Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Today, my plan was to go out and see an art exhibit, because my friend has some work in it.  I was quite looking forward to it, because I usually just see her at the poetry readings and, while she is a very nice person and her poetry is interesting, I’ve never seen any of her artwork.  I’m not even sure if it’s paintings or some sort of weird installation art, which is not my favorite stuff, but that’s not the point.
Anyway, walked out from the Metro station and down the street till the end, where I came to what I thought was the address, but it was an automobile dealership.
So, nothing for it but to head home.
Checked the address, and I had had it wrong.  It was 34 Kolbenova, not 3 Kolbenova.  So, had some lunch and went back.  Now, Kolbenova is not a neighborhood I get to often.  Actually, it’s not a neighborhood anybody goes to often.  There are a lot of old factories with windows busted out which, come to think of it, bears a bit of similarity to Karlin when we moved in, 15 years ago.  I thought “If I had money, this would be a good neighborhood to buy into now.  Nowhere to go but up.”
Found 34, and it is a beauty salon.  Well, fuck.  But, there was a large gap right next to it, so I walked around behind the building.  There was an old truck painted all white, like windows and all, and there was a sign that said ‘Art is better than nothing,’ and there were 4 big billboards up against a brick wall, with a lawn in front of them.  No common theme.  One was geometric, lots of green, yellow and pink ovals, looked like pills.  One was little girls, naked, riding on unicorns, in black and white.  One was concentric circles, kind of a Hippie Mandala, and the 4th was like ’50s guy holding a bowling ball, or maybe a ballon, and saying ‘Welcome to Dream World.’  Still didn’t see a gallery.
A bit further on I saw a sign that said ‘Permanent Beer Fest’ and walked in that direction, but a security guard yelled at me.  Maybe he was a security guard.  Maybe he was a guy that just liked yelling at people.  Anyway, as I was walking away from there, I saw a younger couple and asked them and they pointed me in the right direction.

The ‘gallery’ was in a derelict building, and I knew it was the right place because the artist’s names were written on red tape saying which floor they were on so I went up to the first floor to see my friend’s work.  It was the biggest, emptiest warehouse you’ve ever seen.  I followed the arrows, and came to a locked door.  The other floors were the same.
Well, I contacted her and I’ll go see it another time, when it’s open, I hope, but it was an interesting neighborhood and an interesting experience and that’s what I love about Prague.  Even when you don’t find what you’re looking for, you find something.

I didn’t really want to write about whiny, little, rich kid Brett Kavanaugh two days in a row but it’s the only thing anybody wants to talk about, so here we go.
It seems like a bit of a litmus test.  Some of the men I know are rushing to Kavanaugh’s defense, and it’s pretty much the ones I expected to.  Men who often talk about how oppressed and discriminated against white males are because everybody talks about how we shouldn’t discriminate against anybody else.  The thing is, if you are white, and male, and poor, Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh will shit all over you, too.
Of course, women are almost unanimous in their contempt for him, and believe Christine Blasey Ford’s story without hesitation.  I think that’s because it’s not at all an uncommon story.  There’s nothing hard to believe about it.  There are lots of guys who pull this shit.
There’s a great photo making the rounds, a single still shot from the hearing, and every woman in the room is looking at him like he just pooped in his pants during Thanksgiving dinner at their grandmother’s house – and these were supposed to be women supporting him!  His wife came closest to a supportive expression, and she just looked hollow eyed, empty, as if she was sedated, which she might well have been.
There was the 11-10 vote to send it to the Senate, and then came Jeff Flake’s last minute move to request one week for the FBI to investigate.  It could be that he had  a last minute attack of conscience after those ladies corralled him  in the elevator – those two are true heroines of democracy, in my opinion – but I doubt it.  He’s a Republican.  He has no conscience.  And he could have ended Kavanaugh’s chances today, just by switching his vote.  So, I think it was more of an “Uh oh, better cover my ass” move, after the confrontation in the elevator.
Anyway, it’s something.  I hope the pressure keeps up, I hope the FBI finds some shit (but I don’t really trust them any more than I trust Republicans), I hope that the Supreme Court seat stays open until after the mid-terms, and I hope that the mid-terms significantly changes the make-up of congress.
That might be a lot of hope, but that’s O.K.  It doesn’t cost money to hope.

Well, Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony was about what I expected.  She did well.  She delivered facts, and she was pretty much emotionally controlled.  Now, Kavanaugh’s on and hoo boy, it’s a shit show.
Durbin nailed him pretty good trying to get him to accept an FBI investigation (and he kept changing the subject), Lindsey Graham went sort of nuts, Orrin Hatch referred to Ford as ‘an attractive witness,’ proving that he does not really understand what’s going on at all, and it’s all pretty horrible and unbelievable, but Kavanaugh has not done himself any favors.  By painting himself as a victim, blubbering about how much he loves going to church, and coming up with alternate definitions of ‘devil’s triangle,’ ‘Renate alumnus,’ and ‘FFFFFourth of July,’ he just comes across as an extremely dishonest, and seriously obnoxious individual.  Not at all the serious, sober minded kind you would expect to sit on the Supreme Court.
I’d certainly be happier if they were going after him on the perjury charges (maybe they could add a few more after today), or just for being a crappy, knee jerk right wing judge, but I’ll be happy if he goes down.
I certainly think Mark Judge should be subpoenaed.

We are always in the springtime of Utopia.  That is not to say that it is always springtime in Utopia.  That would be a silly thing to say.  If and when we ever create a Utopia, it will be on planet Earth, because that is the planet we live on, perhaps the only one we can live on, certainly the only one we can live on within 4 or 5 light years, which is a long, long way indeed.  Planet Earth has 4 seasons, maybe 6, maybe more, it all depends on how you define a season, but they all have their own kind of beauty and Utopia is possible within any one of them, or across all of them.
When I say ‘we are always in the springtime of Utopia’ I mean there is never a day when we do not see some aspects of it.  Every day we see examples of the generosity of the human spirit, of love, of sharing, of self-sacrifice.  Every day we see brilliance in the arts, and advances in science.
The idea of a utopian society has been around for a very long time, at least over a hundred years.  Some try to trace it back to Plato, and his book The Republic, which is at least an attempt to describe a perfect society, but it’s one which includes slavery, and accepts as a matter of course that the Republic will always be at war.  It was the times, I suppose.  Both of those things were deeply embedded aspects of society, so much so that Plato couldn’t imagine a world without them.
I guess you could say it was a very early springtime, with patches of snow still  on the ground.

Just got back from the semi-regular, generally bi-monthly, multi-lingual poetry reading at Ad Astra, which I don’t find to be an ideal site for a poetry reading because it’s still a café, and even though we can pull a thin partition wall partway across so it’s kind of a private room, you  can still hear the people at the more boisterous tables.  Despite that, it seems to be working out.  There was a good crowd there, that is, some old, many new.

There was a new guy who had written some intense, urban angst type poems about different Prague neighborhoods and it was pretty good, but then he lost me with his “I love nature so much I would literally like to have sex with it” poem.
There was the cute, young, Finnish hippie girl who read a poem by a friend of hers in Finnish, which of course I don’t understand a word of, and there was a point in the poem where she made a sound, it was somewhere between a bleat and the honking of a horn.  It was clearly not a word in Finnish, but it was also clearly an intended part of the poem, sort of an international expression that we  all could understand, and that made me laugh out loud.
There was a new American guy who had a poem about a teacher standing in front of the class and I am not sure my interpretation was correct, but he seemed to be describing the teachers positioning in the classroom as part of a satanic ritual.  I quite liked the poem.
And I read four new poems, which will be in my next book, which is still a ways off.