Alone in a room, with TV, while outside world crouches coyly around smoke-stacked visions
between man, and our “waffle”, stands a time to think of loss and cherish memories.
slinging mind, across shined floor, locked away from brightness of knowledge
upon a mighty river shall truth, bright and blinding, bare down upon the masses
mounds of garbage, neatly piled, hiding realities that lawnmowers and fertilizer cannot contain
leaves gone changin’, have mercy, veil wears thin. leaves soon fallin’, dear lawsy, dead be near.
all ends. away, there upon crunching trail. general grey, muted sun. and then begins again.
Relative calm during transition; once settled, popped out like a spotty light bulb
The last batch of masthead photographs taken over the last four months (masthead poem to be posted next). Go here to check out the first batch I posted in August.

Industrial wastelands of Cedar Rapids, Iowa
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Federales in Oaxaca, Martial Law in the US….
A few snapshots of random connections over the past few days
Oaxaca has now reached a tipping point, forcing outgoing Mexican president Vicente Fox to send federal police to take control of the barricaded city. With one more month to go in office, and the looming potential for civil unrest as Felipe Calderon gets sworn in, Fox has decided to move on the successful coalition of dissatisfied Mexican citizens.
At the same time, the story became major international news after a NY Indymedia journalist was shot and killed during an incident at the barricades of the city. Brad Will died from wounds to the abdomen sustained from armed Mexican police. With Dia de los Muertos approaching, Ward will be mourned and celebrated by a community of activists and friends he knew, and those who sympathize with the democratic rights of the people of Oaxaca.
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I have many plates spinning at the moment, so, this morning when a Wheel-of-Fortune player asked me if Sensible Iowans supported the politician that was speaking behind me, I forgot that I’m in the middle of a “historic election.” I had no idea who the candidate was at the podium behind me. I don’t even know if Iowa is a Red or Blue state. Blue is Democrat, right?
Since my job ends on election day, I’m trying to plan my return to VT, my hopeful trip to NYC, and my coming flight back home. I’m also busy promoting Ben Cohen’s Take It Back College Tour next week (two days before the election), I have had little time to put the election thing together, and being on the road has distracted me from the names, polls, close races, etc. Actually, I have been keeping up a little bit on the radio, and enjoying all the stenciled yard signs. I just now started poking around San Francisco and California politics, but I have become an official jaded voter.
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Commander Riker has had a recent bad experience that left him injured and disfigured. Instead of being on the Enterprise, he has been reassigned by Starfleet to test new flying equipment. I have been assigned to assist him. Riker’s current test vehicle is a hovercraft that will be used for mine shafts. It glows yellow-green, is circular and is currently being tested in a deep rock crevasse.
The test vehicle needs a counterweight apparatus, so I am assigned to be on that part of the rig. When Riker goes up with the machine, I go down. When he goes down, I go up. During testing, I notice two men who are on the side of the crevasse. They attach something to the cable that connects my rig with the test rig. Then, one of the men slides down to my area. He stops above me, then reaches down with his hands.
“Take my hands if you want to live!”
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After the cops shut us down about 4 years ago, I had to take on the task of answering info@cellspace e-mail. At least once a week, people from around the world would contact CELLspace and ask how they could start their own arts center. I tried to answer their questions. This desire to make community space showed me how amazing of a concept CELLspace had become. Now, the term “multiuse arts facility” is used to describe spaces like CELL all over San Francisco and the world.
Here, unpublished since 2003, are a few of the answers I gave for the groups that e-mailed us asking about starting their own multiuse arts space. I tried to be as honest as possible, because I didn’t want them to make the mistakes that we made, and I saved these answers in info@cellspace’s account. Sadly, all of those old e-mails were deleted by the company that hosted our mail account. Of all the neat things I saved during that rocky time, these FAQs are the only bits that survived.
HAPPY 10TH CELLSPACE!!!
:~:~:~:
(From a personal file dated June, 2003. All opinions are my own and do not reflect the opinions of CELL the collective and/or CELLspace the nonprofit.)
If things seem slow–i.e., few people around, summer’s here, let’s go drink, etc., do we just keep sticking it out? Have there been ‘bad times’ at CELLspace, and how did you weather them?
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