Homeless Village

Yo Erik,

I found something unique here in Portland. There is a homeless community calling themselves, "Dignity Village."

I have not actually gone to the village, and just to note: the homeless population is high in the Portland area.

Anyways, Dignity Village seems interesting. First, they have thier own website, and all of you should check it out. Here is their open remarks:

"On December 16th of the year 2000, a group of eight homeless men and women pitched five tents on public land and Camp Dignity, later to become Dignity Village, was born. We came out of the doorways of Portland's streets, out from under the bridges, from under the bushes of public parks, we came openly with nothing and no longer a need to hide as Portland's inhumane and Draconian camping ban had just been overturned on two constitutional grounds. We came armed with a vision of a better future for ourselves and for all of Portland, a vision of a green, sustainable urban village where we can live in peace and improve not only the condition of our own lives but the quality of life in Portland in general. We came in from the cold of a December day and we refuse to go back to the way things were."

They also have a Poetry and Writings section and there is a white rastafarian dude named Jack Tafari that has some interesting stuff.

I'll have to visit one fine day. And give my own interpretation of the Homeless Village.

Later,

The Chris Man

Simply A Long Blog, but hopefully good

Hello All,

Well, North Korea has come out of the closet. Their Vice Foreign Minister has proclaimed that there nuclear proliferation is simply a deterrent, and of course, simply self-defense. Here is the previous Nuke Blog Stats:

"According to information compiled by the Nuclear Threat Initiative, an organization devoted to monitoring the status of the nuclear threat worldwide, nine countries had nukes by April 2004. The nine countries are listed below. Each figure includes the approximate number of both tactical and strategic bombs (nuclear and thermonuclear, or "big" and "really humongous").

Country Warheads

United States 10,455
Russia 8,400
China 400
France 350
Israel* 250
United Kingdom 200
India** 65
Pakistan** 40
North Korea*** 8
TOTAL 20,168

Well, I wonder if this will be brought up in the Presidential Debate? I have been meaning to bring up a book written by George Farah called, "No Debate." It details the control the top two political parties have over the "Debate," and how it is actually not even a debate anymore, due to all of the systems of control. It is simply a facade. It is suprising how much of our history is rittled with government lies and cover-ups. Just last night, I was watching a PBS show called History Detectives, (good show I might add), and they were trying to find out if a certain pair of propellers off the coast of Maine were, in fact, propellers to a German U-Boat (853 to be exact), that sunk a US navy ship off the eastern coastline. The amazing part of the story is that the ship was not officially recorded sunk by the U-Boat, but by a "boiler accident." The case was reopened in 2001 and just proved presently that it was sunk by U-Boat 853...(and the propellers were that of 853 :-)

The point is: I find it amazing how our government/military takes over the press during war time, and I wonder how much we don't actually know about US Foreign Relations.

Oh by the way, I also just learned of another historical story mirroring our (US') situation in Iraq. The Roman Empire, in 70A.D., handled a "holy war," with the Jewish dubbed Zealots in a much more viscious way than us, (as far as we know now :-). This Jewish Zealot sect, which can be traced back to Simon the Zealot, (one of the 12 Disciples of Christ--he converted), was a terrorist group, that hated the Romans with a distinct passion, mirroring the Al Qaeda we read, or watch about on TV. Anyways, eventually these "pests" were eradicated by the Romans after Soldiers stamped out over 900 Jewish Villages. This makes our war look very P.C.

Okay info-share time is over :-)

Kris, just to let you know, I got the package and thanks a ton. Thanks also for the third party book. It looks very informative. Better than the other two. To clue in Sarah and Erik, Kris sent back 2 Grammar books of mine and a third of his own. Exciting!

Erik, Whittier sounds like a reoccurring dream I have. Very strange. I have this dream where I am in a building just like the one you described. I am not sure why I understand that that is so, but I know that this community lives under one roof, and any source of light is bleak. All I ever remember is wandering around in my boxers looking for the communal shower, naturally.

Sarah, missing out on Bob. Stink. I told Laura about it, since she lived 40 minutes away, and she had no idea who he even is. Laura is definitely a product of a strange brew. She is full of suprises. I digress......I am curious. Would you actually go up to him in such an environment? I have been subject to celebrity environments thanks to "Runner" gigs at the Fargodome, and one I was told not to be "fanny" or I would be fired, and two, it just seems wrong to fall into that gap. I did get to talk with Billy Joel only because he was very grounded and during his break in the performance he came and chatted with the production crew. I exchanged words with Max Weinberg, when The Boss came to the Dome. I was just walking over to the stage when he suddenly appeared. I felt compelled to say something because he was staring at me, so I looked at him and said, "Sup Max!" as I gave the ole head nod, and he exchanged the "sup" with a smirk. very interesting.

Well, I better go, but first a quick Oregon update: I work at Target--the pay sucks, so I am looking for another job. I applied for a tutoring position which pays very well and also a warehouse and delivery gig at a Building Materials company. It pays decent, and I have warehouse experience. I am thankful for the Target gig, but it is only temporary, due to the eventual lack of means to support my wife going through school. Also, I am thinking of returning to Grad school. I mentioned going into a Masters of Divinity program before, but did not follow through simply because Laura is going through the Grad process, so I wanted to support her. I honestly believe that I am being called, (if you will), into the Pastoral setting. Possibly a youth pastor. Ever since I was in High School this lingering feeling has drawn me to that position. Frankly, I have been scared to pursue it. But I will stop here and elaborate later.

Good tidings to all,

The Chris Man

hey chris, like your poem, its concrete, and i like that. you're really missin out not readin sk some may say he writes schlock, but i say he only wrote schlock in the beginning. anyways, a tired argument i know. things sound like they're going well for you, whats your town like? is it like the town in the goonies? are there any haunted houses? any weird history happen there? I like findin out about that kinda stuff when i move places. There is always somethin crazy. For instance, I went to a town here in Alaska called Whittier. Now there is a novel waiting to happen. I bet if all four of us went there we could come home and write 4 completely different novels. The thing is this.

Whittier is a town that was created on the site of an old military base from the 1940's. Everyone in the town lives in one apartment highrise. There is a huge abandoned building called the Buckner building that in the 60's was home to up to 1200 military personell. It was the largest building in alaska for a long time. Now it is the largest eyesore in alaska, cracking concrete walls, a thousand broken windows, it just sits there falling apart. Whittier itself looks like a post apocolyptic commune, neglected machinery sits rusting scattered around the small town. Besides the Buckner building there are a number of other smaller buildings that have long been abandoned. The only way into the town is through one of the longest railroad tunnels in north america. thats right, railroad tunnel, it opens to automobile use on the half hour on the way in and on the hour on the way out. This isn't the only tunnel in the town. Rumor has it that there are tunnels leading out into the uninhabited mountains behind the Buckner building. There is also a tunnel from the Buckner building down to the harbor, and a tunnel from the apartment complex to the elementary/high school.

I had to go to whittier to work on some boats there for a couple days. The company put me up in the apartment complex. This is where the weird stuff comes in. Think of this, a whole town of 200 people living in one building. It houses the 'whittier church' a general store, and of course a large gym like room that serves as the city dump. There is not 1 private home in the rest of the town. The only bar in town is accessible by a four story flight of a fire escape which the patrons must stumble down at 3 oclock when the bar closes. The place looks like an apocolyptic commune, complete with the decaying remnants of a grander past. weird i'm tellin ya.

anyways, I gotta go,
talk to you all later.

erik

Never read King before

Hello all,

Well, I can honestly say that I have never indulged in any works by King. But I am glad you are glad to have a good read for the future.

I switched up my posting idea. I am going to post a shorter poem I just wrote, instead of the Revelation poem, which I sent to Kris. It needs work anyhow.

I work at Target now.....It stinks, but I get paid. I have an interview tomorrow (thurs) for a tutoring position with a youth organization here in the Portland area. I hope to get this position, so I feel as though I am contributing to society, rather the Target route....issshh

Well here is the poem:

A Grocery Setting: Father and Son
By Chris Lindgren

Father and son walking
hand-in-hand.
I admire them from afar,
as I squeeze a peach, in
the palm of my hand.
The son’s arm raised
above his head, guided
as to where to go.
My eyes see an honest
peach—
perfect.
The father, upon closer
inspection, wears a blemish.
I read on the front, “Hustler,”
On his back, as they pass,
“Relax, It’s just Sex.”

My fingers graze over
skin and youthful fuzz—
I find it to be bruised.

Sweet!!

i knew the final installment was soon (dt series) but not this soon! I am just finishing up the Wastelands for about the 50th time. I haven't even picked up wolves of the calla yet, i have a whole chunk of excellent reading ahead of me this winter!!

talk to you all soon

erik

Happy Birthday Stephen!

Just wanted to send out some warm birthday wishes to Stephen King. What makes this birthday all the more special is the release of «The Dark Tower» (book seven in the series of the same title). Finally, we have an end to this wretched thing.

Also, the original Star Wars trilogy was released on DVD the other day. My brother-in-law bought it and it has some previews of Darth (Anakin) - Obiwan fight. That ought to be a good one. I don't know how I feel about Anakin doing the Darth voice/breath though.

Hope it all goes well for you kids.

hello everyone,

i have been guilty of the crime that on my families blog we call "lurking" in which i faithfully check the blog eveyrday but never write. i guess one reason is this. I've never been very good at poetry, and in fact know little about what makes one poem good and one bad. Throughout college there were times when i would just have to take the professors word that yes, this was a good poem. So I hesitate to comment on poems, because all i know to say really is this is good, or this is bad. I've often thought that if I were chums with Cummings or Ginsberg I probably would have told them their poetry sucked and deprived the world of a couple of good ole yarns (and one kick as Rage Against the Machine rendition).

anyways, i am here, and doing well. I come back to nodak on oct 4th or 5th or something, and then leave the 6th on a roadtrip with some buddies to the redwoods in california for a camping trip. I have a phone interview on wednesday for a job i applied to in Steamboat Springs colorado. I scratched the Hawaii idea for a winter snowboarding instead...

It sure was a great feeling a couple weeks ago when i realized that school was indeed afoot in more civilized places of the world and that I was not attending! damn, nice. Kris, We should get together for a drink (are you 21 yet?) when i'm back in nd...I will be back around the 17th of oct. until the beginning of november or so.
Chris, things sound exciting for you. I bet theres some kick ass snowboarding in oregon, i hope you take advantage while you can...(before the kids come i mean)
Sarah, i am sure you doing fine, coming down with communicable diseases and complaining about doing terrible on tests that you ace. heh

anyways, i truly apologize for not writing more, i have been reading and love to hear from everyone.

take care

erik

Well, if anyone is reading, enjoy!

Hey all,

If anyone is still out there in the aaa world, I hope you enjoy these two poems that I already sent off to Kris via email.

I hope School and Alaska are going well. I just read an interesting forgotten law in Alaska: It is illegal to push a moose out of a flying airplane.......interesting. With that said, Erik, you have been forewarned!

Well here are the poems; enjoy, comment, or just sit on it :-)

1st Poem:

America, How Beautifully Boiled in Hotdog Water
By Chris Lindgren

America’s within a salty sea
And see fishers of men cooking hotdogs
While beatifying the smooth skinned meal,
Breaking bread to insert well-fared Oscar

From sea to shining sea.

How beautiful our brotherhood is boil’d.
Wickedly Vivid onliners think so.
So should you, clandestine father with son,
Googling, “Wicked ways to use hotdogs,”

From sea to shining sea.

A blind man once sung of America.
He saw spacious skies, liberty in law,
Purple mountains above the fruited plain.
But I see hotdogs buoyantly bouncing
From sea to shining sea.

America, America,

Is it his grace that God still sheds on thee?
Or is it justly, just fishers of men?
Steaming dogs they eat, reaped from the water
Thou salty the water smells, impure it be
From sea to shining sea.

2nd Poem:

Not Bitter, but Not

By Chris Lindgren after S. Crane

A woman licking a pillar,
salty and plump,
procured of a man
accusing—
she says:
I like it because it is bitter—
he says:
I am not bitter, though
you should try my heart.

Ms. Uste. (Yes, lame title.)

Gang, here's the "rape" poem that I previously alluded to. I don't really remember what I meant by the final two lines, so you can just disregard them. There was a point to it, but I don't remember. Some word choices might be awkward, this is because they have some multiple meanings which have developed through misuse. We had an exercise out of a usage book... We took problematical words and put them in poems. (i.e. - comprised = "embraced" - thrust (obvious sexual connotation) - fixed = "hard, rigid" - most unique = "most" is needless here)

- - - - - - - - - -

She said she felt compromised
(when he comprised! but
as a man, he surmised
that she could care quite less)
even though tears were begging in her eyes.

Taking this ill-thought consent and
enthused, he disregarded her.
Fixed within his haughty glare
And fixed, the thrust he utilized

As conqueror, he
organ-ized.

Her words unstable seemed to creep,
“I will surely die,” they came muttered
inaudibly,
“He shall surely fall to sleep
because he couldn’t care less
while I weep.”

And how she thought herself most unique!

A man is unable to think,
they must all act as one.

I was just typing up an assignment for Sullivan's class and my computer pulled the spontaneous reset action. Unlike the last time (when I was working on Chris's Dis- poem), my work was not destroyed this time. (That's because it was actually written out, and not in the comments portion.) Whew. I nearly had a heart attack. I wanted to scream.

But now all I can think about how handy that option is. Had I lost everything I think I would've just called it a night. I now have renewed energy to live.

Chris, I like the silhouette picture. Really cool. The woolly branches are also really cool. I remember seeing some things like that. When I was in Argentina, Joleen, Cornélie and I went hiking in the Tierra del Fuego National Park (...in Tierra del Fuego, of course). Amazing. Beautiful. Oregon must be great. The view from your photos looks spectacular.

Sarah, weird about Alice in Wonderland. I know very little of the plot, as I have never consciously watched the movie or read the book. Sounds like an interesting little detail though. I'm thinking that a lot of writers would probably be likely to do the same thing. They all impart some type of bias (their voice) into their writing anyway.

Classes are going well for me. I'm keeping busy. Amy's class actually isn't too bad yet. I'm going to attribute that to not actually having to write anything yet. We had to write a poem for class today about misusing words. It took me about 20 minutes in total to write it, I will post it on here in a few days, if I remember. It's not too good, and there are a lot of puns that you guys probably won't get, unless you've read the "little book" by Strunk and White. My poem is about a sexual encounter between a man and woman, I guess you could say it's a quasi-rape poem.

Salting brought up an interesting point today in class. He said something about language not applying to logicical, mathematical thought. Sullivan was talking about life as applied to logic and scientific thought in Brave New World. I guess it never fails, we talk about what we know, and it all ends up being related in some form or another.

If you guys haven't read BNW, that's my book recommendation for the week. I'm going to start putting my recommendations up weekly. My previous books recommendation that I never formerly posted was Ulysses. You must read that, friends.

Oh yeah, just found this out today... Luc Chinwongs is a master's student at NDSU now. He's teaching Comp 110. Looks like someone else from our class is hopefully doing something worthwhile now. Perhaps you're not the only hope for us, Sarah, but that doesn't mean that you can start slacking now...

And, Erik, I trust you're having a good time, you lucky bastard.

Another Poem!

Hey All,

I've been in the poetry mood as of late, so here is another one for your eyes....if you choose to read it :-) It's a free verse poem, but the "Eloi, Eloi lama sabachthani" did not quite format correctly, but it works...... Enjoy!

Infidelity Gaits Across the Chatroom Floor
By Chris Lindgren

Here, I do not move, or quake, or tremble if you prefer.
My feet meet none while fingers fly and mouths hinge open openly.
Here my blind feet tread over the sea of Beezlebubbling ideas.

Eloi!

Here, I hear Ginsberg97 howling of the demise of America’s gaiety, while
My eyes find bannered above, Kerouac.com soliciting Black Jack T’s, just as
My mistress plus_amour coyly types up, “14F SoCal So fun ;-);-).”

Eloi!

Here, I walk over our children lying, coveted with perverse blankets of lies, and
Here, I ask why adults feel secure with Mr. McAfee watching their backdoor? But
There, squirms the worm, the purveyor lies, the elymas, the Bar-Jesus.

lama

Here, my fear ferments within cocked fists, fisting in and out of the abyss, while
Here, Gen-X’d Booming Babes search everywhere but anywhere for love, and
Here dexterous, sex-stamping tips tip-toe over Baal-esque, ASCII’d bodies.

sabachthani?