Author: Mike

Letter from Disneyland Jail

Greetings from Philadelphia. I just found out that radical guitar improviser Derek Bailey died on Christmas. I’ll be remembering him tonight by going to a concert featuring, among others, radical improvisers Todd Margasak and Jack Wright. I must admit I’ve always gotten Todd’s music, and never gotten Jack’s. That’s part of the appeal of seeing Jack play again.

Anyhow: If you want to get arrested for protesting in California, you could go to some boring air force base in the desert, or you could join Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir at Disneyland! Rev Billy:

With watches synchronized, the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir walked onto “Main Street USA” at 1:50 PM on Christmas Day, with the Disney faithful lining the curbs, waiting for the dancing of Tinkerbelle and Donald and Mickey.

…the entire choir entered the theme park undetected, hiding their robes at the bottom of backpacks and purses. …Once marching up the street in the rocking motion of gospel, the singers were able to complete three full songs, with the Reverend preaching throughout. The heightened strangeness of the place may have contributed to the hesitation by police to resist the church.

The performers marched back and forth on the theme park’s Main Street, a distance of about a half mile, contacting several thousands of on-lookers, for a period of about 25 minutes. After Reverend Billy was surrounded and hand-cuffed, the choir was detained in the filthy back lot of the park. …The Rev was held in the Disneyland holding tank and then the Anaheim jail.

Be sure to read the Rev’s “Letter from the Disneyland Jail.” (Here’s a nice picture.)

Items

Lots of new stuff since I’ve been away.

  • New York Catholic Worker Matt Vogel made an appearance in a New York Times op-ed. It referenced a march by Catholic Workers to Guantanamo to oppose torture there. It also mentioned 80 people gathering in NYC to remember Dorothy Day. Among these were Clinton’s Patty Angevine and Worcester’s Rev. John Madden.
  • Volcanoboy reports that Mike Duffy has died. I got to know him a few years ago working on a production of “The Trial of the Catonsville Nine.” He played the judge. Damn nice guy. There’s another remembrance of him at Wormtown.
    Joe Finneral, Andy Keefe, Mike Duffy, and Mike Benedetti celebrate with pizza and beer
    Joe Finneral, Andy Keefe, and Mike Benedetti salute Mike Duffy (center, with pizza) after their final performance. Photo: andrewkeefe.net.
  • Many people have pointed out another CW mention in this New York Times story:

    One F.B.I. document indicates that agents in Indianapolis planned to conduct surveillance as part of a “Vegan Community Project.” Another document talks of the Catholic Workers group’s “semi-communistic ideology.” A third indicates the bureau’s interest in determining the location of a protest over llama fur planned by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

    Continue reading “Items”

South Bend Catholic Worker loses zoning battle

The South Bend Common Council has denied a zoning change to the Catholic Worker community there. WNDU-TV:

“We are looking forward to finding another house that’s properly zoned and continuing our work,” said [Margie] Pfeil. “We are hopeful that we can get a good price on our house and invest our money elsewhere.”
[…]
Starting Tuesday the Catholic Workers plan to move their five guests and three staff members south two streets to a house that the diocese gave to the organization years ago.

South Bend Tribune:

A last-minute effort to prolong the Catholic Worker house issue failed in a 5-4 vote. This was followed by an emotional 7-2 vote to deny the group’s overall rezoning petition.
[…]
There are no plans to pursue a lawsuit against the city, [Mike] Griffin said.

“Many have said we have a good case,” Griffin said. “But it’s also a Christian tradition at times to simply shake the dust from your sandals and move on.”

Twenty-five years without Dorothy Day

Dorothy Day was an American anarchist, pacifist, and devout Roman Catholic. She dedicated her life to serving the poor of Manhattan, eating and living with them. She refused to pay federal taxes, to accept government aid, and to be complicit in injustice. From time to time, her stands landed her in jail.

Her great accomplishment was to integrate these usually unrelated things into the seamless whole that was her daily life. With Peter Maurin, she founded the newspaper The Catholic Worker, which gave its name to what we call the Catholic Worker movement.

Each Catholic Worker community is independent and unique, but all take inspiration from the model she developed.

Dorothy died twenty-five years ago today. In accordance with her wishes, her family correspondence and diaries, held in the Marquette University Archives, will now be unsealed and available to researchers.

Thanksgiving and other items

Let’s eat

Thanksgiving is one day when America not only makes a point of feeding the hungry, but feeding them in style.

There was a big crowd at St. John’s Free Meal for Thanksgiving Breakfast. Lots of hugs and smiles.

The St. John’s High School football team stopped by with a donation. (Later that day, they beat St. Peter-Marian 28-7.)

The breakfast conversation was sparkling, as always.

Mike: Why are they showing “Night of the Living Dead” on Thanksgiving?

Bruce: The dead gotta eat too, Mike!
Continue reading “Thanksgiving and other items”

Bazelon reactions and non-reactions

Last week the press reacted to a memo from Bazelon that said the recommendations of the (Worcester) Mayor’s Task Force on social service siting might violate federal law. (This even made it into a Daily Kos diary, which allows you to vote on whether “The Task Force on Social Services are Fucks.”)

Worcester Magazine ran a disappointing editorial on this issue. It began:

The inflammatory issue of social service siting received a kick recently when a Washington, D.C.-based agency weighed in on local politics, saying that a recent city report potentially discriminates against people with disabilities.

The national legal advocate for people with mental disabilities [Bazelon] issued its statement at the behest of a Cambridge-based social service agency, defending the position that such agencies have a constitutional right to locate programs wherever they choose. We realize that these people have to protect their turf, but the recommendations of the Mayor’s Task Force on Social Service Siting were eminently reasonable — and voluntary in nature. This response fans a fire that really doesn’t need additional fuel. Their position may well be supported by the courts in many instances, but it doesn’t advance the laudable and civilized objective of staying out of the courts in the first place.

(Bazelon argues that the recommendations are not voluntary in a footnote.)

The editorial doesn’t mention the charges again till the final sentence:

This recent salvo from Washington represents a half step in the wrong direction.

It’s odd that this editorial defending the Task Force report from the Bazelon memo never engages the charges in the memo.
Continue reading “Bazelon reactions and non-reactions”

How to knit a plastic bag

Reusable bag titan Rajiv Badlani points out that because you can’t convince every shopper to use cloth shopping bags, there will always be some plastic bags out there. He plans to recycle these into textiles.

You can do something similar at home, with shopping bags or the plastic bags they put your newspaper in on rainy days. All you have to do is cut the bags into ribbons, twist the ribbons into a sort of yarn, and then knit or crochet the yarn into whatever you like. This is an inexpensive way to make holiday gifts for the environmentalists on your list.
Continue reading “How to knit a plastic bag”

Basil Pennington’s suits and other Items

  • I agree with Elwood:

    “I love my president, but he doesn’t love us.”

  • Pie and Coffee contributor and cinemaster Adam Villani started a personal blog last week. The next day he was namechecked by Boing Boing. Auspicious.
  • Father Basil Pennington was a Trappist monk who died in June at St Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer. Many know of him because of his work with the centering prayer movement, revitalizing the contemplative tradition among Catholics in America.

    Tom Lewis happened to go to mass at the Abbey the morning after Fr Pennington had died, and saw him lying in state.

    Mike: So his body was there in the chapel?

    Tom: He had enormous feet.

    Dom Basil was in many ways a giant of a man. Even physically, he looked like someone who stepped out of the Old Testament with his huge frame and long beard. He was also interiorly a giant in the sense of one of those rare people who is filled with many, many, many ideas. Big ideas.
    (from a homily by Abbot Francis Michael Stiteler)

    I stopped by the monastery last week to pick up a donation of food for some shelters and soup kitchens in Worcester, and they also gave me several boxes with Fr Pennington’s clothes. It was like being handed a crate of holy relics. After sorting through it, a lot of the clothes went right to the thrift shop—there aren’t many homeless people in Worcester who are that big. His suits were size 50L.
    Continue reading “Basil Pennington’s suits and other Items”