Kitteh Yoga: Exhale arch, Inhale stretch

Last night was my second night in two weeks of yoga with K. Clair and friends at her West Philly loft. I’m even starting to remember some poses for practicing during the rest of the week. But the hardest part, for me anyways, seems to be associating correctly each pose with either inhaling or exhaling — and then keeping aware of where my breathing is as I exercise each position. As a teaching and memory aid, I created the above image macro with the help of icanhascheesburger.

Much appreciation to Kristina and my other fellow Philly yoga friends for making this a fun and instructive part of my week.

UPDATE: Hilariously, I got my (in/ex)hales mixed up in my first attempt at this lolcat. See comments below. Thanks again to Kristina

In light of the McCain campaign’s stinking “idiot wind” gusting over America’s racist dead enders, I also thought that a boing boing commenter’s insight was spot on:

This [murder of McClelland] must be viewed in light of the Ashley Todd incident this week. Todd made up a false story that a black man attacked her and carved a “B” in her face, ostensibly because she supports John McCain. In Paris, Texas, a hundred years ago, a charge like that would get a black man burned alive. Today it doesn’t go quite that far but you could see the shadow of the lynch mob forming in the darker corners of the right-wing blogosphere when the Todd story first circulated. — JWB

Nowadays I’m less concerned with these clowns than with last minute dirty tricks to scare Philadelphia seniors that a vote for Obama is a vote for a second Holocaust. Good grief. Their strategies are just so disgusting.

I’ve been in email conversation with a friend from Louisiana, a philosemite and born again Catholic who believes Obama is a “Muslem” [sic]. He’s a former Huckabee supporter, and I’m concerned for him and all of his like minded fellows who are so overwhelmed with rumours to instill fear, uncertainty, and doubt, that they’ve abandoned all trust in the media. Here’s the summary in his own words, after several lengthy exchanges of commentary and links sent in refutation of slander he’s heard:

That is the main problem: lies.  You don’t know who to believe.  Both parties have a degree in spreading them and there is not enough penality for telling them.  The media can be bought to spread their lie of choice, or conceal thereof.  That is the whole reason we had this banking/wall street debockle. Politics breeds them like flies.

For him it’s as if the long feared gnostic world of darkness has finally eclipsed the world of light. Obama may preach the need for change but oh my god, these folk are deathly afraid and distrutsful, and then also, dangerously manipulatable. It is so essential to reach out to them with love rather than with hate or condescension. I am confident we will win today, but if in my exuberance I am blinded to the enduring need to engage with these folks with respect, then it will all have been for nought. The seething domestic insurgents vying for their hate might eventually win it.

It was only three months ago, July 27th, that Jim Adkisson barged into a Knoxville, Tennessee Unitarian-Universalist Church with the intent to kill some liberals (and tragically killed two churchgoers). With the election only two weeks away, and supporters of McCain/Palin already beginning to wear the veil of victimhood and martyrdom, I will admit to some fear that the more militant among them will be inspired towards insurgency. It’s not as if the south doesn’t have a long history of fighting insurgent warfare. Normally, I’d consider this sort of associative thinking paranoid… but I guess that recent nearby expressions of hate, like Mike Lunsford’s antisemitic Halloween effigy of Obama, have me concerned.

I pray that Pressly recovers fully I pray for Pressly’s grieving family and that her attacker is caught and that our country soon turns a page for the better. Courage.

(In 1986, a deranged man attacked Dan Rather demanding of the CBS anchorman, “What’s the frequency!? Kenneth, what’s the frequency??!”)

“Is that a kippah on that anti-Obama effigy?” I couldn’t help but wonder while reading this article and watching this story that local Cincinnati station WKRC (Channel 12) aired yesterday about Fairfield, Ohio’s Mike Lunsford as reported on by Shawn Ley. (For those from out of town, Fairfield is a northern exurb of Cincinnati just north of the Hamilton County line.)

Lunsford adorned the tree in front of his house with an effigy of a ghost hung with a noose, (a presumably stolen) Obama sign hung upside down pinned to its chest with “Hussain” [sic] incorrectly spelled above, and a Star of David drawn on its head. Close observers will also note that the two “S”s in “Hussain” are written out in the style of the Schutzstaffel Nazi paramilitary force insignia popular among today’s suburban neo-Nazis. Considering this, I’m kind of surprised that nowhere in the report is this display described as anti-Jewish.

That unapologetic self-described racists like Mike Lunsford are now seeping out of the woodwork doesn’t surprise me. After all, there are consequences to McCain’s campaign stirring fears of Obama as a secret Muslim, pedophile, and terrorist abettor. McCain’s surrogate Rep. Michelle Bachmann call for an investigation of her fellow congressmen’s “pro-Americanism”, Palin’s careless (or calculated) reference to rural America as “real America,” and John McCain’s brother Joe’s description of North Virginia as a Communist Country: these are all statements that cast their opponents as a demonized Other, and embolden the right wing to further explore their most paranoid and primitive instincts under the guise of patriotism.

That Lunsford’s effigy has sparked outrage and is reported on with an air of concern is good, but I am still disappointed to read it described merely as an “anti-Obama display.” According to the report, neighbors describe it as “racist and offensive” and Vicki Crowe now knows that her neighbor is “anti-black.” Lunsford and his ilk might be disappointed that no one reported that his effigy is also antisemitic. I guess that’s where I step in to translate the hate.<groan>

Besides revealing Obama’s hidden secret Muslim identity with his scrawl of “Hussain,” the Star of David on the ghost’s head broadcasts the common trope of antisemitic white supremacist conspiracy theorists. Not familiar with it? Variations of it have circulated among hate groups for decades. The conspiracy has it that Jews will use blacks to overthrow white America in order to install their one world communist government. For these racists, Obama’s presidency is thus the realization of their long held fantasy. And by choosing a ghost to caricature Obama, Lunsford might also be trying to demean him with the racist epithet of “Spook.” By smearing Obama as Muslim AND Jewish AND black, Lunsford’s effigy of Obama scores something of a trifecta of hate.

From Shawn Ley’s article, “Racist Anti-Obama Display Hung From Tree in Fairfield”:

Mike Lunsford hung the ghost in his yard. He spoke to us off-camera, saying his views could hurt his employers business … but he says make no mistake: He doesn’t want an African American running the country.

Lunsford says he believes Barack Obama is not a “full blooded American.” And he says the United States is a white, Christian nation - and only with white Christians should be in power. With Lunsford not willing to share his views on-camera:

“It’s like whoa. He’s definitely anti-black.”

Vickie Crowe lives next door. She’s an Obama supporter.

“What did you think when you first saw that?” Vickie Crowe/neighbor: “Well actually my 5 year old son says Obama’s hanging upside down. He’s what? He’s hanging upside down. It’s the neighbor’s ghost. I took it as a little bit of a racist statement because my grandson’s mixed and it hurt a little bit.”

Mike Lunsford says he got the idea after an Obama supporter in New York put up this display of a Obama mannequin being chased by a figure of John McCain wearing Ku Klux Klan robes.

Another neighbor, Megan Sory says this symbol makes her more than uneasy it scares her. Megan Story/neighbor: “He’s been a really nice neighbor but it’s one of those you question and wonder, you know, if he’s that forward about something will he be forward enough to do something else, too. it is scary at times but we live in a scary world.”

Behold, my Omphalos as digested arithmetically (with some aesthetic treatments) by Jonathan Feinberg’s text cloud application over at wordle.net. Makes for a rather elegant visual poem, no? The wordle engine accepts site URLs, RSS feeds, or giant gobs of text. The latter is what I fed it after copying the source of my ATOM feed and removing all the links, html, and other xml cruft using NoteTab. Hat tip to Jamais Cascio over at Open the Future for sharing the coolness.

The application provides some control over the appearance of the cloud. You can configure how many words appear (I chose 200). There are also settings for the orientation of the words (vertical/horizontal), palette, and font choice.

Some comments. It doesn’t appear as if the wordle engine is context sensitive to words that appear in close proximity to each other; place names like Bond Hill and Baton Rouge are thus not recognized as such. It would also be nice if common words such as “like” and “also” could be filtered out or relegated to the background as glue for more significant nouns like “heierophant” and “cosmogonic”.

Still, looking into the world cloud as a mirror of my writing over the last three years or so is interesting. All those music related terms are surely the result of importing all the posts I made over at mog.com in 2006 and 2007. Should I be as surprised as I am that this blog is so “Jewish”? Probably not.

Joe Lamantia has written more about text clouds here. (A tag cloud with all the tags and catgories of articles posted at the Omphalos appears on the right sidebar.)

In order to see these great women butt heads I had to skip out on seeing Natalie Portman downtown at Fountain Square. Sure my heart beats a little faster hearing her call to vote early, but alas, I already got that done last week. But for all of those who went to see Portman and hear The Nationals perform, no worries, I have you covered. I recorded the entire debate which you can listen to here [m3u streaming link] or download (Part I, Part II), whichever you prefer.

The debate was emceed by Arna Poupko Fisher, JCRC President and moderated by Brian Jaffee, JCRC Director. The stage was set with three living room style comfy chairs; Lingle and Boxer sat at a 60° angle from each other, and Jaffee sat in the center. The first half hour was given over to opening remarks that each delivered from the podium. Afterward, Jaffee took the podium and presented questions delivered from the audience that had been written out on index cards handed out with pencils at the door. Disregarding the introductions and acknowledgments made by Fisher and Jaffee, the debate lasted around an hour and 15 minutes. Part I of the debate (linked above) contains the opening remarks of Lingle and Boxer and Part II contains their responses to the questions posed by the audience and to each other.

In Lingle’s opening remarks, I was struck by a tone that seemed to resonate with foreboding. To be fair, the perfectly measured pace of her statements adds a certain gravitas regardless of the point she makes. But I was still unnerved when she invoked the traditional response to the Holocaust, “Never Again,” raising the specter of a nuclear holocaust in Israel if Iran’s pursuit of nuclear power isn’t met with unqualified opposition.

My Jewish education only recognized the usage of the phrase “Never Again” as a declaration to all of humanity, i.e., never again would genocide be tolerated as a solution in human conflict. In this universal context, “Never again” justifies the intervention of the United Nation’s security council in actions that might prevent a genocide — anywhere.

But Lingle, and McCain, use the phrase “Never Again” in justification of an argument for U.S. military action against Iran (ostensibly in defense of Israel’s regional military hegemony). To hear the phrase used by a politician this way seems to be a fairly transparent manipulation of Holocaust fears. Even with the failures of the world to respond adequately or capably to the genocides of Rwanda and Darfur, I’m not willing to trade in the universal and moral appeal of “Never Again” for the justification of neocon foreign policy objectives. McCain and his surrogate obviously have no problem with taking advantage of the term so long as it holds currency for manipulating Jewish voters.

(To be absolutely clear, in no way am I arguing that the experience of the Holocaust does not partly justify the importance and historic necessity of the State of Israel as a sovereign refuge for the Jewish people. I am only saying that the simple phrase “Never Again” is a strong universal appeal against genocide. I’m opposed to seeing it appropriated for use in stoking Holocaust fears in precipitating a war with Iran.)

In contrast, Boxer made her points without any references to the Holocaust or a future Holocaust. Among  bona fides that included Obama’s high ranking pro-Israel scorefrom AIPAC, Boxer described the foreign policy sanctions against Iran that Obama authored in the Senate to prevent their acquisition of nuclear power.

Both Lingle and Boxer could teach McCain a thing or two about keeping his cool during a hot debate. Their parrying back and forth, clarifying the responsibility of the executive and legislative branches of for the last eight years of financial mismanagement, was intense. Listen for yourself and hear just how sharp a debater Barbara Boxer is. Lingle didn’t pull any punches either. As a liberal partisan, I’m pleased that Boxer got the last word though. Before I provide any more commentary I’m going to have to listen to it again myself.

In general, the “Presidential Forum” was special for having brought so many segments of the Jewish community together at a crucial moment. The last time I saw this togetherness was at the Israel at 60 gathering at Fountain Square in late April when the Idan Raichel Project performed. I’m really pleasantly surprised by the thoughtful and relevant activities being organized here in Cincinnati under the auspices of the Jewish Federation. On the fourth night of the holiday of Sukkot, I couldn’t be happier to see this diverse community gathered under one roof. Events like this help generate respect for our diversity and tolerance for our differences. Call me hopeful, but this can only lead to a more mature and attractive Jewish community in southwest Ohio.

Before they were made famous as one eyed monsters in Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey, the cyclopes were known as primordial blacksmiths who could fashion the power of the universe into tridents and other weapons wielded by gods. It’s not such a far leap to see La Forge (lit. the forge!) as a current incarnation of the cyclopaean archetype. According to a hymn of Callimachus, the Cyclopes were helpers at the forge of Hephaestus, the god of blacksmiths and craft. I can even see La Forge as a reconstituted Polyphemus, once blinded, but liberated from the darkest depths of Tartarus through the intervention of Technology.

The depiction of a cyclops by Odilon Redon (see below, The Cyclops) follows less from Hesiod’s tale than from an antediluvian idyll. The cyclops in this garden to me appears to be modeling a primordial desire: a rather sheepish, male gaze. Is the cyclops of Redon a representation of the Edenic snake, the single eye symbolizing phallus and desire, staring at Eve? Or perhaps the cyclops is one of the mysterious נפלים (Nephilim), who in Genesis 6:1-4 desires of the daughters of Adam? The story is expanded on in aggadic literature both in Rabbinic midrash and in pseudepigrapha. There these Watchers and their progeny are giants that share some of the attributes of the Greek cyclops. In both myths, these divine figures possess useful technological knowledge. In the Book of Enoch it is the sharing of this knowledge with men that leads to the dissemination of evil on Earth. It should also be mentioned that Goliath, the foe of David singularly defeated by a single blow to the head from a slinged projectile, was characterized in midrash as the last of the race of Giants.

The Cyclops (1914) by Odilon Redon

The first modern adaptation of the cyclops must be credited to the robot Gort from the 1951 sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still. Here too, there seems to be some syncretism between ancient Greek and Hebraic myth, except that the technology the heavenly beings wish to share with earthkind is wholly good, and it’s only our xenophobia and paranoid tendencies which cause mayhem. Fear of subjugation and the unknown replaces the earlier myth’s fear of sexual conquest of earth women (a common enough trope in other period sci-fi films).

The slit eyed helmet of Gort seems the obvious root of the robotic fashion leading up to Urs Amann’s cover art to Klaus Schulze’s Audentity (1983). A closer antecedent influencing Amann may have been the design for the Cylon Centurions in the TV show Battlestar Galactica (the original series, 1978-1980). Pictured below, Cyrus, a Cylon from the episode “The Return of Starbuck” (aired May 5, 1980). Battlestar Gallactica was famously rife with biblical adaptations, from the wandering of the “twelve colonies” to the character of Adamah. It’s no surprise that the fecund imagination of the Mormon writer, Glen Larson, managed to stuff so much biblical myth into a show that aired at the peak of 70s fascination with UFOs and new age religion. Larson’s story of war between the civilizations of robotic Cyclons and space faring humans (developed to greater depth in Star Trek’s war withthe Borg) is another shade of the antediluvian battles described in the Book of Enoch and Jubilees.

Come to think of it, the Borg character of Hugh, rehabilitated by La Forge in the Star Trek Next Generation episode “I, Robot” (1992)totally parallels the Cylon character of Cyrus, reconstituted by Starbuck in “The Return of Starbuck.”

No discussion of mute cyclopean monsters would be complete without mentioning Maximilian, Disney’s homicidal robot from The Black Hole (December 1979). (Poor eviscerated Dr. Durant (played by Anthony Perkins), just another casualty of Disney’s adventurous post-Walt, pre-Eisner decade of dangerous entertainment experiments.)

With these antecedents in mind, looking above back to Audentity, note Amann’s translation of the cyclopean cliché from robot to human; Amann is depicting some sort alienated audiophile listening to Schulze’s Kosmiche Musik. This is the cover Schulze should have had for his 1973 album Cyborg. Here is man like machine but not as automaton — rather, man as desocialized being, completely self-centered, and focused inwardly on processing piped in audio and perhaps also visual stimulus. The commercial realization of this ideal has been evolving over the past 15 years with a profusion of (the not-yet-quite popular) head mounted displays (aka video goggles and video glasses).

Early reports of nausea and neck cramps prevented these consumer products from gaining too much popularity. Every few years gadget bloggers report that the technology has improved and that the price has dropped some. (See below, a protoype 360° immersive environment by Toshiba.)

Even as the realization of this dream has (so far) failed consumers, the obverse of this ideal has been realized in the torture of prisoners of war by our horrible Bush administration. Insanity is the natural consequence of sensory deprivation inflicted on these prisoners. (See below Jose Padilla being led to a dentist, December 2006.) Others must endure the torture playlist.

Where once the cyclopean eye represented the focal point of untold and mysterious power in the creature of Gort, in the characters  of Maximillian and the Cylon Centurions the eye is demoted to the unblinking, unwavering madness of automatons that lack free-will and empathy. The bold vision of bringing sight to the blind depicted in Star Trek’s 25th century techno-utopia is perverted at the dawn of the 21st century. In Guantanamo (and presumably elsewhere) our society brings blindness and madness to the sighted and sane (imprisoned under suspicion of terrorism).

Our blinding of presumed terrorists (officially, to prevent communication through blinking) recalls Odysseus’ blinding of the cyclops Polyphemus. But really, who now has become the myopic monster of yor, the blinder or the blind? I write with great hope that we will soon end this era of manufacturing suitable monsters, and suitable blindness.

Hopefully, in three weeks.

Some unanswered questions to inspire further exploration in the labyrinth of myth:

What do the single eyes of the cyclopes of Greek myth symbolize? The sacred inner eye turned outward? The realization and beneficence of inner knowledge expressed and realized in the outer world?

How is the cyclops eye related to the single eyes (and the lost eyes) of Odin and Ra in Norse and Egyptian mythology? Does one eye represent empathy while the other a sort of panoptic embrace of all creation? If so, which eye is lost?

Are the Cyclopes eyes related to the biblical character of Cain and the sign on his forehead? Are the extra-biblical myths of the Nephilim related to the Cyclopes who are renowned for their productive and creative capabilites?

How might the eye of the cyclops be related to the shining light of the Tzohar or the brilliant eye of the Leviathan? Is this a kind of primordial eye that has not yet been divided into two (or more) eyes at a later stage of the cosmogony?

Can the myth that masturbation leads to blindness be rooted in some sort of cyclopaean/phallic conflation? What then would the blinding of the cyclops represent for Odysseus?

Strange questions to ponder in sleep with my inner eye open in dream.

I rode my bicycle over to Ault Park today to hear Barack Obama speak. Navigating the hills and valleys of Cincinnati on a beautiful day, as it was today, is so much more preferable to huffing it to the park from a car parked a mile away. As it happened I was pretty exhausted by the time I made it up that last hill up ot the pavillion and then I had to scout around for a suitable pole for locking up my bicycle. Many folks were still arriving for the 3pm rally and to get in Obama campaign volunteers were passing out white “tickets” for attendees to fill out with their neighborhood so they could be co-opted for possible volunteer work in the next few weeks. But really, no tickets were required for attendance. At the pavillion, police had me go through a scanner and checked me for weapons.

The podium was set up in the lower yard of the park, which was pretty well filled by the time I arrived. In any case, I was on the lookout for some shade, the park goers best friend on a sunny day. I found a little nearby where the event organizers had set up a refreshments table serving water courtesy of a nearby fire hydrant and the Cincinnati Water Works. First Mayor Mallory spoke and he introduced many of the other local and state Democratic party politicians vying for office. Then Governor Strickland spoke and word of mouth spread that Obama was running late. Strickland then introduced a woman from Sharonville named Rockel Haussman (sp?). She spoke of her family’s difficulty finding work and enduring long commutes after her husband lost his job security with Ford Motor Company. A smattering of applause interrupted her story as Obama’s entourage arrived at the park. A few minutes later she introduced Obama.

I’ve heard Obama speak on television numerous times now. But here in Cincinnati I couldn’t help but be struck by his populist message. The speech was definitely oriented towards working hard on reviving the economy and he didn’t shy away from saying that we will all need to make sacrifices and take conservation seriously in order to be more frugal. I cheered when he called for promoting a public educatuion system that funded art and music classes. I remembered that critics have been calling for Obama to make an emotional connection with voters and I feel he did so when speaking about his mother arguing with insurance companies a few months before her death from ovarian cancer at the age of 53. The fight for health care against its obscene corruption by health insurance companies animated Obama.

It’s hard to estimate how many thousands of people were in attendance at the rally. At least 5,000. Possibly twice that. Later on in the day I went to Kroger’s to buy some goodies for my Yom Kippur break fast and saw an employee I had seen earlier at the rally. I said hi and asked him what he thought. He said that he missed hearing Obama speak. Because Obama was running late he said he had to leave the rally early to make sure he got to work in time. Then he told me he’s one of those undecided voters who’ll probably choose who to vote for the day of the election. I suspect that he also thought that Obama would be speaking at 3pm rather than having to endure a half hour of introductions by local pols. In any case, this rally today was a missed opportunity for him. For the rest of those assembled, most of whom were wearing some Obama merch, the rally was already preaching to the converted.

During Golden Week, Vote Today Ohio banked ~3,300 Obama votes, plus 621 voter registrations. Did we hit our ambitious 10,000 goal? No. Did we make a critical contribution in America’s #1 battleground state? Absolutely.

Our 3,300 votes were far more than just a drop in the bucket. Consider this: In Franklin County (home to Columbus), 9,264 people voted early during Golden Week. Vote Today Ohio vans (and cars and marches) moved 1,369 of them to the polls. Yes, we directly moved 14.8 percent of the early vote in Franklin County. It’s safe to assume that thousands more heard about Golden Week directly from our work. That’s powerful. We were THE game in town.

These numbers are significant since Stephen Majors of the Associated Press wrote on October 6th that first indications indicated that turnout during Golden Week was light. Majors writes, “Early returns showed about 3,000 voters in Ohio’s four largest counties took advantage of the disputed policy, a surprisingly low turnout to some elections officials.”

Considering that Monday was our busiest day by far and that Vote Today Ohio was one of only a number of groups in the state helping to turn out the vote last week, I’m pretty confident that the early returns cited by Majors presents a misleading picture of the turnout last week. Moveon and ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) were two other groups working in Hamilton County. Jennifer Brunner, Secretary of State for Ohio, reported yesterday that roughly 660,000 voters were newly registered in Ohio. Obviously, only a small fraction of these banked their vote last week but from what I could tell on October 6th, the Board of Elections was busy enough to make the Republican Party here quite nervous. I’m cautiously optimistic for November 4th.

Erik Crew added up the numbers for our efforts in Cincinnati on Monday, by far our busiest day. (Erik is interviewed in this ireport video). We moved 220 votes to the Hamilton County Board of Elections on the final day of registration. Our Golden Week is over but early voting continues. One of our volunteers, Becky from the UK, is staying on and helping make daily shuttle runs from campuses to the Board of Elections. So long as I’m in town I’ll also volunteer to drive and I’m also working on cleaning up GIS data for the Obama GIS working group. Should be a busy three weeks.

Finally, I want to give a shout out to Cathy from the Washingtonrox blog who has a great summary of our effort this last week, and excellent photos of my volunteer colleagues in Cincinnati. Take a look.

]]> http://aharon.varady.net/omphalos/2008/10/vote-today-ohio-till-the-election/feed http://aharon.varady.net/omphalos/2008/10/dawn-after-golden-week http://aharon.varady.net/omphalos/2008/10/dawn-after-golden-week#comments Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:04:08 +0000 Aharon http://aharon.varady.net/omphalos/?p=322 Yesterday the Scion xA and I got some street time shuttling students from Xavier to the Board of Elections building downtown and back. Who knew you could fit six people in that hatchback? From noon to five pm, I manned the “overflow vehicle” because our regular shuttle (a Windstar van donated for the day by fellow Cincinnati Obama supporter) was filled to capacity. (The other Ford Econoline vans rented for the day with Internet donations were operating out of Cincinnati State and the University of Cincinnati.)

While sweating out the afternoon heat parked in front of the Board of Elections waiting for my voters to return triumphant, I relaxed listening to tunes and took in the hubbub of the voters, pamphleteers, and assorted political workers milling about the place. One of these, a slim 40 something blond woman pulled up in front of me in her white sedan. I noticed a plethora of McCain bumper stickers sporting the rear of her vehicle, including the gracious, “Obama for Rockstar / McCain for President.” She zipped into the building and ten minutes later hopped back into her car and took off. She looked irate.

A few minutes later my voters returned to my car, as pleased with themselves as any voter should be this year. I asked them what the line was like and if there were any troubles. Smiling, they told me of this slim blond 40ish woman who was stalking the hall in front of the Board of Elections and shouting into her cellphone in frustration that the Board of Elections was swamped with college students and other Obama supporters.

Mmmmm… schaudenfreude. It is delicious.

This is the last day of Golden Week, the week in Ohio when the periods for voter registration and early voting overlap allowing new voters to register and vote on the same day. Our teams are working hard to make one final push to get out the vote. I made posters like the one above for Xavier University. (If you like it and want to use it feel free. Here’s the download: Election Day Is Now (poster art)).

Friday night our volunteer groups met up at Baba Budan’s Cafe near campus. There I made the acquaintance of Erik Crew, another local Cincinnatian working on this effort. He’s been writing at rubyhornet about Golden Week (”Golden What?“), his experience registering the homeless, and the issue of ex-felon disenfranchisement. Erik and I are an exception. Most of the volunteers have come in from other states (California, Michigan, Kentucky, etc.) and two are international; one traveled from Canada and another flew all the way from the UK. Their efforts are testament to the global concern for the future of this nation’s leadership.

The party at Baba Budan’s was co-sponsored by the Hip Hop Congress. Spoken word artists delivered poetry, some with dj backing. The emcee was the Divine Prince Hakeem. My ears perked up when he mentioned his connection to the Artistic Order of 144,000. The latter was the collective of my friend Obalaye Makaria. (Obalaye helped direct some funding for my research into Bond Hill’s history four years ago.) Hakeem informed me that Obalaye’s since moved to Seattle but calls in weekly to Cincinnati’s black radio station, The Buzz. I’ll be tuning in to hopefully hear from him.

Sunday morning I went with Erik to the A.M.E. Church in Bond Hill. (This is the church built at the corner of Reading Road and Seymour Ave. on the parking lot of what is now Jordan’s Crossing and formerly Swifton Commons.) Our mission: to respectfully offer our shuttle services to any congregants come later today. We stayed for the 11am service. Rarely have I known a warmer and more welcoming community. After introducing ourselves, the congregants were invited to greet us personally. I really felt their love. I also enjoyed the relaxed yet uplifting spirit created by the church choir and its excellent band. The band leader and piano player informed us that the bassist, a young fellow, would be playing with Wynton Marsalis pretty soon and everyone gave him a nice applause. The band leader also announced a group of black youth called the Ritz Chamber Players who will be performing with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra on October 9th. He invited everyone to attend the concert and udged everyone to develop an eclectic taste in all sorts of musical styles including classical and hip hop in addition to gospel and rock and roll.

Reverend Alphonse Allen preached about the necessity of striving to improve even when you feel comfortable where you’re at. In developing this idea he used the story in Deuteronomy of God commanding the Israelites to prepare to take possession of the land of Canaan while they camped on the east side of the Jordan after their 40 years of travel in the wilderness. In Jewish circles I think I’ve heard the same idea developed but from the command of God to Abram to lech l’cha l’artzecha, go out to a land that he will show you. Thinking about it, there’s a good parallel between the two stories in Genesis and Deuteronomy. Below is an image I gleaned of their lovely sanctuary.

9/30: 380 votes
10/1: 429 votes, plus 121 new registrations
10/2: 449 votes, plus 306 new registrations
10/3: 776 votes, plus 391 new registrations

That’s 2,034 total votes cast statewide since Tuesday. If we assume that each field team has a shuttle van that leaves every hour from 9am-3pm, and that every van has 7 seats, then 2,034 voters have cast out of a possible 5,880. In other words we’re getting close to 35% of our capacity. The stats aren’t broken down by peak hours but I’d hazard a guess that we’re hitting nearly 60% of our capacity from 11am-2pm.

I’m OK with these figures and buoyed by the upward slope of the stats. I’ll tell you why. Early voting doesn’t commence Monday with the end of voter registration in Ohio (when “Golden Week” is over). Ohioans can continue to vote at Early Voting Centers until Monday, November 3rd. More than directly increasing voter turnout, this week probably did more for simply generating a good vibe among college students (and their friends and families by word of mouth) that they’ve already helped make a difference in this Election.

ELECTION DAY IS NOW. From my own experience talking to folk on campuses, plenty of voters simply wanted to know the address of the Early Voting Center in Hamilton County (it’s the Board of Elections office at 824 Broadway Street in Downtown Cincinnati, 2nd Floor) so that they could get down there on their own at their convenience. I also heard the best reason for voting early when a voter (pictured above) convinced a friend to vote at our table, “Vote today ’cause November 4th might be cold!” Word.

In these stats, we may also be seeing the outcome of the intense new voter registration efforts by groups like moveon.org. From the stats above, it looks like a little over half of the voters we’ve shuttled had already registered. There is plenty to be enthusiastic about in this race but from the level of enthusiasm I saw among our college students at Cincinnati State University this week, I’d wager that many of these were newly registered voters.

Yesterday, I finished the t-shirts I promised the Cincinnati early voting teams. This is the first stencil I’ve made and below is the result. What do you think? We didn’t have enough teams or volunteers to justify a silk screen, thus these lo-fi spray painted shirts.

For those wondering how to do this

I didn’t have a frame to reduce splatter around the stencil, so I wrapped the t-shirt over a slightly smaller cardboard sheet I cut from a box. By laying the t-shirts flat over the backing I was able to adjust the shirt for where I wanted the image and then wrapped the sides and back of the shirt around and underneath the cardboard. By the way, if you’d like to download this stencil and make your own shirts, I have it available for download. Link: VOTE TODAY OHIO T-SHIRT STENCIL ART.

Vote Today Ohio at Cincinnati State University

Today I met with my field team at Cincinnati State University where I was put to work politely asking passing students, custodial workers, faculty, and staff whether they’d like to “Vote Today” and explaining the advantages of early voting and submitting an absentee ballot in person (rather than by mail). Quite a few signed up for our shuttle service to the local Early Voting Center at Hamilton County’s Board of Elections Office (824 Broadway St., google map link). When our 11am van filled to capacity I was thrilled.

For sure there’s no way to know how folks will vote once they are given their absentee ballot to fill out, but Vote Today Ohio is hoping that they’ll vote for Obama. Thus the focus on frequently under-represented voting blocks: college students, the homeless, and ex-felons (who are forbidden to vote in Florida, among other states), to help swell Obama’s numbers in this key swing state. (See here, for more on Ohio’s voting rights and regulations.

Can you tell how pleased I am to be working on this project? I was hoping to do something for this campaign. This summer I was hoping someone would respond to my invitation to do GIS work for Obama gratis. Some of my proudest work in Louisiana involved the canvassing maps I drew up for David Brown, a Baton Rouge lawyer and progressive candidate for the State Legislature’s District 67. But even before I learned GIS, I’ve tried to help wherever I could. Back in 2004, when I moved to DC and began working at the Trust for Public Land, I was happy to find a little volunteer niche at the DNC party HQ regularly sorting giant binders of scanned and copied checks for their donation vetting department.

(A digression. Amazing the friends you make working shoulder to shoulder for these races. At the DNC I met Chris Kinsei, a Zen Buddhist monk who had recently left the Mt. Shasta monastery that had been his home for the previous 25 years. Twenty five years of contemplating peace gave him a hunger for pursuing peace in our world. In the last four years since Bush won, Chris has gone on to build a life teaching folk, getting married, and studying to become a nurse. A great guy if ever you should meet him.)

In 2000, I worked as a citizen reporter for the IMC covering the (unfortunately now typical) police abuses of political demonstrations at the Republican Convention in Philadelphia and nearly got arrested while talking on my cell phone and delivering this story from Market Street. My work on national political campaigns began by canvassing to elect former California governor Jerry Brown President in 1992.

Besides watching the VP debate, tonight I get to make some snappy t-shirts for my fellow volunteers to wear. My hope is that they’ll be good enough to become a budget conscious hipster’s proud thrift store discovery.

I want to thank Linda Everhart and Helen Goodman for helping me to volunteer work and attend the conference. Linda’s son Ian, recently returned to the States from Honduras, had pretty much everything under control from the technical side, so besides session monitoring, my job was pretty easy. I mostly backed him up at critical moments. (Looking forward to seeing Ian at work registering Ohio voters in the next couple of weeks.)

Back in Cincinnati, electricity is restored but the cable feeding our house Internet access is still down. So I’m writing this from Sitwells, my favorite coffeehouse in Clifton near the University of Cincinnati, rather than from my usual hermitage in the wilds of North Avondale. This will put a cramp in my blogging up my notes from the rest of the conference but I hope to complete this by the end of the week. Here’s just a brief rundown of what I’ll be writing about:

The No Child Left Inside Act, and the movement that links childhood recreation, nature education, parks, and open space conservation. One of the exciting themes I found at this conference was the search for a driving issue that promotes better park funding and resonates across a broad and bipartisan constituency of voters, interest groups, and politicians. That issue seems to have been discovered by linking parks with the desire to give children the freedom to explore their childhood outside, and a genuine fear rooted in nostalgia, that too many kids are absolutely disconnected from nature. (Unfortunately I didn’t hear enough talk linking this issue with Smart Growth and land use, since the pervasive sprawl of low-density housing subdivisions has forced children to constantly rely on their parent’s cars, and thus their parents, to meet friends and visit places.) Have you read Rosa Park’s article at the LA Times on “the erosion of free, unstructured outdoor play”? This issue connects with the parenting movement to nurture more independent minded children unshackled from media conditioned fear of their absuction by strangers. Back in April of this year Mark Frauenfelder and Cory Doctorow began posting about this parents movement. See Mark’s post on Lenore Skenazy’s article on her letting her 9 year old ride the subway alone here and Cory’s post on Free Range Kids here. Luis Acosta, Richard Dolesh, and Richard Louv all remarked on this topic. I’m excited to be seeing the dots connected.

On the Economic Value of Parks. The search for better ways to communicate both the tangible and intangible values of urban parks continues. Besides the critical importance of nature awareness in benefiting the process of childhood maturation, park professionals and advocates are still struggling to realize a common set of instructions for calculating the economic benefits of parks. We need absolutely need a more academically oriented conference that brings together consultants and academic park researchers to begin nailing down some industry standards and doing some peer review on this topic. In general I want to see more rigour attached to this question since park departments are already looking for someone to provide this analysis. Luis Acosta proposed the idea of a “Green Line” akin to the Poverty Line, to determine the minimal amount of greenspace needed to live healthfully. How can this be studied by psychologists? It seems more practical to first nail down the Green Line in terms of the seven economic benefits already proposed by Peter Harnik in his work at the Trust for Public Land’s Center for City Park Excellence. The issue of economic values for parks is regularly published on in academic journals. Since academic journals are not easily accessible (or their indexes easily searchable) by non-academic professionals, I believe there is a dire need to bridge the practitioner-academic divide here.

On the trailblazing park work being done in NYC. I had the fortune of monitoring the session moderated by Peter Harnik entitle “When the Rubber Meets the Green: Cars in Parks.” Harnik gave an overview of worst and best practices across the country, shining a light on his exceptional and broad grasp of the diverse solutions park architects and transportation planners have wrestled with when visioning the best use of available open space. Barry Bessler of Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park Commission provided the specific example of the road closures along the Schuylkill River Park greenway. Lastly, Andy Wiley-Schwartz, fomerly of Project for Public Spaces, gave an amazing presentation on the new work initiated by NYC’s Department of Transportation in reclaiming the open commons and asphalt of city streets into plazas and parks. Wiley-Schwartz’s work frankly blew my mind. Looking forward to researching and writing more on this. He’s only been there a little over a year and so many good things to show for it.

Besides these topics I also want to write about my experience in Pittsburgh, on my bicycle adventure along the Ohio River last Sunday. I also enjoyed a dérive of downtown Pittsburgh Monday night with Bernard Luyiga, a city councilman from Kampala, Uganda. He was at the conference in order to learn more about parks and preserving public space. With Google Earth, Luyiga showed me acres of public park land in Kampala that had been appropriated for private development by government officials in league with developers.

I’ve taken bunches of pics so I have to upload them first now available here.

Luis Garden Acosta, founder of El Puente, a community based human rights and environmental organization in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, and recipient of the Heinz Award for the Human Condition, provided a rousing keynote address, “Parks: The Common Ground for Democracy and All Human Rights.” The speech was notable for spurring the largely non-Latino audience of park advocates and professionals to stand up and chant “el pueblo unido jamás será vencido.” Acosta stressed the importance of creating broad alliances between diverse community and ethnic groups in order to effectively advocate for community health issues. He honestly described the challenges of reaching out to Chasidic community leaders in Williamsburg and was surprisingly blunt in describing the tensions between the Latino and Chasidic communities there. More detailed notes of his speech are below.

Tupper Thomas, administrator for Prospect Park, president of the Prospect Park Alliance, and board chair of the City Parks Alliance introduced the speakers. Thomas credited Meg Cheever, founder and president of the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, for the genesis and vision behind the conference five years ago. She then introduced Gary Saulson, Director of Corporate Realty Services for PNC Financial Services Group, noting approvingly Saulson’s disapproval of using pesticides in his home lawn care. PNC is a major philanthopist for city park facilities in Pittsburgh and internationally touts the most LEED certified buildings of any megacorp. It’s nice to see a corporation that sports its plumage by way of showing off its LEED certifications and aesthetic sensibilities in landscape architecture. Saulson was particularly proud to show off two downtown “gateway” parks in Pittsburgh that it has designed, PNC Firstside Park (completed) and PNC Triangle Park (still in its design phase).

PNC Firstside Park (image below) was developed on the site of the former Pittsburgh Public Safety Building, an “insignificant building of no historical importance” according to Saulson. PNC purchased the site from the city for an undisclosed but admittedly exorbitant amount after negotiations. Saulson was pleased to describe the deconstruction of the building, where rather than conventional demolition, the building was taken apart and its constituent building materials (steel, cement, etc.) recycled or repurposed. I had only previously heard of this sort of process occuring in Japan so it was wonderful to know that PNC was promoting this best practice as well.

PNC Firstside Park, Pittsburgh, PA

The 1.5 acre, PNC Firstside Park looks amazing, but I also think that the desire to have a corporate park, albeit public park, in front of their downtown building speaks to me as a way of incorporating a bit of an suburban office park image within the city. But hey, they can afford it, and so long as it is a truly public park, freely accessible as a public commons, why should anyone complain. On the contrary, this sort of expensive park planning by a private entity is extremely laudable.

PNC Triangle Park (rendering below) was also billed by Saulson as a “gateway” park. I’m never really impressed by the use of these buzzwords, but again, no one can really argue wth the public asset that PNC will be providing. Kudos to them.

PNC Triangle Park (rendering)

After Saulson, Thomas introduced Richard Dolesh, Director of Policy, National Recreation and Park Association. Dolesh provided a brief historical summary of the organization, and in particular I noted that the NRPA is just the latest incarnation of an org with roots in the late 19th century. The current NRPA was created in the 1960s and I’m interested to note how the focus of the org has changed over the last century from urban to suburban. Dolesh pleaded with the conference attendees to recognize the dire need for more park advocacy and lobbying noting that the federal Urban Parks Recreation and Recovery Act (1978) that provided matching funds for urban park maintenance has been dead for the past seven years. He did note one recent success, the No Child Left Inside Act, passed by the House of Representatives last week. This call for urgent advocacy from the leading umbrella org for park professionals and friend-of-park advocates, provided a good segue to Acosta’s keynote address.

Below are my casual notes from his speech. Personal commentary is in brackets. More substantial criticisms follow.

***

Acosta brings greetings from “the People’s Republic of Brooklyn and the ‘hipster capitol’ of Williamsburg.” While recently in Beijing, Acosta is surprised to find a Chinese news report about Williamsburg. The news report does not mention how the neighborhood’s diverse population also includes a substantial number of Chasidim and Latinos. [Acosta is a community activist who has been active in the neighborhood since the late 70s, way before the influx of hipsters in the 90s.]

Acosta talks about the late 70s when south Williamsburg was an extremely dangerous and largely Latino neighborhood. A teenage gang capitol. A crack capitol. [Crack in the late 70s?]. The organization Acosta created, El Puente (The Bridge) initiated a program to bring gang members on weekend retreats boating down whitewater rapids. After experiences like this, gang leaders wanted to do more with their life than market drugs. [Acosta's work in El Puente during this period is what brought him recognition though the Heinz Award in 1984.]

Acosta brings three examples of neighborhood coalitions that have made an important difference in health, youth and family service and crime.

1) Outward Bound. Simple objective: playing touch football in George Washington Plaza park. Major problem was that the park was a major venue for drug dealing and thus dangerous for recreation, [least of all because of all the scattered glass vials littering the park]. Question was how to confront the problem but avoid violence with the drug dealers. Outward Bound organized protest days for three straight years that combined community shame with having this drug park with a call to city action to clean up the park. They used the symbolism of the statue of George Washington’s horse, the ass half of which faced the park center, to make the case that the city’s attitude towards the park was disrespectful and the park needed redesign. Newspaper photos of the ass also showed the graffiti and crack vials on and below the statue. After the thrid year, the park commissioner consented and the park was redesigned. [Significantly, the most important design change was not the reorientation of Washinton's horse's ass but the removal of the high walls surrounding the park that made the park feel unsafe. Clear sight lines remain an important design component for both the psychological perception of safety and functional application of surveillance and law enforcement in a public commons.]

2) Apologies for not capturing enough detail on Acosta’s second example, the clearance of a vacant lot (I think ) piled with two stories of garbage. Not clear on the name of the coalition or group responsible. The site is now a public park and community garden, but first the garbage had to be cleared by community volunteers and the toxic topsoil completely removed and replaced. Veggies grown in the garden are now sold at local corner groceries and bodegas.

3) [Acosta's third example was by far the most sensational as well as the most recent.] A group called the Toxic Avengers fights NYC and the state for the removal of a neighborhood storage facility for chemical and nuclear toxic waste owned by Radiac Research Corpoaration. Since the 1960s, Radiac had housed the waste onsite in barrel storage. The design of the facility was not up to code — jst one example of many, the only door out of building in case of a fire was through nuclear side of storage buidling. Folks living on block didn’t know this facility even existed and to what degree they were at risk in case of an accidental fire and explosion. There was no bureaucratic lever to close it down and the facility seemed grandfathered into its current location. According to officials the facility could never have been licensed today. The Toxic Avengers mobilized much of the community and especially its church leadership. They made note on the sidewalk and roadways in a growing radius around the facility how many seconds they had to live before being engulfed in a toxic cloud if an explosion were to occur. The Toxic Avengers achieved success in getting Radiac to give up license. They successfully lobbied the state legislature to sponsor legislation to disallow toxic storage in the manner that had been permitted.

The success of this action led to an important grassroots effort to oppose a large garbage transfer station envisioned by former mayor (Guiliani?) along their waterfront. The community wanted a viable park there instead, and the community got this park approved. Acosta  was especially proud to note that even the Chasidim love to use this park. [This seemed to relate to tensions later described between the Chasidim and community activist groups in Williamsburg that Acosta goes int o detail a short time later.]

Acosta returns to the general theme of his speech. [When community activists make a case before city and state government they need to pose the issue as representing a holistic response to numerous problems, rather than as a "parks issue" because doing so will translate very quickly into a parks budget versus health services budgetary question by bureaucrats. Community activists must dodge this sort of categorization.] The issues is not parks vs. health or parks vs. education funding. Acosta says “green and open spaces is the fundamental connection. It is what makes us human.”

Acosta calls “a fundamental human rights issue: to be one with nature.” Acosta’s mother was “ripped” out of rural, idyllic Puerto Rico in the 1930s and dropped into concrete Fort Green the most concentrated and dense housing project in the world. Having been one with nature in Puerto Rico, she managed to remain one with nature in her housing project despite her poverty. Filled her apartment with plants. Acosta says “the earth is within us, we have to connect all the time.” We must oppose “the insatiable force for brick and mortar development.”

“We are living in a crisis but not of financial systems: it is a crisis of our humanity.” Acosta asks, “what kind of a human being are we becoming? Come to NYC and see what the future of the country is today!” [This remark perplexes me. The country is in more peril from unrestricted urban sprawl, not the exceptional population densities of megacities like New York. The transformation of rural countryside into privatised lawn space of low density disconnected automobile-oriented housing subdivisions is the most present danger to an accessible open public commons. This is not to say that residents in concentrated urban neighborhoods do not need more greenspace. They need more absolutely, and they need their existing parks to be well maintained to preserve them as facilities from the stress of their overuse. They also need many many more greenroofs!]

Those of us who work to reclaim brownfields are part of a “green resistance, championing connecting to the earth.” Acosta proclaims, “we are radicals. we need to become revolutionaries!” [This is a call to arms. I am surprised by the tone of this language and wondering how it will go over with my colleagues.] Acosta continues, “(parks) are essential to our humanity. We need to reinvigorate our movement.” Acosta calls for standards for how much greenspace a human needs to live healthfully. He compares this with the issue of poverty. “From Presidents JFK and Johnson we learned that we are as strong as our weakest link.” After researching the issue of poverty, policy makers introduced the idea of a poverty threshold. If you don’t obtain a certain amount of money you cannot sustain your life in this society, and this became known as the poverty line. Louise suggests a “green line” or minimal daily requirement for open space. “Demand it!” he exclaims to applause.

[Acosta returns to the coalition to remove the Radiac facility from Williamsburg and how it led to a a coalition to oppose a toxic waste incinerator in the neighborhood.] Explains Acosta, there was a “No talk protocol between Chasidic leadership and Hispanic leaders.” The chasidim in the neighborhood controlled key community assets from housing to public schools. Acosta brings up corruption among Chassidim. 6 million dollars stolen and documented. Vigilante Chasidim beating up Blacks in the neighborhood, even Black cops. [Could Acosta be referencing the recent shameful beating of a Black policemen by Chasidic vigilante thugs in Crown Heights??? Crown Heights is not Williamsburg! Also the Chasidim of Williamsburg are Satmar and in Crown Heights they are Lubavitch. But whatever. For Acosta, this nuance may be irrelevant for this speech. Acosta later explained to me that the Satmar vigilantes had beaten up a Black policemen in the early 90s and that he wasn't referring to the recent assault on a black patrolman in Crown Heights by Lubavitch vigilantes.] Acosta continues, “They (the Chasidim) controlled the housing, controlled the schools regardless of there being no Chasidic kids in the schools.” Really dangerous tensions existed  between the communities. And no communication on any level. But for this issue with Radiac there was a dire need for a broad representative coalition that included the Chasidim. What to do?

Acosta went to the Jewish Community Relations Council and its associate executive director and director of government relations, David M. Pollack. [UPDATE: According to The Activist's Handbook: A Primer (p. 86), El Puente contacted Rabbi David Neiderman and the Jewish org was United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg. David Pollack emailed me to clarify the story today: Pollack was the one who introduced Neiderman to Acosta. Pollack writes, "I brought Garden Acosta and Niederman together using the argument that Hispanic and Hasidic children would glow in the dark equally if  there should be a mishap at Radiac. I also managed to bring Rabbi Niederman and David Pagan of Los Sures together in a joint development project."] In Acosta’s telling, when the Rabbi arrived at El Puente’s headquarters after asking “will I be safe?” from violence visiting a largely Hispanic community forum, Acosta ensured his safety and the rabbi was welcomed by the Latinos with overwhelming love. (The work of Pollack and the arrival of Neiderman signaled a sea change in relations between the Chasidim and Latino groups in Williamsburg. [More on this in a 1994 article in the New York Times.]

The outcome of this coming together was a Community Alliance for the Environment. The coalition to stop 55 story incinerator (that was already legislated, designed, and planned) included Chasidim and Latinos and Italians and Poles. Then Governor Pataki was lobbied to overturn the law to build the incinerator. The coalition succeeded. Acosta is effuesive in describing his joy in watching a 15 years old Chasidic youth chanting in broken Spanish El pueblo unido jamás será vencido alongside a 15 year old Latino youth who was very patiently teaching him how to pronounce the words.

Acosta concludes, “This (Park advocacy) is a struggle and not a delicate matter. We must be militant! We must be radical.” We all stand up and say El pueblo unido jamás será vencido.

***

Thus ends the first evening of the conference. Just a few notes on Acosta’s address. First of all, I believe that Acosta’s important community work needs to be celebrated and extolled as a banner for bridge building between disconnected communities. I also wish he prefaced his examples with the year that these coalitions took place. It was only the occasional detail, like the fact that they were lobbying former Governor Pataki, that clued me in that the example he had mentioned took place over a decade ago.

Besides Acosta’s concern that the future of the U.S. will look like Lewis Mumford’s 1950s dystopic vision of a concretized necropolis, I was taken by surprise by Acosta’s call for park supporters to think of themselves as “Green Militants.” I just don’t understand how appropriating the term militant to describe even an idealized passion for our advocacy can help the parks movement. I understand that in the context of his speech he was trying to rev up the audience in how they perceive themselves. I just don’t think that sort of language even helps park advocates and professionals identify their own work as environmentalists in a useful way. Yes we are environmental professionals and some of us even share his particularly romantic environmental perspective. I think I understand where he’s coming from but I don’t share in his call for identifying as radical or militant. I want environmentalism to be completely and totally mainstream, and the perception of environmentalism as a fringe philosophy plays into the politics of the enemies of environmentalism. And in any case, I believe the idea of environmental work as radical is at odds with current public perception — especially after Hurricane Katrina and the war in Iraq raised awareness of the related issues of overreliance on fossil fuels and global climate change.

I’m excited to be going and especially to see some of my old colleagues from the Trust for Public Land that will be attending. But in a deeper sense, working at this conference and networking with other folk passionate about parks will be a return for me to an intention that motivated me to change my career six years ago.

Rewind the cosmic clock and half a decade ago you’ll find me riding a bicycle along the Schuylkill River Park greenway in Philadelphia and wondering how I could possibly reciprocate for the wonderful space that anonymous civic philanthopists, city planners, and landscape architects had provided for me to re-create myself on that beautiful day. The answer I came up with was studying to become a city planner myself, and two years later after writing a thesis and finishing a ton of work, I was awarded a degree in city planning. Still focused on parks I found a job with Peter Harnik at the Center for City Park Excellence at the Trust for Public Land, a research internship that last a year.

But for the past two and a half years I haven’t been focused on parks. Following the hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, I moved down to Louisiana to cut my teeth as a planning practitioner, first for a FEMA contractor in rural southwestern Louisiana, and afterwords for an engineering firm in Baton Rouge. During that time I gained enough experience to apply to take the AICP exam and passed. And now that I’ve returned from Louisiana, I’m once again looking to get back into working for city parks, as a city planner in a parks department, or in some other capacity as an open space or trails planner.

I’ve also been looking into programs that focus on green building and construction. What I discovered in Louisiana is that experience matters. However exciting green technology or environmental best practices sounds to a young planner, the tried and conventional modes ossified in regional expectations are a nearly impossible barrier if you can’t speak with firsthand experience to how practical a different approach might be.

A moment of transition and opportunity. This next year should be interesting. I’ll keep you informed.

This rang true for me on a personal level. A digression. I know close relatives who tacked towards Orthodoxy because for them it represented a more authentic experience of a Jewish identity they had not known or assimilated when they were younger. I can understand how for initiates, playing by the traditional conventions and standards makes more sense than playing some other variant of the game adapted by heterodox reformers or revolutionaries. This is what an “authentic experience” is after all. First, you learn to play by the regular rules. After a few years of getting used to the imaginary world and its rules, you can maybe make up your own rational mind whether the game play is lacking or needs some tweaking. Some other cats take this role playing so seriously that rather than stop playing they actually do try and adapt the game. This of course raises the ire of the old gamers and creates real tension between practitioners adapted to one of the now forked rulesets. So long as no one gets hurt, there should be nothing wrong with these typical frustrations. So long as no one gets hurt, there should be nothing to worry about with this sort of role playing.

There’s more to say about religion as role playing game. About preoccupations with identity versus more relevant concerns. About the search for meaning and the role of myth and fraternity in ferrying a mediocre simulacra thereof. More to say than I can or want to in one post, so that is all for now. The same can also be said alas for Mind Flayers.

Ghost Recon begins in 2008, with civil unrest in Russia. Ultra-nationalists have seized power in Moscow, with plans to rebuild the Iron Curtain. Their first step is clandestine support of rebel factions in Georgia and the Baltic States.

During the first few missions of the game, the Ghosts battle South Ossetian rebel forces from the north of Georgia, who are harassing the legitimate government and its allies. The Ghosts fight in the forests, on farms, and in villages while assisting their NATO allies in fighting the enemy. Unfortunately, the Russian government complains to the United Nations that the Americans have interfered in their affairs, and eventually they send in their army to aid the South Ossetian rebels. The U.S. cannot hope to stop the Russian Army from invading Georgia, so the Ghosts slow down the invading forces so that their allies can evacuate. Eventually, the Ghosts are all that’s left of the U.S. forces in Georgia, and they evacuate by SH-60 Seahawk helicopter on the rooftop of the American Embassy in T’bilisi, just barely avoiding the Russian forces. The Georgian government flees to Geneva and sets up a government-in-exile. Sadly, with the fall of T’bilisi, Georgia surrenders and is forcefully incorporated into the RDU.

We can only hope that this war doesn’t continue to play out as the game writers imagined it might. I’m no expert on these matters but I suspect that regardless of Georgia’s invitation to NATO membership earlier this year, the U.S. won’t be fielding special forces in Georgia that are already deployed in the Middle East and the Hindu Kush. Read more of Ghost Recon’s plot summary at the wikipedia.

UPDATE: From Russia’s perspective, Georgia is a proxy power of the U.S. on its southern border, so it might be something of a propoganda coup to capture U.S. Special forces or NATO troops fighting in the interests of Georgia. Thinking of this, I’m unsure what to make of the following story which has so far not been picked up by Western news media outlets (as of Sunday night 10PM EST):

Russian news media site Rosbalt (Google translation) is reporting that Russia has captured a U.S. citizen among a group of Georgian sabatouers that had “committed a group suicide.” Another news site Izvestia (Google Translation) identifies the American as a NATO instructor and reports that “among the corpses in Tskhinvali was found several bodies of black people who fought on the side of Georgia.” According to Rosbalt, the citizen is currently being held for interrogation in Vladikavkaz (capitol of Northern Ossetia). (There is a photo of a soldier in this article, but it looks like a stock photo lifted from somewhere else.)

Do sabatouers commit group suicide upon fearing capture? Should the bodies of “black people” be assumed to be the bodies of U.S. mercenaries? This all seems very suspicious to me.