I can’t help it. I have ideas about how the world should be. I have ideas about how people should be with each other. Sometimes I’m self-indulgently nostalgic for the present.
Are there any two words sweeter than General Strike?
I was doing some archive stuff today. I found a pair of shoes that I was completely astounded by. Words don’t do them justice, but in case you aren’t believing your eyes (or are vision impaired), they are fairly simple pumps with short pointy toes of the nineteen fifties variety. What’s special about them is that they don’t have heels! There is a steel shank that curves away from the sole where the sole meets the ground, providing a little platform to extend the center of support back about two thirds of the way to where a heel would touch the ground. They look like regular heels without the heel. They are very very worn. I expect that their previous owner (a 1950s NYC pro-domme) just could not give up wearing them. These shoes certainly deserve a little restoration. If you know someone who does shoe repair of an archival/restoration sort, please let me know.
I love my work!
In what seems to be a new trend in my writing, another quick throwaway in which I barely even say what I’m saying.
I’m gonna be eating Girl Scout cookies this year. Even if they aren’t made from real Girl Scouts.
I will not be at 14th and Broadway tonight at 6:00. I will be meeting other obligations in another fight that I genuinely believe makes the world a better place. I’m thinking of you all and I’m keeping my fingers crossed for all of your safety.
Update: I was totally there.
I’m a day late. I won’t make an excuse.
Happy birthday to one of the people I admire most in the world.
Thanks for all you have done for us.
Girlfriend and I watched both Tombstone and Kevin Costner’s Wyatt Earp in the past few nights. This morning we were discussing the fact that someone should make a movie centered around the adventures of Doc Holiday.
We were thinking that this would be a natural for Johnny Depp. Not sure who to cast as Big Nose Kate; Isabella Rossellini could do it again and we would be quite happy.
If anyone reading this knows any Hollywood types, please pass the thought along.
I love the fourth of July. I’m conflicted about parts of it, but uncomplicated relationships are for uncomplicated minds. I loathe the standard fare patriotism and invented right wing history that this date invokes, but the negatives associated with this date don’t outweigh the positives for me.
Historically, July 4 is the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. A bunch of moneyed white men got together to complain about their taxes. That doesn’t sound too unfamiliar. Does it? They selected a passionate writer and speaker, slaveholder, rapist, inventor and rabble rouser Thomas Jefferson to draft a declaration of their distaste for being told what to do by other moneyed white men.
In spite of all his shortcomings, Jefferson penned (literally) the foundational document of the American Revolution and, perhaps more important, the foundational document of what we now think of as social justice and human rights.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all [people] are created equal, that they are endowed (snip) with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
This was a declaration of the rights of people to govern themselves for their own well-being, benefit and purposes. This was the assertion that the rights of individuals were greater than the power of monarchy. This was the beginning of not just the American Revolution, but of many revolutions to come. Over the next fifty years, monarchies all over Europe would fall. Later, the promises of freedom in the Declaration would inspire progressive political thinkers such as Karl Marx and Emma Goldman. It is the promise of the Declaration that inspired abolitionists in the mid nineteenth century in the USA, and anti-colonialists all over the world in the mid twentieth century.
Ho Chi Minh quoted the American Declaration of Independence in his own and sought support for throwing off his French colonial rulers from the United States, who he assumed would be sympathetic because of our history as an exploited colony. Unfortunately, like Fidel Castro, his requests for assistance in establishing independence and freedom were denied and he was forced to seek support from the Soviet Union. The same segment of the Declaration was quoted by the Black Panther Party and they too were seen as an enemy by the US government.
On the Fourth of July, I celebrate the moment at which the political ideals I subcribe to, those of individual freedom and collective effort and sacrifice for the collective good, were set in motion for the first time in a way that is recognizable to people struggling in our time.
Jefferson himself predicted that rights should be ever-expanding and that it would be correct for future generations to look back on his age and see barbaric suppression. We do. I expect the same to be thought of my current ideas in the future, or at least I hope for that.
In the mean time, I also really like fireworks.
