Racing In The Street

From Backstreets.com: Springsteen News
The Born to Run 30th anniversary celebration continues, with a magnificent coffee table book from cover photographer Eric Meola due in September. In Born to Run: The Unseen Photos, Meola shares a wealth of images from his 1975 cover session -- more than 100 black and white outtakes, most published here for the first time, in stunning quality. The Worcester Telegram & Gazette News has a piece on the making of the book, including the $50,000 scanner and 350 hours of work for scanning alone. This 12” x 12”, LP-sized hardback will also have Springsteen’s complete lyrics from the album, an introduction by Daniel Wolff (author of 4th of July, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land), and a foreword from Meola himself to set the scene. The photographer is donating his share of the proceeds to the Community Food Bank of New Jersey.

Vacation's where I wanna be
Party on the beach where the fun is free
We don't need a holiday, it's time to celebrate
'Cause I need a break, I need a vacation

Vitamin C, "Vacation"
(I haven't heard of her either--the song's from a Pokemon movie!)


A week's R & R with the family in Canada. After that I will return to work for the first time since May 12th. The Amazing Adventures Of Clot Boy are officially closed (well, except for the bloodthinners, periodic check-ups, better diet and increased excercise.)

That's right, you read it right. I'm taking a week's vacation to rest up from two and a half months of laying around the house, playing with my doggies, surfing the web, reading several books that had languished on my shelves for eons. Deal with it.

There are two environmental issues that both candidates for NYS Governor are barely, if at all, discussing.

1) Agriculture is NY State's number one industry. Why no discussion of the rise of huge factory farms (called CAFO's Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) upstate? These monstrous facilities create massive amounts of animal waste, often contained in unsafe lagoons, Remember all the shit that poured into the Black River near Watertown last year? The Marks Dairy Farm near Lowville spilled 3 million gallons of liquid cow manure into the river. The DEC is not effectively policing these manifestly unstable containment units.

The Friends of Rural New York blog had a disturbing, and as yet, still unanswered thought: the Southern Tier flooding that blocked access to many dairy farms for collection of milk may also have compromised MANY manure containment lagoons.

2) Energy production. While the Con Ed mess in Queens is pointing out the shortcomings of NYC's energy distribution system, the overarching question for downstate residents is their rapidly increasing demand for more power. If, as some estimate, NYC demand for power outstrips the supply, the economic engine of NYC business--high tech, financial etc. will also be compromised. This is where NYRI comes in. The plan to transfer "excess" upstate energy to downstate residents by constructing a huge series of high voltage transfer towers is obviously very controversial to the towns it will rip through.

The solution of opponents to NYRI is for the NYC area to produce more of its own power. As the New York Times recently pointed out in a article entitled "Ther Nuclear Option", building new nuclear plants and expanding old ones has gained credibility, even with erstwhile environmentalists. Nuclear power, despite the threat of terrorist attacks on plants and the need to store toxic waste for over 10,000 years, is being seen as a "clean" alternative to fossil fuels.

How are we going to deal with these often contradictory problems? If Eliot Spitzer, who has come out against both NYRI and the extension of the Indian Point nuclear plant near NYC, is elected governor which promise gets broken first? Or is there another way out of the dilemma through alternative technology or demand reduction?

Wonkette beautifully pointed out Eliot Spitzer's contradictory answers to the two marijuana questions during last night's debate: Yes, I have smoked marijuana. No, I don't support legalizing medical use of marijuana.

"So he’ll smoke it, but he won’t let you smoke it if you have tumors. What the hell next? Is he going to start insider trading?"

A friend e-mailed me the following floating around the internet. I heartily agree with the sentiment after tonight's disappointing Spitzer/Suozzi debate proved upstate will be getting four more years of benign neglect from our NYC overlords:

If you invested $1,000 last year in the following stocks, your return would be:

Nortel: $49.00.
Enron: $16.50
WorldCom: less than $5.00

However, if you purchased $1,000.00 worth of beer one year ago,drank all the beer,
then turned in the cans for the recycling refund, You return would be $214.00.

Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle. It's called the 401-Keg Plan.

Cheers Zac!

If you watched the only debate scheduled between the two Democratic candidates for governor of NY State, you heard lots of stuff either Elliot Spitzer or Tom Suozzi will do for NY City and environs. Fire the heads of the power company and transit authority. Spend billions of dollars to improve (only) NY City's schools. Shut down the NYC area nuclear power plant. Rebuild the Ground Zero site with differing percentages of commercial and residential space.

About the only thing that apparently will happen upstate is that the governor will live in the governor's mansion in Albany. Oh, Spitzer assured us that he has toured our poor area (he didn't mention Appalachia this time). Suozzi did mention that he would support the passage of laws that would make the upstate business climate more "attractive" (read anti-union: repeal Wickes law, and reform scaffolding legislation), but was short on specifics on how to reform insurance and worker's comp. problems.

NYCO said it best in her first post on the debate: "I am %@^$%^@#&$%ing furious at the fact that nearly every non-general question asked in the debate was about #^&$^#&*%^$&*%^&ing New York City issues."

BuffaloPundit pointed out how Buffalo, where there was no live televised coverage of the debate, lost out twice: "If you’re a Buffalo-area Democrat, you have been essentially foreclosed not only from seeing the debate, but even being a salient issue for discussion."

Nothing on upstate issues such as floods in the Southern Tier, increasing number of factory farms upstate, New York Regional Interconnect powerline project, DestiNY USA, funding for non-NYC school districts, Buffalo's financial control board--the list is endless on the issues they ignored.

Gotham Gazette has a great review of residency requirements for municipal workers. The city recently relaxed their regulations and have allowed members of a major clerical union the right to move out of the city and still keep their jobs. Of course, the reasons are different for NYC compared to Syracuse. In NYC the workers in question wanted out because it's increasingly difficult to find affordable housing in the city. In Syracuse, white, middle class employees don't want to send their kids to city schools.

The courts have held up residency requirements for municipal workers, despite the hodgepodge of exemptions for police, firefighters, teachers and sanitation workers. Syracuse must work to end those state exemptions and bring those jobs (and homeowners/tax revenues) back to the city. As the former mayor of Madison, Wisconsin observed: "People have a constitutional right to live anywhere they want. They do not have a constitutional right to public employment."

No, this isn't another Springsteen post, although it is informed by my total saturation in his latest album, a collection of old folk songs.

I have despaired lately about my ability to help our community make real change. As an organizer, can I really accomplish anything? Change seems impossible. The powers that be are on the march and we're just a terribly worn down speed bump. I read a piece like Sean Kirst's piece on his blog The rain, raw sewage and the lake and I feel like someone punched me in the gut. In a few sentences Sean points out that our campaign to stop the County from ruining our neighborhood with a raw sewage treatment plant at Midland Ave. has been irretrievably lost.

Not only that, he uses the supportive language for our plan for underground storage that we begged the media to use for over five years. AAAGH! Why now? What good now does it for the paper to say " it made me think about how nice it would have been, just once, if we had done things in the way of so many progressive communities - and solved the problem up front, in its entirety, and not left the final answer to our children."

Of course, it's not the Post Standard or Sean's fault. I'm not mad at them. I'm mad at myself for caring so much. Why have I chosen a profession that takes up most of my waking hours with worry, rage and angst? Why can't the good folks win once in awhile? Pondering these questions while listening to Bruce's latest album gave me a partial answer. The title of this post refers to the gospel song that was later adapted as a freedom song by the civil rights movement. The lyric that races around my mind lately:

"I've got my hand on the gospel plow/won't take nothin' for my journey now
Keep your eyes on the prize/hold on."

The song both embarrasses me and gives me great comfort. No one ever said that changing the world was going to be easy. No one guaranteed success. The good guys (in the Californian gender-free sense) often lose. How you respond to this knowledge dictates your ability to continue in the fight. Baby boomers such as myself (and later generations as well, I guess) are particularly prone to these demons. The world has revolved around our desires and wishes for so long that we naturally assume that state of affairs will follow us into our chosen careers--even the world changing biz.

Prior generations understood that change may be imperceptible and may never be witnessed by those currently struggling. The cumulative struggle of generations may finally lead to the tipping point where rapid and final change may occur, like the drops of water wearing away the stone. However, individuals are largely single revolutionary digits, contributing their labor to something they cannot control. Spirituals and folk songs spoke to that understanding and gave support and strength to those in the fight. Martin Luther King, Jr. said it in his final speech I've Been To The Mountaintop:

"Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! "

Great victories are long, complicated events. Civil War Reconstruction ended in 1878 and the great Civil Rights Acts weren't signed until 1964-65. Many thousands of activists struggled, suffered and died for African-American freedom during that time. The Soviet Union lasted from 1917 until 1989, dissidents and activists in many countries labored for the freedom eventually gained by forces such as Solidarity and Charter '77. The recent verdict in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld by the U.S. Supreme Court validated the 60 year old arguments made by dissenters to the execution of Japanese war criminals at the end of World War 2. The author of the Hamdan decision, Justice John Paul Stevens, was a law clerk to original dissenter Justice Wiley Rutledge.

I'm not trying to conflate the small struggles that I am involved in on the city's Southside with the great people's struggles of the past century. I'm merely trying to point out that struggles for peace, justice and freedom are necessarily complex things. Whether fought on the grand stages of history or on Midland Ave., patience, faith and endurance are indispensible. I may be learning a hard lesson in this throw away culture, but it is a valuable lesson nonetheless.

Bruce is taking the Seeger Sessions band back to Europe for two months of touring in Bruce hot spots like Ireland, Spain, Italy and Sweden.

The rumors are still flying about an expanded version of the new album "We Shall Overcome". Everyone coming out of the concerts are clambering for high fidelity versions of "How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live", "Bring Them Home" and Bruce's version of "When The Saints Come Marching In." This is where Bruce fandom sucks. He's going to release an album identical to the one I bought a couple of months ago, with just a couple of added tracks. I will be at Sound Garden in Armory Square the day of release.

Shades of the Tracks fiasco. Bruce releases a four disc set of unreleased rarities (many of which had been concert staples for years.) Fans nearly riot when they find out that songs like "The Promise" and "The Fever" aren't included. So Bruce releases 18 Tracks--a 1 disc set culled from the four discs with three new songs. Back to Sound Garden on release day, buying 15 songs I already spent $30 on a month earlier, just to get three new songs.

Oh well, the price of fanaticism I guess.

Original Pink Floyd guitarist Syd Barrett died last week at age 60.

Clamp on the headphones, turn on the blacklight and see the piper at the gates of dawn.

The BBC recorded a special concert by Bruce Springsteen & The Seeger Sessions Band in London earlier this year. The show, will be broadcast on the PBS series "Great Performances." WCNY Channel 24 will broadcast the show locally on Thursday July 13th at 10:30 P.M.

One more chance to see this amazing 17 piece "arena folk" band. Here's a review of the show and setlist from the Backstreets website:

May 9 / London, England / St. Lukes Church
Not a bad spot for the Seeger Sessions Band's brand of gospel: this show was recorded for the BBC at St. Luke's, an 18th Century church restored by the London Symphony Orchestra as an intimate concert hall. "If they were attempting to give this the atmosphere of a country hoe-down in a village hall, then they more than succeeded," Peter Raymond tells us, "but the sheer exuberance and quality of the performance set it way apart from any local jamboree I've ever been to." BBC DJ Johnny Walker greeted "the luckiest 300 people in the world" -- many of them BBC contest winners, with Emmylou Harris, Stephen Merchant, and the Old Grey Whistle Test's Bob Harris also spotted -- before bringing on Bruce and the band. Springsteen quickly dismissed the riotous applause by joking, "you just practiced that -- it doesn't count!" Bruce and the band set aside original material to focus on the Seeger Sessions songs (plus the "Poor Man" centerpiece) from the main set. "How Can I Keep From Singing" went on despite the fact that "We forgot to bring that friggin' organ... we can't let that stop us, can we?" With retakes of "O Mary" and "Mrs. McGrath," the performance lasted 80 minutes, ending promptly after a rousing "Pay Me My Money Down" finale (and despite a persistent audience chanting for more). Nick Corr tells us: "Given it was meant to be a media showcase performance, I thought Bruce and the Band played a storming show, enahnced by the much smaller venue and closer environment... the entire crowd was well into the vibe, which the band seemed to pick up on and play off -- so despite the shorter set, it was the best of the three UK shows I witnessed.

Setlist: John Henry/O Mary Don't You Weep/How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?/How Can I Keep From Singing/Mrs. McGrath/Mrs. McGrath/My Oklahoma Home/Jacob's Ladder/O Mary Don't You Weep/We Shall Overcome/Pay Me My Money Down

Wow, I went away for the weekend and I missed all the fun. Just a few comments on the DestiNY mess.

1) SIDA (and its little brother SEDCO) are the local equivalents of the NYS authorities that are bankrupting the state. These quasi-governmental agencies not only enable assholes like Driscoll in their end-runs around elected government, these agencies control millions of dollars and legally obligate taxpayers to economic development deals that have little to no public scrutiny.

In March 2004 SUN fought for and Stephanie Miner successfully proposed legislation giving the Council oversight over all economic development loans made under the federal government's HUD 108 loan program. In the past, the mayor and SIDA would use this program for crazy schemes. The failed businesses that were funded succeeded only in creating debt for city taxpayers--not the promised jobs and tax revenue.

2) Vito Sciscioli as Colin Powell Sean Kirst came up with the perfect description of this situation. Vito is intelligent, thoughtful and exceedingly personable. Unfortunately, Vito's high octane mix of talents are used in service to the plans of workaday politicians like Driscoll and Bernardi--people who are only there to do the bidding of the power structure. Like a good soldier, Vito does his duty, regardless of right and wrong.

3) I like Vito's pithy Hamilton beats up Jefferson Day quote. However, I would suggest that the genius of the American system of government is the balancing of often contradictory impulses. No one form should be given exclusive control. In Syracuse, when Lee Alexander was finally outed as a serial thief, the city eliminated the undemocratic Board of Estimate and supposedly vested all final votes on city financial matters in the hands of the Common Council. This SIDA loophole must be closed. The Council controls the purse, the Mayor administers the bureaucracy.

4) The city is facing an amazing array of problems: a city that grows older and poorer every day, deteriorating housing stock, a school system that doesn't educate a large number of its students, energy costs that are increasingly unaffordable. The list goes on and on. DestiNy will not do a single thing to deal with these problems and city officials will be spending most of their time and energy on the ramifications of this past week. All over a freakin' mall?

I just finish posting my screed about the deficiencies of organized religion in general and my Episcopalian faith specifically, when I come across a speech by U.S. Senator Barack Obama on the need for progressives to "tackle head-on the mutual suspicion that sometimes exists between religious America and secular America."

Obama hits me where I live. He insists that we will be unable to solve the problems of poverty and racism if we ignore the powerful role that religion, even of the organized kind, can play in this struggle:


"After all, the problems of poverty and racism, the uninsured and the unemployed, are not simply technical problems in search of the perfect ten point plan. They are rooted in both societal indifference and individual callousness - in the imperfections of man. Solving these problems will require changes in government policy, but it will also require changes in hearts and a change in minds. I believe in keeping guns out of our inner cities, and that our leaders must say so in the face of the gun manufacturers' lobby - but I also believe that when a gang-banger shoots indiscriminately into a crowd because he feels somebody disrespected him, we've got a moral problem. There's a hole in that young man's heart - a hole that the government alone cannot fix."

This is why I don't believe in organized religions. These are my peeps, I'm a baptized and confirmed Episcopalian. I had been heartened by the liberal drift in social thought by the church over the years, much different from the fusty WASP church in which I was raised. It still couldn't rouse me from bed on Sunday mornings, especially since my wife and in-laws would pack me off to Catholic Church if I suggested some religious face-time.

Now the church is involved in a doctrinal meltdown that threatens the whole Episcopal structure in America and throughout the world. Apparently, the especially intolerant Episcopals in areas such as Africa and Asia cannot abide gay people. They do not want them in the church and they especially do not want them as ministers or bishops. They have threatened to leave the church and they have the numbers and clout. The "first among equals" in the Episcopal church is the Archbishop of Canterbury. He gets final say in this matter, since the English invented the whole religion (you know, so their king could get a divorce.) He's threatening to create a two-tiered church: one that discriminates against gays and thus are fully recognized members and a second "off-brand" church that tolerates gays and therefore has no formal influence.

What is this bullshit? God, protect me from your followers.