My friend Mike Fordham died this week in Greenville, SC. After taking a few aspirin because he wasn’t feeling well, he got up to go to the bathroom and had a massive heart attack along the way. Carol his wife started CPR but he had already followed the bright light out of here.
Mike and Carol didn’t have any children, but he is survived by his community of artists, queers, freaks, geeks, and all in between. Guess that tells you something about who he was. The best thing about Mike was the fact that he busted stereotypes. Looking like Charles Manson, Mike actually had a big heart under that mean exterior. How in the hell could a mean-looking guy be so damn nice? Why is little Mikey so easy to hug? Damn, I’d never want to get on your shit list!
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Just in time for, uh… the end of June! Tunage eclectika from your humble DJ HappyFt. This episode’s theme: Something shiny, something new, something folded, something…green and red and yellow. What could it be? Well take a listen dear listener and dig deep to see what you got going on in those proverbial pockets of need and sometimes splendor.
PS: Episodes 001 and 002 should fit nicely on an 80 minute CD (for sure) for double your listening pleasure.
DJHappyFt's LegumeCast Episode 002:
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Ah, the power of the blogosphere. Thanks to good ole’ Wordpress, The Priorities Campaign has launched their own blog to cover fun, informative NH and IA events and goings on. In case you haven’t noticed, I currently drive the CarnyMobile around and perform for this campaign, spearheaded by True Majority and Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities.
Right now, about three other Priorities Campaign folks are posting to the new blog as well, so it’s worth checking out. Some of my posting energy for my travels will go to the Priorities Blog, but don’t fret. I’ll still drop posts here at Happy Feet! In three weeks, I’ll drive through the Rust Belt to Iowa for a new world of carny splendor.
Here’s our mission:
We aim to redirect 15% of the Pentagon’s discretionary budget towards education, healthcare, job training, and starting to repay the national debt. This 15% cut, or $60 billion dollars, on obsolete weapons systems and the further proliferation of nuclear weapons in no way impacts homeland security or our defense. We have the money; let’s spend it on sensible priorities!
Here’s a bit of inspiration (from a Republican!):
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are no clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists and the hopes of its children.” • Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower, 4/16/1953
I first met Kevin White about 12 years ago in Atlanta, GA. At the time, Kevin toured the Southeast performing marionette shows with his brother Brian. They worked for a company named Vagabond and had a boss that mismanaged the business. I moved away from Atlanta a few years after meeting them and they had both quit working for that company due to the fact that their boss didn’t run things too well.
Kevin White behind the wheel of Puppet in the Park’s Puppet Mobile, NYC.
I lost touch with Kevin and found my own path to puppetry after moving to San Francisco in 1997. As I became an active member of the CELLspace Puppet Cluster (David Morely, Jonathan Youtt, and Joelle LaPlume were the main members, with Whitney Combs, Sam Bower, myself, and others as supporting cast) in 1999, I thought of Kevin often and wondered why I never felt drawn to puppetry in Atlanta.
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New York City, Last Week
Early in Rev. Billy’s Church of Stop Shopping’s service/performance, an elderly man gets up out of his front-row seat and is escorted down the aisle of St. Marks Church. “That looks like Mark Twain,” I think, observing this gentlemen’s crazy hair, bushy mustache, and seersucker suit. “Wait. That’s Kurt Vonnegut!” Rev. Billy sees the man leave and confirms my thought, saying “bless you Brother Kurt” into his mic.
Vonnegut couldn’t stay long enough to give the reading portion of Stop Shopping’s service/performance, so Rev. Billy reads the poem for him. With a four-camera shoot going on, and everyone’s acknowledgment that Vonnegut was old and not well, Rev. Billy reads a somber requiem for the war, it’s dead, and our country’s current state. Sober, respectful, the Rev. takes the poem’s message and calls on his flock to heed the words of our elder brother.
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This afternoon, as I parked my van at the entrance to my house/apartment, a woman pulled up and called me to her car. “Do you know where I can find the shelter around here?” she frantically asked. I thought a bit, and wasn’t sure what she was talking about. “The people from the Department told me it’s a brick house that looks like a factory? Is that it (pointing to a brick building across from my house)?” “I have no idea, but I bet that that women’s clinic over there can tell you.” “OK, thanks,” she said, hurrying off. I watched her pull away from the women’s clinic and take a left down State Street. Guess she was going to see if that building was the shelter she was looking for.
I live in a “real” part of Concord, and I’m grateful that I ended up here and not in a Holiday Inn. My roommates and neighborhood shows me a slice of New Hampshire, and probably the United States, that I wouldn’t see if I stayed in hotels. Then again, maybe not. If you haven’t read Barbara Ehrenreich’s book, Nickel and Dimed, and if you don’t pay attention to the precarious working poor that live around you, then you might not appreciate where I’m living right now.
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DJ HappyFt LegumeCast 002
Pulling Strings in NYC with Kevin White
Requiem for Billyburg
