The Necessity of Dreams Has Never Been More Clear--
Next time, it's you or me or our children. The horrors of Katrina were one thing, but they pale in terms of this ongoing social neglect of our own. If anything good comes out of this movement around Obama, if anything good comes out of this war, I hope it's that we begin to think in terms of not just the dream but the necessity of building a new kidn of government (by government I mean a mechanism for living together, looking out for each other and living our live's to their fullest), a new kind of government that doesn't mean simply protection of the rights of the privileged, a government that is genuinely BY THE PEOPLE and FOR THE PEOPLE.
This one isn't. No way, no how.
DA
Feds plan study of children amid FEMA trailer furor
CDC bosses ignored warning, scientist says
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
By Bruce Alpert
Washington bureau
WASHINGTON -- Accused of taking months to correct a misleading report about the possible health risks of formaldehyde in FEMA trailers, a government agency announced Tuesday a five-year study of Gulf Coast children to determine the long-term effects of exposure to the gas.
"I regret that our initial work on formaldehyde in trailers did not meet our own expectations," said Howard Frumkin, director of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Details of the new children's study, he said, are still being worked out.
The announcement came as a House subcommittee heard emotional testimony from the Agency for Toxic Substance's former top toxicologist, Christopher De Rosa, who said he was excluded from a flawed 2007 study that recommended simple venting as a way to reduce potentially toxic levels of the gas.
De Rosa said the respiratory problems reported by trailer residents were a "harbinger of a pending public health catastrophe" and that residents should be alerted of potential "reproductive, developmental and carcinogenic effects." He said he was instructed not to write e-mails about his concerns for fear they might be misinterpreted.
The 2007 report had concluded that by opening windows and vents formaldehyde levels in FEMA trailers could be kept at safe levels in the short term. The Federal Emergency Management Agency reported those findings to the public, including in April 2007 testimony to a House committee by the agency's director, David Paulison.
But by then, according to subcommittee Chairman Brad Miller, D-N.D., the Centers for Disease Control already had reported De Rosa's concerns in a letter to the agency's legal counsel, who put it in a file and never shared it with other officials.
Because no one at the CDC corrected the reassuring statements by Paulison and others, Miller said residents were given a false sense of security.
Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Texas, who said he was ashamed of the revelations, called De Rosa a model employee willing to risk his own career to warn residents about possible health problems.
Frumkin acknowledged that he and other agency officials should have been suspicious when the request for a report on formaldehyde levels came from the counsel's office at FEMA, rather than employees directly involved with trailers. It indicated, Frumkin said, the request was intended more to protect against litigation than as a comprehensive examination of the potential health concerns.
FEMA Deputy Administrator Harvey Johnson told the subcommittee that FEMA is moving quickly to move the remaining 30,000 hurricane victims in trailers to other housing -- about 1,000 a month at last count.
Becky Gillette, a Sierra Club official who first reported in 2006 that high formaldehyde levels at FEMA trailers were causing health problems, said she encountered "callous disregard" from FEMA and the CDC as she pleaded for follow-up studies. At the very least, she told the subcommittee, that FEMA officials and federal researchers should have spent 15 minutes, "let alone spend the night," to learn what residents were encountering.
. . . . . . .
Bruce Alpert can be reached at bruce.alpert@newhouse.com or (202) 383-7861.
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Rites of Spring
I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that featured a satyr before in my life. There’s that brief Pan episode in The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao, but I’ve never gotten around to the book. However, spring is here, and I’ve read two in about as many weeks.
Fortunately, I now believe satyrs can be pretty damn scary. I mean that Dr. Lao scene was creepy, but it didn’t prepare me for the horrors in Bentley Little’s Dominion and Brian Keene’s Dark Hollow. Although Keene’s book is hot off the presses, February 2008, my stumbling across them back to back was somewhat of a coincidence because Little’s dates back to 1996, and the fact that I picked it up in the grocery store paperback rack I guess indicates a recent heightened redistribution of the book, perhaps as a sick Easter joke.
I think this is the oldest of Little’s books I’ve read, and it shows just how solid he’s been over the course of the 15+ horror novels he’s written over as many years. This is an exquisitely disturbing book that begins with an engagingly sweet love story between two school kids, each alienated for their own seemingly unique reasons. As the story progresses, you fall in love with them and hope against hope that the horrific secrets that apparently have tied them together since birth won’t rob them of that future it seems only they can offer each other. A fearless writer, Little takes you way beyond the pale in a bacchanalian apocalypse which leaves no obscenity unexplored, and somehow, somehow in all the inhumanity that takes place, he finds some scraps of redemption that make the trip worthwhile.
More economical in his use of horror, Keene explores similar themes of hedonistic evil with what feels like more compassion for, not just his central characters but virtually every person in his book—except for that irredeemable satyr. That’s one of the distinctive characteristics of Keene’s fiction in general and this book in particular. He knows all of his characters on the level of understanding and empathizing with their often contradictory ethics and experiences.
I’m a horror fan who, perhaps contradictorily, hates to see life regarded as cheap. That’s why I particularly appreciate that there are no bad roles in Dark Hollow. Keene is a working class writer in the best sense of the term. First, he somewhat autobiographically (I’d guess) casts the protagonist of his novel, Adam, as a midline mystery writer who, when its all said and done, may be a bit of a celebrity in his central Pennsylvania hometown, but he’s really making little more than minimum wage off his work.
And that makes him a peer with a wonderful cast of working class male characters who are essentially his drinking buddies from the neighborhood. I don’t have to open the book to remember these guys. There’s Merle, a funny and fun-loving character despite the fact that he’s been dumped by his wife and lives a lonely existence that might just depend on these guys that’ll have a beer with him in the afternoon. There’s Dale, the protagonist's 70-something next door neighbor who's been secretly coping with his wife’s cancer while offering reassurances to the younger men who live near him. There’s also Cliff, a confirmed bachelor everyone envies whether he’s really happy or not, and his downstairs roommate, Cory, a twenty-something gamer and hip-hop head. I know these guys, and I don’t want anything bad to happen to any of them.
And then there’s the quiet agony of the protagonist and his wife, Tara, who keep trying and failing to have a baby. This gnawing pain makes their life hard and leaves them vulnerable to the menace lurking in the woods. Tara’s a strong character, too, every bit the equal of her husband, as is Dale’s wife. And Leslie's a great character; she's the girl Adam buys his smokes from every day, who offers him editorial advice before she then turns up missing. And Shelley, the hot single that sets Adam’s mind reeling at the beginning of the book, and who starts the horror in motion, is only in the story briefly, but she’s unforgettable, and you care about what happens to her as well. Even Nelson LeHorn, the old farmer that practices black powwow, who apparently killed his wife and disappeared 20 years before the story starts, eventually gets his due, and he too turns out to be a sympathetic character with real foibles, yes, but virtues that make him somewhat tragic.
For me, that’s what makes real horror, the sense of real people, recognizable people, people who live in my world, facing some kind of terror that springs from the unknown and threatens to rob them of everything.... But what makes it horror is that it starts by unmooring them, setting them adrift in a new world where none of the old rules apply. Not to tell too much, but Dark Hollow’s particular beauty, in a very significant way, springs from the way the community of friends I’ve described above manage to use the only thing they’ve got left—each other—to conquer the threat. No matter what awful losses they suffer before the end, that coming together gives the book its soul, and a beautiful soul it is.
I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that featured a satyr before in my life. There’s that brief Pan episode in The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao, but I’ve never gotten around to the book. However, spring is here, and I’ve read two in about as many weeks.
Fortunately, I now believe satyrs can be pretty damn scary. I mean that Dr. Lao scene was creepy, but it didn’t prepare me for the horrors in Bentley Little’s Dominion and Brian Keene’s Dark Hollow. Although Keene’s book is hot off the presses, February 2008, my stumbling across them back to back was somewhat of a coincidence because Little’s dates back to 1996, and the fact that I picked it up in the grocery store paperback rack I guess indicates a recent heightened redistribution of the book, perhaps as a sick Easter joke.
I think this is the oldest of Little’s books I’ve read, and it shows just how solid he’s been over the course of the 15+ horror novels he’s written over as many years. This is an exquisitely disturbing book that begins with an engagingly sweet love story between two school kids, each alienated for their own seemingly unique reasons. As the story progresses, you fall in love with them and hope against hope that the horrific secrets that apparently have tied them together since birth won’t rob them of that future it seems only they can offer each other. A fearless writer, Little takes you way beyond the pale in a bacchanalian apocalypse which leaves no obscenity unexplored, and somehow, somehow in all the inhumanity that takes place, he finds some scraps of redemption that make the trip worthwhile.
More economical in his use of horror, Keene explores similar themes of hedonistic evil with what feels like more compassion for, not just his central characters but virtually every person in his book—except for that irredeemable satyr. That’s one of the distinctive characteristics of Keene’s fiction in general and this book in particular. He knows all of his characters on the level of understanding and empathizing with their often contradictory ethics and experiences.
I’m a horror fan who, perhaps contradictorily, hates to see life regarded as cheap. That’s why I particularly appreciate that there are no bad roles in Dark Hollow. Keene is a working class writer in the best sense of the term. First, he somewhat autobiographically (I’d guess) casts the protagonist of his novel, Adam, as a midline mystery writer who, when its all said and done, may be a bit of a celebrity in his central Pennsylvania hometown, but he’s really making little more than minimum wage off his work.
And that makes him a peer with a wonderful cast of working class male characters who are essentially his drinking buddies from the neighborhood. I don’t have to open the book to remember these guys. There’s Merle, a funny and fun-loving character despite the fact that he’s been dumped by his wife and lives a lonely existence that might just depend on these guys that’ll have a beer with him in the afternoon. There’s Dale, the protagonist's 70-something next door neighbor who's been secretly coping with his wife’s cancer while offering reassurances to the younger men who live near him. There’s also Cliff, a confirmed bachelor everyone envies whether he’s really happy or not, and his downstairs roommate, Cory, a twenty-something gamer and hip-hop head. I know these guys, and I don’t want anything bad to happen to any of them.
And then there’s the quiet agony of the protagonist and his wife, Tara, who keep trying and failing to have a baby. This gnawing pain makes their life hard and leaves them vulnerable to the menace lurking in the woods. Tara’s a strong character, too, every bit the equal of her husband, as is Dale’s wife. And Leslie's a great character; she's the girl Adam buys his smokes from every day, who offers him editorial advice before she then turns up missing. And Shelley, the hot single that sets Adam’s mind reeling at the beginning of the book, and who starts the horror in motion, is only in the story briefly, but she’s unforgettable, and you care about what happens to her as well. Even Nelson LeHorn, the old farmer that practices black powwow, who apparently killed his wife and disappeared 20 years before the story starts, eventually gets his due, and he too turns out to be a sympathetic character with real foibles, yes, but virtues that make him somewhat tragic.
For me, that’s what makes real horror, the sense of real people, recognizable people, people who live in my world, facing some kind of terror that springs from the unknown and threatens to rob them of everything.... But what makes it horror is that it starts by unmooring them, setting them adrift in a new world where none of the old rules apply. Not to tell too much, but Dark Hollow’s particular beauty, in a very significant way, springs from the way the community of friends I’ve described above manage to use the only thing they’ve got left—each other—to conquer the threat. No matter what awful losses they suffer before the end, that coming together gives the book its soul, and a beautiful soul it is.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Dave Marsh, Ice Cube and DJ Pooh at SXSW
RRC's Dave Marsh, Ice Cube, and a new promotion tool for hip-hop artists
On Saturday, March 15th, Rock & Rap Confidential editor Dave Marsh will interview Ice Cube and DJ Pooh before a live audience at the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas.
*************************************************************************************************************************
Ice Cube and DJ Pooh sit down for an interview with writer Dave Marsh. Cube and Pooh come to SXSW to announce their website UVNTV.com, an online streaming television and broadband social network website that utilizes Microsoft Corporation's groundbreaking Silverlight 1.0 platform. The user generated website is home to current and future filmmakers, musicians and onscreen talent, and features exclusive channels such as Snoop Dogg's Snoopadelic TV, fashion designer Christian Audigier's Live TV and Ice Cube's own Hip Hop 24/7 TV. UVNTV's members are also free to develop profile pages to showcase their talent, collaborate and meet like-minded fans and professionals. Ice Cube has recently released a new single and video, "Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It" which updates his groundbreaking flow for 2008.
Ice Cube Cube Vision
DJ Pooh Cube Vision
Dave Marsh Editor/Publisher, Rock & Rap Confidential
www.rockrap.com
RRC's Dave Marsh, Ice Cube, and a new promotion tool for hip-hop artists
On Saturday, March 15th, Rock & Rap Confidential editor Dave Marsh will interview Ice Cube and DJ Pooh before a live audience at the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas.
*************************************************************************************************************************
Ice Cube and DJ Pooh sit down for an interview with writer Dave Marsh. Cube and Pooh come to SXSW to announce their website UVNTV.com, an online streaming television and broadband social network website that utilizes Microsoft Corporation's groundbreaking Silverlight 1.0 platform. The user generated website is home to current and future filmmakers, musicians and onscreen talent, and features exclusive channels such as Snoop Dogg's Snoopadelic TV, fashion designer Christian Audigier's Live TV and Ice Cube's own Hip Hop 24/7 TV. UVNTV's members are also free to develop profile pages to showcase their talent, collaborate and meet like-minded fans and professionals. Ice Cube has recently released a new single and video, "Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It" which updates his groundbreaking flow for 2008.
Ice Cube Cube Vision
DJ Pooh Cube Vision
Dave Marsh Editor/Publisher, Rock & Rap Confidential
www.rockrap.com
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Our Friends At Rock A Mole--
Talking ‘Bout the Black and The Brown
That's why we need to sit downAnd talk about the black and the brown
--Xzibit, “Black & Brown,” from Weapons of Mass Destruction
On February 17th, Rock A Mole Productions staged the very successful festival Common Roots, Common Visions: A Celebration of the Commonality of Black and Mexican Culture and History. Now Rock A Mole is rehearsing a one act play, The First Embrace, which depicts the embrace of fugitive slaves by Mexico in 1829 over the fierce opposition of the slaveowner-dominated U.S. government. This is far from being ancient history. See below:
From Wikipedia:
"Phylicia Rashād - who played Claire Huxtable on "The Cosby Show" - was born in Harris County, Texas, to a full-blooded Cherokee father (Andrew Arthur Allen) and an African-American mother (Vivian Ayers).[1] Arthur was a dentist and Vivian was a Pulitzer-prize nominated artist, poet, playwright, and publisher. Rashād's siblings are jazz-musician brother Tex (Andrew Arthur Allen Jr, born 1945), sister Debbie Allen (1950), and brother Hugh Allen (real estate banker in North Carolina). Debbie Allen is an actress,
choreographer, and director.
While Rashād was growing up, her family moved to Mexico to escape U.S. racism; as a result, Rashād speaks both English and Spanish fluently.
Also....
Juanes Preaches Peace on U.S. Tour; free concert on Colombia/Venezuela border
By SIGAL RATNER-ARIAS
NEW YORK (AP) — Juanes kicked off the U.S. leg of his world tour at Madison Square Garden, bringing a message of peace and a giddy enthusiasm to be performing in "the temple of music."
He opened Thursday night with his hit "A Dios le pido," and kept the public on its feet with more than 20 songs, including "Mala gente," "Fotografia," "Volverte a ver" and the megahit "La camisa negra."
The Colombia star showed his activist colors, preaching peace between his homeland and its neighbors amid a diplomatic crisis over a deadly Colombian cross-border raid into Ecuador last week that killed a senior Colombian rebel and 24 others.
"This night as a Colombian, I want to extend my right hand and embrace all my Ecuadorean brothers, I want to extend my left hand and embrace all my Venezuelan brothers," Juanes said. "Only we can come together under a single flag, the flag of peace."
A hush fell over the stadium as Juanes led a tribute to land-mine victims, singing "Minas piedras" while two giant screens carried images of the victims of anti-personnel mines by photojournalist Gervasio Sanchez.
Leading a band of seven, guitar in hand, Juanes briefly lost his way while singing "Mentira" — but the crowd was forgiving.
"I forgot the lyrics and it's my turn to improvise," Juanes confessed to wave of applause.
For an encore, Juanes played a rousing rendition of Colombian Joe Arroyo's "La rebelion."
Juanes is planning a free concert at the Colombian-Venezuela border to foster peaceful resolution of the crisis embroiling both nations and Ecuador, his public relations firm said Friday.
The concert is to take place at the border between the Colombian city of Cucuta and the Venezuelan city of San Antonio de Tachira within the next three weeks, firm Rogers & Cowan announced in a statement released in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, where the presidents of Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador met Friday to try to resolve their differences.
Juanes will ask musicians from Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and other Latin American nations to join with concertgoers "in demanding that the region's governments find a diplomatic solution to ease the growing military presence along area borders," the firm said.
The rocker has previously performed as part of the Nobel Peace Prize awards ceremony and to raise awareness and money for an anti-landmine foundation in Colombia.
Talking ‘Bout the Black and The Brown
That's why we need to sit downAnd talk about the black and the brown
--Xzibit, “Black & Brown,” from Weapons of Mass Destruction
On February 17th, Rock A Mole Productions staged the very successful festival Common Roots, Common Visions: A Celebration of the Commonality of Black and Mexican Culture and History. Now Rock A Mole is rehearsing a one act play, The First Embrace, which depicts the embrace of fugitive slaves by Mexico in 1829 over the fierce opposition of the slaveowner-dominated U.S. government. This is far from being ancient history. See below:
From Wikipedia:
"Phylicia Rashād - who played Claire Huxtable on "The Cosby Show" - was born in Harris County, Texas, to a full-blooded Cherokee father (Andrew Arthur Allen) and an African-American mother (Vivian Ayers).[1] Arthur was a dentist and Vivian was a Pulitzer-prize nominated artist, poet, playwright, and publisher. Rashād's siblings are jazz-musician brother Tex (Andrew Arthur Allen Jr, born 1945), sister Debbie Allen (1950), and brother Hugh Allen (real estate banker in North Carolina). Debbie Allen is an actress,
choreographer, and director.
While Rashād was growing up, her family moved to Mexico to escape U.S. racism; as a result, Rashād speaks both English and Spanish fluently.
Also....
Juanes Preaches Peace on U.S. Tour; free concert on Colombia/Venezuela border
By SIGAL RATNER-ARIAS
NEW YORK (AP) — Juanes kicked off the U.S. leg of his world tour at Madison Square Garden, bringing a message of peace and a giddy enthusiasm to be performing in "the temple of music."
He opened Thursday night with his hit "A Dios le pido," and kept the public on its feet with more than 20 songs, including "Mala gente," "Fotografia," "Volverte a ver" and the megahit "La camisa negra."
The Colombia star showed his activist colors, preaching peace between his homeland and its neighbors amid a diplomatic crisis over a deadly Colombian cross-border raid into Ecuador last week that killed a senior Colombian rebel and 24 others.
"This night as a Colombian, I want to extend my right hand and embrace all my Ecuadorean brothers, I want to extend my left hand and embrace all my Venezuelan brothers," Juanes said. "Only we can come together under a single flag, the flag of peace."
A hush fell over the stadium as Juanes led a tribute to land-mine victims, singing "Minas piedras" while two giant screens carried images of the victims of anti-personnel mines by photojournalist Gervasio Sanchez.
Leading a band of seven, guitar in hand, Juanes briefly lost his way while singing "Mentira" — but the crowd was forgiving.
"I forgot the lyrics and it's my turn to improvise," Juanes confessed to wave of applause.
For an encore, Juanes played a rousing rendition of Colombian Joe Arroyo's "La rebelion."
Juanes is planning a free concert at the Colombian-Venezuela border to foster peaceful resolution of the crisis embroiling both nations and Ecuador, his public relations firm said Friday.
The concert is to take place at the border between the Colombian city of Cucuta and the Venezuelan city of San Antonio de Tachira within the next three weeks, firm Rogers & Cowan announced in a statement released in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, where the presidents of Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador met Friday to try to resolve their differences.
Juanes will ask musicians from Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and other Latin American nations to join with concertgoers "in demanding that the region's governments find a diplomatic solution to ease the growing military presence along area borders," the firm said.
The rocker has previously performed as part of the Nobel Peace Prize awards ceremony and to raise awareness and money for an anti-landmine foundation in Colombia.
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