[5/3/2001 1:56:29 AM | Dan Spalding]
The letter Dan Spalding wrote to the Oberlin Alumni MagazineI just got back from the protests against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) in Quebec City, Canada. The FTAA is a giant trade treaty that will extend NAFTA to North America, South America, and the Caribbean (except Cuba). Quebec City is a tiny Canadian city where I ran into many fellow alums, and not a few current Oberlin students.
As part of the legal team there I had a unique perspective of the protests. Far removed from the street skirmishes between protesters and police, I heard firsthand accounts from people still rattled days later from the tear gas the authorities used indiscriminately. I also received frantic phone calls from many activists in jail who had ambushed by plainclothes officers, beaten, and arrested - all for no apparent reason.
Among those arrested was (at least) one Oberlin student. Her friends, also OCers, waited for her at the 24 hour vigil outside the jail where all the protesters were being held. Talking to them about their organizing within Oberlin and beyond - indeed, in other countries - was an inspiration.
The non-profit I work for, the Midnight Special Law Collective, has provided legal training and support for activists in Seattle, DC, and LA. For (or rather, against) the FTAA, we helped in San Diego as well as Quebec City. In each of these places Oberlin students are an organized, powerful presence. If anyone getting this magazine is starting to feel cynical and defeated, try talking to a current student about their activism. Especially outside of a jail.
Dan Spalding, '99
dan@midnightspecial.net
www.midnightspecial.net
www.danspalding.com[5/3/2001 12:39:50 AM | Dan Spalding]
Dan I'll find out about your politics within 30 seconds of meeting you, but I won't know shit about your romantic life. So then I have to prod you.Sarah Cattleprod you.
Dan and Sarah on Dan Spalding's "Canadian Immigration" style of questioning.
[5/3/2001 12:37:58 AM | Dan Spalding]
From "American Heartworm," an article about the perverting influence of the Mississippi, by Ben Metcalf, published in The Baffler number 11:Most of America's national resources, and the despoliation of same, have their mythinc personifications: the Northwestern forests have Paul Bunyan, who, like the trees he felled, was immensely tall and who, if we are to believe the American lumber industry, created all that we now see before us; the Great Plains have Pecos Bill, whose bronco rides were apparently so intense that they whipped up the tornados that now regularly flatten trailer parks filled with Metcalfs; and I suppose all of America lays claim to John Henry, who represented the railroad, which has always wanted us to regard it as a natural resource. To this list the Mississippi adds an unmedicated schizophrenic named Mike Fink, a flatboat pilot who, to hear him tell it, was "half horse, half alligator" and coud eat "you for breakfast, your folks for supper, and all of your cousins for a snack in between," which is to say that the river is personfied, and aptly so, by a stunted and belligerent liar.
Ben Metcalf on the Mississip's lesson of hopelessness
The power of this lesson is made clear to me when I hear that a cousin of mine has burned down his high school because a bully told him to do so, or has molested a child for his own reasons, or has run off with his brother's wife (but offered his own in recompence), or has deserted his pregnant girlfriend for a woman old enough to buy him beer, or has somehow managed to electrocute himself, or has tattooed an infant, or has been beaten so badly that her kidney was removed, or has not spoken to her aunt since her aunt married the man who ruined the kidney, or has rolled a car because his father never taught him to slow down on corners (and because the thought never occurred to him privately), or has attempted to run down his wife and her lover in a combine, or has been shotgunned in the chest at close range but is "too ornery to die," or has been arrested for growing marijuana in the front yard, or has made no effort to pay the telephone bull and must now communicate solely by CB radio, or has become some sort of humorless Christian, or has been delivered of yet another child so that this jug band of woe might play on.
[edit][5/3/2001 12:25:05 AM | Dan Spalding]
From a New York Times article about a federal law, only fully enforced under Bush, that keeps students convicted of drug crimes from getting federal financial aid for education:Others complain that the law is biased against the poor, who rely on the aid, and blacks, who make up a disproportionate percentage of those arrested on drug charges. While about 13 percent of the people making illicit drugs are black, the same as their proportion in the general population, blacks represent 55 percent of the drug convictions, said David Borden, executive director of the Drug Reform Coordination Network.
...
The law's sponsor, Representative Mark Souder, Republican of Indiana, said the bill was intended to hold students receiving federal financial aid accountable and ensure that they did not become involved with drugs.
"If my son goes to a party and he doesn't have the courage to say, `No, I don't want to smoke a joint,' he can say, `No, I could lose my student loan,' " Mr. Souder said. "It's not actually a good example, because my son is not on scholarship."
[4/30/2001 5:03:45 PM | Dan Spalding]
More quotes from the FTAA Canadian border crossin' legal office in Vermont"Law school is all about untraining to be an organizer."
-Belinda, Boston Law Collective[4/30/2001 4:51:31 PM | Dan Spalding]
From Rob Walker's review of the book Free Agent Nation
(how funny is this, a synopsis of a review?)In answering this, "Free Agent Nation" often reads less like an investigation than a sales pitch, dense with enough slogans and catchwords to launch a dozen marketing campaigns. Solosists and microbusinesses and "mamapreneurs" are replacing Taylorism with "Tailorism," or "My Size Fits Me." They practice "horizontal loyalty" or "high-tech muckrizing" and form "entreprenetworks." They look forward, finally, to the pleasures of "e-tirement," which involve continuing to work for the rest of one's life.
...
There's nothing wrong with free agents like Pink pursuing opportunity as far as they can, but in wrapping up a discussion of the disadvantages of temping toward the end of the book, Pink oveserves, "The source of inequality in work today is not between who's an employee and who's a free agent - but between who has skills in demand and who doesn't, between who can exercise bargaining power in the new talent market and who cannot." This observation may not be particularly new, but it's probably the most unassailable point Pink makes. In fact, it seems truer than ever, not least because of the corporate evolution that Pink writes about.Maybe that's good news for him, and for whichever of his friends and neighbors are equipped with the skills to bargain for power. But for others, who look for work not as a source of meaning but as a source of survival, the world of free agents -a world in which they are free to hustle until they die - does not sound like such good news at all.
[4/30/2001 4:36:33 PM | Dan Spalding]
From an article in the Sunday Times regarding Bob Kerrey's (admitted) killing of over a dozen unarmed civilians in VietnamAccording to the manual [Army Field Manual, which "represents United States policy"]: "A commander may not put his prisoners to death because their presence retards his movements or diminshes his power of resistance by necessitating a large guard, or by reason of their consuming supplies, or because it appears certain that they will regain their liberty through the impending success of their forces. It is likewise unlawful for a commander to kill his prisoners on grounds of self-preservation, even in the case of airborne or commando operations, although the circumastances of the operation may make necessary rigorous supervision of and restraint upon the movement of prisoners of war."
While there may be some room for interpretation in the policy, Walter Rockler, a semiretired lawyer in Washington who was a prosecutor in Nuremberg, says, "The basic rule is that in enemy territory you don't kill civilians, particularly unarmed civilians."
[4/28/2001 9:41:00 AM | Dan Spalding]
From Postcards, by E. Annie ProulxMink felt himself slow as a nailed board. The milk pulsed, empty seconds hung between the spurts. The cows shifted and bawled. It was worse, whatever it was, this morning, the way they fidgeted. There was a crack of memory of something from a long time ago, he and Ott climbing on a board fence with a ferret-faced boy, Gordon or Ormond, his father and some other neighbors leaningover the fence. A lot of men, a low twist of voices. There was a pig on a bed of straw. There was a .22. Or was it a .30-30. The matter was serious, but there was a feeling of coming through whatever it was all right, that it was a bad, but fated, part of life. But he couldn't remember what it had been about. The night before he lay awake late into the night trying to remember what was wrong with that pig, and was deathly tired this morning. The automaton-like pulling on of clothes, the groaning of the winter stairs, the rattling of lime deposits in the kettle all seemed to heavy to endure. The kitchen seemed a rabbit cage, himself the rabbit subdued into crouching silence.
[4/23/2001 6:23:10 PM | Dan Spalding]
From Postcards, by E. Annie ProulxWhen he came out of it he was on a table with a ring of faces staring down at him. The thinnest man pressed bony fingers on Loyal`s wrist. The skeleton`s hair, parted in the middle, was scraped back like a metallic cap. His teeth and eyes were rimmed with gold and there were gold rings on his fingers, a wedding ring and a signet ring on the little finger of the right hand. Loyal felt himself shaking and trembling with a thunderous heartbeat.
"You`re lucky I was here. They`d have stacked you in the corner with the other drunks. Would have put your light out for good."
Loyal could not speak his jaw was trembling so hard. His arms shook, but he could breathe. He sat up, and the crowd, disappointed he was still alive, turned back to their glasses.
"It`s Adrenalin that`s making you shake. I have you a shot of Adrenalin. You`ll calm down in half an hour or so. You`ve had these attacks before, I take it."
"Not like this."
"Allergic reaction. Probably something you ate or drank. Tell you what. Make up a list of everything you`ve had to eat or drink in the last day and come see me the day after tomorrow."
But Loyal knew it wasn`t anything he`d swallowed. It was the touching. Touching the woman. If it wasn`t Billy it wouldn`t be anyone else. The price for getting away. No wife, no family, no children, no human comfort in the quotidian unfolding of his life; for him, restless shifting from one town to another, the narrow fences of solitary thought, the pitiful easement of masturbation, lopsided ideas and soliliquies so easily transmuted to crazy mouthing. Up there beside the wall some kind of black mucky channel that ran from his genitals to his soul had begun to erode.
[4/19/2001 3:46:57 PM | Dan Spalding]
Two conversations with anonymous protesters"At that point it'll be all about, Fuck you."
-Answer from K about what activists will do if none are allowed to cross into Canada to protest the FTAA."Don't let me start telling you about my ex-fiance."
-Talking to D in the legal office[4/4/2001 2:59:46 PM | Dan Spalding]
From The Recorder, "[Judge]Walker Won't Budge On Executions"A last-minute attempt by the state to keep from public view the early stages of Robert Massie's execution was rebuffed Monday by U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker.
...
Furthermore, he [Walker] dismissed arguments that the IV injection was a routine procedure unworthy of public inspection.
"Unconvincing," Walker called the argument. "Few doctors forcefully strap patients to gurneys in order to execute them."
[3/29/2001 3:43:40 PM | Dan Spalding]
From The Girls' Guide to Hunting and FishingFor dinner we have local lobster and eat on the veranda. Bella and Yves speak to each other almost entirely in French. At first, Jamie interjects stray French phrases, as though joking, but Yves says, "You speak very well," and soon Jamie does, with an ease that suprises me.
I have not spoken French since eighth grade, when I learned about a wholesome French family living on the third floor of an apartment building near the railroad station. I remmeber that sometimes they took the elevator, sometimes the stairs.
"We visited Yves's parents at Christmas," Bella says, in English, touching Yves's cheek with the back of her hand. "They are so nice."
To me, she says, "How is your lobsters?"
"Nice," I say, realizing only afterward that I've mimcked her, a bad habit of mine; I'm like one of those animals that imitates its predators to survive.
---
In bed, Jamie says, "How do you like Bella?"
A voice tells me to say, Great, and I obey.
He smiles. "I thought you'd like her."
I say, "I myself have dated several mannequins."
"Honey," he says, and reminds me that Bella is a good friend of his. I should give her a chance.
Here in the dark, I mouth, You're right, I'm sorry.
By the time I get the sound to come out, he's asleep.
[3/27/2001 5:34:33 PM | Dan Spalding]
From Bastard out of CarolinaGlen was a small man but so mucular and strong that it was hard to see the delicacy in him, though he was strangely graceful in his rough work clothes and heavy boots. There were bottle fragments on the pavement, crushed shards ground into the tarmac, and all the men wore heavy work boots with thick rubber soles. Glen Waddell's feet were so fine that his boots had to be bought in the boys' department of the Sears, Roebuck, while his gloves could only be found in the tall men's specialty stores. He would pivot on those boy-sized feet, turning his narrow hips and grunting with his load, everything straining and forceful, while his hands cradled cases and flats as delicately as if they were soft-shelled eggs. His palms spread so wide he could easily span half a case's width, keeping every bottle level no mater how high he had to throw the flat.
People talked about Glen's temper and his hands. He didn't drink, didn't mess around, didn't even talk dirty, but the air around him seemed to hum with vibration and his hands were enormous.
...
"Bone." Cousin Deedee was the first to call me Bone, but everyone did by the time we were living in West Greenville. Dog bone, penny bone, suckle bone, milk tooth, goat head, horse head, tiger bone, collarbone, hipbone, neckbone, knees and toes.
"You are hard as bone, the stubbornest child on the planet!" Daddy Glen told me. Cold as death, mean as a snake, and twice as twisty.
Daddy Glen was careful not to hit me when one of the aunts was visiting, and never much when Mama would see, except for those times he could justify as discipline, dragging me into the bathroom while she waited on the other side of the locked door. It was when Reese and I were alone with him that he was dangerous. If I ran from him, he would come after me. He shook me so hard my head wobbled loosely, and he'd joke that chickens and goats had more starch to them than a Boatwright, even a half-Boatwright like I was.
It was the bones in my head I thought about, the hard, porous edge of my skull cradling my brain, reasssuring me that no matter what happened I could heal up from it eventually. It was the heat in my heart, my hard, gritty center. I linked my fingers behind my head, clenched my teeth, and rocked back and forth. The sturdy stock we were boasted to be came down in me to stubbornness and bone.
...
"That wife of his, that Maggie, is the trouble in Beau's life. Little white-faced thing, white eyes, white headed, bruises soon as the wind blows hard. Woman makes babies the way you make biscuits. All the time pregnant with some little whey-faced empty-eyed child of God. Hellfire, Beau couldn't get ahead of himself if he gave up everything but black coffee and hard work. Seven children! Bad enough Alma's got so many, but at least she knows how to keep hers fed and clean. That little Maggie can't even change a diaper without coming on a dizzy spell. Woman has eaten Beau alive. Like some vampire sucking the juice out of him. You cut that girl open you'd find Beau's blood pumping in her heart."
[3/26/2001 11:05:22 AM | Dan Spalding]
So The other night I stay up 'til 5am or so with my special friend Leone, almost-as-special friend David Taylor, and some of their pals from Evergreen (Richard, Elza, Tara, and new friend Rebecca). Now there's nothing more tedious than yet another story on a web page about how drunk someone got. However, here are a few quotes so you can get the flavor of the evening:[David Taylor and his friend Harley were] "chowing on some beef stew shit that you found somewhere."
-Tara, describing the two near the bottom of a two day bender."Why did I decide to stay up all night drinking?"
-An anguished Leone, the next morning[3/24/2001 10:02:54 PM | Dan Spalding]
So. You think there's something subversive about pleasure. You've read the cultural studies books, you've sat through the lectures, and now you're convinced that when you enjoy yourself, you're not just having fun, you're sticking it to the man.Well, we at The Baffler disagree. And that's why we've constructed a magazine that goes out of its way to neutralize all those things that give you such joy. Our authors can't just enjoy TV shows - they have to interrogate them! When they peruse books and magazines - they nearly always hate 'em! And don't even mention the music industry- grrr!
That's why we made The Baffler so extraordinarily difficult to read. Those long, torturous sentences; those phalanxes of semi-colons and ranks of commas; that positively Prussian layout - all scientifically designed to deny you the pleasures you expect from such literary-looking text.
Call in an airstrike of your own. Individual subscriptions to The Baffler Magazine: $20 for four issues...
Finishing the Thought
On April 17, 1965, the first major demonstration against the war in Vietnam took place in Washington, D.C. Though the program included such celebrities as Joan Baez, Bob Moses, and I.F. Stone, the best-remembered speech came from Students for a Democratic Society president Paul Potter: "The incredible war in Vietnam has produced the razor, the terrifying sharp cutting edge that has finally severed the last vestige of illusion that morality and democracy are the guiding principles of American foreign policy... What kind of system is it that justifies the United States or any country siezing the desitinies of the Vietnamese people? ... What kind of system... consistently puts material values before human values?... We must name that system. We must name it, describe it, analyze it, understand it and change it." But Potter himself never did name that system.
On November 30, 1999, in Seattle, Washington, at the first major national demonstration against corporate-controlled globalization, Gerald McEntee, the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees - best-known for his unbridled enthusiasm for Bill Clinton and Albert Gore - told twenty-thousand protestors, "The system turns everything into a commodity. A rain forest in Brazil, a library in Philadelphia, a hospital in Alberta! We must name that system: it is corporate capitalism!"
Long pause, strange times, changing weather.
-Joshua B. Freeman
From Dissent magazine, Spring 2000[3/22/2001 11:06:02 AM | Dan Spalding]
Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were OrphansThen a large red-faced man - a director of the Hong Kong and Shaghai Bank, I learnt later - made his way to the front wearing a kind of tunic over his dinner jacket, and began to read form a scroll a monologue satirising various aspects of Shanghai life. Almost all the references - to individuals, to the bathroom arrangements at particular clubs, to incidents that had occurred on recent paper chases - were entirely lost on me, but very quickly every section of the room became filled with laughter. At this point I looked around for Sarah, and saw her sitting over in a corner amidst a group of ladies, laughing as heartily as any of them. The woman beside her, who clearly had had a fair amount to drink, was roaring with almost indecent abondon.
The red-faced man's perormance had been going for perhaps five minutes - during which time the level of hilarity seemed only to rise - when he delivered a particularly effective volley of three of four lines which set the room virtually howling. It was at this point that I happened to glance over once more to Sarah. At first the scene appeared much as it had before: there was Sarah, laughing helplessly amidst her companions. If I went on watching her for several more seconds, it was simply because I was rather suprised that after barely a year, she was already so intimate with Shanghai society to the extent that these obscure jokes could reduce her to such a state. And it was then, as I was gazing at her, pondering this point, that I suddenly realised she was not laughing at all; that she was not, as I had supposed, wiping away tears of laughter, but was in fact weeping. For a moment I went on staring at her, unable quite to credit my eyes. The, as the uproar continued, I rose quietly and moved through the crowd. After a little manoeuvring, I found myself standing behind her, and now there was no further doubt. Amidst all the gaiety, Sarah was crying uncontrollably.
[3/16/2001 9:27:12 AM | Dan Spalding]
Product endorsement from Lindsey Stowe-Berns"It's like the most updated web site I've ever seen."
'Nuf said
[edit][3/14/2001 3:38:54 PM | Dan Spalding]
A freaking INCREDIBLE poem by a man who will remain nameless
(Mark Trushkowsky)danny k is a jap, danny k is a heeb
he busts bi-racial power like you'd never believe.
taking self-adoration to the next level
at danspalding.com be prepared for a revel,
in the sense of a wild party and experience accruetion
but also close the "e" to an "o" and after the "l" add "ution"
he likes to shake things up like a snowy glass ball
and in check he likes to keep us all
he says he's coming back east like a frog on a pad
where he's hoppin' to next, don't know but its probably bad
i mean that in the sense of how it was in the eighties
in resistance to the topsy turvy ron and nancy reagies
flip that shit around like the balance of power
yo danny k's comin home at the top of the hour.can't wait to see him and get his shit drunk
and from onto of the bar coyote ugly style watch as the white supremist capitalist patriarcy gets its ass debunked
by his scathing commentary too hot for his web page
with a left hook right jab jeet koon do controlled rage
he was always partial fingertip to the throat
found in keanu's matrix, kickin like a billy goat
jumping roundhouse style, wax off wax on
at the end of the war all his enemies gone
sleeper hold held tight by the corporate media
dan's throwin books, ain't talking no 'cyclopedia
but the real book of knowledge the book of self
you got to pull it from within not off some shelf
i gotta end my rhyme and send it on its way
so here's to you dANNY K, what do you say?[3/14/2001 11:16:12 AM | Dan Spalding]
A two page short story from Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut's last novel:"No Laughing Matter" got its title from what a judge in the story said during a top-secret court-martial of the crew of the American bomber Joy's Pride, on the Pacific island of Banalulu, one month after the end of World War Two.
Joy's Pride itself was perfectly ok, and in a hanger there on Banalulu. It was named in honor of the pilot's mother, Joy Peterson, a nurse in obstetrics in a hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas. Pride had a double meaning. It meant self-respect. It meant a lion family, too.
Here's the thing: After an atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and then another one was dropped on Nagasaki, Joy's Pride was ordered to drop yet another one on Yokohama, on a couple of million "little yellow bastards." The little yellow bastards were called "little yellow bastards" back then. It was wartime. Trout desribed the third bomb as this: "A purple motherfucker as big as a boiler in the basement of a mid-size junior high school."
It was too big to fit inside the bomb bay. It was slung underneath the plane's belly, and cleared the runway by a foot when Joy's pride took off into the wild blue yonder.
As the plane neared its target, the pilot mused out loud on the intercom that his mother, the obstetrics nurse, would be a celebrity back home after they did what they were about to do. The bomber Enola Gay, and the woman in whose honor it was named, had become famous as movie stars after it dropped its load on Hiroshima. Yokohama was twice as populous as Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
The more the pilot thought about it, though, the surer he was that his sweet widowed mother could never tell reporters she was happy that her son's airplane killed a world's record number of civilians all at once.
...
The crewmen aboard Joy's Pride, at any rate, told the pilot on the intercom that they felt much as he did. They were all alone up in the sky. They didn't need a fighter escort, since the Japanese didn't have any airplanes left. The war was over, except for the paperwork, arguably the situation even before the Enola Gay cremated Hiroshima.
To quote Kilgore Trout: "This wasn't war anymore, and neither had been the obliteration of Nagasaki. This was 'Thanks to the Yanks for a job well done!' This was show biz now."
Trout said in "No Laughing Matter" that the pilot and his bombadier had felt somewhat godlike on previous missions, when they had had nothing more than incendiaries and conventional high explosives to drop on people. "But that was godlike with a little g," he wrote. "They identified themselves with minor deities who only avenged and destroyed. Up there in the sky all alone, with the purple motherfucker slung underneath their plane, they felt like the Boss God Himself, who had an option which hadn't been theirs before, which was to be merciful."
...
The pilot of Joy's Pride made a U-turn way up in the sky. The purple motherfucker was still slung underneath. The pilot headed back for Banalulu. "He did it," wrote Trout, "because that is what his mother would have wanted him to do."
At the top secret court-martial afterward, everybody was convulsed with laughter at one point in the proceedings. This caused the chief judge to bang his gavel and declare that what those on trial had done was "no laughing matter." What people found so funny was the prosecutor's desciption of what people did at the base when Joy's Pride came in for a landing with the purple motherfucker only a foot above the tarmac. People jumped out of windows. They peed in their pants.
"There were all kinds of collisions between different kinds of vehicles," wrote Kilgore Trout.
No sooner had the judge restored order, though, than a huge crack opened in the floor of the Pacific Ocean. It swallowed Banalulu, court martial, Joy's Pride, unused atom bomb and all.
Why I like this book best of all of Vonnegut's stuff is because of the format. It's him writing ostensibly about working on this failed novel, also called Timequake. So it's a combination of excerpts from that story, which is a good one, and his ruminations on life in general. One more brief quote:
I am Honorary President of the American Humanists Association, whose headquarters in Amherst, New York, I have never seen. I succeeded the late author and biochemist Dr. Isaac Asimov in that functionless capacity. That we have an organization, a boring business, is to let others know we are numerous. We would prefer to live our lives as Humanists and not talk about it, or think about it than we think about breathing.
Humanists try to behave decently and honorably without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife. The creator of the Universe has been to us unknowable so far. We serve as well as we can the highest abstraction of which we have some understanding, which is our community.
...
I spoke at a Humanist Association memorial service for Dr. Asimov a few years back. I said, "Isaac is up in Heaven now." That was the funniest thing I could have said to an audience of Humanists. I rolled them in the aisles. The room was like the court-martial scene in Trout's "No Laughing Matter," right before the floor of the Pacific Ocean swallowed up the third atomic bomb and Joy's Pride and all the rest of it.
When I myself am dead, God forbid, I hope some wag will say about me, "He's up in Heaven now."
[3/13/2001 2:17:28 PM | Dan Spalding]
Word on the street:"All changes should go through me. I'm the boss, applesauce."
Actual words spoken in e-mail form by Natalie Sperry.
[edit][3/13/2001 10:43:34 AM | Dan Spalding]
Background: BMI is threatening to charge a number of retirement homes owned by giant corporations like Marriot royalties for playing their old-time music. This would affect crooners who play songs from the 1930s and 40s for the residents there. The royalty would be $2.25 per bed per year, and would not (at least at first) affect "mom and pop" retirement homes. Currently these homes, unlike cruise ships and waiting rooms, pay no fees at all. (San Jose Mercury News, sometime in February)Marriott, for one, could certainly afford to pay the royalties. Were the situation reversed, they're certainly evil enough to do what BMI is trying. Marriot union busts and has been found to have served contaminated food to children. (Not like on the street or anything. They get contracts for school cafeterias - public, private, and college/universities.)
However, it's a no-brainer as to who's going to win this publicity war. Big corp. vs old folks? Thus follows the quote from the SJM News article:
As a licensed music therapist, Hardy is keenly aware of the role music plays in seniors' lives.
"The elderly here, especially those struggling with Alzheimer's disease and other types of dementia, their long-term memories are much more intact," he said. "So when we sing these old songs... it gives them a sense of being young again, and a sense they know who they are."
"They may remember the song," Hardy said, "but not your name."
When I read this, I felt tears come to my eyes, but also a queer sense of being really impressed with Hardy's ability to shape the issue. This isn't about one corporation battling the other over what seems to be outright copyright infringement. Instead its, "Let's talk about what helps grandm/pa's dementia." Fucking brilliant.
[3/13/2001 9:38:53 AM | Dan Spalding]
And now for something completely different..I don't know why, listening to him, I should have noted so distinctly the gradual darkening of the river, of the air; the irresistible slow work of the night settling silently on all the visible forms, effacing the outlines, burying the shapes deeper and deeper, like a steady fall of impalpable black dust.
. . . . .
'This mournful and restless sound was a fit accompaniment to my meditations. She had said he had been driven away from her by a dream, – and there was no answer one could make her – there seemed to be no forgiveness for such a transgression. And yet is not mankind itself, pushing on its blind way, driven by a dream of its greatness and its power upon the dark paths of excessive cruelty and of excessive devotion? And what is the pursuit of truth, after all?
From Lord Jim, which, except for the parts that are incredibly racist and astoundingly sexist, is a beautiful book. I know of no other author who can create such memorable characters who, in a few paragraphs, establish themselves more deeply than most characters can in a novel. Conrad's descriptions of nature are so evocative that I literally caught my breath when he wrote about the jungle in Jim. However, I don't know if I ever would have picked it up, much less finished it, had I not been travelling in an non-English speaking country at the time. See the full text.
posted by Dan Spalding 2:43 PM