Sunday, June 28, 2009
Monday, June 15, 2009
Open Letter to Rachel Maddow on Gavin Newsom
May 25, 2009
Dear Rachel Maddow.
We love you. As queers of San Francisco/The Mission, we are writing to tell you that we think you are fabulous, smart, inquisitive, thoughtful, and inspiring. We watch your show online with avidity. And, as your fans, we are also offering some constructive feedback.
In your interview with Gavin Newsom, you threw him curveball questions and offered an open platform for his gubernatorial stump speech. We thought you should know better, and have attached some things to ponder when next you and he meet:
Top 10 Reasons Gavin Newsom is a Snake in the Grass and Not Queer-Friendly Even Though He Supports Gay Marriage
10. He slept with his campaign manager’s wife and then cried, “I’m an alcoholic” and checked into rehab a la Michael Richards. We believe in polyamory, but sleeping with your campaign manager’s wife is just shady.
9. He was appointed to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors by self-identified Mayor “Slick” Willie Brown (i.e., he is a product of patronage and nepotism).
8. Same as #9. See Paul Getty oil family.
7. Newsom only did the gay marriage thing at first to appease gay voters in the Castro who played a big role in getting him elected and were pissed when he neglected to mention the gay community when applauding the city’s history in his inauguration speech. (We concede he later really cared about the issue.)
6. In his campaign literature for “Care Not Cash,” Newsom misleadingly cited a New England Journal of Medicine article as proof that people on welfare spend their money on drugs. Its authors sent him a cease and desist order and he was forced to quietly trash thousands of hateful and erroneous campaign flyers.
5. Newsom ran his mayoral campaign on the heels of his successful “Care Not Cash” campaign, which took money out of the pockets of homeless people. While he claims the program has been a success, there are more people homeless than before; participants report panhandling because the program cut their cast benefits to $59/month; and the housing offered by the program was procured largely by displacing other poor people from single-room occupancy hotel rooms in the Tenderloin, where it can be hard to stay off drugs or feel safe for residents.
4. While Newsom is out parading about his success at creating universal healthcare, services are being slashed in the midst of a budget crisis. The economy is not his fault, but he could at least show up to budget hearings.
3. Under his watch, San Francisco was turned into a playground for increasingly rich, white people – the black population is dwindling to zero and his policies have sided with private developers time and time again. Now, ugly, expensive lofts sit empty while the exodus of people of color continues, evictions soar, and homelessness grows.
2. If you observe closely, you will see that Gavin Newsom is in love with the idea of himself as a leader, but he does not actually effectively lead.
1. Gavin Newsom wears excessive amounts of Pomade. While we like this in butches and drag kings, it makes him look like a creep.
Yours,
The Residents of Richlandia
p.s. If you don't believe us, check out the S.F. Bay Guardian's article, The Two Newsoms
Dear Rachel Maddow.
We love you. As queers of San Francisco/The Mission, we are writing to tell you that we think you are fabulous, smart, inquisitive, thoughtful, and inspiring. We watch your show online with avidity. And, as your fans, we are also offering some constructive feedback.
In your interview with Gavin Newsom, you threw him curveball questions and offered an open platform for his gubernatorial stump speech. We thought you should know better, and have attached some things to ponder when next you and he meet:
Top 10 Reasons Gavin Newsom is a Snake in the Grass and Not Queer-Friendly Even Though He Supports Gay Marriage
10. He slept with his campaign manager’s wife and then cried, “I’m an alcoholic” and checked into rehab a la Michael Richards. We believe in polyamory, but sleeping with your campaign manager’s wife is just shady.
9. He was appointed to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors by self-identified Mayor “Slick” Willie Brown (i.e., he is a product of patronage and nepotism).
8. Same as #9. See Paul Getty oil family.
7. Newsom only did the gay marriage thing at first to appease gay voters in the Castro who played a big role in getting him elected and were pissed when he neglected to mention the gay community when applauding the city’s history in his inauguration speech. (We concede he later really cared about the issue.)
6. In his campaign literature for “Care Not Cash,” Newsom misleadingly cited a New England Journal of Medicine article as proof that people on welfare spend their money on drugs. Its authors sent him a cease and desist order and he was forced to quietly trash thousands of hateful and erroneous campaign flyers.
5. Newsom ran his mayoral campaign on the heels of his successful “Care Not Cash” campaign, which took money out of the pockets of homeless people. While he claims the program has been a success, there are more people homeless than before; participants report panhandling because the program cut their cast benefits to $59/month; and the housing offered by the program was procured largely by displacing other poor people from single-room occupancy hotel rooms in the Tenderloin, where it can be hard to stay off drugs or feel safe for residents.
4. While Newsom is out parading about his success at creating universal healthcare, services are being slashed in the midst of a budget crisis. The economy is not his fault, but he could at least show up to budget hearings.
3. Under his watch, San Francisco was turned into a playground for increasingly rich, white people – the black population is dwindling to zero and his policies have sided with private developers time and time again. Now, ugly, expensive lofts sit empty while the exodus of people of color continues, evictions soar, and homelessness grows.
2. If you observe closely, you will see that Gavin Newsom is in love with the idea of himself as a leader, but he does not actually effectively lead.
1. Gavin Newsom wears excessive amounts of Pomade. While we like this in butches and drag kings, it makes him look like a creep.
Yours,
The Residents of Richlandia
p.s. If you don't believe us, check out the S.F. Bay Guardian's article, The Two Newsoms
My Vision for the United States in 102 words
Sent to then President-Elect Obama's vision page at www.change.gov/, November 11, 2008.
100% of young black and Latino men graduate high school. Prisons and jails close for want of boarders. University rolls swell. Needle exchange programs are federally funded. The rights and dignity of drug users are respected. Public health and public safety work hand in hand. Drug treatment is available on demand. Housing is affordable and accessible. As my State's hepatitis coordinator, I receive calls from people who are no longer uninsured, and who, for the first time, have access to health care for hepatitis B & C. And, while I choose not to marry, as a gay person, it is my right.
100% of young black and Latino men graduate high school. Prisons and jails close for want of boarders. University rolls swell. Needle exchange programs are federally funded. The rights and dignity of drug users are respected. Public health and public safety work hand in hand. Drug treatment is available on demand. Housing is affordable and accessible. As my State's hepatitis coordinator, I receive calls from people who are no longer uninsured, and who, for the first time, have access to health care for hepatitis B & C. And, while I choose not to marry, as a gay person, it is my right.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
springtime turns into summer, 2009
Chinatown, San Francisco, Summer 2009
Sacramento, Springtime, 2009 
Holly Hill Park, San Francisco, Spring, 2009
More on Marilynne Robinson
At an event of City Arts and Lectures, October 27, 2008, at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco, I had the pleasure of asking Marilynne Robinson this question:
“My favorite line from Housekeeping is, ‘When she had been married a little while, she concluded that love was half a longing of a kind that possession did nothing to mitigate.’ Can you talk about longing and solitude in all of your books?”
Here was her response: “Hm. Interesting. I really think. I mean, one of the reasons that I write is that it feels to me as if there is a, you know, there is a frustrated richness in experience. And I know that that’s kind of. I think that we know more than we can convey, that we hope for more than the world can satisfy, that we are in a certain sense creatures of greater depth than the world can answer to.
And that’s why I like string theory ha ha. I mean, the idea that science can actually affirm in its way the possibility that there is a greater sort of depth and density in existence itself than our senses allow us to apprehend. This, to me, feels deeply consistent with other intuitions that I have about the world.
I think that one of the things that is interesting about any art, and about the reception of any art, is that when you listen to beautiful music or when you read a moving book it’s almost as if it awakens recognition in you, as if the emotion that it stirs pre-exists your experience of it, but you would never know that if it were not for the art.
And so it’s like there’s some paradox about our being very deep creatures, very emotionally rich creatures, who nevertheless are dependent on one another for access to what is most interior to ourselves. So, longing seems to me a sort of metaphor for a much deeper state of attention, and expectation almost, that people live with continuously and never satisfy.”
“My favorite line from Housekeeping is, ‘When she had been married a little while, she concluded that love was half a longing of a kind that possession did nothing to mitigate.’ Can you talk about longing and solitude in all of your books?”
Here was her response: “Hm. Interesting. I really think. I mean, one of the reasons that I write is that it feels to me as if there is a, you know, there is a frustrated richness in experience. And I know that that’s kind of. I think that we know more than we can convey, that we hope for more than the world can satisfy, that we are in a certain sense creatures of greater depth than the world can answer to.
And that’s why I like string theory ha ha. I mean, the idea that science can actually affirm in its way the possibility that there is a greater sort of depth and density in existence itself than our senses allow us to apprehend. This, to me, feels deeply consistent with other intuitions that I have about the world.
I think that one of the things that is interesting about any art, and about the reception of any art, is that when you listen to beautiful music or when you read a moving book it’s almost as if it awakens recognition in you, as if the emotion that it stirs pre-exists your experience of it, but you would never know that if it were not for the art.
And so it’s like there’s some paradox about our being very deep creatures, very emotionally rich creatures, who nevertheless are dependent on one another for access to what is most interior to ourselves. So, longing seems to me a sort of metaphor for a much deeper state of attention, and expectation almost, that people live with continuously and never satisfy.”
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