Report back from Iraq

Sami_Home
Originally uploaded by Ravenmn.

My good friend, Sami Rasouli, is returning home from Iraq next month. I created a flyer for the report back he'll be giving on June 21. It makes it so much more vivid to have someone you know and trust tell you what they've seen and heard.

Sami is currently working for an Iraqi human rights group and has been to many of the areas affected by the war.

I just watched the movie, Guerilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst on PBS. I was profoundly affected by the entire Patty Hearst incident, but in ways that aren't normally talked about. I was a senior in high school when she was kidnapped, seeing my friends getting killed or warped by their experiences in Vietnam. Two years into the story, I was a journalist and waited with baited breath for the two-part story that Rolling Stone did about William and Emily Harris and Patty Hearst hiding out in Pennsylvania. I was in southeast Ohio at the time and everything seemed so close and immediate.

The webiste that PBS set up is hilarious. You can find it here. I'm thinking if the SLA had ever had the kind of production values PBS put into their little web sitelet, they might have won a few advertising awards!

I took their little "What's your bag" quiz and here's the result:


Authoritative Activist

You continue to speak out for what you believe is right, as part of a left-wing social justice organization. You've found a life partner who is a kindred spirit. The whole Nixon debacle affirms that the political system is corrupt, and you find yourself saying, "I told you so" to all those who doubted your earlier criticisms. Maybe now that Vietnam is in the past, the country can evolve -- you are committed to working for change through peaceful means. The Sixties might be dead, but the spirit of activism keeps on truckin' in the Seventies.

Well, that's only because the answers I wanted to provide weren't available, of course.

If you watch the film, I recommend you also listen to an interivew Terry Gross did with the film maker and a journalist who covered the story. It is available here. It does a good job of explaining how the timing of the Hearst kidnapping made all the difference. It was the first time journalists were able to report from the scene. They camped out in front of the Hearst mansion and competed with each other for coverage of the distraught family. The shoot-out in L.A. was the first life coverage of such an event. The media was so as much a part of the story as anything the activists or the authorities attempted in the whole affair.

I hope to write more about this soon.

I've been doing lots of reading lately. Good mysteries.

I just read Denise Hamilton's Sugar Skull (2003). I read Hamilton's The Jasmine Trade a year or so ago. Hamilton's main character, Eve Diamond, is a journalist who investigates interesting aspects of life in Los Angeles. The Jasmine Trade was about children of rich Asians who are sent to the U.S. for high school. The parents never actually live in L.A., they just pretend they live there so their kids are eligible for school. The kids are set up with maid and housekeepers, but are basically left to fend for themselves. This leads to chaos, of course, and Hamilton does a good job of describing a world unlike any I'd known.

"Sugar Skull" is about Latino music culture in Los Angeles and also about rich kids who get off on hanging out with homeless kids in urban hell holes. Again, Eve Diamond gets involved in a world unlike any I've known. What I like best about these novels, of course, is that everything has to do with class. In the U.S. we pretend there are no classes, and yet when we scratch below the surface, we run up against the consequences of class.

Hamilton has two other books, Last Lullaby and Savage Garden that I'll add to my list of what to get next.

Next up, I read three books by Charlaine Harris. I'd already read several Lily Bard books based in Shakespeare, Alabama. Bard is a fascinating woman whose life was transformed by a brutal kidnapping and gang rape. She survives, but in the process she murders her abductor and becomes a media celebrity. The pretty obvious subtext in these books is about how a survivor's live is affected and how one goes about re-establishing trust and healthy relationships after such a brutal event. Bard is a cleaning lady, which allows her to become intimately acquainted with her neighbors and also helps her to solve the rather-too-common murders that occur in her neighborhood. Shakespeare is like Sunnydale, CA, from Buffy, the Vampire Slayer -- you have to accept that nobody seems to notice that horrible things seem to happen in this small town and people still choose to live there.

This past week, I read Shakespeare's Trollop and Shakespeare's Counselor. The writing is sure and involving. I don't want to stop reading and I always am left with the "and then what?" feeling when I'm forced to put the book down. Bard is a woman worthy of respect, but also deeply flawed in a way that's easy to relate to. I look forward to reading more.

What was surprising, however, is that Harris has branched into the vampire world with her Sookie Stackhouse series. I read the first book, Dead Until Dark. We meet Sookie, a working-class waitress in a small-town bar. Vampires have just come "out of the coffin" with the explanation that their condition is actually the result of a virus and therefore a medical problem (ala alcoholism), rather than being actually undead. So learning about real-life vampires has a sort of voyeuristic appeal and fascination. Sookie, of course, ends up with her very own vampire lover who is the archtypical broody man of mystery. I'll definitely read some more of these books. Harris's vampire books are pitched as Anita Blake-light. I tried to hang onto Laurel K. Hamilton's Anita Blake vampire series but got really tired of reading the same book over and over again. In that light, Stackhouse is a fun and enjoyable alternative.

At the moment I am reading The Librarian by Larry Beinhart. It's about a presidential campaign against a strikingly familiar spoiled rich boy who grows up to be president. So far, it's hilarious and interesting. I'll write more once I've finished reading.

Pinko Commie Cosmonaut!

Well, this proves it!

You scored as Communism. <'Imunimaginative's Deviantart Page'> Socialist 100% Communism 100% Green 67% Anarchism 58% Democrat 58% Fascism 17% Nazi 0% Republican 0% What Political Party Do Your Beliefs Put You In? created with QuizFarm.com

mother's day march

mother's day 3
Originally uploaded by Ravenmn.

Just uploaded a few pictures from last Saturday's Mother's Day march. It was a great turnout considering the drizzly weather. Also, it turns out there were two or three other progressive marches last weekend, so the antiwar movement had several choices to express their sentiments last weekend.

mother's day
Originally uploaded by Ravenmn.

My job for these events is to create the flyers (see below). Once I get to the event, my job is to do several crowd counts. This is not only to keep track of our own activities, but also to have some honest numbers for the press. Local news organizations got into big trouble for underestimating crowds several years ago and ever since then we've been building the reputation for honest reports on turnouts for our events. In the second picture, that red-draped figure in the background is me, after performing the third crowd count of the day. I was on my way to the front of the march so that I could do a count of people entering the church. As it turned out, there was only one reporter at the event. I called and spoke to her a couple of hours after the march and gave her my numbers. She agreed to the wording "over 250 participants" after I gave her all four counts.

Additions to the blogroll.

Today I've added one of my favorite blogs, Wood's Lot, to my blogroll. I've been reading this blog for several years. Every day there is at least one link that inspires and teaches me something. Yesterday there was a link to a Michelle Cliff article about reclaiming forgotten history. Fascinating story about the lies we tell ourselves about the past. Here is an excerpt:

How do we capture the history that remains only to be imagined? That which has gone to bush, lies under the sea, is buried in the vacant lots of big cities.

In my mind I erect a scaffolding; I attempt to describe what has not been described. I try to build a story on the most delicate of remains.

I traverse the American landscape as someone foreign-born, as a writer, a novelist, as a woman who has fallen in love with this country—certain that this love demands accountability. This love impels my search into America’s past.

Wood's Lot contains links to art, poetry, fiction and philosophy. Sometimes the subjects are way beyond my comprehension. Often I learn about painters, photographers and poets I've never known before. Often I am reminded of writers that have influenced me greatly (Joy Harjo, Michelle Cliff, etc.) and I find wonderful links to articles I haven't read before.

The second addition to my blogroll is Sappho's Breathing. The webmistress is a graduate student teacher of feminist moral philosophy. Lately I've been reading through her archives and coming upon topic after topic of interest.

Catching up now.

Last Saturday was the Mother's Day March for Peace. About 275 people showed up on a warm rainy day. There were songs and a reading of Juliet Ward Howe's Mother's Day proclamation at the Peace Garden, then a march over to a church for a snacks and a program. The program was terrific -- all women and all reflecting on the war and its effects. The first speaker, a teacher, spoke about the affect of the "No Child Left Behind" act and the lack of funding for schools. The second speaker has a son in Iraq and talked about war and its effects on her family. The last speaker was a state senator who immigrated from Laos and talked about war as it affected her own life. All were fantastic.

I got a call to work at the bookstore Saturday afternoon -- from 4 to 8. I picked up a stack of Andrea Dworkin books to reread.

Sunday we drove down to Mom's to enjoy a Mother's Day brunch together.

Yesterday I went to a program on Wal-Mart and its effects on workers and neighborhoods. One of the neighborhood activist was an architect whose viewpoint was from how buildings impact on a community. He spoke of the troubles the Midway neighborhood had trying to make sure the big box stores moving in had windows, lights, etc. They had to fight to encourage them to face the street with foot traffic and transit stops. The big boxes, born on freeway exits, still orient themselves toward the freeways, despite moving into urban areas that have different realities.

Today I'm catching up on chores and reading.

Baby owlet

Livecam1_owlcam_00488
Originally uploaded by Ravenmn.

Here's a shot of one of the baby owls from the Xcel center site (see link in post below this one). Momma is the huge mass on the right (both head and tail are out of frame). The second owlet is that furry white thing in the lower left corner. It's shots like this that make me smile.

I get an inordinate amount of enjoyment by watching live bird cams. Our local energy conglomerate has a slew of them at this site including nests for owls, eagles, osprey and several peregrine falcons. They are all roosting on eggs or taking care of babies this time of year. The owlets are just plain silly looking and make me laugh whenever I happen to get a good look at their faces!

Yesterday, I met with Craig Cox to pick up several copies of his book Storefront Revolution for the bookstore. His book is about the "co-op wars" in Minneapolis that happened just a few years before I became politically active here in the late 70s and early 80s. Co-ops are still around and still struggling, and people are curious to know more about the history.

After work I went over to the U of M to join in a student-organized protest against the new plan to phase out General College. Nine protesters were arrested after sitting in at the President's office. The issue is about class, pure and simple. General College is the only access that people from the community have to the University. The U wants to attract top research scientists from around the world, which is a worthy goal. But they've decided they must cut off access from the local community in order to do it.

Tonight, I went to St. Paul to hear Liza Featherstone talk about her book, Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Women's Rights at Wal-Mart" at Macalester College in St. Paul. The author is not a gifted public speaker, but the book, of which I've read the first few chapters, is quite good. She's onto something with her analysis of consumer culture and what happens in a world where citizens are turned into consumers. More on this issue once I've finished reading the book.

I just finished reading A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson. I picked it up at my last book group meeting. It is a quick read and quite hilarious. Bryson decided to walk the Appalachian Trail one summer and his account of the event is hilarious. Not a champion athlete, he managed to plow through several hundred miles through sheer stubborness. In fact, the successful trail walkers seem to embody a combination of sheer grit and lunacy that would be out of place anywhere else in the world. I lived on the edge of the Appalachians when I went to college at Ohio University and I vaguely remember fantasizing about walking the Appalachian Trail. After reading the book, I recognize that the trail is a symbol of something purely American and wonderful -- the urge to appreciate nature, the willingness to help strangers, the code of the trail. With so little community left in this world, it is a joy to read about it in Bryson's book.

------

Yesterday, May 4, was the 35th anniversary of the Kent State massacre. I lived in Ohio in 1974 and the memory of that day was still alive at that time. In this day of cynicism, it is hard to understand how much that day affected people my age. We didn't realize just how callous our politicians had become. We didn't understand the depths to which Richard Nixon and his cronies would stoop to gratify their personal ambitions. Those soldiers who opened fire on their fellow citizens had been convinced by Gov. Rhodes, the mayor of Kent and the president of the University, that the innocent students they were firing at were evil infiltrators bent on destroying their way of life. Why did Rhodes and his gang stir up such hatred? Purely for their own personal political gain. They won, too, in the short term. But our country lost so much that day. I can't experience May 4 without feeling that draw -- that memory of betrayal and profound sadness.

And speaking of sadness, I am still profoundly affected by the death of Andrea Dworkin. 20 years ago I spent my life working day and night against violence against women. I understood then that there was a war against women in this world. The women in combat -- those on the front lines -- were living in a war unlike any we have glorified in our combined social conscience. The front line was the home -- the battle was between individual men and women. The personal is the political and once you are touched by that truth, there is no going back.

What Dworkin was then and will continue to be is an anchor for the rest of us. The horror of what happens to individual women at the hands of individual men in this country is sometimes incredibly hard to bear. But Dworkin bore it and refused to back away. She was our standard-bearer. She stood out front and suffered the slings and arrows -- the lies and distortion -- and never flinched. It made it easier for the rest of us, knowing that she was there, standing up for all of us. I want and I need to write more about this amazing woman.

In time. In time.

Ravenhub had me ROTFLMAO Saturday morning as he pretended to be a cable news reporter following the story of the "missing" woman who turned out to be a runaway bride. It had just been learned that she had not been kidnapped, there had been no danger or crime -- she just needed to get away -- and apparently VEGAS was the proper place (oi vey!)! As Ravenhub so aptly put it, the prestitutes went on and on about how "betrayed" they were. "I feel so used!" Ravenhub whined. "I've been violated!" he added. Yeah, right, you fuckheads!

In a totally unsurprising web meme, I discover that I am not a Republican:

I am: -12% Republican.

"The Marxists are too reactionary for you.  With people like you around, America collectively thanks God for John Ashcroft."

Are You A Republican?

I'm finally recovering from a busy weekend. Saturday I had a meeting of my book group, followed by my shift at the bookstore. Sunday was the annual Mayday Parade. This event is sponsored by In the Heart of the Beast Puppet Theater and involves large puppets, a parade made up of community members and lots of fun. From the web site:

The 31st annual MayDay Parade and Festival will be Sunday, May 1, 2005 beginning at 1:00 p.m.
HOBT's MayDay Parade and Festival is eagerly anticipated by thousands who flock to the parade route and ceremony site to join this joyous spring ritual. For many, this is the highlight of the year, as they donate countless volunteer hours needed to bring beautiful and fantastic puppets and floats to life.

The 31st annual MayDay Parade and Festival will be Sunday, May 1, 2005 beginning at 1:00 p.m. HOBT's MayDay Parade and Festival is eagerly anticipated by thousands who flock to the parade route and ceremony site to join this joyous spring ritual. For many, this is the highlight of the year, as they donate countless volunteer hours needed to bring beautiful and fantastic puppets and floats to life. Click here to see this year's MayDay Park Entertainment Schedule.

Held on the first Sunday in May, MayDay is a testament to COMMUNITY. Immense joy is generated as thousands of people work towards a common, energetic purpose.

After the puppets, various community organizations, etc., there is the Free Speech Zone in which politics can raise its ugly head. This year I marched with Women Against Military Madness and handed out the flyers I made for an anti-war protest on June 30. The weather was typical Minnesota "spring" weather: include snow, sleet, patches of sunlight, winds and rain. By the end of the day I was tired, but happy.

For dinner we went out to Stillwater where my uncle and aunt provided dinner. My mom was staying over, after flying back home from visiting my bros in California. A wonderful evening with family and friends.

05_06-30-05_Iraq

05_06-30-05_Iraq
Originally uploaded by Ravenmn.

Update to the flyer I did yesterday. The previous version had the date above the circle and under the ANTI-WAR PROTEST headline. Ravenhub missed the date -- especially with the time and location being below the circle. So I moved the date down with the rest of the location information. It's cool.

You Know You're From Minnesota When...

The weather is usually 80% of your conversation. When you say "down south" you're referring to Iowa. You call highways "freeways." Snow tires came standard on your car. You've never taken public transportation. 75% of your graduating high school class went to the University of Minnesota. "Perkins" was the only hangout option in high school. You assume when you say "The Cities" people know where you're talking about. You can list all the "-dales." People from other states love to hear you say words with "o"s in them. In a conversation you've heard someone say "yah sure, you betcha" and you didn't laugh. You could pinpoint exactly where each scene in the movie "Untamed Heart" was filmed. You hate the movie "Fargo" but realize you and your entire family have that same accent. You get mad at people who think Fargo is in Minnesota. You know what Mille Lacs is and how to spell it. You have fish boiled in lye for Christmas. You know what "uff-da" means and how to use it properly. You know the 2 sports-related reasons why we hate Dallas. Nothing gets you madder than seeing a Green Bay sticker on a MN car. The only reason you go to Wisconsin is to get fireworks. You're a loyal Target shopper. You've frozen your tongue on a metal handrail before. You own an ice house, a snowmobile, and a 4 wheel drive vehicle. You wear shorts when it's 50 degrees outside in March, but you bundle up and complain in August when it goes below 60. You have gone trick-or-treating in 3 feet of snow. You've not only walked across a lake, you've driven across one. Everyone you know has a cabin or, at least, access to one. You know that Lake Wobegon isn't real and you know who made it up, where they live, and exactly what you want to do about it. You have friends who schedule their wedding in the middle of January without a thought about weather conditions. You consider a six inch snowfall a blessing for "the cities" because it provides instant urban renewal. You keep the snow tires on your truck all year because it ain't worth taking them off for only two months. Your local Dairy Queen is closed from December through February. You believe the only REAL vehicles have skis in front and a loud motor under your seat. You consider snow banks to be "just another rough" on the golf course. You have worn shorts and a parka at the same time. You were delighted to get a miniature snow shovel for your 3rd birthday. Your town isn't trying to be ironic when it plans a "winter carnival." The temperature in March is above freezing for three days in a row, and you think it's summer. You laugh out loud every time you see a news report about a blizzard shutting down the entire East Coast. You think happiness is owning a "piece of lakeshore." You never meet any celebrities except The "BODY" You know what and where "Dinkytown" is. When you talk about "opener" you are not talking about cans. You have refused to buy something because it's too "spendy." You believe that the Vikings would have won four Super Bowls by now if they were still playing in Metropolitan Stadium. You are convinced the Twins will never win the pennant because the owners are too cheap to pay the good players, so they all leave. Your town has an equal number of bars and churches. You grew up thinking rice was only for dessert. You think that ketchup is a little too spicy. Your gas station thinks "full service" means filling your gas tank, washing the windshield, checking the oil and being friendly to the customers. You (or your parents) voted for Mondale. You've seen "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" in Uptown. You know that everyone has a city preference -- Minneapolis or St. Paul. You can honestly claim Germanic / Scandinavian ancestors, and have been known to say "ya" instead of "yes" Upon seeing an ocean for the first time, you say, "Hey! That looks like Lake Superior!" You actually get these jokes and pass them on to other friends from Minnesota.

Get Your Own "You Know You're From" Meme Here



More cool things for your blog at
Blogthings

05_06-30-05_Iraq

05_06-30-05_Iraq
Originally uploaded by Ravenmn.

Another flyer for another anti-war event. Big doings this weekend, including the Mayday march, so we needed to get the word out.

The Iraq: end the occupation NOW! is a type treatment on a button I found on the web. Maybe I can make larger signs as well.

Enjoy!

Oy vey! This is where the intellectual mafia hangs out and tries to meet each other: The London Review of Books personals:

Example:

Woman, 43, would like to meet a man – any man – whose evolutionary path isn’t that of Homer Simpson. Suspecting that’s too difficult, I may go lesbian. Box no. 08/10

Bi-zarre! I love to challenge my mind and will subject myself to more extreme levels of intellectual hair splitting than most people I know. But there are times when I can clearly see the vast gulf between my life and the life of an academic intellectual! :)

On the other hand, I have greater respect for those who can skillfully executive various crafts: including skillful operation of a machine lathe, skillful manipulation of a bandsaw, and/or skillful execution of graphic design through digital means. Which brings me to a great series of events in St. Paul.

The St. Paul Public Library's series: Untold Stories is a free program celebrating Labor History Month. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a calendar of events on-line. I have a printed copy that I will retype if I can't find a decent link. The first event is Thursday, May 5, so there's time.

On a sad note, I went to a memorial service for a local activist who recently died of breast cancer. Damn, that makes me angry. She was good people. The service was distinctly odd: focusing only on a portion of her life and neglecting to encompass the entire life of goodness and activism that was Mary. It was very strange. I am quite sure she's raising a ruckus wherever she is today.

For sheer joy of life, I copy here, for those without access to the L.A. Times, a great

story about a street poet:

April 21, 2005

COLUMN ONE

Happy to Feed 'Em a Line

Whether reading for old ladies or young radicals, poet Colin McIlvoy keeps the meter running on the streets of San Francisco.
 
By John M. Glionna, Times Staff Writer

SAN FRANCISCO — Old ladies prefer love poems. They stand frozen on the sidewalk staring into space as though listening to faraway music, letting Colin McIlvoy's spoken imagery wash over them like whispered compliments.

To a 60ish woman wearing a purple hat, he reads the Margaret Atwood charmer "Variations on the Word Love":
  
 … This word is far too short for us, it has only four letters, too sparse to fill those deep bare vacuums between the stars that press on us with their deafness.

The woman announces that her knees are weak.

"Read it again," she says. "Once is not enough."

McIlvoy knows his audience. He knows that mothers and daughters like nature themes and will wait quietly through a five-stanza walk in the woods. He knows young radicals want shock treatment, outlaw verse with hip-hop immediacy. Hammer me, they say, with a bruising blow. Or an insult.

And McIlvoy complies. On days off from a community organizing job, the 20-year-old New Mexico native packs a dozen dog-eared tomes into an oblong red toolbox and takes to the street. He assumes a spot in a middle-class neighborhood called West Portal Village, just over the hill but a world away from counterculture Haight-Ashbury, where poets and philosophers rule the roost.

Outside a Charles Schwab brokerage office, he posts a sign announcing that all his offerings are free. Then he patiently solicits passersby to disengage from their cellphones and big-city routines and appreciate an all-but-forgotten public art form.

"Like to hear a poem?" he asks. "It's not a very long poem."

People pass as though hypnotized, their eyes downcast, shoulders tense. A few make eye contact, but most shake their heads.

"You sure?" he says to a dog-walker. "How can you turn down free poetry?"

"No time," the man says.

"I'm very, very busy," says a woman in a stoplight-red jacket.

One person in 10 stops, like the lady with a leopard-skin purse who pauses for Pablo Neruda's "Ode to My Socks."

As McIlvoy reads, he looks up to catch the woman's eye, sharing a private moment on a public street, before resubmerging into the ocean of words:

The moral of my ode is this: beauty is twice beauty and what is good is doubly good when it is a matter of two socks made of wool in winter.

"That's lovely," she says.

The troubadour sees opportunity. "Want to hear another?"

She hesitates. "Why are you doing this?"

"No one reads poetry anymore," he responds. "I want people to have poetry in their day. It's a hobby. People build model airplanes. I read poems."

He writes them as well. But McIlvoy — who calls himself Mack — never reads his own work. Instead, on an average day, he'll read 40 poems by contemporary stylists such as John Updike, Billy Collins, Rebecca Bagget and Heather McHugh.

McIlvoy is no poetry jukebox. He reads poems he likes. Sometimes he'll even offer to feed a listener's parking meter to win a few more moments. He takes the occasional request, like from the woman who asks: "Hey, you got something to do with wisdom? I need a wisdom fix."

There's no artistic pretense to McIlvoy's poetry performances — no pseudo-beatnik berets or bohemian dress. He drives a decidedly un-hip white Oldsmobile with Illinois plates his grandmother willed him. He wears Oxford shirts, and his hair is cut schoolboy short. Many people assume he's a missionary.

Sometimes, the poet hits his mark — as he does with the woman who rushes past mumbling before wheeling about to hear two poems.

"I can't believe I just said 'No' to a poem," confesses Cecelia Wambach. The college math teacher is leaving for Prague and is crazy with final details. But how can anyone, she asks, be too hectic for a quiet moment?

"We run the globe with glazed eyes but don't have time for each other," she says. "I almost walked past a free poem. But I want to change. This is a start."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

McIlvoy has a strict rule for the 100 poems in his street-reading repertoire. He likes them short, never abstract. Funny or sad, they must hit home instantly, like breaking news.

The son of a novelist father and a psychologist mother, McIlvoy began making up poems before he could spell. He winces over how poetry is taught in school, where works chosen for analysis are too often dense and make most teens view poetry as they would Latin: as a dead language.

After studying architecture at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, he canvassed in 2004 for presidential candidate John F. Kerry. For months, he went door to door asking for campaign contributions. He stood on street corners and hit up passersby. All the while, he read verse to fellow campaign workers.

"I have this bad habit," McIlvoy says. "If I'm around my friends long enough, they all know that eventually they're going to hear a poem."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

His curbside readings began last November, when he read bursts of verse to friends canvassing for an environmental cause in West Portal. He also stopped a few strangers and found he liked engaging people with poetry. Canvassing made him practiced in the art of the sell, prompting a name for his endeavor: the poetry canvass.

The poetry reader has taken his verse across San Francisco. In pricey Pacific Heights, he's knocked on doors, saying, "My name is Mack. I don't represent any group, and I don't want your money. I just want to read you a poem, and then I'll go."

He has also read poems in Bayview Hunters Point, the city's poorest neighborhood — once approaching five youths throwing dice on a staircase. From "The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry," he read "I Am the Bomb" by Mike M. Mollett:

I am most wise.

I play for keeps.

I am the unimaginable.

I have not been created for nothing.

When he finished, McIlvoy recalls, nobody said anything. The poet turned to leave.

"That's cool," one kid said, not looking up. "Read another."

McIlvoy follows a long tradition of believers spreading the word on poetry. Experts know what he's up against.

"Poetry is the poor little match girl of the arts, but at least that girl was selling something useful: a match that can light a cigar," says Billy Collins, a two-time poet laureate of the United States. "But what do you do with a poem? It's useless. That's why some people love it and some people scratch their heads: Why do they need it?"

Collins has pushed to publish verse on buses and subways and persuaded an airline to briefly feature an in-flight poetry channel: "To read poetry is to join the community of human feelers, because a guy writing an Italian Renaissance poem felt exactly what you feel when a girl leaves you."

Yet even a poet laureate sees limits for the art form's mass appeal. "Lots of cool things have small audiences," he says. "Like jazz and collecting tropical fish."

Still, Collins applauds McIlvoy's guerrilla tactics. "He's ambushing people, and I'm all for that: poetry coming out of unexpected places. I like the way he apprehends people. Like a stickup man."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

McIlvoy performs in a culture with too little privacy, where solicitors hassle people at home and on the street. Some see his act as just more public noise.

He describes how, when he approached a couple, a woman snapped: "Can't you see we're here talking to people we really want to be talking to!"

Another woman climbed into her BMW and observed: "You know, this really isn't working out for you. You need to get a life."

Others welcome the intrusion. Liz Burnham, 42, who works three jobs yet describes herself as an "anti-establishment slacker who walks on the beach and does a lot of yoga," recites for McIlvoy one of her own works: a heroin-related riff on a nursery rhyme she calls "Mary Had a Little Smack."

Then she adds sheepishly: "That was a bit too punk, huh?"

McIlvoy meets people with too little time — and too much. A homeless man with unruly blond hair heckles him regularly. "He hated the poem I read him," McIlvoy says. "He insists that I should be reading Shakespeare."

A college theater major complained that his readings showed too little passion. Still in the thrall of a McIlvoy love poem, a woman returned with a valentine. When a streetcar passed, drowning out a poem, George Shoblo wanted to hear it again.

"I've always got time for a poem, that's just me," says the 63-year-old hairdresser. "God gives you unique little experiences. It's as simple as that."

McIlvoy is still learning to read his audience. As he was reciting nature verse to a 9-year-old girl and her mother, he said, the child pointed to a John Updike work called "Dog's Death."

McIlvoy advised against the poem, saying it dealt with sadness and loss. "You won't like it," he said.

The girl insisted. So McIlvoy read — he and the mother finally fighting back tears.

In the car to the vet's, on my lap, she tried

To bite my hand and died.

I stroked her warm fur

And my wife called in a voice imperious with tears.

Though surrounded by love that would have upheld her,

Nevertheless she sank and, stiffening, disappeared.

McIlvoy said that when he was through, the girl looked at him and sighed. She said she loved the poem.

Your Inner European is French!

Smart and sophisticated. You have the best of everything - at least, *you* think so.

Who's Your Inner European?

"Habemos Popa."

After a week of deathwatch for John Paul II, a week of funeral ceremonies, and a couple of days of conclave, a new pope has been named. The word is Pope Benedict XVI is conservative, hardline and a blast from the 18th Century. Same old same old.

Our entire media has been "All Pope, All The Time" for weeks now -- which is all out of proportion to the amount of Catholics in the U.S., in the world, etc. Why all the attention? Have we all become religious? Have Catholic values become "common sense"?

Nope. It's all about power. The old guy had power and the new guy will have power. How that power is translated into the world is of concern to world leaders. But is it going to make any difference in your life or mine? Not hardly.

I've spent the last few days reading Cynthia Enloe. She's terrific at questioning assumptions and examining power relations. Reading about feminist analysis of world events while watching this uber-masculine Vatican spectacle has been a curious experience. When you look at the amazing Catholic clergy who have made a profound difference in the world: people like Archbishop Oscar Romero, you can see that not one of them was represented at the College of Cardinals. A bunch of bureacrats picking the head bureacrat. And we have to see this on the news day after day.

Forecast is for another week of this obsession, until Benedict is formerly installed, and then the media can go back to its regularly scheduled spectacles. Praise be.

I attended a local conference called Globalization, Modernities and Violence on Friday and Saturday and my mind became filled to the brim with interesting perspectives, ideas and hope. Speakers included: Cynthia Enloe, Rashid Khalidi, Naomi Klein, Mahmood Mamdani, Vandana Shiva. If you visit the conference site, you can download whole chapters from the speaker's books to get a feel for the fantastic thinking these people bring to questions of international relations. The conference was well-attended, despite the unfortunate name. It sounds like postmodern mumbo jumbo. I'll try to write more later and provide links. The people I had read the least: Mamdani and Enloe, turned out to fascinate me the most. So I will have to do more research.

I was up late last night thinking and reading. Today I have been napping pretty much all day. Finally, I convinced Ravenhub to go for a walk with me just as the sun was setting so I hadn't wasted the entire day. It's a warm, calm night after all-day rain yesterday. The trees are just about to burst out in their finest green dress. For the past couple of days they've been in that bizarre state that allows us to still see the brown and black skeletons, but the tips of the branches have their first open buds of bright green. Instead of looking black or green, the trees look blurry. With the rain and warm temperatures, the transformation will take place this week and winter will be a memory.

Last weekend was very busy. On Friday I saw the play "In the Mirror" by Pangea Theater. It was directed by Dupankar Mukherjee, the man who directed a play I was in last year. The play examined media, but not in the superficial ways that have become popular in the blog word: love/hate Dan Rather, celebrity profiling, etc. There's a pretty good review here. I enjoyed the show and it has stayed with me over the past couple of days. Not bad for a couple of hours on a Friday night.

Saturday night and Sunday I went to events sponsored by Veterans for Peace. The local chapter brought in one of the co-founders of Iraq Veterans Against the War. Jimmy Massey spoke about his years in the Marines. It brought up memories of talks I'd had with returning Vietnam War veterans 30 years ago. Massey wanted to talk less about Iraq and more about his overall experiences in the Marines and how those experiences had led him to distrust the military altogether. He especially needed to talk about his years as a recruiter and some of the underhanded techniques he used to meet his quota of recruits.

The audience, I suspect, wanted to hear more about Iraq and his experiences there. However, when veterans start to talk and reason out their experiences, it seldoms results in discussion that meet the needs of the audience. Soldiers need to talk -- they have to talk -- about what they have learned and what they have experienced. And I am torn between wanting to help this one man heal and wanting to know that his story can help somebody else come to understand what is happening in Iraq and what the soldiers are dealing with over there. I want his talk to motivate people to get active and to do whatever they can to bring this occupation of Iraq to a close. We're not there yet. But Jimmy Massey does have important things to say. Readd more about Iraq Veterans Aginst the War here.

Also, I've been reading about Andrea Dworkin, the feminist, who died last Friday. She was an amazing fighter for women who had suffered violence in a world that tolerates violence against women. A memorial site is here and does a great job of describing the effect she and her writing had on women around the world. She allowed herself to become a stereotype of the angry feminist in order to remind the world that the violence continues and that much of our culture still glorifies the victimization of women. Many blogs linked to a comment posted on Susie Bright's blog about Dworkin. I was disgusted by how many commenters posted about the way Dworkin looked. She was hairy and fat in comparison to our culture's absurd standards. So the fuck what? Why is her appearance fodder for commentary, even in her obituaries? Bah!

Dworkin made the world stand up and look at itself and the war that continues against women throughout the world. We have come a long way since the days when women were expected to stay home and shut up. And yet, there is still much to do. More than a million women currently live in sexual slavery. We are still living in a world where one in four women suffer sexual abuse in their lives. Dworkin wrote about this world and her words deserve to be read and read again.