Who Lived In This House?

From Boyd's Directory of the District of Columbia:

1887 Charles Morrison, clerk and John H. Martin, porter.
1892 John Martin, laborer.
1903 Charles R. Martin, porter, and Della Martin, washer.
1908 Charles Martin, laborer

DCFOODFORALL January Potluck

DC Food For All Launch Party

Blood On The Tracks

Went down to water the garden and found police tape, camera crews and the people who show up to look at a wreck. We tied up the tomatoes and lamented the drowned cucumbers. And we lamented the suffering of the people who were there the night before.

Mr. Williams came by and we talked about how Metro has to keep 30-year old cars in service while the Metro General Manager is making $326,000 a year (plus a $60,000 annual living allowance) and how that's DC for you.



And then we watered the peppers and picked a little mint and headed home, thinking about what we could plant in memory of what happened at the bottom of the garden.

Spring Fever

The White House gets a garden!

Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library

I needed a book for a project and since I just needed a few pages, I decided to go to my public library. I checked online and found a copy available at the central library: Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library. I took the Metro to Gallery Place, crossed the street and entered the building. inside the door I put my bag through the x-ray machine and stepped through the metal detector, which I set off. the officer made me spread my arms out while he wanded me for guns, knives or whatever.

the central library of D.C. is not a pretty place. it may have been once, but now it's dark, grimy, and stale. after a few wrong turns I found the section I needed (Sociology). the doors were locked with a note explaining the section was closed until further notice due to maintenance. I went back downstairs and asked a librarian if a staff member could retrieve the book for me. the answer was no.


it's been forty years since James Earl Ray did what many feared and some hoped for. by 68, King had turned to economic justice for all people, black and white. he was in the midst of organizing the Poor People's Campaign, which he envisioned as the "second phase" of the civil rights movement.

the poverty rate in America has not changed since 1968. today 36.5 million Americans live in poverty (link). in the District of Columbia, 19% of the city's population live in poverty.

walking down G Street I thought about how the condition of the library reflects the condition of King's ideas of economic justice. both have suffered from years of neglect.
the leaders who gather to pay tribute to King on the anniversary of his death have done nothing to lower the poverty rate in America. when we remember Martin Luther King, Jr. we should remember his unfulfilled dream of economic justice for all Americans.

Video Of A Protest This Morning

Stop Bitching and Create Something Interesting

If you live in D.C. you've probably encountered someone like this woman standing on a downtown sidewalk.

these people are from Zendik Farm, a commune in West Virginia.

their slogan is "Stop Bitching Start a Revolution". this command doesn't appear to have worked so far. maybe because starting a revolution requires more than putting on a t-shirt.

I'm not bothered by hippie artist commune dwellers selling t-shirts on the street. we need more weird people selling art in our public spaces (instead of FBI t-shirts and hot links). what pisses me off about the Zendik people is their lack of imagination. they've been selling the same black t-shirt with white slogan ever since I came to D.C. ten years ago.

if you drop out of society to create art then create something interesting.

My Favorite Record Stores

two record stores I frequent:

True Vine is my new favorite record store and I've only been there once. The place is chaotic, almost an anti-store, which would make it more like someone's living room, which I think describes it pretty well, come to think of it. I got into a discussion with the owner/manager/clerk/head conversationalist about Wacky Packages, which was cool, especially when it devolved into a story
about riding around naked listening to Psychic TV ( I won't say whose story that was).... PURCHASES: Incredible String Band "Changing Horses" (LP), Six Organs of Admittance "Shelter from the Ash" (CD)

Another chaotic store that I love is Joe's Record Paradise. It has a completely different vibe from True Vine- more frumpy Rockville than arty Baltimore. Joe's is a maximalist place. There are the record bins, then below the bins are shelves, and in front of the shelves are cardboard boxes, all stuffed with records. I tend to spend either 10 minutes or 5 hours. It can get overwhelming. Although I recognize some of the staff after repeated visits, there's no acknowledgment that I've ever been there before.... PURCHASES: 13th Floor Elevators "Demos Everywhere" (LP), Curtis Mayfield "Back to the World" (LP)

I guess what I like about these stores is that they are completely unpredictable. You can't go in with a particular title in mind, or a shopping list. You have to just be open to whatever you encounter while flipping through the stacks. It's a cultural field trip through hairstyles and fashions, cover photo moods ("we're having fun", "we're cool", "I'm serious") and graphics.

thoughts on Jeremy Blake

I've been thinking a lot about Jeremy Blake ever since I saw the Wild Choir show at the Corcoran in December. If you haven't been, you should go. Blake was really onto something with his combination of still media and video (he edited every frame of his 9-12 minute videos in Photoshop). And I'm partial to his themes: sixties Swinging London decadence, punk impresario Malcolm McLaren, the poetry of David Berman (who will be reading at the Corcoran in February)....and there's the heavy back-story too, with his slide into paranoia and death. But I think people should be remembered for the beautiful stuff they create, not for their messy lives. So check out Jeremy Blake- some of his videos are on the web (as well as Theresa Duncan's The History of Glamour) but you really need to experience his stuff on a big wall in a dark room.

Takoma Crime Map

View Larger Map
Stereogab created this very cool Google Map showing the latest wave of muggings in our neighborhood. It's cool that DC shares their data but if one concerned citizen can build an effective map using Google, why are we paying for stuff like this?

UPDATE 12.12: Found the MPDC Crime Incidents KML file and their Google map but they don't show many of the incidents mapped above. Is MPDC not adding every incident to their database?

Rasta!

Today as I was entering my office building one of the security guards smiled at me and said "You look like a rasta! You're a rasta, right?" This is at an institution with one of the tightest sphincters in DC...and I was in a suit and tie...I''m baffled...is this good or bad?