Observations from the Edge 11.15

My horoscope today said that I feel like I am in the eye of a hurricane right now and that isn't too far off. By this past Sunday I was so tired of seeing Penn State trashed I stopped watching the news and didn't go anywhere near twitter. Than I woke up this morning to the green light flashing on my Droid and was surprised to find that the NYPD had raided Liberty Square like thieves in the middle of the night, arrested over a hundred, and tore down all the tents. Once again they used the excuse of cleaning the camp for Brookfield Properties but this time there was no warning. Rather than spiraling it down even farther the news seems to have pulled me out of my funk for now.

I felt guilty for having slept through the eviction so I went down to Liberty Square to see what was left and found absolutely nothing. Everything was gone and replaced by about 50 of New York's finest leaning on the barricades that now held back nobody. All that was left of the encampment was a single middle aged man holding up a sign that read “re-occupy Wall Street.” I was taking some shots when I saw one of the cops walking towards me and thought better of adding to the morning's arrest tally so I moved on to Foley Square where I found maybe a hundred survivors of Bloomberg's raid.

At Foley I heard a rumor that the mayors of the occupied cities were working together to clear out the encampments. The idea being to flood the media with so many events no one city would take the a beating in the coverage. It didn't take much looking to see this might be true as Denver and Salt Lake City were cleared on November 12th, Portland on November 13th, Oakland on November 14th, and New York City today. Maybe it's all a coincidence and maybe it isn't. This rumor later morphed with a printed report that many of the raids were planned with the assistance of the Department of Homeland Security which quickly sparked a new hashtag, #PoliceState.

Mayor Bloomberg evidently thought he could get away with no coverage at all this time as reporters were held blocks away from Liberty where many were arrested and some beaten. One reporter for Mother Jones was told if he stayed in the park he could get hurt. This after he tried to photograph an injured protester being loaded into an ambulance. In the possibly the biggest crock of bull I have ever heard Mayor Bloomberg said the decision to clamp down on coverage was made to "protect the members of the press. We have to provide protection and we have done exactly that." Beating as protection, what a concept. Another tactic of questionable legality was the clearing of the airspace over Liberty during the raid, something NYPD has no authority to do.

Thanks to a court order OWS members are streaming back into Liberty Square as I finish this. It may however be a pyrrhic victory of sorts as the judge ruled OWS may be there but may not camp or set up tents in the park. As temperatures dip lower and lower at night I fear it's now only a matter of time.

In all likelihood the weather option has been his highness the Mayor's option of choice all along.

Observations on Penn State and JoePa

Just a small post here to put to rest for now this Penn State chapter of my writing. It really has consumed me for the past week, creating a roller coaster of emotions I need to get a grip on. I tend to take things personally and to see cable pundits and newspaper columnists suddenly discover Penn State for all the wrong reasons totally depressed me. For now I figure if the asshats can't see past this total tragedy to what is good about my school I shouldn't let it get to me. Their total loss.

I wanted to pass along a column Sean sent me yesterday. Titled "Joe Paterno's Code - Reckoning with the Penn State betrayal" it was written for Esquire by Chris Raymond who is a former editor of The Daily Collegian, the Penn State student published newspaper. It is the one thing I have read that sounded somewhat how i feel, how a lot of us alumni feel. Really the final line says it all....

"In the meantime, we will rebuild on the scorched earth of Happy Valley, and I will abide by this simple truth: If the Paterno way is discarded along with Paterno, then this tragedy will have been miserably, terribly compounded."

Observations on Penn State and JoePa

After a long emotional day I was sitting at what was always one of my favorite spots in State College. From Court's kitchen table you can look out over the deck to the Penn State campus and past it to Nittany Mountain where tonight a bright moon was rising. I was thinking about the day and the moment that bought a tear of pride to my eye. Just before the game between Penn State and Nebraska began both teams gathered in a group in the middle of the field. As the teams listened to a prayer by a Nebraska coach 110,000 people stood and looked on in utter silence. You could have heard the proverbial pin drop.

The low point of the day came early when I received a school alert text advising a bomb threat had been received but Beaver Stadium had been checked and was clear. Than we arrived for some subdued tailgating only to find state troopers patrolling the edges of the parking area on horseback. As with OWS it always seems to be the sight of the horses that elicits a feeling of dred.

As we entered the stadium an organization formed this week by a group of students and alumni, Proud to Be a Penn Stater, was accepting donations for charity at all the gates and most people I saw donated something. The group is partnered with RAINN, the Rape Abuse & Incest National Network, and has a goal of raising $500,000 for the charity. In three days of existence it has raised $297,000 which includes over $20,000 at todays game.

The stadium itself was an amazing and surreal sight. Blue is the color associated with child abuse prevention and today Beaver Stadium was a sea so blue it almost seemed like a night game. The blue S in the normally white stands was now inverted to white and sported a blue ribbon, even the band's flags were now blue. The blue out was a success beyond anybody's wildest dreams, organizers had hoped for maybe a quarter of the fans, it was nearly total.

"I can't tell you how proud and pleased I am, especially with the students and athletes and the character and class they displayed," interim Penn State president Robert Ericson told reporters. That may be the only statement by university official I heard this week that I fully agree with.

It was a long sad week with possibly every negative emotion you can imagine swirling around. But a week filled with anger, sadness, and disgust ended with renewed pride and hope, touched with exhaustion.

"When we stood at childhood's gate,
Shapeless in the hands of fate
Thou didst mold us, Dear old State"

From the Penn State alma mater, rather fitting given the week.

Observations on Penn State and JoePa

One of the great days in Penn State football history will be just that but for reasons none of us could have imagined until a perfect storm of misery swept through Happy Valley earlier this week. I just sent a friend an email in which I described today as a homecoming from hell and I can't think of any better way to put it here. Ash and I arrived late last night, Sean early this morning, and it seems like nobody can stay away. In the end we still are Penn State and nobody is going to take that away from us no matter how hard they try.

I have no idea how this game is going to play out, honestly nothing will surprise me. The prevailing opinion is that the player's heads aren't going to be in it so it's going to be ugly but I'm not so sure. I won't even try to comprehend what these players must be going through. I do know from experience that, no matter how depressed I was, when the game started habit and training took over and I just played.

The 'blue out' is born. During today's game donations will be accepted throughout Beaver Stadium with the proceeds going to two Pennsylvania organizations, Prevent Child Abuse Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape. So far at other events, including the women's soccer game yesterday and a candle light vigil last night,  over $200,000 has been raised for these charities.

To put this day in perspective a person would have to be close to 70 years old to remember Penn State without Joe Paterno. That being the case I doubt they would remember it anyway.

To state the obvious this is going to suck.

Observations on Penn State and JoePa

The cover of my hometown newspaper this morning with the three words that say it all. After 61 years JoePa is gone.

Observations on Penn State and JoePa

Tears

morning update - Yes tears, tears for my school, for the kids abused, for the alumni, students, everybody involved, and tears for JoePa because I'm just so sad it had to end this way. But no tears foe Sandusky, if there is a hell hopefully there is a very special place there for him and his kind.

Stay by the phone Urban Meyer.

Observations on Penn State and JoePa

This just hurts. Ever since the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal broke I have been avoiding the subject like the plague. I didn't want to talk about it and failed, I didn't want to read about and failed, and totally didn't want to write about it but I can't help myself. Penn State has been my anchor for years, it really has helped me to survive more than anything other than my family and friends so it does hurt like hell to see it all end this way. No matter how it plays out the name Joe Paterno will never sound quite the same again and that's just sad.

Former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky is alleged to have sexually abused eight boys over more than a ten years, both before and after his retirement from the team in 1999. One incident in 2002 was witnessed by an assistant coach and reported to Joe Paterno who reported it to other athletic department officials including Athletic Director Tim Curley who was charged Monday for failing to report the information to the police, a crime in Pennsylvania. He was also charged with perjury in testimony to a grand jury and he resigned later in the day. Paterno, who was not charged or investigated, has been criticized for not calling the police himself or simply following up on what he had been told. Pennsylvania state police Commissioner Frank Noonan said Monday that Paterno fulfilled his legal requirement when he told his superior of the 2002 assault but he also questioned whether Paterno had a moral responsibility to do more. He did.

One of the blessings of Penn State is that it is situated in the mountains of central Pennsylvania with the nearest major media outlet an hour to the south in Harrisburg, literally down the mountain. That blessing is turning into a curse now with everybody from the BBC to Al Jazerra swooping into Happy Valley with seemingly one thing on their mind, Joe must go. I read one article in which the writer went so far as to call Beaver Stadium an “empty cavernous monument to JoePa's failed program.” Tarnished yes but to call a program with the highest graduation rate in the NCAA history failed is just shear stupidity. As long as I have been associated with Penn State there have been people both inside and outside the University who just wanted to bring Paterno down. I'll call it the Lance Armstrong effect, you can't possibly be that good with out cheating so there must be something hiding somewhere and if they just dig deep enough they'll find it. They failed every time but now it seems they have been handed a nuclear option with the timer winding down to zero.

I'm just terribly torn because I know how I would feel under any other circumstances and I know how I feel now. I just can't bring myself to turn on a man who has meant so much to my school. I do believe Paterno, how can I not, but I also know he is terribly wrong. At the bare minimum he should have pushed his superiors for some kind of public investigation and he should have condemned Sandusky's actions, friendship only goes so far. Another cop-out is for anybody to say it was out of his hands because of one thing I am certain, whatever Joe wants in Happy Valley Joe gets.

Should Joe go? As hard as this is to write it probably is time because there will be no moving on for the school until he does step down. But there is no need to fire the man who has made Penn State his life for 61 years, his contract is up at the end of this season. Just don't renew it.

As my dad reminded me yesterday the last time the the voices calling for Paterno's ouster were this loud in the valley I was a freshmen and Paterno was in the middle of his worst season ever. One of the men these people would have replaced him with?

Jerry Sandusky.

evening update - This statement was released by Joe Paterno today:

"I am absolutely devastated by the developments in this case. I grieve for the children and their families, and I pray for their comfort and relief.

I have come to work every day for the last 61 years with one clear goal in mind: To serve the best interests of this university and the young men who have been entrusted to my care. I have the same goal today.
That's why I have decided to announce my retirement effective at the end of this season. At this moment the Board of Trustees should not spend a single minute discussing my status. They have far more important matters to address. I want to make this as easy for them as I possibly can. This is a tragedy. It is one of the great sorrows of my life. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more.
My goals now are to keep my commitments to my players and staff and finish the season with dignity and determination. And then I will spend the rest of my life doing everything I can to help this University."

notes:

On November 4th Sandusky was arrested for 40 counts related to allegations of sexual abuse of young boys over a 15 year period. Sandusky is currently free on $100,000 bail pending trial and could face life in prison if convicted.

Saturday #12 Penn State faces #19 Nebraska in what is in all probability Joe Paterno's final home game as head coach of the Nittany Lions. It is also senior day which is a tear jerker in the best of times. I haven't made up my mind if I'll be making my planed trip to the game but I can't see myself not. If it is JoePa's last game in Happy Valley I'm going to have to be there.

Observations on Art 11.6

I was reading an article on ArtInfo about Occupy Museums and a thought came to mind. Maybe they do have a point, maybe there is a major problem in the art world, but I'm not sure they themselves realize what the problem is.

No matter how you figure it, only about 10 percent of the works major museums show in New York were created by women. Gallery shows are much better but still only about a quarter of all solo shows are by female artists. Every year the major art blogs put out their "power lists" and every year few of the names are women's.

Why is their such inequality in the art world?

To have ones work shown in a major market one has to get the interest of a small group of curators, collectors, and critics. A group that for the most part is male. It isn't any big secret that the social make up of the art world is cliquish and elitist. For any artist, but particularly for a women aartist, to get anywhere you must go to the right schools, meet the right people, be willing to push your work, and be extremely lucky. Even with todays explosion of social networking to get invited to the parties where these power-brokers schmooze over drinks is next to impossible. Over the years some women's groups have tried to duplicate this male dominated world but to what end? To create a permanent sanctioned second class in an otherwise unchanged art world?

I think the time for anything of that sort has long passed. But for now female artists lack the resources needed to counter hundreds of years of informal discrimination against them. They lack the money, influence, and quite literally the space necessary to have any kind of major impact. For now most of the art works you see will still be created by only the male half of the artist population.

One way or another things need to and will change, the only question remaining is how it will be accomplished.

Observations from the Window 11.5

Remember, remember, the 5^th of November, Happy Guy Fawkes Day. Be sure to watch your Blu-ray V for Vendetta Special Addition today. What? Are you trying to tell me that not everybody owns a copy?

It was a stunningly beautiful fall day in the Village so I boldly decided to jump in Foxy and make my escape from the city for some hi-speed relaxation. In a baggy black sweater, jeans, and a pair of Timberland hiking boots I was prepared for anything, or so I thought. What I wasn't prepared for was running into all the perils of driving in this city and all of them in one day. I drove down one street only to have it closed because of a crime scene, than shot down a side street to get to Canal where I turned right into a jam caused by a double parked semi. Here I witnessed a scene straight out of Independence Day as people stood outside their cars, cabbies yelled in middle Asian dialects, and as far as I could tell the truck driver had disappeared without a trace. Luckily I saw it all soon enough to do a quick reverse back into the side street but there was no getting to the tunnel. My escape thus thwarted I settled for a drive up the Hudson River as far as Harlem, across 112^th, than down Second Avenue and home. Not quite what I had in mind but Foxy did get some exercise.

Today also marked the 50^th day of Occupy and it was dominated by Bank Transfer Day, an event organized by Los Angeles gallerist Kristin Christian. Bank Transfer Day originated with Christian's Facebook event which she started October 4th because she was irritated with Bank of America's announced $5 a month ATM fee. The idea is to have massive numbers of people pull their money out of major banks an open accounts at smaller local banks and credit unions. According to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders more than 650,000 people have moved an estimated $4.5 billion into credit unions during the last four weeks alone. That compares to 600,000 new credit union accounts in all of 2010.

To date the number worldwide Occupy related arrests now stands at 3200. The total number financiers arrested for causing this economic meltdown still stands at 0. 

And finally I end on a better note, I seem to have been tumbled and reblogged twenty times so feel free to have a look. It is as always a perfectly safe shot. kaetlinn

Observations from the Edge 11.5

If you follow me at all on twitter you probably have noticed that other than sports I seem to do more retweeting than anything else. One reason is that I find it very hard to say what I want to say in 140 characters or less. But when it comes to OWS related things it's also because there are already some pretty awesome women out there reporting from the street every day. Sometimes I'm more than a little jealous because I know there is no way I could ever compete with them.

Here are some of the the best....

Allison Kilkenny (@allisonkilkenny), New York and the world. Citizen Radio co-host, contributing reporter for In These Times, The Nation and writer of The Uprising blog for The Nation. I met Allison the morning of the “cleanup eviction” of Liberty Square. She is the kind of person that seems to be everywhere at all times, quite possibly VQ material.

Faeza Moghul (@FaezaMoghul), Oakland. Her twitter profile says “Seeker of Sacred Knowledge. Roamer of Ancient Lands. Pakistani Indian American Muslim Sunni married to an Irish Jewish American Shi'i.” She literally exploded onto my timeline during the Oakland general strike with on the scene reports and some amazing photos.

Laurie Penny (@PennyRed), London. “Journalism, feminism, tea and sedition.” Penny writes for New Statesman, Independent, Guardian, Al-Jazeera, The Nation and others.

Lucy Kafanov (@LucyKafanov), Washington DC. “News junkie, policy wonk, skeptic and voracious consumer of stories neglected by mainstream media.” Kafanov is the senior TV news producer and on-air analyst for Russia Today's Washington bureau.

Special honors for Susie Cagle (@susie_c), Oakland. Graphic artist, cartoonist, and founder of the Graphic Journos collective. Cagle was teargassed twice and arrested once during the Oakland protests and general strike.

Also here are some good lists to follow to keep up with news you wont find in the mainstream media....

Occupy The World - Unify Movement
Occupy Wall Street - Kaycee Nightfire
Progressive Politics - Alison Kilkenny
Smart Snarky Lefties - Sarah Jaffe
The 99 Percent Movement - Think Progress

Observations on Sports 10.31

On Saturday afternoon Penn State beat Illinois 10-7 when Illinois kicker Derek Demke missed a 42-yard field goal with 5 seconds left on the clock. With his 409th win JoePa moved ahead of Grambling State’s Eddie Robinson for the most ever wins among Division I coaches.  Penn State is now the only unbeaten team in Big 10 play (5-0 Big 10, 8-1 overall) and moved into the 16th spot in the BCS poll.

If you ever wondered why I so live for Penn State football just watch this vid taken at the end of the Illinois game, it should give you a pretty good idea. Keep in mind that this crowd was about 40,000 short of the normal crowd of 110,000 due to it being snowtober.

link

Observations from the Edge 10.29

I was at Liberty Square a couple days ago and had an interesting conversation. As we looked at the ring of interlocking steel barricades that now completely surrounds the park we started to talk about what the police in this country have become. In major cities they have become militarized to the point that it's hard to call some of the police departments anymore as they are more para-military organizations. They have all the toys and, in the case of Oakland, they want to play with them. I honestly think New York City probably has one of the best small militaries in the world, large enough to suppress all of Jersey in the event of any future Devils' Stanley Cup win.

You could use the so called 'War on Terror' as a reason for all that but none of these toys would have stopped the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. They don't seem to be able to stop drugs from entering the country or people from crossing the borders illegally. So what is their purpose? A question which we may all have to be answer one day soon.

But back to the barricades which started this whole ramble. I searched the New York Times archive and found an article from 2003 called “Steel Barriers Reinforce a Thinner Line of Blue at Parades, and the Bottom Line” (l, not sure if the link works without a subscription). At the time the NYPD already owned 12,000 of the stunningly beautiful things. I read elsewhere that the city now owns enough of them to completely surround the island of Manhattan in steel and right now they are everywhere, surrounding Liberty Square, the New York Stock Exchange, creating a veritable maze in the Financial District. Supposedly they are to keep protesters in the park and out of the street where they can restrict traffic yet the damn barricades themselves are in the street.

At a recent community meeting local resident Sabrina Espinal said “My biggest issue is the barricades, don’t care if they stay in that park 'til kingdom come. I just want the barricades down.”

Maybe the New York City Police Department is the real one occupying Wall Street.

Observations from the Window 10.27

I received a rather weighty package from Amazon yesterday that may signal the beginning of a cold weather reading binge, something I think my brain needs. It also seems to be the time to put Patti Smith's Just Kids on the shelf for a long deserved break. I first read the book back in April and have been rereading parts of it ever since, partly because I live near where so many of the scenes took place. But one part I have stayed away from is the end because it always brings tears to my eyes.

In late February of 1989 Smith saw Robert Mapplethorpe for the last time. In the book she shows the following note which she wrote to Mapplethorpe, but doesn't say whether she actually sent it to him than or was writing it to him in the book. If I should ever meet her that's the first question I'm going to ask.

Dear Robert,
Often as I lie awake I wonder if you are also lying awake. Are you in pain or feeling alone? You drew me from the darkest period of my young life, sharing with me the sacred mystery of what it is to be an artist. I learned to see through you and never compose a line or draw a curve that does not come from the knowledge I derived in our precious time together. 
Your work, coming from a fluid source can be traced to the naked song of your youth. You spoke than of holding hands with god. Remember, through everything, you have always held that hand, grip it hard, Robert, and don't let go.
The other afternoon, when you fell asleep on my shoulder, I drifted off too. But before I did, it occurred to me looking around at all of your things and your work and going through years of work in my mind, that of all of your work, you are still your most beautiful.
The most beautiful work of all.
Patti

Mapplethorpe died a few days later on March 9, 1989.

Like I said, tears.

Patti Smith - Paths That Cross

Observations from the Edge 10.27

Leave it to Jon Stewart to say it best and with the fewest words. "What the fuck happened in Oakland?"

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart