Issue #1 of OBSOLETE! Magazine

8/7/2019 Issue #1 of OBSOLETE! Magazine

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Don RockCover Art


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OBSOLETE Magazineis a quarterly tabloidpublication in the tradition of the International Times, OZ, The EastVillage Other, The Berkely Barb, The Chicago Seed, The Whole EarthCatalog, PUNK! and the other great underground rags of days past....

We are interested in high-quality poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, com-ics, photography and other 2D art. Submissions can be on any subject;however, we are especially interested in work that voices alternative, non-

mainstream, even radical views on politics, technology, the environment,and modern culture. Poems can be traditional or experimental, fiction ofany genre will be considered, and non-fiction should be fast-paced chal-lenging.

Please submit no more than four poems, one short story, two REALLYshort stories, or one essay. For visual art, please submit no more than 3pieces in any one media. Want to pitch a story idea? Contact us at theaddress below.

Please send a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) with your workif you would like it returned. Do not send your only copy! Please do notsend original artwork. We ask for first North American serial rights only.Copyright reverts to the author upon publication. OBSOLETE compen-sates its contributors- please contact us for current rates.

Don Rock OBSOLETE! cover

Editorial Introduction to Issue #1:

Life in Post Imperial Amerika 3

Ricardo Feral Doopers: Design Beyond Obsolescence 4

Will Grant Beerch & Bong: Intoxitocination 5

Mick Farren Hard Times at the Aces High 6

Alissa Bader The Mile High Citys New Green Economy 8

Todd Colby Gas Stations and Wierdos

Electric Pony Light 9

Amy Digi The Demolition of Yankee Stadium 9

bart plantenga (excerpt from) Beer Mystic:

A Novel of Intoxication and Light 10

Mali Delaney Dragon 66 13

Reviews 14

Rich Dana Dumpster-Diver Gardening 15

Robert Dana Blood Harvest 15

Pronunciation: b-s-lt

Function: adjective

Etymology: Latin obsoletus, from past participle of obsolescere to grow old, become disused,

perhaps from ob- toward + solre to be accustomed

Date: 1579

1 a : no longer in use or no longer useful b : of a kind or style no longer

current : old-fashioned 2 of a plant or animal part : indistinct or imperfect as compared with a corresponding part

in related organisms : vestigial

synonyms see old

OBSOLETE Magazine is a publication of OBSOLETE Inc. , PO Box 72, Victor, IA, 52347. [email protected].

Special Thanks:

Special thanks to the artists, illustrators,photographers, and editors who helped out toget this first issue off the ground.

They Include:Blair Gauntt/Idezin Digital Workgroup,Peg Dana, Ericka Wildgirl Dana, Eric Houts ,Christopher Schipper and:Becky Danielson(http://beckydanielson.mosaicglobe.com/ )Tobey Anderson(http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/tobey-anderson.html)

Advertising:

Thanks to the advertisers who were willing toappear in the first issue- For current ad rates andsizes, please send a request to:[email protected]

OBSOLETE! is edited and published by Rich Dana

visit us online at: http://obsoletemag.blogspot.com/


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If you are a perceptive and relativelyunmedicated reader, you may have noticedby now that this is not an e-zine or a blog.This is a real, turn your fingers black, pulpypaper product. If you have the curiosity toexplore further, you may notice that it is, infact, an old-school newsprint tabloid, com-plete with slapdash layout, smudgy printingand inflammatory rhetoric.

You may feel that a publication like thisis an anachronistic throwback, a vestigialappendage on the body of the digital info-organism, a bit of paper best suited to line

the cat box or wrap a fish. However, its notjust the newspaper that has become obso-lete. In post-post-post-modern society eventhe term obsolete is becoming obsolete-products are obsolete before they hit themarket-place, technology is only good aslong as its replacement is in beta-testing.Maybe its time to re-examine the printedword. Perhaps the newspaper is for theearly adopters of post-apocalyptic technol-ogy.

For now, I hope you will find it more ofan informational eddy, a small backwater inthe info-stream where ideas can slow down

and swirl around before being used ordisposed of. On the other hand, if this paperis used for nothing more than lining thecat box, I posit that it has been more usefulthan 99% of the web content that you wereexposed to this week.

In the early part of the 20th century, Har-old Innis, a Canadian media theorist andpredecessor of Marshall McCluhan, postu-lated that great civilizations were those thatbalanced time-binding media (which re-tain ideas and history), and space-bindingmedia (which allows ideas to travel rapidly).He felt, back in the 50s, that western soci-

ety was relying too much on time-bindingmedia like radio and television, and thatthe over-exposure was leading to a culturewhere ...the emphasis on change is the onlypermanent characteristic. He felt that thistrend would kill shared experience and localidentity and create and atmosphere of para-noia and rigid political militarization. Noone knows what Innis would have thoughtof the internet, but despite all of the greatgifts of modern technology, some of Inniswarnings seem to be coming true. Despitethe gushing flow of free information, cul-

tural ridgidity appears to be setting in.As we go to print on the premier issue

of OBSOLETE Magazine, The AmerikanEmpire is in full decline. The earth seemsto be facing daily major assaults from itsmost troublesome species. The catastrophicoil-rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has offi-cially eclipsed the Exxon-Valdez spill as ournations biggest man-made environmentaldisaster. Midwestern farmers report an on-slaught of herbicide-resistant Super-weeds- the product of over-reliance on chemicalinputs in monoculture farming. Even hu-man attempts to adopt green lifestyles

have unintended negative consequences- Eu-ropean drivers thirst for non-fossil-fuel-basedbiodiesel is causing rainforest deforestationthroughout Indonesia because of the in-creased demand for palm oil.

Even human interactions with their ownkind fail to live up to the definition of civi-lization. The human race has taken the ideaof evolution in directions that Darwin nev-er could have predicted, choosing to contin-ue to leave the physical realm to the mercyof medieval feudal fiefdoms, while focusingon evolving the mutant offspring of theirown misguided attempts at god-hood. Cor-

porations and financial instruments take

on life, procreating through phallic 1s andyonic 0s in their digital primordial ooze. Nowonder the late great comedian Bill Hickscalled humanity just a virus - with shoes...

Okay, Captain Bringdown, you say,...but Im just trying to get by here! Youare doing the best that you can. We all are.What is an under-employed hipster withan over-extended credit card to do? Morerushing ahead just seems to get us where weare right now. Perhaps its time for a lateralmove.

Instead of sending new technology to thedeveloping world, lets look at the adapta-tion strategies that the 3rd world has adoptedto survive the foreign technology onslaught.What we can learn? Lets dumpster-dive ourculture and see what the corporatocracy hasleft behind. Make something new out of theempty vacu-form plastic package that theysold you your life in.


4/16

by Ricardo Feral

There are columns in nearly every magazine espousing the latestgimcracks and geegaws and a myriad of websites dedicated to review-

ing the latest new cars, motorcycles, running shoes, home entertain-ment systems, cellular phones, computers, home appliances and sextoys.

I love gadgets and I love reading about them. I like having thelatest cool stuff as much as the next person- but there are those ob-jects that transcend trend, that exist in a time-capsule of near-perfectdesign. Over time, they may be tweaked, overclocked or souped-up,but their source-code remains intact. Their simplicity, functionality,reliability and replicability make them cultural icons and their veryimages become memes.

The futurist Ray Kurzweil once commented; Im an inventor. Ibecame interested in long-term trends because an invention has tomake sense in the world in which it is finished, not the world in whichit is started. Throughout history, there have been examples of in-ventions whose usefulness has long out-lived its inventor. Here are afew examples of 20th Century designs of the highest order..... In thisnew era, when the Amerikan Empire is sliding into decline and theonly things we seem to be able to manufacture are high fructose cornsyrup, financial instruments and porn, it might be helpful to lookmore closely at gadgets that really work.....

The Safety Razor

Inspired by a woodworkers plane, the first safety razor was invented byin the late 1700s in France. The design was perfected during the 1800s byBritish and German companies, but it was not until a traveling salesmanfrom Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin, King Camp Gillette, patented his designfor the double-edged razor in 1904 that the modern safety razor chal-lenged the popularity of the straight razor. By securing a contract with

the U.S. Military to supply the Gillette safety razor to each and every G.I.during World War II, these virtually indestructible little tools becamethe standard issue shaving implement world-wide for decades. Wilkin-son Sword, a British company, introduced the stainless steel blade in the1960s, significantly improving blade life, as well as creating an iconicobject that has become an international symbol for danger. Adoptedby 1970s punks as a symbol of the movement, the double edged razorblade has been adapted for use as drug paraphernalia, jailhouse shiv, andprofessional wrestling blood-letting tool.

With the advent of the era of cheap, plastic and disposable, U.S. manu-facturing of the Gillette-style safety razor has ceased, but they are stillfound at nearly every American drugstore or grocery. Because of thelongevity of the handle as well as the steel blades, they continue to bemanufactured and used around the planet and have, arguably, the lowestenvironmental impact of any shaver, with the exception of the traditional

straight razor.

The Dymo Label Maker

If you are over 25 years old and live in a country that uses the English

alphabet, you probably have used a Dymo label maker at some pointin your life. The hard plastic embossed labels have adorned everythingfrom file cabinets to sports equipment, lockers to utility panels, note-books to foreheads- from their invention in 1958 until the advent of digi-tal labelers in the mid 80s. The daisy-wheeled pistol-shaped labelers andtheir shiny, brightly colored strips with raised white capital letters maynot be as popular now as in their heyday, but they are still available- innew, ergonomic designs. The classic models can still be found on ebay,at yard sales and flea markets everywhere.

The peel-and-stick plastic labels still have many advantages over theirmodern counterparts- they require no electricity to produce, the plasticlabels dont fade when exposed to the elements, in fact, they are virtu-ally indestructible. Not to mention that they just look so damned cool. Socool, in fact, that the look of the Dymo embossed label has been dupli-cated in several font designs, like Punch-label and Plastique. The font

suggests a low-tech, retro, DIY attitude- and we here at OBSOLETE aredown with that.

The 3-speed Bicycle

Before the 1970s explosion of Japanese road bikes with derailleurgears, the English-style 3-speed ruled the roads. In fact, the 3 speedroadster accounts for more than of the bicycles ever built. The RaleighDL-1, with its fully enclosed chain-case, rod and roller brakes and giant28 inch wheels made it the perfect all-terrain bike of its time. Designedin 1913 for the British military, it eventually served across the empire asthe bike of choice for police, mailmen, couriers and commuters fromKingston to Shanghai. The first manufacturing facility built in post-im-perial India was a bicycle factory, which still produces an exact replica of

the DL-1. Across Asia, the English-style roadster is the platform of choicefor cargo bikes and pedi-cabs.At the heart of every English-style 3 speed is the Sturmey-Archer 3

speed hub. The fully enclosed hub is nearly impervious to the elements,and extremely rugged. To disassemble and reassemble the planetarygears of a 3 speed hub is a lesson in physics, and some might say a peakinto the clockwork of the universe (okay, mostly old hippie bike mechan-ics say that...). Many variations have been built with up to 7 speeds, andthe DynoHub includes an AC generator for powering lights. In Ameri-ca, 3-speed bikes built in the UK with Sturmey-Archer hubs were sold upuntil the late 1970s, labeled Robin Hood, Sears brand, and even K-Mart.Easily found at second hand stores for $50 or less, these workhorses willstill out-ride and out-last a cheap mountain bike from Walmart.

continued. . .


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The AK-47

In the movie Lord of War, the protagonist Yuri Orlov, played byNicholas Cage lays it all out; Of all the weapons in the vast Soviet ar-senal, nothing was more profitable than Avtomat Kalashnikova modelof 1947. More commonly known as the AK-47, or Kalashnikov. Its theworlds most popular assault rifle. A weapon all fighters love. An elegant-ly simple 9 pound amalgamation of forged steel and plywood. It doesntbreak, jam, or overheat. Itll shoot whether its covered in mud or filledwith sand. Its so easy, even a child can use it; and they do. The Sovietsput the gun on a coin. Mozambique put it on their flag. Since the end ofthe Cold War, the Kalashnikov has become the Russian peoples greatestexport. After that comes vodka, caviar, and suicidal novelists. One thingis for sure, no one was lining up to buy their cars.

Designed by a wounded tank commander and aspiring agriculturalequipment designer named Mikhail Kalashnikov, the AK-47 is perhapsthe quintessential product of the 20th century. In an earnest attempt to

create a weapon that would defend his Communist homeland from theaggression of fascist Germany, Kalashnikov unwittingly invented oneof the key elements in the blueprint for Soviet expansion. By makingthe AK-47 design a sort of open source technology, the USSR licensedthe manufacturing of AK-47s to facilities in Finland, Hungary, Bulgaria,China, North Korea, Egypt, Iraq, and other countries. Today, it is estimat-ed that there is a one Kalashnikov-style rifle in use for every 66 peopleon earth.

As Yuri Orlov points out, the very image of the AK is a symbol ofrevolution worldwide, and a symbol of the business of revolution. It isthe worlds deadliest meme. In another Hollywood film, Jackie Brown,Samuel L. Jacksons character Ordell says; AK-47. The very best thereis. When you absolutely, positively got to kill every motherfucker in theroom, accept no substitutes.


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by Mick Farren

Joey had finally and reluctantly sold the sunburst Fender to theChinese kid. In the end it had to be the Chinese kid. He was theonly one whod answered Joeys ad on Craigslist who could meetthe asking price. Only the Chinese kids the kids whod arrivedwith their parents after The Crash had money any more, and, foronce, Joey actually had enough cash to drink in the bar.

Across the street from the Ace High Tavern, the unemployedboys and girls were, as usual, lounging in the doorway of the der-elict, boarded-up movie theatre, passing round a bottle. In the goodtimes the movie house had been called The Gem Cinema, butpeople had started to forget the name after the bank had sold offthe neon sign again to the Chinese, who seemed to be collectingeverything that had once been America. Although the Ace Highremained open, Harry the Owner had also sold his sign, the fourgiant playing cards that made up the electric poker hand fromwhich the bars name was derived. A Chinacorp exec had madeHarry an offer he wouldnt refuse. His patrons protested, but Harrythe Owner had merely shrugged, claiming the sign had to go any-way because keeping it on added too much to his already cripplingenergy bill.

The boys and girls in the movie theatre entrance would rou-tinely drink themselves stupid on some really nasty shit beforethey got too crazy-loud and the cops rousted them out of there.The stuff called Little Demon was among the nastiest, and cameup from up El Salvador or some place south where the poverty was

even worse. The boys and girls bought it in flat plastic pints at the99 Cent Store. The raw amber rotgut was made from corn syrupand heaven knew what else, but, in these hard times, alcoholicsmanaged as best they could, even down to doing shots from clearbottles with no labels and dubious purity; firewater by any othername or none. And Joey would have been right there with them ifhe hadnt unloaded the guitar.

Joey had half hoped that he might slip into the Ace High with-out being noticed by his once and future friends. He knew the boysand girls would, after a while, undoubtedly drift across the street,following him into the bar and hustling him to buy them a drinkin a glass. His plans were thwarted, however, when Tommy NoDime looked up, spotted him and waved. Joey noticed that Lotharwas among the wino crew in the doorway, passing the pints in the

paper bags. Lothar didnt come out too much any more. He spentmost of his time just sitting around the house hallucinating. Peo-ple adapted differently to the post-Crash world, but Lothar wasntadapting at all. After the Palin assassination, the merciless revalua-tion of the Yuan, and the inevitability of Terminal Tuesday, every-one had known there was no going back. Most did what they could,and made the best of it. Lothar had trouble finding any best to it atall, and Joey had ten bucks on him in the Ace High suicide pool.

As he pulled open the street door, Joey glanced up at the sky be-fore he made the transition into the dark interior. He never ceasedto be amazed how so much still stayed the same even when lifewas so very different. The sky was still blue. The sun still shone.The wind continued to blow in from the west, and the crows stillcawed and flapped on Elm Street in the quiet of the city dawn. Thelines outside the State Relief Office, and the wreckers hauling awaythe abandoned cars could almost be forgotten. Somewhere in hissubconscious Joey figured a depression should look like a depres-sion. It should be shrouded in a perpetual grey overcast, with onedismal day following the next. He expected a dark age to be dark,and resented sunny days, when the air was close to clean, as a crueltease.

Then the door closed behind Joey and the gloom of the womb-like bar, with its enfolding smell of spilled beer and industrial-strength cleaning products, made it easier to put aside his illogicalresentment of nature. He swung onto a stool, pulled out his newlyacquired roll, and placed a twenty on the bar with ostentatiouscare, making it clear to Harry the Owner that he was in funds.

Harry was leaning on the far end of the bar, in conversation withthe elderly man with the long wild hair who went by the name ofOld Beau, and the woman in the silk shirt and leather jeans whosename of Magda, but when Joey flashed the cash, Harry straight-ened and moved to take care of his business. Whats it to be,young man?

A shot and a draught.You want the good stuff?Joey regretfully indicated otherwise. Hell no. Ill go to the well.Harry placed a shot glass on the bar, and pulled up a bottle frombellow. The label read Ancient Exceptional. Harry was a master atlocating supplies of really cheap, really unpleasant whiskey. Therehad been a time when Joey had drunk Jack Daniels, but those dayshad long passed. Indeed, in recent months, Jack Daniels, and other

HARD TIMES AT THE ACE HIGH

continued. . . .

Illustration by Becky Danielson


7/16


8/16

Photosby

AlissaBader

THE

MILE-

HIGHCITYSNEWGREENECONOMY

THE

MILE-

HIGHCITYSNEWGREENECONOMY

When Alissa suggested a photo feature on the Medical Marijuana Clinics of Denver, I loved the idea.Denver has been in the news a lot lately for its burgeoning MMJ scene- in fact, its quickly becoming knownas Americas Cannabis Capital. Politicians like Senator Chris Romer (a Democrat candidate for Mayor) wantto pass new laws to establish cadres of gun-toting enforcers with the assignment of regulating the clinics intooblivion. For now, patients will still have a natural and safe alternative to the addictive and dangerous drugspushed on them by Big Pharma.

Interesting side note: News sources report that as of January, 2010, there were nearly 400 legal MMJ dispensa-ries in the Mile High City, outnumbering Starbucks franchises in the entire state of Colorado by nearly 2-to-one. Can you say Grass-Roots Capitalism?-----Alissa Bader has dedicated herself to spending a lifetime hanging out with those people her mother once warned herabout. Alissa also purchased her first package of bacon, ever, last May. She lives and works in Denver, Colorado


9/16

Gas Stations & Weirdos

Oh blue flower thigh you are silk andmatted with blood and fur.The bus seats are lavish and primedfor your sweet flesh while jumpersswoon over your eagle parts. Yes!Think claw think gangreneall misanthropic and molecular then

reach into the bed: red rimaround beet piss. From Brooklyna caller i.d. illuminates the weltsenough to spark principleto sit and think or scoop chocolatefrom a bin of thistles. I am movinginto the new cape with a tendernessyou know from way before you were born.I was walking down Bergen Streetwith a capsule comment: my lungswant to breathe you in while my bodybrays at the open sky in a calmand reassuring way. An android fullof nut butters and quinine. Do you feel

calm and reassured? Is that my handyoure holding? I want you to hold somethingcool and silver and instructive.Follow me home so I can call the policeand tell them youre finally here for me.

Electric Pony Light

This is what I look like when youre not lookingat me I feel feverish my eyes are bigger in yourelectric pony light. There will never be more of methan you can handle ever, I swear. Leave the heavy liftingto my sturdy legs. Parts of me are strewn on the floor,I can pick them up later. Leather wristband, cold cream,and my lost in space feeling marking what remains of the morning:

you and your helium will. Its curtains for thesheepish and sullen. They can suck it. What Im tryingto say is: morning with you is a luxury in the puzzleof my day. Give me the soft solace of your arms.All amber-scented and clear-headed,you move through me like a bright tigerjolts the green with her stripes in the woods.You might be more awake than even I could imaginebut the way coffee tastes in your mouthwhen I lean in makes my spine buzz with jazz.When youre not looking Im right here.

Amy DiGi studied at the Art Stu-dents League of New York withMary Beth McKenzie and JosephPeller. She received her MFA inPainting from Lehman Collegeand her BFA in Drawing and Art/Design Education from Pratt In-stitute. Ms. DiGi is a United StatesCoast Guard Artist. She lives andworks in New York City.

http://amydigiart.blogspot.com/

In the spring of 2010, the old Yankee Stadium in the Bronx was demolished. As fans of the Bronx Bombers stoodby as The house that Ruth built was reduced to rubble, one die-hard fan worked to capture the moment.

Men had little tears squeaking out the corners of their eyes, says Painter Amy DiGi, who furiously painted andsketched the demolition. I was the only broad painting on the platform... Im thinking, what were those bitch-assesthinking in that board room when they decided to tear it down?

Her pictures say something about the event that news photos can never capture.

Todd Colby has published four books of poetry: Ripsnort (1994), Cush (1995), Riot inthe Charm Factory: New and Selected Writings(2000), and Tremble & Shine (2004),all published by Soft Skull Press. Todd has performed his poetry on PBS and MTV,and his collaborative books and paintings with artist David Lantow can be seen in theBrooklyn Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern Art special collections libraries.Todd serves on the Board of Directors for The Poetry Project, where he has also taughtseveral poetry workshops, and he posts new work on gleefarm.blogspot.com.

The Demolition of Yankee Stadium

The Demolition of Yankee Stadium


10/16

Beer Mystic:A Novel of Inebriation & Light

by bart plantenga

Beer Mysticis a unique literary adventure that will take you on thelongest, rowdiest literary pub crawl ever. Follow the Beer Mysticsstory around the world through excerpts in a global network ofhost magazines. For a complete list of excerpts, visit

http://bartyodel3.wordpress.com/about/

Furman Pivo believes he [plus beer] may be the cause of a rash ofstreetlight outages. This sense of empowerment transforms himinto the Beer Mystic. He has a mission and a mandate. Or does he?In any case, 1987 NYC will never be the same and the rest is historyor myth or delusion.

Beer Mystic Excerpts #37-8In an unpublished piece, Luc Sante writes: These inscriptions,these erasures, these black holes that dot the lower end of Manhat-tan like empty stars colored black by a 4-year-old are not just aboutwar, but about what Virilio in his Guerre et cinmacalls the guerrelumire, the war of light, which dates back to the earliest use of themilitary searchlight in 1904. During World War I, lights aided in-fantry movements. While during World War II, warplanes createdlightning flashes, flares, to illuminate the earth to enable them totake essential reconnaissance photos.

We are now witnessing a similar war albeit withina more personal or circumscribed landscape along the Bowerybackbone with arteries radiating East and West like lit or darkenedribs. What we are left with is sensory hints of an ebony and ivoryconflagration where the preserving streetlights salvage propertyat the expense of dream, and the darkness is a return to the pri-mal dream at the expense of property darkness encourages bothdreams and petty criminality.

However, newfound corridors of darkness unleashes

fear and nurtures new industries in its wake, not to mention newsecurity and surveillance technologies. This process highlightslightings almost Manifest Destiny-level innate colonization ten-dencies that may end up transgressing its supposed purpose andbenefit to humans. As the Beer Mystic [nom du guerre] seems tobe saying: Aufklrungis German for both Enlightenment, and, inmilitary circles, for reconnaissance, surveillance.

A consequence of too much light over-exposing ourpresent reality is manifested in the condition we commonly referto as information overload more images than the eyes can con-sume.

What I suspect he further desires to reveal so far aswe can ascribe it with conscious purpose is the tautology of howexcessive wattage blindsand its glare blurs. Blinded by the light is

right. In the name of bringing things to light, seeing, andillumination many crimes are committed see totalitarianism,fascism, et al. By putting out a few lights here and there he simplyproposes that we keep lights down to an organic and harmoniousequilibrium [he advocates atmospheric lighting candles andNOT pitch darkness] thus encouraging our eyes to see more andstimulate our other under-utilized and withering senses.

Light, ironic as it may seem and despite its histori-cally good image, and not darkness, stimulates the very conditionsfor the destruction of society and light itself. As Horkheimer andAdorno noted in their Dialectic of Enlightenment: The Enlight-enment has always aimed at liberating men from fear and estab-lishing their sovereignty. Yet the fully enlightened earth radiates

disaster triumphant.

The Rum Seer offered me swallows of rum from her mouth.Like a raven feeds her young. Deep into the craw. She was certainlybeginning to show me she was worthy of my gratitude.

This is MY black hole. She ran her fingers through herhair. Absorbs all light, all looks. I only wear black. Black lingerie.Black sucks the false gaiety out of the world. Bright shits just aredundancy of false hopes.

You sound like the Amish. I opened my second bottle this time with my teeth. Her eyes did not light up. Like the Ha-sidim.

The bodys 93% water, she said matter-of-factly. She knewit was only 67% water but was exaggerating for effect.

But mines 50% beer. We wound through more black-eyesites; the streetlights in front of the police precinct on East 20th St.,which I tried to convince her were like an audacious and catharticliberation like a Pollock, like graffiti, like... alas...

What dyou do for female companionship?I get by. I sometimes count on magazines. I lied, thinking

of Nice, Elsa, Jude, Rita, DjunaAnd we walked into the talk and somehow ended up fac-

ing Macys window with its Golden Age of Classicwear diorama,revealing an age when everybody was happy, dressed nice and sataround a fireplace and a board game.

Suddenly she grabbed my beer and, in a fit of pique, pushedmy head back with a forearm to the chin and poured it no-non-sense down her greedy gullet.

So, I grabbed her flask and returned the favor. The oralityof drinking suddenly looked like the orality of sex. And suddenlywed progressed from a policy of Mutual Deterrence to the mostintimate of bodily fluid exchanges.

Oblivion; its my specialty, she declared. Running onempty, we went to a Korean 24-hour deli to refuel. Theyre always24 hour. Even at three a.m. youll see somebody squatting out-side, trimming green beans, washing bokchoy. Each Korean delicontains well over 10,000 anti-shoplifting watts, so entering heremeans crossing over into enemy territory.

Heard theyre all Moonies, you know, right-wing podpeople. She put on her shades, covered her exposed skin as weroamed the aisles. I squinted as I scrounged for change to pay fortwo Rolling Rock long-necks. She protected her face from the rav-ages of redundant light with the collar of her jacket.

Figh dolla, said the man behind the counter.Wha! Rolling Rocks not a foreignbeer. Come ON!Figh dolla.Its from friggin Pennsylvania! One of the original of the 13

United States of this here America.Figh dolla. He was glancing left and right for back up.Lets just get outa here, Furman. The light was detrimen-

tal to her skin. Fluorescent light is said to promote acne.Hey, if I was fuckin Axl Rose or fuckin Travis Bickle or

fuckin Mickey Mantle or fuckin Gypsy fuckin Rose Lee youd...The deli man reached under the counter.

Just paym. Come on lets vacate these premises. I mean,why dontchu just send a whole string of these delis the way ofyour street lights?

Maybe I should. We waltzed around the corner. Shehummed a tune in back of Macys by the loading docks where Iopened the bottle with my teeth and handed it to her. Whereuponshe took the other bottle, reached down under her tight black

skirt and opened the long neck with her vagina. And I heard whatsounded like bells wrapped around the necks of distant sheep.I think the good shepherds comin our way...Thas me. She showed me the little brass bells that dan-

gled from the pierced labia. She smiled because she knew exactlyhow spooked Id be.

Its so I always know when someones fuckin with me.It dont hurt?No, if you got the technique down. Ring mah bee-ee-elllI know somebody that just did the same... was there some-

thin in People Magazine...? And you know that theyre twist-off,right?

I dont believe in twist-off.She took her bottle and stuck the entire neck down her

throat and chugged the whole cold thing. In seconds flat. Chuckedthe empty against a brick wall. This is how woman provokes mebest. I made an amorous lunge, which she dodged. If you evencould.

Could what?Be fuckin me...Yea, well, none of this is exactly me, myself. I had to be

humble. I mean, this could go on forever, I warned.Listen, Im too impatient for forever. I want EVERYthing

now. So is it you, then, doin the black-eyes? And if not, stop claim-ing them for yerself. People used to live forever before religiontold them there were two worlds. Part one, here; part two, there;now and later. Dead and gone. I nodded knowingly not to betrayignorance. Thas when churches went into business. She seemed

continued.. .


11/16

to know a lot. But wanted to know even more.Monksve been brewing liqueurs outa anything since who

knows when.Tell me somethin I dont already know. We continued to

wander a precarious path uptown.I was Mata Hari in a former life. Plus I used to be scared

of the dark. The unknown eats away at you. Things move cuz yermind makes telephone poles follow you. Half the worlds animalsare nocturnal. I know cuz I used to be a bat in a former life.

Before or after Mata Hari?Before... I hate people with tans. I love jazz Negroes.

Me too. Although I dont know any. Well, Nice, but I amnot talking about her.

When I do the sexthing and its good, I see phos-phenes. You know, those de-lirious fireworks of the soulprojected on the backs of oureyelids. And then I pass out into delicious blackness.

Sounds like epilepsy tome. We tugged at and underand inside one another on theproverbial steps alas downto her A train.

She crushed my noseinto her hirsute armpit. Hairmade her feel more European.I tasted the sweat sodiumchloride, lactic acid, traces ofpotassium, magnesium.

She rubbed her knuck-les on the seam of my crotchuntil she had a brush burn toshow me. Misshapen lust hid-den inside the blurred flailing going nicely nowhere. Pass-ersby confused us for assault

and battery. But where couldour kind of reeling lead? Did itneed to go somewhere?

How do I know likeyer the one responsible for allthis... this stuff... that like hap-pens?

The black-eyes?Yea, like how do I know

its you and not just chance or solar flares? Or we see only what wewanna see, like predictable coincidences that we give meaning.

And sometimes we dont even see that... Listen, I do it formyself and for anyone who wants to live in the low light, youknow, like atmospheric lighting where we all look and feel better,

that grey area where things happen.Thats very magnanimous and retrospective of you.I dont do it to impress girls.Im no girl. Whereupon she began to describe her sous

sol again, this time as a place I might never escape from, a darkcave done in velvet underground and day-glo black velvet paint-ings. Basement windows painted black. Her piece of death. Whereshed feed me exotic pats from her mouth. Where she becomes ananimal of another species communing with her Nico, Joy Division,and Sisters of Mercy discs morbid dance music for the dyingand other undergrad existentialists with hairstyles. A touchy-feelybower full of empty psychotropic prescription bottles, glowingskeletons dangling from her pipes.

Ive draped various tomb rubbings from the pipes, which I

got by going to cemeteries in Queens, where I rub crayons and pas-tels over a sheet of parchment draped over tombstones. Her faveswere the various smiling death heads with wings. As a dominatrix,in this basement [of her parents home!], she had set up her littledungeon like others arrange their kitchens.

And suddenly she was kissing me. Or was I kissing her? Tomake brief our encounter the kiss will suddenly lunge into the ori-fice of character as if to assume the responsibility of a verb relatedto conflagration.

[The Rum Seer, ne Tura Sultana: I never was overly impressedby him. The slide from respect to pity was quick. Although hecould be so terribly endearing whenever he was trying so hard toentertain and impress. Furman Pivo is always going to be caught

in the physics of inertia. Hope and glue. Naivet and mistaken pur-pose. Keep moving, I remember him saying, so things dont latchon to you laws, wives, preconceptions, jobs, looters, artists, anddust. He has, I spose, learned the art of the dodge and bob ap-pearing to move while standing perfectly still, even to the point ofappearing to be someone, someone of substance. I am reminded ofa quote I came across in Peter L. Wilsons Sacred Driftby a Muslimheretic, I think named Ibn somebody: Bedouins are more disposedto courage than sedentary people basically, he goes, becausewanderers dont depend on laws that destroys our will to resist.So, with that in mind, I will give him the benefit of the doubt. So I

think something is happening with his black-eyes although at thetime I was holding my cardsclose to the bosom and so I wasnot ready to admit this. I thinkits on the skin stretched acrosshis six-foot frame hes muchtaller emotionally by the way,when hes wearing his big blackboots where the alchemytakes place, where substancegoes insubstantial, fact meltsinto rumor, and all phenomenatransform into delusion. Nowask me how I know all this. Oris this just all about men?]

Her mouth pulled youinto her face, a whirlpoolthat wrung my dragging soularound the mischievous fea-tures of her face. A mouthalways busy. A mouth thatsucked the dials off the clock,the fingers off my hand, likethere was no soup nor tomor-row. A mouth that envelopedmy identity in the surface

rapture of her face. Her tonguelike the first darter perch I evercaught, dangling from my linein Bear Mountain. And then shemysteriously left me standingthere as she retreated down thesubway station stairs with greathaste. The smile was certainlyher favorite wound. It dug up

bones like a dog full of jazz.I didnt notice until I got home me and this big Bozo face

full of lipstick. And so this is why people on the 2 a.m. streets weresnickering. Or maybe it was blood or something. Others may havewondered what new fashion sub-cult I was loyal to and whether

they were early witnesses to a new trend. What new club I couldlead them to.

Once in my new place I realize I never got around to tell-ing the Rum Seer about my room, the checkerboard linoleum...I listened to my messages, again only one from Nice, Thereis nothing wrong / with sobriety in moderation. Thats poet JohnCiardi. I see you with my eyes closed right now and Im wonderingwhere you are.

I watch the long artificially illuminated skies scrape acrossNew Jersey. There is new grafitti on the corrugated walls of theempty warehouse across the way: IYNIKE and under it SAMCOOKE (33) MURDERD 1964. Id like to tell her about the timelineof events in my life in blue and mysteries Id unraveled in red thatId strung along my wall and decorated with salvaged beer labels

from my Euro-pilgrimage. And the map of NYC with little pushpinflags tagging all my black-eyes. Id like to know where Nice actu-ally is. The closest phone that she can say is her phone is the payphone on the corner of 10th and B.

The Rum Seer was now long gone into the ground thatshakes and lets off steam. I realized then that NOTHING happensforever, which leads to fear leads to disillusionment leads to thefridge and a last beer, a Palm gul en mals [generous and tender].To the nights last tender beer.

~~

In pursuit of Nices beckoning voice and in avoidance of Djuna, Iwalk by the library branch on Second Avenue, then the Jefferson

Illustration by Tobey Anderson

continued.. .


12/16

Market branch, 23rd Street, Tompkins Square of course they areall dark and closed behind thick grates of secure mesh, because itsnearly midnight in our concrete insomnia. She is nowhere. I leavenotes, slip them under the doors of the various far-east squats andtenements that smell of brick dust and rotting wood. I no longerlive with Djuna, havent seen her for weeks, have somehow lostElsas number and can never pinpoint the whereabouts of myNice.

I leave a note for her under the door of theTompkinsSquare branch of the public library and continue along the terseperimeter of the park. I suddenly witness a drug entrepreneur, in

full scurvy skin and grin behind loud gold, pulling a blade, get-ting into an associates car. With a certain slo-mo style copped fromScarface [somewhere between the lan of a fencer and the hair-trig-ger viciousness of a petty mobster], and with the passenger dooropen, he inserts the blade into the torso of the guy riding shotgun.There is blood and the kids keep on shooting hoops.

It used to be people only opened letters in this kind ofcasual fashion. But this entrepreneur had such grace that peoplein cafs caught mid-sip, mid-allusion, were impressed by the ballet-like beauty of it and forgot whether it was better to yank the bladeout or leave it in. The blade handle just quivered there because thecar, although top of the line, was revealing a somewhat rough idle.A New York Postheadline wafts by my feet: Warm E Train HumsHobo Lullaby.

The Crack Cartel, with its hierarchical dreams, is a strangeand terrifying yet logical affirmation of Capitalism around here.Its get-rich-quick schemes pushed three or four notches beyondeven those of the infomercial and the telemarketers repertoire.Operates outside the mechanisms of reason and morality. Crack,like military hardware, goes where it is paid for. Like the physicsof fluids with a combined density of blood and bile. Like the make-over of luxury into necessity, crack creates its own heroic needs.And the victimizers, suspended in their mumbling mythos of painand craving, forget that they too are victims of their own strategicvictimization. They have allowed the magnification of profit andfirearm calibers to skew all sense of prior proportion. Packing fire-power means responsibility, an increased peer pressure to use the

gun. This pressure replaces wit, cunning, negotiation. And my darkbowers become their fields of play.The cops in this scruff of the hood are bred to resemble

these hoodlums. This is accomplished by having a gene withdrawnthat is essential for the manufacture of nitric oxide, the moleculethat allows nerve cells to communicate and is an essential brakeon excessive volatile behavior. The absence of this gene leaves theenforcement agents wildly impulsive [rogue cops], sensitive notto their surroundings nor their purported vocation but to the mostminute slights which might set them off, it makes them relentless-ly aggressive, often to the point of killing targeted humans theMichael Stewart Phenomenon, or like Michael Carter, ad nauseum.In effect, rogue cops are truer to themselves and to their servicethan the more sedated/civilized among them. Rogue cops are the

crack entrepreneurs of their occupation, terrorists with a licensedraison dtre.

And Rum Seer wonders how I feel about exacerbating thisstate of things falling apart. Hmm. The cover of night is a savageand delirious color of freedom in the state that does not yet exist.Will they name this area after me? I dont think about it too much,Madame Rum Seer.

I remain adamant: Darkness remains a no-mans-land whereadventure is reinvented, yea sure, it drags some suspicion, fear,apprehension along with it. OK, granted, but these are our primarycolors. Night is feminine, the mother of the gods, the unconsciousswim in the womb. The Greeks believed the darkness of nightpreceded the creation of all things. It is fertility, germination, theanticipatory state, the promise of awesome eruptions.

Although they do not as yet know my face, the Cartel, LawEnforcement, and the Yuppoisies brittle alliance do not like me. Iadversely affect one mans livelihood, anothers dominion, and theyups right to an unfettered lifestyle. I destroy turf, the very idea ofturf as ownership. I will make parents think twice before they tosstheir kids to roam the streets past midnight. I will re-establish thediurnal-nocturnal cycles that will allow us to go back to sleep with-out fear we are losing out on some event or profitable opportunity.I will reconstruct repose. Peace and happiness for every man, peaceand happiness through all the land, as the song goes. Someday myretribution will seem as natural as Marinus van der Lubbes torch-ing of the Reichstag in Berlin.

Im talking about, for instance, 12th and A. Check it out.Its black-eyed to the max going on a month now. I sent a string

of eight streetlights on the ol black-eye one ferociously chargednight. Perhaps you saw it the night I took the Rum Seer there.A darkness so conclusive and pervasive that the Cartel has sincepacked up and conquered new turf. The cops, pretending to be un-daunted, skirt its perimeters and huddle in the bright newsstandssqueezing free candy bars and sodas out of the proprietors. Thereare almost no parked cars around here. Yes, this is urban renewalmy way.

The Cartel members tell a slender range of discount Shake-speare stories that involve knifings, bros blown away, boxing, deadlifts, AIDS, the next big thing, gold, Nike, all pacing about with

gila monster eyes and arms like baseball bats, arguing with any-thing passing by.

The Yuppoisie, meanwhile, snuffed by the arrogance oftheir accumulated comforts, continue to enlarge the gaping holesin their jeans, hunting for the proper grimy nouveau edge, whereillicit adventure might resuscitate their over-furnished lives. Andwhen they park their shiny modes of transport they hope to findstreetlights so they can abandon their tin cans for evenings ofworry-free expense-account dissipation.

Ive black-eyed this vigilance of light, and so they must goeast, further into the toxic repose of the cornered beast. I havethus, in my own way, facilitated the redistribution of wealth. Be-cause darkness initiates an entire process of reclamation. Bye byeradio, radials, plates, plugs, window, seats, grimy guts, crankshaft,doors. BMWs strewn like felled antelope on the Savannah, pickedclean by scavengers crouched in the carcasses with their grimyknuckles. And within a week, a Mercedes will be wingless, legless,eyeless, gutless. Adapt and thrive, leave or die!

Theres something haunting and beautiful about a carcassof steel. Like an abandoned dream. Like the pig eye I found in thegutter in front of my new walk-up chamber that once was an abat-toir.

I now feel like part of the natural order of this asphaltjungle. I am ally to the scavenger, one of them. I could demandcommissions from chop shops. I need an agent. But I must remainsatisfied with the highly codified nods and subtle eye signals theytip my way. A secret agent does best when he keeps ego in check.

I go on breathing. My black-eyes reshuffle the inevitability of theinevitable. I add exclamation points to despair and danger! Makethem seem like hope and love.

Yes, these haunted hulks of steel are my trophies, my sculp-tures. I take curious admirers like Nice and Rita there. In winterthese steels skeletons hold the cold. In summer they retain thedays heat past midnight.

~~bart plantenga is also the author of Wiggling Wishbone and Sper-matagonia: The Isle of Man. His book YODEL-AY-EE-OOOO: TheSecret History of Yodeling Around the World received worldwideattention. He is working on a new novel, Paris Sex Tete and a newbook on yodeling Yodel in HiFi. His radio show Wreck This Mess

has been on the air on WFMU [NY], Radio Libertaire [Paris], Radio100 and currently Radio Patapoe [Amsterdam] since 1986. He livesin Amsterdam.


13/16

DRAGON 66(For Rain/for Richie)

Dragon double-six, you dominoedRight out of this world

Catapulted up through sixth gearAll your senses

Straining, cut to ribbons,

Flayed wide-open throttleHell-bent for heaven,In the wind.

Unkept promises, vows leftUnspoken, undeclared

Passion spent,

Used-up rusted shut orBroke apart,Where the metal meets the sky, unhealedWound, scarborn, lace

Stitched with needle blows,Riveted to the

Tattooed map of your heartWhere

The hunter should be, orion your third eyeHis star-sword tip.

At the crooked crossroadsLines converge

Rise or fall according to their lawsThe hawk drifts upward, riding one

Current, while blood rains

Down, tracking along a riverbed.

I never met you, saw your imageIn skin,

On the luminous page,That turns by itself, a leaf, a lifeAt a time . . . .. . . . and once, passing by, in your

black hat,

taking out the trashwhile the raven croaked and the stars wheeled,spun the planets round the sun the moon

overheadin a dreamin a dance

like satellitesto one long lonesome note,a keening song sung a little too hard, too high

& too late, for comfort.

Ride the wind, let all the bellsRing,

Chime the blood-red ravens cawCall

Calling you home.

Shes calling you from home.

Mali Delaney

Photographs by Ericka Wildgirl Dana

hwww.catnipfarm.comhYour source for excellent organic catnip, kitty greens/pet grassYYY and other good stuff for pets and people!YYY

h GOT GRASS?h

Mali Delaney is a heretofore virtually unpublished writer who has spent her entire adult lifeas a working stiff. Dreaming along the byroads and making poems of daily occurences, thedark light of observance in the regular headlamp gloom.

She has consistently refused to deal with publishers, agents, book tours and other forms ofsado-masochism that comprise the writers path to paid perdition. She hopes that in the pre-apocalyptic neverland there will be space for true mavericks and renegades like her heroes& herself. Mickey Spillane is a hero because he always mentioned how much Hammertipped his waitresses. She is currently working on an interlocking series of novels, knownas the novelization-in-progress.


14/16

ReviewsBooksNon-FictionMade By Hand: Searching for

Meaning in a Throwaway WorldMark Frauenfelder

(Portfolio, 2010)

Mark Frauenfelder knows about technology. He

is former editor at Wired, a co-founder of the

amazingly great blog Boing Boing and editor

of Make magazine. He has bulletproof cred

when it comes to writing about what is hip and

groovy with the average iPad owner. So why is

he writing about raising chickens?

Made By Hand: Searching for Meaning in

a Throwaway Worldis a wonderfully deceptive

little book. Frauenfelder chronicles his familys

transition from tech-boom suburbanites to bare-

foot coconut harvesters, their continued evolu-

tion, and his personal search for equilibrium ina disposable society. It weaves together enter-

taining tales of failed projects and small, daily

successes. A bit like a modern suburban Swiss

Family Robinson, Made by Hand is such an

easy and entertaining read that it nearly masks

the serious social message that underlies the

story.

Although the author writes at length about

gardening, beekeeping, raising chickens and

other elements of Urban Homesteading, this

is not a how-to guide. As Frauenfelder recounts

his own slightly naive forays into DIY (Do-

It-Yourself) culture, he reveals himself as a sort

of wired Bodhisattva. In the chapter entitled

Learning How to Learn, he writes; ...Its as

though the folks who have been spending their

time creating the Web and everything on it sud-

denly looked up from their monitors and real-ized that the world itself is the ultimate hack-

able platform. In other words, for these creative

DIY folks, the Internet stopped being an end in

itself and became a tool to get things done in

the real world.

As the Foodie movement toward locally

raised food has raised the awareness of what we

eat, the Maker movement holds the potential

to do the same for so-called Consumer goods.Instead of shopping for the latest avatar of per-

sonal satisfaction, why not use what is at hand

and build it yourself, sew it, repair it, modify or

decorate it? What Michael Pollan has done for

food, Mark Frauenfelder is doing for stuff.

FictionThe Big Bang

Mickey Spillane and

Max Allan Collins

(Houghton Mifin Harcourt, 2010)

Make no mistake; Mickey Spillanes work is

pulp. It was pulp when I, Jury came out in 1948,

and its pulp now. It has never received the be-

lated critical acclaim of Hammett, Chandler, or

even his contemporary, Jim Thompson. What

Spillane did achieve was selling a shit-load of

books (over 200 million world-wide), relyingon an oh-so American combination of graphic

vigilante violence and lurid sex.

When Spillane came home from WWII and

invented his signature character, Mike Ham-

mer, he was giving birth to a representation of

the post-war American male id. Hammer ap-

pealed to the blue collar G.I.s, who entered the

monotony of suburban life after the chaos and

anarchy of war. Unlike the moral ambiguity and

elegant toughness of Sam Spade or Philip Mar-

lowe, Hammer was a dogface, just like them,

and though they could no longer solve their

problems with a Colt .45, Hammer could. Mike

Hammer was the prototype for James Bond,

Dirty Harry, and every other wisecracking

tough-guy since, and the cultural signicance

of Spillane cannot be over-stated.

During his later years, Spillane took a shineto a young journeyman writer named Max Allan

Collins, best know for the Road To Perdition

graphic novels. Collins, no stranger to the pulp

genre, has paid his rent writing novelizations

of popular lms and did an extended stint as a

writer for the Dick Tracy comic strip. His de-

votion to popular ction and his scholarly dedi-

cation to the pulp genre made him the perfect

writer for Spillane to tap to take charge of his

unnished works.

In The Big Bang, Collins shows his ability

to take on the voice of the master, serving up

247 pages of terse, bloody, libidinous and com-

pletely politically incorrect rst-person tough-

guy story telling. Set in the 60s, Hammer takeson the hairy hippies and drug-addled crazies of

swinging Greenwich Village, blowing open the

biggest heroin ring in the cities history.

Unlike Robert B. Parkers attempt to com-

plete Chandlers unnished Poodle Springs,

The Big Bang works precisely because of Col-

lins skill to work unrepentantly in the brutal

style of Spillane. Where Parkers voice was

unmistakable and Poodle Springs read more

like a throwback Spenser novel, Collins rarely

lets on that this book was completed in the 21st

century. He occasionally slips in some detail to

provide historical context, which Spillane never

would have bothered with. Otherwise, this is a

seamless, classic Hammer book.

VinylWig!Peter Case

(YepRoc, 2010)

The music of Peter Case was the soundtrack

for the coming-of-age of a lot of post-punk, pre-

GenXers. With The Nerves, he recorded Hang-

ing on the Telephone, probably the single great-

est new wave song ever, which later became

a hit for Blondie. His next band, The Plimsouls,

appeared in the brat pack classic Valley Girl

and their single Million Miles Away became

an instant 80s standard. In the years that fol-

lowed, Case released a string of strong solo re-

cords, while gaining notoriety as a musicologist

and historian of popular music.

The original fans of The Nerves and The

Plimsouls are no longer spikey-haired kids,

and neither is Case. In 2009, he suffered health

problems and underwent heart surgery and, like

so many aging residents of post-punk, post-

prosperity Amerika, Case was left with a six-

gure hospital bill.

Friends like T-Bone Burnett, Dave Alvin,

Stan Ridgway, Syd Straw Van Dyke Parks,Loudon Wainwright III and Richard Thomp-

son appeared at a benet to raise funds to cover

Cases medical bills, and as soon as possible he

went back to work, hammering out an amazing

new album with X drummer DJ Bonebrake and

Ron Franklin of Gasoline Silver.

Wig! is a raw slab of bluesy, swampy, roots-

rock, recorded in just 3 days. Packed with blues

harp and distorted tremolo and slide guitar, it

comes off as a scorching live recording laid

down by a man on a mission. Like a steel gui-

tar player in a storefront gospel church, Case is

making music like he means it.

Its denitely a change- at times sounding

more like Dr. John or Junior Kimbrough than thepolished California pop master or the thought-

ful singer songwriter of the past, Peter Case still

manages to sound authentic and natural singing

the blues- and damn it, hes earned the right.

YepRoc is offering Wig! on CD and vinyl, and

all of the songs on the record can be previewed

at the YepRoc website.

Free Web BookBuffalo Bird Womans Garden

Gilbert Livingstone Wilson, Ph.D.

(University of Minnesota, 1917)

This classic text on what i s now known, as sus-

tainable living has been a standard of back-to-

the-landers for years. Originally published in

1917, it is a recounting of what the author, Gil-

bert Wilson, learned about indigenous agricul-

ture from the Hidatsa women of Minnesota.

Perhaps the most comprehensive description of

how to plant and manage a traditional Three

Sisters garden (corn, beans and squash), ever

written. Buffalo bird Womans Garden is a blue-

print for how to most efciently raise enough

food to survive and thrive without canning or

refrigeration.

In this traditional system, corn plants are

grouped in mounds and the beans are allowed

to climb the cornstalks, binding them together,

while xing the nitrogen in the soil that the

corn needs to grow. The squash plants spread

out across the ground, smothering weeds. As

well as being complimentary to each other bo-

tanically, corn beans and squash, along with the

fourth sister of sunowers (grown surround-

ing the garden) provide the protein, complex

carbohydrates and calories needed for complete

nutrition.

Along with complete directions on how to

lay out plots plant gardens, there are sections on

seed saving, food storage and tool making.

This amazing book is available in its entiretyonline at: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/wom-

en/buffalo/garden/garden.html

www.feral-tech.comIowas Rural Hackspace & Skunkworks

Bringing Third World Technology to the First World


15/16

by Rich Dana

We began dumpster-diver gardening sometime in the early 90s, when we cameacross a vendor at the Brooklyn Terminal Market tossing flats of broken andwilted bedding plants into the trash. Neither Wildgirl nor I were strangers todumpster diving (a proud trash-picking tradition that is now fashionably knowas Freeganism), and W.G. immediately hatched a plan for me to distract the

shop owner by buying a bag of peat moss while she filled the trunk of her 74Valiant with rescued greenery. We didnt need the plants, she recalls- butthey didnt have to die. They were hurt but still alive. All they needed was someTLC and a home.

Fast-forward 10 years. We no longer live in New York. We have a small or-ganic farm, and grow a lot of our own stuff. On a blistering July afternoon inCoralville, Iowa, I noticed one of the seasonal garden centers set up in a grocerystore parking lot was breaking down for the season and again, they were dump-ster-izing flat after flat of sad, leggy, brown and bolting tomato plants, squash,peppers, herbs, and flowers. A lot of the higher-priced organic and heirloomstuff was left behind. I took as much as the old Subaru GL would hold. WhatI have discovered in the last few years is that throughout the Midwest (indeed,much of the country), huge numbers of plants get dumped, given away or soldfor next to nothing sometime in the last part of June to first week of July. Iftimed properly, a pickup truck can be filled with blueberry bushes, roses, prairieplants, perennials, and lots and lots of vegetable plants for less than twenty

bucks- often for nothing more than the price of gas. If you are a non-driverand really hard-core, you can do it with a cargo bike, shopping cart, hand truck,wheelbarrow or travois. The keys to success are timing, speed, and a modicum

of stealth. Despitethe fact that thestuff is being jet-tisoned, employ-ees, particularlymiddle managers,can tend to flex-out on peoplewho want theirtrash. In mostcases, though, ifyou time yourarrival properly,the peons who

got exiled tothe swelteringparking lot tohaul the stuff tothe dumpster are

more than happy to have you lighten their load.A lot of people like to get their gardens in early and planting in July just

seems contrary to the American puritan work-ethic. What kind of deadbeatplants a garden in July? This is one of those great situations where being lazypays off. Your neighbor the foodie-nazi paid 25 bucks for a few Green Zebratomato plants... you are hauling in a dozen of them for free. If you feel that you

absolutely must plant something in early spring, you can start the season bytossing some brassica or greens seeds around. This will make you feel like youare doing something, and you will get some fresh greens to eat after the longwinter. By July, your crop of mustard greens, radishes, lettuce or spinach hasbolted, you have collected the seed for next year and turned the rest under, andyou are ready for the flood of refugee plants.

In my experience, these stressed-out dumpster plants are often already flower-

ing or even bearing fruit. They have been stuck in those pots for a long time,they have become root-bound and they think they are going to die, so they tryto make seeds. Once their roots are unbound, they are ready to party! Placedin some decent soil with a little compost tea and lots of water, they come onremarkably fast, and generally produce vegetables only a few weeks behindschedule.

You dont need a huge space to grow your own food, and in the twilight ofour empire,there are plentyof empty lotsand abandonedproperties thatcan benefit fromsome guerillafoodscaping. Ifyou are manag-

ing to hang onto your suburbandream-home, Illbet you are readyto give up somelawn mowingand score somefresh producefrom right out-side your backdoor. After all,they dont call Whole Foods Whole Paycheck for nothing.

For those working in a very small plot, I suggest that you find a copy of JohnJeavons classic book How to Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever ThoughtPossible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine. This book is the bible of com-panion planting or bio-intensive techniques and explains what kinds of plantscan share space, allowing you to double or triple your food production per

square foot.Some issues have come up over the years of dumpster-diver gardening. Gar-

den center plants are often hybrid varieties, non-organically raised in industrialfacilities and after being stressed in poor growing conditions, they can carrypests, fungi or plant diseases. You do need to know what to look for and what topass up. Also, seeds from hybrid varieties, if saved, may not produce the sameplants next year. In some cases this can be fun- we have the weirdest assortmentof winter squash growing from years genetic roulette and cross-pollination.

The bottom line is, dumpster-diver gardening is a great way to get intogrowing your own food. The risks are modest and the benefit is huge. Make therounds and scope out the possibilities. Summer is still young- get out there andstart diving!

Dumpster-Diver Gardening

BLOOD HARVESTSay Goodbye. Say whateveryou want. Summer here beginslike thirty years of tryingto breathe under water.

Bluecorn surging the plumped lapand sow-belly hills. Sweat.Nights rinsed in hot moonlight.

The farmer who looks at youand crumbs dirt from undera thumbnail black as cake.

You dont leave it. Yougive two fingers to a whirlinggear, your children to thechurch. Slash lips and tongueand arms until blood rainson the harvest, tasselled andfeathered and green asthe dumb god of grass.

Robert Dana1929 -2010

In Memory of Robert DanaThis premiere issue of OBSOLETE is dedicated to Robert Dana. RP was a writer,teacher, and publisher of immense skill. In over 55 years dedicated to the perfec-tion of his craft, his work touched countless readers and listeners, his mentorshipmolded the careers of scores of writers.

He was also a great father who encouraged every creative endeavor,every hare-brained adventure and every half-baked scheme I ever undertook. Hebelieved in putting it out there, every day- enjoying the successes, learning fromthe failures, laughing, cursing, crying- getting up tomorrow and doing it again.

Dumpster-Diver Gardening


16/16

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chewy, decadent cookies?Fuhgeddaboudit.

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Documents

Issue #1 of OBSOLETE! Magazine