In This Season of White Christmases,

peace on earth, goodwill to men

some think of the freezing 

time

when the Long Knives stormed the camp.

They hear the screams of babies

and young children

the wails of grandmothers

and the death songs.

with Long Knives camped all

around them

and Hotchkiss guns aimed right at

them,

their hearts heavy with sorrow and

desperation,

their children crying with hunger

and cold,

the People begin to dance.

When it is over,

the cameras of the Long Knives

record

the butchered women and children

frozen stiff and grotesque in the 

bloody snow:

a little boy who had lost 

his moccasin

a woman with a little baby nursing

at her breast

"On the 100th anniversary of Wounded Knee."  By Beverly Slapin.  I tore this out of the newspaper on Dec 29th, 1990.  It's been next to me since then, pinned or taped or with a magnet.  One hundred years on 1990.  It's now Dec 29th, 2015.  125 years.

Genocide is still genocide.

I first heard John Trudell speak in a small community building in Berkeley probably early 80's.  He was the leader of the American Indian Movement from 1973-1979, and first coming onto the scene as the de facto spokesperson for the Indian Occupation of Alcatraz Island in 1969. The US Government squashed that one down.  He died earlier this month so you won't be able to hear him speak in person anymore.  That's a shame because he was such a powerful person when he spoke.  I can still see and hear him from that Berkeley talk.  "There has not been one, not one, not one treaty the US Government signed with the Indians that they did not break.  Not one."

Talk about getting fucked over.

The US Government did offer an apology of sorts in 2010.  It was tacked at the end of a Defense Appropriations bill.   Made sure to say the government wasn't going to offer any monetary reparations.  Nope.  Not going to honor no treaty we signed either. 

I can't wait until we elect a Native American as President.

You can find a pretty balanced account of the massacre at Wounded Knee on the internet.  Soldiers were trying to round up the last of the peoples into a camp, take away their rifles they hunted with and make them stop dancing the Ghost Dance...that dance the Whites feared would spread throughout the different tribes.  One shot was fired within the Sioux camp and then the killing began.  Soldiers didn't care who they killed.  Tracking women with children for miles just to shoot them.  Many of the Sioux were only armed with knives, the soldiers had among other weapons four Hotchkiss guns, a gun that put out a huge "shotgun" blast every 6 seconds. 

The US Government awarded 20 Medals of Honor.  Or Dishonor as the Native Americans call it.

Today, grandchildren of the few

survivors

tell the stories, again and again

for their children and

their children's children.

They remember the blood-soaked 

snow,

in the year of someone's Lord

while others sing of white

Christmases,

peace on earth, good will to men

2016.

KilCams Cam

The KilCams name came from the time the three of us were sitting around at the Utah watching the events on TV of the US Government's assassination of Osama Bin Laden.
We were wondering if the soldiers had helmets with cameras that fed right back to the White House.
Thus...The KilCams.

Last night we did a short set on the Utah's venerable and tiny stage.  A KilCam Cam from the stage looking out.

Cary in the "green room" tuning up.  He leaves us sitting there for the longest time.

I was lucky to be placed right behind John.

"Why aren't you drumming, Brah?"

And of course, the set list.

Newspaper Boat

A table I made way long ago, a lifetime of lifetimes ago.  I remember it had to be finished right before Thanksgiving, the year though is but a guess at the point.  My guess...1989.  Ok, could've been 90 or 91.
I smoothed everything with a Japanese smoothing plane, the surfaces have the most sensual slightly scalloped feel to them from the cutting of the iron.
So it's got 26 years or so of patina on it.
The patina that comes from living, loving and fighting.  The patina from kids spilling on it, doing homework on it.  The patina from breakfasts, lunches and dinners.  I didn't think I would become emotional but this is causing some tears to fall.
The patina that comes from moving it from one house to another.  From one side of bay to the other side and back and back to the other.
The table eventually went from a home to my studio to be alongside another similar table I had built a year before.
And it then started the patina earned from big dinner parties to huge BBQ's to mega-parties.  Big character marks on the table from those years.

But I certainly don't need/want two tables.

Taylor and Nick bought their first home....in Sausalito.  I offered the table and she accepted but it was too big.  Let's cut out a couple feet it was decided.

When I joined the two halves back together I chose to chamfer the edges so if when glued up the two planes don't meet exactly I wouldn't have to plane down the faces.  The chamfer allows for a slight mismatch.
To plane would be to take off the patina.

 The chamfered joint and wax.

They came over to get it yesterday.  Along with most of the chairs that Taylor sat on around the table as she grew up...ok, more tears...

Three little tastes of a nice smokey mezcal and they're gone.

You know you build these things and like a newspaper boat you put it in the water hoping it makes it to the other shore.  You hope what you build lasts as long as it can.  50 years?  A hundred would be cool.  But who knows.  Maybe a fire, maybe tastes change and it ends up the in landfill.  Maybe the newspaper boat lasts and lasts and my great great great great great people will be adding their own patina to something they have no idea where it came from.

And the tears come again seeing it in it's new space.

State of Emigrant

Just outside of Death Valley is Emigrant.  A ten parcel town whose inhabitants change daily for the most part.  Me...I stayed for 8 days. The 8 day stay this year...different than other years.  Less old codgers, more young long distance bicycle people.  Much more international too.

Soft lisped Canadian.  We talked of hot springs and being an emigrant in his country in the 70's.

Coffee made on the almost too beautiful Svea 123.  The brass shows it's age.

 Drank from chrome.

There seemed to be two campground romances going on.  One brand new, the participants meeting each other for the first time in Emigrant. She from Nevada, attentive dog with her.  He, I overheard him telling the old guy, was on his way to Missoula.  Sweet to watch the innocence of it all.

The other romance, to me, seemed to be maybe winding down. Maybe. Right next to me I couldn't help to be part of their life.  Maybe winding down because although their talk was of ending it, their interactions suggested otherwise.  Theatrical almost to watch and listen.  Physically....Crackled, popped, snapped with energy but the talk, their conversations was of over, the end, can't go on.  Maybe.

Tents do nothing to muffle voices.  I heard her say......"What if we.....

I wrote it down the next morning.  Thought about it in a bigger context.  Pictured what that might be like to think everything was just a dream..

In the desert, away from the tent town of temporaries.  It was different.  Patterns took on more meaning. The crows beaks and wings talked to me.  Star fields seen in cactus.  Heart tattoos on forearms. Golden blue white black rock sand stick....always always with shadows.  Always shadows.

ShadowRock

Trona...California.  Trona was a state of mind.

The ballons announce Santa's visit at the Senior Center.  I buy fudge and my mother's peanut brittle.

The Elks Club.  The bar covered in these.

The ceiling covered with this.

The town cemetery.  Town kids visiting and playing in on and around their brother and cousins graves.  So refreshing to see how death was not such a foreign concept to this group.

Is This Irony?

Not that I have a philosophical difference with them but I'm not one to own a smartphone.  I've railed against what they've become now long enough that for me to have a one would be quite comical.

An old friend of mine, Kit, gets a hold of me recently about a job.  He's been a senior art director for just about every one of the big tech companies in the bay area for the past twenty years.

I signed a shitload of documents for the company Kit is now working for, which I didn't pay any attention to but I'm pretty sure a NDA was one of them.

The job and it's a real sweet job by the way, is to shoot stuff for this company who shall not be named with their top of the line smartphone.....how funny is that?
The gave me one.  Shit.  Well, for sure I'm not activating the phone.  I can use it just as a camera and nothing more.

I do get to play with my favorite rock.  I only brought one rock with me in the move from Dogpatch SF to Dogtown Oakland and this is it.

The more wires on the studio floor, the funner the job.

A Most Dis-functional Band

Cary, John and I have been getting together for years, years I tell you, to play music.  We still don't have one song down.  Not one.  There's lots to do before we get down to pulling out the instruments.  There's eating, drinking, listening to what's coming out of the speakers, bunch of laughing, angry words, finger pointing, kevetching (did I spell that right?).  Ok...and then comes what do you want to play, I dunno, what do you want to play, I dunno what should we play, how bout Dirty Old Town, I'm tired of that, let's do some obscure ten minute English ballad, eye rolling, no let's do Natural Woman, John, you sing that this time, I can't remember the words, ok, Cary, you sing it, I'm not feeling that tonight.

Well, let's open that bottle of scotch then, maybe that will help.

That helps, but not for the music.  It sure helps in other ways though.

And then the tuning of the guitars start.  Oh Lord, help me here.  They can tune their guitars ad infinitum.
And tuning.
And tuning.

Then we actually start to play something and stop.  Can't remember the words, or the chords or the key.

So we pour some more.  That helps, but not the music.

We go out to Cary's back porch to catch some air, maybe watch the sun go down over Twin Peaks.  Let the Coca Cola sign let out a sigh and run through it's little light show.

Let's play one of your songs Cary.  Let's do "Irony."  Cary is one hell of a song writer and so we do "Irony" and almost make it to the very end but we end in a huff.  We have a hard time ending songs in a meaningful way.
Cary jumps up waving his arms when I start to complain about how we end songs

We get in a groove, do some jams.  They peter out.

John and John's beard.

Cary decides he needs to tell us about a wedding he went to up in Willits.  Complete with a phone slide show.  Man, have we regressed as a species with looking at photos on phones now.  So sad.

Well, that about wraps up the night.  Five hours, maybe four songs total.  Next time, we'll have forgotten how we did those four and re-invent them.
But damn.  Hardly anything better then when we do connect on something and so we will come back and try it again.