I learn something every few weeks... for instance, I went to Alcatraz and learned about the Alcatraz Indian Occupation. (That page, and the film they show at the museum, unfortunately leave out the proclamation, which is hilarious.)

And my all-time favorite escape story, from the island's days as a military prison: four men got away (three for good) by forging a letter for their release, and got five hundred dollars of beer money in the process. (See "Escape from Island by Forgery")

The prison itself is worth seeing. I liked that they haven't tried to make it look just as it was back in the day—some rooms have a few recreated props, but many are abandoned or are being dug up for earthquake-proofing; down the hill from the cellblocks, there are heaps of ruins of demolished housing that have sat there untouched for 30 years. The haunted-house atmosphere comes mostly from the very skillfully done audio tour, which is full of background voices and shuffling and clanking. (The audio tour was created by Antenna Theater, which started as a teeny California troupe, somehow ended up doing this thing for Alcatraz, and has now spawned an international audio guide company.) It's not that big a place, and it's not built with the kind of grandiosity or inhuman precision you'd expect if it were built now; it just looks like a sturdy piece of heavy equipment totally devoid of moral concerns.

It was a clear, hot day. You could see the city and towns on all sides of the bay, and sailboats all over the water—unable to sail anywhere, the air was so still—which is what the prisoners would see from the dining hall. I didn't see any of the pelicans the island was named for.

Looking at photos from the 1969 occupation, I loved how matter-of-factly the Indian activists moved into these forbidding spaces and started just living there and putting them to good use; then, when they decided there might be spirits there, they moved a little ways away and just left those places alone. At the museum, there's a group portrait that I wish I could find a copy of—at least a hundred people of all ages just sitting in folding chairs in the cellblock and leaning over the balconies, looking like "Well, here we are."

HILLARY GOODRIDGE & others v. DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC HEALTH & another

As of April 11, 2001, the date they filed their complaint, the plaintiffs Gloria Bailey, sixty years old, and Linda Davies, fifty-five years old, had been in a committed relationship for thirty years; the plaintiffs Maureen Brodoff, forty-nine years old, and Ellen Wade, fifty-two years old, had been in a committed relationship for twenty years and lived with their twelve year old daughter; the plaintiffs Hillary Goodridge, forty-four years old, and Julie Goodridge, forty-three years old, had been in a committed relationship for thirteen years and lived with their five year old daughter; the plaintiffs Gary Chalmers, thirty-five years old, and Richard Linnell, thirty-seven years old, had been in a committed relationship for thirteen years and lived with their eight year old daughter and Richard's mother; the plaintiffs Heidi Norton, thirty-six years old, and Gina Smith, thirty-six years old, had been in a committed relationship for eleven years and lived with their two sons, ages five years and one year; the plaintiffs Michael Horgan, forty-one years old, and David Balmelli, forty-one years old, had been in a committed relationship for seven years; and the plaintiffs David Wilson, fifty-seven years old, and Robert Compton, fifty-one years old, had been in a committed relationship for four years and had cared for David's mother in their home after a serious illness until she died.
. . . .
The benefits accessible only by way of a marriage license are enormous, touching nearly every aspect of life and death. The department states that "hundreds of statutes" are related to marriage and to marital benefits. With no attempt to be comprehensive, we note that some of the statutory benefits conferred by the Legislature on those who enter into civil marriage include, as to property: joint Massachusetts income tax filing . . . automatic rights to inherit the property of a deceased spouse who does not leave a will . . . entitlement to wages owed to a deceased employee . . . the right to share the medical policy of one's spouse . . . preferential options under the Commonwealth's pension system . . . access to veterans' spousal benefits and preferences . . . financial protections for spouses of certain Commonwealth employees (fire fighters, police officers, prosecutors, among others) killed in the performance of duty . . .
. . . .
For decades, indeed centuries, in much of this country (including Massachusetts) no lawful marriage was possible between white and black Americans. . . . . In this case, as in Perez and Loving, a statute deprives individuals of access to an institution of fundamental legal, personal, and social significance—the institution of marriage—because of a single trait . . . . . The marriage ban works a deep and scarring hardship on a very real segment of the community for no rational reason.
. . . .
We declare that barring an individual from the protections, benefits, and obligations of civil marriage solely because that person would marry a person of the same sex violates the Massachusetts Constitution. We vacate the summary judgment for the department. We remand this case to the Superior Court for entry of judgment consistent with this opinion. Entry of judgment shall be stayed for 180 days to permit the Legislature to take such action as it may deem appropriate in light of this opinion. See, e.g., Michaud v. Sheriff of Essex County, 390 Mass. 523, 535-536 (1983).

So ordered.

(more)

(and more)

Once in a conflict, we are moved from the abstract to the real, from the mythic to the sensory. When this move takes place we have nothing to do with a world not at war. When we return home we view the society around us from the end of a very long tunnel. There they still believe.
—from War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges

. . . she needed a victory, or the appearance of a victory, so badly that she chose to ignore what was coming.
—from "Losers" on Body and Soul

I'm easily amused: the Cleveland Plain Dealer runs a news item (edited down from an AP story) about an alleged new audio message from Saddam Hussein, and mistakenly(?) attributes the message to Senator Tom Daschle:

The voice in the recording resembled Saddam's, but was huskier and the speaker seemed tired. "The evil ones now find themselves in crisis, and this is God's will for them," said Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat.

And an English-language newspaper in India runs the same story, mis-edited a little differently:

The CIA said it would review the tape for its authenticity. President Bush dismissed the recording. "The evil ones now find themselves in crisis and this is God's will for them," he said.

So I guess I didn't write anything for a couple weeks—I was busy with various things—so sue me.

But today Arnold's Ascension reminded me of Halloween. So here's my story...

my past dumb Halloweens

All Hallows Eve was always one of my favorite holidays, in spite of which nearly every year I completely lame out and do nothing. I think I've only dressed up for it three times as a grown-up. Once, my first year in New York, I went out to see the parade, but missed meeting up with my silver-painted friend because I was throwing together a costume at the last minute—and the costume turned out pretty well, but it was so genuinely disturbing that it kind of ruined the good time of any stranger who glanced at it. Many years later, the only time I ever went to a Halloween party, it was a pretty quiet shindig but there were some pretty good costumes, including a frighteningly talented novelist dressed as a Blue Meanie, and a leading Brooklyn bon vivant wearing a T-shirt and jeans, who said his costume was "a drunk ... who turns into an asshole!" I felt a little stupid since I'd just thrown together a bunch of hats and mustaches and so on at the last minute and claimed I was "The Scarlet Pimpernel, master of disguise."

The last time I went out for Oct. 31 in New York was when my sister came to visit with her Italian sweetie, who had never been there, so we had to go see the crowd. They got strikingly decked out in all kinds of pompoms and antennae and googly eyes. I built a big clunky bird head, and then once we were out in the crowd, I realized that (a) there were 2000% more tourists than there had been 10 years ago, so we couldn't get anywhere near the parade, and (b) wearing a big clunky bird head that you can barely see out of is not so fun when you're crammed into a big crowd.

my new dumb Halloween

So, this year I was kind of excited because surely people have more fun dressing up in San Francisco, and even though the Castro parade is full of rowdy tourists, what the hell. There were no parties on my horizon and my new favorite partner in crime was going to be out of town, so, might as well hit the street. I made a vague plan with Melissa to do so. Of course then I forgot all about it till a couple days before, and then the only idea that came to mind was kind of impractical, to say the least.

It would've been good though, I think: sort of a New Age fantasy Arnold... some kind of heavily altered Schwarzenegger head on top of a fanciful body—tie, tassels, tights, tits, lights, robot parts, one big arm, one skinny arm, and some campaign flyers I had designed, saying in part:

Arnold is All Things to All People... The people of California do not want to know if Arnold is man, woman, or machine—fish or flesh—skinny or distended ("the public doesn't care about figures")—a Republican or a Democrat—a drug user or a drug. The people want someone who will take California in hand and go somewhere with it. In Arnold, we are all one.

Or something like that. Needless to say, this did not happen. On the morning of the 31st, I got a long overdue haircut, then Melissa and I wandered around the Haight for several hours fruitlessly shopping among throngs of other lame-ass procrastinators. Even her much better and much simpler costume idea was not really a half-day kind of thing, and since we're both insanely stubborn, there were no other ideas and we just got pissed off and gave up.

I ended up going out to Oakland to have dinner with another friend who just got back from a long trip, and that was nice. After that I was heading back into town on the BART, and I started thinking, what the hell, I'll just go to the Castro anyway and see stuff.

Then I got on the train. Every drunk teenager in the whole East Bay was on that train, going the same way. They all looked like they'd started the evening pretty early, since this year there was a new no-alcohol rule at the main event. There were a couple of cool costumes, a lot of store-bought stuff, and a whole lot of just plain drunk party kids. I started feeling awfully old, awfully boring, awfully sober and awfully irritable. Pressed up around me in my corner of the train were four of the least unpleasant people on the train—a smartly dressed little circle of friends who seemed honestly full of joy and anticipation for the evening. Unfortunately one of them was 99% unconscious, upright only because there was no room to fall down, and her face kept changing between blissful innocence and about-to-barf. She kept rotating unpredictably while her friends tried to keep an upturned hat in front of her face—it was like vomit roulette.

By the time I got into town, the only person I wanted to see was no one and the only thing I wanted to do was go to sleep, so that's what I did. I vowed to make even more grandiose plans next year and maybe even do them.

BUT...

All I knew about Dia de los Muertos was something about skeletons. Fortunately I didn't have to make much effort to find out, since the Mission District procession goes almost right past my doorstep—and our new next-door neighbors throw a big excellent party before the parade every year.

We dressed up kind of somber/festive, went next door, met people, ate all their food, paid respects at the altar, and joined the crowd out on the street. The Mission being what it is, it was quite a mix. In any 20 square feet of street there were three or four different styles of celebration going on—some loud and colorful, some quiet, some kitschy, some just being there doing nothing. Lots of candles—we had some, and had to protect them like little baby birds from the raindrops that teased us now and then. Unlike Halloween, there seemed to be a lot more people in the procession than onlookers. And the ones with paint on or playing music weren't showing off, they were just doing part of what was called for.

Here and there, something bigger moved through the crowd: a stilt-walker cradling a limp dead doll, and two dancing skeletons with giant heads and hands who pulled people out of line one at a time for a short embrace. I couldn't stop looking at those two (one white, one orange) and I was sad when we moved ahead and lost them.

The procession spiraled around and then changed pace dramatically as we went into Balmy Alley—heading for Garfield Park where the outdoor altars are, where our candles eventually found a home. Now it was a thinner line of people in a more intimate space, with walls and windows near us on both sides. I saw the massive skull of the orange skeleton moving ahead, passing people by till it came to a garage door where it knocked and was admitted. A dark little cave just big enough to suggest more darkness; black lights made the orange bones shine. The crowd waited until someone was beckoned in. They were enfolded, spoken to, released. I stepped up and presented my hands; we waltzed slowly in a circle, stopped, I was told something, and I moved on.

A friend (quoted with permission) recently started doing the personal-ad thing again—not very optimistically—and mentioned having contacted "some nice-seeming guy who likes opera." I asked what was so nice about the guy...

Oh, you know. He has a brain. He likes music.
Hey, I should just date Frankenstein's monster. HE had a brain, too. And he was very fond of music.

Later:

Or maybe I just wish I was Madeline Kahn...

Verbose economist Brad DeLong made my day by posting some correspondence from a Berkeley botanist and former hyena wrangler:

... other person unlocks door and then runs like hell while marksman tries to tranquilize hyena before it rushes out the door .... Problem: hyenas have ripped off the metal doorknobs on their side and damaged lock mechanism so doors will no longer open...
....
One especially wily deer. Considered bringing in hyena from Hyena Station, but trading a deer loose in the Botanical Garden for a hyena loose in the Botanical Garden not an improvement in situation.

Read more.

This romantic anxiety story was already awfully funny when the nervous Oaklander Jason Shiga wrote it, but it's on a whole new level now after being comicstripicized by the sanguine Missourian Dan Zettwoch. Those guys make me ill.

German Scrip of the '20s: Amazing archive of "Notgeld"—emergency currency created by local governments during the collapse of Weimar Germany. The artists commissioned to draw these notes turned them into fierce little cartoon stories about bitter poverty, sleazy officials, and beer. If we're going to have a Depression here, I hope we at least get to use comics for money. (Thanks to NYCO for bringing this to my attention.)

Anyone who was still hoping that the new governor of California might turn out to be a straight-talking guy with some new ideas—or, failing that, a harmless nitwit—should now know better.

It's not just things like cutting education after promising not to do so, or freezing programs like the AIDS Drug Assistance Program that keep sick people alive, or making it harder for people to get food stamps and then claiming that this frees up more money to "feed hungry people." Those might all be logical ruthless emergency measures—at least, if you were for some reason required to be a hyper-purist Republican who can never raise taxes no matter what, yet must keep building prisons no matter what.

But then there's this: "Schwarzenegger also proposed reducing the monthly support checks to single parents with children on welfare by 5 percent even though that would save the federal government money, not the state." I've had trouble finding more details on this but apparently he's talking about AFDC/TANF, which is money the feds give to the states to help families in poverty. Either he's even stupider than we knew, or—surprise—the fun-loving "moderate" that people apparently thought they were voting for is just another lying ideologue, for whom solving problems is less important than hurting people he disapproves of.

Oh well, at least he's got a firm handshake.

In wartime the state seeks to destroy its own culture. It is only when this destruction has been completed that the state can begin to exterminate the culture of its opponents.
—War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, Chris Hedges

Clint had recently read a piece in a magazine which posited the emergence of a new human type: the high-IQ moron. Wised-up, affectless, and non-empathetic, high-IQ morons ... were also supercontemporary in their acceptance of all technological and cultural change—an acceptance both unflinching and unsmiling. So Clint was relieved, in a way, to find himself flinching and smiling, flinching and smiling ...
—Yellow Dog, Martin Amis

"What, are you kidding? Shit, I'd be lucky to sleep with me! I'm outta my league!"
—The Pain: When Will It End?, Tim Kreider