Wind inflated bag
once feared by crows is gashed
airless against gutter [Read more…]
What’s on your Mind?
San Diego Free Press editor and Starting Line columnist Doug Porter is enjoying a California style stay-cation until Friday 25th. Daily editors Annie Lane and Rich Kacmar will continue to post articles and read our emails with some pinch hinting from Anna Daniels.
In lieu of Doug’s analysis of the local and national scene, we invite you, our readers, to let us know what is on your mind in our comment section, or send a full length submission to contact@sandiegofreepress.org
[Read more…]
Confederate Monuments – Grind the Stone Into Dust | Video Worth Watching
What is to be done with the monuments to Southern white supremacy? New Orleans has already begun the process of removing these symbols of white supremacy and New Orleans mayor, Mitch Landrieu, revealed to the Atlantic, some of the issues raised by this project.
Then there’s Daily Kos blogger, Hunter, who weighed in recently with a post titled “Tear Them Down”. Pointing out that nearly all of the monuments nationwide were erected long after the end of the Civil War, most were less an attempt to honor the exploits of those fighting to preserve slavery than a demonstration of the continued dominance of white power and privilege. Putting them in historical context he says: [Read more…]
Mad World – There Are No Answers, Only Mysteries | Video Worth Watching
It’s a “Mad World”. Yes it is. If only it were so, simply for the reasons presented in this quirky little video directed by Michel Gondry, rather than for the actual tragic and frightening events of the last few days. Well, we can dream … and this video conjures up a poignant dreamscape.
Some of you may recognize this Gary Jules and Michael Andrews cover of the Tears for Fears song as the musical leitmotif from the movie “Donnie Darko” (an underappreciated cult indy movie which, if you haven’t seen yet, consider doing now). This video treatment, though, is completely unrelated to the movie, creating its own atmosphere and sense of time. The overhead views of the schoolchildren creating animated tableaux pan away to distant vistas, to the singer, then return to the children, still constructing the dynamic scenes which can only be appreciated from on high. There are no answers, only mysteries … [Read more…]
Geo-Poetic Spaces : Invasion
Air is sucked from the lungs
of missing sons and fathers
exit wounds wail
air raid sirens
Fleeing echoes
collapse
on tears of olive trees
Still listening for a bird’s song
to sound the all clear [Read more…]
Isaac Artenstein: Telling Frontier Jewish Stories
Filmmaker Isaac Artenstein likes to tell good stories, especially unknown ones, and if those stories inform and entertain others, even better.
He feels that the Jews of the Southwest have an untold story as the narrative has been mostly about the Anglo westward expansion; whereas, other immigrants are also part of the history. He wants to show one of the missing pieces of the puzzle.
To that end, he’s working on a four-part series of documentaries, “Frontier Jews,” which covers Jews of the Southwest, including New Mexico, San Diego, Arizona (specificially, Tucson), and El Paso, Texas. The documentary on New Mexico, “Challah Rising in the Desert” has just been completed and the one on San Diego, “To the Ends of the Earth,” is near completion.
Artenstein was born in San Diego and grew up as a child of the border. He went to school in Tijuana and high school in Chula Vista. Fluent in both English and Spanish, he moves comfortably between both worlds. In addition, with an Ashkenazi father and Sephardic mother, he was also exposed to the different aspects of Judaism, which has served him well while making the documentaries. [Read more…]
‘America First:’ The Value of Knowing Where We’ve Been
Tough subjects seem always to end up with Greek or Latin roots. Alienation, bulimia, catastrophe, depression … just go through the alphabet and you’ll find them.
In our fragile democracies, maybe we assign concepts like these, wrestled over by so many psychoanalysts, social and clinical psychologists, political scientists, sociologists, historians, writers for large daily newspapers — even some politicians — that they’ve become contorted and distorted to the point that they are merely suggestive, symbolic, abstracted from the particular.
Many of them become the product of people who differ mightily over the causes and effects of our barely civilized mistakes; for example, the election of Donald Trump to presidency.
Historians have generally proved to be more reliable than other more scientific specialists active in the battle to explain how we wound up electing a blowhard to the nation’s highest office. Here are two words they’ve used, righteously, to explain our mad indifference to failure: Xenophobia and isolationism. [Read more…]
Summer Chronicles #5: Two Conversations
Two recent conversations that stayed with me for some reason.
One was with a man who told me that he knew what it was like to feel so empty that the fragile construct that was him, his identity, could fall apart at any moment. He knew this, of course, because that is what happened to him. He had a breakdown; he broke down and the pieces of him fell off, down on the ground all around him–inexplicable shards of what used to be that thing he called himself.
It is remarkable when someone tells you such a thing. I was struck by the courage of the confession and also by the rawness of the moment, the trembling intensity that accompanied the admission and the heightened anticipation of what I don’t know. [Read more…]
A Song for the Sea Pig – Featuring the Kronos Quartet | Video Worth Watching
Unusual Creatures is a PBS Digital Studios series. This particular episode reveals some fascinating facts about the Sea Pig (Scotoplanes globosa), a critter that inhabits a world on the deep ocean floor that most of us will never directly experience. These little pink blobs survive by hoovering up “marine snow”, basically eating and pooping. That doesn’t inhibit the show’s host Michael Hearst from collaborating with the San Francisco string group Kronos Quartet to create a musical tribute to this peculiar denizen of the deep. [Read more…]
Geo-Poetic Spaces : Small Talk
Wealthy patrons complain
about the absence of ice buckets
in nightclubs:
Bloated small talk
that melts glaciers [Read more…]
A Genealogy Adventure with Slave and Supercentenarian Moses Williams
Donya Williams, the four-times great-granddaugter of a man named Moses Williams, asked me if I would help draw attention to some research she and a cousin are doing titled: Stronger Together: The Moses Williams Genetic Genealogy Project.
So I started reading a bio she sent me of their work and can’t help but think they already know what they’re doing.
I was barely into reading other information when the names Strom Thurmond, 50 Cent, Al Sharpton, and L.L. Cool J jumped out at me – names I wouldn’t ever expect to appear in the same sentence.
I mean what could a white Southern senator who loves the KKK and a man who raps, “There’s no business like ho business” and a melodramatic Baptist preacher “Keepin’ it Real” and the creator of “Mama Said Knock You Out” possibly have in common? [Read more…]
What a Dump! or Is Donald Trump Afraid of Virginia Woolf? | Video Worth Watching
Well it may not be set in the White House, but this little slice of the 1966 Mike Nichol’s film adaptation of Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” certainly does justice to the original Bette Davis delivery of the now iconic phrase: “What a dump”. What does any of this have to do with Donald Trump? As little as possible. I just couldn’t resist an opportunity to resurrect this masterful classic that is one of only two films to be nominated in every eligible category at the Academy Awards. (h/t AGD) [Read more…]
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