I wish I'd gone camping after reading Terry's journal. It sounds like y'all had a good time. I've been hanging around Keith and his housemates to much this weekend. They're nice guys and everything but way to obsessed with pornography movies and poop dick, well, tack is.
Today I rewatched that Now show on PBS. It was the same one that was on yesterday or whenever. They did a story on migrant farm working families in Texas. There's this one part where I always tear up. I've done it twice now. It's at the end of the story when they say the teen girl earned honors in math and history and she had perfect attendance. It's the attendance part that gets to me. I think it's because the family usually has to check the kids out of school early so they can go up north to help pick corn and shitty no fun stuff like that.
Soyeon got back from New York City today. I've been keeping her car for her. I'm a damn good driver. I drove to the airport to pick her up at midnight. I never adjusted the seat from Soyeon's height though so I must have looked funny while driving.
I've been feeling damn sad lately. I think It's a mix of being poor, reading Dostoevsky, and worrying for one of my most favorite professors.
Hopefully the poorness with change in a few weeks. I start my plant watering job at Forever Elmwood at 9 in the morning. I need to sleep but my schedule has flipped around again. That's what this Buffalo weather does to me. I thought it was going to be warm by June. Plant watering should be cool though. It's the 6 bucks an hour job I've been fantasizing about for a while now.
Tony called while I was in Georgia and said he's in New Mexico for a few weeks so maybe when he gets back I start to help him clean out that old yellow jail of his so he can shoot some stuff in there. That's a damn good job to. A jail is an awfully good set for the things my mind is currently conjuring up.
I've read a couple of stories White Nights and The Gambler. I'm working on Notes from the Underground but I haven't got to far. I think I'd like it better if someone were reading that one to me. It's written like it should be spoken. I need more books! If only I'd been about to start this job thing sooner. I'll be happy when I get to teach video. I hope I get interesting students who know what they want. That seems unlikely though so I guess I'll have to try to convince them of what they want to do but I'm not sure how I'll do that when I feel like I'm flopping around like a fish out of water. Life is moving in a slowly spreading circle, like a bit of oil spilled on asphalt. Soon enough it may turn into a line.
I remember the first semester that I was here we had the contingency test. I went out to the pink despite a nasty upper viral infection and Steve persuaded me to give him a kiss to see if he'd get sick then he kissed someone and they kissed someone and so on and so on. I though it was a wonderful idea and sure enough Steve got sick for weeks, he was the only one. It made me happy to help him with his research. That and I'm slightly evil. I though it was great fun that a middle aged man got sick from kissing a 22 yr. old. The next semester I had another cold. I asked Steve if he wanted to have a contingency test and he'd learned his lesson apparently because he vigorously declined. Yeah, I think once you get a person sick they grow on you somehow. I'm very worried about this FBI bioweapons stuff. It makes me so sad that they would try to press charges against Steve for that. He's an artist not a meany and he's afraid of death I think.
A few months after I moved here I told Steve about the death of my cat. I was depressed for a quite while after my cat died. I brought Oliver, here with me all that way from Georgia. Then he got sick right when my money for the semester ran out. I stayed up with my kitty all night Sunday and then walked to the vet's office at 9 in the morning with my last 50 dollars and a lot of ho
pe
! When I got there they told me that Oliver needed an operation that would cost 500 dollars. I didn't even have enough money to have Oliver put to sleep. The vet's office had to give me 80 dollars from their emergency pets fund. I walked around that office holding Oliver like a baby and crying my eyes out. I got Oliver two years before when I lived with Matthew. It's sad that they both died so young. Matthew was 19 Oliver was 3. Yeah, but back to the point.
When I was telling Steve about all those woes he told me about a cat he had. It broke his heart when he had to have the cat put down. He said that he wasn't there when the vet's did it, he couldn't watch. I told him I wanted to be there with my cat even though it was hard. Steve told me that he'd lost friends to AIDS and after that I figured he was afraid of things like death and dying. Maybe that's why he's researching the things he's researching maybe he just wants a better understanding of the things he fears the most. but yeah, knowing about this discomfort with death the idea of Steve finding his wife dead and then being indicted for bioweapons, it's like a horror movie come to life. It makes me pissed off, full of rage, and generally unhappy.
The posting from Julie's journal ended up on the Atl list serve. I wrote a post saying how I know Steve and he's my professor and a good guy and all that. A couple of my professors from Atlanta wrote me back so I hope they'll donate some money to help out with all this legal malarkey.

members of the Critical Art Ensemble subpoenaed

On the morning of May 30, two members of the Critical Art Ensemble were
subpoenaed by the FBI on their way to the "Interventionists" art show in
which their work appears.

The FBI, we now know, will seek to indict Steve Kurtz before a grand jury in
Buffalo, NY on June 15 on charges related to "bioweapons." Incredible as
this may sound, it is true. More details to follow.

Financial and other help are more urgently needed now than ever. Thanks to
all who have already helped or volunteered to do so.

I'm planning on getting ripped and singing a few at the Tudor lounge! Come on out and make an ass of yourself with me!

They just showed this cartoon on the "now" show on PBS. I thought it was good so maybe you will to.

Haha, That A person is pretty funny but so is Paul. All I know is that I don't want to visit the speak up sight. It seems like in must be politically based and I don't know if I give a shit about western New York. I don't think I do, I mean I live here but only for a few years, hopefully I can find a satisfying way to get out of this country at some point. I'm not to into American values and lately it's to easy to feel threatened by the government even when you're not doing anything dangerous. There is to much hostility in this country! I wanna run away with my tail between my legs and raise my own animals to butcher and eat.

Down here you'll find some stuff off the Atlanta Artist list serve thing.

Subj: Re: [ARTNEWS] Art and Politics
Date: 5/30/04 2:15:10 PM Eastern Daylight Time
From: carrlevy@bellsouth.net
To: artnews@pd.org


What's interesting about this is that the pictures appeared in every
newspaper around the world. When it enters a gallery and becomes "art"
then the direct assaults begin. Chilling wrap up- now we have a 12 yr
old investigated by the secret service, a teacher fired because of a
poem, an artist/ prof having things seized by the FBI and a gallery
owner threatened. These are indicators of a broader, scarier than ever
New American Fascism. The NAF is disguised in the Patriot Act. This
type of incremental creep allows for greater injustices in the future.
Unfortunately the list I mentioned above will grow and grow and grow





SF gallery owner becomes target after showcasing painting of Iraqi
prisoner abuse
- LISA LEFF, Associated Press Writer
Saturday, May 29, 2004


(05-29) 17:10 PDT SAN FRANCISCO (AP) --

After displaying a painting of U.S. soldiers torturing Iraqi
prisoners, a San Francisco gallery owner bears a painful reminder of
the nation's unresolved anguish over the incidents at Abu Ghraib -- a
black eye and bloodied brow delivered by an unknown assailant who
apparently objected to the art work.

The assault outside the Capobianco gallery in the city's North Beach
district Thursday night was the worst, but only the latest in a string
of verbal and physical attacks that have been directed at owner Lori
Haigh since the painting, titled "Abuse," was installed there on May
16.

Last Wednesday, concerned for the safety of her two children, ages 14
and 4, who often accompanied her to work, Haigh decided to close the
gallery indefinitely.

Painted by Berkeley artist Guy Colwell, "Abuse," the painting at the
center of the controversy, depicts three U.S. soldiers leering at a
group of naked men in hoods with wires connected to their bodies. The
one in the foreground has a blood-spattered American flag patch on his
uniform. In the background, a soldier in sunglasses guards a
blindfolded woman.

The painting was part of a larger show of Colwell's work that mostly
featured pastel-colored abstracts.

Two days after the painting went up in a front window, someone threw
eggs and dumped trash on the doorstep. Haigh said she didn't think to
connect it to the black-and-white interpretation of the events at
Baghdad's notorious prison until people started leaving nasty messages
and threats on her business answering machine.

"I think you need to get your gallery out of this neighborhood before
you get hurt," one caller said.

Even after she removed the painting from the window, the criticism
continued thanks to news coverage about the gallery's troubles. The
answering machine recorded new calls from people accusing her of being
a coward for taking the picture
do
wn. Last weekend, a man walked into
the gallery, pretended to scrutinize the art work for a moment, then
marched up to Haigh's desk and spat directly in her face.

On Thursday, someone knocked on the door of the gallery, then punched
Haigh in the face when she stepped outside.

"This isn't art-politics central here at all," Haigh said. "I'm not
here to make a stand. I never set out to be a crusader or a political
activist."

In closing the gallery, Haigh was forced to cancel an upcoming show
featuring counterculture artist Winston Smith. She covered the windows
of the gallery with old newspapers from Sept. 11, 2003 that included
stories about the war, a statement she insists was coincidental.

For Haigh, who opened Capobianco a year-and-a-half ago, having the
chance to work with prominent artists fulfilled a lifelong dream.

"I kept thinking someday I'll have enough of a reputation where I
could bring in my heroes of the art world, people like Guy Colwell
especially," she said.

The irony of the attacks hasn't been lost on Haigh. Among the
expressions of support she's received since shuttering the gallery, her
favorite is an e-mail whose writer said, "I'm sure that a few and
dangerous minds don't understand that they have only mimicked the same
perversity this painting had expressed."

The abuse also has soured her on North Beach, the Italian-American
neighborhood that spawned the Beat Generation. Long considered a
bastion of free speech, it is also home to many old-time San
Franciscans. Haigh believes "it is the locals" who first took aim at
her gallery since it's on a mostly residential street and she hadn't
advertised Cowell's show when the threats started.

But others in the neighborhood have gone out of their way to offer
encouragement and sympathy, among them poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti,
owner of the famed City Lights bookstore. Outside the gallery on
Friday, someone had left a bouquet of flowers along with a note
reading, "The woman who ran this gallery is a brave and honorable
woman. ... She is a true American and a real patriot."

San Francisco police are investigating the incidents and have stepped
up patrols around the gallery while Haigh finishes closing up shop.

Colwell stopped by on Friday and refused to discuss his work or the
reaction to it, saying only, "I'm sorry if this is putting pressure on
Lori."

URL:

state1749EDT0067.DTL
©2004 Associated Press