squatsteader

[squatsteader]

SQUATSTEADER NEWS: My novel THE REVELATOR is DONE!

And, on to lesser reportage...

WE WON!

And almost as importantly, there's still a chance we seize control of the senate. 2 Georgia seats  are going into runoff phase, so YET ANOTHER election gears up almost immediately. Make calls for these 2 dems!

We deserve a day f celebration. But the election didnt go the way most expected. All pollsters are hereby FIRED. They get a pass for last election, which was razpr thin, but missing half a dozen senate and congressional seats, no excuse. From now on there should be a big red warning whenever news outlets show us polls, WARNING TOTAL BULLSHIT.

BUT HAY, WE GOT AMERICA'S FAVORITE PSYCHOPATH out of office, (secret service will have to drag him out of the oval office, where for decades tour guides will point to scratches on the burnished oakwood floors and say, "that's Disaster Don Trumps fingernail trail"

GOOD. FUCKING. RIDDANCE. Lets all hope he ends up in a super max.

What to do with the 405 OF THE VOTING REPUBLIC that put him in office and almost did a repeat? Hope they fall into a sinkhole, or something. There's really no excuse voting for someone who vilifies Muslims, tares refugee kids away from moms, then lies about it. And lies and lies and lies.

I NEVER WANT TO HEAR HIS NASALLY WHINEY VOICE. AGAIN.

On to other world changing and amazing news:

My latest novel, THE REVELATOR, at 250000 words, (thats a lot of friggn words believe me, my personal record) IS DONE.

HERES THE QUERY. Anyone who needs help writing a query, dont ask me, I fucking hate queries. they suck. How do you jam 580 pages into one and a half? How how how...

I tagged on the 1st ten pages as well.

Greetings Ms X.

I truly appreciate the time and investment you are making in considering representing me and most especially the Novel in question, The Revelator, a literary work at 250 k. That you represent Mr Cantu', and was successful in publishing The Line Becomes a River, makes me feel that I'd be at home with you as my agent. I value Cantu's work, as well as the excellent Midnight on the Line, as the two most important modern works on the border. Ive worked and lived in the region for years, and based a novella trilogy and novel on the region, and into Chihuahua and the Sierra Madre.

My novel The Revelator, a literary work at 250 k pages, is also founded upon a rich cultural legacy, that of the Caribbean and southern Colonies of 18th century America.

The heart of this tale begins with the boy Garret, press ganged onto an English slaving ship, the Dolphin. During a vicious storm off the coast of Guinea, he crouches above the padlocked hatch to the hold below, where several hundred Africans await their fate; death by drowning, or a chance to survive, if the boy smashes that lock, with the ball peen hammer clutched in his fist.

Directing and acting in the performance art theatre group Los Angeles Poverty Dept enabled me to develop a unique voice,The LAPD is a rough and ready troupe of homeless folks (including myself for a time), actors, artists and students. We were NEA supported, and received the Tony Award.

My travels along the Caribbean rim through Honduras and a bit of Guatemala also added a cultural honesty to The Revelator. Allow me like to thank Fito, a Garifuna elder, for providing me hammock space in his sea side bar, just outside La Ceiba, Honduras. I like to think the Garifuna and other Native American groups live and breathe in the pages of The Revelator.

A rich cast of escaped African slaves also find voice in this novel. A native American confederacy under the leadership of the enigmatic prophet Ghost Eye, committed to retake their lands, form an alliance with, among others, absconded indentured servants, pirates and revolutionaries. All combine to fight under the banner of Tierra Libre, or, the Freelanders who set aflame a revolution throughout North America.

The Revelator is, in part, an exploration of American violence brought about by slavery. Our protagonist, Garret, is split into two timelines, one of today, one of yesteryear. After an assault, resulting in a concussion, today’s Garret embarks on a rampage of killing centering on young black men and boys. Hunted and eventually arrested by African American detective Det. Grimes, Garret is found guilty and sentenced to death in Texas. Housed on death row beside the one time urban guerrilla Cochise Teages, who was convicted (possibly erroneously) for killing an FBI agent during a no knock raid, the two begin an unlikely friendship. Garret mumbles and speaks in odd accents late at night. Teages hears, and soon is recording multiple voices emanating from Garrets cell.

I have published in the online Poetry Journal The Nervous Breakdown, and have won numerous Awards for fiction and poetry in the online workshop Zootrope. I also blog at Tumblr under the handle Squatsteader. This blog is a primarily for urban homesteading and gardening, though post fiction and poetry as well.

Again, much thanks for your time and energy. Included below is 10 pages from The Revelator

Yours, D Halenda

cell 415. 200 8551

dskiko@yahoo.com

The Revelator

chap 1

The victims. 2018, United States of America

The concrete owns a stain outside Lupe’s Liquors. A blackened, oily shadow in repose. The death chalk not yet traced about that place where his soul was last earthbound, before vacating, diffusing, upwards into the sky. Desmond ‘Luciano’ Stiggs. Born 1989. Kill # 3. South side Tucson Arizona. Mother, Bertha. Father unknown.

Mario Williams. Age 17. The outline of yellow chalk reveals a babe curled about its own form, not in his mothers belly, but the concrete, the tomb of his most sudden death.  Austin Texas kill # 1. 2616 S Congress st.,  on the property of The Comanche Hills apartments.

Darl Mose. Age 16. slumped against the brick wall of Mobis Cafe, Phoenix Az. Mouth gapes as if his jaw has been unhinged. Beneath, his throat laid open, gouts of blood soaking his hoodie, his jeans, the pavement beneath. Kill # 14.

His girlfriend, Mariposa Marquez, weeps beside him, his son in her belly, listening, not yet fathoming the world in   which he will soon emerge. Yet surely sensing by his carriers frantic heartbeat, not is all well.

Lavon ‘lil Detroit’ Boyd. Age 14. Emergency room, st Theresa the Martyr Hospital, room number 16 E.  Houston, Texas. A metal object having been shoved into the back of his skull, into the cerebellum. he survives solely by life support. Within three days, his step mother and sister will agree by signature to allow   ‘nature to take its course’. As the victim's brain damage is massive, and would otherwise remain in a vegetative state for the remainder of his time, here, on this planet. 

The Stepmother weeps  squatting beside the coffee machine, alone.  The janitor mopping the floor ignores her, swivels his bucket to another quadrant of his workplace. Her son if not by flesh then by love. Something caves inside her chest. She freezes, silently, enduring. It is a physical thing , grief. It catches you, in the neck, in the throat. It squeezes you in the dark of night, refusing to release its grip. Othertimes grief itself is a ghost, hidden, yet drowning one in a listless, thoughtless blank.

The shit eating grin of Demetrius Green, trumpet in hand, behind polished glass and framed by plastic blooms of every genus, all white. The white of death in India, his mother says to the heated air before her, the crowds of distant relatives shoving food into their mouths, mumbling lowly, to her they were wooden machines, maniquins, jerked here and there by dangled strings, dictates of funeral formality. Her voice was every bit as dead as her son lying in the coffin five feet away from her.

That aint him, that aint Dem, that aint my son. That a thing. 

Just a ...thing.

She closes her eyes as if under her lids some respite might be found of this horror. But stamped upon those lids another border shone as if lit from within, the yellow border of chalk, in a zig zag down the steps of their apartment house, where he’d been stabbed. The ritual of funerals and murder scene investigations became a blur to her. 

Her only son. D didn’t hang out with the neighborhood click, he’d kept himself clean, was set to graduate with honors, from the LA County School of The Arts. His crime had been to hang out with a cousin, who’d just been upped in the hood as its major shot caller, at the age of nineteen. 

Towns, you motha fucka. I told you to keep clear. Keep clear of my boy. 

Towns had something to do with it, she was certain. Maybe whoever killed her baby mistook him for Towns. Because her boy D had shot up like a weed after a summer rain, from the goofy 11 year old in the school picture, to a long, lean and unbearably clumsy six feet something. Where as Towns had gone into sports, then crime, D had gone to music, taking to it ironically, like Towns’ daddy, who played with the biggest jazz men in the city. Before dropping to the H and finally a slab in the morgue. 

Just like where you should be Towns! She screams loudly. Not my boy, not my D….not Demetrie

The parlor freezes.  An unknown mannequin sits beside her, its wooden hand clasping her own. My boy. His music, the tone as pure as a dream of heaven itself, clean as a Mississippi sky after a thunderstorm. From where her kin came, after Africa...My boy.

She’d taken extra work, cleaning houses, doing accounting for neighborhood shops, to buy him the horn, a used pawn shop relic, its bell dented, rusted. A valve that stuck. But even with that old thing of tin and rusted brass his sound was golden.  

Golden. Until the school president himself gifted him a Bach Stradevarious, with its  bell of solid silver. And his tone ranged so high, into heaven, like honey. My honey. I know I embarrass you no end. My baby. How you used to flee from my hugs, cause you didnt want to be the moma’s boy. But you were. You were my boy. And now you are nothing. No...thing. Or just a thing. No more music, no more runnen off from me. A stiff piece of bad work from the cheap assed  mortician what charged her an arm and a leg...for this. This aint my child. No. No sir. 

  chap 1  

1752 off the coast of Benin, Africa

In a screaming wind rent with sheets of  rain slamming into the the ships and sailors bodies, our  gang-pressed boy of Scottish blood stands sprawl legged, right hand gripping the hemp rope rigging, left clutching a pall-peen hammer, trying to fathom what the 2nd mate, at his side, is screaming at him. Through the howl of wind and a rain driving down upon them verily like a waterspout tilted upside down, he cannot even hear the man’s voice, much less discern any meaning at all. But between bouts of the rain he sees the man clutching a massive padlock hung from the hasps screwed into the porthole’s frame, the one which imprisons nearly two hundred sweating sickness and dying Africans, in the hold below. He studies the mans face, mouth agape, teeth a yellowed and blackened nightmare. He raises the hammer, sweeps the rain from his eyes, and freezes. A swell takes the ship, tosses it aside like an enraged toddler might fling his toy boat out from  his tub, and the water drives across young Garret, up to his waist. He steadies himself against the ripping force of the water, hammer gripped, hammer raised, frozen in the moment of falling upon that very padlock. Having considered through an entire night this very act , the two sides of the coin, whether to free a hold of chained Africans that would surely kill he and the rest of the crew, or doom them to their own deaths.

***************************************

Roll the dice, toss the bones. The old spanish peseta. Ones and zeroes. Does he strike the lock, unleashing a series of events whipping through the future like a lightning clad snake, or will the next swell take him,  washing him from the ship, tearing away the grip of the hammer, never then, to find purchase for his own survival? While those men women and children below will sink to the blacklands at sea’s bottom. Food for crabs, groupers, eels.

The particle flashes forward at lightspeed, separates, into two particles, identical twins, yet still twinned by what mystery of gravitational force, invisible, undetectable...

Toss the bones 'pon the hide over the clay ground, old skin  stiff as an oak shingle left in the sun. Birthing sack which once carried a like-twined soul in its momma's belly.  Let the bones fall ‘pon that old placenta, gaming board of what may come to pass, and let the speaking spirits have their say, by knuckle or toe, coccyx, molar or fang. By common gambling dice. By cards whose faces were born from the dreams of soothsayers, then painted on their blank pigs hide rectangles by an old deaf mute,  so now let them rain down like old time orations torn from  the good book, and the sayings from the grannies n aunties goin all the way back to   Africa, the gold coast, from the highlands of Scotland and the old Celtic clans of Ireland, of the high plains and deserts and eastern woodlands of America,  and we'll see as to your future. As to your seed as well, and what blood may survive into the abyss ahead, to the next epoch and the next, sewn into the realms of time as recorded by those long passed to clay, to the underworld.

Chap 2

Ash to Huntsville  Deathrow 2017

Her  drive was fraught with rain and sleet, sheets of Atlantic weather unending, surging, retreating to drizzle at times, then heaving back with still greater ferocity.

She cherished such road adventures generally, even when they involved her work, though the Knoxville city traffic’s quagmire leading into interstate 75 aggravated her,  so that she took to the back roads. And now she was lost. Somewhere in the swamps and pine barrens of east Texas, or was it still Arkansas? The rain had followed her all the way down, along the eastern range of the Appalachians, her family’s home for generations, and into the deep south, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas. 

And though she was born and raised in the  south she was still struck by the differences between her ‘neck of the woods’ and that of the Dixie states in general. Her folks, tho maybe a bit more restrained, had never held to the glory days of the gentry, the planters and their culture, and the ugly twin that shadowed them always, slavery. Certainly there was racism round her neighborhood. She grew up with the spooky tales of blacks in ghettos  rampaging through those big cities  outside the mountains. But truth be told, her family’s history, and of those hill-folk in general, was a good deal different from the south through which those mountains ran. For the most part, geography dictated that large plantation  operations weren’t feasible in the roil of sandstone and slate and granite that broke up from the flats how many millions of years ago. True enough, tobacco was a cash crop which grew in profusion in the mountain valleys, but not on the scale of tidewater Virginia or the rice, indigo and cotton of the lowlands of the Carolinas. So that, slavery was never really operational in the environs round about Knoxville and other mountain towns. Most folk,  Scotch Irish generally,  that settled the mountains were in fact  indentured servants ‘on the lam’ from brutal labor of their own on the plantations of the south or the early factories , weaving and furniture making, gun smithing and such,  of the north. Many, including herself up to the age of 13, had never so much a laid eyes on a black man. 

Garret Francis McComas, clearly an avowed racist with a deep and destructive hatred of black folk, was born  not an hours drive from her, in the Town of Wise, Va.  Claims were made,  that had begun as rumors among the prison guard, that strange voices were emanating from Garrets cell.  And that such reports of the voices, heard by the guards on shift, evidently issued from this single pale, frail and pale skinned killer,   had percolated out to state psychologists and therapists. Those tasked both with determining the felons mental state thus culpability in Capital offense crimes, especially inmates condemned to death by the state….. it was in short, all in all quite troubling.   And did not fit into the escape proof steel alloy parameters of their governmental mission specifications.

Rumor had it mongst the inmates that visions came to him  as he lay on the metal bedframe in cell #544 in the Texas state penitentiary, Polunsky Unit, death row, thirteen miles north of  Huntsville. Waiting patiently and most would say utterly resignedly, for  his end by means of lethal injection. And tho Dr Ash didn’t hold to state sanctioned murder, if anyone short of say, Mengele or Pol Pot deserved it, then Garrett Clark McComas was your man. Sixteen dead, all young men, some still yet juveniles,every single victim black, the last three, and still counting some claimed, had been burned after succumbing to multiple stab wounds.  Evidently he’d soaked them with a flammable agent, then tossed a lit napkin upon their supine forms. And more perplexing even,  many claims were made by several inmates regarding his magic powers, and healing hands, without even touching as no contact was allowed, and the ability to predict a number of the inmates futures. But Mr McComas denied emphatically any such gifts. Indeed, it is said that he himself questions his own sanity regarding these ‘hallucinations’, as he deems them. 

It would be her task, under the exegesis of the state sponsored defense team of said inmate, to  determine his mental capacity, among other, more troubling, more haunting questions, in which she and a very select few specialized. Not including those experts hired at top dollar to track down ghosts and vampires in what reality show of the moment which plagued the television airwaves. 

[squatsteader]

Here's an Athabaskan version of the 'pithouse'. Below is a Mandan version. Did the Athabaskans spread this anciant architceture. This one is in Alaska, where the earliest evidence of this large group is found. They then spread southward, into SW America and northern Mexico, where pithouses are also found. One problem with this theory: Pithouses in SW America were evidently used much earlier than the 1st Athabaskan arrivals there. But the Apache and Navajo (being Athabaskan) will argue they've been in this region 'since the beginning of time'.

https://images.app.goo.gl/1LXD45YaQES1jKBu9 

[squatsteader]

What is Hobo Aristocrat???

Notes on the life of a hobo aristocrat What is a Hobo aristocrat? and, what is the INTERNATIONAL SISTERHOOD ( inter preferred pronoun here) OF THE HOBO ARISTOCRACY? I can't remember the moment when it struck me that I'd invent a tribe of like minded souls who thrive on travel, simplicity, back country rambles, and /or just hanging out in a wilderness setting, say in a king sized Yucatán hammock I like to think the idea hatched in my pleasantly exhausted brain while luxuriating in a hot spring…after a .7 mile treck into the Gila wilderness of New Mexico. For decades afterward I returned to lose myself in those mountains, the mogollons, birthplace of Geronimo and Mangas Coloradas...,.Anyway, that's where I like to think the notion came to be. Firstly the idea was tongue in cheek. I never fancied actually forming said group, it was more an imaginary thing. The idea was to define a certain type of character, such as myself and a number of others I'd known or ran across in my rambles thruout the hemisphere and beyond. Who are these members? She/ he lives simply, yet values quality. Quality living. Quality food and wine. A very good tequila to heighten that back canyon stroll replete with pack burro, deep in the Sierra madres of Chihuahua, say. Said Hobo Aristocrat (HA) Also balances her/ his time between backland exploring, inward rambles thru say meditation--- or rendering the single branch of a thousand year old bristlecone pine onto the page of a dog eared sketchbook. Or following a deer track until hopelessly lost. And because said HA has thru the years, and from the 1st moment, developed a profound love for all that is wilderness, shehe is driven to protect such. And because the primary threat to wildlands is we the human race, certain acts dedicated to protecting these lands become not only necessary, but critical. Such as working to elect those who agree with the HA ethos, from city council to prez of the universe. And most importantly to set the stage for a social model that can live sustainably, while reducing the devastating effects coal and oil have on our atmosphere. No longer is the human race waiting for the bogeyman of climate change, we're witnessing it this moment, with catastrophic burns, droughts without precedent ... you get the picture. And so for we the HA, a multidimensional web begins to form. Joining protests and showing up for phone banks supporting fair housing, demanding more, not less public lands, etc, is also the heart of what it is to be HA. Making one's bread for the next Amtrak to lost-ville, and bread for actual bread...where to find housing when assuming however temporary the working stiff mode (more on squatting and work trades and locating cheap places to lay one's weary head to follow).... learning to navigate such necessities are also key to walking the HA path. “THE BEATS...THEY RUINED MY LIFE” My biggest hero's are teachers in publics schools. They deserve way more than any techbro or pro hoopster. But then that's the perverse machine we live in. One it seems, designed for a short shelf life. But my first mentors were to a one writers. Especially those in the latter years of the 50s, reinventing the notion of the wandering vagabond, the zen haiku master. But let's be clear, shehe should understand, this ain't vacationville. It can be a hard road, at times even dangerous, it might try both body and soul to the limit. Just as the more staid traditional mode of living. I never really had much of a father figure other than certain writers I've grown to love and cherish. (My oft repeated claim is the beats aka Kerouac and Snyder and Kesey ruined my life). Because, as often as not they slapped a good deal of varnish upon their descriptions of life on the road, the rails, the back country tracks. Reading the bios of not a few, such as Jack and Neal, one sees what road living can have in store, especially when lost to the imbibements.. I've friends who went that way, and there's no romance to a stiff body in a back alley, pockets riffled, soul sent to nowhereversville. Experimentation is one thing, the hallucinogens have their place. But, sistersbrothers, beware the chemicals on the streets these days So, more or less, a HA enjoys both the long and rugged and sweaty road to the back of beyond lands, but more important, BEING, in mind and body inside the heart of wilderness. Shehe carries with her that indelible memory of backland experience thruout their short time here, on this ancient rock. It is our balm, our religion, our soul. ***If you own a Mercedes Benz mega truck replete with hot showers and sauna... well, maybe this life ain't meant for you. But we’ll certainly take a ride from you, without complaint. Perhaps more than anything, this ‘blog’ is meant for the young sis-brotha just setting out on their own, maybe a bit overwhelmed with this notion of not following THE PLAN, of secure home and the wife hubby and kids ( no judgement here folks). And well shehe should understand, this ain't vacationville. It can be a hard road, at times even dangerous, it might try both body and soul to the limit. Just as the more staid traditional mode of living can. Learning from stone from sand from current They took to those lessons written both on page and on terrain, the earliest HA’s. Drifted down to the canyons where creeks weave thru thickets of willow and cottonwood. scrambled up along up the south facing cliffwalls for warmth of sun and a decent overhang out the way of those beastial southern winds and their weapons rain sleet snow ice, blasted as if from a 50 caliber. Discovered hand prints of children done in hematite a thousand and more years past, lay in bowls pressed into the Flats just below... likely dwellings of the earliest farmers here. Such artifacts and remains told them they’d found the place where 10,000 years and how many generations of native peoples had settled, birthed their young, fashioned myths from the stone and stars, and perished. Those first ones to this hemisphere are HA’s true mentors, and we honor them. Horse raider flats Who are they? Who are those whose steps we retrace? Follow paths so ancient, so oft used they are grooved into the very sandstone? We follow such trails, into the canyon floors and up top to the granite peaks, stone spines of the upper most ridges. there are not a few hereabouts who I would propose to membership in the HA sisbrothahood. I’ve learned a new term round these desert places; dirt bag. Now at first I was like many a little off put by the label. Brings to mind that urine soaked, down-on-his-luck, Safeway vodka Swilling lad hitting you up for a dollar bill on skid row, no? But you'll find Intelligent erudite folks, true hobo aristocrats, though they are sadly unaware. Dirt bag to them is a badge of honor and the appelation a rejection of the consumerist techie 50 hour a week wage slave. Historical mentors and members might range from Crazy Horse to depression era itinerant laborers, those hobos who once rambled across the sweaty Western State back in the 30s. Today’s HA might throw you a deep dive lesson in local geology, discuss classic literature, even share a high dollar microbrew with you, tho many are teetotalers. I've met a few here in Moab practically from the first day. There's wild Bill, the first week I put in town, he gifted me a ride to Behind the Rocks, my first wild land ramble in Utah in over 30 years. We skidded and bounced along a dirt track in his Toyota pickup, his home away from life draining criminal $700 a month apartment. Let's just say he don't don't jive with draining that paycheck on rent. Where was I... up a rugged track we did go gambling on about the local deserts and mountains island ranges the phrase ‘like I said predominates’ oft repeated assertions regarding the van life, the hard life etc. 5 months afterwards I discovered he’d majored in early US literature and was in his second year of a masters when one night the plan turned on a dime and he burned his notebooks and set out on a career as a part time trail crew in the US service and full-time dirt bag aka hobo aristocrat Why this HA returns to the wilds The silence a terrible deep silence silence so total, voices prayers incoherent babbling hatches from the depths of the skull being the silence of death that most ancient place before stone was Stone, star was star, I was me and you were you. To connect to with our personal silence, is to rejoin with that timeless void from which we to a one arose….so says shamaness and personal mental health guru Mary X. (names have been removed to protect the innocent) Indeed a lonely silence recalling some deep chamber of the forgotten self, before our first memories...that moment in the belly we became cognoscent off our mom’s heartbeat, our own heartbeat. There, blind, swimming in the womb, emerging from death, some might claim...this is but one of the many reasons I return to the wilds, spend weeks, months in the back country. Until Mr. of road vehicle no muffler power machine NRA gifted yahoo comes holleren’, charging like something outa a bad ,battle of Gettysburg’ re -enactment, to ruin the whole fucking thing. What's with these black and white US flags, anyway? They really creeped me out I once heard a sister's podcast, a city gal, whereupon she described soothing sounds to sleep by... cop sirens from afar, car alarms, the drunken fight next door, shattering of vehicle windows, semi automatic gunfire in the distance….so, soooooothing. Sleep, sleeeeep... TO BE CONTINUED: ahead, ‘what, he ate his own puke?’ Campfire cooking and maybe a recipe or two. Stinging nettle, acorn gruel, rainbow trout, grass hoppers, dandelions… but no human barf. Ready in 20 minutes Serves 8 people 280 calories

[squatsteader]

This is in effect, a transition, in many ways. We’re gonna focus on the basics of finding shelter, gearing it towards those facing homelessness for the first time. The term itself sucks, as so many in the US grew up, in effect, homeless. Traipsing along much like the ‘army brat’ behind Mom n or just Mom, or in some cases none of the above. So any real sense of home, of BEING in a place more than a decade, where grandmas raised corn and shit like that, is some far away made for tv family flick, Lassie, or some kinda stupid shit like Americans, let’s face it, have always been ,nomadic, driven by hunger and greed and from the law and pregnant women and NEVER LOOKING BACK. It should be our national motto: Don’t look back. That’s why, in general, our culture sucks shit. But back to the point...

So, you three part time jobs dint quite make the grade? That story you told ol Joe the landlord, about the coon eating yr paycheck, dint buy you another month? The sheriff’s notice stapled to your front door having ripped the lower part of your guts out, you buy a six, sit down at what’s left of the kitchen table, and MAKE THE PLAN...which is basically, holy shit I have no frikkin idea. 

I once had this girlfriend, years ago, and she’s got a pretty damned solid bank account, closing in on six figures, even so, her greatest fear was, ““I don’t wanna be that crazy lady pushing a fucked up shopping cart full of failure and trash. It was, I guess, to her at least, a pretty good motivator.  I faced it on my 19th birthday. Jumped on my beat to shit Honda FB 600, a bunch of shit strapped to the back, and hit the road, aka Kerouac....

my first ‘Squat’ was a tired old spread in Santa Monica, roof sagged, caged in by chain link. I was too stupid and young and scared to actually ingress the place, just slept on a back until a dude I met hipped me to the ““I bet there’s a way inside”notion”.   And I never looked back...

[squatsteader]

[squatsteader]

towards a functioning Government

https://wordpress.com/post/urbanhomesteadingandsquatting.wordpress.com/4

[squatsteader]

Adios Frisco, hello wilderness

So this is it. After 12 years of living in Frisco, she and I are parting ways. I came here with the notion of plunging into the literary scene, but  wasn't able to break in. Ya Ive written a good deal, a couple novels, many poems, attending a number of open mikes. But the thriving arts and writing scene this city was famous for  has been badly damaged by the influx of a whole new urban personality, the tech industry. As well as absudly high rents and a housing crises, which shoots it up even higher.

I cant really  use this as an excuse. The truth of it is Im not a social butterfly, I find it hard to break that invisible, semi permiable wall of friendship circles and clicks. And these days in the writing gig, social circles are everything. In fact the only poems I was able to publish was thru the kind help of my ol Buddy Rich Fergusson, of Bloom fame, and a helluva poet himself.

Occupy was an amazing, horrific, soul enriching, soul sucking experience, and Ive gained a few close friends from that brief experience in "true democracy," (if that's a 'thing') Many of my friends, including almost everyone in Homes Not Jails, have split for reasons of police pressure and gentrification. HNJ was  a group of anarchist types devoted to opening abandoned houses for our roofless brethren. That too was an awesome exp, working with and learning from folks that have carried  on a tradition of opening houses without damaging them, and devoted to improving them for others to occupy. One excellent aspect of this city is its three hours from some of the most pristine  wilderness areas this nation has to offer.

And that's where Im headed. So, you guys, we'll hopefully talk and correspond soon, when Ive build a solid pithouse, armed with bow, knife, solar charger, and this janky assed laptop.

Adios! 'With deaths comes births'. I feel like that should be a quote, but its from yrs truly.

BTW this is a vid of something like what Im planning to build out in the bush

[squatsteader]

https://youtu.be/Q_nQpo7ek7s

Adios Frisco, hello wilderness

So this is it. After 12 years of living in Frisco, she and I are parting ways. I came here with the notion of plunging into the literary scene, but  wasn't able to break in. Ya Ive written a good deal, a couple novels, many poems, attending a number of open mikes. But the thriving arts and writing scene this city was famous for  has been badly damaged by the influx of a whole new urban personality, the tech industry. As well as absurdly high rents and a housing crises, which shoots it up even higher.

I cant really  use this as an excuse. The truth of it is Im not a social butterfly, I find it hard to break that invisible, semi permiable wall of friendship circles and clicks. And these days in the writing gig, social circles are everything. In fact the only poems I was able to publish was thru the kind help of my ol Buddy Rich Fergusson, of Bloom fame, and a helluva poet himself.

Occupy was an amazing, horrific, soul enriching, soul sucking experience, and Ive gained a few close friends from that brief experience in "true democracy," (if that's a 'thing') Many of my friends, including almost everyone in Homes Not Jails, have split for reasons of police pressure and gentrification. HNJ was  a group of anarchist types devoted to opening abandoned houses for our roofless brethren. That too was an awesome exp, working with and learning from folks that have carried  on a tradition of opening houses without damaging them, and devoted to improving them for others to occupy. One excellent aspect of this city is its three hours from some of the most pristine  wilderness areas this nation has to offer.

And that's where Im headed. So, you guys, we'll hopefully talk and correspond soon, when Ive build a solid pithouse, armed with bow, knife, solar charger, and this janky assed laptop.

Adios! 'With deaths comes births'. I feel like that should be a quote, but its from yrs truly.

BTW this is a vid of something like what Im planning to build out in the bush

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All in Common? Or ‘what I say goes’? lessons and notes on  running a community garden

Being a part of a garden community really means community. It means dealing with our neighbors and friends, learning patience, discovering our limitations and maybe expanding them. But lets be honest. Dealing with folks can sometimes be  really trying. We all are working thru stuff, most of us have issues going back to family, all the way back to the delivery room. Though this article may be in part me hashing thru stuff,and literally grieving about losing a beautiful space with some special folks from my neighborhood in the Mission,  I think its also pertinent to those interested in working and or volunteering at a community garden, or about to start one.

So bare with me, and let me run down the particular issu involved. After working for over five years at the, let’s call it “Humans for a Green Common” Garden in SF, I had a run- in with the main facilitator there. I have to say, he is a wonderful man, full of gentleness. But  I also found him to sometimes exhibit signs of the basic control freak. And though i don’t want to presume what he’s going through, there’d been health  issues, and as well a son who’d committed suicide. Whether this hab any bearing on our dispute, I can’t be sure.

Usually though, we’d been able to work through these issues. My thing? Sometimes I get inpatient with folks when I feel they are breathing down my neck, and there’s likely times this wasn’t in fact the case, I’m human, and often mistaken, and need to remember that, and remind myself .

On the particular day in question, I was feeing that he was really boxing me in more than usual, not allowing for any range of independence, not trusting me, after that many years. And so  things got tense. I asked him if he could back off a little and trust me to make some (even simple) decisions. He got his back up, raised his voice, saying if I couldn’t listen to his instructions, I’d have to take a break form the garden. This frankly surprised me, and I blew up, tossed a couple of “F Yous”.  Not my proudest moment, and definitely way out of line and immature. When I’m blindsided, that’s when I tend to react with anger. Its not a good trait and I am constantly working on it.

There had been other issues before. There are powers that be of this property,  elderly guys who run, supposedly, a non profit, though their age and infirmity doesn't allow for much work at all. At one point they’d entrusted me with  the responsibility to manage the garden while, lets call him Arbor, wasn’t around. Thinks were going well, but one day I showed up late, after Calling them. At some point after this they decided to take away that responsibility. And gave it to another person, who did exactly the same thing as I had, showing up late once. But they let it slide with that person. That individual didnt have her responsibilities stripped from her, as I’d had. Another time, when  Arbol was sick, they locked the gates, without telling any of the volunteers they’d decided to close for the day. I asked them about this, and one of the original members, the defacto president,    told me, very rudely I thought, he didn’t have to give me a reason. This to a person who’d worked there for years, without a dime paid, and I didnt expect payment, except in the currency of respect and common decency.

Whats to learn in this situation? First, I’d research the garden you’re thinking about joining. Talk to folks who are working there. Ask them especially if there were any issues dealing with leadership, and what their basic organization is. If its fuzzy, that means folks are probably not going to be totally straight with you, there might be control issues. I’ve found that Vagueness breeds dishonesty, it leads to manipulation. Its much clearer and more honest to set some basic rules at the start, so that when there are  misunderstandings, and there will be, everyone is on the same page. This never happened in this particular garden. The vibe was, hay we’re all in this together, when the reality was, there was a definite hierarchy.  A definite leadership situation, however couched in communal terms, which in the end I found to be frankly dishonest and hypocritical. 

For those especially about to start a garden, my feeling is, its just as important to plan and put into writing the organization as it is the garden itself. When one is about to put in a garden, you plot the suns path, the major micro climates of the space, the makeup of soil, etc. All these things are vital to a successful garden. BUT JUST AS VITAL IS A CLEAR CUT ORGANIZATION, whether you are totally communal, decide upon a leader, or somewhere in between. Usually those who put the most time in a garden, and the most knowledgable, become leaders by default. That’s fine, but it should be expressed clearly.

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Mandan Moments: Earth Lodge Construction

Here’s an excellant model of a Mandan lodge. It explodes then rebuilds so you can see the techniques, and materials used to build. I’ve come to believe this lan is ubiquitous thruout much of western North america, from The Dnai tribes in Alaska and Canada, to the mississippian groups like the Haditsa, Mandan, and others, all the way thru New Mexico and Arizona (they are referred as pit houses),down into Chihuahua and Sonora. Whether there is an early prototype that spread down from the bearing straights and Siberia, or the structure just makes sense, is an interesting question...

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BAMBOOBAMBOOBAMBOO...THIS is at least one vital alternative to todays destructive construction mega business empires (read D Rumps shitty glitter style vegas rejects)

At All In Common garden where i hang out, and sometimes even do stuff, we are replacing  a bamboo arbor thats pretty much fallen apart. I’ve been working with a large bamboo grove, cutting out the dead, keeping some to use as polls for out greenbeans n tomatoes etc. But this is the 1st time any of us (outside of a water fawucet stand i put together)     have tried to BUILD something. So I’ve started  researching this amazing grass, and am BLOWN AWAY by it’s potential. Some species (nearly 15,000 diferrent ones)  can grow more than a METER N 3 DAYS. Are there issues? Ya. If untreated and left in the open with moisture and rain, bamboo quickly weakens and rots. But, if treated....well, I’ll let the above speak for itself. You’ll be amazed.   The beautiful thing of it is, bamboo is SO VERSATILE. With certain non toxic curing processes, (heat, and also borax salts) bamboo will last a very long time. Enjoy!  

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animation of building Mandan earth lodge

wonderful animation of how-to in building a mandan style earth lodge. No, living so close to the earth aint for everyone. That's cool. But for those who are interested check it. Im also experimenting with a  simpler version of such a lodge, based on the Sierra Miwoks of CA.

https://youtu.be/VUsO2UaMWBc

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400 years. Anniversary of slavery in the US, a personal perspective

Regarding Kids being killed in communities of color.  

From my squat in the Mission district of SF, I have heard three times this year a semi automatic pistol being fired. This resulted in a wounding and two deaths. There’s no difficulty in distinguishing between a round of fire crackers and a clip from a nine millimeter fired at three in the morning….tho during the one shooting I  did witness, a Honduran young man, or adolescent, shot downtown across the street from the Vietnamese restaurant where I eating. ‘Wow must be a celebration, the fire cracker thing’ I thought….until  looking across the street to see the kid lying face up at the edge of the sidewalk. I ran over, wadded up my teeshirt, and pressed it into the wound, a bullet hole exactly at the center of his chest. Truthfully, there was little me or my teeshirt did to save him, all the blood was draining into his chest cavity. I by chance caught the same paramedics two days later and asked whether the kid was still alive. ‘touch and go’ they mumbled.

It was in that same neighborhood, the Tenderloin, long a dumping ground of all humans we Californians would rather not see---the mentally ill, those newly paroled,   drug addicted, etc. including likely at the time, myself.

I had been bullied by a middle aged black man who was a neighbor of mine. Reason being, I’d screamed out the window one night, after a woman, who turned out to also be a black woman, was screaming and crying and cursing for someone to ‘let her in’, for over two hours. I lost it, yes. ‘Will you Shut the fuck up’, I hollered out the window. Not one of my prouder moments. My neighbor immediately  took it as race based. It was, frankly, lack-of- sleep based. The neighbor told me he ‘wouldn’t mess with me in the Hotel’ (the Seneca, a notorious Skid row SRO hotel, of the THC corp an also notorious nonprofit evidently dedicated to crime and mayhem, was known for utter corruption, including managers who took payoffs from drug dealers) ... My neighbor wouldn’t ‘fuck me up’ because the Seneca was ‘wired up’, with cameras. But if he caught me on the street ‘IT WAS ON’.

Several times afterward   he threatened me, or glared at me inside the hotel. One day I met him on the street just outside the hotel. ‘Look, I’m done with the threats, you gonna do something, then lets get it over with’, I stupidly challenged him. We squared off, and in a matter of seconds, I was also face up on the pavement, after a couple of guys laid into me with their boots. A massive black woman now straddled me, screaming….not at me, but at the men who were evidently set on putting me in a wheel chair, hospital bed, or worse. Moments later, an ambulance and the fuzz showed up. That woman very probably saved me from damages much more serious.

Turns out that my neighbor wasn’t the one that put me down. It was a younger black man who sucker punched my from behind, a perfect uppercut, connecting to the left side of my jaw. After the emergency room doctors wired it up,  I’d be sucking through a straw for six weeks. Everything had been caught on a camera from the pizza shop next door. (the Seneca’s of course, ironically wasn’t functional) My neighbor/tormentor did kick me several times, as did others, also caught on camera. Both men who accosted me had felony records, with histories of violence. Both did time for this assault.  I never saw the woman again, never had the chance to thank her. Probably wouldn’t even recognize her, as I was mostly unconscious for the blood drained out of my head. I figure, the Tenderloin being the Tenderloin, there’s a 50-50 chance she still has a pulse.

I’m a direct victim of black violence, probably the most violent community in our country at this moment.( I’m also a victim of being saved by a very large black woman) This last non parenthesis sentence will in all likelihood be dissected, misunderstood, as being racist based. Its not. Its a fact. I also have come to believe that this violence so often inwardly directed in these African American communities, is a result of over 400 years of slavery horrific educational prospects, and open bigotry.

That being said its almost impossible to find  records of black on black violence and homicides when googling race and color based records of violence.  Its too inconvenient for the neo liberals whgo own google and most every major news outlet. But google ‘police on -black violence’, and there’s scores of stories. Why? Reporting on black on black violence is often too complicated, too ugly, too ‘racist’. If read at all, those wedded to their political views, both on the left and right, will call me out for being their opposite. For claiming violence is race based (I believe it is not, but our history is) For those claiming violence is purely fabricated by whites ( we share huge guilt, but not all of it)

I do not fully blame the men who beat me that day. (tho I blame the woman for saving me, wish and yearn to my core that I could give her a big hug) Because I feel, after a long and torturous road, which included fear of black men and teens if they fit a certain profile… that history is not a dead and embalmed corpse moldering in the ground, but very loudly, very obviously alive in all of us, the neighborhoods we live in, the country we claim as citizens. And this is what we’re left to deal with today, under an administration we voted in (if not by popular vote then by our legal election system) that seeks to use hatred as a means to power.

  The 400 years of slavery in the U.S. which, ironically for this writer, began in his home state of Virginia, did not in fact end for many black people especially young men, until long into the twentieth century. This is recorded, this is fact.  The ghettos and communities of black folks have, I believe been caught up in this from this deep past into the present. Maybe today the young white cop on the beat in Hunter’s Pt doesn’t have a racist bone in his body. Maybe he does. But from the 40s on, when the black community in SF was largely established, there were plenty that most definitely did , and this quickly I assume entered the verbal history of their community. Anger, festering unemployment, betrayals from bureaucrats and pols from every side of the coin, and every race, including their own, have dealt with these communities dismally, if at all.

I believe with every bone in my body especially the mending ones, that a line, most crooked, between the first African dragged in chains upon our shores can be drawn, straight up to my jaw, and more importantly, to every black on black killing in this country. Let me be clear: I do not in any way compare my assault to the near genocide and horrific experiences of those Africans who long ago survived criminal voyages, or to those in south side Chicago afraid to go out of their houses at night, or broad daylight. But until we on the left, including folks of color, face up to these very real truths, and instead fall into simplistic finger pointing, (where in the Black lives Matter movement do they address black on black violence?) we will never completely heal these deep wounds.

At least my brothers n’ sisters on the left can see beyond their own lives, and understand the role history plays here. They understand the need for reparations, for healing. Will those on the right continue to demonize and negate until they are also face up on the ground, their loved ones praying over them?

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400 years. Anniversary of Slavery in America

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America’s Sleepless Nights ‘17-’19

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Snakeman, from inside the oldest longterm squat in SF...

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a pic of some temporary artwork, inspired by ‘throwers’ or fortune tellers who use bones, sticks, dice etc to preidict YOUR FUTURE WITH 100% ACCURACY!