I just finished reading The Donkey Show by Michael Patrick Welch. I met Patrick one day on the couch of his girlfriend’s neighbor’s house, where in a galaxy of artful minds and conversations he only stood out as the new guy. We didn’t get a chance to become friends. He was just settling in while I was moving on. After reading The Donkey Show I wish I had had that chance.
The narrative is charged with the schizophrenic energies of New Orleans; poverty, wealth, wealth in poverty, poverty in wealth. Every time something good happens you’re waiting for the other shoe to fall. Every time tragedy strikes look around the corner for the city to resurrect joy from pain. The book tells you, and reminds me, what its like to arrive in New Orleans a foreigner, minority, cautiously excluded, and cautiously welcomed. Patrick teaches at a public school in New Orleans and of all the pregnant tales, tells the reader the lessons he learned from his students, and by inference ones he didn’t. He serves fancy meals at a fancy restaurant while his first Mardi Gras rolls by right in front of him, and lets us in on the wait staff rantings with its defacto race, sex, and gender politics. He falls in love and finds his way, for now. Sadly he doesn’t tell us if he ever made it back to Costa Rica, but at the end of the book he gives you his email address so you can just drop him a note and ask.
While despairing to impart the simplest of instructions Patrick tells his writing students to “review the content.” I did my best. The last time I saw Patrick he was sitting on his bike with his girlfriend on his lap waiting for the next parade to roll down Canal Street. The Donkey Show tells some of Patrick’s story, but there’s a lot more, and I’d love to hear it.

Find Michael Patrick Welch at these other links:
Equator Books, Author Profile.
Gambit Weekly Author Archives.
commonplace, the author's blog.
An early piece of The Donkey Show at The Edward Society.
and the essay Animal Hospital at BIGnews - A Publication of Mainchance.

First person to ask gets it. I have released it via BookCrossing.

What is the role of government? What should government provide to citizens? I'm getting into a civil responsibility kick. I'm frustrated that Republicans and Democrats are presented as viable, opposing alternatives to governance. The only things that strongly separate our political parties are the fringe issues like abortion and gun controls. But I have to believe (and I hope you're with me) that most Americans hold opposing values on these issues and struggle to know what's best. I feel like we are being swallowed by consumer capitalism, government by corporation, and as a sideline we have electioneering and scandal-mongering. The politicomedia complex distracting us from the fact that only corporate lobbyists can buy access to government. What ever happened to representation?

There's something to finding the edge of a cliff. Something animal in me that screams with fear and adrenaline, "That's a cliff right there! We're close to the edge!" It's a thrill to overcome this, or to embrace it and master myself.
"I know its a cliff. I'm the one who brought us here."
Laying flat inching towards the edge of some gorge in Arizona or pushing my face past the guard rails atop the empire state building. Perhaps I run out of neural chemical signals or burn up all the receptors to carry them, or my body believes the lie I'm telling myself, "Everything's okay. I can get a bit closer." The animal gets put away.
In this way I creep towards the edge. I terrify myself, get a hold of myself, and terrify myself again. At some point the animal says "Who are you shitting?" and the only way to get a hold of myself is to back away from the edge. Having found it. Right there where I turned around.

In Las Vegas we have a lot of strip clubs. Recently one club in particular has been having advertisements on pretty early in the evening. Its the same commercial every time; with a kind of tinkley, wind chime, xylophone music and a bunch of scenes with women in bikini sized outfits. All of this is somewhat unremarkable.
This is what gets me: while my nephews are playing (2 and 4 years old), crashing cars, wrestling, whatever the commercial starts with the tinkle tinkle and everything else stops. They walk up to the television and stare in silence and when the commercial ends they go right back to what they were doing.
Should we turn off the TV? Alone and unprompted my two year old nephew will cross rooms like some Pavlovian puppy to watch this commercial. How is that possible?
I couldn't find a clip of the commercial...

I've been away for over a month. Sorry about that. I'd like to get back and produce something worth reading. There's more to come...

I think I need to admit I am totally in love with Amazon.com. Not really in love, but I have so many wonderful expectations.
I was an early adopter of internet shopping because of Amazon. I'm not sure when I made my first purchase but it was back in the days when dial-up was king.
The reason I shop at Amazon is because Amazon knows me as a customer. In retail, there's no other store that I am getting that from right now.
Take book shopping. I generally decide to shop for a book when I come across a title or author while I am doing something else. If I take this information to Big Box Retail Book Store (and I am lucky) I can find a specific book I am looking for. Generally, I wind up spending a lot of time looking at the bargain book racks and taking home some great deal that I'll never open.
Thanks to Amazon I've found enjoyable books that I wouldn't have even know to look for at Big Box Retail Book Store. That's the kind of shopping experience I come back for.

Growing up in Las Vegas I always wanted to be a Thunderbird pilot. On the 14th we nearly lost one. Capt. Chris Stricklin (USAFA '94) ejected with minor injuries just before his F-16 crashed. I came across this article with a video (KTVB.COM | Idaho News | Idaho News on Demand) and these other videos: (video1, video2.)

Friday
I'm all over the place today; mentally and netwise. It's Friday after all. I came across NationMaster.com. It's fantastic. You can find out things like which countries are the most taxed. Like the CIA Factbook done with the capabilities of the internet in mind. (The scope of these sites only overlap on country statistics.) Also, check out the BBC Country Profiles if you're looking for background info of countries.

Sam Brown at explodingdog is drawing wonderful things.

How rich are you? >> I'm loaded. It's official. I'm the 53,095,965 richest person on earth!

The Global Rich List is trying to remind us of how well off we really are. (And get us to donate to CARE International.)

You will find on this page a reminder of 9-11-01. Watch it and pass it on.

Warren Zevon died yesterday Sunday, September 7, 2003. I first listened to Warren Zevon in the summer of 1998. A friend had a copy of Excitable Boy and it played in the car for months. I fell in love with the song Rolland the Headless Thompson Gunner. I can't say why for sure. It will always remind me of the cost of war; in success or failure. I once heard a statistic (while standing at the Vietnam Memorial) that more Vietnam vets have committed suicide than were killed in action. We ask our soldiers to kill, die, and for many, kill themselves.
On his farewell album The Wind, with a wry wink at death, Zevon covers Bob Dylan's Knockin' On Heavens Door. The album has received excellent reviews and its great.
Peace, Paul

I finished Evolving the Mind by A. G. Cairns-Smith a few days ago. For me it was rather ponderous. I may need to re-read it.

I picked this book because I came across a quote of Cairns-Smith's in Darwin Among the Machines by George B. Dyson. [A history of computing.]

As I understand it Cairns-Smith proposes that the conscious mind, the parts of mind that have feelings and effect behavior, are like a macro-quantum mechanical effect. (i.e. superfluidity or coherent light lasers) He argues that the mind is an evolved 'physical' phenomenon but its clear to him that our models of physicality are insufficient to know the mind. Indeed our misunderstanding of our world is the most substantial impression I took from the book.

For me this book was a challenging science primer, structured to hold up a proposal for consciousness. I would recommend it to interested readers who feel they have a strong grasp of the physical sciences.

Webcomics
If you want to read a fun (and cheap) web based comic book check out The Right Number by Scott McCloud.
I ran into this comic in a round about way. First I was browsing Friendster.com for new friends, if you can believe it, and I was reading about someone who liked Neil Gaiman. That reminded me to check out his blog. From there I learned about BitPass and how Scott McCloud is using it to distribute his comic webComic The Right Number.
BitPass is a prepaid mircopayments system that lets web content creators charge small amounts for things of value, albiet small value. I jumped right in. Got ten bucks in BitPass credit and bought The Right Number for $0.25. I sure hope that BitPass or something like it will catch on and encourage mircopayments.
Following the same thread I ran across CafePress.com which lets bloggers (anyone with a webpage) have their content manufactured for their audience. CafePress takes a cut and bloggers develop another revenue stream.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
I was happy to run across some reminders of Martin Luther King, Jr. today. The first showed up on This American Life, the second at the Indian Express, and the thrid over at the BBC.
At TAL’s Kid Logic Episode a father is explaining to his very young daughter first about the Christmas holiday and the teachings of Jesus and later about Martin Luther King Day and King’s teachings. (Listen to it here. Move slider to about 13:05 mark.)

Checking the news I bumped into the small quote, “In 1965, Martin Luther King recalled that during his visit to India he was introduced by a principal of a Dalit school in Kerala as an ‘untouchable from the United States.’” This led me to Pamela Philipose's cloumn Dream On, for the Future. She mentions that tomorrow is the anniversary of King’s “I have a dream" speech (listen to it here) and tries to convince her readers that the dream is for everyone. Unfortunately, the only response to the article says, "I say King belongs to Negros only.....not us Indians...." Its sure to me that we have a long way to go.

The next article I saw was more pessimistic. In An unfulfilled dream, T Rasul Murray, a witness and organizer of the March on Washington finds that little has changed in 40 years.

It seems to me that King will always be a leader to emulate. That in fact injustice should be opposed with love. When more people look to solutions that include self-sacrifice and forgivness we will have real hope for the future.

Bruce Mau is one of the people at MASSIVE CHANGE that is trying to point out what we are doing to the world and what we could be doing.

Love. Sex. Life.
Do relationships that start with lighnting bolts last? This American Life had a Valentine's Episode that tried to pick out stories of love that lasts; rather than love lost.

I've been bombarded with tragedy all day. Reeling from stories of ethnic and religious strife in Pakistan, the oppressive atmosphere of sexual assault in Gao Xingjian's Soul Mountain, and from Margy Rochlin telling the story of her father Fred Rochlin on This American Life (listen here).

Hearing and reading I fidget with anger. I feel compelled to embrace more and more tragedy. Like it’s a crime to ignore it. As though I participate in causing the harm by not stopping it. It crushes me, hurts me. I'm whole. Not being annihilated. Not subject to unimaginable injustice; attack, murder, rape, and war.

And yet I am subject to injustice. I live in an unimaginably unjust world. Filled with all manner of evil and cruelty. I am disappointed. Cheated. I can’t imagine that this is how thing were meant to be. What does it mean to set things right? What will I do? I feel unable to do anything. I want everyone to equal but I am afraid to renounce my privileges. White. Male. American.

I must do something.

I try to keep a notebook of terms and people I come across and don't know anything about. It’s a bit like a personal dictionary. It turns out to be a document recording my ignorance. Albeit, a partial record. So I'm always looking for good sources of biographical material on the net. I found a good source for authors at the BBC while looking for Zadie Smith.

She shows up in Episode One of The Whole Wide World talking about her multicultural origins and their expression in the new globalism. After listening to her I got recommended by Amazon to buy her book White Teeth and that same day I came across an article in Newsweek called A Slacker's Delight which mentioned White Teeth. So I caved. I bought White Teeth (and Autograph Man, for good measure.)

Its funny, this book was a best seller, won all kinds of first-book awards, and was broadly marketed in 2000 and I never heard of it until a few weeks ago when I get this hat-trick of late stage documentary marketing. I had to buy it. Synchronicity and all. I want to write, "It’s a good book" and be done with it. I enjoyed reading it and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in updating their views on, so called, post-colonialism.

I've been dwelling on the purpose of this web log. There are a lot of things that are appealing about it to me, but I feel like I need to make it more focused. I need to make it more readable; not that I have any audience. So far I have been relating the trail I've followed to some cultural consumeable and left the reader to decide if its a path they might want follow. I want to rework this approach. Try to highlight an interesting piece of media I've come across while describing how I became interested in it. I'll see how this turns out and make course corrections as i go.
Peace,
Paul

I had an accident. It’s a little embarrassing... I have been biking out at Red Rock Canyon a little west of my house in Vegas. Sunday I was coasting down the second half of the scenic loop when improbably a huge moth and I intersected paths. This moth tries to make a home in my mouth and I (being an insect in mouth, ah, disliker) freaked out and fell. I broke my fall with a head-elbow, shoulder, & hip combo.
Two guys stopped to help me, thanks two guys.
I was able to drive to the trauma center where my friend works and he put staples in my head, thanks friend.
Everything is going to be alright. I'm taking this experience as a sort of "get out of jail free" version of the bike with a helmet lesson.

If you don’t know it, check out Tyler Hamilton’s story from the Tour de France. (He’s amazing. It makes my story a little pathetic.)

Everybody! Everybody!
Have fun at homestarrunner.com

This American Life | Running After Antelope

I have listened to some of the audio articles by Ruthie Bloom. They are interviews and (for me, so far) less interesting than her column that I read or Mike Pinteks interview of her (where I first became interested in learning more about her). [Previously posted links.]

The Zambonis have a great song called Hockey Monkey.
Listen to the song here.
Watch the video here.
.........................................
(its)
One! Two! Three! The kids love the monkey.
(and its)
Four! Five! Six! The monkey's got a hockey stick.
Seven! Eight! Nine! Havin' a good time. Yeah!
.........................................
Peace
Paul

Continuing to listen to things I found at the Jerusalem Post, I found America's Voices. It is subtitled as Broadcasting the Real Story from Israel to America. I haven't listen to the whole series but what I have heard is one sided. The choice of what to host on the webite especially so. Maybe it would be too much to expect otherwise. Among the full articles dedicated to "thanks to El Al" and "thanks to the David Citadel Hotel" for supporting the cultural exchange I found Ruthie Blum talking about "the Flip Side" and Dore Gold talking about the "Road Map for Peace" Blum's article is about the nature of living in Israel and very charming. Gold's is an opportunity for Sharon's approach to the Road Map to be broadcast to American audiences and informative albeit one-sided.
I continued looking for material by Ruthie Blum. I read her current column at the Jerusalem Post (a sort of quick enjoyable and melancholy work) and found her audio archive there. I have not yet listened to any of these stories but look forward to them.
Later I was nosing around for more interesting stories and found this one about the Machlis family. They host Shabbat meals and this and every subsequent story I could find about them priases their conviction and hospitality. I hope I might be able share a meal with them someday.
Peace,
Paul

Today I read a Religion and Peacemaking e-newsletter from the United States Institue of Peace [web page here].
Dr. Doug Johnston talked about his participation in an American Abrahamic delegation's trip to Iran with high level diplomatic visits. As I understand it the delegation was religious in nature and therefore avoided political discussions. Johnston concluded that Iranians are perhaps encouraged to aquire atomic capabilities by being surrounded by American military forces in Iraq and Afganistan while President Bush sticks to the 'regime change' and 'axis of evil' rhetoric, and that the student unrest is somewhat overstated. [I could not find a link to his note, which for brevity I did not include. If you want to read it I could email it to you.]
In the same e-newsletter Yehezkel Landau reccomended the Jerusalem Post article A mutually subversive journey by Yossi Klein Halevi. I can only repeat his recommendation. It is the story of the risks and opportunities of a pilgrimage of Israeli Jews and Arabs to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Finally, it was at the Jerusalem Post that I found new spoken stories at This Normal Life by Brian Blum. Blum is an Israeli immagrant telling stories of life in Israel. I wish there were a hundred story tellers like him on each side of the Jordan just telling stories about their lives and listening.
Peace,
Paul

I was listening to This American Life - The Kindness of Strangers. Around the 18 min 30 sec mark Act Two, 'Runaway' begins. Its a story of H. Jack Geiger being taken in by actor Canada Lee. The story lead me to find out about Langston Hughes; a frequent visitor to Canada Lee's house.
I knew the name from a life time of almost learning things. I found an entry at The Academy of American Poets and Hughes reading his own poem, The Negro Speaks of Rivers, here.

Have fun at the Kung Fu Movie Name Generator.

I am listening to The Whole Wide World with Christopher Lydon today. It’s compelling so far but I can't give it unequivocal thumbs up until hear more of it. I found out about it at Transom. I've opted to download the first few shows a couple clicks into the first link above. (That way I can put them on my MD player and listen while I am biking.) But if you want to listen to them over Real player here are some links:

Episode One: The Global Condition
Episode Two : War and Conflict in the Post-Cold War, Post-9/11 Era
Episode Three: Refugia
Episode Four: Global Culture
Episode Five: The Future of the Planet
Episode Six: What do Writers Think
Episode Seven: Live from WBGH

I am trying out the Ringo web site. The idea is to create a network of friends, keep in touch, plan events and such, helpful. Then when your friends start inviting their friends to join you get these networks of networks; some folding back on each other, interesting. With these extended networks you get to meet people who are like your friend (or at least who your friends like). If you want to join my ringo circle use this link.

Let's all pitch in to help FOUND Magazine. It's a collection of found artifacts that let you in to the annonomous lives of regular people. This one is the funniest I've seen. You can hear Davy Rothbart, foundmagazine.com's point guard, read it for This American Life here (a real audio link) if you fast forward to about 46:30 on the track. His reading starts around the 42 minute mark if you wind up wanting to hear more. So look around and if you find something interesting, send it to FMfinds. Have a nice weekend.
Peace,
Paul

Project Minus One: Capture Stories.
I want to get on public radio, This American Life specifically. I started this project just before I began the blog, so I'm calling it Minus One. I've been listening to the archives of This American Life while working and I really enjoy them. They have a lot of resources to help amateurs get going. Mainly thay send you over to Transom - A Showcase & Workshop for New Public Radio to get help. Transom is great. So far I am just following directions. Today I was listening to Jimmy and Jewel: A Love(?) Story and somehow got sidelined into Lost and Found Sound: The Vietnam Tapes of Lance Corporal Michael A. Baronowski. Listen to Baronowski; he's one of our heros.

Share the Web
As a way of documenting the interesting things I come across surfing the web I will be using 'BlogThis!' frequently. I hope this will have the effect of creating content that will comment on who I am and what interests me. When strung together it might become a sort of web stream of consciousness.

I have the BBC News Ticker running at the bottom of my screen while I work. (You can get it at BBC News | Services | News Ticker.) The headline Bush deplores 'crime' of slavery caught my eye. (It’s the first link below.) The first reaction I had was: Crime in quotations like it isn't really a crime, and maybe we should be surprised that the president deplores slavery. The second: How is this news? Who doesn't deplore slavery? The article led me to want to know what Go're Island was all about. I found the second link at the UNESCO website using a google search for gore island.

BBC NEWS | Africa | Bush deplores 'crime' of slavery

UNESCO - Virtual Visit of Gor�e Island - Senegal

Welcome to making projects.
This is my first attempt at a blog.
My hope is that by documenting my ideas for projects I might have a better chance of completing some of them. Maybe some readers will pick up on my ideas and improve on them, others might encourage me to finish projects they find most interesting, and still others might just enjoy the content created in the process.
Thanks for visiting. I hope to add more soon.
Peace,
Paul