SAGE TURNED 8 MONTHS YESTERDAY!!
WHICH MEANS HE'S BEEN OUTSIDE MOMET'S BELLY as long as he was in!
TWENTYNINE PALMS - Although the actual anniversary took place a week before, about 20 people gathered in front of Twentynine Palms City Hall on Sunday, March 26, to mark the third anniversary of the war in Iraq.
Names
Participants lit candles, heard a song dedicated to the families of service men and women serving in Iraq and listened while the names of ages of 82 men from the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center who have been killed in the war were read.
Many of those names and ages were read by Pastor Joe Matoush, of Faith Lutheran Church in Twentynine Palms, who helped organize the event.
Before he began reading the names, he reminded those in attendance of a peace vigil which had been held in front of City Hall before the war began, during which participants sought “options other than violence.”
He said the candlelight vigil was being held not to protest the war but to help people be more aware of the war's cost in human lives.
“You know some of these young men,” he said.
War, he said, is often seen as a distant thing which doesn't touch our lives.
“These are young men, these are very young men. Unless we can remember these young men what honor can we give them?” he said.
“The real tragedy is if we allow people to continue to die and don't say anything,” he said.
Music
In between the reading of names, participants heard a song performed by Joshua Tree musician Ted Quinn.
In a letter to The Desert Trail, Quinn later thanked Rae Noel, who helped organize the event, and those who accompanied him in song, Monet Blair, David Butterfield, Michael Hernandez and London Pain.
He described the event as “a solemn memorial to those who have made the ultimate sacrifice.
“I played a guitar loaned to me by John Correll, a Marine currently serving in Iraq, in his honor and in the hope that he makes it home safely,” he said.
Kurt Schauppner - The Desert Trail - March 30, 2006
what did you do to end the war, daddy?
well, son, i didn't do enough to end the war, that's for sure. three years into it, 2400 young americans had given their lives. at least ten times that many iraqi's had lost theirs. we were duped into the war, even though millions of us around the world had a hunch they were lying to us and we took to the streets before it started. could be millions more agreed with us but i looked around and i didn't see them.
you may remember that you were not quite eight months old. your mother and i bundled you up and grabbed our guitars and some candles and drove down to 29 palms. that's the town nearby where they have the world's largest marine base. 80 young people who had been stationed there were already dead and who knew how many more were destined to die for a lie. it wasn't anything heroic to do, that's for sure. the town is less than half an hour away. that's why we were so disappointed that, even though we had sent out bulletins - even song lyrics and chords to a bunch of our friends who we really believed shared our views, and even after the local newspaper and radio station had announced the event, and the kind older woman who organized the event had gone all over town posting fliers...even though she had asked several members of the clergy and all the widows of the marines, and yes, all the new agers who have found refuge in the desert...still, only about twenty people were there...but three of them were you, your mother and me...we had a few friends there to make our voices stronger as we sang our little song questioning this war, all war...london even went to all the trouble of bringing 2400 candles, one for each dead american soldier...he couldn't have possibly brought a candle for all of the iraqi's...or the journalists!! butter brought his guitar and harmonica...michael hernandez, who i'd been recording that day, brought his guitar. eric richards drove all the way up from his ailing mother's place in palm desert. liz mediavilla drove her funky car out there all by herself. anyway, i want you to know which people showed up to make our voices stronger. your mother and i were against this war before it started and before you were even conceived...but your presence in our lives makes it even more real and even more important to do anything we can to stand against it..publicly, loud and clear. sure, we voted against the man who started the war. we even tried to get others to vote against him. our friend tal spent two days here with me on the phone calling voters in ohio , just a couple of weeks before you were conceived. we thought we were doing what we could. but at that point, when you were about 8 months old, three years into this liar's criminal war, one where he allowed - even encouraged false imprisonment of people, torture and unspeakable crimes that this country used to stand up against - we couldn't do much to stop the war. we couldn't do it without a lot more of our friends joing the effort and they were too busy. they were tired or they were home watching tv or out playing or listening to some band in a nightclub. they will all have very good reasons why they couldn't join us. there will be two thousand four hundred perfectly good reasons why all those candles had nobody to light them and hold them high. son, i saw you absorbing it all, taking it all in, as you always do, and i know that if you had been able to, you would have held one of those candles. i know that you would do anything you could to stop that war.
TOO MUCH FUN IS GOOD FOR YOU
OKAY.
LAST NIGHT I GOT TO PLAY AT PAPPY'S WITH AN ALMOST TOTALLY IMPROMPTU LINE-UP.
ONLY SAM WILLMORE IS A REGULAR MEMBER OF THE TREE. TAL HURLEY AND SUE BRADLEY ARE MY OTHER TWO THIRDS IN WOODEN NICKEL BUT WE HAVEN'T HAD A SHOW TOGETHER FOR A WHILE. SCOTT MCCULLY PLAYED BASS WITH ME AND ROBBI AND KRIPA ON FOUR SONGS IN ROJER ARNOLD'S STUDIO A FEW WEEKS AGO , WITH STU RICHARDS ON DRUMS (!!)...ALAN BERGMAN PLAYED A COUPLE SONGS WITH ME AT THE BEATNIK AND I'VE HEARD HIS EXCELLENT PLAYING WITH TOM HEGARETY AND BARKING PUPFISH, AS WELL AS SHAWN MAFIA ...AND BUTTER HAS PLAYED HARMONICA WITH ME ON '29 PALMS' ONCE BEFORE. SO LAST NIGHT, WE DID A SHOW, WITH NO REHEARSAL AND IT ROCKED. ESPECIALLY THE E MINOR JAM OF A JONI MITCHELL MEDLEY : "LAST TIME I SAW RICHARD" & "BLUE"...AND "APOCALYPSE NO" WITH LOTS OF ROLLING STONES-ISM AT THE END ("how white my shirt should be...) AND "TALK TO HER" WITH A NEW VERSE I MADE UP ON THE SPOT "I REMEMBER THAT BEAUTIFUL SUMMER MORN. WHEN YOU WERE GIVING BIRTH, and AS THAT CHILD WAS BEING BORN, YOU WERE THE MOST DELICATE CREATURE ON EARTH"..
FOR A CROWD INCLUDING SAGE & MONET, OFELIA AND BENJAMIN, SHARRON LOREE & ChrisB, LONDON PAIN AND HIS MOTHER DEBBIE, LARRY FIKE & STEPHANIE, ERIC RICHARDS, TAL'S FRAULEIN FRIEND CHRISTINA...AND OF COURSE, HERR KLAUS WILLE...WHO TOOK THESE PICTURES...
then, today, sage's first two teeth appeared !! lower front teeth where yesterday they were almost visible beneathe pink gums, today: PEARLY WHITES!!
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a journey through the past:
jeremy gilien turned me on to www.hollywoodhangover.com, which is a great TRIP down memory boulevard for me:
where else could i see pictures of my junior high school buddy lori matix, who was the only person cool enough to like me when i showed up in bowie glam drag at a 14 year old's birthday party...??? she was already 'dating' bowie and jagger at the time, before she became jimmy page's steady girlfriend...
plus, the first ever color picture i've ever seen (or that my brother bob has seen, either) of the infamous 'abbey road' billboard that he climbed atop in december 1969 to BEHEAD paul mccartney, thereby fueling the already world-famous PAUL IS DEAD rumors... (i need to scan that photo of 'paul,' bob and me from a couple xmas' back; paul's head still hangs on my brother's wall, somewhere in the san fernando valley!!!)
or, the good old canyon country store (who remembers old bill, who ran the store??) - my first hitch-hiking destination, the place where both my sister diane and my brother bob worked - i did , too , but only for one day. long enough to carry a bunch of frozen food out to the trash to feed my punk 'family' at kenny doll's house up the street that night, but that's another story. i was about 19 or 20. the first food item i remember getting at the canyon store were pepperidge farm goldfish crackers. why do i remember that - but not what i ate for breakfast today??
NOW THIS PART IS SERIOUS:
"progress" in iraq?* come out against the war!!!
sunday march 26 at 7pm PLEASE JOIN ME
on the steps of 29 Palms City Hall
just up the road from the world's largest marine base
to commemorate 3 years of war in iraq
with a candle vigil.
i was asked to sing my song '29 palms' and i am asking you to join me with your voice and your guitar or other acoustic instrument - there will be no amplification, so
the more voices the better.
the song is on www.myspace.com/tedquinn and here are the words and the chords:
29 palms (c) t.quinn 2003
(G harp)
intro
Am G
Am
why are all the wives and kids alone?
C G
why are all the wives and kids alone?
G
i see them shopping at the mall
G Am
where are their husbands so strong and tall?
Am C Am
do they wonder when their daddy's coming home?
Am G
Am
what are all those helicopters for?
C G
what are all those helicopters for?
G Am
i feel them overhead when i'm lying in my bed
Am C Am
must be that they're flying off to war
Am G
Am
why are all the wives looking so sad?
C G
why are all the wives looking so sad?
G Am
she was just a child herself with a child beneathe her belt
Am C Am
now she's stuck without the only friend she had
Am G
Am
what are all the helicopters for?
C G
what are all the helicopters for?
G Am
they rattle my house when they're just flying across
Am C Am
i wonder what they do away at war
Am G
Am
why are all those women widows tonight?
C G
why are all those women widows tonight?
G Am
how do they tell their young children daddy's never coming home again?
Am C Am
somehow it just doesn't seem right
Am G
Am
where are all those helicopters now?
C G
where are all those helicopters now?
G
how much do they cost?
G Am
are they worth more than they've lost?
Am C Am
how does anyone ever win a war anyhow?
Am G
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*president bush and his word of the week:
"concrete example of progress in Iraq that most Americans do not see every day in their newspapers and on their television screens."
"the kind of progress that we and the Iraqi people are making in places like Tal Afar is not easy to capture in a short clip on the evening news. Footage of children playing, or shops opening, and people resuming their normal lives..."
"for every act of violence, there is encouraging progress in Iraq that's hard to capture on the evening news."
estimated between 33,710 and 37,832 iraqi civilians killed.
US dead in iraq 2,329 confirmed.
US wounded in iraq 17,004 confirmed.
this was elia's sign for a guerilla performance she did 3 years ago when the war started. she portrayed a homeless vet from the war in iraq, on the sidewalk in front of the beatnik.
and this is my good friend randy hoffman, who didn't look like this when he left for iraq a couple months ago. he didn't have that mustache and he had a full head of hair. he teaches yoga and is a psychologist who was helping solders returning from iraq, plus he's a fucking fine delta blues guitar player who turned "hoochie koochie man" into "hoochie koochie quinn" for my birthday last year - and whose steel guitar i took home and played at pappy's one night when he left the beatnik in a hurry with a beautiful woman he met. this, he writes to me in an email, is his "warrior look." when he left earlier this year he was supposed to be gone for a few months but now they're telling him he'll be there more like a year. bush and his bullshit progress. he and that fat bastard cheney. i'll be playing a guitar on sunday owned by my friend johnny correll. it's a stella he left in my care while he does his time over there. i'll be singing for my friends over there and for all the people i won't get to become friends with, too.
"my captain, he's decorated - he's well schooled and he's skilled...he's not sentimental - don't bother him at all
how many of his pals have been killed"
bob dylan, "lonesome day blues" from "love and theft" (released 9/11/01)
hey, this is a wild footnote to the story about hollywood hangover above. my siblings and i all attended grade school off the sunset strip in the swinging sixties at a church on holloway drive in west hollywood. i just did a search on that place, the school is long closed but the church remains. in fact, i went there on ash wednesday 3 years ago to get my mark on my forehead in protest against the war, which pope john paul ll opposed. turns out, that church has some very interesting things associated with it. the original voluntary film rating system, the first AIDS services in southern california...plus a slew of celebs who attended over the years... http://www.seeing-stars.com/Churches/StVictors.shtml
"The purpose of the gospel is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."
— Thomas Cahill from The Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus
