Self Gossip

Angel and Jess benefit August. 26th

stormaldo — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 21:34:13 GMT

For those of you who know our beloved and deliciously twisted friends, Angel and Jess, you've probably heard have fallen upon some tough circumstances as of late. They were all packed up and ready to move to Florida when their truck with all of their belongings was stolen. Leaving them homeless and without a way to get where they need to go. And did I mention ALL of their belongings gone? They're still trying to make it to Florida in time for Angel to start his new job. That means flying out by next Wednesday if they can come up with the cash. Critter, myself and whoever wants to help are throwing a benefit for them on Oct. 26th. It will be a clothing swap and dirty cabaret. Sad to say that Angel and Jess will likely NOT be there for this. Hopefully they'll be in Florida already. I will send them a check and perhaps some fancy outfits after the show. Wanna help? Wanna perform? Let me know. Either way, save the date and come to the show. See below for more deets: Saturday, August 26th @ Femina Potens 465 South Van Ness San Francisco, CA 94103 7pm (for clothing swap) 8pm (show starts) So far performers are: Lucian, Jukie Sunshine, Critter and me, Stormaldo. $5-100 sliding scale. (less if ya can't, more if ya can) Please see this link for other ways you might be able to help. sanfrancisco.tribe.net/listin...f4b926b

what comes to mind

stormaldo — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 21:26:09 GMT

what comes to mind when you think of what the following colors might each taste like? green red black brown blue yellow orange pink purple

While the Bombs Fall (re-post) by Starhawk

stormaldo — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 17:38:16 GMT

While the Bombs Fall By Starhawk While the bombs fall in Lebanon, I’m teaching a two-week course in permaculture: regenerative, ecological design, with a schedule so demanding that I find it hard to check email every day, let alone watch the news. But it comes in, between lesser messages about leaks in the watering system in the garden and flight cancellations: pictures of dead children on the road. I feel horrified, angry, frustrated, powerless…all the things I’m used to feeling about the situation, but more so. I try to write something in the spare moments when my teaching partner Penny is covering rain catchment or graywater systems, but all I keep writing, over and over, is “Killing children is wrong.” That sees so self-evident and banal that I can’t quite bring myself to send it out. Or rather, it doesn’t seem to add much to a discussion in which the decision makers are so convinced that killing our children is very, very wrong, but killing their children is the Path of Righteousness. While the Congress and Senate are voting their support for Israel’s actions, I am teaching systems theory and strategy, including an essay by Donella Meadows, “Nine Ways to Intervene in a System (in increasing order of effectiveness.) The least effective way, she says, is by changing amounts. Please, General, can we drop fewer bombs? Can we keep it proportional? Could we scale down to killing just maybe two of their children for every one of ours, instead of ten? The situation itself is a perfect example of what she calls a positive feedback loop. I find the term confuses people, as there is often nothing positive about it. I call it a self-reinforcing cycle. Whichever, it means a situation in which the more you have of something the more you get, and the more you need. You kill some of my children so I kill more of yours, so you kill more of mine, so I kill even more of yours. Self-reinforcing cycles are engines of change, for better or worse. They get more and more extreme, until either some new constraint enters to impose a new equilibrium, or they crash. Hurricanes suck up energy from the heat in the sea, and grow bigger, sucking more energy, which makes them bigger still, until they hit land and blow themselves out. Addicts keep taking more of what they’re addicted to, until they hit bottom, whether the addiction is to alcohol or heroin or military intervention. This quality of systems does not bode well—either for the children of Beirut or those of Haifa. Europe and the UN might make some weak attempts to intervene, but as long as the U.S. is cheering the Israeli government on, no serious constraints will be imposed. And why shouldn’t we cheer them on, when Israel’s addiction to force as a solution is the mirror of ours? We’re the big guy and the small guy, standing each other drinks at the pub and throwing the chairs at anyone who threatens us, until we smash the place. It is this very self-reinforcing cycle that keeps power in the hands of the neo-cons, whose answer to every fear and insecurity is more force. Force which creates more fear, which generates more violence, which requires more force to keep down. It’s an inherent aspect of being caught in this sort of system that as it begins to spiral out of control, and starts to break apart, the only solution you can see is more of the same. An alcoholic gets fired for drinking on the job, and drinks more to forget. Iraq is not working out well for Bush and the neocons, so bring in more troops, or expand the war—Lebanon, Syria, Iran. You can’t change a self-reinforcing system by changing amounts. Recovering alcoholics know this, generals and politicians don’t. Try to limit yourself to one drink before dinner, and somehow you still end up behind the wheel of the car that careens into the bus full of schoolchildren on the road. Tell yourself that you are using a measured, limited response for well-thought out political aims, and you still end up with blackened torsos and the severed limbs of infants in smoking piles on the motorway. Here’s some other things we know about these cycles—they are expensive. They consume resources. Drinking up the children’s milk money down at the local. Starving every social program to fund our military. And when they crash, they often fall hardest on the undeserving. The drunk behind the wheel rolls out of the crushed car, unharmed, while the family of five lies dead. The policy makers are not cringing in tenements as bombs fall, or crying over the bleeding body of their most beloved child. Nor are most of those who support the policies. Yet. To change the system, you need to change the paradigm, the way you frame the situation and think about it, the deep assumptions that shape your viewpoint. That’s Donella Meadows’ most effective way to intervene—changing the world view and the constructs that support the system. It’s also, generally, a hard and painful process. A new paradigm, a new construct of self and world, goes against everything we know and believe. If I’m telling myself that I’m a fun-loving, party kind of a gal—how painful to instead admit that I’m an alcoholic! If I’m justifying the deaths of children by telling myself that I’m bringing democracy to the region, or safeguarding my sister’s children in Hadera, or fulfilling God’s plan, how painful to look at the broken bodies on the pavement and say, “I did that. I have blood on my hands.” I’m thinking about one of the many fruitless arguments I’ve had about the issue, this one with an ultra-Orthodox rabbi’s wife, shortly after I’d returned from doing solidarity work with the nonviolent Palestinian resistance in Gaza and the West Bank. I tried to describe to her what I’d seen in that bullet-riddled, shell-shocked land, the ongoing, everyday horrors and humiliations and frustrations, the houses bulldozed, the farmlands confiscated, the lives blunted and stunted and blasted into oblivion, and at the end she said to me: “But we’re good. So if we’re doing it, it must be good.” That’s one hard paradigm to shift, because there is nowhere to go from that pinnacle but down, no change we can make that doesn’t require us to face the possibility that maybe we are bad, or at the very least, that we are good people doing some bad things. From that vantage point, of course any critique, no matter how measured, seems anti-Semitic, an assault on that basic self-definition of Essential Goodness. While the killing escalates, I am teaching about soil. How to feed the life of the soil, how to encourage and nurture the worms and the beneficial bacteria and fungi and other soil organisms. How a healthy soil will grow healthy plants, that can resist pests. Industrial agriculture, in contrast, is based in the same exact paradigm as our Iraq policy, one that was succinctly expressed in a bumper sticker my first husband applied to his van shortly before we broke up: “Force, It Works!” So, if corn borers are attacking your crop, blast it with insecticides. Kill the bastards! Are there weeds among the fields? Zap them with roundup. Root feeding nematodes, perchance, below ground? Blanket the whole thing in plastic, and gas it with methyl bromide. Force—it works, for a while, perhaps for short term goals. But force is costly. And, whether we’re employing force against bugs or bacteria or human beings, force breeds resistance. And so insects that survive the onslaught of the pesticides breed young that are not affected. We up the doses, and breed more and more resistant pests, which require more insecticides to kill, in another self-reinforcing cycle. The helpful insects, the predators that might have kept the pests in balance, are wiped out. And the residues of poison remain, in the soil and in the crops themselves. Human beings are not insects or bacteria. The human resistance that force breeds is not in the genes, but in hearts and minds. And so the bombing of Beirut breeds rockets falling on Haifa and airplane bombers in London, and all the assaults on South Lebanon, the bombs and blown-up bridges and armed teenage boys in uniform on the ground will breed more rockets yet, more suicide bombs of the future, more death in retaliation. And the devotion to force is itself a toxin, poisoning the soil of Israeli society, starving its own social programs, warping the very soul and ethics of the religion it purports to defend. How do we get out of this mess? What would a regenerative paradigm look like as a policy? If compost, worm castings and plants that feed beneficial bugs are the gardening alternative to chemical warfare, what would be the political parallel? From a purely self-interested, Israeli point of view, a policy maker coming from a regenerative paradigm might say: “We can never stamp our hatred, but let us not create habitat that favors its growth. Instead, let us nurture health wherever we find it, and create conditions that let flourish those who favor peace.” So, in the nineties, Israel could have said, “We have a small window here, when the Palestinians have settled for less than they could have demanded. Let us move quickly to establish a Palestinian state, with true areas of self determination for its people. If the Occupation is a running sore, inflaming rage and hatred throughout the Arab world and undermining our moral credibility, how do we swiftly end it and transform the region into a place of opportunity and hope? Where can we support people’s legitimate dreams and aspirations? How do we support the health of the region’s actual soil, the vitality of its crops, the abundance of its markets, the excellence of its Universities? How do we create such flourishing abundance that this region becomes a shining model for the whole Middle East?” Instead, Israel built settlements, began a long term program of encroachment on the tiny territory allocated to the Palestinians, and maintained an Occupation backed by force. When Abbas was elected, Israel could have said, “How do we give him victories and real gains that will strengthen his own people’s allegiance? And if corruption runs rampant in the Palestinian Authority, then where are there leaders of integrity we can ally with? And if Hammas is winning over the people with its social programs, how do we feed a healthy economy so that they become unnecessary?” Instead, Israel continued to build a wall which confiscates huge amounts of Palestinian land without compensation, destroys the very communities which historically have been most friendly to Israel, unilaterally ‘withdrew’ from Gaza while keeping it surrounded, an isolated, open-air prisons with its resources destroyed and its factions inflamed—creating a perfect breeding habitat for yet more violence. There are a hundred other missed opportunities. And there will be more. But the longer the cycle goes on, the more damage is done, and the harder it is to stop. Am I ‘blaming’ Israel unfairly? Couldn’t Hezbollah just stop shooting rockets, and the Palestinian factions stop bombing? Yes, certainly they could, and it would be good if they did. Children would live who otherwise would die. When we’re caught in a self-reinforcing cycle, it’s a fairly useless exercise to ask, “Who started it?” Or to debate whether one side or the other has the ‘right to defend itself’ by continuing the cycle. Far better to ask, “Who is in position to stop this cycle?” And it is Israel, the occupier of the territory, the fourth largest military power in the world, that sets the conditions of the region, that has the power to create a habitat where violence flourishes, or peace is favored. And I admit that I want Israel to act as the moral agent it claims to be. I’m a Jew who was raised with the dream of Israel, as a safe place after the Holocaust, as a refuge in that visa-denying world which sent boatloads of my people back to their deaths, as a place where we could finally, after two thousand years, be ourselves, in our own home. Among the many casualties of this war is all that was good in that dream. Because of the pennies I saved as a child to buy trees for the promised land, because of the songs I grew up singing, because of the deep well that was carved in my heart for that dream that now spews anguish and blood, I have the right ot an accounting from those who have replaced the God of Justice with the God of Force. The place has a history of great prophets and lousy kings. There is nothing more Jewish than thundering at the policy makers, saying “Jahweh and Allah and all good-hearted people agree: killing children is wrong. Just plain wrong, and when you do it you have left the Path of Righteousness. The cost of force is too high—it includes your soul.” Even as the bombs fall, there are people choosing to come from new assumptions. They are the Palestinians of the villages where the wall is confiscating their farmland, choosing nonviolent means of struggle, returning day after day to demonstrations in which they get beaten, tear-gassed, arrested. They are the Israelis and internationals who cross borders to stand with them, saying, “We are not ‘Palestinians’ and “Israelis’, we are people together struggling against injustice. They are the Women in Black, who stand in silent vigil for peace, year after year, fleeing Katusha rockets and returning back to their stand for peace. They are organizers of cross-cultural dialogues, soldiers who refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories or to kill civilians, youth who refuse to don the explosives belt. That these people still exist, that they somehow grow out of the blasted, toxic soil of the Middle East, gives us some reason to hope. In spite of the million missed opportunities, the oceans of spilled blood, the escalation of stupid policies, the situation is not yet utterly without hope. But what can we do, we who are not policy makers or generals or Queens of the Middle East, who are simply ordinary people of compassion, wringing our hands in front of the TV set. Every day, I hear people ask, “What can we do that will be effective?” And for once, I can’t think of a damn thing. Never has political action felt so futile. But I think about the advice the great war journalist Robert Fisk received, for surviving decades in Lebanon and other war zones. “Do something,” he was told. “Don’t do nothing.” So do something. While we’re waiting for the effective thing, do something even if it seems small and futile. Write your representatives. Go to the demonstration, or organize one. Educate yourself more deeply, then talk to someone who has less information. Stand in vigil with the Women in Black. Some of the founders of the International Solidarity Movement in Palestine are organizing nonviolent civil resistance in Lebanon. Join them, or support them. Pray to those Gods who may secretly resent being cast as child killers. Do something. We don’t know what the effective thing will be, may never know. But if we do nothing, we will surely have no impact. And what do we say? How do you stop a vicious cycle? Just stop. Stop now. Don’t wait until the enemy is utterly defeated, because your every effort to defeat them strengthens the forces that created them. Just stop. Not tomorrow, when our position is stronger. Not the day after, when you have neutralized more territory. The longer the cycle continues, the worse the crash will be. Just stop. Stop now. Come from a new paradigm. Feed the soil of the Holy Land with something other than blood. Cherish all children, ours and theirs. Starhawk www.starhawk.org <http://www.starhawk.org/> Feel free to post, forward, and reprint this article for non-commercial purposes. All other rights reserved.

vote for frab!

stormaldo — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 21:16:41 GMT

vote for frab #2!--to eat (wow, somehow my definition moved up to #1 since the original post...) http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=frab a word i made up in highschool go here and give 'er a thumbs up. then use the word with all your friends, ok? http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=frab 2. (now #1): frab v. to eat. n. munch (as in throw a munch) (origin: barf spelled backwards and barf done backwards.--opposite action something coming up and out of your digestive system is something going down and in.) 1. n. Hey holmes, let's go throw a frab at Taco Bell. 2. v. My mom bought hella groceries last night, wanna frab here?

Auntie Em Auntie Em!

stormaldo — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 23:10:58 GMT

OH MY GOD!!! I just remembered that I had a dream about the wizard of oz last night! i dreamed that i was dorothy. Toto and I ran into my room and slammed the door shut as the twister started. i swear, i'm not joking. wo. i'm hella gay.

Dumb Tag... kicks dirt

stormaldo — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 23:35:46 GMT

I was tagged by Trouble http://people.tribe.net/troubleporndawgie Eight bits of self gossip 1. I hate tag. 2. I love blood –I’m with Trouble on this one. 3. On dating: I want one of everything and all the time in the world. 4. I’m a hopeless, tragic romantic. 5. When I was in fourth grade, I wrote a song called Dreamers and Lovers that I hoped to someday get Neil Diamond to sing. Never happened. 6. I once went to Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous in Albuquerque a few times. It was creepy and depressing. I think it was that particular group of people. I decided to stop having obligation sex. I think I’m cured. 7. I’m afraid of mice. 8. I was a latchkey kid. When I was little and home alone, I used to fantasize about Jesus coming over and playing checkers and watching Tom and Jerry with me. I was tagged by Trouble http://people.tribe.net/troubleporndawgie The rule is for me to now tag 6 people. Sorry kids! I now tag: Logan, Indigo, Mimi, Leslie, Jean Luc, Rahel

hey homos, i'm performing this sunday!

stormaldo — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 14:24:19 GMT

Feliz mes de los jotos! I'm performing this Sunday in SF. Also, look for me on the Trans stage at pride this year. See below for this Sunday's deets. mwa! stormaldo the gay http://www.sfbaytimes.com/?section_id=19&sec=calendar_event&month=06&year=2006&event_id=4668&event_sec_id=0#4668 (sadly forgot to credit the amazing photographer Brett Fisher for the pic. so now you know. check out http://www.brettisisfisher.com/ ) Host: Trauma Flintstone Location: Martuni's 4 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA View Map When: Sunday, June 11, 7:00pm Phone: 415.241.0205 BIJOU!, a gem of a night ... featuring both up-and-coming and established performers in a drag (and non-drag) cabaret. So much fun for a mere $5 cover charge. The JUNE BIJOU takes us down another new road ... a lot of queer in-your-face performance, more duets than usual and a few newbies! The show features: - Singer/songwriter Storm Florez, who bravely flaunts his pervy genderqueer talents. Storm has performed across the US and co-produces and performs in the sexhibitionistic, pornarific cabaret, Trans as Fuck. Storm will be appearing on the Tranny March stage and the Trans stage at SF pride this year. - The return of ultra-bad boy Varian with a V. Yes, Varian returns to Bijou to push your buttons, provide queer quirks on standard songs and attempt to land Mrs. Flintstone in jail. - The first teaming of mandolinist J. White with drag raconteur Cookie Dough. White will also play his solo compositions, written in a lush hypnotic style. - The maiden voyage of ex-Broadway performer Liam O'Brien teamed with local chanteuse Connie Champagne. With voices larger than life, these two are bound to shake up the room, as well as everyone within a 5-block radius! - and me. Yes, I've been negligent in inserting myself into the Bijou line-ups, but I'm going to sing several songs this month. - and Tom. Yes, Tom Shaw will be with us, holding down the fort at the keyboard. - and Mister Freddie. Back in his favorite chair, now that he's a local celeb (or at least a notorious local). Join us ... Hell, a $5 cover and strong-ass drinks ... what's not to love?

Ok Kids, Who can tell me...

stormaldo — Tue, 30 May 2006 22:54:44 GMT

what an auto erotic golden shower is?...

Dog Zombies

stormaldo — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 17:54:58 GMT

Last night I dreamed that i decided to join the dog zombies on the dark side. i made out with this dog and felt my soul slipping away and started to get sucked into a dark pit under a dresser and feel myself disperse into this crazy hell like vortex and on my way out of conciousness i said a prayer that i would eventually make my way back to the path of enlightenment.

some signs (repost)

stormaldo — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 20:32:45 GMT

some signs of candida: itching (anywhere), muscle and joint pain, digestive problems (bloating, stomach ache, etc.) moodiness, asthma. some signs of a broken heart: chest pain, shortness of breath, loss of appetite, anxiety, fear some signs of new love: chest pain, shortness of breath, loss of appetite, anxiety, fear some signs of being on a roller coaster: chest pain, shortness of breath, loss of appetite, anxiety, fear some signs of being on the toilet: release of bladder and bowels, sudden interest in better homes and gardens

Note found on my desk this morning.

stormaldo — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 18:17:59 GMT

"Storm, Your 6 Billing Summaries tied to the penny. Excellent job- thank you VERY much for your attention to detail!"

rainbows and unicorns

stormaldo — Sat, 24 Dec 2005 20:30:33 GMT

last night i cuddled with a pink unicorn beenie baby and dreamed about puppies.

Fried Bologna...

stormaldo — Sat, 24 Dec 2005 05:47:11 GMT

...american cheese, mustard on white bread and coors light. My second dinner on this first night of my visit back home to albuquerque. My sister still keeps this in her fridge... i couldn't resist. latchkey kids we were. crock pots and tv dinners. it was YUMMY! i forgot how good fried bologna sandwiches could be. try it, i dare ya.

gendered soup

stormaldo — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 00:32:06 GMT

did you know that they now have " 'his' and 'hers' " soup?

Happy Samhain some words from Starhawk

stormaldo — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 22:49:12 GMT

The Gifts of Grief By Starhawk Friday, October 28, 2005 I woke up this morning thinking about grief. It’s almost Halloween, the time of year when, we say, the veil is thin between the world of the living and the world of the dead. Here in San Francisco, we’re preparing for our big, public, Spiral Dance ritual on Saturday night, busy getting all the last-minute details taken care of, dealing with the complexities of a new location and a new form for the ritual. It’s easy to get caught up in the responsibilities and the practicalities…'but this morning, in that twilight space between waking and sleeping, I found myself thinking of the dead. There are so many dead this year. So many large scale tragedies. The great wave last winter that swept tens of thousands to their death in Asia. The hurricanes and floods in the Gulf Coast and the Caribbean. The earthquake in Pakistan, the mudslides in Guatemala, the simmering volcanoes in El Salvador. Natural disasters—compounded by official neglect, intensified by global warming and the destruction of wetlands and mangrove swamps and all of nature’s protective systems. And the dead of war. Two thousand American soldiers, tens of thousands of Iraquis. A constant attrition of Palestinians and Israelis. The countless war dead of Africa who have dropped out of the news. Each death a loss to someone, a huge well of grief. My mother, who died thirteen years ago, was an expert on loss and grief. A psychotherapist, she wrote a book, “A Time to Grieve”, which is still a classic in the field of bereavement. She taught me that grief is not something to fear. If we let ourselves feel our pain and loss, if we truly mourn and rage, grief has a healing, transformative power. Cindy Sheehan, the mother of one of those dead soldiers, is taking her grief to the gates of the White House, chaining herself to the fence like the suffragists who demanded votes for women, long ago. I met her earlier this year, at Crawford, Texas, where she encamped before Bush’s ranch demanding to meet him face to face, to confront him with the reality of her loss, to ask him what was the noble cause her son died for. Her vigil there was like the small waves of the sea, eating away at the buttresses of his power, a harbinger of the storm surge to come. If compassion is the ability to feel and imagine someone else’s grief, Bush and his cabal of ultra-right advisors have long seemed lacking. Moreover, they have fed on death, used death and fear and horror to buttress their power. They used the deaths of September 11 to extend their power. They used fear and ruthlessness to stun their opposition into silence and complicity as they unleashed a brutal and criminal war. Like vampires, they have maintained their unnatural life with blood. But the counter to this ghoulish power is real grief, real loss. True grief has the power to open the heart. It strips away lies, dissolves false differences, and reminds us that we are all vulnerable, all mortal, all clinging for our lives to those fragile cords of love that bind us to those we care about. True grief casts out fear. “There’s nothing they can do to me,” Cindy Sheehan said to me at Camp Casey. “There’s nothing more than can take from me. I’ve already lost my son.” Standing among the pictures of the dead, at Camp Casey, I imagined the spirits of those soldiers rising up, a tidal wave of rage and anguish turning against those who caused and misuse their deaths. I see Cindy, fearless in her grief, strong in her mother-right, bringing that spectral army to the gates of the White House itself. I see them enter in, cleansing, rooting out lies, overturning every false foundation. I feel a fresh wind blowing, awakening courage, integrity, and compassion in all of our hearts. This is the spell I would shape this Samhain season. We are in a time of great loss, facing more before the world comes back into balance. The gifts of grief are painful, but if we open to them, allow our hearts to break and in breaking, expand, then grief and compassion may save our lives. www.starhawk.org <http://www.starhawk.org/>

the tower card and katrina

stormaldo — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 16:37:40 GMT

the tower card in the tarot is one of the most feared cards (perhaps the most) by a lot of people. it's actually one of my favorites. on the surface it seems to be about destruction and disaster. underneath it's about truth. the image is of a castle being struck by lightening and destroyed. there are people falling out of the castle as it comes crumbling down. if the truth of any matter isn't being dealt with, it will eventually be forced upon those who need to see it and innocent bystanders. usually not gently. sometimes it takes something as devestating as hurricane or a terrorist attack for the truth to be uncovered and dealt with. not to say that natural disasters wouldn't occur if truth wasn't being seen and dealt with, but i'll bet they wouldn't be nearly as devestating. the truth in this case being that we live in a terribly racist world and in my, not so humble opinion...each of us plays a part. http://www.michaelmoore.com/_images/splash/new_orleans_ej.mov

Starhawk: Casualties of War: Camp Casey and New Orleans

stormaldo — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 23:22:14 GMT

Casualties of War: Camp Casey and New Orleans By Starhawk When Katrina hit, I was at Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas, where I had gone to support Cindy Sheehan, the Gold Star mother who encamped outside of Bush’s ranch to demand a meeting so she could ask him one simple question, “What noble cause did my son die for?” Cindy is a formidable woman, a fearless woman because she has already lost what she most loved. Loss and grief are powerful forces. Camp Casey was full of those who had suffered the real losses of the Bush administrations’ war on Iraq, the families of soldiers, returning veterans, Gold Star Mothers who had lost a child in Iraq.’ Along the roadside stood a vast field of crosses to represent the dead. Across the road, a small encampment of pro-war counter-demonstrators would gather each day. They didn’t stay overnight. On our side, we camped in a ditch, in the hundred and five degree heat, itching from sweat and chigger bites. The counter-protestors shouted slogans and drove up and down the road in cars decorated with signs proclaiming their love for Bush, honking. David, my partner, a veteran of the civil rights movement and a draft resistor in Vietnam, thought they needed some lessons in taunting. He’s been taunted by better in his time—the outfront racists, the fanatic anti-communists. The worst our counter demonstrators mustered was a sign saying, “The Sixties are over—why don’t you go home!” “Someone on our side countered with a sign reading, “The Fifties are over—why don’t YOU go home?” Bush and his allies are experts at manufacturing emotion, whipping up fear, exploiting the dead. But here the air was permeated by real and personal loss. “You have to understand,” the woman said to me. “My mother does not go out. She doesn’t leave the house.” Her mother, standing next to her, nodded in agreement. We were outside the big tent where the rally was being held, at Camp Casey Two, up the road from our campsite. “But I told her, you have to come. You have to see this.” The woman was blond, late thirties, conservatively dressed, in a big sunhat . She spoke with a Texas accent, and she and her mother looked like archetypal Republicans. “Nothing looks prettier than a young man in a uniform,” she said, smiling sadly “but when you look at what’s underneath, it’s not so pretty.” Her brother had come back from the first Gulf War, mentally and emotionally shattered, and had never recovered. And that’s what drew her mother out, to gather with others who had also lost real children, real lives. I told her about Billy, the son of my best friend from junior high school. Mary and I played with paper dolls and screamed for the Beatles and went wild together in the Sixties. She was the first of my friends to get pregnant, when we were nineteen, and I helped her through the stress of telling her ultraconservative family, her hasty marriage and messy divorce. Then we lost touch for many years. I remember Billy as a sweet two-year-old with angelic curls. He grew up to be the second soldier across the line in the first Gulf War. I reconnected with Mary shortly after he took a gun to the beach and shot himself, one of the thousands of uncounted casualties, suicides, chronically ill, lefovers from that adventure. The homeless shelters and the cold streets are still filled with men of my own generation, the living ghosts of Vietnam. Meanwhile veterans’ services are being cut back, hospitals closed. My aunt and uncle from the communist side of the family worked all their lives for the VA, proudly, because as my aunt said it was the closest thing to socialism in this country. They enjoyed providing free treatment for people. Perhaps that is why the same warmongers, so eager to create new casualties, refuse to adequately fund their ongoing care. The people at Camp Casey talked about ‘being on someone else’s mission,’ about ‘chains of command’ and ‘getting orders from above”, which they agreeably followed. “This place is run like the military,” one of my friends remarked. “We are the military,” was the answer. They were indeed the military, the people in this country most directly affected by the reality of war, Gold Star Mothers who had lost a child in Iraq, returning veterans, Veterans for Peace, military families. They wore cowboy hats and spoke in real Texas accents: Bush’s natural base, in rebellion not at the concept of authority but at his misuse and abuse of the authority entrusted to him. Most people there were from Texas, many of them surprised and delighted to meet other Texans who opposed the war. A whole contingent was from Louisiana, and New Orleans. And so on Sunday night when the news reports were tracking Katrina’s progress and predicting the disaster of New Orleans, the mood at the camp was grim. I was over at Camp Casey Two, where a big tent was set up for meetings and rallies. I was trying to be helpful by making a list of all the stuff needed for the caravans which would be setting out when the camp closed on a speaking tour, mobilizing people for the September 24 march on Washington. On the screen a video was playing detailing the effects of depleted uranium, showing pictures of the deformed babies born in Iraq, cyclops babies with only one eye in the center of the forhead, babies with heads like tumors, babies that are nothing but undifferentiated lumps of flesh. And at my feet, a man from New Orleans was crying and raging. The bridges were closed, and no one could get out any longer. The news was predicting that thousands might die. The petrochemical industry and the developers have long ruled in the Gulf, with free reign to destroy the wetlands that are nature’s buffer against storms. A huge proportion of the Louisiana National Guard, which is supposed to take charge during natural disasters, was in Iraq. The rest were apparently in Florida, moving military equipment out of the path of the storm. The funds for flood control and reinforcing the levees had been systematically cut by the Bush administration in order to fund our attacks on Baghdad and Fallujah. Hurricanes are fueled by the warmth of the ocean, and the Gulf is abnormally hot due to global warming, which Bush and his allies will not admit is happening. Global warming may not have caused Hurrican Katrina, but it undoubtedly amplified it’s power and fury. New Orleans, like Casey Sheehan, is a casualty of war. And I imagine Cindy joined in her vigil by a mother from New Orleans, perhaps one whose baby died in her arms of dehydration at the Superdome, to ask, “Why did my child die?” And Bush, if he were honest would have to say to her, “Your child died of incompetence and callousness justified by a set of false assumptions:” That the current economy and technology, fueled by cheap oil and gas, can and should continue in its current form. That the profits of those who benefit from the current system are of paramount importance, and should be protected at all costs. That war is good for business. That environmental impacts don’t need to be counted as part of the cost of doing business and so don’t count. That technology has transcended nature. That global warming has no real consequences. That government owes nothing in the way of care and support to its citizens. That the lives of the poor aren’t worth much, anyway, especially if they happen to be black. That the way to respond to uncomfortable questions is to sneer at and smear the questioner. That a good media spin can redefine and outweigh reality. But reality has a way of being, well, real, and catching up with you. Real loss, real grief are the real results of the Bush administration’s policies. His neocon friends maintain their power by manufacturing fear, exploiting the dead. But now the real dead are coming back to haunt them. And so I imagine Cindy and the mother from New Orleans joined by a legion of mothers from Iraq. I envision the roads of Crawford lined with the corpses of Baghdad and Fallujah, with the one-eyed monstrous stillbirths, the children blown to pieces, caked with flesh, soaked with blood. I hear a chorus of voices asking, “Why? What noble cause? What great gift are you bringing us? What is this democracy that abandons the poor to drown?” I see them laying the bodies at the gates of power. I see us joining them, to turn the to a wind of justice, a wind of change. Hurricane season has just begun. * * * Some places to send aid: Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children are doing intense work among the shelters and prisons with displaced youth, mostly African American. Believe me, the Red Cross and the Christian charities won’t be pouring out relief to this group! They can also use some volunteers (especially African American) and many gifts in kind. Send a check to the “FFLIC Hurricane Relief Fund” to 920 Platt Street, Sulphur, Louisiana, 70663. awakenprogress@yahoo.com kd.higgs@yahoo.com The Veterans for Peace bus that was at Camp Casey in Crawford, TX has now gone down to Covington, Louisiana to do relief work. They also need donations of money and computer equipment. Make a donation to Veterans For Peace Chapter 116 http://www.vfproadtrips.org Tax deductible cash donations can be send to: Contact: Veterans For Peace Chapter 116 28500 Sherwood Rd Willits CA 95490 pjtate@sonic.net Cell PH 707-536-3001 Food Not Bombs will be providing food for refugees. They can use volunteers to prepare and serve food, and, of course, donations. www.foodnotbombs.net. You can make a financial donation on line or mail checks to Food Not Bombs, P.O. Box 744, Tucson, AZ 85702. Please call (1-800-884-1136) or email (katrina@foodnotbombs.net ) us if you can join them on the bus or help with gas money. Starhawk www.starhawk.org <http://www.starhawk.org/> Feel free to post, forward, and reprint this article for non-commercial purposes. All other rights reserved. Starhawk is an activist, organizer, and author of The Earth Path, Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising, The Fifth SacredThing and other books on feminism, politics and earth-based spirituality. She teaches Earth Activist Trainings that combine permaculture design and activist skills, www.earthactivisttraining.org <http://www.earthactivisttraining.org/> and works with the RANT trainer’s collective, www.rantcollective.net <http://www.rantcollective.net/> that offers training and support for mobilizations around global justice and peace issues. Donations to help support Starhawk’s trainings and work can be sent to: ACT 1405 Hillmount St. Austin, Texas 78704 U.S.A. To get her periodic posts of her writings, email Starhawk-subscribe@lists.riseup.net and put ‘subscribe’ in the subject heading. If you’re on that list and don’t want any more of these writings, email Starhawk-unsubscribe@lists.riseup.net and put ‘unsubscribe’ in the subject heading. C This post has been sent to you from Starhawk@lists.riseup.net. This is an announce-only listserve that allows Starhawk to post her writings occasionally to those who wish to receive them. To subscribe to this list, send an email to Starhawk-subscribe@lists.riseup.net. To unsubscribe, send an email to Starhawk-unsubscribe@lists.riseup.net. Starhawk is a lifelong activist in peace and global justice movements, a leader in the feminist and earth-based spirituality movements, author or coauthor of ten books, including The Spiral Dance, The Fifth Sacred Thing, Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising, and her latest, The Earth Path. Starhawk's website is www.starhawk.org, and more of her writings and information on her schedule and activities can be found there.

Katrina Caravan from the Bay Area?

stormaldo — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 22:03:14 GMT

Hey all. I'm curious... Are there folks from the bay area who are working on making their way down to Louisianna to volunteer? I'm not sure if this is something I am able to do, but I'd be into helping out with organizing a trip or donating supplies... I'm feeling pulled to head down and make myself useful. I must admit though that my own resources are limited as far as being financially able to do it. So, i'm putting it out there that I would love to help other folks who are planning on heading down.

I swear I'm not getting paid to say this

stormaldo — Fri, 26 Aug 2005 15:17:30 GMT

*re-post to be honest, the ads on threads thing doesn't bother me all that much. now, i normally get bothered by advertising just about anywhere (even though i analyze advertising revenue for a living--i swear there's no conflict of interest here)... anyhoot, tribe is pretty much free and the ads aren't all that obnoxious to me. if they were flashing and/or you had to click on them or watch them to get to the next page, now that would bug the shit out of me. this ain't so bad though *said ducking* am i the only one who feels this way?

GOOD MORNING!

stormaldo — Fri, 26 Aug 2005 15:09:03 GMT

i have been up since 5:30am. there's not much else to say.

Moving on Saturday

stormaldo — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 19:58:51 GMT

Still need some help. I like my new place and my new roommate. This will hopefully be my last move for a while. I'm so over moving and not having a stable home. I hope this one works out. So far there will only be four of us moving. Anyone out there feeling charitable? I'll feed you bagles and coffee. i'll sing for you... i'll love you forever, although i probably already do.

My three favorite tribes

stormaldo — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 17:01:21 GMT

Vain Narcissistic Bastards (private tribe, hecka fun--if you want in, tell me and i'll grace you with an invite-- if you're in it, invite your worthy pals) Skaraoke Complaint Box (yes they're all ones i moderate, i know that! hence the first one) My second three favorite tribes: *POMPOMS* Dingleberry Lane Genderqueer What are yours?

need help moving for the last time

stormaldo — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 22:15:28 GMT

I hope. I finally found a place. Sheesh! it's really about time. I'm looking for some folks to help me move. I am planning on renting a uhaul so that it's easy and simple. My stuff is boxed and packed away in storage. I just need bodies to help me physically move stuff. The move (to and from) is taking place in San Francisco on august 20th. in the am. anyone? Please email me or call me at 510 472-7689. Thanks and love. storm