Birds Before The Storm

I know, I know, I give like no warning for these things. But I only just now got finalized details on the thing. I’m playing a show tonight in baltimore, 7pm at Charm City Art Space, 1729 Maryland Ave. (Their website is woefully out of date, by the way.) It’s a benefit for Baltimore’s branch of Rising Tide, which is grassroots radical group that confronts the social justice issues of global warming (basically, addressing that global warming will screw over the poor even sooner than it screws over everyone). Anyhow, they are great people with their hearts firmly in their work, and deserve support.

I’ll be playing with Cringe (who I can’t find anything about), Randi Williams (another acoustic musician), and the “90s ukulele cover band” Car Phone.

So eventually I’m going to start posting about events before they happen, even reasonably far before they happen. But last night was Red Emma’s first ever art auction, and it was a grand good time. Basically, they collected donations of art from tons of local baltimore artists and then auctioned them off, most of them as silent auction. I made like 10 pieces for them, and they all sold. And I forgot to photograph the pieces, of course.

Red Emma’s is baltimores worker-owned radical bookstore/cafe/infoshop, and it’s actually my favorite infoshop in the world. They are really passionate people, working incredibly hard in what is a rather dangerous, dirty city. There are a lot of radicals working really hard here, as a matter of fact. You have to. In baltimore, poverty and inequity are just so prevalent. But yeah, Red Emma’s is a wonderful place, and whenever I’m in town I spend almost every afternoon sitting around reading their books.

I’m sad I only learned about Harold Thompson because of his death. He was an anarchist prisoner, but one I never heard much, if anything about. He was convicted of killing a man who had killed the mother of his son and was threatening to kill his son.

He became interested in anarchism early, but his beliefs solidified when he served in Vietnam. Upon his return, he was actively involved in anarchist struggle and worked with the veterans against the war. (The modern incarnation of which, the IVAW, includes quite a number of anarchist veterans at all levels of involvement.) Since going to jail he was involved in a number of escape attempts and was well known as a “jail house lawyer,” both admirable things. (Sad, of course, that his escape attempts never bore fruit.)

His support website has plenty more information about him, including his writings. I’m just looking at it all right now and I’m kind of sad that I’d never heard of him before. He seems like an amazing soul. Too often, we anarchists focus on our prisoners who are in jail for politically-motivated direct action and forget about other anarchist prisoners. Certainly, defending our loved ones from a murderer is the right of every human being, and it is very much within the realm of anarchist desires.

So yeah, Harold, may you rest in peace.

This guy is really strange. And funny. And talks about seniors in the post-apoc stabbing one another.

While searching for Nicki Jaine videos on youtube this morning, I ran across this. At Eccentrik Festival, there were a few moments when I dragged a bunch of people out into the parking lot to play impromptu songs. Personally, these were the highlight of the event for me and really opened my eyes to collaborative music. Sadly, these videos are only 30 second snippets, but I think they’re fun. There’s another of everyone and then a third that’s just valerie and I playing accordions.

Eccentrik Festival was utterly magical, and downright transformative for me. Playing with the musicians I played with did something really good for my heart. I’ve met an unfortunate number of musicians who are kind of… aloof? arrogant? something like that. But these people, Nicki Jaine, Jill Tracy, The Ghosts Project, Hellblinki Sextet, who I got to hang out and play music with, these are good people.

For 8 years it’s been “Bush did this” and “Bush bombed that” and it was driving me up the damn wall (almost drove me up-against-the-wall a couple of times too). But of course, it’s the entire capitalist nationstate that’s corrupt, and soon we’ll see that, cause you all got to vote yesterday but money votes every day (insert additional anarchist/radical slogans here).

Anyhow, it will be nice to be able to talk about things in the context of this whole system being bankrupt again, and maybe we can finally start addressing some fundamental issues, like the national forest timber giveaway or, you know, the existential crisis that is global warming (and believe me, this administration will be taking baby steps when it’s time for running).

Oh dear. I thought I wouldn’t make any more election-related posts between now and election day. But, well, a group called The Masked Avengers, from Canada, prank called Sarah Palin, pretending to be the president of France. She bought it, and of course, made an ass of herself, and of course, it’s really, really funny. There’s a transcript available as well, which includes translations of some of the bits they say in French. And there’s the usual fun back and forth in the comments over at boing boing.

Okay, so this is pretty damn last minute, as in, three hours before I play, but I’ll be playing a benefit show tonight for the RNC arrestees. These are the folks who are being charged as terrorists for organizing anarchist responses to the Republican National Convention, and whether you can come tonight or not, they need your support. The show is at Checkpoint Charlie, at 2638 N. Charles St. in Baltimore, MD. I’ll be playing with my friends Iris and Ryan Harvey, so check it out if you’re in the area. Doors are at 8.

The headline alone is enough, really: Military Investigates Amnesia Beams. The short of it is that scientists have finally figured out how to selectively zap certain memories out of mice, and the military is quite interested. Apparently, since the 80s, they’ve known how to erase about the last 4 seconds of a rodents memory, but this is the first time they’ve been able to get older memories deleted.

Our heads, the hard drives. The military, the ones with the software to read/write. Hurrah.

So there’s this group that you’ve probably already heard of, the Westboro Baptist Church, who run godhatesfags.com (ooh, and even more interesting, godhatestheworld.com, an interactive map that lets you find out why god hates everywhere). Basically, these people go around and picket other folk’s funerals for being gay, or even more bizarre, the funerals of dead soldiers, since the soldiers were “defending” a country that “harbors” homosexuals. Anyhow, they’re a bunch of bastards, really summing up the whole “close-minded religious lunatic” thing pretty effectively. So anyhow, a few people have shown up at their protests and made pretty clever protest signs:
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