Brian
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Post by Brian on Jun 14, 2009 0:03:04 GMT -8
Iggy Pop and David Bowie on their U.S. tour in the spring of 1977.Maybe I read too much Robert Hilburn at an impressionable age, but I still make my own lists of the Greatest Albums of All Time once in awhile. Iggy Pop's "The Idiot" always lands in the top five. I vividly remember working at Here, There and After in Montrose the day it came out and yanking the shrink wrap off his first solo record. Punk rock -- which he had invented ten years earlier -- had just hit the U.S. after taking over England. But David Bowie wrote most of the music and produced, so there were synthesizers. And Iggy wasn't screaming, he was crooning. The effect at first was unsettling. Somehow Bowie had come up with arrangements more menacing than the Sex Pistols and Iggy had mined lyrics more personal than Paul Simon. But I soon embraced the deep atmospherics, choppy guitars and the warmth of Iggy's voice. I bought the eight track and drove around with a can of beer between my legs singing: People said we were negative They said we'd take but We would never giveCLICKGGGGGHHHHHHHCLICK But we'd sing da-da-da Da-da-da dum dum dayDriving, albeit more responsibly, into the 1980's I duped the LP onto a cassette until Virgin issued a remastered version in 1990. I pack it without fail every time I leave town because it's one of the desert island albums I'll need to hear if I'm trapped in the mountains camping after an 8.0 earthquake. I learned about Iggy's new CD, "Preliminaries," from a story in the L.A. Times so I bought it when it came out last Tuesday, intrigued by his collaborations with European jazz musicians in his Miami home studio. Already, I like most of it. This might be yet another breakthrough album for Iggy. Here's a clip from his May 28 concert on French television -- a live version of the song even better than the recorded one, especially on guitar: When Iggy gazes at his navel, you can still join in.
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Brian
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Post by Brian on Aug 11, 2009 23:25:50 GMT -8
Kimberly Rivera in 2006 before moving from Iraq to CanadaLast March, Roberta came to our sign painting party with flyers telling the stories of several former soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan who had deserted, mostly to Canada. She also brought stationery and stamps. Courage to Resist was sponsoring a letter-writing campaign to send them some encouragement from Americans -- many of the AWOL troops were facing deportation by the Conservative Canadian government. I wound up writing to four whose brief biographies and quotes struck me the hardest, especially the mother of two named Kimberly Rivera, the first female war resister, who faces up to five years in prison if court martialed in the U.S. Here's her original page on the Courage to Resist website: www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/541/118/Just recently, I received this clear handwritten reply from Kimberly in Toronto, which I transcribe: Brian,
Thank you for your letter. It is great help to inspire to keep fighting my fight for soldiers who are trapped with no end but the one they can force on themselves.
A lot of the time I think because the government is so big and more powerful than just you or just me that it would do what's right to us little guys, but I was just kidding myself. And just found out life doesn't really care about people and how hard they struggle, all kinds of battles in their hearts, minds, everyday life. I had two choices. I could just stop caring and become an angry monster, or I could try and change everything I could have ever thought to work at being better.
So everyday I just try to be better, and even when I fall flat on my face and don't want to get up because breaking through will be that much harder.
I get back up and try to be better, even when I am still fighting my own mind.
Anyway, just thank you for still hoping that tomorrow can and will be better.
With all the Peace of God may you be blessed in all of your days. (Signature)I should bring Kimberly's amazing hand painted and custom folded envelope to the corner. Wow. Here's the latest news about her legal case on the Courage to Resist site: www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/blogcategory/60/118/
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Roberta
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Post by Roberta on Aug 14, 2009 20:23:18 GMT -8
Thanks so much Brian for sharing thisbeautiful letter. I wrote half dozen or so letters also but didn't get any replies. I wonder if others who wrote got any answers?
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Post by Jeanne on Aug 15, 2009 18:10:59 GMT -8
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Brian
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Post by Brian on Aug 17, 2009 0:00:35 GMT -8
Kimberly Rivera and her family in Toronto last springI didn't know when I transcribed Kimberly's letter in my previous post that just that day she had won another temporary stay in her fight to remain in Canada. The Toronto-based War Resisters Support Campaign had a press conference scheduled a few hours later with Kimberly and her lawyer. The news about the new risk assessment granted by the Federal Court currently rides on top of this webpage -- click on the link for the PDF press release, including excerpts from the judge's ruling: www.resisters.ca/index_en.html
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anni
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Post by anni on Oct 17, 2009 18:42:21 GMT -8
Can you spell M-O-N-T-R-O-S-E? Hey! Sunday, Oct. 18 is the first anniversary of the Montrose Peace Vigil message board. WOO HOO!
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Brian
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Post by Brian on Nov 19, 2009 0:41:22 GMT -8
A bright, green morning not so long ago at the Big Tujunga Dam.As I watched the mile-long wall of fire visible from my porch on the evening of Aug. 31, I gave into regret, something I don't do much anymore. I had been wanting to drive up Big Tujunga Canyon and Angeles Forest Highway to Mill Creek Summit for months, just as I always did in my teens and 20's, but never made the time, despite learning way back in 1977 that everything could burn. Now some of the mountains might come down to visit us instead, just like they did in 1978, which might as well be 1958 compared to this new age of media we live in today. The story about the casket that rode all the way down Hillrose from the old cemetery on the hill to the Wagon Wheel Market at the low spot of Tujunga Canyon Boulevard may only survive in the archives of the Los Angeles Times and the Record-Ledger -- and the memories of those of us still living here 32 years later. Nowadays it would be captured on cellphone cameras and perpetuated on You Tube. The last time the mudslides came, we communicated on phones with dials.
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Brian
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Post by Brian on Dec 2, 2009 0:44:53 GMT -8
I could've stuck this in the "Rethink Afghanistan" or "Today in the News" thread, but I've got a mind to ramble and a heavy heart.
Let's see. We have to send more troops immediately so we can bring them home in 19 months. They're going to Afghanistan although our problem resides in Pakistan. Afghan citizens, who include the Taliban, don't want us there. But they weren't invited to the White House for Obama's deliberations.
Yes, the surge would not motivate Karzai to clean up his act unless there was a deadline, that's the reasoning, but how will we ever train an army of illiterates who have no national loyalty to side with a corrupt nongovernment in a civil war? So much of Obama's speech could have come out of the mouth of George W. Bush. He found a more elegant way to say, "We have to fight them there so we don't have to fight them here." I also felt insulted by his refutation of the comparisons to Vietnam, having learned that Afghanistan is far worse. And I was sickened by his call to unity, claiming Americans were unanimously in favor of the invasion in 2001, because I was among the ten percent who thought they knew better.
Still, I'm enjoying the reaction from unusual suspects, agreeing with the likes of Dana Rohrabacher. I heard that Dick Durbin put out a statement tonight saying that he'll have to think about the speech before he comments. The calls for a war tax -- and even a return of the draft -- may be the best way to enlist Americans to think and act against the surge and the underlying, never-ending occupation. If this war is vital to our national interest, as Obama says, how will he be able to resist McChrystal's call for more troops and another strategy in July 2011?
When Anni and I discovered the Montrose Peace Vigil in August 2006, the U.S. had fewer troops in Iraq and Afghanistan than we do now. Hell, we have more than last December. Now we're adding another 30,000. I need to work harder.
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Post by Jeanne on Dec 2, 2009 6:42:35 GMT -8
Yes, depressing. All I can think of this morning is a comparison of $/soldier and $/pupil that we choose to invest in our society. I don't have the numbers, but I'm pretty sure we don't spend $1,000.000 per pupil in any state.
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Post by Sharon W on Dec 2, 2009 9:23:14 GMT -8
Yes, Brian, we need to do more. It's hard to keep shouting into the wind but we need to persevere.
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