It's A Bird, It's A Plane, It's a Refrigerator...

Everyone in Virginia heard that BIG noise on Sunday night. At my house we were loafing on the settee in the middle of an intense marathon of Law & Order re-runs when it KABOOMED outside. It happened somewhere between finding the dead body and Briscoe's deadpan line that ends the intro.

"What's that?" I asked Hubs.

"Ah, thunder?"

"I don't think so..."

"Could be."

"Doesn't thunder mean like a lot of booming? Not just one boom?"

Hubs gave me the modern cave man look. You know the one that means...

You're crazy if you think I'm leaving this cave to check it out....

I tried to say something else about how it might be something like an exploding airplane or a tree on the roof, but before I could act like Henny Penny with my sky is falling routine he had already turned up the volume on the remote in case it happened again.

Turns out the noise was the follow up to a spectacular light show that was visible over parts of Virginia.

An article in the Virginian Pilot newspaper our local news source pegged the streaking lights and rattling booms as meteor fall out. The paper quoted a young jogger, Lindsey Hosek of the Great Neck area of Virginia Beach as saying that she saw something in the sky that was blue and orange and appeared to be the shape and size of a refrigerator.

I wish it was my refrigerator. My old icebox is about twenty years old and I have been threatening to put it in orbit for about a decade. ....

Although no refrigerators are actually reported to be in orbit there is a lot of space junk out there and some of it is quite big. This space junk turned out to belong to the Russians. According to a report on MSNBC the junk was actually scheduled to BOOM on Sunday night. Just no one told anyone.

Mystery flash traced to Russian space junk Expert says reports likely sparked by rocket stage re-entry, not meteor

by Andrea Thompson

I'm pretty convinced that what these folks saw was the second stage of the Soyuz rocket that launched the crew up to the space station," said Geoff Chester of the Naval Observatory in Washington.

Residents of the areas around Norfolk and Virginia Beach, Va., began calling 911 on Sunday night, reporting that they heard a loud boom and saw a streak of light that lit up the sky, according to news accounts.

The Naval Observatory gets plenty of reports of such fireballs, and Chester investigated whether it could be a meteor or whether there were "any potential decays of space junk that were coming up," he told Space.com. He checked the listing for debris that were expected to enter the lower atmosphere from their decaying orbits around this time period and found that second stage of the Soyuz rocket that launched last Thursday was slated to hit during a window that started at 8 p.m. ET Sunday.

Falling space junk happens all the time and I guess to this Chester guy at the Naval Observatory it's sort of ho-hum. Guess Hubs was right....

Lost and Found Cameras

People lose stuff every day. Many items are often replaced by their owners, but cameras and the memories they hold of birthdays, weddings, vacations, and the people we love are often truly missed and irreplaceable. Cameras seem to be at the top of the list for items that are easily forgotten or misplaced. Recently I found a small Olympus camera in front of the house. It was inside a backpack. Guess someone had dropped it as they bicycled through the neighborhood. Looking for a clue to the owner's identity I gave the pictures a quick look.

The shots weren't typical. Road intersections, snow on cars, bicycle handlebars, and asphalt. There were also pictures of guys in hard hats. The camera is blue so I figured guy, right? Then I wondered how I could find the owner. First stop was the local Craig's list where I posted my find along with all the notices of lost Yorkies, Pomeranians, coats, and driver's licenses. Lisa Aschinoff--- Quizno's has yours.

I wondered if there wasn't someplace to get some real visibility. I hopped over to Facebook and to my surprise there was already a group just for lost cameras. I added my find to the list of posts and checked to see if any matched mine. As I scrolled through a couple of pages I realized that there were many desperate postings by people who had lost cameras everywhere from Bangkok to Orlando, but none were for those that had been found. Discouraged? Not me. I rooted for the 1969 miracle Mets when I was a kid. I believe in fairy tales, one in a million shots, and improbable happy endings.

Where could I turn next. Then I discovered I Found Your Camera. On the website you upload the pictures from the camera and hope for the best. I was surprised to see that many cameras had been reunited with their owners. That's hopeful news. Budget Travel did a good article about lost cameras and it repeats the information that I find to be true from my experience searching lost and found ads. People lose cameras on vacation, in transportation like taxis and buses, on top of slot machines, and at concerts. So be careful when you are distracted or in unfamiliar places. As soon as I can figure out how to retrieve the pictures from the Olympus I'm going to send them to the site. Maybe I'll hit a home run like Tommie Agee. Could happen.

The New Narcissism

You're so vain
You probably think this song is about you
You're so vain
I'll bet you think this song is about you

Don't you? Don't you?

You know this profile is about you. About you. About you. About you. Looks like pedophiles and film critics aren't the only dysfunctional personalities hanging out on social networking websites. A study published in the October 2008 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology reports that narcissists are all over Facebook and they are easy to pick out. No, it isn't because they kept giving themselves gifts and joining Fans of Paris Hilton. Researchers at the University of Georgia studying Facebook discovered that the number of friends and wall posts that a person had in the virtual world correlated with how narcissistic they were in the real world.

According to the research, normal people behave on Facebook in the same way that they behave anywhere else. They socialize, post photos, invite you to events, chat, and so on, and so forth, but to narcissists Facebook is just another tool for self promotion. We've all been wondering about the implications of social networking and easy virtual friendships, but the good news seems to be that most people can tell the difference between online acquaintances and friends in the real world. The bad news is that virtual friendships can be disposable friendships if the price is right.

In January Burger King in a promotion called Delete Ten Friends Get a Whopper offered to give a free Whopper to anyone who deleted 10 of their friends on Facebook. The Delete Ten Friends campaign resulted in the severing of 233, 906 friendships. Not everyone who was deleted had a sense of humor about it and Burger King kept the ball rolling with "Whopper Sacrifice" where deleted Facebook friends could log on and fire back angry-grams against their former friends. (BTW the value of the Whopper coupon was 37 cents. OUCH.)

You're So Vain was a blockbuster hit for Carly Simon in 1973. Today it is considered one of her most memorable tunes and is listed at #72 on Billboard's Greatest Hits of All Time. The song has always been a bit of a mystery and guesses about the subject of the song have ranged from James Taylor to Warren Beatty. The smart money has always been on Mick Jagger.




Simon has refused to confirm or deny who is actually so vain. but she has dropped a few hints over the years giving up three letters A--E and R that she says are in the legendary narcissist's name. That leaves Jagger and Beatty in the game. Beatty is adamant that the song is about him. About him. About him...

First Grandma in the House

FIRST MOTHERS

Although not much of a personal nature is known about many of the women who shaped the childhoods of our early Presidents there are several mothers that we do know something about. One of those women is Elizabeth "Betty" Jackson. During the Revolutionary War, Andrew Jackson and his brother Robert were taken prisoner by British forces following the Battle of Hanging Rock. The young Jackson was only 13, and his brother, Robert 17. Held with 250 other soldiers in a small encampment without food or medicine, the boys were soon infected with smallpox. Both were near death when their mother, Elizabeth Jackson came to the rescue. She arranged a unique trade. She marched 15 Redcoat prisoners to the camp and offered to release them in exchange for 7 soldiers including her two sons.

After the exchange the group traveled over 40 arduous miles back home. Robert Jackson was already in ill health and he died two weeks later. When Andrew regained his strength his mother left for Charleston where nurses were needed. In Charleston she contracted cholera and died. Betty Jackson was a strong and resourceful woman, but she is not the only one on the list of President's mothers with such characteristics. Seven of the mothers of our Presidents have been widows and many fought back against poverty, depression, poor health, and domestic abuse.

Martha Bullock was the mother of Theodore Roosevelt and an emotionally fragile woman. A Southern belle and a well known supporter of the Confederacy she was widely believed to be the model for the character of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind. Martha Bullock died at age 48 of Typhoid. In an odd coincidence she died on the same day in the same house as Alice Lee Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt's wife. This double tragedy caused the future President to flee and leaving his infant daughter behind, Teddy went West. When he returned two years later Roosevelt entered politics. He always said that the loss of his beloved mother and wife spurred him to take on.

Nancy Hanks Lincoln, the mother of Abraham Lincoln was born on February 1794 in Cambpell County, Virginia. The child of Lucy Hanks, her father was unknown. An orphan at nine, Nancy became a seamstress and was widely known for her excellent needlework. Nancy Hanks married Thomas Lincoln, a carpenter in 1806 and they had three children. After surviving the hardships of carving a life in the Indiana wilderness, the Lincoln family was struck by tragedy when Nancy contracted Milk Sickness. Milk sickness is caused by drinking the milk of a cow that has eaten the poisonous white snakeroot plant. Such poisonings were common at the time,and Nancy Hanks contracted the illness after she went to care for neighbors stricken with the disease.

W. Eugene Smith

Born in 1918 in Wichita, Kansas, W. Eugene (Gene) Smith was a legendary photojournalist who got his start working for Newsweek. Smith's stubborn personality and prickly perfectionism however kept him from fitting in at the conservative publication. In 1939 he signed an exclusive contract with Life. Although his time as a staff photographer for Life would be short lived, his association with the publication would be lifelong and troublesome. The photographer would have numerous disagreements with Life and most were centered around the conflict between his singular artistic vision and the magazine's policies.

When war broke out in 1941 Smith become a war correspondent for Ziff-Davis, publisher of Flying and Popular Photography.

On the front lines Smith honed his talent for the photo essay. On May 23, 1945 he was seriously wounded by an incoming shell. Two years of painful recuperation followed.

During this period when he was home resting with his family Smith took one his most iconic images. "A Walk to Paradise Garden" an evocative picture of Smith's two children would become a part of a photo essay "The Family of Man."

W. Eugene Smith died in 1978 of a stroke brought on by years of drug and alcohol abuse. Now photographs and recordings that he made during the period of 1957- 1965 at after hours jazz sessions in a loft at 821 Sixth Avenue in NYC has been organized by the Center for Documentary Study at Duke University. The 3,000 hours of recordings and nearly 40,000 photographs that compromise the collection include sessions with Thelonius Monk, Zoot Sims, Roy Hanyes, Chick Corea, and many others. In addition to the exhibit, there are a series of radio shows with WNYC Radio in New York and a book.

Musicophilia

Oliver Sacks the neurologist who brought us The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is an entertaining fellow. His latest book, Musicophila is all about the human experience with music. Just as he did in the previous book Sacks charts the curious dysfunctions of the brain by looking at patients with some unique disorders. This time Sacks investigates several cases where the brain's ability involving music sticks around long after other capacities have disappeared due to diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.



He also tells a few tales about how for some unlucky individuals music suddenly becomes the brain's sole focus.


Everyone knows what it's like to get a song stuck in their head but what would it be like to become obsessed with music? That's the case with one of Sack's patients. Struck by lightning at forty two the man literally becomes possessed by the tunes in his head.

In this video Sacks describes another more common condition called amusia or tone deafness. People who are tone deaf cannot accurately discriminate between musical notes.


Che Guevara is listed by Wikipedia as one of the most notable examples of people suffering from the problem. Suffering of course is a relative term. Anyone who has ever watched American Idol knows that it is the folks who are forced to listen to tone deaf singers who are the true sufferers. You can take the tone deaf test and others involving associative musical intelligence here.

Rainbow Room

Dinner for two at $600. Martinis $21.50. A $24 chicken sandwich. The prices are not for the faint of heart and the food bland and tasteless enough to please your grandmother, but after 75 years of serving up mediocre meals and expensive drinks the venerable Rainbow Grill is finally closing its doors. There's a new mood on Wall Street and with NYC dining in the doldrums, the art deco landmark at Rockefeller Center is finally calling it quits. After a well publicized dust up with the landlord and a suit for back taxes, the fixture at Rockefeller Center since 1934 has fallen victim to the new "It's not nice to flaunt your wealth" attitude in the Big Apple and some heavy duty tourist backlash against overinflated cafeteria cuisine. How do you spell, "costly mistake" in Des Moines? Not to worry though, although the eating establishment will close, it looks as if the bar will live on.

John D. Rockefeller completed his fantasy of urban development, Rockefeller Center in 1934 during the depths of the Great Depression. The Rainbow Room located on the 65th floor of 30 Rockefeller Center was the project's crown jewel. With a revolving dance floor and gorgeous views of the City, the opulent supper club was a refuge for the upper crust. The rooftop cabaret opened the same year as the Apollo Theater and although old JD was a prohibition supporter he didn't let that stand in the way of opening the glitziest club in town. Designed by Elena Bachman Schmidt with assistance from Vincent Minnelli (Liza's Dad) the Rainbow Room was an art deco masterpiece. Broadway stars, Hollywood notables, and other hoity-toity lads and lassies of cafe society descended on the dance floor.

But club life isn't what it used to be. Over the years the Rainbow Room has seen its share of renovations with JD's son, David Rockefeller overseeing a 25 million dollar overhaul in 1974. In 1978 the Rockefeller Family sold out to the Italian Cipriani Family, owners of the famous Harry's Bar, and several other upscale New York eateries. There was some talk of payoffs to the Mob during union troubles in 2003 and Anthony Bourdain let go some rudeness in his 2000 memoir, Kitchen Confidential, but overall the place has been a tame tourist trap until its present well publicized economic woes.

The Sport of Kings and Queens

The surfing documentary, Surfing for Life narrated by Beau Bridges offered profiles of ten legendary surfers. Included in the group was John "Doc" Ball an early surf photographer who wrote the classic surf book, California Surfriders (1946). When Ball hit the beach in 1929 there were only a handful of surfers brave enough to test the West Coast waves and they were mostly in Southern California where the water was warm, according to the surf pioneer. Ball was in dental school at USC when he first started carving the waves and in a testament to the sport's power of addiction, the man kept at it until he was well into his Nineties. Unfortunately, Doc passed away in 2001 the same year the documentary was released. However, many geriatric waveriders are still at it including "Granni" Grannis, a surfer for 67 years, Woody Brown still surfing Maui in his Nineties, and honeys Anona Napoleon, a surfer for over 50 years and Eve Fletcher. (pictured above)

Surfing has been around for a long time too. The earliest record of surf riding dates back to James Cook's visit to Hawaii in 1778. Although the poor Captain was killed in a terrible misunderstanding (He tried to hold a Hawaiian Chief hostage in return for a stolen boat.) Cook's second in command James King kept a prodigious journal that devoted two solid pages to surf riding at Kona.

Surfing was a vital part of early Hawaiian tradition and culture. The surfboard has seen many technological advances, but early surfboards were anywhere from 12-24 feet long and made from local woods. At some point redwood boards were introduced and this type of plank board would be the only game in town until the 1920's when improvements were made.

Check out my vintage photo of some excellent looking Virginia Beach surfers. Virginia Beach is home to the East Coast Surf Championships and some ankle busting waves.

Coco Chanel

Audrey Tatou the French actress who played the winsome and eccentric Amelie in the 2001 movie of the same name is set to star in a new bio-pic about the early years of the famous fashonista Coco Chanel. Scheduled for a mid-2009 release Coco Before Chanel is based on Chanel's autobiography, The Nonconformist and will be helmed by screenwriter Anne Fontaine with costumes recreated by Karl Lagerfeld. Shot in Paris and Normandy, the film covers the couturier's rise from her humble beginnings in a French orphanage to fame and fortune as one of Europe's top designers.























Coco Chanel was a pioneer of modernist design and the mother of such creations as the little black dress, bell bottoms, and the Chanel suit. Born out of wedlock on August 19, 1893 Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel was left in the care of nuns in the Aubezine monastery at the age of twelve following her mother's death from tuberculosis. It was there that she was taught the trade of a seamstress, a skill that would prove to be her ticket out of poverty. After serving an apprenticeship Chanel opened her own millinery shop with the help of French playboy, Arthur Capel. Her simple hats were soon popular with the public and the Chanel empire had begun. Her reign as a leading designer would survive even her affair with a Nazi officer during WWII.
















Chanel died on January 10, 1971 in her private suite at the Hotel Ritz in Paris her longtime residence, but her legacy lives on. Her perfume, Chanel No. 5 created in the 1920's remains profitable and her timeless fashions popular.

New Black Panthers

Here's the trailer video for "Inside: New Black Panthers" that I worked on this past year. Check out the National Geographic Channel website for the full schedule.

AMERICAN NAZIS

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CHANNEL
Tune in on Sunday night for a double header of hate. Two documentaries that I worked on this past year, "Inside: New Black Panthers" and "Inside: American Nazis" will air back to back on Sunday night. First up is the Panther program, an hour long insider's view of the New Black Panther Party then at 10 PM we're on to the National Socialist Movement, Aryan Nations, and several not so warm and fuzzy hate groups. These two are the latest documentaries in a four pack that I've been plugging away at about hate in America. The others "Inside: American Skinheads" and "KKK: Inside American Terror" previously aired on the National Geographic Channel. The programs will repeat several times so visit the National Geographic Channel for a full schedule.

Have You Heard?

Gossip is everywhere, but what exactly is it and why do we do it? Some psychologists categorize any talk about social or personal topics as gossip while others suggest that such talk isn't really gossip until an evaluative aspect or an opinion about the topic is introduced.

Such a lack of distinction makes studying gossip difficult but using the broader definition, researchers eavesdropping on conversations in public places like train stations and bars, have determined that at least two thirds of our conversations can be defined as gossip. In the U.S. celebrity gossip has become a national pastime and most Americans are able to rattle off gossip about any number of celebrities without breaking a sweat. Newspaper columns, magazines, blogs, and television programs all feed the frenzy for star gossip.

But why are we so interested

Social scientists suggest that we do it because gossip is good for us and good for society. In fact gossip might be called the social adhesive of society. It's what keeps us together. Gossip is not just trivial chatter, but a vital part of human existence. Gossip helps us build relationships, bond with one another, reinforces our common values, and helps us maintain social networks. And apparently many of us include celebrities in our social network whether or not we have ever had actual contact with them. But one has to wonder in our fast paced world how do people find time to gossip? Researchers say that it looks like the cell phone is coming to the rescue. Studies of cell phone use indicate that men and women gossip equally while on cell phones, that people gossip about celebrities on their phones especially during significant life events such as high profile divorces, and that only 5% of gossip on cell phones is negative in nature.

Unfortunately, the ease of cell phone communication has added a new wrinkle to our modern life. Cell phones allow people to gossip anywhere and with anyone. Before cell phones when someone wanted to limit their gossip intake they could just duck the water cooler or the cocktail party, but now cell phone users seem to be everywhere, and overhearing gossip from fired employees, jilted lovers, and out of control exs, has become commonplace in grocery stores and doctor’s offices. Christine Goffman, writing in The New Atlantis calls this type of cell phone conversation— communications panhandling— forcing our conversations on others without first gaining their approval. She says it’s just another nuisance associated with the ubiquitous technology and an example of the breakdown in the division between public and private conversations. Conversations that in the past would have taken place over the backyard fence or at the kitchen table are now taking place in public on cell phones.

This lapse in social manners points out one of the more important functions of gossip— to inform us of the social rules and tell us what is and isn't acceptable. This function might be called gossip's evolutionary agenda. Gossip is a quick way for people to transfer information to each other that hasn’t been written down. This information or social knowledge is important to all of us as members of the human community, but it is particularly important to groups outside the mainstream. Gossip helps these groups navigate through society and provides them with opportunities for self promotion. Keeping in touch with what others are doing, and reading the latest news about the rich and famous is actually a smart way for people to keep track of their position in the social hierarchy and form social networks.

That’s one of the reasons for the perception in society that women as a group are the chief purveyors of gossip. Although women tend to gossip a bit more than men do, the reasons that social scientists give for this behavior may surprise you. Some suggest that early on tribal women needed gossip to adapt when they married and joined their husband’s family, others contend that gossip between women tends to be more positive than negative, a sign that women use gossip to lend support to one another, and still others think that women are just more verbal creatures. But Robin Dunbar of the University of Liverpool has his own point of view. He argues that human societies are essentially run by women. "There is all this froth on top made by the men, pretending to rule the system, imposing themselves, and restricting what women do," he says. "But women are running the system at the interpersonal level. If women were to stop socializing, society would fall apart." (qtd. In Drakin, 2005)

ALIEN HAND SYNDROME

Alien hand syndrome (AHS) is a rare neurological disorder that causes hand movement without the person being aware of what is happening or having control over the action. The afflicted person may sometimes reach for objects and manipulate them without wanting to do so, even to the point of having to use the healthy hand to restrain the alien hand. A new study identified the areas of the brain involved in both voluntary and involuntary movement and found that neural activity was restricted to the primary motor cortex during the unconscious motor activity seen with AHS.

Gypsy Rose Lee

The dysfunctional Hovick family has once again been revived on Broadway in "Gypsy" the musical. This time with the considerable talent of Patti Lupone as Mama Rose and under the masterful direction of ninety year old Arthur who also wrote the book. This tale of the most notorious show business stage mother and her stripper daughter, is loosely based on the memoirs of Gypsy Rose Lee. The original 1959 musical was nominated for eight Tony awards and developed by Ethel Merman and David Merrick with music by Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim lyrics.

Gypsy Rose Lee was born Ellen June Hovick in Seattle Washington in 1911. Her sister also strangely named Ellen June Hovick and later known as June Havoc was born two years later. When their parents divorced the girl's mother, Rose Hovick developed a successful vaudeville act for her daughters aged five and seven, called Baby June and Her Farmboys. Although the act was making $1500 at its height, Vaudeville soon began to fade and Baby June eloped at 13 with a member of the chorus. Mama Rose though was hell bent on continuing without her main talent, and although Vaudeville was a dying art form--burlesque was blossoming and Gypsy Rose Lee was born.

Gypsy Rose Lee went on to a successful career as an actress, author, and talk show host. She wrote three books including the best seller Gypsy, and performed in 12 movies and , but the intimate details of smothering Mama Rose's life didn't feed public consumption until June Havoc wrote in her autobiography, Early Havoc. Rose 'turned toward her own sex,' at first ruining a lesbian boardinghouse in a 10-room apartment Gypsy rented for her on West End Avenue, and then owning a sort of lesbian farm in her country house in Highland Hills. At a party in that house, Rose pulled a gun on one of the girls, according to Erik Preminger Gypsy's son and killed a young woman.

Mama Rose's troubles may have started in her own childhood. Her mother, Anna, had left the family for long stretches, traveling to the Yukon with hats and corsets that she made, selling them to boom town prostitutes. Rose gave her own girls $1 a day to eat, kept them out of school, and rarely tended to their physical or emotional needs. She lived a hand to mouth existence, stealing from other performers, once pushing a pesky hotel manager out a window, and when June married a boy in the act named Bobby Reed, Rose had him arrested and brought to the police station, where she arrived with a hidden gun. When he moved to shake her hand she pulled the trigger twice, but the safety was on.

Hovick died in 1954, and after her death Gypsy began writing her memoirs and they were published in 1957.

GHETTO BROTHERS

AFTER YOU READ THIS BLOG WATCH CHANNEL 13 FROM 1971.

AFTER THE DEATH OF BENJII 3 WEEKS LATER:

FREE TIME HERE

When I was fifteen my grandfather died, and my father brought home his old black and white television set. Our house was small with not much space to store things, so my father set the thing on the floor of my room. It took a few weeks, but one night I decided to plug it in to see if the light would be bright enough to read by, but low enough not to wake anyone up. So I fiddled with the TV dial and found I could get the brightness sharp and I could read with the sound down. That is what I did for a little while, until after some experimentation I discovered that I could get one channel and if I sat real close with the sound low I could watch TV.

The one station was Channel 13, WNET and the show that I watched was called "Free-Time." This show was broadcast live and came on at 11 pm. Free Time had a rather eclectic offering of guests, musicians, radicals, politicians, and poets. It was on Free Time that I heard a young poet named Nikki Giovanni. She read poems about John Coltrane and Billy Holiday. It was unbelievably exciting to me. Nikki was young and radical, very untraditional with a huge Afro and she was different than anyone I had ever heard.

So one night when the address for tickets flashed on the screen I jotted it down and sent off.

When the tickets arrived, I arranged with a friend to go. We lied to our parents and took the LIRR to NYC at nine at night. I'm really not sure how, but we found our way to the subway and then to the TV station. We entered the studio which was nothing more than some bleachers and a stage.

The program that night was about gang violence. The studio was over flowing with gangs from the South Bronx. People were pushing and shoving and cursing. And to my amazement my desire to see this show was so strong that I convinced my friend to stay. We found seats and the program went on.

The gang members who sat on the stage were it seemed to me at fifteen--mature and insighttful. They got right to the point. Don't judge us, they said. A gang was a family that you needed to survive and you just had to live in the South Bronx to understand. Although I didn't live in the South Bronx I did understand and while the program was running I lost what ever misgivings I had about our situation and how it would unfold afterwards.

These quickly came back when the house lights went down and the moderator left. There was a general uneasiness then. Everyone knew things was different out on the streets. The gangs were at war. Who would leave first? How would they do it? And what would happen as there was no promise of safety as we headed to the subway. By this time it was about 1 AM and my friend and I had little idea about how to get out of the City.

And then shouting started and we heard some threats, and because we were too frightened to leave-- we just stayed. We were still hanging around an hour later. Then these Ghetto Brothers walked over to us and started to talk.

The Ghetto Brothers were a gang (or club) founded in New York City's South Bronx in the late 1960s. They eventually spread to much of the Northeastern United States. Like the Young Lords, they were involved in Puerto Rican nationalism, including, in the case of the Ghetto Brothers, an association with the then-new Puerto Rican Socialist Party. Ghetto Brothers founder Benjamin Melendez, who left the organization in 1976, was also known as a guitarist. He led a band, also known as the Ghetto Brothers, which included his late brother Victor Melendez on drums. They released one (self-titled) album in 1972, which had only informal, local distribution.

The Ghetto Brothers, especially in their early years, had a reputation as one of the more politically minded and less vengeful of New York-area gangs. After Cornell "Black Benjy" Benjamin was killed in 1971 trying to prevent a fight between two rival gangs, the Ghetto Brothers did not seek the expected revenge on those responsible for his death. Instead, under Melendez's leadership (and that of Carlos Suarez, also known as Carlos Melendez), they were instrumental in achieving a moderately successful truce among South Bronx and other New York-area gangs. The best-known of the meetings to hammer out a peace treaty occurred December 8, 1971. Among those present was Afrika Bambaataa, then a 14-year-old Black Spade warlord known on the streets as Bambaataa.

Under Melendez's leadership, the Ghetto Brothers represented one end of the spectrum in terms of how they treated the women involved with the gang. Referred to as the Ghetto Sisters—the respectful term contrasted sharply with the names used for the women attached to other NewYork gangs of the period—the women were generally viewed as organization members and as girlfriends, whereas many other gangs treated women almost entirely as sexual property.

We talked with them like the high school kids that we were. We were all into this Free Time scene.The guys liked us and we had a lot in common. One guy in particular, a guy known as Benjii was a poet and we hit it off, he showed me some poems that he had written that he had in his pocket. Great stuff about the streets.

We felt comfortable enough to tell these guys we had to get home, but had no idea how to do it. They agreed to show us the way and walk us to the train. But first they had to do something important for our protection. Benjii made them turn their vest jackets inside out, so no one would see their colors on the street and we wouldn't be targets. They walked us to the train, these guys with their jackets turned inside out, and we talked some more and held hands. It was that kind of thing--kid stuff. We had a long walk, and it was winter and we were cold, but happy to have found each other, pleased about having a small bit of time like this when we could just be teenagers and not battling some problem.

When we got to the platform Benjii and I kissed and as I remember it, he read me another poem, and I thought it was really good and I knew we had a lot in common. Maybe he would call me sometime in the future—I gave him my number—give me someone to hang on to in my stupid life. And I went home. It was probably six in the morning when we arrived at the our stop and my friend and I slept on a bench in the waiting area until about 7 when we got up, school would start soon, and the school building was across the street from the train station. We didn't want to be seen by teachers arriving for work.

The next week while I was running some errands for my mother I waited in line at the cash register and grabbed up the Daily News to check it out---there it was on the front page, Benjii on the ground. Shot trying to make peace in the South Bronx. He was the only one killed. This was the kind of photograph that we were used to seeing on the front page in the Seventies of young men on the concrete because there were in gangs and crime was bad in NY. Young men were pretty much killing each other and themselves and later there were the riots and the police became the ones doing the killing and then of course there was Vietnam.

Benjamin Melendez began the GBs in the South Bronx around 1967 with his brothers and some neighborhood friends. Known on the streets as "Yellow Benjy", Melendez would also become a key organizer of the pivotal 1971 Bronx truce that transformed the culture of the borough, and made the rise of hip-hop possible.

So, the way I remember it is-- I was shocked, but not shocked. I went to school and started to thinking about how much the sidewalks of New York City looked like tombstones and how headlines can sometimes read like epitaphs and how some people will always be trespassers because there will be places where they're not allowed to walk and how first someone had to let you come in before you can go out and I thought about how much pain there is in the world and how someone has to express it and I thought about poets like Benjii who die with their words in their pockets when everyone else has a gun and I wrote my first poem.

Where The Wild Things Are

Let the Rumpus begin. Where the Wild Things Are is set to appear in theaters in 2009 with a new script by Spike Jonze (Adaptation) and Dave Eggers (Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius). Currently in post production the cast includes James Galdolfini, Forest Whitaker, and seven wild creatures that have been created using foam body costumes and CIGI faces. The movie is based on the popular children's picture book by Maurice Sendak published in 1963. The story is all about Max, a little boy who is banished from his room for kicking up a fuss and decides to go live with the imaginary Wild Things. The movie version has been in development since the 1980's and has been tossed from studio to studio. The project eventually landed at Warner Brothers in 2007 when some concern arose at Universal over whether a 338 word book could really be turned into a movie. Here's hoping that the kinks have been ironed out of the little classic, but recent rumors say otherwise. Appears that Warner Brothers is unhappy with the film and Jonze may reshoot.


Another well known children's author and a personal favorite is Shel Siverstein. Silverstein wrote a bunch of kid's books like Where the Sidewalk Ends, Falling Up, and The Light in the Attic, but he was also known for his bohemian lifestyle and more adult fare. A fixture in Key West, Florida where he lived a "Peter Pan" like existence for almost thirty years before his death in 1999, Silverstein was among other things a pundit, a poet, and a songwriter. He won a Grammy in 1970 for the Johnny Cash song A Boy Named Sue and he penned many other songs including "Cover of the Rolling Stone" and "Sylvia's Mother" for Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show and the classic "The Unicorn" for the Irish Rovers. Silverstein got his start as a cartoonist for Playboy and was surprised to find out that his work for Playboy did not interfere with his sucessful career as a children's author.

Where the Sidewalk Ends
by Shel Silverstein


There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

Birth Of The Cool

Everyone knows what cool means. Cool is an aesthetic, an attitude, an amorphous but defining quality that is often difficult to explain, but easily recognizable. The Internet is full of cool places like The Cool Site of the Day and Daily Candy and other search engines that aggregate cool. Cool can also be found on the library shelf and any up and coming Hipster can turn to the pages of the book Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury and explore the beginnings of Fifties modernist influences on the West Coast.



Besides being an aesthetic and an artifact of culture--individuals and music can also embody cool. Nothing is cooler than Jazz and nobody is cooler than Miles Davis. Davis' legendary album Birth Of The Cool was released by Capitol Records in 1957 with music from 3 recording sessions and the album is timeless cool and even inspired a whole school of jazz musicians in California known as the "cool school."

Objects, film, and fashion are also cool. Take Ray Ban Wayfarers, Messenger bags, and Cloverfield. But material cool can translate into consumerism based on a desire to enhance prestige and status by owning certain "cool" possessions. However, this kind of cool is a diminishing equation--affluent affectations are never cool.

People are Freezing in NYC

Looks like it's pretty cold in NY.
People are freezing---

Valentine's Day

My daughter used to hang out in this coffee shop in Boulder when she was a student. On the last day before she graduated and headed home her favorite barista made her a latte with a little heart in the center. She was thrilled. Maybe this Valentine's Day you can wake your Sweetie with a heart latte.


The following is from WikiHow:

"HOW TO MAKE A LATTE"

Things You'll Need
Espresso machine, with Steam Wand
Tamp
Metal Pitcher

Fill the metal pitcher 3/5 of the way full with milk, or to the base of the pour spout.Place thermometer securely inside of the pitcher. Steam milk to 145ºF. The temperature will raise an additional 5 degrees as it sits. If you prefer hotter drinks, that's fine, but you will scorch it above 155ºF. (be sure your thermometer is calibrated!)The steam wand should be inserted diagonally just below the surface of the milk. This will create froth or foam necessary for a good latte.When frothing make sure you are creating rotational flow in the steam pitcher and once the temperature of the milk is about 100ºF or just warm to the touch, raise the steam pitcher to cease frothing and continue to heat to above temp. Tamp the ground espresso into the portafilter with roughly 40 lbs of pressure and lock it into the group head on the espresso machine.

Pour your two perfect shots into your coffee mug or equivalent.

Texture your milk by rolling it around in the steam pitcher until glossy on the surface. Pour your steamed milk over the espresso. The froth will pour smoothly and blend with the espresso crema.

Is There a Hell

Pointy-tailed Devils with pitchforks. Naked souls writhing in a lake of fire. The acrid smell of Brimstone. (What is Brimstone anyway?)

These are the familiar and icongraphic images of Hell with which most of us are familiar. But does Hell really exist? Almost all religions believe in a place of future punishment. For some religions the concept includes eternal damnation and an eternity of sado-masochist torture. For others like Buddhists, Hell is just a plateau where the human soul stops off to be cleansed before moving on to another life.

For those of you who believe in God--I know you're out there because you've been sticking The Lighthouse in this sinner's mailbox for years--The big question is whether or not believing in Hell means believing in accountability--Will people really get their props or be dissed for a minutia of earthly misdeeds come Judgement Day? (Just in case, my bro Steve broke that window in 1971 not me.) Answer me this believers; Is your God and maybe my God just some kind of big heavenly Accountant in The Sky recording sins in his/her/ one trillion terrabyte brain?
The notion and nature of Hell has been the subject of debate for religious folk, philosophers, and scholars for eons and eons and I know I'm not making any serious headway here, but it is an interesting topic for a reprobate to contemplate on a Saturday afternoon while avoiding real work.

In Spring '92 the New Agers had their say about Hell when in the Journal of Near-Death Studies P.M.H. Atwater described some very interesting interviews with individuals who had experienced near death. These interviews revealed that for some folks the near death experience wasn't all hearts and flowers and a tunnel of light.

"I had been looking up into the big glass cupola over the operating room. This cupola now began to change. Suddenly it turned a glowing red. I saw twisted faces grimacing as they stared down at me. Overcome by dread I tried to struggle upright and defend myself against these pallid ghosts, who were moving closer to me.I could no longer shut out the frightful truth. Beyond doubt, the faces dominating this fiery world were faces of the damned. I bad a feeling of despair, of being unspeakably alone and abandoned. The sensation of horror was so great it choked me, and I had the impression I was about to suffocate." Curd Jurgens, actor in James Bond films revived after a heart attack.

You can take what you want from that, but I think it was all about the drugs. The concept of Hell in popular culture is a curious one and Hell has turned up in the movies including What Dreams Will Come, Little Nicky, Constantine, and Deconstructing Harry. If you are feel like living dangerously you can put those bombs on your Netflix Q. In comic art Hellboy is a demon conjured up by Nazis in DarkHorse Comics. (Now there's an imagination)

Hell is also a popular bar on Rosemary Street in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Now didn't I really take the long way around to get to that?

Spock Goes Nude

Leonard Nimoy is one of the latest to add his voice to the female body acceptance movement. Last May he mounted a gallery show that featured photographs of obese women and in November he released a book The Full Body Project that includes photographs of full bodied women like those pictured above.

In an article in the NY Times Nimoy says that the Xtra large nude photographs were his artistic response to the cultural pressure on women in American society to conform to the size 2.

It's true. The size 2 woman is an unrealistic standard. Most women weigh 25% more than the average runway model. BUT STILL not many women are at the top of the curve that Nimmoy photographs. My guess is that this particular aesthetic is truly under appreciated by the public and in my opinion the unimaginative poses that the ex-Vulcan uses for his models seem to do little to change that view. Nimoy is no stranger to the female form and he's been photographing nudes since the early seventies.



His Shekhina series of photographs has its own quirky hook—sensual images of naked women in religious Jewish wear. Nimoy is a man of many talents-- artist, photographer, director, musician, and actor. He is best known for his run on the Star Trek series as the unemotional Vulcan Spock. Vulcanism is something Nimoy shares with Kirstie Alley ( The former Lieutenant Saavik in "Wrath of Khan.") Alley made some money by turning the tables on herslf in Fat Actress a rather distressing one season comedy from Showtime about Hollywood's warped view of women's bodies.

In the series Alley played a 200 lb plus actress trying to get a few yucks by making fun of bulimia. Besides being spokesperson for Jennie Craig and an actress who has long battled a weight problem herslf, Kirstie Alley has another Hollywood curse. She's a Scientologist who made news by donating over 5 million dollars to Scientology last year. In a recently unearthed video from many years ago she appears claiming that she "would be dead" without her man L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology.

Haunted Television

Stories of souls trapped or lost in television's nowhere land permeated the folklore of the Sputnik Era.

In 1953 the NY Times carried an article about a Long Island family with a TV set inhabited by the ghost of a mysterious woman. Jerome Travers and his 3 children reported seeing the woman during Ding Dong School. The Travers family was besieged by reporters, but the image never reappeared.

In the 1960's a Wisconsin woman claimed to have seen a couple arguing on a balcony and the call letters of a defunct radio station on her television screen. The vision was followed by a desperate cry for help. Rosella Rose was not the first person to see the KLEE station card almost twelve year after it was abandoned, and when news of her sighting appeared in the papers it reinforced public perception that television was a netherworld where even the most fleeting earthly message could be trapped.

Reports of electronic transmissions between the real and the spirit world in the early days of television were generated by public anxiety surrounding the new technology. For a viewing public unfamiliar with ideas like electromagnetic waves, static, and cathode ray tubes, a host of suspicions arose including the belief that a television set was capable of transporting individuals to another dimension, holding them captive in some sort of electronic limbo, and if conditions were right, becoming remote viewers for surveillance.

These paranoias made rich fodder for a host of science fiction plots on popular television series like The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone. Early television reception was also full of electronic deficiencies like double images, phantom transmissions, and sound distortions that gave rise to a host of sightings. Scholars have linked these sightings to quickly changing social realities that fueled public distrust. The cultural implications of ghost sightings at the dawn of the television age have been written about at length by social historians in books like Haunted Media: Electronic Presence From Telegraph to Television and The Revolution Wasn't Televised.

Public reaction today to a ghost in the machine is quite different as evidenced by the reaction of the giggling group in the YOUTube video showing above. Due to constant exposure to the video stream our reactions are now mitigated by both experience with the technology and our sophistication with the meaning and limitations of media.

Happiness

Everyone recognizes that "in the groove" feeling when someone is totally immersed, focused, and fully involved in some activity. In this state time drops away, the world recedes, and we become at one with whatever endeavor or task we are engaged.

Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, a psychologist known for his work in the field of creativity called this feeling flow. In his best selling book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience Csikszentmihalyi describes flow as a source of great freedom, enjoyment, and fulfillment. According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow is one of the hallmarks of happiness in life and work.

Until recently happiness has been an unexplored dynamic of human life, but lately some psychologists have begun to map the dimensions of positive human experience. In fact there is a Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pittsburgh where academics are collecting information for happiness studies. Individuals can take a Happiness Inventory ( I'm a 3.2 on a 1-5 scale) and participate in happiness journaling. There is also a six part series about the Science of Happiness available on the BBC News website that includes happiness tips. (Hint: It does help to count your blessings.)

There is no magic potion for a happy life, but researchers have teased out a number of broad categories that influence our well-being including certain personality strengths, the influence of family on happiness, and an indictment of pleasure seeking behaviors. In fact researchers say that pleasure is often confused with happiness and that for humans, learning the fast path to pleasure may be akin to evolutionary suicide.

The confusion between happiness and pleasure might explain why so many unhappy people surf the Web. The Internet is full of pleasure spots. For those who like their pleasure dark and their humor sick there is Cyanide and Happiness. The web comic can best be described as offensive, adolescent, and stupid.

The comic began with a 16 year old student, Kris Wilson and is now the work of 4 authors. Cyanide and Happiness can be hot linked to myspace and other social networking sites which has added to its rocketing success. The sketchy stick-like comic characters cover topics like venereal disease, racism, sexual deviancy, blasphemy, and other nonsense in pathos driven scripts.

Drinking Games

Researchers at San Diego University did a little field work recently and discovered first hand that drinking games lead to higher blood alcohol levels for college students. Most academics study alcohol behavior by examining student self reports after the fact, but in this study the researchers observed 1,304 young adults at 66 college parties over the course of three semesters.

Not surprisingly they found that playing drinking games, having a personal history of binge drinking, attending a party with many other intoxicated people, and attending a themed event all predicted higher blood alcohol levels. In addition something surprising turned up when they discovered that women at themed events drank more heavily than men, especially at parties with sexual themes or costumes. The point of drinking games is to get drunk fast, right? So the results seem to be a no-brainer, but the study does sum up nicely what researchers have been saying all along about drinking to excess--that it is a function of both person and environment. And for women that might mean that wearing nothing but a grass skirt and a coconut bra to a party is a pretty good reason to get drunk.

Duplessis Orphans

In a scheme that boggles a person's mind, fifty years ago in Canada, Quebec Minister Maurice Duplesiss entered into a pact with the Catholic Church to defraud the government by relabeling children left in orphanages by unwed mothers as psychotic or mentally deficient to gain greater funding. In the demented plan orphanages were also relabeled as insane asylums and run that way.

When the asylums were closed in the 1990's, the profit scheme came to light and a scandal erupted. The survivors began to tell about the horrors of imprisonment from childhood---the profound abuse, treatment as slave labor, electro-shock treatments, sexual abuse, physical tortures, straitjackets, and medical experiments.



Confronted with the evidence the government chose to trivialize the impact and refused to punish the clergy responsible. Eventually in 2001 in an attempt to stop further inquiry into the scandal, the government offered $15,000 per orphan in damages but just in certain cases. The offer outraged victims and they pressed for more damages, further investigation, and justice. How much did the Church benefit from the relabeling of orphans?

"It was definitely to the financial advantage of certain religious institutions to transfer these normal children to psychiatric hospitals, in order to profit from a higher daily subsidy for each child it was established that the religious communities involved were able to obtain, in 1999 dollars, an additional $70 million for the years between 1940 and 1960 (a mentally deficient child would provide greater subsidies than a normal child). According to the analysis, this amount represents a minimum amount since it does not take into account the unpaid labor which the children were forced into during their stays in these asylums.

In 2006 the Canadian government finally agreed to pay out 26 million dollars to the 1,000 to 2,000 orphans still alive if they agreed not to sue the Catholic Church. The Church never apologized. The period of Maurice Duplessis' tenure which was known for conservative and church oriented politics is called "The Great Darkness" in Canada and the treatment of the orphans as the "Canadian Holocaust." Much of what was perpetrated has been hidden from history and still remains uninvestigated.