understand rather than persuade
- Diversity: invite and honor all points of view
- Sincerity: speak what has personal heart and meaning
- Brevity: go for honesty and depth but don’t go on and on
I watched a group form and start. The hardest part was getting to the topic but once everyone agreed on the topic, they all had their say. I was in the debate club in High School and it would be hard for me to “seek to understand rather than persuade” because I’m opinionated and self-righteous and I want to convince people of my version of the “better” way.
Speaking of opinionated people, I’m on Greg Palast’s announcement list and he doesn’t often use it for anything but this week he wanted us all to know that while he personally doesn’t “hate republicans” he does have an essay in a new book called THE I HATE REPUBLICANS READER: WHY THE GOP IS TOTALLY WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING, published by Thunder’s Mouth Press about how the Bush family brought democracy to Florida as they have Iraq.
Naughty Bits
I get a lot of interesting email. I got this message from Marilyn Manson. “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to respond to the 178 emails in my inbox or the millions of emails at my website. I will get to them soon.”
I’m sorry too, Marilyn. Did you know that Manson has a thing for the number seven? Well, he does.
Bachelor Bob’s friend, Jonathan Weiss, sent me e-mail. I met him in the green room at JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE before I left Los Angeles. He wanted to let me know that he was the music producer for INTERSCOPE PRESENTS ‘THE NEXT’ which aired on Showtime last Friday, the 14th and I guess he wants you to know, too. The show is about the trials and tribulations of undiscovered rappers struggling to become the nations top MC. If there is a show about them, doesn’t that qualify as “discovered” ?
Bachelor Bob cut a record just out of high school that Weiss produced. He was telling me there are plans afoot to re-release the CD but I don’t know if it’s official yet.
If you haven’t seen enough MATRIX spoofs, you have to see this one called THE MEATRIX. It’s kind of like George Orwell’s ANIMAL FARM meets PETA.
And one last one to fulfill the FCC mandated Public Service allotment. TAKE BACK YOUR TIME DAY is a nationwide initiative to challenge the epidemic of overwork, over-scheduling and time famine that now threatens our health, our families, our relationships and our environment. Go to www.timeday.org for more information.
Take Back Your Time Day is a project for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy (CRESP) at Cornell University and is an initiative of The Simplicity Forum, a leadership alliance for the Simplicity Movement – Promoting and Honoring Simple, Just and Sustainable Ways of Life for All.
It’s been a while since I wrote of those. I know nobody will care about this, but I used to write and produce PSAs for the public affairs department of KALX radio, the university and listener supported station in Berkeley, California. 90.7FM in the house, y’all.
HBO is showing the first part of ANGELS IN AMERICA, the award winning play by Tony Kushner about the AIDS pandemic on December 7th. The film stars Al Pacino, Emma Thompson and Meryl Streep. The second part will be shown on December 14th. The entire program is 6 hours. Frameline Video, who also organizes the San Francisco International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival had a special screening of the film at the Castro Theatre. Tony Kushner could not make it to the special screening because he was in New York previewing a new play off Broadway. ANGELS IN AMERICA premiered at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco and the City by the Bay features prominently in the backdrop of the movie. Kusher thanked San Francisco, a city he said, “has the best politics.” He also sent along this final message. “Let’s work for regime change in 2004.”
Something is Ending and Something Begins
If you don’t go to film festivals, you are missing out on a heck of lot of quality cinema. You can see movies this year that will be in theatres next year. One film making its way around the more underground film festival circuit is SIRENS OF THE 23RD CENTURY, written, produced and directed by Jennifer Kroot. In the 23rd century, beauty has been outlawed but a band of beauty rebels called “Victims of the 23rd Century” is fighting back. The film recently had a midnight screening at the Clay Theatre in San Francisco, birthplace of the midnight movie in San Francisco.
John Waters popped the City’s midnight cherry when he premiered PINK FLAMINGOS at the Clay. SIRENS is reminiscent of Water’s earlier films like PINK FLAMINGOS but with special effects. The film is gender-bending, campy, intelligent and fun and destined to be a cult classic. V-TWO-THREE-C! The Victims live in a special training camp where they learn about the proper way to apply lipliner and the highest levels of figure control – the bulimic arts.
The show before the show was a beauty rebel makeover contest and a bulimia projectile barfing contest. A toilet was brought on stage and contestants were given a cup of “vomit”. The object was to spit the barf into the toilet but as so happens in real life, the stage, curtain and front row were all sprayed with the unpleasant tasting mixture. One of the contestants gagged for real after taking a swig of the stew but he missed the toilet entirely and didn’t win the prestigious title as master of the bulimic arts.
“I was inspired to make this film because I get so irritated at mainstream representations of male and female roles,” said Kroot. The film is really about the individual deciding to be masculine or feminine regardless of gender. I find the choice to decide to be sexy and fun and certainly more creative.”
The Victims of the 23rd Century are a far cry from the real life training school for Guerilla armies. The United States government for many years ran an academy called The School of the Americas trained Latin American rebel fighters to crush legal democracies and institute US control of South-American economies.
The atrocities committed by the graduates of the school, the routine denial by the US Government and the ongoing effort to shut it down is documented in a new film called HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT being put out by Seventh Art Releasing.
Dirty Little Secrets
It was often called The School of the Assassins by it’s critics because School of the Americas graduates would often use their US led training in terrorism and torture to slaughter innocent civilians – what we now call “non-combatants.” If Iraq is any indication of the newspeak used by the US military, “non-combatant” really means, “white people in Iowa.”
As in, “Do not kill the white people in Iowa, everyone else is an enemy target.” I’m very troubled that US soldiers in Iraq have taken to calling the Iraqis “hajji.” Racism has long been not only tolerated but encouraged within the culture of the US military even though many of the front line soldiers are people of color … while high-ranking war planners are conservative straight white guys. Hmmm…
I was also a little troubled to hear that a member of Don Rumsfeld's inner circle was making speeches about our war against Islam. I rest easy knowing that the U.S. military is doing the Lord’s work and defeating the infidel Saracens to pave the way for Christendom to take it’s God-given place as ruler of earth. Is this is the 12th century or the 21st? I guess old cultural paradigms take a while to fade away into obscurity.
Let me help it along. Go. Shoo. Begone old paradigm. *sweep sweep*
I need one of those little mirror prison things that that Kryptonians used to keep the most dangerous people in their world at bay. And then I’d stick a whole entire frame of mind into it and send it to the farthest reachest of the universe where OTHER life forms can deal with it. And then the mirror will break and fearsome space criminals will go looking for Houston. KNEEL BEFORE ZOD! Oh wait, that’s the plot of SUPERMAN 2 (electric boogaloo).
A notable graduate of The School of the Americas is Manuel Noriega who eventually stopped playing by the rules and was punished by the US. We flipped the script, so to speak. Even though it was a play that our government and military leaders wrote. So the good guys suddenly became bad guys. And we are holy servants of the Lord, just and righteous in all we do because GOD is on our side. GOD bless America. One Nation Under GOD! WE SHALL OVERCOME AND DRIVE ALL WHO OPPOSE US INTO THE DUST! WE SHALL SMITE THY ENEMIES IN THEY NAME, OH LORD GOD, AND THE GRAPES OF WRATH WILL FEED THE EARTH WITH THE BLOOD OF YOUR ENEMIES. SEEK, KILL, DESTROY!
More angry young people
The Cold War played two shows last weekend but I only got to see one at the Tempest Bar in San Francisco. The second was in Oakland and was a benefit for MoveOn.org – the group that helps to mobilize leftist political dissent into political action - direct action like street protests as well as long term political involvement at the local, state and federal level.
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