i would like to just note that public enemy's "shut em down (live in the UK version)" is for certain on my list of 10 most important/best songs of my lifetime.

thank you and goodnight.

...and then when i do, its either about something jew related or something work/writing related. (tho i do read all of y'alls diverse and topical posts eagerly.) so today its not jew stuff its writing stuff. hello. i have spent this entire holiday week sick and trying to finish an essay that's due--when? new year's day. new year's fucking day. i was going to write it in early december but then at the last minute i found out that i had to write 2  $1million grants by mid-december and that turned that plan to shit. so here i am, the day before new year's, possibly halfway done with this essay--possibly. or possibly not. or possibly more than that. its hard to tell. the truth is, its a super interesting essay, its about the 1963 march on washington and anti-homophobia education. yes. you read that right. i can't possibly work up the wherewithall to explain exactly how that works right now, but just hold it in your head and if you want to, ask me about it later. one hint: bayard rustin and strom thurmond feature prominently.

i would like a short vacation/break. not that i have it so bad. just that my body wanted a rest, it got sick in an attempt to tell me to rest a bit, and but i couldn't. and then-- new years will come and what happens then? MORE WORK! immediately, alas. starting on jan 4, the bulk of the month is full of job stress and work up to my chin and etc and when do i get to collapse and watch movies in bed? february, possibly. i think i am not living in a feng shui way. new year's resolution #1: figure out a way to not be so busy. to prioritize the people and activities i love --and exercise! and writing! and walking in the park!-- without wrecking my body's immune system or my tiny spirit.

lots of love from the desk i might be at for the rest of my days...

good night and good luck.
xoxox

your resident history nerd here. below i'm posting a link to a video about local brooklyn history and the efforts of activists to keep capitalist fuckers from knocking down important sites of historical memory. the video was produced by the new york times, so it doesn't tell the story the way that i would, but it does manage to tell a lot of the story in the end.

keep a look out, while watching, for the folks fighting to keep the underground railroad houses in downtown brooklyn from being knocked down by real estate developers -- they are working with FUREE. FUREE just recently won a small victory, in the effort to fight off the developers, but need support to make sure that the city doesn't ultimately succeed in knocking these buildings down.

the video is at http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=7da9cdbe8bdb6c5fd53eb6fd45d0999661e0e837

here's the info about FUREE's victory and future work:

HI Friends,

    I just wanted to pass on the very exciting news that we have won a huge victory in our fight to stop the City from using eminent domain to seize almost a whole city block in Downtown Brooklyn to build an underground parking garage and “plaza.”  
    The property that the City wants to take includes 7 homes on Duffield Street widely believed to have been safe houses on the Underground Railroad and hotbeds of Abolitionist activity, and three apartment buildings where over 40 low-income immigrant families have been living in rent-stabilized apartments  for 20 years.    
    Yesterday, our lawyer got a call from the City announcing the City has withdrawn its eminent domain findings and there will be a new public hearing.       
    This is a TERMENDOUS victory, and provides hope for FUREE member Joy Chatel and Lew Greenstein – two of the property owners on Duffield Street who have essentially dedicated their lives these past 4 years fighting to preserve their homes as a museum paying tribute to the history of freedom seekers in Brooklyn.
    It is a huge relief  and to the families at  Albee Square (all FUREE members), including Lidia Campos, who worries that if evicted from her Albee Square apartment, her family will become homeless because they can’t find affordable rent.
    It is also a testament to the power of combining strong organizing with legal tactics - Jenifer Levy at South Brooklyn Legal Services, who filed two petitions on behalf Of FUREE, Joy Chatel and the Albee Square tenants deserves huge credit for her work.  Candace Carpenter also filed a petition on behalf of three artists in the same eminent domain area.  
    It’s not over yet  - we now have an amazing opportunity to build for the hearing and to create the level of political pressure and public awareness that will make it impossible for the City to move forward with their plans.  The hearing date is to be determined -  please contact me if you want to stay informed, and if you want to be part of this fight.

 http://www.nydailynews.com/boroughs/2007/09/30/2007-09-30_families_feeling_squeeze_in_name_of_deve.html

http://www.brooklynheightscourier.com/site/tab8.cfm?newsid=18871008&BRD=2384&PAG=461&dept_id=552854&rfi=6

grace paley has died. i wish grace paley could go on and on forever, but she cannot. she had cancer and she died. she was the first yiddishist that i ever fell in love with. i was in college, in ohio, a tiny, blinking, confused girl who was finding, to her surprise, some beauty in jewishness, in jewish community. i was raised in a stiflingly untextured jewishness, in a jewish community that was more about dishing about what leslie jacobowitz was wearing to temple on the high holidays than anything else. but at college i fell in with a crowd of jewish queers (no! really?) who made beautiful radical shabbos dinners and ant-zionist newspapers. and it was then that i found grace paley. and then, once, we piled into a car and drove to philadelphia for a conference (i think it was one of the last New Jewish Agenda things, even-- that's how old/young i am!) and there, in some partitioned-off ballroom, i met grace paley for the first time, in the flesh. there's even a picture of me, with my little awkward body and my bad, bad, BAD babydyke haircut, standing with grace paley and melanie k/k.

anyhow, i thought i'd post a poem of grace's that i like in here, in tiny honor of a very very important woman who is no longer living (although the poem completely condemns the memories i just wrote above, in a thoughtful, tragic way):

the poet's occasional alternative

i was going to write a poem
i made a pie instead     it took
about the same amount of time
of course the pie was a final
draft        a poem would have had some
distance to go         days and weeks and
much crumpled paper

the pie already had a talking
tumbling audience among small
trucks and a fire engine on
the kitchen floor

everybody will like this pie
it will have apples and cranberries
dried apricots in it       many friends
will say      why in the world did you
make only one

this does not happen with poems

because of unreportable
sadness i decided to
settle this morning for a re-
sponsive eatership     i do not
want to wait a week     a year      a
generation for the right
consumer to come along