Personal Infrastructure Crisis/Spitzer's "Boy Toy"/Ingersoll Quotes

(P1) Political

Infrastructure?

Friend Tom Mariani, primarily as the result of the family Volkswagen plunging off a bridge crumbled by an earthquake near Eureka, California in late 1980, became a strong advocate for improving the state's highway infrastructure.


Look closely at the photo, and you'll see the car bearing Tom and his wife. For a time they were terrified not to be able to find their two children who had been ejected from the car. Tom writes The L.A. quakes in the 1970s that caused overpass failures, showed that we cannot rely on the constant force of gravity. What my wife and I saw out of our windshield November 8, 1980, and what we all saw in the Bay Area after the 1989 quakes, further demonstrated that Caltrans' engineering theory for freeway construction does not hold up during an earthquake.


To this I add "infrastructure" well may be the single greatest concern and cause to which each of us should subscribe. As roads and bridges age, as water conduits corrode, as buildings rot, far too little is being done in the way of replacement. "Taxes" whether new or increased apparently have become "evil. Many of us grew up expecting to pay our fair share in return for services and infrastructure improvements. Sure we grumbled at tax time, but we knew that there was no free lunch. Somehow, over the past 30 years, the term "tax increase" is barely whispered. Instead, we have either unbridled borrowing or, perhaps worse, nothing at all. On top of that, proposition 13 gave us one percent property taxes. That "free lunch" resulted in "no lunch." Wake up, California and America; demand infrastructure projects and also the jobs they will create!!!

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(P2) Poetical



"Boy Toy"

Partial representation of 8"x8" Acrylic painting by Jim Spitzer

For Sale

jimspitzer@lycos.com

or visit the studio at
4524 Badger Rd.
Santa Rosa, CA 95404

707-538-4640

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(P3) Philosophical

4 From Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) (Look him up!!!)

1. It has always seemed absurd to suppose that a god would choose for his companions, during all eternity, the dear souls whose highest and only ambition is to obey.

2. A believer is a bird in a cage; a freethinker is an eagle parting the clouds with tireless wing.

3. Who can estimate the misery that has been caused by this infamous doctrine of eternal punishment? Think of the lives it has blighted--of the tears it has caused--of the agony it has produced. Think of the millions who have been driven to insanity by this most terrible of dogmas. This doctrine renders God the basest and most cruel in the universe...There is nothing more degrading than to worship such a god.

4. Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action, rather than the dead calm of ignorance and faith!

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Oscar Grant/Katherine Hastings/Harvey Pekar/Global Warming Big Time/

(P1) Poetical


In Memory of Oscar Grant
New Years Day, 2009

by Katherine Hastings


As the young supermarket worker lay facedown
amid the darkness
as he lay there in Oakland's underground,
where moon and stars are barred
unarmed, black, pinned down,
inside the darkness
begging not to be shot,
as he lay there covered with cops
dark forms with dark wings
hiding him from view as best they could,
through fear's thick veil
cell phones up and down the tracks
a shape-shifting transit crowd
recorded the cop pulling his gun,
pressing it to the back of the unarmed black man
strength in meekness
who was a young friend, who was a lover,
as a drop of dew
who was a father laying facedown
as a small drop of dew

As the young black man lay there,
encircled
pinned down, facedown, begging,
a lone drop of dew
a cop shot him in the back, BAM!
dying
shot him in the back!

As the young unarmed man laid dying,
birds within the wind
cops hiding him the best they could,
fish within the wave
cell phones recorded the shooting of Oscar Grant,
thoughts of man's own mind
unarmed,
float through
pinned down,
all above
face down,
begging.
the grave

Everyone saw it and saw it and saw it
those eyes
and no one can say
burn through

Death!
it wasn't so.
the last embrace

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(P2) Philosophical

Harvey Pekar Tribute by Jaime Crespo





















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(P3) Political

Forgotten About Global Warming? - Check this out
Giant Ice Island Breaks Off Greenland.. Largest Chunk Since 1962

WASHINGTON — A giant ice island has broken off the Petermann Glacier in northern Greenland.

A University of Delaware researcher says the floating ice sheet covers 100 square miles – more than four times the size of New York's Manhattan Island.

Andreas Muenchow, who is studying the Nares Strait between Greenland and Canada, said the ice sheet broke off early Thursday. He says the new ice island was discovered by Trudy Wohlleben of the Canadian Ice Service.

Not since 1962 has such a large chunk of ice calved in the Arctic, but researchers have noticed cracks in recent months in the floating tongue of the glacier. (AP 8-7-10)

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The Gulf in Our Humanity

(Ed Coletti-"Dead Fish - watercolor)

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Practically every environmental problem we have can be traced to our addiction to fossil fuels, primarily oil.
Dennis Weaver

The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun. (ed, I would add "Yet.")
Ralph Nader

“I think the devil will not have (you) damned, lest the oil that's in (you) should set hell on fire."
William Shakespeare

It is clear our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and more of our imports come from overseas.
George W. Bush

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Ed's June 22d Letter to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat

Mixed Cartoons

EDITOR: It irks me that The Press Democrat feels the need to please everybody, and therefore nobody, by providing conflicting political cartoons. I miss the days of the great newspapers (e.g. the Washington Post) which took a principled stand and stuck to it. But the Press Democrat appears to want to provide something called “balance.” While this concept may be appropriate for reportage, it's not the case with editorial opinion.

So along comes the Monday political cartoon apparently objecting to government spending to save the planet. I conclude that this must be one of those days when the PD steps to the right while figuring that tomorrow, it'll move left. However, the “balance” bromide fails horribly here. What is the balance to saving the planet? Is it “not saving the planet”?

Perhaps I expect too much. But I do long for a newspaper which, in the grand tradition, takes a strong editorial position on issues local, national, international, and, yes, even planetary.

ED COLETTI

Santa Rosa

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I wrote the following poem quite a few years ago, and long before the Gulf horror. Just goes to show you. Oil long has been about the worst thing in our world. What was the name of that recent movie? Oh yeah, "There Will Be Blood."

This Barrel of Oil Addresses
An American Slave

They call me black gold
but like a dollar bill
I ain’t worth a spatter
'cept they use me for something
believe me they do
but I don’t need to tell you
the way they used you
some of them knowing better
were the worst for the knowing
not doing anything about it.

They pretend I’m not even there
while I’m all that’s there and you
your existence made their heaven
planted on the bottom line
with no price for labor
anywhere above,
the difference between us being
you had children,
that alone made it so you couldn’t hide
their misery or your wife’s
or that man place inside you
where you knew hot rage
with nowhere to go.

So me I’m just a metaphor,
something they use and use and take
away from under what was never theirs.
The people who try to live nearest me
who don’t own a dram of me,
they get used the same as you and everyone else
gets used a bit like you, and only you
really know just how very used
the people of this earth are
used and used
and used to being used.

(Published at In Our Own Words (Fall 2008)

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Ed Coletti Paintings at Big Bridge/ Jim Spitzer & the Kids/Community Land Trusts/Churchgoing/

(P1) Poetical

8 Coletti Paintings At Big Bridge

Here's a link to Michael Rothenberg's great international arts forum Big Bridge where Michael has honored me (Ed Coletti) by featuring 8 of my paintings (check them out and be sure that, upon viewing a painting, you then click at the bottom, "Click here to go to next Ed Coletti work").

Shown here is a recent watercolor not at Big Bridge. You may like the title, "Fish With Large Red Mustache, Bird, Worm, and a Tortoise On Roller Skates."

Now here's the link to Ed Coletti's 8 Paintings at Big Bridge



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and also, Check this out!!!

Jim Spitzer On Art and Youth

After you hit the link, then page down to "Jim Spitzer's Philosophy of Art." Here's the LINK


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(P2) Political

Community Land Trusts

San Francisco radical organizer and poet James Tracy is one of the founders of the San Francisco Community Land Trust.

The community land trust movement nationally is most interesting and very promising. James will be reading and speaking about the movement in NYC soon. I urge you to go to the linked (above) website for the full skinny on the trust.

My cousin Bill writes, Community Land Trusts are a great way to attack speculation...the root cause of many of the housing problems in the country. One slogan of the movement is "The land belongs to a vast family of people; some of whom are dead; many of whom are living; and most of whom are yet unborn".

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(P3) Philosophical

Philip Larkin - Church Going

Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.

Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches will fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognisable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.


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