BLUE TANGO SHOES
for Patti on her 60th birthday
by Janet Hamill


From New York to London and back again
the courses of our cryptic mythology
soar in mid flight, converge, and go their separate ways
in a bookstore window in Buenos Aires
you saw sparkling blue tango shoes
and thought of the mariner off shore in the distance
adrift from the gold and silver canvas of your world
that fits so perfectly - a shirt of star field cloth

Always there's a porcelain angel
in the pitch and roll of my study
the blue tango shoes take their place
among the saints and rosaries
brought back from your Pythagorean travels
notebooks like this new one from the Argentine
a box of twenty-five eggs of semi-precious stone
and the last armless soldier from a box of one hundred
we bought on Second Avenue

Miniature blue tango shoes
blue roses and feathers on the toes, blue ankle straps
from Borges' city, which you didn't care for much
"Too much like a Portuguese city," you said
yet prowled the streets none the less
looking for treasures to stock the hold of my heart
and in return this poem -
a vial of pale green seawater
to wear around your neck

(c) Janet Hamill





LENNY KAYE

Musician, writer, father, friend
Born in New York City
December 27, 1946
Sixty Years Young Today

Happy Birthday, Lenny
Thanks for Everything





THIRD EYE VISUALS POSTERS
Dear Family, Friends and Freaks;

The Third Eye Visuals poster line is now a reality! The first four images are all from my trip to Cambodia in October 1995. These black and white photo-posters are printed on sturdy high quality paper at 24"x36". I will be selling posters this weekend saturday and sunday from 10am to 7pm at the Bleecker street Market next to Our Lady Of Pompeii Church on Bleecker between Carmine and Leroy. Its just west of sixth avenue and 2 blocks south of the west 4th street subway station. It'd be nice to see some friendly faces at the market!
Peace to All
Dan Lilienfeld





SO LONG, PETER BOYLE
October 18, 1933 - December 12, 2006

Pete Boyle is one of those people you always selfishly count on to be there to make you laugh and smile. I can't believe he's gone, but he and his classic voice will certainly never be forgotten. He was a good father and frankenstein.

jesse smith





WE SALUTE NOAM CHOMSKY
friend of the people

born December 7, 1928

"Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony."

http://www.chomsky.info/





BIRTHDAY GREETINGS AND GRATITUDE
TO SENATOR ROBERT BYRD

"The loss of freedom will not come as a thunderclap. Rather, if it goes, it will slip silently away from us, little by little, like so many grains of sand sliding softly through an hour glass. The curbing of speech in the Senate on judicial nominations will most certainly evolve to an eventual elimination of the right of extended debate. And that will spur intimidation and the steady withering of dissent. An eagerness to win -- win elections, win every judicial nomination, overpower enemies, real or imagined, with brute force -- holds the poison seeds of destruction of free speech and decimation of minority rights. The ultimate perpetrator of tyranny in this world is the urge by the powerful to prevail at any cost. A free forum where the minority can rise to loudly call a halt to the ambitions of an over zealous majority must be maintained. We must never surrender that forum, the United States Senate,
to the tyranny of any majority."





FUR






CBGB October 15, 2006

Mission accomplished
what remains is future....





CONGRATULATIONS, DETROIT!





A SALUTE TO ANN DEMEULEMEESTER

Ten Years of friendship
Twenty Years of beautiful work
Twenty Years dreaming of cloth

Paris. October 3, 2006


PLEASE CONSIDER THIS

Dear Friend,

Last month a federal judge ruled that the Administration's warrantless domestic eavesdropping program was unconstitutional. The court acted to safeguard our Constitutionally-protected liberties and to restore our government's separation of powers. I commend the court's decision.

Today, Republicans are considering legislation to retroactively authorize the Administration's lawbreaking. As the Washington Post wrote yesterday, Republican leaders have planned to produce legislation by month's end that would give the administration as much latitude as possible to continue the program. [WP, 9/6/2006]

But before this Congress is rushed into voting on a proposal that would set aside its Constitutional responsibility to provide a check and balance on Presidential power we must first know more about this secretive assault on our liberties.

Congress should not give rubber-stamp approval to this spying program before we know how it may have reached into the lives of innocent Americans -- Americans like you and me.

That is why in February I introduced legislation to establish an independent, nonpartisan commission to investigate the secret spying on law-abiding American citizens.

You agreed and endorsed my proposal by signing the petition to investigate the secret spying. The American people need to know if the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or any other U.S. law has been broken, and whether the constitutional rights of the American people have been violated.

That's why I am asking you to tell a friend that the Administration's secret spying must be investigated and to urge them to sign the petition. Republicans in Washington must know that the people care about liberty and the Constitution.

To tell your friends, visit: www.byrd2006.com/action/tellafriend.cfm

Thousands of you already have let your voices be heard. But we need thousands more to send a loud message that the Constitution still matters, and its checks and balances are essential to our Republic.

Thank you for your support for checks and balances -- and for our Constitution.

Sincerely,

Robert C. Byrd
United States Senator




QANA

Patti Smith has recorded a new song: "Qana":
[band version] [solo version]

There's no one
in the village
not a human
nor a stone
there's no one
in the village
children are gone
and a mother rocks
herself to sleep
let it come down
let her weep

the dead lay in strange shapes

Some stay buried
others crawl free
baby didn't make it
screaming debris
and a mother rocks
herself to sleep
let it come down
let her weep

the dead lay in strange shapes

Limp little dolls
caked in mud
small, small hands
found in the road
their talking about
war aims
what a phrase
bombs that fall
American made
the new Middle East
the Rice woman squeaks

the dead lay in strange shapes

little bodies
little bodies
tied head and feet
wrapped in plastic
laid out in the street
the new Middle East
the Rice woman squeaks

the dead lay in strange shapes

Water to wine
wine to blood
ahh Qana
the miracle
is love







QANA

The Israeli practice of collective punishment is a war crime under the Geneva Convention. Why are they allowed to do this? Because they have our permission?

We send over four billion dollars in aid and weapons to Israel every year. We are paying for this devastation. The slaughter of children. The country in ruins.We are paying for this. George Bush willfully rejected a truce and now we have the Qana massacre on our head. Thirty seven of the dead were children.

Qana is considered by some as the location of the first miracle of Christ. Turning water into wine. There is no wine flowing in Qana today. Only blood. Only blood.



SMELL A RAT

President Bush said Monday the monthlong war between Israel and Hezbollah was part of a broader struggle between freedom and terror and "we can only imagine how much more dangerous this conflict would be if Iran had the nuclear weapon it seeks." Bush said Iran and Syria were the primary sponsors of Hezbollah guerrillas who captured two Israeli soldiers, igniting the battle with Israel. More than 900 people were killed in the fighting, and there was massive destruction in southern Lebanon. Bush said the "responsibility for this suffering lies with Hezbollah."

TRANSLATION. The Bush administrations' wet dream of invading Iran as a trickle down aspect of the Lebanon invasion didn't pan out.

These are dirty times. Time to clean our inner houses. Time to wake up. Not the time to cultivate fear. Cultivate awareness. Ask the Lebanese, burying their dead, clearing the debris of their life, who is responsible. It is Israel and the United States. The most hated countries in the world. Are we not our country? Will we stand for this?

This was not a conflict. Iraq was not a war. They were invasions. Premeditated and driven by selfish agendas. Ask the mother who pulled her dead little girl from the ruins of Qana if she feels safer. Chances are she no longer cares who has the fucking bomb. Nothing can make the world safe for her daughter.

After September 11th the rats from downtown migrated to our village street. And every one had a face like the Masters of War who call themselves our protectors. Would that the Pied Piper could return with his magic flute and drive them all from the White House to the most polluted section of the sea.



LETTER FROM RALPH NADER
TO PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH

July 17, 2006

Dear President Bush:

You have been a weak president, despite your strutting and barking, when it comes to doing the right things for the American people within the Constitution and its rule of law. This trait is now in bold relief over the Israeli government's escalating war crimes pulverizing the defenseless people and country of Lebanon.

With systematic efficiency, the Israeli government has already destroyed innocent homes and basic public facilities--ports, airports, highways, bridges, power stations--which are critical to delivery of food, medicines, health care, ambulances, water and other essentials for a civilian population. This bombardment, by U.S. made bombers, military vehicles, ships and missiles with American taxpayer subsidies, places an inescapable responsibility upon your shoulders which does not mix with your usual vacuous messianic rigidity.

As the leading player in official Washington's puppet show, it is time for you to assert the interests of the American people and those of the broad Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, by standing up to the puppeteers. For without this conflict, Hezbollah would not be in today's news.

The time has come for you to return to Texas for a private meeting with your father, his former national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft and his former Secretary of State, James Baker. You need to say to them 'I can't trust my advisors anymore; there have been so many tragic blunders. What do you advise me to do about the destruction of a friendly nation by the world's fifth most powerful military?'

Here is what I think they should say to you:

1. Take personal command of an immediate rescue effort for the tens of thousands of Americans trapped in Lebanon by Israel's calculated blocking of air, land and sea escape routes. You've said the safety of Americans is your top priority. Prove it by using the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy facilities to immediately evacuate all our people desperate to escape the terrorization of Lebanon.

2. You have been so docile and permissive to Israeli demands that any modest deviation from this posture will make your next move credible. Announce that you are sending two prominent negotiators--perhaps James Baker (Republican) and former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell (Democrat) to Israel and Lebanon to arrange for a cease fire between the combatants.

Announced at a televised White House news conference with your two envoys, you can punctuate your seriousness by raising the questions of violations of the Arms Export Control Act and the Foreign Assistance Act. Using U.S. supplied weapon systems to commit civilian atrocities on homes and fleeing vehicles with children and to inflict collective punishment on mass civilian populations are not using these weapons for legitimate self-defense and internal policing, as our federal law requires. Israeli planes have even fire-bombed wheat silos and gasoline stations in Lebanon. More mayhem is on the way.

3. Stop acting like an impulsive, out-of-control West Texas Sheriff and start reading, thinking and listening for a change. When Israel, Britain and France violated international treaties against aggression in 1956, and invaded the Suez Canal, President Dwight Eisenhower used his influence to make them withdraw from Egypt.

In 1982, following a year without any PLO skirmishes over the Lebanese-Israeli border, Israeli armed forces invaded Lebanon anyway. They created a path of destruction all the way to Beirut and militarily occupied south Lebanon for 18 years before they withdrew, except for retaining Shebaa Farms. In 1982, the New York Times reported "indiscriminate bombing" of Beirut by Israeli planes. At least 20,000 Lebanese civilians lost their lives in that invasion and many more were injured. From that conflict Hezbollah was born, composed of many people whose relatives were casualties in that illegal invasion.

History, George, does not start two weeks or two months ago. You must read about past U.S. Presidents who, at least, sent high-level emissaries to quell similar border fighting. It worked and prisoners were often exchanged.

You are doing and saying nothing about what the rest of the world believes is a hugely disproportionate attack against innocent adults and children in violation of the Geneva Conventions, the UN Charter and other treaties and federal statutes. You've sworn to uphold these laws. Do so. Because of the Israeli government's overwhelming military power, the imbalance of terror against civilians and their property has always been to its advantage. As has its occupation of Palestine and confiscation of land and water sources.

4. You can't take sides and be an honest broker. Just about all our knowledgeable retired military, diplomatic and intelligence officials believe resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the key to deflating other agitations in the region. Freedom and justice for the Palestinian state and security and stability for the Israeli state must both be achieved.

You have turned your back on the courageous and prominent Israeli peace movement which normally reflects the positions of half of the Israeli population. You've never met with any of its leaders - even those in the Knesset or former officials in the military, intelligence and Justice Ministries. Hundreds of reserve combat officers and soldiers of the IDF have refused, in their words, "to fight beyond the 1967 borders to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire population." They pledged only to fight for Israel's legitimate defense. (www.seruv.org.il/defaulteng.asp)

5. Once in a while, ask your aides for a sample of Israeli opinion that rejects the notion that there can be a military solution to this conflict, despite the military imbalance. For example, reports and editorials in Haaretz, arguably the most respected newspaper in Israel, would educate your judgment. In a recent editorial, Haaretz argued that the present Israeli government has "lost its reason" through the brutal incarceration, devastation and deprivation of innocent people in Gaza.

In another Haaretz commentary dated July 16th, Gideon Levy writes:

In Gaza, a soldier is abducted from the army of a state that frequently abducts civilians from their homes and locks them up for years without a trial - but only we're allowed to do that. And only we're allowed to bomb civilian population centers.

6. One final bit of advice could come from Papa Bush's circle. If the Israeli army decides to invade Lebanon with troops, your support of the aggression can possibly unleash a domino of warring actions and reactions over there. As is it, Americans are increasingly fed up with the Iraq quagmire.

Moreover, we know they don't like many of your domestic policies favoring the wealthy, the post-Katrina debacle, exporting jobs, and among our conservative base, your enormous deficits. So our Republican Party's control of government is at stake in November. Don't you have your hands full with Iraq whose invasion we all urged you to avoid in 2003?





GRISHA

"Lone and discarded one! divorced by fate
From thy wished for fellows-whither art flown?
Where lingerest thou in thy bereaved estate,
Like some lost star or buried meteor stone?"

—J.J. Sylvester

Grigori "Grisha" Perelman, who turned 40 on June 13, is a great mathematician who has made important contributions to Riemannian geometry. He humbly produced papers on the internet offering a solution to the century old
Poincare Conjecture.

There is an intense flurry of mental activity surrounding his solution that offers us all a thrilling respite from the the exploits of greed, wiretapping, sexual perversity and human slaughter which is the usual fare we ingest like slabs of doctored spam. This is a pure story and though one may know little of mathematics, Poincare himself said "A scientist worthy of the name, above all a mathematician, experiences in his work the same impression as an artist; his pleasure is as great
and of the same nature."

Grisha presented his illumination and disappeared in the woods. His fellow mathematicians call out to him. It seems he has been located. Living, it is reported,
as a shattered recluse, with his mother.

We are in desperate need of the true Artist in any field. Of hope, magic and spiritual ascent. Perhaps Grisha will emerge and accept the extended hands of his fellow explorers and
shed his light upon us all.






LORRAINE HUNT LIEBERSON

March 1, 1954 — July 3, 2006

A courageous, transcendent spirit and voice.





THANK YOU, LIEUTENANT

Ehren Watada, a First Lieutenant in the Army, stationed in Fort Lewis, Washington, has become the first commissioned officer to refuse deployment in Iraq. He faces a court-martial and imprisonment. "I refuse to be party to an illegal and immoral war against people who did nothing to deserve our aggression," he says. "My participation would make me a party to war crimes."

A true patriot questions his government and his conscience. We support Ehren Watada who has shown much courage in his meditations and his actions.

A website has been set up where you can sign a statement of support for Watada.




STATE OF THE UNION

A recording from Patti Smith's New Year's Eve concert:

Declaration of Independence





AUGURIES OF INNOCENCE

Patti Smith's AUGURIES OF INNOCENCE: Poems has been published by Ecco.

Autographed copies are currently available at St. Marks Bookshop in New York City. Visit the store at 31 Third Avenue (at 9th Street) or order by phone at 212-260-7853.