The Venn Diagram

PS

2010-07-01T10:26:00.001-07:00

For the record, I do regret leaving my camera in Eugene.

Girl Travel Adventure Week 1 Memory Recon Mission

2010-07-01T09:55:00.000-07:00

I'm writing only because if you don't start writing you never will. I thought that sitting down weekly would be adequate, but hitchhiking is like watching TV. The information rolls over you, absorbtion minimal. The channel changes to often--one second you're in with a coal minor, next a cowboy, then an Indian. Some of their stories are similar-- between Montana and South Dakota I'm struggling to keep track of a long string of "really nices guys in pick-up trucks." One of them bought me an egg salad sandwich and offered us a hand gun for personal protection. Another played the banjo.

But the real character is supposed to be my girl traveler subject, Gaby (this week, next week maybe someone else) Because no one else enters the frame long enough to be the protagonist.

There are two journeys for the protagonist: First, the obvious, physical journey across the country. The struggle to move, to eat, to sleep, and eventually reach the destination. The first destination is the Earth First Rende in Maine. A nexus for radical environmentalists. It's just a destination. It doesn't mean anything. I mean, we all know that "it's not the destination, it's the journey" and that's why stories where the protagonist takes way too long to get there are the best. But what happens when the protagonist already values the journey over the destination? What kind of story does that make? Does it have to be written stream o' consciousness on a type writer a la Kerouac, or is there some way to give it structure?

Then the emotional journey... The struggle to justify your aimlessness. The struggle to find meaning when you have declared all societal norms (job money home family) irrelevant. Weighing your desire to be utterly independent against your bodily safety....

I have a lot of writing to do but for now the road.

2009-10-28T13:29:00.000-07:00

hey mans and girlies,

i made this for my class. The video was put together by some crazy animator and then in class we had to score it, so the music is all mine. haha!! lookee!

Grace P: jabbing men in suits since 2009

2009-10-23T01:24:00.000-07:00

Another column

Fourth Wave

From Jesse

2009-10-20T22:40:00.000-07:00

I requested "an absurd factoid to recall every time I am irrationally stressed about deadlines."

Don't Forget! A Russian commits suicide every 17.5 minutes. WHY?

1. It is so cold there.

2. They don't know how to love.

3. The Earth is dead.

"Damsel in the press"

2009-10-16T14:05:00.000-07:00

Speaking of headlines I didn't write: two new columns

Third Third Wave

This one is about bicycles. And women. Women and bicycles, together. An bike advocate from City of Portland Transportation Options says:

"Very good article in the ODE. However, the percentage difference in genders riding bikes in Portland is much larger than three percent. In our 2008 bike counts, women accounted for 32% of riders, men 68%. You can read the full report here."

Looking back at the Portland Mercury blog post I cited, I can see why the statistics are so different. The Mercury cited a study that compared the percentage men versus women who called cycling their primary mode of transportation: 7.3 versus 4.4. Looking at the data this way really skews the gender gap. While the statistic wasn't technically inaccurate, it was in the sense that I took it completely out of context. Lesson learned.

Also, Second Third Wave

Fishy business

2009-10-14T22:11:00.000-07:00

I'm posting this for two reasons: (1) I'm taking a sociology class about fish right now, and (2) I'm finally nearing the end of that era of my life in which I write obsessively about things that happened to me in Africa. Unless I go back to Africa. But until I do, the deadlines I (hopefully) meet this week should mark the finish line for rehashing interviews and anecdotes from Sub Sahara.

I wrote this for the New Crusading Guide during my last week abroad, but lord knows if it every got published.

Trawling for Answers

Jamestown residents dwell on the rubble of Accra’s oldest buildings. On the old colonial stones, the families of artisan fishers and mongers built ramshackle homes, stores, churches, and markets in typical Ghanaian fashion. The residents aren’t wealthy, but they carry themselves and their fish baskets with the pride of a people who have taken back their land.

In many ways, Jamestown holds the heart of the city. Ga is the tribe of Accra, and Jamestown is the Ga township closest to the metropolitan city center. As a fishing community, Jamestown also holds the stomach of the city. Fish constitutes over 60 percent of meat consumption in Ghana, and the majority of the tuna, tilapia, cassava, and other assorted fish come from artisan canoe fisheries along the coast and in the gargantuan Volta lake.

I visited Jamestown late in the afternoon, towards the end of the working day. Most of the painted wooden canoes were on shore, motors still attached, while the fishermen sat out repairing their nets or napping after the day’s catch.

The idyllic scene of the afternoon masked the ugly battle that the fishermen of Jamestown are fighting—and losing. On the docks fishermen Nii Laryea, Daniel Annoh, and several colleagues discussed the depleted fish stock along the coast that is ruining Jamestown fishermen.

“It’s because of pair-trawling that we get less fish,” said Nii Laryea. He gestured with anger out to the deep sea, at the phantom boats that, according to Laryea, take fish faster than they can reproduce and leave behind bloody pools of less desirable catch, driving away potential stock.

“Fish won’t come back to the dead place,” said Laryea.

Pair trawlers drape neighborhood-sized nets between large, motorized boats and dredge the ocean for anything in their path. They are infamous with environmental organizations across the globe, like Greenpeace, for destroying fish habitats on the sea floor—a problem all familiar to people like Laryea and Annoh, whose economic livelihood depends on the fish coming back year, after year, after year.

Pair trawling is not a problem isolated to the West African coast, neither is it a new phenomenon within Ghana. Laryea remembers the “Chinese boats” arriving some twenty years ago, but they stayed out in the deep sea, far away from the wooden canoes. Now the deeper stock is depleted, and the vessels come closer to shore.

The men on the dock seemed unaware, or perhaps apathetic, of the recent government ban placed on pair trawling. If the Department of Fisheries on the Ghana Navy patrol the waters, it certainly hasn’t stopped destructive fishing near Jamestown. What’s worse, the fishermen allege that the pair trawlers have deliberately destroyed their nets.

Fishing is not profitable anymore, says Laryea, but he continues to fish because it is all he knows. Men learn to fish when they are boys, and the tradition is passed on this way for generations.

Nii Laryea has twelve children.

“Will they fish?” I asked.

Laryea shook his head; “They will go to school.”

Jamestown fishing seems optimistic next to Chorkor, a remote fishing community on the Western edge of metropolitan Accra. Chorkor really takes the romance out of long walks on the beach. My guide and I found the ocean through a maze of concrete dwellings off of the main road. We followed ribbons of grey sludge past flats of smoking fish until we came upon the backdrop of the Atlantic Ocean. The surf kissed mounds of garbage while bristly hogs feasted on the refuse. And, everywhere I looked, men and their children were out taking their morning shits in their only sewage system—a beach of a litter box.

I grew up in Northern California, with the rugged, icy Pacific Ocean as a symbol of liberation. At home, the beach is a place to feel clean and unguarded. In Chorkor, I see the ocean as a prison wall that holds people to their trash. The city and the sea have closed in on either side; a poor waste removal system forces residents to shit where they eat.

After I recovered my senses and found a new way of walking—dodging between the trash, the grey water, the pigs, and the fecal matter—I noticed the relative quiet of the beach. As in Jamestown, mammoth wooden canoes were lined up along the surf, but this time I saw only a few attached motors, piles of teal and blue net, and men lazing on the piles with their hard fingers digging to repair holes.

We met Lomotey Mamiko, a fisherman dressed in colorful cloth.

“It’s Homowo, a Ga festival time,” he said.

This would explain the low activity on a Saturday morning, a work day for many Accra fishermen. But Mamiko had another story. Even on normal days, he said, most of the boats stay docked.

He took us back to his house and showed us, in a shadowy corner of his room, the one item that could save Chorkor from the certain demise of losing its fishing business: the Yamaha Enduro 40 marine motor.

Mamiko said there were plenty of fish in the ocean for everyone in Chorkor, which doesn’t have Jamestown’s multitude of fishermen competing after the same short stock of fish. The only thing holding back Chorkor’s fishing business, said Mamiko, is a lack of motors.

“They can’t get far enough out without the machine,” said Mamiko. Up and down the beach, this was a common complaint from Chorkor’s fishermen. Only “rich” men with enough capital to purchase and maintain the motors are still fishing in Chorkor.

Down the beach I watched a gathering of Chorkor residents pull a canoe out of the water. It was the only catch I saw arrive that morning, and a whole neighborhood helped bring it in. Men, young and old, and children—a small girl, even—lined up along ropes and dragged the canoe onto dry land over iron tubes. A man with no functioning legs had joined the procession as well, though he intermittently rested to keep rhythm on an empty gasoline can.

Even without the rusting metal and mottled paint, I could see that the tradition of fishing had held this community together for generations. The boats have clearly spent plenty of days at sea, regardless of motors. The fishermen of Chorkor didn’t rely on motors before, so why would they now?

I found my answer off the beach, where retired fireman Samuel Quarcoo had several stacks of fish out to smoke. His wife brought the fish from the city because the supply in their own community was too low.

“We don’t buy local because of a lack of motor,” repeated Quarcoo. But they need motors, he said, because of “the lights.”

I heard this on other parts of the beach; a Rasta named “Mawuli,” who was sick and sprawled out on a pile of nets when we found him, made vague references to “the lights” that draw fish away from the shore. According to Quarcoo, the lights come from the pair trawlers, who illuminate the deep sea all night.

The trawlers come from Tema in large, motorized vessels, lure away Chorkor’s fish with lights and bring them into the city to sell back to Chorkor smokers at an inflated price: GHC 85 to 90 per box instead of GHC 20 to 25 from the artisan fishers. Chorkor is eating its own demise, and paying for it.

A week later Quarcoo took me away from the shore, and away from my initial observations of tragedy. We met at the roadside that divides the community of smokers and boatmen from a pleasant outcrop of fenced compounds away from the beach, which, according to Quarcoo, house a number of important figures in Accra’s government and financial sectors.

I could see also that “Brother Sammy,” as the Chorkor knows him, has enough clout in the broader community to garner respect on both sides of the road, perhaps because of his leadership role in Chorkor’s NDC party during the recent election. As we met he said a few words to the mob of local children who engulfed me as I got off the tro tro, and the crowd dispersed.

“Brother Sammy” took me to meet Nathanial Ardayfio, who has lived in Chorkor for his whole life—almost sixty years. Though his father fished, Ardayfio has made a good living and sent three children to universities through creative and persistent entrepreneurship. He has done everything, from driving a cab to selling the very outboard motors that are essential if Chorkor’s fishermen want to compete with trawlers.

Where others might see problems in Chorkor, Ardayfio sees an unrealized opportunity for industry. If Ghana can produce its own engines and trawlers, he says, the men of Chorkor have a good chance of competing with foreign fisheries. Ardayfio has confidence in his community, which is already known globally for an innovative method of smoking fish called “the Chorkor oven.”

But problems with the pair trawlers, along with the rising costs of fuel and imported motors, threaten to drive the community away from fishing altogether. Chorkor residents increasingly send their children to school and turn to other industries. Many are eager to move on from a way of life that often exploits children or leaves them too tired for serious schoolwork.

Sam Quarcoo fished growing up but, like Nii Laryea in Jamestown, he wants his children to stay in school and away from the fishing business.

“Sammy—don’t you eat fish?” joked Ardayfio. “Who will catch the fish?”

Whether the fishermen of Accra find a way to overcome the pair trawlers or simply turn away from their old way of life, the color of the coast will change in the coming decades. The painted canoes and sleepy piles of turquoise net may become images of the past.

Femmy column #1

2009-10-01T09:08:00.000-07:00

Tagline: "Third Waves."

Title: Let's talk about reproductive rights.

Me: Way too nervous about writing column for the Daily Emerald.

See it here.

Feminizzle

2009-09-23T13:30:00.000-07:00

I sent out a simple text request to a dozen friends this morning: Title my weekly feminism column for the Oregon Daily Emerald.

The responses have clogged my phone but failed to produce any material appropriate for my school newspaper. Still, a few of the tag lines are treasures, and I don't want to forget them when I clear out my inbox.

Doug says:

"Damsel in the press"

"The Goddamsel"

"A Shape within the Watry Gleam" (I don't even know)

"Lass with Sass"

"Babes in Boyland"

From Camilo:

"Cunt Rag" (Rachel also suggested something along these lines, and Jesse told me, "You know, Henry Miller said that cunt is the most beautiful word in the English language.")

And Evan:

"Boys drool"

"Women's Writes are Important"

"Don't Mock Girl Talk" (I couldn't tell if this was an idea or a directive)

"Phleminism in the 21st Century"

Peter:

"Goodness Gracious!"

"Grace in yo' Face"

Finally, Jesse with some real winners:

"Keeping you abreast!" (Jesse said, "You are basically breast-feeding the public with information)

"Hi men!"

Thanks boys! Please contact me if you have any more submissions.

A series of unfortunate Missed Connections and one Casual Encounter

2009-09-20T19:53:00.000-07:00

Here is a long string of posts from a woman (41 years old) to her estranged lover. Digest.

Just me, where is he? - w4m - 41 (NW)

Date: 2009-08-10, 10:29PM EDT

I love this and think it's pretty damn sweet

Me too.

I did a bit of editing though, a girl thing I guess.

When a girl says she likes you,

she wants you to ask her out.

When you break a girls heart, she still feels

it when

bumping heads 3 years later.

Oh yes she does.

When a girl just stares deep into your

eyes, she's

HOPING that your hers and ONLY hers. ( it

shows

how much she cares: eyes never lie.

When a girl is quiet,

millions of things are running through her

mind. (Not all are bad.)

When a girl is not arguing,

she is thinking deeply.(She could just be peaceful person, and prefers to walk away.)

When a girl looks at you with eyes full of

questions,

she is wondering how long YOU will be

around.

When a girl answers, "I'm fine, " after a

few

seconds,

she is not at all fine. (She still won't argue, sleeping on it does wonders most of the time.)

When a girl stares at you,

she is wondering why you are so

wonderful. (Or if she's dreaming.)

When a girl lays her head on your chest,

she is wishing for you to be hers FOREVER.

When a girl calls you everyday,

she is seeking for your attention. (Or she hasn't heard from YOU.)

When a girl wants to see you everyday,

she wants to be pampered. (Or simply acknowledged.)

When a girl says, "I'll love you forever, "

she means it. (Dam Straight).

When a girl says that she can't live

without you,

she has made up her mind that you are

her future.

When a girl says, "I miss you, "

no one in this world can miss you more

than that

When a girl is mean to you after a breakup

she wants you back, but she's

scared she'll get hurt and knows

your gone forever.

(But still wonders & wishes on stars for the way it was, so beautiful... before you were a big jerk.)

Guy Facts:

When a guy calls u

he wants to be with you

When a guy is quiet,

He's listening to you...

When a guy is not arguing,

He realizes he's wrong

When a guy says, "I'm fine, " after a few

minutes,

he means it

When a guy stares at you,

he wishes you would care about him and

wonders

if you do?

When you're laying your head on a guy's

chest

he has the world

When a guy calls you everyday

he is in love

When a (good) guy say he loves you

he means it

When a guy says he can't live without you

he's with you till your done

When a guy says, "I miss you, "

he misses you more than you could have

ever

missed him or anything else

repost this in 10 minutes and your true

love will

call you

I miss you so bad it hurts - w4m - 41 (Milford)

Date: 2009-08-26, 10:19AM EDT

I miss you really bad. I have the week off from work and I want to spend it with u.. Why do you hurt me so? I would rather be hurt then without you. Dont let me go. please.. I am begging you.. forgive me.. love me

I do miss you so bad it hurts!!! - w4m - 41 (Milford)

Date: 2009-08-26, 1:59PM EDT

I dont know what Im doing, i keep going back and forth. I just want you, Then I dont want you.. I write i do then i dont I only have two more days of vacation.. You know who this is.. you know how i am Please just understand that I love you, and am lost without you. I cant and wont get over you and i dont want to.. I know it must seem crazy going back and forth, changing my mind, but please give me another chance. When I say I dont, I do. Please Be mine forever. TH

re: gone - w4m - 41 (Milford)

Date: 2009-09-01, 9:55AM EDT

I can not do this anymore.. Please just forgive me. I need you. I want you. Only you. Give me a chance to prove it. I know I am driving you insane, but you love me too and you want me too. I am begging to be with you, cant you see that?

re:gone - 41 (Milford)

Date: 2009-09-01, 9:55AM EDT

I cant do this. I tried very hard, but I love you and I want you. I am going back and forth, making every attempt, but it is all for not.

Please come back to me.. I need you more then air. Dont let me go

re: gone - w4m - 41 (Milford)

Date: 2009-09-01, 9:57AM EDT

I am empty inside without you. you are my heart and soul. My everything. I would give up all I have, all that surrounds me just to be with you, the way you want to be. I am yours, only yours.. forever, no matter how long it takes. nothing else matters.

hopelessly devoted. - 41

Date: 2009-09-03, 8:31AM EDT

I can not keep doing this, how can you just leave me. I have done everything in my power to get you out of my mind, but it is just not working. It never ever will, no matter how much I try. I am yours complete. Fully. Forever.. I love you. I hope you know that. No one compares, nothing else matters. Only you and me. I will give everything up to be with you. We can go away just you and me. whatever you REALLY need to make this work. I cant deny it, I wont deny it. True love is hard to find and I wont let it go...

Sad inside - 41 (Milford)

Date: 2009-09-03, 8:50AM EDT

Why am I still writing you on here, do you even check this? it is the only way I can get to you. Everyone is telling me to let you go. But how can I, when this feeling inside wont go away and is so extremely strong. Why cant it all be the fairytale I had wanted and needed from you, only you. I am literally on my knees begging to be with you. Please just swallow your pride and make this work. I have tried my hardest to forget and all it has done is make me see how nothing else in my life matters if you are not in it. Not one posession, not one person. Everything is meaningful unless I can share it with you. I love you with all my heart body and soul. You complete my being. I am devoted to you forever. I love you. Why cant you see that…

you are too mean - 41 (Milford)

Date: 2009-09-03, 2:26PM EDT

Do you see what you are doing to me? I cant sleep, i cant work, all i do is daydream of when our life will be perfect. Please respond.. This is driving me crazy You know we belong together. I have made too many promises to everyone about not contacting you, yet I find myself not caring what anyone thinks or says. I am here. waiting, hoping.. You know we are right together.. I will stay with you, go away with you. as long as we are together I dont care. Just you and me, no one else interferring. All these outside forces trying to ruin what we have, you know what I am talking about, without them, we would be together right now. I am ready to make this happen. I have been working on myself and I want to just work on us. focus on us. Only us. Noone else in the world matters. Come and wisk me away. Make all my dreams come true. I love you.

miss you so bad

Date: 2009-09-04, 11:28AM EDT

Hi there,

This is to the women who keeps posting everyday about missing her man. I feel complelled to write. Please STOP. If ever you did want to get back with him, he would never respect you! You are being desparate and pathetic. Its not your fault. Society has taught us that we NEED a man to be whole, or complete. This is wrong. You are complete without anyone in your life, you may think that you cant live without this person, but that is an incorrect belief that you hold. This relationship is not who you are, sure you miss him, as I have missed someone too. But upon closer examination of the feeling of missing someone, you are really just missing a habit. Its uncomfortable for you to be with out this man. You will move on and you will feel happy again, but please do yourself a favor and stop these postings. Call a good therapist instead. NO man is worth your dignist and self-respect. We all go through hard times, but those hard times are when we learn how wonderful we are, and how strong we are. I feel for you, and hope you find your way soon. If he dosent want the same thing as you do, it will never work, neither of you will be happy. There are so many people out there who are better suited for you, but you have to let this one go, clear your mind, and focus on living each day for yourself. Dont be a doormat.

I have recently moved on from a not so good relationship and have never felt better or more alive. Happiness fills my day, I surround myself with good people and my kids. I cant tell you how much better life is without this relationship. Anyone who lies to you or shows character flaws is not a good catch. There are way more people out there, and you dont have to be young and pretty, maybe you are, maybe you arent....Forget all that and wait patiently for things to hapen for you.THEY WILLL, they have for me!!!!!!!!-

missing you so bad - 41

Date: 2009-09-04, 11:29AM EDT

I know you dont like my new red hair color, but I'll change it back!

I'll do anything for you.

I'll go to all your pool games too, even though I hate it

I dont even care that you still talk to Katie!

And one insane Missed Connection:

no strings - w4m - 19 (waterbury ct)

i'm trying to get pregnant. and i want YOU to nock me up. i will NEVER ask you for ANYTHING just get me pregnant and be on ur way. any involvement that you would have with the pregnancy or child would be completely your choice. we can have sex in any manor you like, im open to everything.

Media log: collected cultural artifacts from the center of the world

2009-09-19T09:29:00.000-07:00

Tro tro poetry

Ghana is a chatty country. Vendors don't wait for you to step inside their shop before they start the sales pitches ("My friend: No charge for looking!"). The radio commentators rifle through hundreds of headlines everyday and spend the day yelling at each other on the radio. And the vehicles talk. Even when the taxis and tro tros aren't drawing attention with their horns, which sound off like dyslexic morse code, most bear messages on their back windows. Some of the statements are simple, religious axioms: "You are not God." But others appear to converse. The sticker letters sometimes carry on inside jokes and arguments. "Big Ben, Not as you think," explained my friend Kestor, is probably a response to an early adversary, "Big Ben," who didn't believe the messenger would make it in life. The message-carrying taxi was apparently evidence enough to disprove "Big Ben's" low expectations.

Some cars have poetic timing. In the moment that you are rife with worry over some petty conundrum, you will inevitably be stuck in traffic behind a tro tro that reads "Who cares?" For a month, I took note of every English language tro tro, truck, or taxi saying I came across on my commute. The ritual made Accra's sprawling metropolis a little smaller; I started to track the commute of certain cars by their back-window lyrics. Alone, the phrases are fun as potential eternal truths. Together, they form an avant-garde, religious poem a la Coltrane's "A Love Supreme." Though there are some odd permutations, the refrain is a simple ode to the power of God.

Fear Not

Ave Maria

Believe

All Shall Pass

Think Twice

Black Smoke

It's Nice to be Nice

He is Lord

God is With Us

God is Good

Determination

Next Time

Vote for God

And Even This

Lion of Judah

The Young Shall Grow

Master

Thank U Jesus

Go Transit

Who 'u' be? Be 'u' Jesus?

Anointing

Just One Day

Still Skipper

Divine Power

Holy Ghost Fire

Who Cares?

Who is Free

Iron Boy

Let Them Say

If You Do Good

Remember Tomorrow

Excellent Jesus

Yesi Adom

Peace Maker

Yaweh Reigns

Little Angel

Big Ben, Not As You Think

Only Believe

Heaven is Real

Good Brother

Still Jesus

The Hand of God

Friends Today...

Overcomers

Judgment Day

Good Master School Bus

Talk About Jesus

Not Me

Don't Force

Power

Pentacost Fire

Dr. Jesus

Nowhere is Cool

Human Beings are Difficult

Pray Without Ceasing

Advisor

God's Time

See Them

Islam is My Choice

God is Good

Part Time Lover

Don't Rush

Too Much

Nowhere Cool

No Need to Hurry

Trust No Man

Chastity

Walker

Righteous

Man No Be God

Precious

Don't Give Up

Shower of Blessing

Jupiter

Faith

No Case

Look Sharp

Rambo II

Still Lucky Boy

Still God First

Back to Sender

Still Power

You Are Not God

Humble African

Oh Man

To ear is...

Latest

Amazing Grace

Oh Jah

If God Say

Let Us Pray

Future

Nothing Late

Because of What

All Eyes on Me

No Weapon

The Word of God

Messiah

Lovely Daddy

Alpha and Omega

Cool Guy

Sweet Mother

Vergin President

No Storry

Only Prayers

Big Promise

Child of God

Man of God

Respect the Police

Respect the Hustler

The Same People

Last Killer

Wonderful Jesus

Still Home Boy

Observers are Worried. Why?

No Food for Lazy Man

If God Say Yes, Who Can Say No

Serious Man!

No Level for the Sector

Who the Cap Fit

People Don't No

Say Jesus

You Will Never Know Who is Honest.

Last Warning

Shalom

Mr. Adom

That last phrase translates "Mr. Grace."

On winning Oregon Trail

2009-09-18T13:03:00.000-07:00

My Eugene homecoming was a little less heartwarming than I expected. Some jerky eco-anarchist ripped apart my bicycle, "Le Peugeot Felix." I left him in the bike room at my co-op--dumb, I know-- but I'm still sore about the incident. They left the disembodied frame hanging in the middle of the room, like a lynched body, and my response was rightfully melodramatic:

"Dear Cruel World:
Why would you ever do this to a bicycle that was one step from completion? My heart is broken! Le Peugeot Felix was my only friend who was also a bicycle. Now I have nobody to take me places. Please don't take any more pieces.
Sincerely,
Grace"

I gave Felix a proper burial and picked up a new bicycle project from one of my many roommates who went Kerouwacking on the road this summer and abandoned stuff at the house. This time a speedy little Univega in blue. Today I will go to the Saturday Market and try to remember why, in June, I never wanted to leave this place. Too bad it's raining again.

I'm compiling some media observations for my study abroad assignments, so don't be alarmed if I post some Ghanaian artifacts on the blog. I know I'm not in Africa anymore, and that's why I don't want to forget anything.

2009-09-17T09:35:00.000-07:00

Around the Ghana in eight days

2009-08-30T08:40:00.000-07:00

On Thursday evening I arrived in NYC to hug Jesse and close my brief stint as a Ghanaian journalist.

New York, New York is the center of the world by many counts, but I've stayed away from it for fear of the agro, chaotic environment that friends and colleagues have described to me. Friday Jesse and I spent the whole day traversing Manhattan island. After a summer in the sprawling, noisy metropolis of Accra, New York felt tranquil. The cars stayed on the road, the hawkers on the sidewalk. I didn't have to hail the subway; it just came, and it waited quietly while I got on with all of my bags. The farmers market in Union Square offered me heaps of fresh, ripe fruits and vegetables--no flies, no dirt--and bunches of cut flowers with no utility, just sheer beauty. New York: you win. I'm entranced.

Still, as we forgot our tired feet for the towering skyline, our conversation never strayed from Ghana. I couldn't stop talking about it. "Journalists--" said Jesse, the literati, as we crossed over from the West side of Central Park to Spanish Harlem--"You're all so obsessed with the developing world. It's just nostalgia."

It took dozens of city blocks before I had a good response to this allegation. In the East Village, I finally found a explanation that satisfied Jesse.

"If you want to understand humanity, and--more importantly--understand yourself, you have to go somewhere that's unmade. 'Developing' says it all. You want to live in place where the cake is still being baked. Look at New York. This cake is done. It's a good cake. But nobody here is making anything. They're just eating. The artists and writers who are drawn to New York-- they're the nostalgic ones. This was the land of cake-baking, folk-singing, rag-tagging, and hitchhiking. But now all the layers and paths to success are in place. You won't find the sort of fascinating heroic arcs here that I saw every day in the streets and offices of Accra."

Someday, after I my fantasy career as an international journalist pays off and I am an old, quirky lady with hundreds of stories to tell my grandchildren or bury in my community garden plot, I will move to New York City and take the subway every day with my plastic grocery bags and my Scottish terrier. I will probably have the same shoes, but maybe a different cardigan. I will go to the same cafe every day and drink my latte with a big piece of carrot cake.

Before my NY bag lady fantasy is possible, I need more money and more life. More harrowing adventure, more flies and dirt, more fire and ice.

For now, I'm grateful for a brief respite from both the stresses of everyday college life in Oregon and the constant baptism-by-fire of travel in West Africa. My last week in Ghana somehow encompassed many of the most difficult and satisfying moments in my two months abroad, and it's fitting now to have some unscheduled hours for reflection.

With eight days to see the whole country, I got on a tro tro and set off for the North on a balmy Saturday morning. After a few days of sluggish journeying with my travel companions, Dan and Brian, I decided to make my own schedule. Alone, I made easy friendships with Ghanaians at every turn, particularly when I left the paved road and headed for the bush.

My highest heights were in Gambaga, a village near the Northern city of Tamale, where I met a community of women exiled from their original homes on accusations of witchcraft. After taking watchye and Fanta with Ibrahim, a good friend I made on the tro tro, his brother Mohammed took me on a motorcycle ride across the savanna to see the Gambaga escarpment, a plateau that overlooks the whole Eastern region of Ghana. We watched the sun go down over the White Volta River and drove back in the dark, past town after town of clay compounds, as a mammoth thundercloud threw lightning bolts at the horizon.

Two days later I was back on solid road, heading back towards Accra. After a week of sweaty, cramped tro tro rides across the nation, I finally made one of the luxury, air conditioned buses that tourists with better planning skills usually rely on for long distance travel. On the fancy bus I hit my lowest low. I spent the five hour drive to Kumasi vomiting into black plastic bags (fortunately ubiquitous in Ghanaian markets) while my fellow passengers looked on. When you want to take a quiet walk alone, Ghanaians will come out of the woodwork to offer you advice or chat you up about Obama. But when you are really lost, sitting on a bus full of people and holding a bag full of your own stomach contents, Ghanaians will give you your personal space. Be careful what you wish for.

I stumbled off the bus in Kumasi, wearily strapped on my luggage, and found a hotel room to lay down for night. I meant to sleep off what I thought was food poisoning, but a thermometer I found in a chance encounter with another American told me that I should get to the hospital right away. In several hours, an apathetic lab assistant wordlessly handed me the results to my blood test. One item circled in red: Malaria parasites.

I spent the night in a hospital bed while a tube fed glucose into my left hand. My dreams were years long and grave deep, but I woke up in the early morning hours when one of the nurses slapped me.

"Mosquito," she mumbled. She handed me my next installation of antibiotics and shuffled away.

Malaria was miserable, but no Ghanaian I talked to about it was surprised or frightened for me. The disease mostly kills children. For adults, malaria fever is the common cold. I'd like to say that I took it like a Ghanaian, but I never felt more homesick in Africa than I did during my last five days on the continent. More than anything, I wanted to feel special in my illness so that people would take care of me. When I got back to Accra, Anas had malaria too. He laughed about my traumatic bus experience.

"They probably just thought, 'Oh--another oboruni throwing up on a bus.'"

The parasites in my blood eased the difficult task of saying good bye to all of my Ghanaian friends. It still stung, but at least it felt timely, appropriate.

Now I'm in New Haven, visiting the ivy leaguers. Last night I found an entire pile of brand-name clothes sitting on the sidewalk, abandoned. In Ghana the pile would have been for sale by a savvy hawker. In New Haven, near one of the world's most elite institutions of higher education, I sorted through the clothes for free with one of the city's urban-black-poor. "Seen any warm sweatshirts?" he said, while I marveled over a Marc Jacobs tank top someone had left in the gutter. Now I'm sitting in a cozy cafe, drinking coffee that, the chalk board says, came here all the way from Kenya. Where did I come from? Where do I belong?

I'm out of time and precise language. For lack of a better word, I feel weird. Weird weird weird.

The Last American in Accra

2009-08-24T06:25:00.000-07:00

(A high-life protest song says, roughly, "Atta Mills, you promised us change. Now we want to see the change.")

Here it is: my final installation as a columnist for the New Crusading Guide. The photo essay is a blog exclusive.

In February of 2003, when I was just 14 years old, I went to San Francisco with hundreds of thousands of other Californians to protest the impending war in Iraq. Bay Area Rapid Transit, SF’s subway, carried me into the din of the city. The train filled with costumed activists and outrageous protest signs as we approached the city center. Drums and chanting filtered down the escalators as we rolled into the station.

Above ground, I emerged into a sea of protesters. They filled the street and sidewalks, skyscraper to skyscraper, and the jostling, colorful ocean went on in front and behind me as far as my young eyes could see. Waves of shouting moved down the line as the bodies shuffled slowly towards the Civic Center plaza, and voices all around me invoked music from the 1960’s civil rights movement, from the anti-Vietnam war protests, and from Bob Marley.

All this I recalled when the Alliance for Accountable Government demonstration engulfed me on Tuesday morning. I went as an impartial observer, but the narrow streets of Adabraka forced me to march with the traffic. I was ignorant of the politics behind the march, but the costumes, dancing, drumming, and singing (“you said you wanted the change, now we want to see the change”) made me wistful for the vibrant activism I witnessed as a teenager in San Francisco.

In the Accra protest I also saw some of the same frustrating elements that keep me away from public protest as an adult. While AFAG’s demonstration was supposed to be a non-partisan outcry against poverty, most of the marchers were clearly affiliated with the NPP, just as American anti-war protesters in the early 00’s were overwhelmingly Democratic or third party. This affiliation means that the activists target particular politicians instead of particular policies. Your signs say “Atta Sakawa.” Ours said, “Bush-shit.”

Lord knows I don’t regret ridiculing my former president, but in public protest these things distract from the potency of your demands. Party aside, no politician is your friend, and shifting the politician alone won’t bring change. Change requires focused needling on the policies that most disrupt progress.

Nevertheless, I was enchanted by both the vibrancy and non-violence in AFAG’s demonstration. Tuesday’s march was more peaceful than most of the demonstrations I’ve seen in the U.S.—an especially great feat when past marches in Accra have apparently ended in police brutality. Americans have had centuries of constitutional governance to learn how to practice and respect the “freedom of expression” guaranteed in our Bill of Rights. In mere decades, Ghana’s constitutional democracy has evolved into a living, breathing, organism with a dynamic capacity for public participation.

In this way, the demonstration was a perfect close to my five weeks as a journalist in Accra. The beginning was marked by a visit from my own president, who lauded democratic stability in Ghana, and the end is marked by a public event that clearly upholds Obama’s praise. Criticism came from the minority, and the majority accepted it in good stride. Public protest is a great sign of a successful democracy, even if the demonstrators appear foolish or misguided to those in power.

This is how I want to say goodbye to Ghana: While improving the quality of your policies and media, I hope you maintain the unique vibrancy in your public discourse. Keep composing high-life tunes that demand change. Keep yelling at each other on the radio in language that I’ll probably never understand. Keep reporting for the multitude of independent newspapers and broadcasting corporations. These are all reasons why the voter turnout is higher here than it is in the U.S.; these are all reasons why I hope to return to Ghana as soon as my time and money allows.

Obligatory photo-essay on adorable Ghanaian children

2009-08-24T05:38:00.000-07:00

As I sort through my photos with the hope of enriching some of my word-heavy blog posts, I inevitably come accross a number of photos that have no content apart from sheer cuteness.
Take photo (a), of a small mob of children that posed for me while I was researching the effects of illegal fishing on Accra's coastal townships. As you can see, there is nothing in the photo that reveals anything about the dire state of artisan fishing on the Gold Coast. You can, however, spot the biscuits (red) my guide used to assuage the community while I did my interviews and took photos. Look at how the central child controls the beach. He has so much power in the community that nobody expects him to put on pants. Photo (b). It's possible that I was trying to photograph the artisan fishing vessel behind yellow pants boy, but I was glad nonetheless to capture this cool thing he can do with his lip.

Photo (c). Who taught her to pose like this?

Photo (d) The Lost Pen Kids of Kumasi crowd around the bus with knowing eyes. The central child has just suckered me into giving up my only pair of shades. I can't tell you how many times I have squinted against the glaring equatorial sun while waiting for a tro tro and wished that I had those sunglasses. But they do look good on him, right? Makes it all worth it.

Photo (e). I got bored during another tour of another craft village near Kumasi and took pictures of good hair instead.

Another American in Accra

2009-08-24T05:19:00.001-07:00

Another piece for my 'Oboruni experience' series in the New Crusading Guide. Maybe you caught the last one in a recent addition of the Davis Enterprise. Grace Pettygrove: reaching obscure, localized audiences accross the globe.

I first witnessed the Ghanaian funeral at 37, on the eve of Obama's arrival. Traffic was ugly that night, and commuters filled the station wall to wall. The congestion alone overwhelmed me, but the musical din on top made me delirious. 37 sounded like a nightclub, but no one was having fun.

Then I saw them-a small group of youthful mourners in casual red and black, bumping and grinding with the fervor of a people who understand the brevity of life. This is the only way I know how to describe it, as I've never witnessed such sweat before; they seemed desperate to revel before it was too late.

I didn't know the significance of their dance at the time, but I could see that it was some how ritual, natural. As people milled about to find their tro tros and taxis, or sell their wares, they were ambivalent to the visceral revelation that the dancers practiced between a fruit stand and a pile of shoes.

Sometimes it takes an external eye to see the extraordinary in the every day. When ethnomusicologist Steven Feld came to West Africa from the University of New Mexico (U.S.), he discovered a funeral ritual unique even to Ghana and greater Accra.

The La Drivers Union Por Por Group, a band formed from the historic tro tro drivers union in La (Labadi), accompanies the funerals of drivers with antique, squeeze-ball car horns. Though the horns are somewhat limited tonally, they create a rhythmic and delightful cacophony over West Africandrums.

But Feld was particularly drawn by the marching format of the Por Por funeral. At funerals for La drivers, the union marches and performs in a manner that perfectly mirrors the brass band funeral marches in New Orleans, Louisiana, the birthplace of jazz in the U.S. When traditional jazz musicians and important community figures pass in New Orleans, brass bands hold public marches with gloves, sashes, music and dancing. Though the jazz tradition is routed in West African rhythm, Feld hasn't seen this particular facet of American jazz culture anywhere else in West Africa.

"You could write the story of jazz and the story of a relationship between Africa and America-between Ghana and the U.S. and also the Caribbean and Europe," Feld told me. "You could approach the history of jazz in Accra in a very different kind of way."

The connection between the New Orleans funeral march and the Por Por funeral ritual provides a good analogy for the different ways Americans and Ghanaians experience music. In New Orleans, the funeral march is a musical tradition for musicians by musicians. But the Por Por funeral is a complex musical tradition by and for a union of people who drive for a living.Music is woven into life and death, even if it isn't a means of living.

Feld is collaborating with Nii Yemo Nunu, an esteemed photographer and oral historian from La, to celebrate Por Por music with recordings and documentary films. Their first documentary film, "A Por Por Funeral for Ashiribie," will debut in November at the Dubois Center. I encourage Ghanaians to check it out; your cultural heritage is your greatest asset.

(Feld with a La tro tro and the family of Ashiribie)

Traveling alone

2009-08-19T11:36:00.001-07:00

After my fellow expats left me last week to repatriate, I moved out of my homey hostel in East Legon and in with Anas at another wealthy suburb of Accra. Moving in with my boss seemed like a good idea (no rent, celebrity access), but I got claustrophobic. His compound is nice, but spartan. When I moved in I left the roosters, boom boxes, and expressive voices that I've become so accustomed to in my Ghana life. My nights in my new home were silent except for the eery croaking of the blood-red, robotic-looking sparrows that dive bomb and peck at Anas' windows in the early morning hours. I think they are hidden camera birds for the Chinese mafia.(Graham K. responds: "I can picture the blood-red bird-bots of Anas' formidable adversaries by combining wistful remembrances of bygone 3D computer games and fragmentary concepts of African aesthetics, sauteed in a pan with Gabriel Garcia Marquez's lyrical prose." Good call.)

I ran away to the North, first to a holy lake with more pen-less children, then to see elephants at Mole. Now I'm in the Northern capital, Bolgatanga. I left my travelling companions on with the elephants. My only friend in this city is the cab driver who picked me up at the tro tro station. I'll join him for dinner soon and break one of my only two Ghana commandments:

1. Never trust a Rasta
2. Never trust a cab driver.

(I should clarify that very few Ghanaians, least of all Rastas and cabbies, have genuine malice for foreign travelers. But many Ghanaians you meet on the street in Accra, most of all Rastas and cabbies, are in search of mutually beneficial situations that they aren't totally transparent about.)

The North is something else. Muslim women drive around bikes and motorcycles like they own the place. The word oboruni isn't in the native tongue. I put up my usual guard that I use in Accra to fend off parasitic Rastas, and then I'm embarrassed to discover that people here have a genuine desire to help me without compensation. Yesterday morning I fell asleep on the shoulder of an old woman on my bus. She couldn't speak English, so I had no idea what she thought of me until she bought me a bag of watchye (rice+beans+awesome) at a village near Mole. We ate together with our hands and laughed.

I've got too much to write and too little time. The blog entries, research papers, and articles are all in the hatch right now, ready to hit the keyboard. I'm backed up and looking forward to a few quiet days dedicated to the pouring of words. Until then: safe travels, happy birthday, save the trees, etc...

Love,
Grace

Undercover Brothers

2009-08-02T13:31:00.000-07:00

Last Friday I followed a coworker into the prostitute-ridden neighborhood near the Circle tro tro station in Accra. He was there, undercover, to monitor the whereabouts of some teenage sex-trafficking victims who worked at an infamous, now-demolished brothel. Police headquarters thought they could free child prostitutes by tearing down walls, but the girls are still at work. I saw them everywhere--young women and teenagers standing idly in the soccer field near Circle. It was a flesh market, and I was a piece of flesh. I could feel eyes measuring me in the dark.

My coworker realized that he couldn't functionally pretend to buy a hooker with an oboruni (white) girl standing next to him. He left me at a fast food restaurant. The restaurant soon closed, and I stood outside in the dark, alone, waiting for him to return from his secret mission. At first I stood down the block from an idle women, but she warned me that I might get my purse snatched if I kept it up. Or maybe I was invading her territory.

I sat on a bench outside the restaurant and fear took hold. Usually the streets here bustle at all hours with hawkers, food stands, and tro tros, but this street was quiet. Every time a figure passed in the dark I felt vulnerable, even though there was a security guard circling the block. A choir practiced in the church across the street-- "Glory inexelsius day-o"-- and I swear the music got louder with my anxiety. And then my coworker came back. While I cowered in the dark, he played pervert and found the new brothel.

After a brief respite to go clubbing in Osu with a couple of NGO boys (another story there, another day), I rejoined Anas' team for an early morning mission. Anas dressed as a cab driver and used secret cameras to uncover a baking flour heist at the psychiatric hospital. I don't know why they brought me along. Everywhere the thief went Saturday morning, there was a white girl with flaming red hair standing just accross the street, gawking. My only guise, so that I didn't blow Anas and co.'s cover, was to pretend that I was a really confused oboruni waiting for another oboruni to pick me up. "My friend has only been here a week, and she is so lost," I told cab drivers and shop owners, every time they asked me "Whereyougoin?" I also told them that I was engaged, and Baptist. This level of detail was unnecessary, but I'm playing dare now, not truth.

When I don't sleep, I dream life. The day is a series of disjointed images that I try to piece together into a cohesive plot, but it still doesn't make any sense. I don't want to leave here any time soon, and all the talk about home from my American companions makes me edgy. Internships end in a week, and then I'm on my own in Africa. Excited:nervous. Anas just put on that shirt he wears undercover as a cab driver.

Honk if you read this blog; I miss you.

An American in Accra.

2009-07-24T06:25:00.000-07:00

(This week's addition of a column I write for the Crusading Guide. The last
three topics: Wacky Jacky, slavery, and Obama-themed reggae. I don't own digital
copies of those, however.)

Maya Angelou drank Club. She came to Ghana half a century before me, with different imperatives and a different skin tone. She had cooler friends than me—Malcom X, for one—and she brought with her a full-grown child. But we drank the same beer.

Long before Angelou became a regular guest on Oprah and a cultural icon for all Americans, she was a radical “Revolutionist Returnee” to her mother Africa. Celebrating the triumph of Kwame Nkrumah, she moved to Ghana in 1962 and joined a community of Black American ex-patriots following the heavy footsteps of W.E.B Dubois.

In “All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes,” Angelou narrates her two years in West Africa in prose laden with personal, political and spiritual insight. While falling in love with her new home, she struggles with her expectations as a Black American—that her return to her ancestral homeland will be immediately celebrated and fulfilling.

The narrative of travel is always more about the traveler than the destination. If the writer is as talented as Maya Angelou, she will still manage to epitomize her locale; in between the autobiography, Angelou hid clever observations on Ghanaian culture and history that I never could have gathered alone, even in country. But “Travelling Shoes” isn’t about Ghana. It’s about Maya. In Ghana she built her heroic arch—a founding story from which she could see her life, her race, and her history with greater clarity.

“If the heart of Africa still remained allusive, my search for it had brought me closer to understanding myself and other human beings,” says Angelou. “The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned. It impels mighty ambitions and dangerous capers… Hoping that by doing these things, home will find us acceptable or failing that, that we will forget our awful yearning for it.”

My search for home in Africa is not as literal. I cannot see my recent ancestors in the faces of my Ghanaian hosts. I will never feel the joy, as Angelou did, of being mistaken for an African, neither will I ever feel the pain of imagining my own family marching towards the shore in shackles.

If I am yearning for home, I am following the creed of modern liberalism, that “We are all one people.” My presumption, true or not, is that I can go anywhere and find some relatable piece of humanity everywhere. Home is in Ghana, if I want it to be. I am part of an idealistic generation of travelers that juxtaposes universality and individualism. We grab our knapsacks with the brazenness of the Old West and the cultural sensitivities of our college educations. We want to help but not to trample on the unique heritage of our destination.

But Ghana doesn’t care what I thought before I got here. Oblivious, the city of Accra persists in its magnificent chaos. The music parts the Atlantic Ocean and synchs with my heartbeat. Women sell plantains from their crowns, and Mentos, and super-glue. The best Chinese food I’ve ever had. The worst traffic. My co-workers are laughing at me but I don’t know why; they speak Twi.

Sometimes I fear I won’t understand this country before I leave it, but I’m beginning to embrace that fear. Maya Angelou and I like the same beer, and we also see the same merit in travel. Two months, even two years, is too short a time to entirely comprehend “the heart of Africa.” But in travel we better understand ourselves, other human beings, and that universal “ache for home.”

For Jesse who can't read this from the mountains

2009-07-19T12:40:00.000-07:00

Between Kumasi and Accra today I read "You Shall Know Our Velocity," one page at a time; between each page gazed off at the lush green and the roadside hawkers. This head cold is making everything a dream, or maybe it's Eggers. The plot, which I won't get into, had me thinking about what I would do without my dependable confessional Jesse Bradford. Contemplating death is such a morbid, stupid, and strangely alluring thing to do when you're on the road. I don't know.

But, as it is, I'm completely out of contact with Jesse. I never get around to sending letters, and he is out of cell-phone and internet reach. So now I know what I would be without real, logical contact with Jesse. I have at least five monsoon-damaged, half-written letters in my purse for him right now that will never make it over the Atlantic Ocean.

That is an aside; I'm actually writing to record a few relevant quotes before I pass on Eggers to someone else in my house.

Hand says: "Stasis is itself criminal for those with means to move, and the means to weave communion between people."

Will says, later: "To travel is selfish--that money could be used for hungry stomachs an you're using it for your hungry eyes, and the needs of the former must trump the latter, right? And are there individual needs? How much disbelief, collectively, must be suspended, to allow for tourism."

I've absolutely had both of these sentiments over the last three weeks. Sometimes travel is joyful and vital. Interaction bears fruit. I have tense arguments with my coworker Zach, a modern day abolitionist, about everything from gay rights to whether white women can shake it (yes, yes). Everyday, we break down cultural misconceptions. And we, Ghanaians and foreigners, weave communion in a million little ways-- in dance, in football, in janky public transit, in eating spicy food with bare hands...

The physical discomfort of the developing, equatorial world only makes the whole experience more visceral. Last week someone slammed my finger in a tro tro door, but no one in the sea of cars and women carrying things on their heads heard me cry out in pain. I held my hand the whole way home, felt my heart beating in my finger, and marinated in humidity. It was fucking awesome.

But I could have fed at least three hungry stomachs with all the money I just spent on internet access. I could have sent every child in Nima (the slum that made me cry) to school for the amount of money I spent getting to Ghana. I don't know what to do with busted cultural misconceptions. Until I can answer that question, change is stuck in my throat and fingertips.

I'm still here, you're still there

2009-07-17T11:52:00.000-07:00

Post week three and I'm in Kumasi, the cultural center of Ghana's Asante people. Which means that we spent the entire day shopping for every imaginable type of traditional textile, sculpture, or trincket. Everywhere we went children crowded the bus. They wanted our pens, our friendship, our money, our patronage, our clothes. I traded my sunglasses for a small toy so that one of the local boys would stop holding my hand and asking me, from the bottom of his heart, why I couldn't give him a pen, a pencil, or maybe my camera. He really wanted a pen, but he'd settle for my camera. Also, he told me that his mother's name is Grace, so I must be his mother. His logic was shaky and possibly facecious, but he totally won me over.

(Ben, do not feel sad that I gave away your plastic sunglasses for mere plastic; I believe the child will sell these sunglasses and use the money to buy pens for school. This is the main item poorer children in Kumasi seem to want. They are in the midst of the Great Pen Shortage of 2009. Please send your pens--the ones you got for free that promote prescription drugs--to the children of Africa. Indirectly, you may have changed this child's life, as he will finally be able to purge his soul through the written word. When he becomes West Africa's most famous poet, he will look back on the micro-sunglass-loan and cry tears of gratitude.)

I'm weary of the guided tour and excited for those three weeks in three weeks when I will venture off of the oboruni path and into--I don't know where yet. Nowhere land. Togo. Nigeria. Don't tell my mother that I might go to Nigeria. It's only because I want to help my friend expose a internet scam called "Sacawa," where tribal "fetish priests" demand absurd, violent sacrifices from greedy and/or desperate West Africans who want traditional religion to double their money. If that sounds crazy, it is.

I'm also hoping to learn and write more about human trafficking here in Ghana, and such project will also require travelling East. But so far I'm all talk. All listen. I've become a useless vessel for information. Everyday I learn things that are tragic, funny, useful, frustrating, uplifting, devastating, or so goddamn interesting that I talk my mom's ear off when I call her and forget to ask about how the garden is doing, but I'm not producing anything in return. I can't bring myself to take photographs to enlighten my peers in the U.S., nor can I settle long enough to research and write quality.

Anas has me split between two offices. At the newspaper office, I often sit around half the day watching "Naliwood" (Nigerian movies) or reading Dave Eggers. Sometimes my coworkers talk to me, other times they say things in Twi and laugh at me. Occasionally I get an assignment that changes my life.

On Monday, for example, I went with another reporter to interview Patience Quaye,

director of the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit at Ghana's Police Headquarters and the official Other Person Obama Mentioned in his speach last Saturday to the Ghanaian parliament. Patience helped write and enforce Ghana's first anti-human trafficking legislation in 2005 (before that, law enforcement relied on child labor and prostitution laws to prosecute traffickers). Human trafficking in Ghana appears to be getting worse-- mostly because of sex-trafficking. An older phenomenon: fishermen around Lake Volta, Ghana's gargantuan man-made lake, buy and enslave children from impoverished families in the region. A newer phenomenon: women are often lured from distant nations, all expenses paid, on the premise of legal work. When they arrive, they are forced into prostitution in a country where they have no friends and no voice.

I was awestruck with Patience. Patience is a good name for someone with a big heart and a constant will to stand up for others. She was in police work for nearly thirty years when the Anti-human trafficking desk became an official unit. She faces abundant challenges: red tape, a lack of resources to deal with the social (rather than criminal) aspects of the issue, and bribery in the lower ranks. "No matter what they do to me," she said, "I will work."

Though her own higher-ups in the police department have been somewhat ambivolent towards Patience's efforts, her work has gained international renown. She represents Ghana at an annual conference for police women (this year in Seattle), and the U.S. Department of State named her a "Trafficking in Persons" heroine in 2007. This is how Obama heard about Patience Quaye.

I left the headquarters feeling the first warm fuzzies I've ever had for a police officer. I got checked, though, when I went to work at my other office. Anas keeps all of his investigative teams at a much nicer office in a more inconspicous part of town. He has two projects: "Team Cobra," his investigative journalism department, and "Tiger Eye," a private investigative team that earns absurd amounts of money to buy spy gadgets for Team Cobra. My work at the office is irrelevant; lately I've been editing reports and secret camera transcripts written in second-language english. The most potent part of my day at the Tiger Eye/Team Cobra bunker is the time I spend speaking with the anti-human trafficking NGO workers stationed in the same office. If Anas' line of work didn't already carry a mysterious romanticism, please know that he works side by side in his undercover investigations with a beautiful and utterly intimidating human rights activist named Tatiana Kotlyarenko. Tatiana graduated from Columbia and started her own NGO in Ghana to end modern slavery. Fucking intimidating. Her employees are some of the most empassioned and intellegent people I've met in the country, and I could listen to them discuss modern abolitionism for hours. I could and I have.

Zach and Hibist are less impressed with Patience, and they described some particular frustrating interactions with the police. Police officers, they told me, are clueless in caring for the victims of human-trafficking, but they also do a poor job cooperating with NGOs that do have the capacity to provide shelter, counseling, and legal support.

This year Anas worked undercover in a brothel run but the Chinese mafia in Accra that had kidnapped a large group of women from China and forced them into prostitution. Tatiana's orginization took on the task of caring for the women until they could return to their country, and the police were unsupportive. They provided security for less than a week before leaving the abused women entirely under the protection of an unarmed organization.

Everything is always more complicated then I think it is. I'm suddenly totally absorbed in an issue that I can't really do anything about, at least not anytime soon.

I have more to write but I've been here too long.

2009-07-13T04:20:00.000-07:00

Talk radio blares constantly at the Crusading Guide Office. The topic of the day is: Obama. The topic of every day is Obama. He arrived in Accra Friday for his first visit to Africa as the "first black man in the white house."

He is a savior to the majority of Ghanaians, especially now that he has chosen to honor Ghana as the new face of democratic Africa. Since the administration announced plans for his visit two months ago, the media here has been totally drunk on Obama.

In the days leading up to the visit, Barack-themed music crowded the airwaves. Black Rasta sings "Ba-rock, Ba-rock, Ba-rock Obama," a song that I've heard dozens of times in the last week. Also, did you know that Barack rhymes with Cadillac? Friday in my bosses car I heard a hip-hop song with the line, "I'm so happy for Ba-rack, feels like I just won a new Cadil-lack."

Everyone was so goddamn excited when he finally arrived. I was out dancing in Osu, the night club district, as his plane touched down, and Ghanaians waved and greeted me with a single word: "OBAMA!"

After all of the fanfare, Obama did an awkward job with cultural formalities. He greeted President Atta Mills upon arrival, but left him standing at the airport while his entourage drove off to the Holiday Inn. As Obama's host, Atta Mills was supposed to see our president to safety at his final destination. I wouldn't have noticed this, but talk radio is all over it.

Apparently, Clinton really brought down the house on his visit to Ghana. He opened his speech in Twi and dressed up in traditional fabrics. None of this from Obama, and he repeatedly mispronounced the name of Ghana's capital city (it's Ah-cra not Ackra). This I noticed.

The speech did contain a lot of important messages for the Ghanaian people and politicians. He flattered them ("Ghana: Freedom is your inheritance") while delivering several heavy-hitting messages (1. You have to work really hard to fix shit here, 2. Don't depend on a single export, stop importing so much shit. 3. end bribery, begin a new era of transparancy...)

Obama's main shout-out was for a Ghanaian investigative journalist named Anas, who also happens to be an editor at the Crusading Guide. Anas does undercover investigations--with hidden cameras and microphones disguised as pens, the works-- to end human trafficking rings in West Africa. I've been shadowing him for the last few days... more on this later. I near fell out my chair when I heard his name on national television.

Better go the internet is eating my money.

Love,
Grace

Thoughts on Ghanaian media

2009-07-07T03:12:00.000-07:00

I started my internship at the Crusading Guide yesterday, and I already have and assignment. But don't ask me about the assignment; it doesn't make any sense. I went to my first press conference yesterday and failed to take good notes or conduct any interviews, mostly because nobody told me I was covering the story. Now I have to write a story about tractor allocation, and Ghana style I am relying completely on a handout from the press conference.

Media outlets here follow different ethical standards. Reporters, who are vastly underpaid, write off of press releases and regularly take bribes to help with transportation costs. While Ghanaian media are far less obsessed with minor ethical breaches, they are far more effective in creating actual change. They aren't afraid of it. They'll muck around and take sides whenever they feel like it. Newspapers played a crucial role in organizing native Ghanaians against their colonizers during the first have the 20th century. As a result, Ghana achieved independence from the British in 1957 with relatively little violence. A pirate college radio station, Radio Universe, gave Ghana a voice during the early 90's transition to constitutional democracy.

Few people get their news from the internet here, but I've never seen so much interaction between public and media. Hundreds of reporters for dozens of newspapers publish stories every day, the radio stations read the stories aloud on air, and Ghanaians phone in to respond, discuss, argue, and rage about the headlines of the day. Not surprisingly, voter turnout is high.

At its best, I concede that newspaper journalism is a glorious beacon for democracy. But usually it's at its worst. Usually I hate writing a press release-turned-article on some cause or event. Usually it takes more than a day of research to speak the truth. In place of the truth, Ghana has a myriad of voices to approximate.

Time to write about tractors.

I totally have diarrhea

2009-07-02T08:14:00.000-07:00

Grace Pettygrove
in the care of Dr. Williams
PMBL 73
University of Ghana
Legon, Ghana
West Africa

The street corners in Accra won't tell you where you are. A mess of villages grew into a city of 3 mil., and no one ever built road signs. The taxis and tro tros, makeshift public buses, clog the streets and storm the shoulders to make time. People sell everything everywhere--in the street, at the market, on the bus-- and nothing is priced.

Ghanaians live a form of liberty that alienates Americans. We think we know free market economics, but the concept is literal here. At the market, on the streets, and in the cournocoupias the women carry on their heads, what you see is what you bargain for. Day to day exchanges directly reflect the value of the product for the buyer and seller. The advertising industry in Ghana is slow coming for a reason; here it is too easy to buy products, not brands, with your god-given senses.

My digital camera, on loan from a Davis Quaker, is burning a whole in my pocket. On Tuesday our program director took us on a bus tour of the city, and we visited a slum in South Accra. The bus crowded the narrow streets with while the other students leaned out the windows with their cameras. Some of the locals seemed angry and disoriented by our presence.

We drove by the "lagoon project," where the government tried to bring European canals into the city but created mucky dumps instead. Garbage and human waste fill the lagoons--I could see people defecating into them as we passed--which have turned into some of the most polluted bodies of water in the world. It's a city planning disaster turned public health crisis.

We got off the bus in Nima, a community of immigrants, to visit a French-English school. The children had prepared an hour of songs to thank us for a meager pile of school supplies we brought as donations. Kids who couldn't afford the school clung to the windows and sang along. I cried because we didn't deserve it.

I feel conflicted about photography. We are journalists, and we believe that knowledge can empower people to make better decisions. But the way we capture information is disempowering as well. The photos we took of that slum will epitomize that community for anyone who sees them, though the photographers were only there for an hour, two at max. We saw and smelled poverty, hugged African children, then left directly for a buffet lunch accross the city.

I look forward to my internship-- to friendship with Ghanaians and a better understanding of my place here. It will take a while, but at some point I will feel comfortable taking the camera out of my pocket. This place is everything at once. Though I'm losing my mind a little (and my lunch, over and over again), my soul is finally returning to my body. I've been off galavanting in other kingdoms, in other galaxies, attending balls at the fortresses of hedonism with the emperors of ice cream. Now I'm back on Earth. In Africa, of all places.

(Post-edit: I went back to the Nima school and took this picture for you)

Accra

2009-06-26T08:08:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Accra, Ghana this morning at 9 a.m. I'm pretty exhausted and overwhelmed, so I don't have much to say now. Lots of people, plantains, etc. More people and plantains than I have seen in a long time.

The first thing I did when I got here was eat mac + cheese and watch a telenovela dubbed in English. The dubbing all had this hilarious, affected Mexican accent. This is definitely an international city, though none of roads have names and the host culture is remarkebly different than in, say, SF or New York. These are really obvious things. I'm tired. You'll here from me in a week, maybe sooner.

Perhaps an Anecdote of a Crazy Woman

2009-04-09T22:21:00.001-07:00

I was driving the bus the other day, and the weather was in one of its lugubrious moods, shifting and playing. At a stop I opened the doors and this short Asian woman gets on, she mutters something vehemently under her breath, indecipherable to me, drops her money into the vault, and takes a seat. Some few blocks later, I picked up a former driver who now works for Yolo Bus. A few moments after he gets on the bus, he stands in the front to converse with me, which I minded because I was in the most reticent of moods, and when people talk to me it distracts me from driving--I begin to see their words in my mind as they escape from their mouths, forgetting that I need to focus on the pavement, the bikers, the pedestrians, the cars, etc. This woman, who sat in the front, asks him voluminously, "Are you going to sit down?" as if she was offended by decision to remain standing. He politely turns to her and tells her, "No, I am talking to my friend." Then some time shortly thereafter, she screams at him, and this echoes throughout the entirety of the cabin of the bus, "FUCK YOU!" My heart nearly jolts, but I cannot turn around to see what is going on for fear of spilling the guts of an innocent pedestrian. She persists in her rage towards this guy, and mutters things at him, when he realizes she is crazy. Though, these are his type of people, those who frequent Yolo. She tells him harshly and loudly, with bitter rage, that she is going to step on his shoe when she departs at the next stop. She gets huffy, pulls the stop request and sits there waiting. She continues to say things to him, of which I only heard, "You're going to die in the next ten minutes," & "You're going to rob the bus driver, aren't you?" while looking at him square in the face, believing that this was the order of events that were to follow. She gets up to stand by the doors, she is so close to me, I thought she was going to inflict some sort of pain on me, but really she was looking out for me by telling me that I was going to be robbed! O bless this woman! As we all stood motionless and let her continue her frenetic agenda. After she got off, some ways down the street she turned around, gave a menacing glare, held it, and shouted, "Call the police! He is going to rob you!"

May the Circle Become Unbroken

2009-04-09T22:20:00.001-07:00

lO! I hOpe nOt.

If

2009-04-09T22:14:00.000-07:00

If there was poetry within me, I'd write it. If there was something within me, I'd feel it. If you guys were here, I'd know it.

Happy

2009-02-21T19:05:00.001-08:00

Birthday
Grace!

This is something special for you:

Listen!

READ

2009-02-17T21:49:00.000-08:00

My articles in the most recent issue of the Oregon Voice.

True story, from my "Evolution, Cooperation, and Ethics" Prof.

2009-02-09T07:10:00.001-08:00

So my professor's friend is sitting on the subway next to this woman, who looks familiar. The guy sitting on the other side also recognizes her. She turns to that guy, and asks him where a certain stop is along the route. He replies, "Ms. Rand, figure it out for yourself!"

I found Mr. Right

2009-01-28T00:20:00.000-08:00

Craigslist Missed Connections, the poem

2009-01-26T23:19:00.000-08:00

If you find there are missing parts,

make parts out of holes

limit yourself to everything:

tambourines could also be whistles

if whistling sounded like

lonesome wind through a metallic forest

Listen!

Myth was made for the modern world

the ancients held their mysticism in caves

ours is in the sky

ours is lonesome wind through a metallic forest

we made these mirror-trees as monuments

to lost art and missed connections

You: all decked out in tinsel

Me: Evergreen, green forever.

Tell me if there is anything I should change. I may be going to a poetry party on Sunday, and I need something dangerous to contribute.

A goat is a seat, if you want it to be

2009-01-23T02:26:00.000-08:00

A maze is like a song. Where the song loses you, and you lose the song. In the middle there is a circle, but in the circle there is no middle. And I do not believe everything I hear, but I hear everything I believe. I think Abraham Lincoln said this. Or maybe Moses. If Moses wore stockings would they be green or yellow? Moses' favorite color was tangerine red. He probably ate oranges with his teeth. His bones are somewhere in this earth. My bones are somewhere in my body. My body is somewhere in a poem. A poem is so punctuated with pillows, that at times you can rest on it. There is a rest in music, sometimes, so that musicians can breath and the people dancing can find their hearts again. When the rest is over the soul can begin again. But the role of the trumpet is still saddling on a mountain and calling to its predecessors, and mother earth is still confused. Father time is getting old, he can never age. And pronouns are all over the place. I saw one once in a bathroom wall, along with many other snotty things. People have so much to stay that they cannot stay in one place. A pontification is a smelly thing. So is a forest. If you put your nose close to the ground you can smell the naked god. If you put your nose close to me, you can smell the forest. And if the forest puts its nose close to me, that's called rude. A bear once clawed at my soul. In the heat of things the wind is rushing hard. Where do all the goings I say do? Is someone at my window? All the atoms in the world know what to do. Tables have order, and you can eat on them. I have eaten a bee. Its stinger is now my arm. Regardless, Walt Whitman will have his feast.

Heraclitus

2009-01-23T02:25:00.001-08:00

Where is the whimsical nature of opposites?

Flopposites? Flip-flopposites.

Universe

2009-01-23T02:10:00.000-08:00

There is water in the universe. Water is funny.

Undulating never increases veritably elongating
reverberating sustainable ensuing. Under
nefarious iterations vary excuses requiring
so exciting. Ugly nematodes inch voluminous earth
roving soundly encircling. Utter notes in verse
every round sound equal.

Unappealing noises intersect vehemently every room
so enormously. Unanimous numbers implode voluminously entertaining recourse supple energy.
Umbrellas not in view
eat really silly energy.
Undermine negativity in vile egress requite song endings.
Um, not interlocutory vultures eying resplendent, surrendering, ellipses.

Under not including vast earth rock surprise everything.

About Journalism...

2009-01-22T14:44:00.000-08:00

It's stressful all the time. We don't just talk to people and write about it any more; there is all this other shit to deal with: video cameras, digital audio records, external microphones, interviews set up through emails (why did I say: "how about we meet somewhere in the MU," instead of "how about we meet near the ticket office in the MU?" That would have made the email exchange much shorter.) I'm stressed out because I have been able to write since I was six but what will really get me published is learning today how to use electronic equipment that I have never messed with before and will never be able to afford.

Happy Birthday World

2009-01-21T01:12:00.000-08:00

Martin Luther Kake

Martin Luther Kake Jr.

Sometimes I Pretend I'm a Bird Fluttering Around the Room and Finally Escaping Out a Window...

2009-01-14T12:42:00.000-08:00

Sans and Cans

2009-01-12T02:49:00.000-08:00

I remember finals of last quarter: sweeping through the library at midnight looking for a place to sit amongst the masses of heads plugged into their seats, iPods and computers; late night studying; red bulls; trashcans full of red bulls; red-eye nights that burn into next morning; coffee pouring into the soul and the exhalations of cigarette smoke evanescent from the mind. The compressed week of suffering, struggling to get the last fact into my mind. Reading frantically, trying to possess the spirits of academia, so that literally they would course through the veins in my brain. That with every thought, I would not be thinking my thoughts, but that of calculus, organic chemistry, metaphysics. I certainly did not want my own thoughts--of what use were they to me when all I had to do was perfunctorily do a task, the one required of me by my professor. Or whatever aggressor was clinging fast to my heels--perhaps some intangible figure, the ouroborous, time, stress. And without thinking I did these things that I was suppossed to do. I performed, gave, at whatever level was needed.

But now comes the cycle anew. The snake shall bite & digest its tail once again. Though, perhaps this time, mastication shall be somewhat more sweet and slow. It eat shall not be one of malicious mastication--but a savory and sapid experience. Let us stretch our experience even to that of a delectable epicurean one, where we try to unfold the mold and break into a new one. Where, at the end, we are not clambering & making an attempt to hold our body parts together. For surely, we will eat them, piece by piece.

So, I make a warning to divine in the leisure, and repose at a time. But, remembering not to forget our duties (whether they be personal or academic). For every season should be taken advantage of, whether it be inside or outside.

And I bid you luck my friends. Though, some of us may be half a fort's night into our academic career for the Spring, and other's begin tomorrow: I say to often stop for no damned good reason at all. I say to do anything for no damned good reason. And if you have a good reason, well damnit, do it!

You guys are my arms, and you're holding my heart together.

2009-01-08T19:58:00.001-08:00

Y'all have some serious password changing to do.

Yeah baby, so cute

2009-01-05T00:20:00.000-08:00

I did get a response.

still missing the connections

2009-01-03T17:41:00.000-08:00

Twist it

I Define, You Eat!

2008-12-14T11:23:00.000-08:00

News break!

Erudite college students save the world through 'intelligent' and 'benevolent' procrastination!

You too!

http://freerice.com/index.php

Most legit procrastination ever!

Creepy things I do when I am alone in a computer lab at one a.m.

2008-12-08T14:47:00.000-08:00

bop it

I was trying to finish my photo essay when I had a sudden urge to join in on the craigslist "missed connections" fun.

I found this at the library

2008-12-07T01:45:00.001-08:00

fuck me…where do I start…
writing is never innocent. I know I am supposed to scratch at the surface but where the hell do I begin. Iknow that I want this paper to fulfill the requirements of post colnialsim, but its more than that. Once I ventured into the realm of the cowboy things changed the landscaped blurred. A mirage? This I dea has been bubbling up inside since I was a little boy I played make believe cowboys and Indians since I can remember as an actor I was’cast’ as the cowboys playing innumerable sheriffs, deadbeats, deputies, and drunks. And npow as a critical thinker I find myself right back in the wilderness, tracking the cowboy through the pocostcolonial landscape. In a qualititiave reseanc Richardson write that writing is never innocent. Ani’t that the truth. If I’m going to track this cowboy oi have to do it right. I have to bring in my mess. My biases. My story.
I woke up in the middle of the night in this strange hotel room with my father. He was a traveler a wanderer of sort. He picks me up weekends and we’d drive. That night we were in a hotel room in Oglala Nebraska. I woke in the middle of the night and the TV was still on emitting the images and sounds of an old western. As I focused on the TV, I began to make out the forms of a cowboy and Indian movie. There was a battle going on George a Custer wand hi troops were marauding through an Indian village. The whites had outsmarted the Indians because all of the braves were away tracking the whites. The Calvary slaughtered innocent women and children. A woman was shot down from behind as she tried to escape a white man on horseback. A young Indian boy had his eye shot out while he was hiding in his teepee from a random bullet. These images have never left me. I grew up on the plains of Nebraska and South Dakota. All my young life I played cowboys and Indians. I roamed the backyard and alleys of small midwestern towns with an imaginary ores and plastic six-shooter by my side. There was a lot of pretend killing and dying. The cowboy represents a significant period of my childhood of my history and his image occupies a space in my imagination. The wildnest of my childhood fused wit hthe wildness of the frontier the two became one in my imagination. little did I know that the whole construction of this make-bellive world was built on top of a colonized past. A “complex cultural artifact of how the west was won” I took up the role of colonizier without an afterthought. A complex colonialial history became a backyard performance. And my contention now is that the cowboy was staged to embody and rationalize the greater historical performance. Of genocide. By both choildrenn and adults.My embodiment of the cowboy became an He is a compelling archetype of an American national hero and the most popular historical and mythological character from our countries past and despite the disappearance of our countries literal frontier the cowboy has continued to live on. The cowboy’s mythos plays a significant role in the history of masculinity and still exists in the American male’s quest for new frontiers. One of these new frontiers exists in the theatre…The cowboy occupies space in our cultural imagination he is always there the frontier experience lives in us. It is in our movies and plays. “Go west young man” there is something to the American experience that has not been fulfilled we always moved west trying to find something. The frontier became a rejection of old Europe it belonged to us. And the most dominant character of the frontier was the cowboy. The boundaries blur between the real and the make believe that is why the cowboy found a home on the stage. The purpose of this paper is to explore to scratch the surface of the cowboy discourse. First not only did the cowboy colonize the land he also colonized our imagination. Second a frontier now exists in the theatre. There is playing space limitlessness to the playing space which allowed the cowboy to be acted out. Something happened t other cowboy in moving from the frontier to the stage.
The cowboy discourse posits that the real world of the cowboy embeddedin the audience the representation of a meta-narrative of false represesentation of the hyper-masculine white male. It considers that the imaginative play of myself as a boy implicates myself in the colonixizng process and the staging of the cowboy indiian battle by the likes of Cody implicates the audience as viewrs of theis genovicde. The potential for embedding whiteness into the frontier imagination is a huge deal from my oral history. The playing of cowboys and Indians functions as a dramatized allegory of colonialism it mythlolgized the very real mess of the wild west.the fromntrier of the wild west merged with the popular imagination the mythologized frontier came to stand for the generic form of coloniazie ism. It is a history play and a victor play.fshioning ourselves and “others”

The is a cowboy discourse which examines the frontier in the imagination of American culture this myth has not died it persists that America is uniquely individualistic and progressive. There is an importance of the frontier mythology that has been embodied by the cowboy. The most popular entertainment version of the frontier myth was created by cowboy and show man buffalo bill Cody. Cody played upon the cultural imagination and sensationalized the west as something that was conquered with the horse and rifle. Cody’s theatre provided the landscape for the western drama in both fiction and Hollywood. In every drama of course there has to be conflict…there has to be a problem and for Cody this became the Indian for Cody the conquest of the Indian was central for his telling of the West. In examining Buffalo Bills Wild West show a postcolonial countered discursive argument presents itself in examining how Cody used/depicted the American Indian. The genocide of the American Indian had to be shown in a different way whites became the victims…and the cowboys became the heroes who had to deal with the savages. Conquerors being turned into victims became a troupe of the frontier experience and the symbolic importance of Custer’s last stand reinforces the myth. Cody conquest of the Indian depicts a wider history. The confrontation between whites and Indians on the western frontier is set within the context of a colonial power structure that only allows for violence as a means of communication across the racial and geographical frontier.
“The colonizer’s falsified stories have become universal truths to mainstream society, and have reduced Aborignal culture to a caricature. This distorted reality is one of the most powerful shackles subjacating aboriginal people. It distorts all indigenous experience, past and present, and blocks the road to self-determination.”
Indian as savage: killed
Indian as exotic: staged
Indian as exhibit: staged
Similar troupes a can be found in the staging of the American Indian sexually the power struggle between the colonizer and the colonized is played out in westerns by the representation of female captivity the representation of Indian captors increasing emphasized sexual violence. Once the sexual boundary was crossed by the Indian n on a white woman or a white woman who decided to live with the Indian as in dances with wolves an ethical boundary was crosses as well. The cowboy was then there to save the woman who was held captor by the savage. Sexual contact across the racial barrier threatened the whiteness of the expanding America nation and wit hit the colonizing power of whiteness.
Indian as friend: tonto

The frontier narrative has become an official ideology. The hegemony of the cowboy discourse has developed into an official ideology that has been appropriated by politicians, advertisers and art-makers and anyone who feels the need t invoke the iconic mythology of the cowboy. The frontier has ended up as widely dispersed intellectual property.

The frontier is a liminal space a space is also in the theatre where audience and actor collide. A cultural contact zone is set up in this frontier this boundary this luminal space functions as a space of transformation and transcultural space the frontier is a space where normal laws of nature and culture are suspended. Where the sky touches the land. It is also a space where world views collide and meet. The cowboy ventured into this space to tame to bring law and order to the chaos and the Wild West show embodies this struggle.

2008-12-06T17:45:00.000-08:00

I wish I had a good reason to subscribe to the "Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus," or perhaps the "International Journal of Lower Extremety Wounds."
It would be especially satisfying to somehow cite both of those journals in the same research paper.

I miss you both! And, to respond to your phone inquiries:

2008-12-01T22:33:00.000-08:00

Favorite color in the morning: Jesse-face
Favorite color in the evening: Ben-face

Tomorrow's Breakfast Today

2008-11-24T22:07:00.000-08:00

"Boy are we hungry."

"But it's Monday night! How can we have breakfast right now?"

"Can we possibly...into the future?"

"A time machine!"

"Jesse, I'm hammered!" "Ben, I'm screwed!"

"We're ready!"

"AAAAaaaaagghhhhhhhh!!!!"

"Tuesday's breakfast!"

"nom nom nom nom!"

"We're going back to Monday!"

"Tomorrow's breakfast is going to be great..."

2008-11-21T12:15:00.000-08:00

Dear friends.

Sometimes we read things that are truly marvelous. We should share them. Look here.

jb

Friends and Dead Ends

2008-11-18T12:43:00.000-08:00

Hello Friends!

Today was a very uninteresting day in my plant sciences lab. However, you will probably disagree after you read this. We went to the arboretum and our professor led us through a tour of the gazebo...where that person hung themselves (allegedly?). But I got to drive those super secretive Ford Econoline 350 vans. They are completely white on the outside and have a "CA EXEMPT" license plates. Anyways, then we went out to the grapevines and did some pruning. And on our way back I started to wonder, as I always think while I drive; & having no friends in that class all I can do is think to myself. I have from time to time try to utter a quip here and there, but nobody seems to hear or bother to notice. Everybody is stuck in this zombie-boredom state.

While I was driving this van, I was lamenting my situation of having no friends in this class. When we were pruning, I had decided that I really wanted to talk to this girl. I did, and I said some funny things here and there to which she lauged, and I commented on her shirt. (It was the White Rabbit, by the way, from Alice and Wonderland.) But that was the extent of the conversation. So, I began to think: what kind of a silly idea is it to put a bunch of strangers in one room and have them cooperate together? Who can enjoy this type of experience. A war of minds and mentality. Who can be the most sterile and timid! This diffidence that washes over us in the midst of the other unknown minds: what they might hold, what consequences they might unleash on us. Granted, perhaps I am being dramatic. Well, I thought of a solution to this congregation of isolated minds. We should only be allowed to have classes with friends or enemies. In either case, there will be a medium in which to converse with your classmates. With friends there is recognition, and comfortability with one another; the same exists with enemies, except that there will be fighting, but at least something will go on. Yes? Yes? Not like in the present situation where you are either doing stand-up comedy or reading your eulogy. In the former, you can't really have a cohesive conversation with these people, so you make remarks hoping that someone will laugh. But the jokes are disconnected and will never lead up to a conversation, because that would bring strangers our age too close together. In the latter case, if you can't make jokes, then you have to talk about yourself. However, nobody knows what to say about you or how to respond to what you say about yourself because they don't know you! So, you end up orating your own eulogy. A most pitiful and hopeless of situations.

Why don't people want to talk to each other? Especially students. We are all taking classes, dealing with the same conflicts of life, looking for a good time. What is the business of all this shyness and distrust?

Back and Fork

2008-11-16T22:25:00.000-08:00

Hello friends,

I'm back in New Haven, returned from Ithaca NY, the land of ghastly gorges. Apparently Cornell has one of the highest suicide rates of any college, and many of them are committed by jumping off the numerous bridges that surround the campus. The water at the bottom of the sheer cliff walls is either muddy or clear (or bloody) depending on the temperament of the weather and the student body. The first day I was there, it eked by in a clear trickle which Eli and I listened to while we talked about our sadnesses and joys. The next day it rained and the streams turned into terrible torrents of coffee-coloured muck. Cold enough to be slush, or a coke slushie. I heard the story of a man who was a Cornell alum who came back after he graduated just to jump off a bridge and kill himself. When I heard that I could only think of salmon. I did not get the job I was applying for, but it did not sadden me enough to take my destiny into my hands and toss it off a bridge like a handfull of tattered flowerpetals.
I am sort of playing with the idea right now that children do not ever make things, but only discover them. That before a certain age, the concept of I made this does not really exist, but is replaced by the understanding of discovery. Adults make sandcastles. Children discover them: inside their buckets, under their shovels, inside a pile of sand. Do children ever sign their artwork without some adult telling them to? If you have any thoughts or contradictions I would be most interested to hear them.
Grace, I hope you bought that tambourine, and I hope it is not tamboring, but rather, tamexciting! And WHOA! I love The Dirty Projectors!
Ben, I'll be home this saturday. Get ready for 2/3 of a Summer 2008 reunion!

jb.loves.you.both

2008-11-15T12:25:00.000-08:00

Wizzard Gizzard, Lion-Tamer
Grace P., Big-Talker
Jesse Parris, Navel-Gazer

Dolly Parton's Sustainable Femergy

2008-11-13T21:49:00.000-08:00

Workin' Lady

Sometimes I fantasize about Dolly Parton being my mom. And then I remember that I already have a really cool mom, so I imagine Dolly as the sassy aunt I never had—the one who took me to buy tampons for the first time and gave me a shot of consolatory whiskey afterwards.

The dream started two years back when I picked up my first Dolly Parton album at the public library and realized that, out of all the super-cool ladies I know, Dolly is the feminist I most relate to.

Not that I look, talk, or sing like Dolly Parton. She is probably the only feminist who has (publicly at least) plasticized her body, and the only feminist I can think of who sings songs about skinning mules. At first glance, she is not even a feminist. She looks like a Barbie, and her Appalachian twang makes Sarah Palin sound like a New England aristocrat. It takes more careful analysis to see the obvious truth: Dolly Parton's folksy exterior masks her subversive plot to demolish the patriarchy.

The most overt example of Dolly's feminist-agenda ("femda") is her 1980 secretary-revenge flick, "9 to 5," hitting Broadway in April of '09. The storyline, which involves a group of working ladies poisoning and holding hostage their sexist boss, is straight promotion for gender-equality in the workplace.

"9 to 5" (the song, album, movie, and Broadway musical) is an anthem for second-wave, upper-middle class feminists from your mother's generation focused on equal pay for equal work. Dolly embodies the emergence of powerful, self-made women in the media during the 70s and 80s. Despite her unassuming "woops I'm famous" demeanor, Dolly has ingeniously constructed music to fit popular trends over the last forty years and created, among other businesses, her very own theme park. ("My one wish for you during your visit to Dollywood," she says on the park website, "is that the wonder of the Great Smoky Mountains will touch your heart.")

But DP was also a third-waver way before the third-wave broke. While women in the 70's liberated themselves by emulating men and buying pantsuits, Dolly stuck with the cinched waste and slathered on blue eye-shadow.

The third-wave reclaims the feminine identity. In interviews, Dolly explains that her look is modeled after a ridiculed, "trashy" woman she admired growing up. Because Dolly Parton is clearly an angel, her appearance defies limiting definitions of a "good woman." It can also be interpreted as a form of female drag; the blond bouffant is a creative representation of inner-eccentricities that Dolly was forced to repress in her pre-Nashville days.

Dolly has always had an enormous fan-base in drag, and her support for the LGBT community was confirmed in 2005 when she contributed to the "Transamerica" soundtrack. In an interview with Paste Magazine, Dolly gave advice to men seeking womanhood. "Well, I’d just say buy shoes that are comfortable and buy boobs that you can sleep with. Don’t get ’em so big that you can’t roll over."

Dolly Parton is a big-tent Christian in a cult of inclusiveness. Her recent compositions have taken on a tone of sugary idealism, with sweeping messages of hope and grand gospel finishes. Channeling Richard Simmons, “Better Get to Livin’” is aimed directly at the depressed, middle-aged woman demographic, with an inspirational music video that features fellow third-waver Amy Sedaris. I want to hug my mom, go to church, and run for president all at the same time.

The Global Femergy Crisis

Once a refuge for the downtrodden, disenfranchised, and broken-hearted, and a source of outspoken independence—think Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Loretta Lynn, and Wanda Jackson—country music lately has been nothing but a brainwashed festival for white pride and a campy glorification of redneck culture. Not that the camp wasn't always there. The bad hair and lowbrow wordplay is half of what motivates me to seek out Conway Twitty records at Springfield antique shops.

But seriously, y'all, where's the love? In 2003 hordes of country music fans, and some musicians, rioted en masse, bulldozing cds and threatening bloody murder, all to defend President Bush from the Dixie Chicks. There is a very serious lack of actual female musicians, not just label-owned songbirds, in modern country music. Occasionally there is a feeble attempt at female empowerment, like Shania Twain's "Man I feel like a woman" or Lee Ann Womack’s “I hope you dance,” but these attempts lack actual substance and, worse, are unbearably cheesy. These songbirds may look a whole lot classier than Dolly, but they ain't got class.

At this point Dolly Parton is hardly human, in the physical sense. She admitted to Oprah that she routinely replaces parts that don’t look right anymore, so she is well on her way to becoming a plastic cyborg. But if Battlestar Gallactica has taught me anything, it's that our humanity isn't defined by our physical reality. Robots are people too, and Dolly Parton is more woman than any of us.

Dolly Parton is never going to die, which makes her a sustainable source of femergy. Dolly is the sun. She has always been here (srsly, she is like 70), and it is about time we start relying on her more.

2008-11-13T09:37:00.001-08:00

I am working on an article titled

"Dolly Parton's Subversive Femergy."

Pray for me!

2008-11-12T01:24:00.000-08:00

I guess tambourines are hot right now!
I think I'm going to buy one.
tambourine dream

Today's survey:

What is your opinion of this religious tambourine?

Do you think it will have a good sound?

Is it worth twenty dollars?

Compost

2008-11-11T19:20:00.000-08:00

Grace,

I am doing a research paper on compost & I just can't stop thinking about your compost pile (I mean, just generally, there on your kitchen counter, it's brewing form and decomposing self). But, I remember that you were plagued by flies and this book recommends a remedy! So, here it is:

"Sawdust place in the bottom of the container absorbs the juices of the garbage. An occasional sprinkling of limestone or wood ash helps prevent odor, discourages flies from laying their eggs, and neutralizes the acidity of the raw garbage."

Hope that helps!

I hope you and Jesse are doing well!

FUn gaMe!

2008-11-08T09:48:00.000-08:00

Hey, I'm making a playlist of pairs of songs in which the first song references the band of the second song. So like, I was wondering if you guys had any favorite songs that reference other bands who are also good. attack your brains!

Berman

2008-11-07T10:04:00.001-08:00

Grace! and Ben,

You know how you were all about David Berman, and love the Silver Jews and interviewed him and everything? We'll I just got this Silver Jews album called "Tanglewood Numbers" made in 2005 That is really amazing and also has Steven Malkmus on it. Yes! So I'd never really listened to Pavement or any of Malkmus' other music before but I just picked up this solo project cd that he also made in 2005 called "Face the Truth" and I think its amazing! I don't know if you've heard it before but you should really check it out. Are there other good/better Silver Jews albums besides "Tanglewood Numbers?" The band Why? (who are amazing!) have this line in their song Good Friday: "i cried to myself in the pisser, and with you in the front row at the silver jews show, and you act like you didn't notice." I'll definitly put a song or two on my radio show sometime. But yeah, I just wanted to say how I have now become more identical to you by gaining an understanding for something you understand. Pretty soon we can just live in the same clothes. also, I found a piece of philosophy that you may agree with, or at least it seemed you did a year or two ago. It's by Schopenhauer:

"There is only one inborn error, and that is the notion that we exist in order to be happy. [...] So long as we persist in this inborn error, and indeed even become confirmed in it through optimistic dogmas, the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in great things as in small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of containing a happy existence."

Do you still feel this way? either of you? We haven't talked about it in a while. What do you guys want to do for spring break?

Also, Oh MY GOD!!! We just love Alela Diane so much and now everyone else does too!!!

Also, here is a song that is not really that good, but the video made me laugh forever.

2008-11-05T03:20:00.001-08:00

The Dirty Projector's "Rise Above" is a good song for right now.

Grace's Election Night Special

2008-11-05T02:44:00.000-08:00

First of all, Ben and Jesse, I would like to again assert that I love you both, and if California's constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman is ever overturned, we should all get married.

After I "woo!"-ed a lot, biked around South Eugene screaming "O-BAMA," and cried with Oprah and Jesse Jackson, I peeled myself away from the t.v. and cycled 30 blocks to hear Mount Eerie perform at a little cafe in the Whiteaker, Eugene's hippie-pirate neighborhood. There were a lot of hippie-pirates at the show who could care less about the election. Who needs the economic and social progress when you've got cigarettes and coffee, right? Before his last song, front-man Phil Elverum sat on the stage floor curled over his electric guitar and muttered, "Happy new world." Afterwards he realized his sarcasm wasn't totally apparent, and he qualified the statement by adding "I'm a little cynical."
But the song was hopeful. He saw city-lights from the top of the hill; he wanted to shine lights into caves. I imagined MLK's mountaintop speech over the lo-fi melody, and my heart was warm as dryer-lint.

October 29 (Forgot to mention this last week.)

2008-11-03T12:23:00.000-08:00

Today I was studying in a coffee shop on campus where the glazed baristas appeared completely unaware that MGMT's Electric Field had been playing on repeat for the last two hours.
Meanwhile a woman--beautiful, self-confident, and portly--sat with her ethnic-studies professor. They were engaged in elaborate discourse about some artist who may or may not be saying, "in a sort-of dark, post-modern manner, that America is the future." I say discourse because, though they differed on certain points, they maintained an amiable tone that made the whole scene wholly inconceivable. "I took it to mean 'cosmic,'" she said, "but not with the normal connotations of 'cosmic,' you know-- cold, barren, alienation." He nodded, and sipped his coffee.

oh shit!

2008-11-03T01:42:00.000-08:00

Hey Jesse, I think I take back what I said about emusic. I found my downloads history and I can re-download my music! I guess they keep it online for you. So, I'll call you and we'll do it!

Things to say

2008-11-03T00:50:00.001-08:00

Hi guys, I wish I had something to tell you, but I have nothing to say. I feel so unprepared. I'm really sorry about this. Actually, my one notable moment of the weekend was biking home drunk. All I remember was not moving but the world moving about me so fast, and somehow objects managed to pass by me. It was as if someone had taken a picture of whatever-was-up-ahead and I just moved into that picture; that happened over & over & over.

My First Radio Show!!!

2008-11-01T15:57:00.000-07:00

just press play to hear my show and look at this dog.

I am a photo-journalist for Halloween

2008-10-30T13:36:00.000-07:00

I just uploaded my photo-journalism projects on to the course website. Perhaps I will post my actual favorites at some point; the link below will only reveal photos that fit the project theme and look good in b&w.
press here
I would recommend completely ignoring the folder titled "Cluster," because I had shoot some totally mundane campus-related images for that one.

Tattoos

2008-10-30T00:50:00.000-07:00

Also, I have been thinking a lot about getting a tattoo. Although, I never will. I still feel tied to my religion, which seems ridiculous for reasons I cannot comprehend. There are somethings people cannot do, such as extricate themselves from their childhood values and whatever was instilled in them. But I have good ideas, I think. & there is that thought: what could be so extremely important that it merits indelible desecration of one of the most beautiful things on the planet, or maybe the universe: the human body. & besides, somewhere, it is possible that in another possible world I may already have a tattoo, even several! & furthermore, it is also possible that in another possible world someone has me tattooed on themselves; & that my own image is tattooed on myself!

Oh, the glory of possible worlds!

Triangles and Circles

2008-10-30T00:42:00.000-07:00

I was sitting in calculus today (next to a girl whom I could not decide what good looking or not; some people's faces refuse to conform to any rigid contortion or fixed state) and I had some random thoughts for you guys:

(1) Life may be circular, but everything is built on triangles.
(2) Please don't drink and derive: alcohol and calculus don't mix.

The second one was mainly for you Grace. It was on my professor's t-shirt. (Not that you should not enjoy it, Jesse!)

& thanks for the coordinates. I will head over there this weekend and tell you how it looks. It appears according to Walt Whitman that it will be rainy, so I am exciting about getting all dressed up and biking over. I say, according to W.W. because Lindsey Walker, at my suggestion, has decided to include in her morning radio show the weather by Walt Whitman. She takes a quote of his poetry that is supposed to be what the weather is like that day. I think Walt Whitman is the best weather man, he is the man for nature.

Also, I'm not sure if it would work through emusic, there seems to be no place that the music is kept online, since it downloads emmediately to your computer. But we can give it a shot.

emusic

2008-10-29T14:22:00.001-07:00

whoa, Ben. Do you think if I signed into your emusic account on my computer and you signed into my emusic account on your computer, then we could re-download all of each others tracks onto our own computers?
whoa!
jb

Also, here are the graffitti coordinates:
38*34'03.60" N
121*41'04.34" W
Elev. 7m

Google image search: "bohemian"

2008-10-28T23:35:00.000-07:00

Yes, gypsies...yes...what!?

2008-10-27T15:56:00.000-07:00

Oh man, those gypsies probably have knives! I hope all your loving paid off in the form of a sweet paper. I am in a similar quandry tonight as I have to write a five-page paper about 'ART' by tomorrow. Aside from that, there is really no restriction whatsoever, and I feel myself leaning more and more closely to the burning embers of freedom: and wanting to write fiction! But not even that, I just want to lie about myself in a paper. If somebody gives you an assignment to write about art in any form, private or public, personal or factual, historical or philosophical, what else would you do? Wouldn't you want to take artistic liberty in the very act of describing it? I have become inane and sleepy all the time. All I can think about in terms of this subject is a time when me and Michelle went out to perform some graffitti on an unsuspecting fusebox in the countryside. We applied the blue, sky, we applied the gold, sun, we applied the red, blood beating, then some glue, collage. Ha! The Virgin Mary holding severed heads in her outstreched palms! It was too much. I've never gone back to look at it, but maybe we should sometime. Maybe I should just write about what I know best. You know, dance music. It's when I kiss the girls, when I drive fast, when I do drugs and drink too much, when I make friends, when I get naked, when I want to live and die so bad that I mix them together, I lie and dive. But maybe that's not art. How could it be that fun...
Wait! I know! I'm going to write about the picture books I used to look at when I was a likkle child, like Where's Waldo and Richard Scary, and how I got the same pleasure from those then that I now get from, say, Heironimous Bosch or Piter Brugel. word. thanks!

"It was too much for me; my gypsy heart was inflamed."

2008-10-24T01:17:00.000-07:00

I need to start researching but I can't decide who to research. Everyone is so fascinating! First off, there is an endless number of various Gypsy groups-- Sea Gypsies, River Gypsies, Russian Gypsies, Devendra Banhart enthusiasts, etc. And there are other nomads, too, like the Kuchi of Afghanistan. Sea Gypsies would easily facilitate a discussion on primordialism because of their relative isolation and apparently genetic abilities to breath and see under water.
The Cossacks sound violent and thrilling, and perhaps I could read Dostoevsky to deepen my discussion (not for this project, as it normally takes me more than an evening to get through Dostoevsky). The nation of Montenegro, where my new roommate is from, brings up many interesting issues about cultural identity and nationalism. "Imagine there's no country," said our friend, John Lennon. Mr. Boto, my roommate, has lived this imagination, as his nationhood fell out from under him while he was abroad.
And what about the Parsis? Their body-disposal conflict is fascinating, but perhaps not enough to carry a four-page paper. The Kuchi Nomads have more political relevence, though their existence doesn't reaffirm the importance of vultures. And how about those pigeon trainers in Amman? Are they not a tribe? An over-world tribe?
The words "tribe," "gypsy," and "nomad" all have a certain poetic appeal to me, though I have no interest in exploring actual tribes, gypsies, or nomads below surface observations on their foreign and romantic practices. What if we lived in boats!? What if we wore funny hats and rode horses?! What if we played tambourines!? What if we trained pigeons to send our love-letters!?

See Gypsies!

2008-10-24T00:36:00.000-07:00

Sea Gypsies!

IM convo with God

2008-10-21T22:28:00.000-07:00

Grace:

My mom won't call me back. That is just the pits! I was sad about a midterm I bombed, so I called her half an hour ago. And she didn't pick up. But I am completely disfunctional right now, like, I need my mom to forgive me before I can move on,
and she won't forgive me! Because she doesn't know how grave the situation is. I'm going to drop the class. God, tell me it is okay to drop a class.

God:

It is oh kay to drop that shit.

Grace:

College is terrible sometimes. We have to go through all of these outlandish and impractical rings of fire with blind faith that some sort of fulfilling, well-paid job will come at the end. It's like I've been given 50,000 dollars, and if I light it on fire I might win 100,000 dollars every year for the rest of my life. Or I might just work at a health food store. It is Deal or No Deal,
except it lasts four years. Often longer. And I hate that show!

God:

It is a huge gamble but you will get paaaid in the end! ;)

Grace:

I don't believe in gambling. It is totally against my religion. I don't even believe in the stock market. Especially not now.
I don't understand money at all. Some people are thousands and thousands of dollars in the hole, but they live in nice houses.
Others have no debt; in fact, they might have five tangible dollars in their possession. But they live under a bridge. I stress out about money all the time but it's totally stupid for me to do so. No matter how much money I am wasting, I never have to look at it.

God:

Lol

Grace:

I am in that part of society that for some reason gets to waste money and experience no visible consequences.
I really want my mom to call and remind me of that, and offer to transfer 300 dollars into my checking account so that I can go buy myself some ice-cream. I need her to call me because if she doesn't I will not be able to study tonight and I have a macroeconomics midterm tomorrow.

God:

hm

Grace:

Well, I have clearly left you out of this conversation. I should have just written a blog post about it or something

2008-10-18T01:44:00.000-07:00

In the post-"High Fidelity" world, hipsters are often unable to accept world music. But their souls are lacking for it. Everyone needs space to indulge in vague, optimistic multiculturalism.
This music is beautiful, and brings us closer to our true father, Paul Simon.
This music is beautiful. Let's start a tribe and lose ourselves to ancient rhythms!
This music! Beautiful!

Uh, yeah

2008-10-16T23:21:00.000-07:00

emusic says about Yeasayer, "World music goes hipster."

Sunrise

2008-10-16T23:20:00.001-07:00

Yeasayer fucking rocks!

2008-10-16T00:15:00.000-07:00

With an um, You mean(der),
As in I don't quite follow:
For how many of there
Am I?
& what am I approaching?

I think I understand the pigeon,
And lose myself.
I think I understand myself,
And lose the pigeon.

An alchemist once tried to add a pigeon and I,
He thinks he synthezised gold,
But he was a fool,
& so was his gold.

Am I here now.
No, I don't exist.
I did, but you can't find me.

That pigeon is Wallace Stevens,
And Wallace Stevens could not be me.
I do not know who I was.
I do not know who he is.

It is the wave of things
For us to be,
In this up-and-down paradise.

And a poem

2008-10-15T01:44:00.000-07:00

He found a new way to render New York. What a maverick!

New York, New York

A second New York is being built
a little west of the old one.
Why another, no one asks,
just build it, and they do.

The city is still closed off
to all but the work crews
who claim it's a perfect mirror image.

Truthfully, each man works on the replica
of the apartment building he lives in,
adding new touches
like cologne dispensers, rock gardens,
and doorknobs marked for the grand hotels.

Improvements here and there, done secretly
and off the books. None of the supervisors
notice or mind. Everyone's in a wonderful mood,
joking, taking walks through the still streets
that the single reporter allowed inside has described as

"unleavened with reminders of the old city's complicated past,
but giving off some blue perfume from the early years on earth."

The men grow to love the peaceful town.
It becomes more difficult to return home at night,

which sets the wives to worrying.
The yellow soups are cold, the sunsets quick.

The men take long breaks on the fire escapes,
waving across the quiet spaces to other workers
meditating on their perches.

Until one day...

The sky fils with charred clouds.
Toolbelts rattle in the rising wind.

Something is wrong.

A foreman stands in the avenue
pointing binoculars at a massive gray mark
moving towards us in the eastern sky.
Several voices, What, What is it?

Pigeons, he yells through the wind.
David Berman (1999)

Here is the final article

2008-10-15T01:30:00.000-07:00

Silver Jews and Monotonix Tonight at WOW Hall - Pulse

Fire and Ice. Me and "D". David Berman of the Silver Jews

2008-10-15T00:50:00.000-07:00

I had a lot of trouble transcribing this because I was disgusted by the sound of my gushy, hysterical voice. Though I am no Silver Jews Super-fan, it is really apparent in the recording that I momentarily worshipped David Berman as a demi-god.

G: How are you doing today?

D: I’m doing okay. I’ve been on the road six hours now, heading into Los Angeles. Six hours is about my limit.

G: Were you just in Big Sur? Or is that to come?

D: Are you calling from a college near Big Sur?

G: No. I’m from California originally and I heard there have been a lot of fires down there. I was just curious what it’s like now, but I guess you haven’t been there yet.

D: I’m curious too. I heard it was a benefit, and at first I thought, “Well, just let it grow back!” But then they were like “No, it’s for the firefighters.” But otherwise I would be like, “No, it burned down, you can’t get your money back. It’s just got to grow back as part of nature’s process, sorry.” But it should be fun. I have never been part of an American festival, other than Pitchfork.

G: What show have you enjoyed the most on the tour? What makes a really great show?

D: Detroit was the first really good one. Boston was really great. The South East, eh. Sf was pretty great. I change up the set every night, and that makes a big difference. The obvious thing that gets me excited is the excitement level of the people there.

G: You will be coming into Eugene on the Monday after all of the freshman move into the dorms at the University of Oregon.

D: They’re gonna wanna blow off some steam.

G: Exactly. So I’m wondering if you could pitch your show to an 18-year-old who might be unfamiliar with your sound.

D: It will be the first day of school for these kids, basically?

G: Yeah, it will be the first day of school. The first day of college, for some of them.

D: Okay, so, it’s my first day of college. What should I do that night? Well, first of all, you’ve got the nervous people, and the lonely, homesick people. They’re hurting, but they can’t show it. Some of them do, some of them don’t. And then you’ve got the ones who have been waiting to get out of their parent’s clutches for 18 years. They have it in their minds this plan to screw every girl they see, drink every night, and become a member of Ai Kappa Kega fraternity. And then a large range of kids in between. So I’d like to encourage the lonely and the nervous to come seek comfort in seeing a band led by a guy who didn’t know what he wanted to do in life until he was 40-years-old. And the reason I say that is because I know the anxiety of kids going to college. It’s like, they are already starting to worry about, “What am I going to do with my life. Because I have to decide my major and that could affect my whole life.” Which, you know, it doesn’t. So, it’s a perfect thing to come see somebody who didn’t have a major, who didn’t use any of his college learning but was able to educate himself anyway. I never went to a guidance counselor, yet I made it myself, did well in school, but did it my own way. I got out of college and I moved to N.Y. and I became a security guard at the Whitney Museum. I figured I wanted to be some kind of artist, but I didn’t know what kind. I didn’t know whether I was supposed to be a poet, or a musician, or what. And that just went on for years.
It’s a good thing to come and see, instead of, you know, “What College Can Do For You.” Come and see what irrationally following your instincts, doing what you want, not what your family wants, enduring conflict along the way… And come and see, I’ve got a good-looking wife, I’ve got a band… It’s a good message. It would be good for me to have all of my college friends who were hounded into marriage and children early in life and have them up there with me. Not to say that there is no happiness in that. But right now I suggest that people stay free agents. No organization or corporation will ever show any loyalty to you. No field of study will either. You have to be your own. Be your own category.

G: Cool! That’s a great message for freshmen. I wish someone had said that to me.

D: They have those speeches at the end, at graduations. But really I could get into the practice of going around and giving speeches to freshmen on the first day—a sort of anti-valedictorian speech. Maybe I’ll do this at the beginning of the show on Monday. I will deliver an anti-valediction.

G: Yeah! I’m sure there will be a lot of freshmen there. I hope they hear that. Will your wife be with you on stage?

D: She will be performing with me. She’ll be with me, so I’ll have all my evidence on stage—that you can be a dork, and you can win.

G: Who else?

D: The band is the band from the last record and most of record before. The first band I’ve played with regularly. It’s not the sloppy Silver Jews. I have a full band so I can just walk around with the mic and sing along. It’s more fun that way.

G: Does everyone in your band live in Tennessee?

D: Everyone’s from Nashville, so we can all get together and rehearse and record.

G: How does the environment of Nashville affect your music?

D: Nashville is a place where if you’re familiar with the history, you see it all around you. You are at the coffee shop and you know that the warehouse across the street is where Neil Young made Harvest, or where Townes Van Zandt rented a room. You know these things if you educate yourself about them. It really is a nice place to live because people aren’t always talking about it, like when you go to Memphis and everyone is like, “Here’s the map I’ll show you where Chris Bell died and here’s Ardent Studios and duhduhduh,” In Nashville, so many things have happened in so many places that it’s not narrated or documented. The past is really alive. They’re dying off more and more, but people from the 50s and 60s—you can still see them live on lower Broad for no cover charge. I usually listen to WSM and that’s an education every day. The modern practitioners of country music really don’t get it. There are scholarly types all around. But for the most part those people really don’t get it either. There are experts in country music who really get it, but they don’t live here. So to be educated about country music and live in Nashville really gives you a sense of proprietorship to “the scope”—what is happening in country music now and what has happened in the past. It’s sort of like being an archeologist living in Israel. I like that. It is a tradition that’s as interesting to me as Hasidic folklore, if not more. I don’t think people are doing enough with the tradition, except mimicking and parodying it. For me it’s material for artistic projects. It strikes and incites my thinking…

G: Who have you been listening to lately?

D: We’ve been in a car, and we’ve been listening to a lot of Johnny Paycheck, Jeannie C. Reilly, and Public Image. Mostly silence. We’ve decided we all like that.

G: Have you toured at all with Monotonix before?

D: Oh yeah, we’ve played with them everywhere. When we played in Israel they basically hosted us, and I was really blown away by them. So when I came back to the states I told Drag City about them and said “this band, this band, this band.” And for a year I really hassled them about them, and finally Drag City put out their first e.p. And really, you couldn’t ask for a better opening band. It’s totally likely that a whole group of freshman will come and be totally blown away by Monotonix. And be satisfied and then leave. A normal Silver Jews show with them opening is funny, because a certain audience comes in, nostalgic, and while their waiting the opening band just happens to be an intense, out of the blue, ripping experience that they did not expect. And while most bands wouldn’t want to go on after that, for me it’s perfect, because it sets the stage. First of all, it makes everyone smile. You can’t watch a Monotonix show and not be in total aw. I don’t want the audience to come in serious, saying “Oh I’m going to see the Silver Jews. You know, David has been mentally unstable and I’m nervous for him.” Or “What if it’s bad?!” [Monotonix] warms things up so I don’t have to deal with misconceptions. Also, none of my credibility rests on my ability to rock, so, you know, they can rock the hell out of the club. They’re twice as loud as we are. Most opening bands... Like if you open for Sonic Youth, there is going to be a guard watching over the sound person, you know, with a gun, making sure you don’t turn it up too much. No rock band lets the opening band be louder. But for us it’s perfect.

G: I’m really excited about the show. I saw Monotonix a couple years ago and I saw that they were opening, and then I realized I should go see the whole show.

D: Oh yeah, it’s like, a total fire and ice experience. You get one kind of thing and then the other, and it’s just…great!

I wrote this poem for Ben and Molly, to thank them for visiting me. I wrote it a long time ago, but I would like to hand it over now.

2008-10-14T22:46:00.000-07:00

We take a long time to grow up but,
in the process,
We are princes and,
in our late ordination
the Naked God affords us many adventures
Unturned by kings

Restless

2008-10-14T18:23:00.002-07:00

I'm restless now like I've never been before. Maybe this is just what happens to people who live in a place where more than one road leads away from their door. This feeling was worse last week, but luckily I knew exactly what to do. I bought a bike. Some guy on craigslist (who I later found out was named mike, and who was very strange and sketchy and mumbled over the telephone and looked at the ground a lot when I met him and wouldn't give me his exact address or take a check which made me afraid that maybe he is a tool for an upscale bike-theft conglomerate who pitch their illicit wares to unsuspecting college students) was selling it. It's really nice: black frame, skinny wheels, single speed (not fixed gear!), blue handlebar tape, and light as a feather. When I finally had it in my hands I rode all around town, found an abandoned warehouse with a gate left open and did laps with no hands around its weed-woven parking lot. I've been riding up and down the hills of the nice neighborhoods around Yale and running errands with the utmost efficiency. I never feel as self-sufficient as when I have a bike-seat gripping my groin. A bike is so alive on its own, that I can hardly think of it as a possesion, a commodity. It's not like I just purchased a bike, but more like I adopted an amazing pet that takes me on its back and flies me through the streets. Now when I look at a map of New Haven, my eyes move to the peripheries, the parks and lakes, railroad tracks and bridges that most Yale students don't even know exist. There is a state park called East Rock less than a half-hour walk from campus, yet most people I've talked to have never been there. I think that what most people think is stress is actually just a result of too much gravity, a lack of simple machines. The wheel! The wheel! The wheel! The wheel! The wheel!
I was just at a digital literature reading by Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries! They came all the way from South Korea to present their work and answer questions. Tomorrow they'll be in my class and I'll actually get to meet them. They are wonderful people and very thoughtful. I really like this one piece of theirs: http://www.yhchang.com/THE_SEA.html
But really they are all amazing. At the reading they presented some pieces that are not even on their website. I'll try to find them somewhere on the interweb.
love,
jb

2008-10-13T01:09:00.000-07:00

I haven't prepared anything, so watch this. I read about genocide all evening for my comparative tribalisms class, but watching this clip from the Tyra Banks Show is the closest I've come to understanding the mob mentality.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOR4qekHWla&feature=related

I also just discovered the word "atavism," which refers to the behavior of reverting to ancestral tendencies. It is used to describe violent political situations--as in, "Mugabe exploited their tribal atavisms"-- and to describe certain medical conditions, such as human tails-- the idea being that the body occasionally reverts to old, pre-evolutionary DNA. I think the term could be accurately applied to the behavior of people receiving free things on national television.

I will post the interview with David Berman as soon as I pull myself together.

I went to new york and i liked it!

2008-10-12T12:46:00.001-07:00

This is Me, and this is Cassidy, and this is Some Guy.

Circle is the Sir Cool

2008-10-10T00:23:00.000-07:00

That poem was great! I love circles and circles love I. I think they have no choice? I'm glad you're writing, I hardly even think about it anymore. Though, I have become more and more excited about writing songs. I have actually written two short numbers, one of which I really like the lyrics (although, they need a bit more fleshing out). However, I think short simple lyrics are great, too.

Well, one goes:

Are you the destroyer? Are you the destroyer?

Are you the destroyer?
Waking up my mind?
Are you the destroyer?
In everything I find?

I think they are directed towards the sun and the moon. I still cannot relinquish the notion that the world is malicious, or mother nature in general is harboring some sinister unconscious plan to consume us all in some burdensome and toilsome end, even with all the bountiful beauty that encompasses me in my life. It's like a minor melody, which is so passionate and moving, yet brings on the lament that one cannot seem to bear. In my favorite poem, "Choric Song" by Tennyson he discusses our relationship with nature and the toiling and laboring of life. The entire tone of the poem has this deep lulling, as if almost near death--a sleep that will never end, a dream the body cannot bend. In the second verse he says:

Why are we weigh'd upon with heaviness,
And utterly consumed with sharp distress,
While all things else have rest from weariness?

He depicts nature as callous, yet he also tries to show its magnificence: and somewhere we may fit into this picture? Anyways, it made me things of circles and the cycle of things. Especially, the alchemical symbol the Ouroboros. The most common interpretation of this dragon eating its own tail is: unity. That the circle completes, becomes full and is in harmony (with something?). Rather, I look at it as more destructive. Now you have an animal that has turned to irrational, futile behavior: eating itself, rather than fullfilling itself. So, that made me think of your poem.

I bought Hissing Fauna (etc...) & I love it! I wish there was a way to upload files on this thing? Anybody now if there is a chance? Also, I would vote to keep this private, I somehow doubt that anyone would find it.

Silver Dues

2008-10-09T16:45:00.000-07:00

Oh grace!

Give us your interview! Can you put it on here?

Dead Western is Live Eastern!

2008-10-09T16:31:00.000-07:00

Hey peepholes,

I know I told one of you, but did I tell the other one? Dead Western is coming to Providence Rhode Island and I think I'm going to go see him! He's playing with this really amazing other band called Snowblink (www.myspace.com/snowblink). Oh, also you should listen to this girl that I met at the WYBC radio station. She goes to yale and is cool, but is also an amazing musician. Check out www.myspace.com/laurazax to listen. I just re-arranged my room last night and it feels amazing now. i wish i had a camera sos I could put a picture on here. But I got my first full paycheck from my job today and I took it out on the town. We bought some painting supplies together! paychecks are so much fun to have around! I think I might want to get an internship at This American Life someday (soon?). I think its really competitive but it would be so much fun. I feel like working for a show like that would be the solution to my constant desire to make a living by living. It's like you just go talk to people and then show their lives to others. It's like being friends with the world! Here's a poem I just wrote:

We try to be tribal
To beat drums and laugh in a round
We try
To whip soft peaks in water
And milk cream straight into the bucket

Am I a circle?
Are you the world?
Am I a circle?
Are you the world?

We try to fit a choir
Between upper lip

and bottom

Can we sing our own praises?
Who better?

Trying is our joy, I say.
“That’s okay with us”

I love you because you love yourself

And I trust you.

Maybe it's good. Whatever. Do you think we should leave this blog open for anyone to see or should be set it up so that only we can read it? I guess nobody could really find it anyway. Well, till next time,

Jesse Parris

Also

2008-10-08T16:27:00.002-07:00

I think this is a fantastic way for us to communicate! You guys are the roots and branches of my tree!

&

2008-10-08T16:27:00.001-07:00

How did you find me in this inexplicably wayward labyrinth?

A Venn Diagram

2008-10-08T16:23:00.000-07:00

A venn diagram is like a sandwich. Please be nice to it & make it tasty.

Dear Jesse

2008-09-25T08:58:00.000-07:00

From the biography of the Silver Jews.

"At the time, Berman and Malkmus were guards at an art museum and Nastanovich was a bus driver."

A link to Graham Kolbein's Dr. Dog interview.

http://futureshipwreck.com/2008/07/dr-dog-scott-mcmicken-trains-tea-and-time-travel/#more-207

And don't forget that David Berman is also a poet. Poet Waifs, Art Gallery Employees, Bus Drivers, Indie Music Savants.

Thanks for adding me, dear. I will post something more complete after I finish the interview with Berman and snail-mail you your letter.

Love,
Grace

Hi

2008-09-24T20:07:00.000-07:00

welcome, grace. Maybe you got in already! You should jeck this out. Jeck it out!

www.thejewsdaughter.com

crazy shit.

Love,
jB