RIP: Vine Deloria, Jr.

Yesterday, Oglala Sioux author, scholar and activist Vine Deloria Jr., one of the major figures in the Native American rights and resistance movement, passed away yesterday. I'm posting comments forwarded to me (via Tyehimba Jess--thanks Jess!) by NYU Hemispheric Institute curator Rachel Chapa:

Sunday, November 13, 2005
In Honor of Vine Deloria, Jr. (1933-2005)


The great indigenous visionary, philosopher, author and activist Vine
Deloria, Jr. passed over to join his ancestors today, November 13, 2005.
Our thoughts and prayers go to his wife, Barbara, to his children and
his other relatives. The passing of Vine creates a huge intellectual and
analytical void in the native and non-native worlds.

He will be greatly missed.

It is appropriate on this website to reflect on the meaning of Vine's
contibutions to indigenous peoples' resistance, and to reflect on our
responsibilities to maintain and to advance the lessons that Vine gave
to us. It is safe to say that without the example provided by the
writing and the thinking of Vine Deloria, Jr., there likely would have
been no American Indian Movement, there would be no international
indigenous peoples' movement as it exists today, and there would be
little hope for the future of indigenous peoples in the Americas.
Vine Deloria, Jr. was a true revolutionary when he wrote Custer Died for Your Sins in 1969, the first of his scores of books and scholarly
articles (for a partial bibliography of Vine's important books go to:
http://www.ipl.org/div/natam/bin/browse.pl/A31). He had the courage and
the vision to challenge the dominating society at its core. He was
unapologetic in confronting the racism of U.S.law and policy, and he was
prophetic in challenging young indigenous activists to hone their
strategies.

We will write much more about Vine in the upcoming days. He was our
elder statesman and mentor. For now, we will share this passage from
Custer Died For Your Sins, as a reminder of our responsibilities, and
to ensure that we are more deliberate and strategic in our resistance.

"Ideological leverage is always superior to violence....The problems of
Indians have always been ideological rather than social, political or
economic....[I]t is vitally important that the Indian people pick the
intellectual arena as the one in which to wage war. Past events have
shown that the Indian people have always been fooled by the intentions
of the white man. Always we have discussed irrelevant issues while he
has taken our land. Never have we taken the time to examine the premises
upon which he operates so that we could manipulate him as he has us." (pp.251-252)

and this relevent passage regarding the example of the great Oglala
Lakota leader Tashunka Witko (Crazy Horse):

"Crazy Horse never drafted anyone to follow him. People recognized that
what Crazy Horse did was for the best and was for the people. Crazy
Horse never had his name on the stationery. He never had business cards.
He never received a per diem. *** Until we can once again produce people
like Crazy Horse all the money and help in the world will not save us.
It is up to us to write the [next] chapter of the American Indian upon
this continent." (p. 272)

For many of us, Vine was a contemporary Crazy Horse. Perhaps we
squandered his time with us. We took him for granted, and assumed that
he would always be with us. Now, the question is, not only will we
produce more Crazy Horses, but will we produce more Vine Deloria, Jr.s?

Vine, we will miss you, but we will continue your work toward freedom
for native peoples everywhere. Mitakuye Oyasin.

Raquel Chapa
(Lipan Apache/Yaqui/Cherokee)
Native Curator
Hemispheric Institute
Tisch School of the Arts
New York University
New York, NY 10003
http://hemi.nyu.edu

CS + JK at Amherst Books

Yesterday I traveled for first time in a little while to give a reading. I hadn't been to the Five Colleges region of Massachusetts in years, pretty much since my friend Gerard taught at Amherst years ago, but I was invited to read with poet and artist Christopher Stackhouse at Amherst Books (and also at one of the smaller schools in the area, Greenville CC, but I couldn't do that because of pending responsibilities at the university). Our host was the lovely poet Juliette Lee, who'd just published Christopher's stunning, new little chapbook, Slip (see photo at left), in which Christopher does his thang on the art tip. (And Juliette handsewed the books, as you can see.) She and her boyfriend, poet Eric Baus (author of the award-winning tome The To Word) were absolutely wonderful. I didn' t want to stop hanging out with them or perusing their library. The reading was a lot of fun. I have to say, it's always exciting when you go far away from home and have a packed audience, and it's even more exciting when people you know attend. Among those present were Keguro Macharia, a brilliant young scholar who used to be on a list (LGBTPoC) I was on years ago, and the incomparably (yes, it's one of my favorite adjectives/adverbs) talented Ronaldo V. Wilson (a/k/a Bro V[ergili]o, who characterized the reading like this (I quote directly and without permission from his email):

Congratulations to John and Che for a very wonderful reading @ Amherst Books this Saturday; I'm dying to see Seismosis in its full, rigorous and drawn flesh. In any case, these two brilliances, are making marks, beating, breaking and squiggling out the possibility of our beloved bodies as texts, selves, re-orienting matter, so that when I (oh how happy was I to see them building...) see these images of blacks, stacked, say on my kitchen counter, or on my wall, at home, or in my office, or in my day-dreams, I have a refererence point, a mark [1]: everyone I think needs a place to start. This is what I love about the intersections between their writings in its current state, live, in print, and what will I see next? All I gots to say is I'm inspired: No shame in my graphite, number two, or my cobalt pens, or my ink-drying, and printing, some that works, some that doesn't. Eureka! If you get a chance to see these guys, live, reading, do go: how they work [2] in the radar beam of drawing, the possibility, out and into the range of black (--------------------) circumstance, point of view, view of point(al)isms, blasting out of that CELL -- out of lines, in lines, then out of that, into layer, surface, draft, body, bringing, my, me, see? Into what it means to be, getting free, by the giving up of angles: past seeing point, marks, and meeting me most where I needed it the other night in our corner of a table at a wooden bar, pondering the plight, terror and joy of the prison-mute and the lines behind and in him:

che [1] and J. [2]

Bra Vo. Thank you. Ronaldo

It was a great way to spend a Saturday, and it also wasn't too far away from New Jersey (home...)!

Jubilee Year & Congrats to Priory Rebels Soccer

(This admittedly is a very personal entry which may be of zero interest to the few regular readers of this blog.) I don't think I've ever mentioned my high school on this blog, but as of this fall, the Saint Louis Priory School is celebrating its 50th anniversary. (Wikipedia incredibly has an entry on it.) In addition to its beautiful church, the Priory Chapel (pictured at left, photo from Joan Sullivan's Architecture page)--designed by Gyo Obata of the architectural firm Hellmuth Obata and Kassebaum (HOK) in 1962, with assistance from the Italian engineer Pier Luigi Nervi--which one is one of the St. Louis region's architectural treasures, the school has the distinction of being part of one of only three houses in the English Benedictine Congregation in the United States. (Oddly, however, though the actual Priory of Sts. Mary and Louis is now the Abbey of Sts. Mary and Louis, the school decided to keep its original name, perhaps because its board and consultants suggested it had continuing "brand" value.) The English monks who ran the school original came from Ampleforth Abbey and College in Yorkshire, England. (It was initially pretty bizarre to go from Catholic parochial and public elementary school to classes taught by British and Irish monks, though it did quickly make Monty Python and most British comedies and dramas seem far less strange.) Many of the original British monks, true "characters" to the nth degree, are no longer alive, but both the monastery and school they established, the second of which continues to be known for its demanding academic program, are still thriving.

Three of the better known alumni of Priory are award-winning actor Kevin Kline, Mississippi Solo author Eddy Harris (who grew up not far from me in Kirkwood), and former MTV VJ and TV show host Dave Holmes.

Though Priory's forte is academics, its sports teams have always been another story. Not to cast any aspersions on fellow alumni, because there have been some great athletes to graduate from the school, but in general...as athletic prowess goes, it was never one of the top schools in St. Louis. Part of the problem always was that the academic rigor led to a high attrition rate. Out of around 60+ classmates that I started with in 7th grade, about 16-17 were gone by 9th grade, with a few more coming and going by 12th grade. Surviving made for great camaraderie and success in college, but it also meant thinned ranks for the sports teams, and since the school always tended to play against larger Catholic diocesan and private schools, larger Protestant Christian schools, larger private nonsectarian schools, and larger public schools, the outcomes weren't always so good, especially in the key team sports of football, soccer, ice hockey, basketball, and baseball. (golf, tennis, cross-country, and track and field were a little different.) A few years ago, Priory started to win some league and district championship in some of the team sports. Until a couple years ago, I think Priory had won perhaps 1 state championship, back in the 1970s. Then, in the winter of 2003, Priory won some second-tier championship in ice hockey. Then, in the fall of 2004, it won its first cross-country state championship. And then today, its varsity soccer team achieved a school first--it won the state soccer championship 1-0 over Trinity High School (another local, larger Catholic boy's school), but also managed to go 26-0, becoming the first high school soccer team in Missouri to go undefeated in a season since the state championship soccer tournament began. This was a particularly extraordinary feat. St. Louis is a soccer powerhouse, and has a number of much larger, all boys Catholic high schools (Chaminade, Christian Brothers College, St. Louis University High School, St. John Vianney, and DeSmet) that are reknowned for their soccer prowess, and Chaminade, CBC, and SLUH have repeatedly been nationally ranked, including this year, but none have had an undefeated season (Chaminade came close a few years ago, I think.)

All in all, a fitting achievement for the school's Jubilee year, so Happy 50th, Priory, and congratulations on the undefeated season!

Quote: Jorge Luis Borges

I close my eyes and see a flock of birds. The vision lasts a second, or perhaps less; I am not sure how many birds I saw. Was the number of birds definite or indefinite? The problem involves the existence of God. If God exists, the number is definite, because God knows how many birds I saw. If God does not exist, the number is indefinite, because no one can have counted. In this case I saw fewer than ten birds (let us say) and more than one, but did not see nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, or two birds. I saw a number between ten and one, which was not nine, eight, seven, six, five, etc. That integer--not-nine, not-eight, not-seven, not-six, not-five, etc.--is inconceivable. Ergo, God exists.
--Jorges Luis Borges, "Argumentum Ornithologicum" (in The Aleph and Other Stories, New York: Penguin, 2000)

Malika's Kitchen Poetry Reading in Chi + Da Ga Ga

There's something to be said for CP time, especially when you're trying to park in a city where finding spots on the street in certain neighborhoods after 5 pm is notoriously difficult, verging on impossible, and you have to circle the block about 15 times, burning expensive ($2.85 regular unleaded) gas all the while, until someone finally pulls out and you can quickly slot your car in, leap out and sprint into the Silver Room, on Milwaukee in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago, hoping you haven't missed the poets you'd wanted to see.

Of course, slow as things are in getting started, you do end up missing one (the lovely wordsmith and collagiste Krista Franklin), but you arrive in time to catch Charlie Dark (blurry cellie photo above), one of the British poets (and DJs) who's featuring tonight as part of Malika's Kitchen 2nd Annual Poetry Gathering, which brings together American (mostly Chicagoan) and British poets (mostly Londoners), including a raft of young Black and Asian British wordspitters, who're visiting fellow young poets in the Chicago area, exchanging words and thoughts and possibilities, and you're actually dazzled to see the future unfolding before your eyes. These young poets serve up poems so beautiful and honest you almost want to weep as you clap. One young brotha pops in the front and back of the Silver Room. A young woman writes about her "scarf," which she is embracing and defending. Another young man's poems shift between English and an South Asian tongue you cannot understand, but his final image, of wanting to substitute his own face for his mother's when his father's fists come, translates across all languages. Four young poets--all Britons, one the child of Afghans, the other of Bangladeshis, the third of Somalis, and the fourth who just describes himself as "Black," recite a group poem that brings the house down. Ugochi Nwagwugwu, the MC, keeps the poetry and good spirits flowing.

And you realize that you haven't missed the other poet you came to see, the incomparable Ms. Toni Asante Lightfoot (at right), who breaks off a sexy haiku called "Lollypop Blues" Kalamu Ya Salaam-style (which is to say 17-syllables become a call-and-response performance), and reads one of her stirring "Moms Mabley" poems, "Losing Loretta Aiken," which appears in the Malika's Kitchen Handmade Fire chapbook that she designed and co-introduced, with Chicago chapter founder Peter Kahn. The poem is so stirring that afterwards, as you're standing outside in the rising cold, chatting with Toni, a handsome young man comes out and says to her, "That was some adult poetry. Mad! Mad! Mad good!....Def!" and you'd have to agree (if in different words). You also remember the sharp poems of one of the Malika's Kitchen Chicago members, Kevin Coval, whose point of departure is Elvis (what is this fixation with Elvis, you always ask and groan), though Coval actually takes it somewhere you hadn't expected, and Malika's Kitchen British co-founder Jacob Sam-LaRose, who favors someone you've actually seen many times, or maybe people you grew up with, but whose powerful poetry is utterly his own. The many of the poets and audience members start filing out, to chat and exchange numbers and just congregate, as Charles Dark spins inside, and you meet a few people--a singer named Maritza, one of Toni's former students who's writing myths, and you take your leave, wish the young Brits a safe trip home and hop in your car and zoom back north, your head still full of lines like "the bowstring of the wind / makes the Chicago leaves sing," and the future of humankind looks and feels a little brighter....

***
I learned on Tuesday (or Wednesday) that I get Logo (which does NOT show up on TV Guide Online's RCN Chicago lineup, oddly enough), so I got to see the most recent episode of Noah's Arc, as well as the prior one (which I thought was so bad I ended up watching Martha Stewart's Apprentice instead). I'll leave the play-by-plays and appraisals to the matchless Rod 2.0 (he hasn't posted on this one yet), but I did think this was the best written and acted episode by far. By far! Noah-Doris still parades around like a slightly buffer Tracy Ross in costumes and hairstyles that never cease to amaze me, and Ricky-Halle Minnelli remains TV's wildest mess since H. R. Puffinstuff, but the Chance character was hilarious as a thug-in-training (he's actually kind of cute in a do-rag), Wade's quasi-hetero/bi character lights up the screen with his smirks and cornrows, and Alex continues to shine in his role as the HIV-counselor/drag diva/mama bear/wit machine. He even demonstrated an on-the-spot HIV test in his storyline, which I think is the first time I've seen that on any program, ever! I continue to enjoy watching the show, criticisms aside, in part because, as I realized, there's no show on TV that has featured this many and wide a range of Black gay/sgl men onscreen in just a four week span. (And they even included an identifiable Latino and several White people as well, it being Los Angeles/West Hollywood, and all.) So what if they toss out "bitches" and "girls" like candywrappers--well, okay, but let's have that misogynistic conversation another time. I say keep it going, chirrens! Aim for the stars, or at least the disco balls!

I also caught broadcast of Oprah Winfrey's interview with author Terry McMillan and her ex-husband, Jonathan Plummer, who served as the prototype for the young island lover in McMillan's blockbuster novel, How Stella Got Her Groove Back. Again, I'll leave it to the incomparable Rod 2.0 to fill you on in the details (the photo of Jonathan Plummer at right comes from his site), but I did think that the Divine Ms. O seemed not only to be questioning Jonathan (who is so sweet he'd make a canefield jealous) a bit hard, but taking it a bit...personally. In fact, she even said that his lawsuit against his multimillionaire, middle-aged ex-wife for some of her money, made Ms. O. "not like" him. The lawsuit (yes, there'd been a prenup), not the coming out--at 26 or 27--as gay, that is, though she pressed that point hard as well, because you know, we all do realize we're gay from the age of 4, or "6" or "9" or whatever. (Anyways, Stedman, you've been forewarned.) Ms. O didn't prosecute Terry McMillan that much (even though McMillan supposedly found gay leather porn in loverman's car trunk back in 1995, and from all the past photos and video of him they showed, he'd hardly be out of place as one of the girlfriends on, well, Noah's Arc!), but then again, as she noted at the end of the show, she'd bought the option to McMillan's new book, and the film version was now in "pre-production," so the whole show was a major promo for the new book (anyone who's been alive the last ten years knows what an Oprah endorsement does for book sales!) and will probably earn McMillan many times the amount she had to shell out as part of the October 4th divorce settlement (Plummer got very little).

I do have to say that McMillan, whom I've met and admire (despite the "Jonathan's fag boyfriend fag" note and so on), really does love to make those dramatic "crack" faces and sighs. Also, she at 54 and the ageless Ms. O both look quite good, so I guess the good genes + millions (or billions in Ms. O's case) in the bank combo is what it's cracked up to be, and so why wouldn't Jonathan, who's got the genes part, not want to get in on the other part as well? Charming best describes the now out, hairstyling- entrepreneur Mr. Plummer, whose lips and eyes (as well as some things (rudeness) weren't on display) surely sent McMillan's heart and pumpum spinning (and at times it looked like she was back there for a split second). She did share with all of us that he took her beyond orgasms, that he was young enough to learn some tricks, that like a puppy, you know, she'd taught him how to lick well (uh huh), and other salty (or saucy, whichever you like) tidbits from their marriage. But then McMillan's all about the realness, you know. Did I mention she has a new book out, that Ms. O's optioned? Hey, what's this strange signal I'm picking up? O(H)--MUST GO BUY, MUST GO BUY, MUST GO....

Adios, Papi

Yesterday was a banner day for Democrats and progressives across the country. In high-profile races in New Jersey (Senator Jon Corzine) and Virginia (Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine), liberal Democrats triumphed in each state's gubernatorial races, in both cases winning by larger than unexpected margins. Corzine walloped flipflopping sleazefest challenger Doug Forrester 54%-34%, while Kaine defeated Republican right-winger Jerry Kilgore 51%-46%. The Virginia race, as has been noted throughout the media and Blogistan, was significant for many reasons, not least Virginia is a reliably conservative state, but also because President W flew in from Panama to campaign for Kilgore, just before the election, and because of Kilgore's extremely vile campaign ads).

The Democrats also gained statehouse seats in both states as well, and Kaine's predecessor, popular Democrat and reformer Mark Warner, is poised to gain national attention as a front-runner for Virginia's 2006 Senate race against dolt George Allen, or the 2008 national Presidential race.

In New York's Long Island, Democrats swept almost all the major races; in St. Louis suburb Kirkwood, Missouri, a Democrat upset a Republican closely linked to that state's right-wing governor. In St. Paul, Minnesota, a Democrat, Chris Coleman, unseated another Democrat, Randy Kelly, who'd defied his party to support the deeply unpopular President W. The Democratic mayors of Atlanta (Shirley Franklin), Boston (Tom Menino), Houston (Bill White), Seattle (Mark Nickels), and other cities and towns were handed another term by comfortable margins, Democrats defeated Republicans in Cincinnati (bringing that city's first elected Black mayor, State Senator Mark Mallory) and Pittsburgh (Bob O'Connor), and even the scandal-plagued mayor of Detroit, Kwame Kilpatrick, won by a 6-point margin after finishing second in the primary to a fellow Democrat, Freeman Hendrix.

In California, voters denied slumping Republican Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger even a single consolation by defeating all of the ballot initiatives he'd championed, and then defeated four others as well. In Washington State's King County, voters reelected the county executive, Ron Sims, who'd faced GOP attacks in part because of the previous year's governor's race, which Democrat Christine Gregoire won on a recount. In Dover, Pennsylvania, voters replaced almost an entire slate of creationist Republicans with more open-minded Democrats. The Party of FDR, Kennedy and Clinton also won small races across the country. And in Maine, 55% of the voters upheld legislation protecting LGBT rights.

Unfortunately, not all the ballot races provided good news. In Texas, every county except Travis County, whose seat is the state capital, Austin, voted to amend the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage. In Ohio, voters defeated four reform initiatives that Democrats had promoted. The Democratic mayor of Manchester, New Hampshire, despite visits from some of the major Democratic heavy-hitters, lost to a Republican. San Diego progressive Democrat Donna Frye lost the mayor's race for the second time to a GOP opponent, despite Republican-initiated fiscal and political turmoil in that city. And in New York City, incumbent Republicrat (or Demopublican) billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg defeated Democrat Freddy Ferrer in a blowout, winning 59%-39%. Boricua Ferrer, a Bronx native and the former President of that borough, was vying to become the first Latino mayor of New York City. He faced long odds from the start, however. Bloomberg spent about $70 million of his own money on the race, a tally Ferrer couldn't come close to matching. Bloomberg entered the race with a favorability rating of about 60%, having overcome stumbles early on in his first term, after 9/11, his outrageous property tax increase, and public perceptions that he was "out of touch." Bloomberg also campaigned assiduously among Black and Latino New Yorkers, gained numerous Democratic endorsements, and offered a platform that was to the left of many national Democrats, almost negating his party identification (he'd been a lifelong Democrat until he ran against Mark Green). Bloomberg ended up winning perhaps as much as half the Black vote and one-third of Latino voters, while winning every New York City Assembly district that had a Catholic or Jewish majority. He also won the one district that had an Asian majority, mirroring the sort of broad-based, multiracial, multiethnic, multireligious coalition that had elected David Dinkins in 1990.

Ferrer, on the other hand, turned off some Black voters with a craven statement early in his campaign defending the horrific, indefensible police shooting of Amadou Diallo, while he offered nothing specific of direct interest to Blacks (or anyone else for that matter) in general. Many Latino voters, and especially non-Puerto Ricans, did not buy into Ferrer's ethnic appeals, or his bid to make history. What most sank his chances was that without a Black and Latino base, he had very little White support to begin with, and offered little to attract White voters to his candidacy; had Bloomberg been a disaster, Ferrer might have had a chance, but there was no chance the majority of White voters (or even the 41% or so he needed had his Black and Latino support been solid) were going to support him otherwise. Lo sentieron, Freddy...or maybe they don't/didn't.

With his loss, Democrats have failed in four straight attempts to win the mayor's office, going back to Dinkins's close loss to Giuliani in 1993, Ruth Messenger's disastrous loss in 1997, and Mark Green's failure in 2001. Ferrer's time, sadly, has come and gone, and the Democrats in New York City, who have a massive registration advantage over Republicans, will have to rethink who they choose to run and how they organize and manage their candidate's campaign in 2009 and future years. On the state level, I have no doubt that Democrats Hillary Clinton will romp to reelection next year (though stay away from the White House, Hillary!), and lasergun Attorney General Eliot Spitzer will be the next Governor.

So no luck for now with New York City, but if national Democrats can devise a coherent and even semi-persuasive, progressive platform for 2006 and trumpet the dangerous, persistent incompetence of W Ltd., they stand the chance of retaking both houses of Congress, and though three years is a long time, the White House in 2008.

***
Two days ago I linked to Doug Ireland's thoroughly insightful article on the French uprisings, and today I'm linking to another excellent piece, by University of Michigan historian Juan Cole, via his blog, Informed Comment. The piece, "The Problem with Frenchness," offers yet a different yet persuasive reading of the crisis, and deconstructs the frequently bandied about idea of "Frenchness" as a concept. Cole historicizes the notion, going on to show that France and Frenchnness have never been "nationally" "pure," and that by the arguments of some right-wing American commentators, even French conservative Nicolas Sarkozy, the son of immigrants, wouldn't be "French." It's worth reading, especially in light of the insane news that France has threatened to deport "foreigners" engaged in the uprisings, even though the vast majority of the incendiary leaders and agents are natives. Perhaps they'll also consider deporting Sarkozy and the rest of the right as well....

Four Books

Many thanks to Reggie H., who sent me the link to Wyatt Mason's article, "A Man Who Wasn't There," on Spanish writer Javier Marías, which appears in the current (November 11, 2005) issue of The New Yorker. (It will probably be gone soon, so download it quickly if you're interested.) Reggie wondered if he and I together constituted Marías's "small" following in the US, which may not be too far off the mark, though this summer when I went to buy his most recently translated novel Your Face Tomorrow: Fever and Spear (Margaret Jull Costa translator, New Directions, 20o5), it had sold out at three different New York bookstores (St. Marks, the 8th St. Waldenbooks, and the Barnes and Noble at 21st St.), though the Union Square Barnes & Noble had several copies in stock. I confess that I haven't had time to get too far yet into this novel, which requires maximum concentration, but I did write about a little paean to Marías back in June (though Blogger's search engine could not find it, so I remembered it'd been back when I'd returned to New Jersey), and I look forward to reading it when I have a bit of a break. I've only skimmed Mason's article, but it looks delicious and addresses one of the central issues I've circled back to many times in my reading of Marías's work, which is his narrator's insistent evasiveness and elusiveness. This narrative strategy both intrigues and beguiles me. I'll have to see how Mason analyzes it, but in the meantime, check out Marías.

Recently at my favorite used bookstore in Chicago (though it's not the best one, which would be Myopic, or the largest one, which would be Powells), I picked up a hardcover copy of Alberto Manguel's Into the Looking-Glass Wood (London: Bloomsbury, 1999). I first saw this book the year I taught in Rhode Island, and had never read Manguel, though he was always on my list of writers to check out. Finally a few years ago I decided to utilize that marvelous institution known as the university library, and check the book out. I loved it, and used his essay on the divergence between the progressive (at least in the imaginative and formal senses) vision of Mario Vargas Llosa's fiction and his racist, right-wing politics in Peru for one of my undergraduate writing classes. But I ended up skimming the rest of the book because I had so much else to read, so now I have it before me to plunge into completely. I especially love the title, and above all that Victorian, anachronistic term "looking glass," which I always connect with Carroll's famous sequel to Alice in Wonderland. When I was small and would spend time at my grandparent's house, I'd sometimes fantasize about following Alice's lead and crawling through the large mirror than hung over the mantelpiece in the apartment my cousins from DC lived in into some wondrous alternate reality that had talking decks of cards, tea-sipping hares and drunken mice, Cheshire cats, and all of the other residents of Alice's other world. Books instead served as the mirror then; but I still harbor that fantasy, though I often feel like as a society and world, we've passed through an altogether different, broken looking-glass I certainly want us all to retrace our way back out of.

Speaking of passing through strange mirrors, I recently reread Wilson Harris's Carnival (Faber Faber, 1985, out of print) for the graduate course I'm teaching. I realized upon finishing it once again that it must be one of the most difficult novels written in English in the last 25 (50? 75? more?) years. Though it only runs to 168 or so pages, it serves up prose so densely lyrical, disorienting, distancing, and taxing that I have to admit my reading strategy involved pausing, then rereading, then rereading again certain passages, even though I'd already read the novel several times in the past. My conviction remains that this is a work of manifest artistry that manages tosimultaneously embody multiple genres and modes while also functioning diegetically as an allegorical narrative. I also think it stages, from the level of syntax all the way up to the level of the plot, a very complex textual embodiment and performance of epic and ritual, as a revisionary "Carnival" site in prose (Carnival and the carnivalesque, masking/masqueing, transformation and metamorphosis, performance and performativity, trauma and recovery). In this work, Harris employs a relentlessly dialectic, fractal, negative capability in writing the social, economic, political, and spiritual "history" of Guyana, the Western epic tradition, the Diaspora and diasporas, society and the self. I also suggested to the class that though he was (and is) interested at the time in quantum theory, which is most evident in The Four Banks of the River of Space (yet operative, in terms of ways of reading time and space in Carnival and the carnival), he seems also to have anticipated string theory in this book, at least as I understand it from many articles and Brian Greene's and Lisa Randall's books on the topic (which isn't very well). Harris brain nevertheless strikes me as having been on the branes before almost anyone else--in the literary world, that is.

I've only been able to make my way piecemeal through Gregory Rabassa's If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Dyscontents (New Directions, 2005), which is that magisterial translator's memoir about his career as an avid reader, Columbia professor and one of the greatest translators ever from the Spanish and Portuguese into English. I actually skipped over the memoir part to get to his discussion of particular authors, and my first choices were the baroque Cuban José Lezama Lima, Spain's leading avant-garde novelist Juan Goytisolo, the ludic Brazilian Osman Lins, and two of my all-time favorites, the extraordinary pair of Colombia Gabriel García Márquez, and Brazilian Clarice Lispector. Of the García Márquez, Rabassa writes in concluding his entry on his many translation of that great writer and another:

It was strange, magical perhaps, that after I ceased working on García Márquez I went on to do quite a few things by jorge Amado and suddenly I got the feeling that Macondo [the imaginary town of One Hundred Years of Solitude] was located somewhere in the state of Bahia, down in the southern cacao country or perhaps more likely on the Recôncavo as the bay shore is called. It was a nice transference and I even began to see [actress] Sonia Braga walking down the streets of Macondo while I tried to find her place in the Buendía family tree.

There's more of this sort of succint and sparking summing up by Rabassa here!

Monday Roundup

Though I wrote several days ago about the explosive situation in Paris, Doug Ireland offers up one of the most thorough and compelling articles on the topic in "Why Is France Burning: The Rebellion of a Generation." He lived in France for about a decade, reads the French press avidly and is in contact with people living there, and knows the society and the politics inside and out. His analyses go much deeper than almost anything else I've read, though the mainstream newspapers may have peeped his piece to get a better understanding of the expanding conflagration. Still, I've yet to see anyone else explore in depth the historical background to late 20th century French immigration, discuss the plight of the Harkis, mention the tremendous promise (and ultimate failure, at least so far) of the Marche des Beurs of 1983, or break down so clearly one of the roots of the problem, the right-wing politician Nicolas Sarkozy, whose extremely inflammatory comments Ireland notes almost defy translation into English. In effect, Sarkozy declared war by calling for the industrial cleaning (karcherise, from the well-known French cleaning product Karcher) of the scum (racaille, a word that implies something so filthy it's almost subhuman). As Ireland notes, the practical effect of this has been to propagate even more uprisings, across France (and they've spread to Belgium), while also galvanizing the support of many White French people behind Sarkozy, as his chief party opponents, the vile crook Jacques Chirac and the pompous Dominique de Villepin, twiddle their thumbs and call for ever more meetings. And France keeps on burning. (If you speak French, Le Monde features an interesting interactive piece on Samir Midi, one of the young people attempting to serve as a mediator.)

Rod 2.0 once again features his inimitable recap of the most recent episode of Noah's Arc (# 3), TV's only Black gay show (it's on Logo). This week, the four keekeeying friends confront (or don't) hanging with the guys (vs. the gays), thug obssession, sexual addiction, and, you guessed it, MTF drag (though they're already gender-bending). Rod prefaces his recap with an interesting apologia for the show that I wonder if it really needs. Criticism can be a good thing, and Rod's, C.'s and others' all have made valid, important points. At any rate, though I missed this episode, I'd break down the retrograde gender politics of the show so far like this: for the primary characters, gay=female, straight=male, and feminine+masculine=couple, so that you get babydollish Noah paired with "straight" (bi? questioning? DL? polysexual?) man Wade, prissy, pissy Chance paired with father (and thug lover) Eddie, Loretta Divine-ish Big Mama Bear Alex paired with verso-superhero-bodied doctor Trey, skater-parkish Rafael paired with Party Monsterish Romeo (or as Rod called her, Juliet)...okay, so things unravel a bit with Halle Minnelli himself, Ricky, who parades around like the last Miss Thing (with bangs, cute tops, lip gloss, no less), but supposedly is the last top (and constantly wants to top/bump Noah). As for fem+fem or butch+butch, rarely do the twain meet in these fictional West Hollywood haunts, except when folks are cheating (cf. Eddie+"thug"). These gay=female men actually carry this retro gender logic to its limit when they all end up parading around on stage, in full drag, to the lusty applause of straight(-acting)=male audience members. Performance meet performativity! But seriously, the issue is not effeminacy or effeminate gay men, or straight-acting men, butchnness, or the complex issue of masculinity itself, but the maintenance of a binaristic gender schema which has been under critique for over 30 years. But I know, the show is doing something different, etc., and any critique of the show is heresy, gah gah. I do wonder, though: has anyone affiliated with it ever come into contact with a real "thug" (and I don't just mean a butch queen)?

This evening while waiting in Walgreens for the pharmacist to process my order, I flipped through Essence's November issue, currently on the newstands, which features its list of the "10 Sexiest Men" selected by readers. They are (and I'm recounting this from memory) Boris Kodjoe (at right), Denzel Washington, Will Smith, Michael Ealy, Terrence Howard, LL Cool J, Idris Elba (at left), Blair Underwood, Larenz Tate, and Mos Def. If I had to limit my choices in this category to Black, well-known, contemporary Hollywood actors, I'd say that this list would very closely approximate my own. For some reason, this surprised me a little; one way of looking at it was that I shared a similar taste with the mean of Essence readers! In my ideal list (still based, of course, on the criteria above), I'd definitely make a few substitutions. Though Washington might sneak in there for sentimental reasons, and while I do think Howard and Mos Def are attractive, I'm not sure they're among my "sexiest." Certainly Tyson Beckford (he's well known and does "act" sometimes) would be on the list, and I'd probably then choose from among a longer list that'd include Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Morris Chestnut, Taye Diggs, Derek Luke, Djimon Hounsou, Rockmond Dunbar, Keith Hamilton Cobb, Anthony Mackie, Chino XL, and Vin Diesel. And there might be many others. Plus I doubt I would have thought of Michael Ealy, who's undeniably phine. But then I'm already over ten names, and dislike lists like this anyways, since they always force impossible choices. (The top 10 books, the top 10 musicians, the 25 best....) Nevertheless, who would your "10 Sexiest" be? (I did like that not all the Essence choices were under 25, superbuff, and...heterosexual. Sistas know. Just kidding....)

Today I voted by absentee ballot in the New Jersey state elections, which occur tomorrow. As I mentioned to C., the election officials swiftly sent my ballot to me once I'd submitted my request, but the process for returning it so that it'll be counted is a bit more complicated. You have to mark it a certain way, then put it in a special envelope that you sign and seal; this envelope has a strip that begs you to tear it off, but if you do, your ballot is invalid. You stuff this whole thing into another envelope, which must then arrive either by mail or by hand-delivery, though if it by the latter route, the deliverer has to list her or his name and then sign as well. I know all these safeguards exist to prevent voter fraud, but I wonder how many people slip up in some minor fashion and nullify their votes? As for my vote, the choice was clear: Jon Corzine for governor. He's been a very good senator, one of the most outspoken and progressive, and I imagine he'll be a decent enough governor. (Virginia's gubernatorial race, pitting right-winger Jerry Kilgore against moderate Democrat and current Lieutenant Governor Tim Kaine also is tomorrow. Polls have Kaine ahead by a hair; his predecessor, Democrat Mark Warner, a US presidential aspirant, has done a superb job turning around a sorry fiscal situation and is very popular, but Virginia, where we lived for two years, is very conservative overall, so it will be tight.)

I've never seen any of Marina Abramovic's performances, but if I were in New York, I'd try to catch as many of them as possible. As part of an upcoming show at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, this longtime pioneer and veteran will restage some of the most famous performance art pieces of the last 50 years, including one of her own, though she won't be allowed to replicate completely one of her most famous and dangerous pieces, which involved placing a number of implements in a room (scissors, a knife, a loaded gun) in a room and then allowing visitors to do anything they wanted to her with them. She will, however, perform Joseph Beuys's 1965 work "How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare," as well as Vito Acconci's still seminal 1972 piece "Seedbed," in which he lay beneath a ramp at SoHo's Sonnabend Gallery, masturbating and discussing his fantasies of gallery viewers while miked, so that the audience could hear though not see him. (At 59, she admits this one will be taxing.) Although she did not have to get permission to perform any of these works--since performance art is not copywritable--she did so out of homage and femmage to the original creators. Unfortunately, she won't be able to restage all of the works she'd hope to: Chris Burden, for example, refused to grant her permission. Others, like Yves Klein's famous "Leap into the Void," perhaps didn't come up at all. Though performance art has become an integral part of contemporary art practice and domesticated and commodified even by the culture at large (cf. not only Fear Factor but "reality TV" in general), at its limits (as Kafka suggested 3/4ths of a century ago in "A Hunger Artist" or as extrapolated from Pater crossed with Nietzsche, Heidegger, and others) it still has the capacity to shock and reframe issues of life and death. I think of of extreme works--like Ray Johnson's final life summation--that Abramovic wisely passed on.

Finally, John Fowles, the reclusive British author of the landmark postmodern novel, The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969), which became an award-winning 1981 film adapted by Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter and starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons, died today after a long illness at his home in Lyme Regis, UK. The Guardian Online serves up one of its usual, pithy obituaries, which I won't try to better it. One quote, from his 2003 interview with that paper:

know I have a reputation as a cantankerous man of letters and I don't try and play it down. But I'm not really. I partly propagated it. A writer, well-known, more-or-less living on his own, will be persecuted by his readers. They want to see you and talk to you. And they don't realise that very often that gets on one's nerves.

The obit also includes a rundown of all his other major novels, of which I've only read the elusive Mantissa (I never finished either Daniel Martin, which was exceedingly dull, or The Maggot). But Fowles will always be known for his greatest achievement, The French Lieutenant's Woman, which I just may ferret out and reread next summer, when I scare up a free moment. Its final, ravishing line is certainly a target to work towards.

Punk'd (Ahmed Chalabi Edition)

Ahmed Chalabi, ah, Ahmed Chalabi. The quintessential trickster in the flesh, though Legba has nothing on this creature. But you don't remember this master of scurrility, Ahmed Chalabi, you say? Let me refresh your memory.

AHMED CHALABI

• who lied and misinformed about the WMDs to government officials (the Neocons) and the American media (Judy Miller, etc.) to get the US to overthrow Saddam, perhaps at Iran's instigation;
• who conned W & Co. into giving him more than $33 million of our tax dollars to plan a post-war government in Iraq, money that disappeared and has never been accounted for;
• who pushed for the policy of de-Baathification that has so inflamed the Sunnis;
• who immediately seized files related to Saddam Hussein and who has tried to meddle in the former Iraqi dictator's trial;
• who controlled the Oil-for-Food scandal investigation in Iraq during the period of the Interim Governing Council a year ago;
• who was initially charged with counterfeiting by the interim Iraqi government yet somehow got all the charges dropped;
• who remains convicted in absentia in 1992 for bank fraud and embezzling millions of dollars in Jordan;
• who for his chicanery got to sit behind Laura Bush at W's 2004 State of the Union Address (cf. photo at right);
• who turns out to have passed on vital, classified US information to Iran;
• who still ended up Deputy Premier of the current Iraqi state and who was for a time the Acting Oil Minister;
• who was supposedly to be under investigation 10 months ago by the US government for espionage on behalf of Iran

will soon be back in the US corridors of power (Washington Post: "Chalabi ready for U.S. visit, a return to the limelight"). Will he be arrested upon setting foot on US soil, or does he get diplomatic immunity now that's basically one of the top officials in the Iraq government? I think we know the answer. He'll be meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and others in the US government, whom he punk'd better than anything Ashton Kutcher has ever come up with. For the punk'd crowd, it's all "routine," according to the Washington Post, which conveniently refreshes our memory about this charlatan:

With his cherubic face and Cheshire cat grin, Chalabi became the most famous and influential figure in a group of Iraqi exiles during Saddam Hussein's rule and spent a decade working to topple the dictator through the Iraqi National Congress, a U.S.-funded opposition group he helped found. The MIT-trained former banker and businessman is described by admirers and critics alike as perhaps his country's most gifted political operator. But he is also often derided as a man too often tied to scandal.

After the 2003 invasion, much of the information the Iraqi National Congress provided to the U.S. government about Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction proved inaccurate, administration officials said. Last summer, U.S. forces raided Chalabi's Baghdad office after he was accused of sending secrets to Iran, whose government he retains close ties with. Chalabi has denied those allegations and has not been formally charged. On Saturday, Chalabi traveled to Tehran, where he met with top Iranian officials to discuss bilateral relations, according to Iran's official news agency.

The fallout from last year's raid led him to lower his public profile for much of the past year, minimizing media coverage and focusing on an essential, if uncelebrated, job of coordinating the Iraqi government's energy policy and protecting its oil infrastructure.

"Top Iranian officials." How vague, Washington Post, how typical. According to the Islamic News Agency, the crafty Chalabi met with the extremist, ultraconservative president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who recently called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" to the full-throated cheers of Iranian "revolutionary" youth, and led a march to underline his genocidal threat. Ahmadinejad, unsurprisingly, has refused to retract his statements despite criticism from the UN and Iranian allies, and has the support of the ultraradical Islamic clerics, including Ayatollah Khamenei, who basically run the state.

Below, a photo of the frightfully jolly pair. And what did Mr. Chalabi and Mr. Ahmadinejad chat about?

Ahmadinejad said that Iraq needs to strive for expansion of ties with its neighbors as a way to thwart the plots for stoking religious and sectarian rows.

Elsewhere in his statements, he alluded to the need for expansion of bilateral economic and trade relations.

Iran is prepared to provide its experiences in various economic spheres to Iraq and meet Iraq's transit needs from its southern and northern ports, he said.

Tehran also expects that the project of laying of oil pipeline between Abadan and Basra, linking the electricity grid of the two countries and building a railroad between the two nations are carried out as soon as possible, Ahmadinejad underlined.

Chalabi thanked Iran for support rendered in establishing stability and security in Iraq.

He also called for closer ties in all areas notably economic and trade including what Iran's president highlighted as development and infrastructure projects as priorities.

Okay, I get it now. Chalabi lied to W & Co. to get them to launch a war to overthrow Saddam so that he, Chalabi, could go home and take his place, control the oil and revenues, and insure Iran's major threat was gone. Only the people of Iraq weren't having him in charge, at least initially. Still, with Saddam gone at least and the US bogged down in Iraq, Chalabi could breathe a lot easier (and maybe allegedly print up his own stock of Iraq's currency, while squirreling away all those millions the US gave him).

As we noted, Chalabi was also working with the Iranians, since he realized that as a Shiite, once Saddam was gone, the Shiites, who are numerically the largest group in Iraq, would gain control under any vague version of a "democracy," and Iran, as the largest Shiite Islamic country on earth, has long had strong ties to said Iraqi Shiites. To curry favor, Chalabi allegedly passed on US secrets, including the fact that US had broken Iran's secret code, so no more secret listening in on those Iranians, who have designs on joining the nuclear club, which would be a real problem, especially for Israel! And who gave Chalabi this very confidential information? I guess investigating that serious matter is not part of Patrick Fitzgerald's purview, and chile, the Republicans just don't want to go there!

Anyways, Chalabi maneuvered his way into power, even though he has no real constituency except his family and what his cash buys him (a considerable portion of which at one point belonged to US taxpayers, the stockholders of that Jordanian bank, etc.). He got ahold of the Oil Ministry, and Chalabi kin are now in the judiciary--hey, it always helps to have friends and relatives in high legal positions. As Deputy Premier, which means he's second in rank, at least until the elections in December, he gets to bop around the world and chat up old friends, including folks he horribly betrayed, like the incompetents in the W administration, and he also gets to have a face-to-face with extraordinarily dangerous people like Ahmadinejad. Ahmed Chalabi, "you're doing a heck of a job!"

As Chalabi bops around the globe, the US has spent over $200 billion dollars; has squandered the good will of much of the Muslim world and of others across the globe; has lost over 2,050 soldiers, with more than 15,000 wounded or psychological damaged. At the same time, well over 15,000 Iraqis have lost their lives, with many more being wounded, and Iraq continues to lack basic services and be wracked by political, economic and social turmoil. Parts of it have even become a training ground for Al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorists! In addition, we learn that Iran plans to hold considerable sway ("expansion of ties" and "bilaterial...relations" my ass) over the wealthy Shiite sovereign state that will control most of Iraq's oil wealth and political power. Didn't they already sign a military pact? Iran is considerably stronger since its main military threat in the region, Saddam Hussein, is gone.

Is this what our troops are fighting for??? Are most Americans even aware of what's going on between Iran and Iraq right now?

I doubt that when he pays his visit to Washington anyone is going to present Chalabi with a bill, but it might be a good idea. But what would be the total, at least for now? Something tells me Chalabi, who's PUNK'D W & Co. really good, would skip out before anyone made him settle it, no matter what the cost....

40 Years--The Arch and the Stadium

41 years ago, one of the most recognizable monuments in the US, the Saint Louis Arch (pictured at left, with Busch Stadium at far left, the Old Courthouse at bottom left, from Tzongming), also known by its official name, the Jefferson National Expansion Monument and Museum, was still two triangular pillars rising into the air. Although St. Louis businessman Luther Ely Smith had convinced Mayor Bernard Dickmann to set aside land on the city's waterfront back in 1933 and President Franklin Roosevelt created a 15-member commission to explore a US Territorial Expansion Museum a year later, it took until 1946 for a St. Louis committee to launch a design commission, two more years to select the winning architect, Eero Saarinen (who designed furniture and the Eames House with Charles Eames, and also designed the TWA terminal at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport, the splendid Kresge Auditorium at MIT, and Dulles Airport outside Washington), and 14 more years before the workers poured the first concrete foundations. In 1963, the stainless steel triangle forming the base of the south leg began to pierce the air, and two years later, in October 1965, using special "creeper cranes," the construction team set the final, 142nd section at the very top of the arch. It would take several more years before the Arch was completely ready and visitors could ride the elevator cars to the top, which I remember doing many times as a kid; through the western windows you could see the city distantly below, its buildings and cars and residents shrunken as if through a microscope, while through the eastern ones the Mississippi River unfurled like an endless brown ribbon.

The Arch (at right, photo from Microservios) is St. Louis's emblem (as much as the French fleur-de-lys or the Native American mounds that give it its nickname), the visual signature of its skyline, one of America's architectural treasures, and one of the man-made wonders of the 20th century. It's 630 feet tall and 630 feet wide at its base, and from its summit you can see 30 miles in either direction, perhaps even a litle farther on a clear summer day. Its internal cars take 4 minutes to reach the the top and it has 1076 emergency stairs. It's the tallest monument in the United States, though several commercial buildings (including Chicago's Sears Tower) rise even higher. Many millions of St. Louisans and tourists have visited over the years, and it also has periodically been the target of aerial daredevils flying through its open legs, even though the FAA banned this even before it was finished. (I imagine that since 9/11 not only the FAA but the FBI are keeping a close watch on planes getting too close to it.) Approaching the city from Illinois's gentle hills presents the Arch with considerable drama, but it's also striking from up close, at its base. The Saint Louis Arch officially turned 40 last month; according to its original builders, MacDonald Construction, Inc., it is projected to stand for a millennium, and I hope it will.

The same year the Arch received its closing steel section, Busch Stadium, the new home of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team, also was finished, and the Cardinals prepared to move from their residence of 46 years, Sportsman's Park, where some of their brightest lights, including Rogers Hornsby, Dizzy Dean, Franky Frisch, Paul Medwick, Johnny Mize, and Stan "The Man" Musial, had starred. In 1964, the Cardinals won their first World Series since 1946 by defeating the New York Yankees, and their new team, now owned by the beer baron August Anheuser Busch Jr., who was as famous for his Clydesdale horses and multiple marriages as his unerring business sense, included their first group of Black superstars, pitcher Bob Gibson (below right) and outfielders Lou Brock and Curt Flood. Like the team, the city was in transition: official, legal racial segregation in public facilities, as well as at many private establishments, was declining or gone altogether (though de facto segregation still exists), and St. Lois was rapidly losing population to the suburbs of the surrounding county and entering a long period of economic and social decay. Yet Busch Stadium, hailed as one of the new, model stadiums in 1965 and 1966, remained a positive civic centerpiece for the entire span of its existence. Two years after moving to Busch, the Cardinals would win their second World Series in three years, defeating the Boston Red Sox in 7 games behind Gibson's almost unbelievable pitching performance, and a year later, in the tragedy-drenched year of 1968, the Cardinals would return to the Series and lose to the Detroit Tigers, despite Gibson's and Brock's season-long and post-season heroics.

I went to Busch Stadium a number of times as a child and teenager, and was there the year they finally returned to the World Series, after a long drought, in 1982. Under their charismatic and puckish manager Whitey Herzog, and with a lineup that featured for the first time future Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith, they defeated the Milwaukee Brewers, who were then in the American League. The Cardinals went on to play in two more World Series under Whitey and with Ozzie, in 1985 and 1987, losing respectively to the Minnesota Twins and the Kansas City Royals, but those were exciting years at the ballpark. With Tony LaRussa at the helm since the mid-1990s, the Cardinals have been perennial contenders but also-rans. Their 2004 World Series visit turned out to be a nightmare, and this year, as Busch was set to crumble, the Cardinals' newest stars, first baseman Albert Pujols and pitcher Chris Carpenter, couldn't send the ballpark out on a winning note. It is set to be demolished very soon, with a new, larger stadium rising right beside it. Nevertheless, millions of fans' memories of Busch Stadium, like mine, won't dim, and perhaps some of its luster and winning magic will transfer to the new stadium, and maybe even to LaRussa's final years as a manager. One can only hope. Goodbye, Busch Stadium!

Oh, and 40 years ago, yours truly was born....

Paris Is Burning

Economically, politically and socially marginalized. Denied opportunities in higher education and decent-paying jobs because of their color, their names, their backgrounds. Housed in grim, high-rise ghettos cut off from the centers of society. Openly treated as second-class citizens and discriminated against by "mainstream politicians" and agents of the police and penal systems. Lacking almost no representatives in the national political structure, and rarely seeing themselves represented in the media, except in the popular culture they fashion for themselves. No, I'm not talking about the United States this time, but about France, where riots in the impoverished ghettos ringing its capital city, Paris, have raged for nine days, and have now spread to other parts of the country.

Last week, on October 27, the riots began in the suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois after two young Frenchman of North African ancestry were electrocuted in a electrical substation they climbed into while fleeing what they thought were cops in pursuit; a third was badly injured but survived. The police have claimed they were not chasing the young men. Shortly after word of the young men's deaths spread, some residents of the suburb began violent protests, though community leaders led a peaceful protest last Sunday.

Nevertheless, the violent protests have continued, spreading to Aulnay-sous-Bois and other suburban towns in the Seine-Saint-Denis region (see the map above). Over the last week, angry youths have committed mass arson, torching shops, dealerships and more than 500 hundred cars, trucks and vans. The police have made more than 80 arrests. These social earthquakes, however, didn't just arise out of nothing. Decades of official and unofficial governmental cynicism, indifference, neglect, and racism towards the North and Sub-Saharan African immigrants from France's former colonies, who've been consistently warehoused in the ghettos, which White French people have increasingly abandeoned, and excluded from the mainstream of society since the 1960s, have created the immense reservoirs of frustration and rage that the youth's deaths unleashed. As Henri Astier says in his BBC News report, "French Muslims face discrimination":

Sadek, 31, has a secondary school education and aspires to something better. But he knows his options are limited: "With a name like mine, I can't have a sales job."

Telemarketing could be a possibility - his Arab roots safely hidden from view. Of course, he would have to work under an assumed name.

Sadek's story sums up the job prospects of the children and grandchildren of Muslim immigrants.

They may be French on paper - but they know that Ali and Rachid are much less likely to get ahead than Alain or Richard.

Racial discrimination is banned in France. But a quick look at the people working in any shop or office suggests the practice is widespread.

The impression is confirmed by official statistics.

Unemployment among people of French origin is 9.2%. Among those of foreign origin, the figure is 14% - even after adjusting for educational qualifications.

Or in the words of writer Nadir Dendoune, a native of the Seine-Saint-Denis region where the violence has exploded:

The main problem is that many French people do [discriminate], says writer Nadir Dendoune.

"How am I supposed to feel French when people always describe me as a Frenchman of Algerian origin? I was born here. I am French. How many generations does it take to stop mentioning my origin?"

And crucially, the suburbs are full of people desperate to integrate into the wider society.

Now the riots have begun to spread outside Paris's ghetto choker to Dijon, as well to areas near Rouen and Marseille. The ineffectual, right-leaning government of Jacques Chirac is split on how to respond, and appears to have no control over the unfolding crisis. It has condemned racism and racial disparities in the United States and the "failed" multiculturalism of Britain, yet its leading figures are split on how to address the problem on its home turf. Leading presidential candidate and Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy has taken the incoherent position of proclaiming a "war without mercy" against violence in the ghettos, condemning the rioters as "scum" and threats to France, yet he has also "affirmative action" to improve the dismal job prospects for the poor Arabs and Blacks. His chief opponent, the aristocratic fop, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who is closely allied to Chirac, has spent most of his time trying to undercut Sarkozy and gain legitimacy for his rule, since he was appointed to his post by Chirac after the collapse of the EU referendum and has no electoral base. Which is to say, he has no plan either.

In today's BBC News article on the subject, Sarkozy says that the problems will take time to solve, while Villepin holds meetings with government ministers and some of the youths participating in the uprising, dithers and fields criticism for his failure to stem the riots or propose a quick, even temporary solution. But there may not be one; as the New York Times reports, almost no one has any credibility with or authority over the young people, not even the Minister for Equal Opportunity, Azouz Begag, who himself is the descendant of North African immigrants. Meanwhile, as journalist Dendoune (at right) suggests, despite the country's vaunted ideals of "liberty, brotherhood, and equality" and its bans on racial discrimination, people of African ancestry and Muslim faith in France will continue to suffer from far higher unemployment rates, social exclusion and racism. And until France proposes a workable solution, the fires of rage and resistance will spread.

Note: Mathieu Kassovitz's 1995 film La haïne (Hate), starring Vincent Cassel (Irreversible), Hubert Koundé (The Constant Gardener), and Ahmed Abdel Ghili, provides a fine perspective, from a decade ago, on the events taking place right now.

Mendi + Keith Obadike in Chi

From SWEAT (unfortunately I won't be able to attend):

Mendi+Keith Obadike present
the Pink of Stealth & other works
at the
Art Institute of Chicago/Gene Siskel Film Center
312.846.2600

Mendi+Keith Obadike in person!
Web Work Of Mendi+Keith Obadike
2003-2005, Mendi+Keith Obadike, USA, 75 min.

Mendi+Keith Obadike are interdisciplinary artists whose work encompasses music, live art, critical writing, and conceptual Internet artworks. The couple reject the notion of Internet anonymity by using the web to broadcast their innovative investigations of personal identity. The program includes THE PINK OF STEALTH, a Flash-based online game story about two characters who attempt different forms of "passing," and three works in progress: 4-1-9 (OR YOU CAN'T VIEW A MASQUERADE BY STANDING IN ONE PLACE); TARONDA, WHO WORE WHITE GLOVES; and FOUR ELECTRIC GHOSTS. Computer projection. (KJ Mohr)

Update: Though I missed Mendi's and Keith's performance/lecture/fierceness this time through at the Art Institute, I did get a chance to klatsch with them over lunch this Sunday (Nov. 5). I highly recommend catching their work if they come (it comes) to (your) town!

Goodbye to All That

I have nothing against the very attractive young man at left, LeBron James. From all I have observed, he is a highly talented, personable young brotha who plays his heart out for his team, the Cleveland Cavaliers. With James, who was the Rookie of the Year several years ago, as their leader and star, they very well may someday go on to win the league championship. Or if he leaves Cleveland and finds an even stronger supporting cast, he may lead that team to an NBA championship.

But to tell the truth, I don't care. In fact, I couldn't care if Cleveland or any other NBA team, led by LeBron James or anyone else, won the NBA championship, or if the NBA ever had a championship again, or if there even was an NBA any longer. There's been quite a lot of hooplah about the new, ridiculously antiquated dress code the NBA czar David Stern has imposed, which offends the sartorial and cultural sensibilities of many of the younger Black, hiphop oriented players. But these same players realize they're participating in a private cartel and money-obsessed business, and they usually do whatever else they're told, like keeping their mouths shut about anything that might offend their owners or endorsers, so I really don't care if Bettman and company impose their ridiculous, antiquated dress code on their players, who in my opinion, look perfectly fine either bland suits or in their hiphop garb or, like young James at left, best with their clothes coming off.

In fact, I have ceased following the NBA since their lockout-strike shenanigans of a few years, and seriously doubt I'll ever follow any of its teams or players regularly again. A league of whiny multimillionaire players and billionaire owners, they lost me when they couldn't figure out a way to get their acts together and make their business work. I can't shed any tears, crocodile or otherwise, over very rich people who pout and stamp their feet and whine because they can't get even richer faster and make payments on their Hummers and pay upkeep on multiple houses! Hey, it's a hard life, you know? (Yes, some of the NBA players do a great deal for the communities they're from, while others like Etan Thomas are outspoken activists, but in general, their focus is on themselves and their wealth and celebrity, and really, I just don't have time for it.)

When airline pilots or steelworkers or nurses or high school teachers other people who don't get paid 10x-100x+ the average salary of most Americans go on strike for better wages or continued health care coverage or pension protection, I'm with them. But these overgrown whiners get none of my sympathy, nor do their bosses, very rich men all of them, who've helped to drive away fans by their pettiness, greed and self-absorption, while also encouraging bad, violent play and endlessly peddling their crapola branded merchandise, which is probably produced at slave wages, to children and adults who can least afford it every day, dumping most of the money back into their own pockets. So I say impose your new dress code, or don't. I don't care. Fill the league with nothing but European and Latin American and Chinese players, I don't care. Line the floor with giant troughs that deranged fans can slurp beer out of before they insult the players like the overpaid, overhyped entertainers they are, and then have the players turn around and whale the living daylights out of them in fights that would make the stars of Ultimate Fighters jealous, I don't care. Never again, nunca, jamais, niemals, thank you very much!

As for LeBron, man, I'm sorry, but it's just too bad you didn't come along 10 years ago, when I could still put up with the organization you're part of.

Which brings me to the gentleman at right, Jamal Mayers, of the St. Louis Blues. I have seen told that his team has lost six straight games, or something like that. Six in one hand, half a dozen in the other, I guess. Because you know what? I don't care! Once upon a time, I followed this team avidly. I knew the names of all its players, its stars, how many points it was ahead of or behind its rivals, whether it was going to playoffs, which I did year after year, though it could never defeat Detroit/Colorado/Dallas/whomever to get to the Stanley Cup. I even figured out that bizarre +/- statistic that the National Hockey League employs. In fact, I cared so much about this stupid team that when it almost moved to Saskatoon, Sasketchewan, one of those supposedly vast and beautiful Canadian provinces I would bet most Americans could neither identify nor spell, I was wrecked! How dare someone try to sell the Blues (who according to lore had drawn away all the White fans from the St. Louis Hawks basketball team, which ended up flying off to Atlanta) away? How dare they!

But then, the greedy owners in this league, and the greedy players (who do, admittedly, earn far less money than the NBA players, but considerably more than everyone else), decided a few years that they would refuse to agree on a salary plan. Or rather they were too trifling to agree on a salary plan that worked for both of them, and they met and conducted a long charade whose outcome was that they ended up shutting down the NHL for an entire season. An entire season! They were so fixated on trying to outdo each other that they were willing to work against their best interests and basically kill off the very thing that was putting money in their pockets, so they shut down the season. Shut it down. Completely asinine, but they did it. Suicide. And that was the moment when I said, NHL, sayonara. If you play tomorrow or never, sayonara. If you come up with some fascinating new playoff scheme or keep the same absurd one in which basically every team competes, negating the purpose of the regular season, sayonara. Dayglo pucks, free smoothies, bobblehead dolls with a gold ingot inside, sayonara. If you have players competing in bells and whistles, lamé, leather, chain mail, even the nude (well...), sayonara. Because if you're willing to backslap your fans as you did, some of us won't ever take it again.

So now they're back in business, and I haven't paid any attention to how many fans they're drawing, if any. If a few teams fail, I wouldn't be surprised. Commissioner Gary Bettman presided over all of this, and he still has his job. Too many NHL owners were always crying poor before their stupid suicide pact, yet they kept expanding or selling teams off to cities and owners where there was hardly any fanbase or hockey tradition to begin with, and then they still went ahead and committed suicided and tried to take everyone with them. But not me. Jamal, I hope you can win a few games down the road. There must be worst teams than the Blues, I imagine.

But then again, if the team gets shipped off to Saskatoon this time, I doubt you'll experience much shock. You're from Canada anyways, andI'm told the landscape is sort of like the Dakotas. It sounds pretty. Good luck, cheers, thanks a lot. Oh, and sayonara.

Rebecca Villareal Exhibits + St. Louis Hiphop Conf.

Friend, artist and poet Rebecca Villareal has been creating with divine inspiration since she got to Chicago a few years ago. Though she lives on the West side, she has had exhibits across the Chicagoland region, including at the university. From a recent email she sent me, here are some of her shows, which include photos like the one shown at right ("El Sol de los Pies Magic," photography by Rebeccca Villareal):

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 27, from 5:30pm-8:00pm, you are invited to my opening at Northwestern University’s Dittmar Memorial Gallery. The show, Telling Stories: Finding Home in Image and Verse features color and black and white photographs from around the world along with poetry installations. I’ll do a poetry reading at 7:30pm.

Dittmar Memorial Gallery at Northwestern University | October 20th-December 4th, 2005
“Telling Stories: Finding Home in Image and Verse” Poems and Photographs by Rebecca Villarreal
Dittmar Memorial Gallery
Norris University Center
1999 Campus Drive
Evanston, Illinois
(847) 491-2348
Opening October 27
5:30pm-8:00pm
with a poetry reading by Villarreal at 7:30pm

Stories free us to visit new places as ordinary as a friend's kitchen, or the proverbial far away land. No matter the location, the search for the universal remains: the identifiable and the familiar in feeling or detail. Rebecca Villarreal's photographs and poems compose a geography of transitory moments and emotions. Her verse evokes an instant in time: a glimpse of an old pair of barber shop clippers, the banter at the local laundromat, or the celebration of a niece's quinceañera: “I was born in 1989 celebrate me cake/cowboy hats and shimmering dresses/shiny faces sweating.” Telling Stories” is a sensory ride through time and place, yet Villarreal's universal themes and engaging narrative bring the viewer home.

The gallery is open from 10am-10pm daily. The show runs through December 4th. If you drive, it’s best to visit after 4:00pm when the gallery coordinator told me that you can park in the visitor’s lot without a visitor’s parking pass. You can also take the purple line to the Davis stop and walk to campus.

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FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28—see “The Newly Dead Show” at Las Manos Gallery. The opening will also feature the music of Son del Viento, an acoustic ensemble that perform traditional folk songs from Mexico.

Las Manos Gallery | Friday, October 28, 2005, 7–10pm
5220 N. Clark St., Chicago, IL
773-728-8910
THE NEWLY DEAD SHOW: SOUTH MEETS NORTH
“The Newly Dead Show: South Meets North” takes off from the traditional Mexican Dia de los muertos (Day of the Dead), a holiday embracing the inevitability of death. Each piece explores a unique aspect of death in contemporary times, including the death of past ideologies, forms, value systems, industries, and cultures. As the global network expands, some elements fall casualty, emulating the natural cycle of death and rebirth. This show calls attention to those elements newly dead, whose memory lingers simultaneously while new life, ideas, and cultures are born.

This group show brings together local artists from different parts of Chicago, and bridges the long-standing gap between the North and South Sides of the city. The pieces represent the diverse, multicultural fabric of Chicago, with each offering a personal perspective on issues that surface today, whether in Chicago or across the globe.

Please join us for the opening night of “The Newly Dead Show” at Las Manos Gallery in Andersonville. Son del Viento, an acoustic ensemble of young players that perform traditional folk songs from Mexico, will perform throughout.

I'm not sure how long this show runs, but you can contact the Los Manos Gallery directly to find out! I plan to check out the Northwestern show in the next few days.

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From the First Civilizations crew in St. Louis, I received the following email:

On Saturday, November 5th, 2005, veteran hip hop artists will discuss St. Louis’ historical and present contributions to hip hop culture at UM-St. Louis in the Millennium Student Center, Century Room A, from 12 pm to 3 pm. Much is known about the early 1970s Bronx, New York origins of hip hop and significant additions made by west coast artists, such as NWA in the late 1980s. However, St. Louis did not receive national attention until Nelly broke out in the summer of 2000. Three panels of hip hop experts will talk about the early days of St. Louis Hip Hop that paved the way for today’s rap artists. Also, the panels will offer views on the present and future of St. Louis Hip Hop. This event is free and open to the public.

Nelly, Chingy, the St. Lunatics, etc. They sell a lot of CDs (I still always want to type either records or albums) and have their own highly distinctive, catchy flow. Coming from St. Louis, which is always well behind the times, I'd never have believed it possible that the city would become a source of well-known hiphop especially before larger spots like Chicago and Detroit, though it has always had many native musical traditions and produced some high-profile musicians, from Scott Joplin to Miles Davis to Clark Terry to Albert King to Chuck Berry to Lester and Joe Bowie to Billy Davis Jr. and the other Fifth Dimensions to Grace Bumbry to Ike and Tina Turner. So why not hiphop too? If you're in the Lou, the conference, on the longer history of the form in the Mound City, could be very enlightening.