Birds Before The Storm » Magpie

Boston!

Magpie — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:47:44 +0000

I hadn’t been to Boston since 2004. Last time I was here, someone called the terrorist tipline on me and I was bumrushed on the street by plainclothes cops from DC. Because I was wearing a skirt. Awesome.

Anyhow, this last trip has gone much better, all told. I’ve been hanging out with cool anarcho folks and gotten to explore abandoned bear cages for what would have been a zoo but is now a park. Also, my friend makes awesome handicrafts and I took photos of them. The needleworks are about mountaintop-removal coal mining.

Sleepy Hollow

Magpie — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 01:41:51 +0000

A few weeks ago I went with a friend on a daytrip from Queens up to Sleepy Hollow, NY. I then proceeded to get my van stuck in the snow at the edge of a steep hill in a graveyard. I also took some photos.

I am the cancer. I am not a human being, I am the beast.

Magpie — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 06:01:27 +0000

(or: “Armchairs GTFO”)

Columnist Chris Hedges has an article titled The Cancer of Occupy in which he makes some rather interesting claims.

The ostensible premise of the article is that the black bloc and its attendant anarchists are the cancer that is destroying Occupy from the inside. Now, while I would disagree with this point, I could see a case being made for it. But this is not actually Hedge’s point. Instead, he throws together an astounding amount of misinformation.

Like the idea that the black bloc hates the Zapatistas. That primitivist author John Zerzan (who has not been in vogue among anarchists for a decade) is the primary ideologue of the black bloc. That the black bloc is made up of people who oppose all organization. Or that those who are in the black bloc cease to become human beings but instead become beasts.

I don’t know whether Chris Hedges is doing it on purpose or not, but this is basically a hit piece written by Derrick Jensen against John Zerzan and the anarchists who have spurned him. It is a transparent attempt to sway people over to Derrick Jensen’s cult of personality revolutionary movement “Deep Green Resistance.” (which has as one its other public leaders Lierre Keith, someone who makes public statements that are rabidly and blindly transphobic)

The actual premise of the article is that anarchists, who have rejected Derrick Jensen for being authoritarian, are bad. If this article were genuinely about the black bloc and Occupy, there is no reason to talk to Jensen at all. There is probably no shortage of public intellectuals who hate the black bloc who actually have anything at all to do with Occupy with whom he could have spoken. Using Zerzan as the purported ideologue of the black bloc though is where this subtext becomes completely transparent: Zerzan and Jensen are the two most important “anti-civilization” theorists and they are at odds with one another. Zerzan argues for an anarchist, non-authoritarian way of dismantling civilization. Derrick Jensen has open and widely-published aspirations of being the figurehead of a hierarchical anti-civilization group. Green Maoists, as it were.

Also, for some “not-in-my-backyard” fun, why not compare this new “don’t break any windows” rhetoric to Hedges’s article happily endorsing the greek riots? That’s always a laugh.

I want to go ahead and publicly apologize for including Derrick Jensen in my book Mythmakers & Lawbreakers: Anarchist Writers on Fiction. I realize now that Derrick Jensen chose to be included in that because, at the time, the anarchists were the ones buying and promoting his books.

I do not blindly support the black bloc or any other tactic. All tactics (within ethical bounds) have their time and place. But I’m not on the ground at Occupy Oakland and therefore it is not my place to sit around tell people what tactics are and are not strategic in their struggles. I’m not going to tell the Greeks not to burn things and I’m not going to tell the Zapatistas not to carry (or shoot) guns. I’m also not going to tell local farmers not to organize call-in days against natural gas pipeline developers.

2008 adventuring

Magpie — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:38:58 +0000

In 2008, I went off with my then-partner to explore the great middle-west of the country. Mostly southern Utah, actually. I hadn’t taken photos in six years or something, but I bought a digital SLR for the trip, hoping to shoot complex panoramas with people in costumes. What resulted are still some of my favorite photos I’ve ever taken. I sat on most of these digital negatives for years before finally processing and posting them. The panoramas, at least, really ought to be clicked on and viewed larger.

Crazy old photos from the trash

Magpie — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 18:20:16 +0000

A few years back, my friends found a steamer trunk filled with old photos next to a trash can in Baltimore. I obsessively scanned everything in it. I only started uploading them to my flickr last night though. Lots of strange portraits!

Being The Explorations #5

Magpie — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:35:41 +0000

Being The Explorations is my series of photo zines that document my travels. I did one a season for a year, mid-2009 to mid-2010, but stopped for awhile. I picked it back up, though, and this edition is larger than the other 4 combined: it’s 170 full color pages with 228 photos from 2011. You can download the web-quality version for free, too!

download (free!)
purchase ($25 but worth it!)

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Taughannock Falls

Magpie — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 23:27:56 +0000

Two weeks later and I’m in the opposite corner of the country. On one of the coldest days of the year, my friend and I left Ithaca, NY to go to Taughannock Falls on Cayuga Lake. Okay, it wasn’t very far away. But it was beautiful.

The mud pots and slab city

Magpie — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:28:24 +0000

The desert called and I returned to Slab City. This time, I filled my car up with punx and we went to “the mud pots”, a geothermal spot with bubbling clay. It wasn’t long before most of us were covered with hot clay. Then we stopped at what I got told was an abandoned whorehouse before driving back to Slab City to shoot pellet guns and shave Matt’s head.

2011 in review

Magpie — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 05:11:28 +0000

I kind of enjoy these end of the year year-in-review posts. They help remind me that I actually get things done, since the end of December is usually a kind of low-point in my mood and productivity. I did one for 2010 and 2008. I tend to leave my personal life out of my blog, and I’ll continue in that habit.

I published Graceless: A Journal of the Radical Gothic, a magazine I edited.
My first fiction book came out: What Lies Beneath The Clock Tower.
I resumed my editorship of SteamPunk Magazine, which I’d dropped in 2008.
I participated in the US’s first general strike since the 1940s, in Oakland, California. I also had the privilege of helping facilitate numerous general assemblies at Occupy Santa Cruz and teach other folks about non-hierarchical decision-making.
I did readings and presentations across the US and a bit of Canada with my books, at anarchist bookfairs and steampunk conventions alike.
I traveled to five new countries: Greece, Bulgaria, France, Spain, and Canada (going when I was too young to remember doesn’t count).
I managed to live in one place for three months of the year!

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Eviction of Occupy Santa Cruz

Magpie — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 18:12:46 +0000

Occupy Santa Cruz, in San Lorenzo park, was told that everyone had to clear out by 5 or 6 on December 7th. I showed up to support in case the police came in to arrest people. But of course, as per usual with the occupy movement, the police waited until the early hours of the next morning to evict so that supporters and media weren’t on hand to document their tactics.

It was a sad site to see the camp being dismantled, but to be honest I’d expected it weeks or months earlier.

A few more photos after the cut: