The Secret Museum

Lost Laptop on the F

Seen at Ft. Hamilton Parkway stop this weekend. I hope he finds it.

The Moving Scene at MoMA QNS

So, especially fitting for a secret museum: mysterious boxes of art. Went to MoMA QNS yesterday to see the Lee Bontescou exhibit before it, and MoMA's outpost, closed today. Hopefully will find a moment to write about it--thoughts and ideas filled my mind as I looked at her work, and I felt my heart lift gazing at her hanging sculptures that evoked floating cities, fantastical organic spaceships, organisms, and universes.

Meanwhile, around a couple corners, things got more linear, and I snuck out my Palm camera:

Put Away Your Hankies...a message from Michael Moore

I'm not feeling particularly inspirational, having just transcribed an interview about how the EPA (fails to) regulates pesticide uses. I liked this missive by Michael Moore, though, so I'll promulage it further.

9/20/04

Dear Friends,

Enough of the handwringing! Enough of the doomsaying! Do I have
to come there and personally calm you down? Stop with all the defeatism, OK?
Bush IS a goner -- IF we all just quit our whining and bellyaching and stop
shaking like a bunch of nervous ninnies. Geez, this is embarrassing! The
Republicans are laughing at us. Do you ever see them cry, "Oh, it's all
over! We are finished! Bush can't win! Waaaaaa!"

Hell no. It's never over for them until the last ballot is
shredded. They are never finished -- they just keeping moving forward like
sharks that never sleep, always pushing, pulling, kicking, blocking, lying.

They are relentless and that is why we secretly admire them --
they just simply never, ever give up. Only 30% of the country calls itself
"Republican," yet the Republicans own it all -- the White House, both houses
of Congress, the Supreme Court and the majority of the governorships. How do
you think they've been able to pull that off considering they are a
minority? It's because they eat you and me and every other liberal for
breakfast and then spend the rest of the day wreaking havoc on the planet.

Look at us -- what a bunch of crybabies. Bush gets a bounce
after his convention and you would have thought the Germans had run through
Poland again. The Bushies are coming, the Bushies are coming! Yes, they
caught Kerry asleep on the Swift Boat thing. Yes, they found the frequency
in Dan Rather and ran with it. Suddenly it's like, "THE END IS NEAR! THE SKY
IS FALLING!"

No, it is not. If I hear one more person tell me how lousy a
candidate Kerry is and how he can't win... Dammit, of COURSE he's a lousy
candidate -- he's a Democrat, for heavens sake! That party is so pathetic,
they even lose the elections they win! What were you expecting, Bruce
Springsteen heading up the ticket? Bruce would make a helluva president, but
guys like him don't run -- and neither do you or I. People like Kerry run.

Yes, OF COURSE any of us would have run a better, smarter,
kick-ass campaign. Of course we would have smacked each and every one of
those phony swifty boaty bastards down. But WE are not running for
president -- Kerry is. So quit complaining and work with what we have. Oprah
just gave 300 women a... Pontiac! Did you see any of them frowning and
moaning and screaming, "Oh God, NOT a friggin' Pontiac!" Of course not, they
were happy. The Pontiacs all had four wheels, an engine and a gas pedal. You
want more than that, well, I can't help you. I had a Pontiac once and it
lasted a good year. And it was a VERY good year.

My friends, it is time for a reality check.

1. The polls are wrong. They are all over the map like diarrhea.
On Friday, one poll had Bush 13 points ahead -- and another poll had them
both tied. There are three reasons why the polls are b.s.: One, they are
polling "likely voters." "Likely" means those who have consistently voted in
the past few elections. So that cuts out young people who are voting for the
first time and a ton of non-voters who are definitely going to vote in THIS
election. Second, they are not polling people who use their cell phone as
their primary phone. Again, that means they are not talking to young people.
Finally, most of the polls are weighted with too many Republicans, as
pollster John Zogby revealed last week. You are being snookered if you
believe any of these polls.

2. Kerry has brought in the Clinton A-team. Instead of shunning
Clinton (as Gore did), Kerry has decided to not make that mistake.

3. Traveling around the country, as I've been doing, I gotta
tell ya, there is a hell of a lot of unrest out there. Much of it is not
being captured by the mainstream press. But it is simmering and it is real.
Do not let those well-produced Bush rallies of angry white people scare you.
Turn off the TV! (Except Jon Stewart and Bill Moyers -- everything else is
just a sugar-coated lie).

4. Conventional wisdom says if the election is decided on "9/11"
(the fear of terrorism), Bush wins. But if it is decided on the job we are
doing in Iraq, then Bush loses. And folks, that "job," you might have
noticed, has descended into the third level of a hell we used to call
Vietnam. There is no way out. It is a full-blown mess of a quagmire and the
body bags will sadly only mount higher. Regardless of what Kerry meant by
his original war vote, he ain't the one who sent those kids to their
deaths -- and Mr. and Mrs. Middle America knows it. Had Bush bothered to
show up when he was in the "service" he might have somewhat of a clue as to
how to recognize an immoral war that cannot be "won." All he has delivered
to Iraq was that plasticized turkey last Thanksgiving. It is this failure of
monumental proportions that is going to cook his goose come this November.

So, do not despair. All is not over. Far from it. The Bush
people need you to believe that it is over. They need you to slump back into
your easy chair and feel that sick pain in your gut as you contemplate
another four years of George W. Bush. They need you to wish we had a
candidate who didn't windsurf and who was just as smart as we were when WE
knew Bush was lying about WMD and Saddam planning 9/11. It's like Karl Rove
is hypnotizing you -- "Kerry voted for the war...Kerry voted for the
war...Kerrrrrryyy vooootted fooooor theeee warrrrrrrrrr..."

Yes...Yes...Yesssss....He did! HE DID! No sense in fighting
now...what I need is sleep...sleeep...sleeeeeeppppp...

WAKE UP! The majority are with us! More than half of all
Americans are pro-choice, want stronger environmental laws, are appalled
that assault weapons are back on the street -- and 54% now believe the war
is wrong. YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO CONVINCE THEM OF ANY OF THIS -- YOU JUST
HAVE TO GIVE THEM A RAY OF HOPE AND A RIDE TO THE POLLS. CAN YOU DO THAT?
WILL YOU DO THAT?

Just for me, please? Buck up. The country is almost back in our
hands. Not another negative word until Nov. 3rd! Then you can bitch all you
want about how you wish Kerry was still that long-haired kid who once had
the courage to stand up for something. Personally, I think that kid is still
inside him. Instead of the wailing and gnashing of your teeth, why not hold
out a hand to him and help the inner soldier/protester come out and defeat
the forces of evil we now so desperately face. Do we have any other choice?

Yours,

Michael Moore
www.michaelmoore.com
mmflint@aol.com

WTC + 3 Years, 1 Day

I did not set out to observe 9/11 yesterday. Around 9 a.m., as the memorial service was underway at Ground Zero, I drove east, out of Brooklyn, to the Hamptons, to visit with my father and his wife, and go the beach. After two years of being emphatically in town for this anniversary, I had decided to take advantage of my last full day with a borrowed Subaru, my folks' presence in Hampton Bays, and the post-Labor Day lull to get in at least one more trip to the Ponquoge Beaches, burrow my feet in the creamy sand, and swim in the Atlantic.

As I drove up the BQE and out onto the Long Island Expressway, I listened to Weekend Edition on WNYC-FM. A long segment was playing--interview with a NYC fireman's widow. She was complaining that now lower Manhattan looked just like any construction site, and that people were selling tourist trinkets on the streets around the WTC site. These offended her.

I thought, this is the living city, this is what happens, if anything it's reassuring to see people picking up the pieces of mundane life...of course knowing that one can hardly challenge grief, especially the grief of a 9/11 fireman's widow. I knew I was being cold.

I switched to the AM affiliate, to listen to the reading of the names of the murdered. Last year it had been the children reading the names of their parents (grandparents, aunts, uncles); this year the readers were parents and grandparents.

As each reader finished their list, they spoke the name of the person they had lost.

"...and my son..."

"...and my daughter..."

Speaking out these names one more time to the world--this person once lived. She was special, he was the light of our family. Sometimes the speaker called out the name loudly, sometimes with voices breaking. Couples invoked their lost children in unison. Sometimes, horribly, a speaker named two names. The messages often so simple and similar: "We love you, we miss you. We will always love and miss you."

I was struck by how grief can obliterate eloquence.

Some readers switched to a native tongue, often Spanish, to invoke the name of their son or daughter. Language mattered to communicating their messages of the heart.

All this carried very clearly over the AM waves, as for the first time in three years, I made an escape from the city on September 11, crying on and off all the way to Riverhead. How lucky I was to spend the day visiting with my family, swimming in the ocean and hearing the plain noises of the waves and the gulls and people talking.

Much later...driving westward towards home in the dark, the Tribute in Light became visible somewhere just east of the Queens line. I had been scanning the radiowaves for decent rock or pop, but with those beams of light now in sight, I felt a cliched desire for classical music, something that at least seemed more emotionally apropos.

Tuning back in to WNYC-FM, the evening music was Brahms’s “A German Requiem," in honor and mourning of the dead, perhaps including the death of the life we thought we knew.

In the extended entry, the email I sent out before leaving work on the morning of September 11, 2001.

-----Original Message-----
From: Emily J. Gertz
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2001 11:05 AM
To: xxxxx
Subject: NYC update

Well, as you might imagine, people are really scared here.

I'm fine. I'm in Manhattan. I just made it to work and emerged from the
subway to hear about the attack. Right now all the access on and off
Manhattan is shut down, so I'm stuck here. At work right now, where the
net connection is ok, but Lincoln Center is being cleared out and I'm off
to my friend Margaret's apartment, soon. I might be hard to reach and I
might not be able to get online again so I thought I'd write now.

For those of you who need to know: have spoken to Candy, who says Andrew
is fine. Have spoken to Margaret and Judge, both fine. Have spoken with
Lucy, who is inviting me to move to Mass. immediately. Cannot locate my
father or Anne, suspect they may have gotten trapped on the road and hope
they'll turn back to LI asap.

Although I am not much given to prayer, I am thinking about those in the
WTC and their families and friends. Both towers have collapsed. I am
very frightened to hear of the aftermath and to go down there and see the
familiar buildingscape altered forever by this horrifying event. Please,
all of you be well and careful.

love,

Emily

Stop that pigeon...urm, that lorem ipsum

This text generator creates fun alternatives for dummy text, such as:

Mutley, you snickering, floppy eared hound. When courage is needed, you're never around. Those medals you wear on your moth-eaten chest should be there for bungling at which you are best. So, stop that pigeon, stop that pigeon, stop that pigeon, stop that pigeon, stop that pigeon, stop that pigeon, stop that pigeon. Howwww! Nab him, jab him, tab him, grab him, stop that pigeon now.

Resume All Major Protest Operations

On a wall on E. 17th, just off Union Square. My personal favorite of all the current agitprop. Who designed this? I would love to have a clean copy as a souvenier of this exasperating, frustrating, angry, sometimes frightening week.

9/3 update: Have tracked down the provenance of this poster: relapsed.net.

Take a look at the NO RNC Poster Project, with .jpgs and .pdfs to download. It's all protest nostalgia now.

Chalking it up to the GOP

Northwest corner of 6th Ave. at 16th St., earlier this evening.

Protest collage (accidental)

Seen on 9th Ave. in Chelsea.