THE DEAD OF THE OAKLAND GHOST SHIP. Blood on the Hands of the Multiculturalists.

 

                                      THE DEAD OF THE OAKLAND GHOST SHIP FIRE 

   Blood on the Hands of Multiculturalists.  No Sanctuary City for Independent Whites.

 

I heard of dead youngsters hauled from Oakland’s inferno, who then were identified, whose faces then went to broadcast. I saw the dead artists. I said aloud:

                         “But they’re white. No one will feel their pain.”

Suffer the little children. They could have been me. I am sister to Oakland’s Ghost Ship Corpses and I must speak.

Who is San Francisco.  Yes.  And who are the  sidewalks and Universities of America, Canada, Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany……..where Diversity is code for Not Safe for Whites Here.

Did Black, Asian, Middle East, Hispanic Oakland City Inspectors get orders to ignore Whites in substandard housing? Will we ever know.

Few crying the horror of exclusion, who rage and fury at exclusion as a philosophy or business practice, in a government…..few may be counted on to be welcoming to Whites.

I speak with some credentials and experience.  I have been painting, drawing, and writing since infancy and never gave it up and it even earned me a living wage during interludes from salaried jobs.  I still gauge the merits of studios based on how often my nose goes red and runny from the cold. I’ve done the tribulations and glories of creative endeavor in France, London, and East Europe; Mexico City, Cuernavaca; Quebec; NY’s Chinatown, Lower East Side, Brooklyn; the Blue Ridge Mountains, Big Sur’s redwood and sea salted air, Yosemite’s High Sierras, and crossing America north and south 3 times.

I’ve intentionally moved into hovels and shacks, filthy lofts, log cabins, stables, condemned basements, attics, garages, root cellars. More than some without hot water, without running water, without heat, without air, without windows, without electricity, without safety, money, food, or allies. I’ve moved into tents, trailers, trucks, and cars without without without. I’ve also lived in stunning scenery, endless skies, dramatic weather, and some totally…..uhm…..unique, low-or-no-cost housing because of hallelujah privacy and space to paint, sculpt, write a book. It’s a miserable, magical, thrilling horrific life as anyone knows who’s tried.

After all I left home at 17 because I sought bohemia, life outside of convention, endless experiences of being alive, music of the spheres, and glorious independence. And I did not, nor did my White generation, seek the exclusion of any race sharing that journey.

In fact we of the sixties, we still alive today of the flamboyantly inclusive equality-demanding outrageous generation, (much to the shock of our elders, and in danger from it, and not giving a hoot) wanted everyone along for the ride. You amongst us may note, as I have, that despite attaining 72.5 years, born in 1944 near-post-WWII, not a single person of color in any part of the world I’ve ever been, spanning over half a century now, has looked me in the eye and said:  Oh right, the 60’s! Good show! Thank you for that, let me shake your hand, we’re all better off for your revolution.

Indeed Whites are now blamed for every trouble the world has every known, by everyone.  Including the twice elected Black President who says: ” All Whites have racism in their DNA. Up yours.”

I devoted 5 years of my life, gained praise from every race and religion of individual NYers but lost my shirt trying to sculpt a memorial for ALL slain police officers in NYC in a year monumental for so many killed.  I was told by a predominately Black NYC Arts Commission, a Black NYC Chief of Police, a Black mayor that my work had no merit because the dark bronze figures were merely human. Not Black. The Vietnam Wall was heralded for not (choosing or daring — I don’t know) representing figures.  The Air and Space Museum finally approved a sculpted floating astronaut in space suit at it’s entrance~~ visor closed ~~ which neither identified or glorified any race though all our astronauts then were white.  As were the guys who designed and built and shot the rockets and brought them to earth again.  No matter.

In the early 1990’s, a person of great authority at the Corcoran Museum in Washington DC, our famously “American Artist” museum, told me to my White face they could not possibly find interest in my art because as a White American I had no culture whatsoever. They would exhibit African American and Native American and homosexual artists who contrariwise had culture to brag about.

From the 1970’s to this 21st Century, publishers print up authors of confession, self-help, self-pity, victimization, obscure/profound/common sexuality, and most loved of all, racism. Publishers are reluctant to print up White heterosexual women standing on their own 2 feet. Who apparently in these times have no point of view, no life to notice, no merit, up yours.  Oh, I said that already.

Look at the relentless defamation of marvelous individuals who invented, described, built for the benefit of all humankind, being re-written out because they are Caucasian. Please, on behalf of art everywhere, turn from the movie “Turner” which grinds to shred and dust the brilliant artist who was a revolution in a waistcoat all by himself until the politically correct Brits in exhaustive humiliation at their own White skin, who are not worthy of pronouncing Turner’s name, shamefully corrupted the dear man’s history because he failed to be Black.

Oakland’s White Ghost Ship Fire is your payoff, you racists of San Francisco and beyond who have been shouting from the rooftops that anyone with White skin does not matter to this world, to your Sanctuary City. Do not apply. Get out. Get lost. We hate you bad Honky.   Burn baby burn.

 

 click here for SF GATE, movie tribute

 

 

 

Valentine to 60’s, Shock at O’s

All the months of ink spent on the ‘Occupiers’ ultimately leads me to shock that these birds can’t manage to keep themselves better off. Tent cities fast become moldy centers of pestilence, plague, murder, mayhem, and a hell of a lot of whining.

Get a grip. My oft-maligned 60’s generation was out in the world misbehaving ingeniously at a far more tender age. In the sixties, 17 year olds were forming communes, exploring farming, building log cabins, geodesic domes, houseboats and– our primo art form –making rock and roll. We were sewing our own clothes, swilling about in Woodstock muck, marching on Washington, discovering Appalachia, driving to Mexico in uninsured no-seat belt jalopies, brewing potato moonshine and dandelion wine and sharing drugs. Why the gap.

Well, well, we have come to this. We observe today’s adults who never managed a thing on their own for their first 25 years. Who don’t even have the sand to fury at being included in parental or government guardianships until they’re nearly thirty! That alone would have turned us all Bolshevik.

I left home at 17 and drove across country from California to New York. The highways of America were littered with us on this pilgrimage, this rite of passage. We were on a full speed run from convention toward individualism. We learned guitar, built harpsichords, outfitted school buses for homes, restored barns/basements/attics….we reveled penniless and brainless in the exhilaration of being unguardedly alive as we explored wilderness and urban jungles, read and adored French writers, gulped Pernod and puffed Gauloises and drooled for bohemian art and Italian filmmakers, martial arts, zen, dirt bikes, tai chi, and tried it or tried imitating all of it. There was nothing so exciting or free or dangerous as being on our own. A lot of living got done badly, but hey, that turns out to be how life works, and you figure out how to make good bits out of disasters. And get better at doing it.

When I hit the East Village at 18 I found thousands of me in variation who were building a brilliant underground that included the start-up Village Voice, weekly newspapers filled with scurrilous outrage and cartoon strips; directions to free dental clinics in Jersey and the nearest ER for serious bleeding. How to install a toilet in a loft. How to sand floors. We were remaking fashion, rewiring ceiling fixtures, turning storefronts into apartments and taking showers at St Jame’s pool. Turned out you could sit in the 42nd Street Library or big museums or Weisner’s Bookstore on 14th Street reading all day in comfy chairs. Word was out there for cheap apartments, where to hear Janis Joplin, watch Cocteau and Fellini films for a buck or how to time it right to see Lenny Bruce get pulled out in handcuffs from the Jewish Theatre on Third Avenue after performing with the exuberant use of four letter words.

You’d take to the sidewalks of the city night and day to watch the entire world around you. Find cheap Chinatown meals that delighted the senses and pirogi from Ukrainians on Third Avenue and real Egg Creams on the corner of St Mark’s. The cheapest place for paint and canvas. Old wool army and navy uniforms for warmth. Where to hear Gene Krupa and Thelonius Monk free and listen to Bob Dylan become a legend; where Buckminster Fuller’s last book could be found. Fulton Fish market discards that fried up good. And you’d wash dishes in a really scuzzy 42nd Street nightclub in exchange for food and likely be starting your own band when the shift ended.

We’d gather to spread info and rumor then span out to find out about living it. And we were happy! Ridiculed, upsetting grown-ups, having trouble finding work, piss poor, scared, but happy! Not dependent on prescriptions and medical plans and not getting sick, or being so damn needy, either. By the time most of us were twenty-five we were employed and raising families.

The 60’s generation that’s been raked over the coals for being ne’er do well incompetents didn’t destroy life on the planet after all, and turned out, in sharp contrast to what’s around now, to have been a lot inventing, independent, free spirited youngsters who abolished segregation, went to the moon, worried about fascism and loss of privacy, came up with Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood and Bridget and Ursala and Sophia, Captain Kirk, Mr Spock, James Bond, Evil Knieval, David Bowie, Mort Sahl and Robin Williams. We made art forms never seen before, owned politics du jour, making the occasional disaster of much along the way. But at least did something more than getting a tattoo! We changed the status quo, and that generation in most every country did the same, all over Planet Earth.

Let’s see the world’s next 18 year olds head into the unexplored country, the future, with some gusto and fervor. Honestly, listen to me, you don’t need seat belts, or GPS, or college degrees, or vitamins, or bottled water, or protective helmets. Bounce around on the front seat of your 25 year old car, eat Twinkies and bacon, risk dehydration, learn something on your own, fall on your head and skin your knees. And for God’s sake, start protesting the stupid laws that steal your independence and coddle you into oblivion.

HOORAH FOR THE SIXTIES. Drop out and tune in. Never thought I’d be saying that.