MO GARBAGE

PROSAIC ANTAGONISM

   I’m always in search of language and appropriate terminology that will help define what exactly it is that I do. “Isms” are useful. Over the years I’ve used Nepotism, Contextualism, Absurdism, Confessionalism, Post-Hepism and other similar terms, hoping something will stick. It never does. Nomenclature fails to accurately capture exercises in futility like segregating trash or filling convertibles with concrete. I love the word prosaic, meaning ordinary or lacking in romanticism. Combined with antagonism- to oppose (sometimes with hostility) seems to fittingly describe the arch of my oeuvre. As many have said before—I’m an ordinary, angry, asshole always searching for who to piss off next.

    Admitting this is a tough sell to the public—whom I’m periodically trying to engage with banal, aggressive hostility. That’s why I temper my anger with empathy and love. I’m not putting anyone on. I actually have these opposing emotions. Like most of you, I’m complex. Contradictory personality traits are not necessarily a drawback when working in the field of social sculpture. For example, ordinary metal garbage cans can be seen as “inappropriate” as municipal trash receptacles. Yet, they function perfectly and cost a fraction of the price of a park style can, which can run over $700. A neighbor may see this as sculptural hostility, while I take the risk and codify the cans within an active system of art and garbage removal; literally putting them on a concrete pedestal. The neighbor may be angry, but I’m not. The sculpture functions and looks good. The trash gets picked up. Art triumphs.

    In many ways my good standing within this insular Catskill community allows me to constantly test the boundaries of my relationships, both casual and intimate. It’s a great laboratory. I’ve always worked this way. In one painting series from the East Village in the 1980’s I appropriated the work of my friends’ who were fellow artists. If I owned one of their pieces I took the liberty of painting over it with a transparent green paint. I would only do it to one painting per artist, no matter how many I had in the collection. You could still see the artist’s hand under my green slime, but authorship was forever nullified, the painting defaced. This defacement angered surprisingly few. As a recent local exhibition confirmed I have defaced as much as I’ve been defaced. Iconoclassicism is another “ism” I’ve employed. It’s all about breaking and re-establishing relationship while stretching the boundaries of definition. How much can I get away with before the whole town calls bullshit and brings out the pitchforks and torches?

    This prickly, tightrope walk can lead to hurt feelings, bruised egos, petty gossip, and alienation on all sides. Why have I chosen this path? I don’t have a clue. Inspiration? I’ve always felt the necessity of a dynamic balance within my work. The Missionary must be counterpointed with the Dysangel (the bringer of bad tidings), the gun pointed at the street. Point blank. This duality (I hope) balances the process, yielding a more tempered product. Years ago I had a professor who, after reviewing a piece presented in a graduate school critique, suggested I join the Salvation Army or work for Social Services. He was serious. He didn’t grasp the threads I was attempting to stitch together sculpturally with my actions, feeling maybe a career change was in order. I’m no do-gooder. If a social sculpture looks to be all rainbows and unicorns on the surface, you can rest assured there is an ulterior, underlying motivation that is not so simple or apparent. True altruism should never be clearly on display. That is why I can’t join the Salvation Army. I’m wholly unqualified.

    And if over the years I have pissed any of you off, intentionally or otherwise……. $ORRY. I mean it. 

ISABELLA VAN WAGENER

A SLAVE IN THE CATSKILLS

     Because it is relatively easy to document human habitation in the Catskills beginning around 11,000 BC, I feel whatever we are presently involved in is a reverberation of the totality of this history. You can’t talk about the Jewish diaspora without considering the early mastodon hunters or consider the recent hipster-refugee escaping from the downtown grind, without talking about northern slavery. We all came (or were brought) to these mountains for different reasons. Our experiences vary widely. But what we all have in common is a history by place. We all tread on the same dirt—some free, some not.

    For a white man, a descendant of slave owners, to write about slavery is problematic. Accusations of cultural appropriation, exploitation, and guilt by ancestral association are common. When I first started researching the subject, and my family’s connection (1653-1865) with the American institution of slavery, I purposely sought out black intellectuals to read the work. I hoped they would tell me if I was overstepping. I kept my race to myself with the ones who didn’t already know me. At least one reader—after an initial enthusiasm regarding the writing—went suddenly radio silent. I could imagine her disappointment as she googled “images” of Mike Osterhout.

     After a slow, step by step process begun in the late 1790’s, slavery as a legal institution in the Catskills, was abolished in 1827. That year New York State manumitted (freed) its entire slave population. African Americans were no longer considered personal property in the state of New York. That is not to say life was much easier for blacks. Racism and poverty cannot be legislated away. When the Federal government passed The Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, allowing Southern slave catchers to operate with impunity, across state lines, slavery was again a very real threat to any black individual living in the Catskills. Only now you could be kidnapped and perish under the South’s brutal plantation system with no recourse. The government would not help you.

     One of the most famous Catskill slaves was Isabella Baumfree. She was born the property of Col. Hardenbergh of Hurley, in Ulster County. Much of the Catskills fell into the Hardenbergh Patent; that was at this time being parceled off. Sold repeatedly, Isabella escaped her last master in 1826, after he reneged on a promise to free her a year before state manumission. Known as a “Christian mystic,” even as a young woman, Isabella’s first brush with history came after her son was illegally sold to a southern plantation owner and transported across state lines in 1829. It was not an uncommon occurrence. But what gained Isabella Van Wagener (who had by now taken a Dutch white man’s last name) a place in history was her retention of legal counsel. Judge Charles Ruggles of Kingston issued a writ for her son to be returned. She successfully sued the man who had sold her son, and he was returned to New York. Isabella Van Wagener became the first black woman in New York (and possibly the country) to ever sue a white man and win the case.

   This was only the beginning of Isabella Van Wagener’s notoriety. Moving to New York City (as many Catskill resident’s do) the former slave found work in the home of Elijah Pierson, a slightly unhinged Christian Evangelist who lived on the Bowery. There she met an upstate carpenter by the name of Robert Mathews aka The Prophet Mattias, who elicited her help in forming a small, but well connected cult: The Kingdom of Matthias. This group of rich, white, NYC society, became devout followers of Mathews. Known for his long beard, odd clothes and free wheeling attitudes towards sex and wife swapping, The Prophet Matthias is a story unto himself. Elijah Pierson (the money man) ended up dying unexpectedly and Mathews was charged with murder in his poisoning. Although never charged, Isabella was also widely implicated by the press, and she legitimately feared for her life. Lynching was a real possibility for an ex-slave implicated in a murder in the 1830’s. Somehow both Isabella and Mathews avoided the hangman. The judge at trial was Charles Ruggles. In 1843 Isabella Van Wagener left New York City, changing her name once again— this time to Sojourner Truth. 

VENISON

HOW TO BUTCHER A DEER

 My paternal grandfather was a butcher in the village of Montgomery. We were inseparable. By the time I was old enough to lend a hand with the meat cutting, he had closed up shop (due to ill health) picked up work as a school janitor and traffic cop, but still kept all his knives and butcher block. During deer season he was the go-to guy for the town’s hunters. That’s when I learned how to butcher a deer.

   Gramp did it old school. He would skin, then halve and quarter the deer with a meat saw. The prime cuts were steaks, roasts and chops. Scrap meat was ground into hamburger. He had lost half a finger in an old grinder and always warned me to keep my hands far away from the spinning corkscrew. I learned how to butcher a deer years before I was legally old enough to hunt one. I don’t butcher the same way, but skills I learned as a ten year old remain with me.

    These days I hunt as much as I can and still butcher my own deer. It is one of the great joys of living in the country, to walk out of your house (or take a short drive) and hunt the illusive whitetail buck. I can still drag one out of the woods and hang it from a tree. I usually hunt alone. The only other artist I know who deer hunts is the photographer George Holz. Otherwise my brother Bird, Bill Voegelin, Bobby Rowe and my nephew Wade are my only companions in the deer woods. I don’t trust any other men (or women) with loaded guns in the same hunting territory. But hunting is not the only way to score a deer. A couple of nights ago I got a call from Ambika Conroy. She’d spotted a hurt deer and wanted me to come shoot it. I was on the other end of the county, so she called the cops (who shot it) then loaded it in her truck. Venison. If you haven’t butchered it yet Ambika, here’s some tips.

Step one- Field dress. Take a sharp knife and cut around the deer’s anus. Then slice carefully from ass to sternum. Reach in and sever the windpipe, while cutting around the lungs. Pull from both ends, spilling the guts onto the ground.

Step two- Hang the deer. Some like to hang from the feet. Others swear you must hang by the head. I hang from antlers first, hosing out the cavity and draining all the blood, then invert after two days.  If the weather is cool—low forties—I like to hang for five or six days. If the weather is too cold or too warm, butcher sooner.

Step three- Skin the deer while hanging, carefully removing the hide like a coat.

Step four- Remove two small tenderloins on the inside of ribcage. 

Step five- Cut away back strap. These are two large tubular cuts of meat running along both sides of the backbone. Trim away all fat and membrane. Cut into filet mignon size medallions. This is the best cut of meat on the deer.

Step six- Remove front shoulders and saw hindquarter from backbone and cut in half. All your steak, stew, and hamburger are on the hindquarters and front shoulder. Take your time trimming. Just follow the lines. Trim all fat, sinew and membrane from the meat and bones. Vacuum seal in quart bags and freeze. Cook like you would a fine beefsteak. I prefer bloody rare. The more work you do during this process, the better your venison will taste.

Roadkill or hard earned eight pointer, they all taste the same. Enjoy. 

LAP DANCE

SOCIAL NIGHTMARE ART THERAPY

    Be you Catskill hickster or Bushwick citiot, we all have an inner life that unfolds elsewhere. It’s a singular experience in the sub-consciousness world of sleep. Mine is especially active. The dream starts out with me getting a lap dance from a male comedian, while dressed as Santa Claus. Distant memories of good times. I am on a lake. The lake separates me from Samm. Somehow I get across the lake (without the comedian) and Samm is having a party in her rather palatial digs. Her house is a cavernous Adirondack style “cabin,” more a lodge than a house. It’s filled with good looking people, men and women and a few kids. It looks like the combination of a Denniston Hill Foundation summer fundraiser and a Hauser and Wirth opening. In other words, it is the art world that I feel so alienated from. Hiring a therapist to give me an exegesis of this dream would be like paying somebody to fix a clogged drain. As much as I hate the job, I can manage. Yet, this obvious plot line does nothing to allay the true terror this nightmare elicits. It’s real. It fucks me up.

     As the social night terrors continue, I’m on a balcony overlooking a room of people—not really interacting— but listening intently to various conversations that drift up from below. Samm is nowhere to be found. The crowd is talking art and I recognize certain pieces extolled as “brilliant.” They are talking about my art. But then, I realize they are not talking about me, but talking about other artists who have done similar, if not exact, versions of my work. I don’t immediately react but continue to listen. How can I respond without looking like a needy asshole? “Then last year he bought and branded a cow…….” This is the last straw. Finally, I can’t stand it anymore. I work my way into the crowded room, find the woman who was talking, gently touch her elbow and whisper, “I did that in 1979…..” The woman screams, “HE’S HURTING ME WITH HIS HAND!” and pulls her arm away. Now all eyes are on me. I touch another woman’s elbow in an attempt to illustrate just how gentle my touch is and, she also screams, confirming the previous woman’s complaint of my abusive violence. There’s no explanation that will suffice. I am the guilty party. The skunk. Everybody glares at me and thinks I should leave.

     The nightmare goes on like that, with me finally rebelling, getting in fights, giving the finger to everyone, etc…..Finally I find Lassie laying behind a door. I grab her leash but I can’t find the end. The leash is a mile long. She looks at me with those Lassie eyes, pleading to go out. I can’t help her. I want to go home but can’t remember how I got across the lake in the first place. I’m stymied. Then I wake up with Cheeky scratching on the window to get in out of the rain. Phew. I’m drenched in a cold sweat.

   This one dream encapsulates my entire neurotic inner life of insecurity and fear of abandonment and rejection. I sure don’t need a therapist to recognize that. I woke up so rattled and confused I literally didn’t know what day it was. Al Jazeera had Trump on talking of killing some ISIS leader and I thought it was Monday, not Sunday. As the stable genius rattled on and on all I could think about was this dream. Why am I having such night terrors? Consciously I feel pretty good. I did a new piece in the Social Sculpture Park and saw a good buck the other night. The pre-rut is kicking in and there’s plenty of action in the woods. Perched 20 feet up in a tree, watching grunting bucks chase does, paw the ground making ground scrapes, and spar in the open woods, is one of my most favorite ways of spending time. Awake I’m a happy deer hunting man. But unconsciously I am obviously a tortured mess.

    That’s where the writing comes in. To air dreams, pathology, neurosis and petty grievances in public seems to have a therapeutic effect—on me at least. I don’t know how it affects the reader. I guess that’s what the comments box is for. Walter Robinson seems to be the only one to take advantage. His soothing words of encouragement and undying support for my struggle are always appreciated. I hear you Walter. To all of you who have reached out with concern over my mental state and suggestions of therapists, after a recent post, thank you. I think I’m good for now. I’m still waiting to hear back from the two shrinks I emailed. If they ever return the email (and I’m still lucid) I have a planned response. Now back to that lap dance. 

CLGM SIGN

THE UNWED

     
There is an old Catskill folktale:

    Once upon a time there was a handsome and successful, young bachelor. He ran a very popular bungalow colony and was looking to expand and build a caretaker’s house. One day while crossing his property he discovered something he had never seen before. Tucked in the woods, covered with thick vines was a tiny bungalow…and the lights were on. “I wonder who lives there?” he thought, “And I wonder if they’ll sell it to me. It would be perfect!” The young bachelor was a shrewd businessman. Spotting a mezuzah on the door, instead of knocking, he went to the bakery to get something sweet as an introductory gift.

    Cake in hand he approached the house. He knocked gently. Nothing. Then he knocked louder. “Hellooooooo.” He heard scuttling and what sounded like furniture being moved about. “Hello, it’s your neighbor.” he tried again. “GO AWAY.” was the reply. “I have a cake for you….for Shabbos.” the bachelor persisted. Slowly from behind the curtain two faces emerged from the shadows, stacked like a totem. “Are you a Jew?” they asked in unison. The bachelor smiled and nodded. Eventually the brothers Nussbaum opened the door and invited the bachelor in.

    Before the bachelor stood two elderly men, dressed in pin striped pajamas, baseball hats on their heads (Yankees and Mets) and cotton balls stuffed in their ears. One was quiet and polite, the other loud and seemingly unhinged. The crazy brother (in the Yankees cap) did all the talking.

     “Are you married?” was the first thing out of his mouth. “No.” responded the bachelor. Thus began the saga of the attempts of the Brothers Nussbaum to find the handsome, young bachelor a Jewish wife. If the brothers could successfully marry off their Jewish bachelor neighbor to a pious young Jewish woman it would be seen as a great mitzvah; assuring them a front seat on that tour bus to heaven. If children followed, a sky box was assured. All the bachelor wanted to do was make an offer on their house. He had no interest in finding a wife or having kids. It was a sweet house.  He left his cell number.

    In the weeks that followed,  everyday one or the other Nussbaum brother would call the bachelor. “Hello. Who is this?” the Yankee fan would ask his neighbor. The bachelor would state his name. “Yeah, so?” was always the response. Then a list of Jewish singles mixers in Kingston, meet and greets in Williamsburg and links to Jdate Facebook pages would follow. The bachelor patiently listened to it all, knowing all real estate deals depend on cordial relationships. He did not want to alienate the brothers, willing to put up with almost any intrusion for a good deal on that house. Secretly he even considered going to one of the suggested speed dating sessions, fantasizing that he would meet the love of his life (for three years) and that the brothers would die and leave him (and his wife to be) the property, before the wedding could take place. Then, his fiancee (or caretaker if it didn’t work out) could live in the brothers’ house. And he’d live happily ever after……unwed. All folktales are fantasy.

   I don’t know what the deal is with getting married, but there’s quite an industry surrounding the custom. I’ve done it twice. I’m not proud of that. Heads up: it’s really easy to get married and really hard to get divorced. If you want to spend the money, on the front end of the process you have jewelers, caterers, dressmakers, tailors, butchers, bakers, photographers and invitation makers. You have magazines, reality TV shows and and entire Judaeo/Christian culture telling you It’s the most important day of your life. And the one thing that everything swirls around is the WEDDING LOCATION. For God’s knows what reason, the Catskills has become a very popular wedding location. On the back end of getting married you have judges and lawyers. Failure at marriage is literally punishable by law. Nobody’s providing a joyous location for that.

    The CLGM sign says: Baptisms, Weddings and Funerals. I’m thinking of stopping this practice by offering an Unwedding. It would be cheap, fun, open to all sexes, species and alien life forms and definitely NOT the most important day of your life. Book now.   

CONG. ANSHEI- GLEN WILD

CONTEXTUAL OVERLOAD

  When I first moved to the Catskills I purposefully kept a low profile. My mindset was that of the citiot—work in the country—but never show there. To join a local art society or participate in a group show was akin to admitting defeat. I avoided any connection to “Sunday painters” or retired college professors who finally had time to “do their art.” There was plenty of work to be done, both on my property and back in the city for wage, so exhibiting took a back seat to survival. I still wrote a monthly column for PAPER magazine, and when they fired me I got a gig writing an outdoor column for the tiny weekly THE RIVER REPORTER. I tried to keep my name out there. In 1999 I organized The Old School for Social Sculpture and prayed that an opportunity would present itself for a show in the “real” art world in New York City. It didn’t.

    Slowly, painfully, my attitude towards showing my work in the Catskills changed. I had no other options. If I was to continue to call myself an artist I would have to find a way to put myself out there, find community again. This goes to the core of the way I had always worked. From my earliest attempts at getting attention in San Francisco, with pieces like The Motel Tapes or attending seminary, the performances, installations, social sculptures and exhibitions have always been self-generated. If I waited around to be asked to be in a gallery show nobody would ever know my name.

     

   Two very important things happened in 2010 that would shape the way I would continue my art career. (I never liked the word practice. I prefer the more aspirational career.) My father died and we convened the first CLGM service of the Catskill era. Almost a decade later I now face a different dilemma. I hesitate to say that I’ve run out of spaces, strategies or ideas for showing in the Catskills, but it feels as if I’m getting damn close. Could I be running out of  Catskill context?

    

    I don’t want to pull back the curtain too much, but it’s fair to say that the CLGM runs itself at this point. If the Band of All Faiths is up for producing a service, with all the hymn writing, rehearsal, drinking and pot smoking that comes with the process, I’m down. It’s fun, the congregation is cool and well behaved, it doesn’t cost that much and people like it. After all, I’m only asking that you bring some food and drink and burn a dollar. The expectations and bar are set very low. It’s no wonder that it’s survived for 34 years.

   The death of my father in April 2010, just before the first CLGM service had a profound effect on my outlook on life and output of work. Mortality was on full display in that little jar of ashes. I entered into a very prolific period. When my mom died two years later I amped up the production even more. My context became the Catskills. The church lawn became my studio. My porch became my gallery. I bought a synagogue down the road, further expanding my studio space and installation possibilities. I drew, sculpted, worked on collages, paintings and installations. I manipulated billboards, tagged the area with large painted yellow rectangles and put up signage exclaiming God Loves Fags and Dykes. Breaking my own rule of not exhibiting locally I had shows at The Catskill Art Society and Gallery 222. When I needed a particular context for paintings I exhibited them at The Rock Hill Ramada Inn over the beds. When the church yard could no longer contain my sculptures I began filling up The Mountain Dale Social Sculpture Park. When all this didn’t fulfill my needs I wrote a book and ok’d the filming of a documentary on the CLGM.

   Here’s the problem. I now feel overexposed locally. There’s only so many people who can possibly give a shit what I do in this little area. Social media reaches a few more, but with slight impact. I think I have saturated the local landscape to the degree that I may be doing more harm than good. Reaching out to the “real” art world isn’t even an option anymore. Plus, I feel an active boycott is in order regarding NYC and cities in general. I’ve become a rural isolationist. Maybe I should do the same in the country, retreat a little—for the good of the community—and my career.

OLD SHUL FOR SOCIAL SCULPTURE

UNDERSTANDING THE LUFTMENSCH

  As you may have noticed I’ve been schooling myself on the history of the Jews in the Catskills. Jews (in small numbers) have been in the Catskills as long as any other white man. But as time passed the Jewish religion took on a larger local role. In the late 19th century more Jewish immigrants arrived from Eastern Europe, forming communities and congregation. They were communists, leftists, intellectuals, business owners and chicken farmers. That community grew, assimilated and after World War II and the Holocaust, the Catskill Jewish population exploded. From the 1940’s into the late 1960’s the boarding houses, bungalow colonies and hotels thrived. But times changed. Woodstock was the end of the Jewish heyday, the era of the “worldly Jew” in the Catskills. Air conditioning, cheap airfares, changing cultural tastes and nostalgia come too late doomed the Jewish hospitality industry in the Catskills.

     I got the term “worldly Jew” from Isaac Bashevis Singer’s book The Hasidim. It’s a slim 24 pages of text. The rest of the book is taken up with Ira Moskowitz’s drawings of Hasidic men. The drawings aren’t very good. There’s a lot of beards, prayer shawls, and closed eye praying in the stilted charcoal sketches. But Singer’s short history of Hasidim is great. I’m not pretending to be an expert after 24 pages. It’s a start.

     Written in 1973, the Nobel Prize winning author starts by drawing parallels to the Williamsburg Hasidic, in their long coats and fur hats, and the beards and long hair sported by the hippies of the time, four years after Woodstock. It’s true—similar styling. They both harken back to another era. Also, like the hippies, Hasidim is nothing if not contrary to the “worldly Jew” (capitalism). They are both countercultures. 

    Soon after the hippies of Woodstock went home and got jobs, Hasidim began moving into the Catskills. Land was cheap and the large families needed room. A migration of paneled Ford station wagons hit Rt. 17 in the summer months.  Only 100,000 strong when I.B. Singer wrote his short history, Hasidim has since outgrown Williamsburg, Monsey and Kiryas Joel. The Catskills are next. This is the most recent Jewish diaspora to move into the neighborhood. From 1973 to the present Hasidim has been a regular summer presence in the mountains and that soon may change. The population of Sullivan County skyrockets in June, July and August. It seems that this population will begin taking up more permanent residence in the near future. Roads and homesites are already waiting for further development. The memo just has to go out. 

   Singer defines a luftmensch  as “literally, one who lives on air; one without a trade or gainful employment.” It’s Yiddish. The context is the almost missionary zeal with which “enlightened” Judaism was pushing assimilation in 18th Century Europe, and ultimately wanted to “put an end to the existence of the luftmensch”- the Jewish religiopath.  Hasidim with their mystical fundamentalism, obvious choice of dress, grooming and insistence on an insular community, was an active response to the “worldly Jew” and proposed assimilation of the enlightenment. Two centuries later Nazism was born. The final solution didn’t differentiate. All Jews were to be exterminated…..not just the pious ones. Assimilation protected no one. 

    Anti-Semitism never goes out of style. It’s like racism. And in the Catskills it’s a tradition. Because Hasidim actively desires to both co-exist and remain insular, protecting a theopathic way of life, they can also serve as the convenient “other,” an easy target for stereotype. To be “anti-Hasidic” is not seen as anti-Semitism in the Catskills. Even Jews can rag on Hasidim. It’s common ground for the country gentile and Jew alike. I try not to play into it, except when it comes to driving. Then I’m the most rabid, anti-Hasidic, hillbilly at the local, “worldly Jew” pig roast. There’s got to be a DMV intervention. How does anybody get a license? But, driving aside, I have no problems whatsoever with Hasidim. I welcome them. I’m insular also. Neither of us want to be bothered by goy or Jew. We have much in common. The fact that they wear their faith (and beards) so blatantly in public, as a badge of honor, makes me feel we are kindred souls, “living on air…without a trade or gainful employment.” religiopaths in kind. I think I understand. 

CRUCIFIXION COMPLEX

SHRINK ME

      I have this recurring dream: I’m in a car, plane, or a bus, sometimes with someone, sometimes alone. I can be anywhere- New York City, San Francisco, Hong Kong- but I have to get HOME. Home is not my shack in the Catskills, but my childhood home of Montgomery, NY. I can’t always remember the details, but the plot is essentially the same. With or without the help of my fellow passenger, I’m traveling back to my childhood. Luggage gets lost. Cars are misplaced and towed. Buses break down and flights are missed. Anxiety and abandonment issues increase as I toss and turn in bed, disturbing Cheeky from his peaceful cat slumbers. When I somehow succeed in getting back to River Road in Montgomery I usually discover that my parents (who are magically still alive) are divorced and the family is in turmoil. The HOME is occupied by strangers, who immediately call the cops……then I wake up.

    I’ve sought out therapy a few times in my life. Traditionally this has involved “crisis management” during a bad depression brought on by a break up. My first mental health intervention was in Marin County California in 1976. My wife and I were getting divorced and she recommended the Dr. to me. I told the therapist that I wanted to go back to art school and he offered me a path towards that end. “You come to me once a week.” he explained “Pay me with MediCal and I’ll help you get money for school.” This sounded like a very good deal—tuition and a little brain scrubbing in the process.

    This Dr. actually was true to his word. Through his recommendation I enrolled in a state program called “Vocational Rehabilitation.” It was set up to help returning Vietnam Vets ease back into the workforce, with training as truck drivers or motorcycle mechanics. There was nothing that said it couldn’t be used to place a depressed hippie in graduate school. My caseworker got me free tuition and a stipend for art supplies. Once a week I would stand outside of the SFAI art supply store asking rich Marin County housewives if they would put their purchase on my account. I got my entire art supply stipend out in cash that way. What the hell does a conceptualist need art supplies for?

   These days I’m thinking of returning to therapy. No. Samm and I are not breaking up. In fact everything is great on that front. Yet, the depression and the nightmares persist. There’s no crisis to overcome. Anybody who knows me can attest to the fact that I have nothing to bitch about. Sure, I have issues. Who doesn’t? But objectively speaking my life is better than most. I’m free to do as I please, live on a shoestring, am in good health (see previous post) and should jump out of bed with stars in my eyes and bluebirds circling my noggin. But that just isn’t the reality.

    A post-documentary depression has set in that mere confessional disclosure cannot seem to alleviate. Manic spurts that can produce plenty of work in various mediums can be followed by periods of entropy and confusion. I never know where the work will lead me next. These down times lead to the depressive state. Pot and sitting in a tree deer hunting helps; but only so much. So today I googled “Sullivan County therapists,” and emailed a couple. So far nobody has returned my cries for help. I HATE IT WHEN PEOPLE DON’T RETURN EMAILS!!!!! Maybe we can also talk about those anger issues. 

PASSPORT BURNING

RENUNCIATION IN PARADISE

     I hit the jackpot. At 67 years old, with no steady job, in relatively good health, I’m an old and poor American with benefits. With all the talk of gutting Obama Care, the crumbling healthcare system and Medicare for all, my personal experience with being on the government teat has been stellar. I’ve been poor (on and off) most of my life, but only recently have been assigned the official “old” title. When I turned 62 I started receiving my meager monthly social security check. When I turned 65 I registered for Medicare. Noticing how little I made, the nice woman in the Medicare office asked why I wasn’t applying for Medicaid as well- poor people insurance? I told her I had resisted going on food stamps or government healthcare because I had some money in the bank and felt others needed it more. “It’s there for people like you.” she reminded me and walked me through the paper work. “It’s there for artists.” REALLY?

    Having glaucoma, I’ve been paying out of pocket for expensive eye drops and doctors’ visits for decades. I never could afford health insurance, so, I crossed my fingers and went through life hoping nothing catastrophic happened; biding my time until turning 65. Then, soon after that birthday the “procedures” and “operations,” that would’ve gutted my bank account, began piling up. The U.S. government paid for it all. I was saved just in time.  

    Back in the 1980’s artists had a better time of it with government support. The National Endowment of Art was set up specifically to fund individual artists who had rejected the commodification of their art and resisted the marketplace. Conceptual and performance and fringe artists had a champion in Washington. Grants which ranged from $5000 to $25,000 were doled out, no strings attached. I got two $5k. Then there was a conservative, cultural backlash spearheaded by cracker politicians like Jesse Helms, in response to overtly sexualized work like Robert Mapplethorpe’s and my friend Karen Finley’s. Responding to political pressure, the NEA changed their policy, ultimately refusing to fund individual artists, now only offering money to 501(C-3) non-profits. The oddball individual artist was kicked to the curb.

    A few church services back I symbolically renounced my U.S. citizenship by burning my passport in front of the CLGM congregation. If you google renouncing citizenship you will learn that it has to be done in a U.S. Embassy in a foreign land, can involve the loss of many rights and is irreversible. To actually renounce my citizenship has no interest to me. I am completely dependent of the government of the United States for my monthly check and healthcare. But this dependency does not preclude my right to protest government policies and a toxic presidency. I pay my taxes and feel all churches should do the same. The symbolic citizenship renunciation had little impact in the world at large (or even the neighborhood). We are all too comfortable (myself included) to take to the streets or care. Things are too good to revolt.

    This is the way that politicians have stayed in power since 1776: give the masses just enough to keep them in line. I’m just healthy enough not to put a giant strain on the system; just poor and old enough to qualify for support and just smart enough not to rock the boat. Yeah, that was an old passport. I got a recent one in the drawer if i want to go somewhere. I don’t. I own my house, a church and a synagogue. As long as I pay my bills and taxes, nobody fucks with me. There are popular uprisings in Hong Kong, Lebanon, and Chile, and that’s just this week. Turkey has invaded Syria, as Trump throws the Kurds under the bus. Impeachment looms and there is much to protest. I KNOW MANY HAVE IT MUCH WORSE THAN I. I’d do more…..but I don’t want to lose my government benefits. I don't really have any right to complain. I live in paradise. 

AUSCHWITZ TATTOO

THOSE NUMBERS

“Like so many immigrant inner-city Jews in the late 1940’s through the 1960’s, the refugees of the Holocaust sought refuge in the hamlets and villages that were nestled in the Catskill Mountains…..

   There were wide lakes and rickety rowboats. Dirt country roads led to bungalow colonies in such far-flung places as Swan Lake, Liberty and Livingston Manor, Monticello and South Fallsburg.”- “Renewal” by Thane Rosenbaum SUMMER HAVEN The Catskills, the Holocaust, and the Literary Imagination (Academic Studies Press 2015)

     You can’t write about the Catskills without considering genocides—recent and long forgotten. Those “far-flung places” that Mr. Rosenbaum writes of are as familiar to me as my family and neighbors. Except for a twenty year stint living in cities, I’ve spent my entire life living in Orange and Sullivan Counties of New York State. The exotic, romanticized spin that literary witnesses of the Holocaust put on the dirt roads, morning dew and starry nights, that were so common to me, can be found repeatedly through the early pastoralism of Washington Irving and the Hudson River School. There’s a predictably rose-colored lens through which these writings of both the recent and more distant past are seen. Like a stone skipping across the lake’s surface, only to be rewound and run backwards through the projector—returning neatly into the pitcher’s hand— each dimple of intra-historical connection reveals something new. I learn more every day about the place I call home.

    Long before the word was coined, genocides took place in these mountains….. what the Holocaust survivors generically called “the country.” The first was accomplished by disease (germ warfare) visited upon the indigenous residents courtesy of European incursion/invasion. In return the Europeans received fur and untold wealth. The Columbian Exchange drastically cut down on the numbers of Indians. Then slowly, over hundreds of years, consumer capitalism, technology, religion, militarism and politics completed the task, annihilating an ancient “low impact” way of life; driving the indigenous residents from the Catskills, replacing them with European “Freeholders” and “Inhabitants,” my ancestors. A slow, but deliberate, genocide. 

    Within this process there were minor “holocausts,” the literal scorching of earth and flesh. Sullivan County is named for one such gore perpetrator. The surviving Jews of WWII knew nothing of Gen. John Sullivan and his “scorched earth” campaign waged against the Indians in 1779. It was way too much to unpack on a summer night of canasta and Glen Miller. But this early genocide, the long dead Indians of the Catskills, had much in common with the more recently traumatized survivors of Germany’s epic Nazi sin. Where I also knew nothing of John Sullivan and saw only “lakes and rickety rowboats,” anguished ghosts of past genocidal mayhem bore witness. Europe was not the only scene of Biblical crime. Ethnic cleansing had been a not so distant tradition in the very mountains where the Jews sought refuge.

   When I was a kid I can remember pale forearms sporting fuzzy, black/blue numbers, peeking out from under white shirt or flimsy blouse sleeves, as men and women ate hamburgers and drank cokes in Walden, or counted out change for a magazine in Monticello. I was ten years old in 1962 and knew nothing of what had happened in Europe only ten years prior to my birth. But nothing much got passed me on the home front. I was curious—why numbers? Maybe I asked my grandfather about the faded tattoos. I don’t remember. More than likely, if I had, the subject was glossed over in order not to ruin an afternoon’s fishing. Something like, “They were in the war.” What could you tell a ten year old about a recent genocide in Europe? “Where’s Europe?” 

    I can’t imagine what driving out of New York City, up 17k, through Montgomery and Wurtsboro, pulling into Glen Wild on a sultry, summer night in 1946 felt like for someone who had miraculously survived the unspeakable (and unspoken) Nazi Holocaust. My mind is too narrow, my experiences too limited. But “Haven” or Heaven probably comes close—the pastoral in full effect. It’s now very rare to meet a person with a concentration camp tattoo. Too much time has passed. Soon that last “marked” Auschwitz survivor will die. Maybe they’ll be buried here in the Catskills……. alongside the Indians. 

THE WIG BUG

THE WIG BUG EFFECT

   There’s a story of a pebble being dropped into a placid pool, the ripples becoming a tidal wave a world away. Another version has the gently flapping wings of a butterfly in China causing a tornado in Arkansas. If Trump were an insect he’d be a wig bug, whose buzzing ass-hairs could wreak havoc across a globe that he sees in increasingly  contradictory terms. Sometimes it’s big and sometimes it’s small. 

    Trump can talk about foreign policy like we are still criss-crossing the seas in creaky sailing ships. His characterization of Turkey’s border war with Syria as being “7000 miles away,” and “none of our business,” makes you think you’re listening to a grumpy, demented uncle in a trailer, not the president of the U.S. Feeling his campaign promise to “bring our boys home” and “end endless wars,” fulfilled, the commander in chief declared victory by removing 28 troops from Syria. “They say it was 28 troops,” he reiterates “with not one casualty.” This amazing feat of rescue by our benevolent leader allowed Turkey to invade Syria. “Now they can fight it out between themselves.” exclaims the self-described “brilliant” strategist of “great and unmatched wisdom.” All verbatim from the wig bug. 

    At yesterday’s press briefing with the President of Italy there’s a passing mention of the 2000 troops that the president just sent to Saudi Arabia. “They are paying for it….and more.” Trump assures the assembled press. The Saudi kingdom is a preferred customer, and Trump fills orders for hired American guns like he’s working the front office at Blackwater. 

    This president is a wig bug; not a butterfly. His rigid duck-ass-hairs are constantly vibrating, whipping up storms across this very small, rather fragile, planet. How one insect can be allowed to do such damage is the fatal flaw in the founders’ vision of a republic consisting of three distinct branches of government, with subsequent checks and balances on power. The legislature and the judiciary are NOT co-equal to the executive branch. They have no real power, no troops to bring home. The executive branch has both the police (CIA, FBI, Border Patrol, NSA, etc.) and all branches of the military at it’s disposal. This is why ultimately, all power rests in the sweaty little hands of that crazy wig bug in the single wide. How do we sneak up on him and remove the AR-15 hidden in the closet?

    This is what I always feared if Trump were cornered with impeachment— the real prospect of global violence and chaos—as manipulated distraction from the ongoing political proceedings. I thought it would be North Korea, but Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and Syria also make perfect sense. Trump’s first National Security Advisor Gen. Michael Flynn (in office 24 days) was working for the Turks as a pro-Turkish government, unregistered agent and arrested before Melania even had a chance to unpack her dildo at the White House. I don’t think it’s a coincidence either that Jamal Khashoggi was chopped up and disposed of like rotten meat by the Saudis in Turkey. The connections were, and are, all there……implicit if not explicit. Putin is uncorking the Stoli and ordering up fresh hookers as we speak. Trump’s inbox is filling up with pee-tapes.

   On the one hand Trump sees the world as “his,” and very small, his bad lieutenants, Barr and Giuliani, jetting across the globe every week operating as his shadowy legion of doom; while on the other hand Trump makes foreign policy decisions assuming terrorists don’t know how to board, let alone hijack an airplane. 7000 MILES! How could these issues in the Middle East affect us? It’s a big world to a wig bug. Walls, and moats with “snakes and alligators” make way more sense to this little guy. Europe sucks. Russia is cool. Mexicans, Central Americans and Democrats are the real enemy— a threat closer to home This is simple insect logic, with simply “brilliant” results. Insect wisdom is unmatched. Instead of an AR-15 in the closet this bug has the nuclear codes. Is anybody keeping track of those? Again, small world. More contradictions. Maybe it’s time that the legislature and the judiciary had their own insect armies; put some some teeth in those subpoenas. No one insect should have so much power. In the meantime, keep him away from the closet; scurrying around on the golf course, and maybe we’ll survive his buzzing ass-hairs in Washington that can cause wars in the Middle East. 

LOGGING IN TONGASS

IF A TREE FALLS.....

   From the chopping down of an old standing dead tree for firewood, to clearing a lot for a house, to the loss of another piece of Mohawk territory in Canada or the opening up of an Alaskan National forest to the lumber industry, logging is a part of living in the country. It can take hundreds of a years to grow a tree. It only takes a couple of minutes to chainsaw one down. So far nobody has figured out a way to put one back up.

   Recently two pieces of forest are in the news; one is the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, “North America’s Amazon,” and the other, a little stand of pines in Mohawk territory outside of Montreal. A member of the Mohawk Nation, Ellen Gabriel put it this way, “The pines are their own micro-climate, you can be standing in the forest and feel a chill and then you walk outside of it and feel a gust of warm air. It is part of the biodiversity that keeps us cool and when you cut that down, you contribute to the global warming that’s killing our planet.” And yesterday the Trump administration proposed opening up over half of the 16.7 million acre Tongass National Forest on Alaska’s panhandle, “the largest intact temperate rainforest in North America,” to logging and the lumber industry. The “roadless rule,” put in place by President Clinton, would be waved, green lighting the skidders, bulldozers and picker trucks. The tiny Mohawk patch of pines is a microcosm of what could happen to the old growth arboreal forests of Alaska. Who will stop it?

   Alaska is a blood red Republican state. They love Trump. Mining, logging, fisheries and indigenous murder have been a part of the Alaskan landscape since the Russian’s started trapping beaver in the 1500’s. In Canada it was the French, then England’s Hudson Bay Company and the international whaling industry making the millions. White people have been making fortunes in the wilderness since they “discovered” it. The Mohawk diaspora populated Quebec post Revolutionary War. They were forced to move from guarding the far eastern door of the metaphorical longhouse of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy in New York State to north of Niagara in the 1780’s. British land was part of the deal. As far as Alaska goes, cousin Henry Seward brokered the deal with Russians, closing on October 18, 1867. From that day forward the U.S. government has been responsible (and to blame) for what happens in Alaska.

    This is the great danger of the Trump administration, and to a lesser degree the Trudeau administration in Canada. Issues like climate change and indigenous rights are either outright ignored or prioritized so far down the news feed as to be invisible. These deals are happening in the shadows. The courts will have their say, but once the roads are cut and the chainsaws start up it will be impossible to “regrow” an ancient forest or even a cool stand of pines. A lone Mohawk man has embarked on a hunger strike in protest in a tent west of Montreal. His non-violent protest may or may not stop this most recent incursion into Indian territory. We may not hear those trees falling, but future generations will be the lesser for it when they are milled into 2x4s. 

THE CHURCH OF FAKE NEWS

THE CHURCH OF.......

     It seems that this is the way it will go with this blog. I have to take breaks. I’ve tried to keep up the pace of daily posts, but it’s too much. Nobody has that much to say….even me. So once in a while I’ll just stop until the pump can be primed again. But, it doesn’t take long before I’m forced to say something. The one thing you can count on in the Trump era (be you living in the country or sweating it out in city) is that this administration is fucking action packed. Climate change, pastoral (or antipastoral) wars only a week old, looming impeachment, incitements, and congressional oversight be damned. Today it’s all about one stupid video.

    If you haven’t seen it just google “church of fake news.” As a fellow “Church of….” this or that, I feel a kinship to this discussion. There’s a lot of Church “ofs.” There’s Church “of” Jesus Christ “of“ Latter Day Saints, Church “of” Satan, Church “of” the Sub Genius and of course The Church “of” the Little Green Man. If fact if you google “Church of” today the only church that will show up is The Church of Fake News. This church is dominating the news cycle.

   I watched the vid. in question. It’s funny to me. I would like to see a cell phone video of all the Trump supporters in the room cracklng up as it played. That would be funnier. The outrage of the left that accompanies the discovery of said video at a Trump campaign “meet and greet” at Trump Doral seems misplaced and rather pathetic. Trump is the master of distraction. Why do you communists always play into his hand? This stupid video is of no consequence whatsoever. South Park could grab the entire thing, never do an edit, air it in it’s entirety and the left would think it was hilarious. The context is what is important. But, then again why should we (communists) be surprised or care?

     It’s the church thing. I understand. OK. I see how this can push some buttons—Dylann Roof and all. Yet, I can also see this as the more redneck, secular Trump hillbillies, shooting themselves in the foot with the evangelical, hypocrite Trump supporters. Win win. Let them hang themselves. There again, in a week that has Turkey invading Syria, Guilianni’s associates arrested, expert witnesses testifying before Congress, impeachment on the horizon, why does this stupid video get so much press?

   It is because it speaks to our core as a consumer capitalism  Judeo/Christian society. Those almost “subliminal cuts” of the exterior of a country church, the sign CHURCH OF FAKE NEWS and the sound of crickets, anchors us in an idyl, a pastoral, that is ripped apart by the anti-hero Trump. It’s orgasmic. He excises the cancerous critics, adversaries and infidels; while outside all is calm. The money changers are expelled from the Temple in another Orwellian twist of Trump’s regime. Two plus Two equals Five. I see where they are going.

    Don’t get me wrong. I love the video. It’s genius. It exemplifies the spirit of the moment way better than CNN, NBC or even Al Jazeera ever could accomplish. And now that the internet has captured it—carved it in stone so to speak—the monuments of marble cannot compete. History has taken over. John Heartfield would be proud. I don’t know who authored this video, but the Yesmen, South Park and Anonymous all have to be green with envy. Who’s laughing at whom? Beware the Church of anything. Maybe this is a touchstone, something that will resonate historically. Or it’s just another forgotten news cycle in a narrativ that is more and more frightening by the day. We’ll see what happens.       

    

EXPERIENCING CREATIVE DIFFICULTIES- Please stay tuned...

KURT COBAIN

SMELLS LIKE MOLD

     All you rock memorabilia geeks take note! Tragically brilliant grunge rocker Kurt Cobain’s ratty powder grey sweater that he wore on MTV’s Unplugged will soon go up for auction. “Cobain appeared in his now-famous cardigan, which he paired with a white tee and baggy jeans….It could fetch up to $300,000 when it goes under the hammer this month.”

   The writer of the article, Marianna Cerini, goes on to explain Cobain’s sartorial aesthetic: “Having grown up in a blue-collar family in Aberdeen, Washington, Cobain had learned to layer up to keep warm and to wear things for as long as possible before replacing them—something that stayed with him through his brief adulthood.” Cobain’s influence on rock music and “grunge style” is undeniable. But, he did not invent power cords or shopping at thrift stores. What’s my interest in such silly crap? The “white tee.”

   In the late 1980’s I was invited to teach a class at the San Francisco Art Institute. It was a month long gig that came with an apartment (the bunker) on campus and basically the run of the place. Since I had attended S.F.A.I. in the ’70’s it was like coming home for me. My life was back in New York, where I had started my own rock band Purple Geezus and the CLGM in quick succession, but my heart was still in SF. Why not have a church on campus?

    I always find that it’s preferable to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. So, I rented a red striped tent, set it up on a piece of lawn outside the bunker and enlisted my students in putting on a CLGM service. Everybody was down, burning dollars and performing for the ad hoc congregation of students, faculty and curious neighbors. The core of any CLGM service is the band. To fill in for the NYC church band, The Workdogs, I invited local rock stars, the all women band Frightwig to be the church band. The Marshall amps were plugged in and cranked to 11, Cecilia straddled the drums, Deanna strapped on her bass and the quietly sedate North Beach neighborhood came alive. Windows rattled and the SFAI switchboard lit up with complaints. I was in heaven.

  If you go to Frightwig’s Wikipedia page (yeah they got one) you’ll read: “The band gained momentary fame after Kurt Cobain was seen at Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged concert wearing a Frightwig T-shirt.”— the white Tee under his fuzzy sweater. These women were feminist, punk rock pioneers, on the front lines of art, music, fun and absurdity. They were musician’s musicians, having influenced much more famous Riot G-rrrrrl groups like L-7, Bikini Kill and Hole. Kurt Cobain was hip enough to know of Frightwig and proud enough of the band’s cred. to rock their tee shirt on MTV.

   My tenure at the Art Institute ended in chaos and infamy as I was kicked out of the bunker after letting my students paint a mural on the walls (without permission). The administration also wrongly accused me of “storing guns and knives in the apartment.” I would never. Between the tent church, mural and inflammatory gun gossip I was forced to leave the school in disgrace. Luckily administrations at SFAI change regularly. I’ve been invited back many times over the years, but never ”officially” to the bunker.  

     The last time I ran into Deanna she was pushing her kid on a swing in a SF park. We hadn’t seen each other in years and neither recognized the other at first. I was also pushing my Goddaughter Ramona Labat on the swing set. After we caught up, she confided that she thought I was some tattooed “creep” with a lost little girl in tow and had considered calling the cops. Times had changed. I don’t know where Kurt’s Frightwig  T-shirt is, but I bet it would bring a pretty penny at auction. I think I have the first pair of Frye boots I ever bought in 1969 and a nice mohair sweater….if anyone is interested.  

JONESTOWN

REPEAT

   "Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it."-George Satayana 


Everybody knows this quote. Nobody ever seems to pay any attention to it. Yesterday’s events in Northeastern Syria are a perfect example. Due to a late Sunday night call between Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Donald Trump, assuring the Turks that the U.S. would pull back it’s troops and not oppose a Turkish incursion into Syrian territory, NATO member Turkey invaded the previously controlled Kurdish land mass on Turkey’s southern border. The Kurds are (were) U.S. allies in the global fight against Daesh (ISIS). Tens of thousands of Daesh women and children are held in refugee camps like al-Hol, controlled by the Kurds. Makeshift prisons also hold captured Daesh foreign fighters. These fighters and their wives and kids present a giant problem. They are all in the line of battle. Maybe that’s the idea.

    The Turks have a horrible human rights record going back to the Ottoman Empire. The term genocide was coined in response to the forced expulsion and killing of over a million and a half Armenians by the Turkish government in 1915. After giving Erdogan the green light on Sunday, yesterday Trump said he thought it was a “bad idea” for Turkey to invade. Huh? This slight back step is in no doubt due to the scathing criticism he has received from his “faithful” evangelical rightwing and even a few loyalists in his own Republican Party. This massive voting block of evangelical Christians are concerned about Trump throwing the Christian minority in Syria under the bus in his rush to accommodate Erdogan. Too late. Funny how the evangelicals have no such concerns when Trump suggests shooting Central American Christian immigrants in the legs. Central America is too far from “the holy land.”

   

    Remembering the past has become a hobby of mine. It’s fun to try to get a handle on it. The Twentieth Century seems like yesterday. It’s nothing to go back 300 years. Just to bring the narrative  into my Catskill neighborhood, lets go all the way back to August of 1777. The Revolutionary War was raging on two fronts. The rebel insurgency was fighting both the British (in New York City, Philadelphia and New England) and the British allies, the Six Nations of the Iroquois, in Central New York and the Catskills. George Clinton was the governor of New York sending out orders from the de facto rebel capitol in Poughkeepsie. Anna Osterhout Moyers was home with her kids in Stone Arabia as her husband Henry nursed a sore foot, marching along the Mohawk River with Nicolas Herkimer, towards Oriskany.

     Henry Moyer’s sore foot would save his life, as he pulled up lame before the battle, limping back home to Anna. After being ambushed and sliced apart by Mohawk and tory forces, 450 rebel men would not return to their families from the bloody creek bed at Oriskany. The battle lasted only a few hours.

     Because of the extreme bloodshed at Oriskany, another ancestor, Johannes Osterhout, Jr., and his sidekick “Nicolas the Indian,” were tasked by Gov. Clinton with going from Wawarsing (birthplace of my great grandparents) to Oquaga (east of Binghamton) to parlay with the Tuscarora. The Tuscarora assured the two “go-betweens” that yes, many of their young men had gone north to fight with the Mohawks and British at Oriskany, but the community at Oquaga was not hostile to the rebels and would stay out of the fight. Osterhout and Nicolas reported back to the governor and were paid 15 pounds for their service. Actually the cash went to Johannes, while Nicolas got a pint of rum. Due to Osterhout’s and Nicolas’ intelligence the village would be spared for the time being. It’s all there in George Clinton’s official papers.

     What’s this got to do with events in Syria? The parallels are obvious. The only reason the Tuscarora had survived that long was because of British guns, powder and horses. The Kurds are in the same precarious position. Eventually the British withdrew their support for the Six Nations, leaving them at the mercy of the battle hardened, Indian hating, American Patriots……… among them the Osterhouts. The Brits pulled back and let the Americans invade the Iroquois heartland. George Clinton’s brother General John Clinton would team up with Maj. General John Sullivan and weave a path of death and destruction from Osterhout, Pennsylvania to the Finger Lakes of New York. On Gov. Clinton’s and Gen. George Washington’s orders, nothing was left standing. Men, women and children were killed, crops burned and apple orchards girdled. The core of the great Haudenosaunee Confederacy was obliterated; while the British sat by and made peace with their unruly colonists and continued making boatloads of money. The Indians would never return. 

    

     When Trump’s clueless depravity unleashed the might of the second most powerful army in the NATO alliance on the Kurds, he may very well have put another genocide in motion. In a matter of weeks the Kurdish homeland may be gone forever. Only a narcissistic, megalomaniac like Trump, who knows nothing of history, can, in politically induced retrospect, opine that Turkey’s invasion now looks like “a bad idea”— warning he’ll ruin Turkey’s economy if they step out of bounds. Everything is transactional with Trump. Lives mean nothing to him.Yesterday he blamed his pulling back troops from protecting the Kurds on the Kurds not helping us in the Second World War, “they didn’t help us with Normandy, for example.” Or the Revolution, for another example. They deserve whatever they get. There’s some history for you. ‘member?  

CLICKBAIT JESUS

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST

     I was sitting at my brother’s kitchen table with my great niece and somehow mentioned—by name—Jesus Christ.  My great niece looked at me in shock and admonished me for cursing at the dinner table. I asked her what I had said. With furrowed brow she told me, “You said a bad word.” Now, there are plenty of times I take the Lord’s name in vain and cuss, “Jesus Christ.”  But this wasn’t one of them. I was literally talking about the New Testament Jesus of Nazareth. Context is important.

    Upon further inquiry I realized that this little girl had no other point of reference towards J.C. other than his name’s usefulness when one stubs a toe or can’t get a jar open. (I didn’t get into my own nickname of Osti being a curse. Some conversations can wait.) It fascinated me that many kids these days only know Jesus Christ as a common swear word; not the son of God. I think in many ways that’s a good thing. Children aren’t unnecessarily burdened by theological dogma in secular education. If they don’t go to church how would they know? And here again the word “church” can be confusing; especially in this neighborhood.

   One of my favorite stories about children of the congregation is of two neighborhood kids attending their grandmother’s funeral. They had spent hours among adults and other children crying and mourning the passing of a loved one; not an easy experience for anyone. As the day dragged on they were tired, confused and basically worn out. Then their father told them to get ready, they were going to church. Both kids perked up, big smiles plastered across their cherubic faces. “CHURCH! Yea!” Their poor father, ripped apart at the passing of his mom, had to patiently explain that it wasn’t that kind of church. Their only experience of church going, until then, had been attending The Church of the Little Green Man. Where’s the piñata? What kind of lousy church is this? Bummer.

   These days the kids in question are overloaded with theology. They attend after school Hebrew sessions during the week and go to “real” Christian church on Sunday. I think this is great. You can’t have too much information. The problem arises when the grandparents (of opposing theologies) want the kids to pick a team. This is a microcosm of an issue that faces major belief systems in general; the idea that a person is required to choose one “God” over another. Learning often contradictory theopathies can lead to confusion, but also curiosity.  I feel this is positive and ultimately helpful to any child’s development. Why not learn about, or even adhere to, as many beliefs as possible? Comparative religious studies among the very young seems like a good idea.

   Go to shul. Go to church. Go to mosque, temple, the ashram or shrine, or just go sit in the woods. The illusion of the Godhead can be found everywhere. The funny thing is, even after attending Christian church, the neighborhood kids felt the same way as my great niece. When they got back from services they couldn’t wait to tell their parents how much fun they had with all the religious people cussing in church. “They say Jesus Christ all the time.” they giggled. Ha! Jesus loves you, this I know……cause the Koran, Torah, and Bhagavad Gita (not in so many words) tells me so.

P.S.

Minutes after writing this blog post an image of a blond, hippie looking, clickbait Jesus magically appeared on my CNN newsfeed. Under his groovy image it stated: “Historical misconceptions we all believed.” Amen.  

YOU'RE AN ASSHOLE

SMALL TOWN GOSSIP DEFENSE

   I’ve always lived in small communities. Even in large cities like San Francisco or New York, I gravitated towards insular neighborhoods like the Mission or East Village. Within these “villages” multiple scenes can develop and thrive. It’s actually more expansive in the country. Hamlets that have little more than a post office for a main street, no longer function as the meeting place for the surrounding community. Here our community is spread out across the county, tied together with group email chains, text messages and phone calls. Even the church—which only meets two or three times a year—surrenders its “hub” function to the tentacles of modern communication. Cocktails Thursday? I’m down.

    Ever since humans sought shelter together in caves there has been gossip. It probably predated art. “God her farts are stinky……don’t tell her I said that. I think she’s sexy.” Our little eastern Catskill community is no different. People talk behind your back, and it’s not always pleasant. Because I talk (and write) so much in public I don’t feel too much of a need to gossip. I can get it out of my system on the internet.

Here’s a recent bit of gossip:

“What was she saying?”

“Who knows. She thinks your rude, shocking revelation. I pointed out to my mom that she’s crazy. Will take it up again soon.”

    I won’t tell you who is responding. It was me asking the question. The subject was hunting permission. You figure it out. Here’s why I like email. I have never met the person in question; the one who thinks I’m “rude.” But I have had 3 or 4 email exchanges with her. I checked my history and reread everything I had written. I know I can be direct, sometimes abrupt, and even rude, but it’s always purposeful. I pride myself in a well crafted, snide, biting, sarcastically rude email. My memory of my interaction with this woman was that I was polite, respectful and cordial. I was correct. There wasn’t a hint of rudeness. I was asking for hunting permission for Christ’s sake. Why would I be rude?

    It’s not shocking that the “mom” thinks I was rude in conversations she has no knowledge of. She and I have our difficulties communicating. It’s an ongoing tango. What is surprising is that the daughter was more than ready to accept the fact that I was “rude.” This is the danger of gossip. My whole world hangs on my reputation. Sure I can be an asshole. Yet, when I am I like to think I can own it. I own less than an acre of land. In order to hunt I have to navigate land owner permission with a variety of eccentric personalities. It’s not always easy or pleasant, but there’s no getting around it. Even writing about this, I’m running the risk of making it worse. But my wiring does not allow for me to swallow. My extreme gag reflex kicks in. So I emailed the woman in question. Here's her response:    

  “Thank you for reaching out again. That should teach me to never say anything to anyone. You and I didn’t get off on a good foot, but now I hope we can just be respectful neighbors.”

Not exactly an apology, but at least the recognition that her gossiping did not go unnoticed. I have little respect for such people. I can say this honestly as I’ll never set foot on her property again. For the rest of the participants in this little kvetching klatch, I respectfully request you think before you cast dispersions on my good name. It’s all in black and white.

ATTENDING THE WOODSTOCK FILM FESTIVAL with Alyson Grey, Samm Kunce and Alex Grey

THIS IS YOUR (my) LIFE

1:00 pm EST Sunday Oct. 6, 2019

    

     I’m sitting here in my house, steeling myself for the screening of Mike Osterhout and The Church of the Little Green Man in Rhinebeck. It’s part of the Woodstock Film Festival. Of course I’ve seen the film, but this will be the first time I’ll see it amongst strangers. I don’t like sitting in a movie theater, in the dark, with strangers, even when it’s not about me. I wouldn’t say I’m nervous, but I am neurotic. 

    The CLGM has been going on (off and on) since 1986. The film is not historical; concentrating on the past two years in interviews and the filming of multiple services. There are two versions: 14mins. and 16 mins. I prefer the longer one. It’s difficult to write about this without sounding like an ingrate or a pompous asshole. So first let me say this: If someone shows up at your house and wants to do a documentary about your work say yes. It’s a humbling experience to have an objective chronicler come away from a relatively unguarded series of film shoots with something interesting. We look good. The cat is now out of the bag.

    Just to put things in perspective, I neither made nor spent any money on this film. It’s all Roderick Angle’s investment. If he can convince some producer that he is worth investing in for a future project, this film will serve as an example of what he is capable of. I don’t want anybody to invest in the CLGM. We’ll just burn your money. With that said, so far my film festival experience has been less than red carpet worthy. The first sign of this was the fact that I have to pay $10 to see the film. This skin-flinty film fest. approach was compounded when I was invited to participate in a Q&A. So, you want me to pay to watch a film with my name in the title and do a free dog and pony show after the screening? I don’t think WTF? is an adequate response to that. 

Since I have yet to drive to Rhinebeck, I’m gonna stop writing here and fill you in when I get back. I don’t want to say anything I’ll regret.

10:45 pm EST 

   I’m glad I waited. My perspective has totally changed. The film was shown amongst a group of other short films. It’s like being in a group show. When you realize you’re in good company the pressure is off. All my petty animosity disappeared as I watched pigeon racers, struggling fishing families, sisters of murdered brothers and ostracized, menstruating Indian girls alienated by ancient customs. These were real people dealing with real  issues, captured by talented cinematographers and directors. Their stories were poignant and captivating. By the time the CLGM movie came on everybody was ready for some foolishness.

    After the show we had dinner and a couple of bottles of wine, toasting our success. I feel great. The neurosis has lifted. Having one’s work exposed within the documentary context—as rattling as that is—can also be rewarding and gratifying. I want to thank Roderick Angle and cinematographer Mitch Blummer for all their time and money they invested in this project….coming soon to an internet connection near you.