“For his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
The Nobel Foundation
9 October 2009

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“Who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed.”
The Nobel Foundation
8 October 2009

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Cornel West will be speaking Friday at noon, in a talk titled, “Brother West: Living and Loving Outloud.” The talk is part of the excellent ALOUD series at the Los Angeles Central Library (produced by the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, a non-profit organization “established to raise private sector support” for Los Angeles public libraries). The event is free, although donations are encouraged and appreciated. All are encouraged to get tickets (check here) and come listen to one of our most engaging public intellectuals.

“Subversive joy is the ability to transform tears into laughter, a laughter that allows one to acknowledge just how difficult the journey is, but also to recognize one’s own sense of humanity and folly and humor in the midst of this very serious struggle.”
Interview with Bill Moyers, from The Cornel West Reader, Basic Civitas Books, 2000.

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The UCLA Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies program annually organizes the Los Angeles Queer Studies Conference. Excellent and free, all are invited and encouraged to attend.

The panel discussions range from Girlhood: Queer Liminalities to Deprovinicializing the Orient to The Queer Vicissitudes of Hip Hop Expressive Culture.

Contact the UCLA LGBTS office at 310.206.0516 or lgbs@humnet.ucla.edu with any questions.

Matt Lipps, Untitled, 2003

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Hunger

The fox you lug over your shoulder
in a dark sack
has cut a hole with a knife
and escaped.

The sudden lightness makes you think
you are stronger
as you walk back to your small cottage
through a forest that covers the world.

Billy Collins

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Figure 4.6
East Site.
Markings on the snake showing the alignment of the shadow edge with the petroglyph at equinox.(A) 16 days after fall equinox(October 9, 1982, 12:00 m),(B) 3 days before fall equinox(September 20, 1979, 2:03.75 pm).[Note: data taken a certain time after (or before) spring equinox are equivalent to data taken the same time before (or after) fall equinox.]

Sun Dagger, Fajada Butte, New Mexico’s Chaco Canyon

Photographs by A. Sofaer.
Text and image property of The Solstice Project

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This is taken from Charles Robbins’ (the director of The Trevor Project) news release for National Suicide Prevention Week. The Trevor Project describes their organization as:

The Trevor Project is a non-profit endeavor established to promote acceptance for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning youth and to aid in crisis and suicide prevention among that group. This is especially important for gay youth.

Read on: 

This week is National Suicide Prevention Week, an annual observance sponsored by the American Association of Suicidology. This is an important week for The Trevor Project as we work to maximize awareness about the important role our programs play in crisis and suicide prevention efforts among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) youth. 

In the state of California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger released a substantive letter commending The Trevor Project on its “outstanding actions to reach out to LGBTQ youth in need,” and West Hollywood Mayor Abbe Land declared “The Trevor Project Day” citywide on September 10, coinciding with New York’s observance. If you’re in the LA area, you can also celebrate with us on the 10th.  

Everyone can play an important role in fighting the preventable epidemic of LGBTQ youth suicide. To start, learn to recognize the warning signs that may indicate a young person is at risk. These include:

• A tendency toward isolation and social withdrawal
• Increased substance abuse
• Expression of negative attitudes toward self
• Expression of hopelessness or helplessness
• Loss of interest in usual activities
• Giving away valued possessions
• Expression of a lack of future orientation: “It won’t matter soon anyway.”
• For someone who has been very depressed, when that depression begins to lift, the individual may be at an INCREASED risk of suicide, as the individual will have the psychological energy to follow through on suicidal ideation.

Please refer youth exhibiting any of these signs to The Trevor Helpline.

Young people can call the helpline at 866-4-U-TREVOR 24 hours per day.
If a suicide attempt is imminent, seek outside emergency help from a hospital, mental health clinic or by calling “911.”   

This week and always, join us and become a lifeguard for young lives. With your help, youth across the country will always know there is a safe place to turn in times of crisis and despair.

All my best,

Charles Robbins
Executive Director

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“Mexicans are arrested while trying to cross the U.S. border, 1979.” Alex Webb

The complex and dynamic immigrant-emigrant relationship between the United States and Mexico continues regardless of the level of attention or quality of discourse offered by politicians. From farmers to bankers to filmmakers, the draw to the United States for Mexicans is almost entirely one of economics. In fact, since the economic crisis, fewer Mexicans are coming northward, choosing instead to contend with poverty at home. But the number of immigrants is still large and states like California continue to rely extensively on their inexpensive labor, no matter their legal status. But the risks are high. As Daffodil Altan writes for the New America Media news, “the glittery ascension of Mexican filmmakers and actors coincides with the ongoing incarceration and deportation of fellow Mexicans who, like their film-industry compatriots, have left their country for better opportunities abroad.”

It is a menace to cross into the United States, risky business, as is being in the States without legal status. 400,000 illegal immigrants are detained each year; 59% of those undocumented workers are Mexican. The fine HBO documentary Which Way Home looks at children who ride the trains north with the expectation of a potentially prosperous life in El Gabacho, mimicking the adults who surround them. It is not uncommon for entire towns to head north, looking if not for the good life than at least enough money to support their families at home. Life has been hard in Mexico since the peso implosion, and is getting harder with an economy and society largely fueled and manipulated by drug trafficking. The hot new patrona is called La Santa Muerte, or Saint Death, and she is ghoulishly trying to wrestle the Mexican soul away from the comparatively demure Guadalupe.

Perhaps an understanding of some of the tension between the two countries lies in their shared history. In 1854, Mexico lost the Mexican-American war (known in Mexico as La Intervención Norteamericana or the War of the North American Invasion), a construct of the United States for the sole purpose of expansion. It was relatively quick, a skirmish of a war in its length and bloodshed. But in terms of cost, political, economic, and social, it was devastating for Mexico and an all-out victory for the United States. Mexican General Santa Ana will live on in infamy in the minds of Mexicans as the loss continues to be bitterly felt a century-and-a-half later. It would be safe to wage that the majority of people in the United States has no idea that California (let alone Utah) was once a part of Mexico. Over half of Mexican territory was signed over to the United States in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo - including all of California, Nevada, and Utah and parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado; a large swath of the US and an even larger chunk of Mexico.

The irony of the population explosion of Latinos, in particular Mexicans, in the United States is not lost on Mexicans who watch as the United States turns literally familiar: Los Angeles has the largest Mexican population after Mexico City; it is nearly half Latino and 79% of the Latinos in Los Angeles are Mexican. But then again, as folk in Mexico are fond of saying, Los Angeles is a part of occupied Mexico; it’s just a matter of time before the rest of California catches up.

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Crow’s Song Of Himself

When God hammered Crow
He made gold
When God roasted Crow in the sun
He made diamond
When God crushed Crow under weights
He made alcohol
When God tore Crow to pieces
He made money
When God blew Crow up
He made day
When God hung Crow on a tree
He made fruit
When God buried Crow in the earth
He made man
When God tried to chop Crow in two
He made woman
When God said: ‘You win, Crow,’
He made the Redeemer.

When God went off in despair
Crow stropped his beak and started in on the two thieves.

 from Crow: The Life and Songs of the Crow 

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Career Advice Quinn Dombrowski 

From the Greek hails the word graphein, meaning to write, and from the Italian the word graffito, meaning a scratch. Many, many scratches have been made in subway stations and city walls the world over. The Daily News offers a mini-retrospective of New York City’s “coolest graffiti,” and there is a 25th aniversary edition of the book Subway Art that chronicles the vibrant graffiti covering that city in the 1970s and 1980s. The majority of the works are now long gone but their legacy is a rich one.  The Brooklyn Museum held an exhibition about graffiti in 2006 and offers some “multimedia highlights” on their website. Here is a blurb about Christian graffiti from a Catholic encyclopedia, and Archaeolog of Stanford University has a look at Graffiti Archaeology, artists and photographers documenting underground urban markings in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City. The Guardian, London’s liberal rag, points out that while “not every city wants to look like the South Bronx” (speak for yourself), the whitewashing of graffiti in Melbourne signals the precipitous march toward bland uniformity. And, the writer warns, London could be next. The Los Angeles Times blogs about “library graffiti” in books and desks at the University of Chicago’s Regenstein Library. Here you can look at all 700 of Quinn Dombrowski’s library graffiti photos (she is a member of the Creative Commons).

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