Berlin and Zimberoff at PALM

On the top, fourth floor of the Veterans' Building, where half of the old Museum of Modern Art used to reside, there is a beautiful central room with a skylight.



This worked well when showing off art in filtered but natural light but it's a disaster for the current occupant, which is the San Francisco Legal Library.



It's supposed to be a "temporary" location for them, after the 1989 earthquake and the City Hall retrofitting, but they have all given up hope on ever getting out of here.



The main problem is that the skylight really heats up the room, which seems to have no air conditioning, and it's not very good for all those volumes of law books. Oh well, the people working at the front desk were cheerful and charming, and they're offering "Free Legal Help."



Not so cheerful and charming is the neighbor down the hall, the San Francisco Performing Arts Library and Museum.



There's a small exhibition room with a librarian in charge and a "NO PHOTOGRAPHY" sign prominently posted, and there is usually absolutely nothing of interest on its walls or in its exhibit cases.



There is also a large room where "researchers" can separate the treasures from the dross. Outside the large room is a hallway where the public exhibitions mostly take place.



The presentation tends to be rather haphazard, and this special Irving Berlin exhibit was no exception.



Later in the fall, the 42nd Street Moon theatre group is putting on a concert version of "Miss Liberty," pictured above, at the Eureka Theatre. Click here to check out the production and to buy tickets.



If you are actually interested in the Irving Berlin story, your chances of finding any coherent information are much better on the web than at this exhibition, including the museum's own well-designed web site, which you can get to by clicking here.



The most interesting site I found about Irving Berlin was on a nonprofit Washington state group's website called "Parlor Songs." Click here to get there.



I hadn't been aware that Berlin wasn't a trained musician, so that he needed an arranger all his life to get the tunes in his head onto the page. There's an interesting examination of how he left his arranging collaborators in complete anonymity on the "Parlor Songs" website, along with this great quote from Alec Wilder:

"I heard Berlin play the piano, back in vaudeville days and found his harmony notably inept. -- Yet Robert Russell Bennett states unequivocally that upon hearing someone's harmonization of his songs, Berlin would insist on a succession of variant chords ...and was not satisfied until the right chord was found. I must accept the fact that though Berlin may seldom have played acceptable harmony, he nevertheless , by some mastery of his inner ear, senses it, in fact writes many of his melodies with his natural, intuitive harmonic sense at work in his head, but not in his hands." (Wilder, p. 93)

Ethel Merman, when I saw her as an older actress in bad 1950s-1960s films, always quite terrified me as a child for reasons I still don't quite understand. She was a favorite of composers, though, including Cole Porter and Irving Berlin, because she not only had that monstrously large voice but her diction was beyond impeccable. You could understand every word in the last row in the days before amplification.



The main reason to go to the fourth floor of the Veteran's Building is to see a permanent photography show that is hidden at the very end of the building.



The lighting isn't all that great, but the large black-and-white photos of conductors "out of tuxedos," taken between 1982-1988 by a local professional photographer named Tom Zimberoff, are totally cool.



Go to Zimberoff's website by clicking here to check out more of his work. There's also a really interesting interview with him on the site that's worth checking out. The above photo, by the way, is of the very scary old Nazi Herbert von Karajan.



The photo above is of Calvin Simmons, a local musical genius who died way too young in a canoe accident on a lake in the East Coast not all that long after this photo was taken.

Single Ticket Morning at the Symphony

This morning at 8AM, single tickets went on sale at the San Francisco Symphony.



Most of the tickets are sold earlier in the year as part of subscription plans.



So this is essentially the time for the Discerning Music Lover, who really doesn't need to hear Beethoven's Nine Symphonies ever again, to do a pick-and-choose among the 30+ concerts that make up the symphony season.



The wait was long, over an hour at least, but there were some lovely compensations.



There was free coffee put out by the Symphony.



And though I'm not a big fan, there were free donuts too.



The employees were even going up and down the line offering season programs to us so we could figure out what we wanted to buy.



The time went by quickly because I had a ridiculously interesting person to jabber with named Denny Berthiaume, a 62-year-old jazz pianist/composer/playwright/former professor who was brilliant and interested and who liked talking about music. Click here to check out his website where he has samples of his music and is selling his own Jazz CDs.



Standing between us all morning was a fretful Russian woman who was waiting for an absent sister to show up. Denny offered her the use of his cell phone but she was too frightened and used the pay phone instead.



San Francisco has had an invasion of Russians in the last ten years, mostly Jewish, mostly elderly. What they all seem to have in common is hating having their pictures being taken by a stranger, a love of shiny, sparkly things (at least on the women's part), and an adoration for cheap, live classical music, particularly when there is a Russian composer or performer involved.



The only single ticket I couldn't get for myself was a $20 Center Terrace seat for Rostropovich conducting Shostakovich later in the season.



The Russians had already bought them in the two hours since the box office opened.



My ticket seller was friendly, helpful and had a huge smile.



Part of that was because HIS computer wasn't malfunctioning and neither was his printer.



That was the fate of the people next to me, who called in "Techical Support" who was doing a great "Who Me?" shrugging act. "You know how computers are," he seemed to be saying as the ticket sellers looked like they were going to have a nervous breakdown.

Norma on a Scorched Earth Stage

"Norma" is an early 19-century Italian opera by Vincenzo Bellini that is one of the masterpieces of the repertory, and easily Bellini's finest work. The simple plot takes place during the Roman occupation of England (which lasted 400 years) with Norma, the top Druid Priestess, having an affair with a Roman officer before the curtain goes up, secretly bearing two children by him. (Hey, it's a dark forest.)



When Adalgisa the Vestal Virgin comes to Norma for advice about HER love of a Roman soldier, Norma is quite sympathetic until the Roman walks in and it's Pollione, the same guy who fathered her two children. Potential Medea action ensues, until Adalgisa, in a great proto-feminist moment, tells Norma that she is giving up her love for Pollione because he's already Norma's guy, and they sing "Mira, O Norma," one of the greatest female duets ever written.



Pollione the Roman tenor, however, is a cad and insists on sticking with the younger woman, so Norma goes a bit insane and in the final scene calls all her Druids to her in the middle of the forest and announces that there is a "traitor amongst us." The expectation is that she's going to name Adalgisa, but instead she announces, "and it is me." Pollione, the Roman cad, is moved by her noble gesture and goes to Norma as they make their way to a funeral pyre where they are burned alive together as the chorus sings how sad they are.



Opera really doesn't get any better than this, which is why the initial staging for the chorus and supernumeraries earlier this week was such a disappointment. Instead of a beautiful Druid forest, the set was an ugly collection of wood that is painted black on the first ten feet to represent a "scorched earth" policy by the Romans who have been burning down the forest. I thought this was a ridiculous invention of the director, but an older Irish-American woman told me today at lunch that it was true, the Romans did burn down forests in their pursuit of the Druids who were fighting them.



I found a few sites on the internet that confirmed the information, and are interesting of their own accord. If you want to know about Druids, click here.
If you're interested in a history of the Roman Invasion of Britain, click here.
If you're interested in reading about Boudicca, a real Woman Celtic Chieftain who took on the Romans and burned down an early version of London while she was at it, click here.



However, the "concept" is so at odds with the lilting, dancelike music of Bellini that it's laughable. I've never seen a production where the chorus scenes weren't at least slightly ridiculous just because getting a huge group of singers on and off the stage never makes much sense, but this is going to be truly wrong. This became clear every time the conductor, Sara Jobin, would conduct a bit of music and sing as a cover for the bass Oroveso (Norma's dad)...



...while the rehearsal pianist played the beautiful music that seemed to have nothing to do with the "masculine, muscular" brutality that was supposedly happening onstage.



The debuting director, James Robinson, an American who runs the Colorado Opera Company in Denver, explained that early in his career he had staged a "Norma" in Europe (Sweden, actually) that was very "pretty," but that he was dissatisfied with the result because the music and the production were just all "too pretty." This production was created for the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto in 1998, and was meant to be more of a dissonant approach, with pretty music and "ugly" staging.



We all agreed that we would much rather be in his "pretty" staging instead, with a pretty forest. Part of the reason is that Pamala Rosenberg, the recently ousted General Director of the San Francisco Opera, has a taste for dark, monochromatic, "Eurotrash" Productions with a Concept, complete with a Dramaturg, and though some of these have worked, most of them have not.



There was an odd moment at the beginning of the first rehearsal when Ms. Rosenberg (not pictured) came onstage and thanked the director, David Robinson, for being there and how much we were all going to enjoy working with him and how "Norma" was greatly anticipated by San Francisco audiences.



The only problem was that David Robinson, wearing a nametag, was a fellow supernumerary and JAMES Robinson, the director was sitting on a chair downstage while she was making this announcement. It was a major brain fart on her part, and I heard the male chorus behind me muttering, "she doesn't even know who she's hired."



On the second night we rehearsed a scene where 17 Celtic Warriors come onstage in loincloths with their pointed sticks and Sizzler Steakhouse salad bowls which are to be filled with mud. We were directed to sit all the way downstage in front of Oroveso and the men's chorus who sing a beautiful three minutes worth of music while the supernumeraries were directed to be "muscular, masculine, like a Greek frieze" as we mimed applying mud to each other's bodies as war paint in Celtic patterns.



My partner was none other than David Robinson and we tried our best not to get the giggles. "I want pecs painted on," he insisted.



One of my favorite fellow supers, John Janonis, a wild man at age 62, confessed that he was going to be the only Celtic Warrior with a pot belly. "Hey, I told them that I had a mature man's body."



Another one of my favorite supers, Lucas Rebston, got the plum role of a Roman soldier who is being murdered as the curtain goes up by bloodthirsty Celtic warriors, and then hung up against the wooden set. In the second scene, Pollione the tenor comes in with a half-dozen Roman soldiers, including me, and we take him down while Pollione sings to him. "Hey, I should have been dead four years ago from lymphoma," Lucas told me. "The role's not much of a stretch."



Katherine Braziliatis, who has been backstage for 26 years, is playing one of the five Druid Priestesses who flank Norma during her entrance aria, "Casta Diva," one of the most famous and difficult soprano arias in the repertory.



Unlike most of her fellow supernumeraries, including yours truly, Katherine's actually a great actress and a joy to watch onstage. Katherine and her four fellow priestesses were directed to pull out chunks of prop mistletoe from a tree stump and then mingle with the chorus, who take little bits of the plant from them while the diva continues singing "Casta Diva."



At some point, the chorus was directed to lay on the floor and sing their background music while "ritually" waving bits of mistletoe in the air.



This is either going to work or it's going to give the audience the giggles.



And you don't want the audience to be giggling during "Casta Diva." They should be holding their collective breath wondering how anything so beautiful can be sung so exquisitely. We'll see.

Blind Art

Hidden away in the bowels of the basement of City Hall, between the Department of Elections and the public bathrooms on the other side of the building, the San Francisco Art Commission puts up various shows on the walls.



The amazing thing is that some of these shows, though clumsily presented, are the best art exhibitions in San Francisco, bar none. They just put up another stunner, which is an annual show sponsored by the LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired by artists who are just that.



I don't usually read the bios of the artists at exhibitions, but in this case, they added immeasurably to the interest so I'm going to quote them.



James Cadiz: Claremont, CA -- "I have been blind since birth. I feel through my hands. My hands act like my eyes. I have a vision in my mind, and I imagine what I want to create. My imagination goes wild and motivates me to creat and explore many things."



"My mental vision shows me when a particular work is finished. I like to choose mediums I can touch, feel or easily move around. My theme is about movement. I like the viewer to explore my work with thier minds, not just their eyes."



Annie Leist: Brooklyn, NY -- "I have been legally blind since birth. The most effective way to describe my extreme nearsighteness is as a very low-resolution, two-dimensional image, with shapes, movement, light and color, but without detail, depth and clarity."



John Ednoff: Belmont, CA -- "A retinal doctor declared me legally blind and told me that I have Macular Degeneration."



"I can see and distinguish forms but no detail."



"When I am lost in my creative world, it keeps me busy and I forget my vision loss."



"I work in all media depending on space, time, and the availability of materials at hand."



"I am experimental."



"My art keeps me from insanity."



Bobbie Gray: Fairfax, CA -- "I've been legally blind for almost five years due to Macular Degeneration. I have enough peripheral vision to see most objects in good light. Edges are fuzzy. Only contrasting colors are visible to me so I like to use strong, vivid colors in my work."



Ida Berkowitz: Tiburon, CA -- "I have been visually impaired for five years due to Diabetic Retinopathy and Macular Degeneration. For my paintings I need to focus on simple things. I can only do landscapes or still life - no faces or people."



Pedro Hidalgo, Oakland, CA -- "I have been legally blind all of my life from Myopia. My vision allows me to delve into space, time, dimension and light; to touch reality."



Mari S. Newman: Minneapolis, MN -- "I am totally blind in my right eye and legally blind (20/200) in my left . I was born with brain damage due to complications in the birthing process. To help me with my art, I use magnifying lenses.



Keith Rosson: Portland, OR -- "I was born with Optic Nerve Hypoplasia or "tunnel vision." Throughout my childhood, I was either drawing incessantly or running into things. By the time I was officially diagnosed as blind, my involvement in art was strong and I chose not allow this diagnosis to alter my decision to work in a visual medium."



Laura Landry: Condordia, Kansas -- I was born blind in September 1980 from the eye disease known as Peter's Anomaly, which clouds the corneas. I don't wake up every day and think about being blind - I just live my life."



Bobby Hightower: Richmond, CA -- "I have been legally blind since I was 12 years old, and I am also hearing impaired. My paintings express the feeling of a real life adventure. I love art!"



Kurt Weston: Huntington Beach, CA -- "In 1996 I became legaly blind due to AIDS-related CMV retinitis. I see the world very differently than a sighted person, very blurred with speckles of light, like an impressionist painting.



"I have found photography to be an excellent medium for expressing my artistic vision, which is influenced by my physical sight. My work incorporates graphic signs and symbols, taken out of context and juxtaposed against ambiguous textural backgrounds."



"My way of seeing has permitted me the ability to perceive in this abstract manner and transform mundane signs and symbols into contemporary works of art."



Rosemarie Fortney: Milwauke, WI -- "I have been legally blind since the late 1970's due to Retinitis Pigmentosa. Since my visual field is small, I am to create the maximum impact on the visual perception of whoever views my artwork."



Tara Arlene Innmon: Minneapolis, MN -- "I've been legally blind since 1986 and totally blind since 1994 from congenital Glaucoma."



"I did much of my painting and drawing from 1987-1990 while losing my vision. It was like being in a fog that got thicker and thicker and now I have plastic eyes."



The 'Doctor's Waiting Room' series was done in the ophthalmologist's waiting room after each laser procedure to document the change in my vision. I also want to show what the world looks like to a person who is losing vision and how the feelings of grief and anger lead to transformation and acceptance."



This exhibit, in case my photos don't make it clear, is extraordinary. There's going to be a public reception next Wednesday, August 31, 2005 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. with many of the artists in attendance. Be there or be square.

Sheehan Envy and the Lone Star Beer Bust

On Van Ness Avenue, just to the left of the Veteran's Building, the radical leftist group A.N.S.W.E.R. was advertising an upcoming protest march.



It was to be held on September 24th, going from Dolores Park in the Mission and winding its way to the Civic Center.



They do good work but their speeches at the rallies at the end of the protest marches are awful, with people screeching into microphones about war and oppression to the already converted.



It also looked like they were having a serious case of Cindy Sheehan envy.



"Is anybody actually staying in those tents?" I asked an organizer, and the answer was no, they were just for show.



I did run into Kali, an old Jewish feminist/leftist/firebrand/theatre artist who I had met 12 years earlier at San Francisco State's downtown Multimedia school back when it was new and interesting. She was actually looking better and less haggard than the last time I ran into her 12 years ago when we'd taken the fabulous Barbara Mehlman's visionary class about the marriage of art and journalism she envisioned called "The Artitorial."



This blog is actually one of the fabulous byproducts of Barbara's vision many years later.



I jumped on a 47 Van Ness bus and ran into Avis, the Tarot reader. Usually, she looks more colorful but the unending fog had dampened her mood also.



She set up her Tarot reading station/mystical corner at the Lone Star Saloon.



There wasn't much business for her today.



Part of the reason for that was because there was such a din from the loud rock music the DJ was playing in the backyard...



...with which he was trying to drown out the horrible disco music coming from a tent next door in a motel parking lot sponsoring a "Bear Weekend" event.



Most of the Saturday afternoon regulars showed up, including Richard and Jesse. Richard is a freelance graphics designer for print and web projects, and he was in a bit of a state of shock because his bread-and-butter client, a hetero web pornographer, had just died of a heart attack earlier in the week and Richard had been dealing with the distraught family while wondering if he was going to be able to keep the gig which was paying most of his bills.



In another corner, some local shirtless dudes...



...were manhandling a cute tourist who seemed to be enjoying the attention.



The 80-year-old Harry Harkness was shocked/amused by the glimpses of flesh he was seeing.



Though the place can be a little intimidating if you don't know anyone, the Lone Star backyard is pretty friendly.



Pictured above is Jim the Sculptor, David Carnes and Harry looking too serious.



One of my favorite people showed up, Rob the Canadian, who works as a researcher for NASA's evil Ames Research Center in Palo Alto. I was his mentor when he showed up back in the 1980s to join the Gay Tennis Federation, where he was soon a star (he's a very good player).



After saying goodbye to Roy and Jesse and everyone else, thoroughly buzzed, I called it an afternoon.

Comcast, Mirkarimi and Iranian Art

On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors had their last meeting before a month-long break. On the agenda were a couple of items relating to the Mayor's secret contract negotiations with Comcast for a four-year extension with a payoff to the city's General Fund.



In an email Zane Blaney, the director of the Public Access nonprofit CTC, reported what went on. Though I find the guy obnoxious and a bit of a scam artist who only cares about himself, the report is interesting:

"Last Tuesday the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to continue the Comcast settlement items until they return from vacation in September. I expect the items will be up again on September 13th. The action followed a very full day at City Hall for the SF Media Advocates team including myself, Sydney Levy with Media Alliance and a representative of the Communications Workers of America (CWA). The day started with Ross Mirkarimi aides telling us their proposed amendment calling for $3.2 million dollars for PEG per year and adding labor language did not have enough votes to pass. The amendment could not have been adopted in any binding way since the supes cannot change the language of contracts. It would only have been a symbolic gesture and perhaps marching orders from the supes to DTIS to go back to Comcast and get better terms for PEG and the union. Hours before the full Board of Supervisors meeting we were still walking the halls trying to get a sixth vote to kill the deal if the amendment was not adopted.



Thirty minutes before the meeting Ammiano's office proposed getting enough votes to continue the items until September in the hopes that with more time we could iron out a funding scheme. At the last minute Sophie Maxwell bought into the continuance.



Although the vote on the Comcast items was expected to take place within the first hour of the meeting Jake McGoldrick called for a closed session to hear from attorneys and DTIS. The closed session was moved to the very end of the meeting. At 6:45 PM they went into the closed session and returned 45 minutes later to cast the vote to continue the item. Needless to say DTIS, the Comcast lobbyist, who were out in force and perhaps the Mayor's Office were not pleased. However, it did send a message that the supes were not pleased with the deal and that our work was having an impact.



I believe this opens the door during the next 30 days to get the supes to consider the issue of long-term sustainable funding for public access. They can either get the money from Comcast or come up with some other scheme such as taking money from the franchise fee and the General Fund. It was historic that a Supervisor, Ross Mirkarimi, had the courage to present an amendment, based on information I have given him, to call for a $1.50 per subscriber pass through to fund PEG amounting to approximately $3.2 million per year for PEG.

All of this could still fail since Comcast has said they will not negotiate anything more and the supes could balk at taking money out of the General Fund. We could be right back where we started from in a month.



Finally, last Friday one our producers, Sam Gold, called to ask whether or not we wanted to have a press conference on the Comcast issues. Although the SF Media Advocates group has considered a press conference in the past the group was not prepared to call a press conference on Monday for a variety of reasons including the fact we did not want to complicate the rather delicate negotiations we were conducting inside City Hall and the key group members were not available. It was decided that if producers wanted to have their own press conference and demonstration they were free to do so. Sam went on to organize producers who turned out Monday to demonstrate on the steps of City Hall. At the very same moment Mayor Newsom was also having a press conference near the steps on another issue. He couldn't help but see the Access SF producers demonstrations and he apparently got the message since he was heard to say something to the effect that he knew what they wanted."



On Friday evening, Supervisor Mirkarimi hosted his monthly art show in his Supervisor's office.



It was noisy, crowded and lots of fun.



The artist being featured this month was an Iranian, Mohammed Harouni. I believe that's his art dealer above, and a photo of the artist is below.



Most of his pictures involved horses.



I wasn't crazy about most of them.



They were a little too "pretty" and decorative...



...and didn't really convey a horse's real energy.



Still, I'm impressed with anybody who is a good draftsman and who tries to make a living in the arts.



Also, it was fun to be mingling with so many Iranian-Americans...



...a group that tends to stick to itself.



It turned out that Supervisor Mirkarimi's rich cultural heritage stew also involved being part Iranian.



The red wine was very good this evening...



...and it had already occasioned some good feelings and sloppiness.



After chatting up a few neighbors...



...I decided to call it a night.

Two Vigils and Seymour Hersh

On Wednesday night, from 7:30 to 8:30, there was a "vigil" in support of Cindy Sheehan and her attempt to meet with the president in Texas.



It was held at the usual place in front of the ugly Federal Building on Golden Gate Avenue.



The crowd of about 200 was having a hard time keeping their candles lit because the ugly building creates a natural wind tunnel. Plus, the fog and swirling winds from the Pacific were creating a typical, rather depressing San Francisco summer evening.



This candlelight vigil was one of thousands that were taking place all over the United States. I read about a number of them later on Cindy Sheehan's site at the Huffington Post, where a couple of hundred intersting comments had been posted. My favorite comment was the following:

Tonight, hundreds of citizens from Houston, Texas gathered on medians, in front of the Veteran's hospital and on overpasses for a candlelight vigil to support Cindy's efforts for peace. The most telling moment of the evening was when a cop pulled over and asked us what "group" we were with. From the back of the crowd, a woman shouted "We are Americans sir, that's the group we are with."
Posted by: Leah on August 17, 2005 at 11:36PM



Interestingly, Heather Fong, San Francisco's latest Chief of Police got on television the same evening and demanded that all vigils needed to get permits before they would be allowed anymore. Rudely paraphrasing the woman in Houston I'd like to say, "We're Americans, you authoritarian bitch, that's the group we are with."



Markley, from the Thursday afternoon vigil, wrote an email the next morning that summed up the evening well and was pretty funny besides:

What a wonderful turn-out last night - 353 people signed up on the Move-On web site and that's about how many were there - including many of you and it was good to see you...

The evening was somewhat cold and breezy but not too much and most of us managed to keep our candles lit most of the time. The speakers were excellent: brief, informal and moving. Some of us held signs. We managed to give out nearly all our flyers for the Thursday vigil - it will be interesting to see if we get newcomers.

It definitely wasn't silent and I wonder if it was even a vigil. I looked up the word in the dictionary and none of the meanings are close to what we're doing. The nearest is "an act or period of watching or surveillance." Gosh, we've been vigiling all these years and we haven't even made it into the dictionary.

I think people were having a meaningful time just being there, but I wonder if it would have been a stronger experience for them if it had been more vigil-like. On the brief tv coverage, some of the local vigils did look like vigils. To me ours was more like a cocktail party. Rather than drinks the guests were holding candles."



"I couldn't help thinking about our dream of totally surrounding the federal building. If we'd stood last night as we do on Thursdays, how far would our line have extended?"



The next afternoon, I rejoined the less frenetic vigil and told people about the interview I'd seen with the Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh on the Comedy Channel's "The Daily Show" Tuesday evening.

Though Jon Stewart, the host, isn't a very good interviewer, Hersh came prepared and provided some of the bluntest talk I've yet to hear about the situation in Iraq. I'm surprised it hasn't been more widely quoted in the blogosphere, so I'm going to do a transcription job here from a TIVO'd tape I made.



Stewart: What's going on in Iraq right now? Uh, August 15th was really an arbitrary deadline. Is there any concern when a country misses a deadline that is somewhat arbitrary in the first place?

Hersh: Look, if you think the constitution is going to make a significant difference, you know, I've got a bridge I want to sell to you. These are a bunch of people living in the Green Zone. They live in the Green Zone, it's a protected area. They have no connection with what's going on outside. And you know, I spent time with somebody today who knows a great deal and he says, as far as he and some of his friends inside the government are concerned, people are critical of this administration from the inside, the extra week is simply more time to get a little more moolah on the table. This is Corruption City. We buy our way, we bought our way into the elections, we fixed the elections, I wrote about it a couple of weeks ago in "The New Yorker." We fixed the elections in January, the famous elections that were supposed to produce "democracy." We did the same in Afghanistan. I can tell you that right now. We were also trying to fix things. And we just use, we have billions of dollars we have taken from the Iraqi oil funds that we have access to. Saddam Hussein himself had three and a half billion dollars, we discovered right after the war. Where is it? It's being used by us in money that's not appropriated by Congress to get what we want.



Stewart: Where, Sy, is this bridge, because I would love to buy it. I need this bridge, Sy. Give me this bridge. The picture you paint, though, I don't, I cannot give up the idea that we can at least bring some stability. Here's what I believe. The focus of this, the question of this war, doesn't seem to me to be, should we withdraw the troops now, should we withdraw them in a month? Uh, should we send more? It should be, can we trust people that seem to have misread this situation at every turn to continue prosecuting it in a way that can get us any success? Because it doesn't seem like this administration makes any changes, even when given clear -- I mean, the insurgency, not enough troops, there seems to be no accountability. We could still do this but are these the guys to do it?



Hersh: Look, what's going to happen is external forces. First of all, I'll tell you, I can tell you, that there's a tremendous sort of panic on the inside. There's a lot of new intelligence suggesting that we're going to see an equivalent of a "Tet" offensive, that the opposition, the insurgency, it's been gearing down, it's been quiet, not a lot of car bombs recently. The intelligence coming into Washington now is that there is going to be massive strikes. We may see a Battle for Baghdad. They may be striking inside the Green Zone. They're getting ready to do something. One reason they're pushing the constitution is they want to -- you heard Condi Rice, in your setup here, Condi Rice saying "it's their problem. Get a constitution, throw it off on them, and the president can begin to boogey out before the election." And so basically, what you have is External Factors are -- I'll tell you one -- right now, Iran has been talking to Venezuela and...

Stewart: Whoa! Where did you get that? Iran's been talking to Venezuela?

Hersh: They've got oil.

Stewart: Oh right, Venezuela, fourth largest producer in the world.



Hersh: And we've got a new guy running Saudi Arabia, Abdullah, King Abdullah...

Stewart: He's been running it ipso de facto for years.

Hersh: It's nothing like being king. Before 9/11, he was hot on our, he did not like the way we were treating, the way we were dealing with the infitada, with the Palestinian issue. He was very critical. I think there's a reasonable chance that external events in terms of cutting back of major oil supplies.

Stewart: You're going Oil Shock on me, aren't you, Hersh?

Hersh: You bet. One way to get...Hey, this guy [Bush] doesn't listen.

Stewart: Give me that [bleeped] bridge, Hersh, that's all I'm saying. You're giving me nothing! But you had told me, last time you were on the program, you said that by now we would have already attacked Iran. That didn't come to pass. What gives you...?

Hersh: What I said was that Iran's in the sights, it certainly is, if you go look and read the newspapers recently carefully you'll see there's a lot of trouble coming in from Kurdistan. The Kurds are going into Iran. There's also Balucious Ram [I got this wrong], we're runnng operations out of there. Balucious Ram? On the border...we're running, what we're doing is running ops, look, Iran's not clear.

Stewart: Now you're just making cities up! Baluciustan!

Hersh: Let's go back. Another country on the border.



Stewart: What are WE doing? It seems this administration's technique is, "let's just hold on, let's squeeze our eyes as tight as we can and hold on. It doesn't seem like there's a plan in place to deal with any of these growing insurgency or anything else. It is literally (crosses fingers), "they'll just get more Iraqi soldiers that can take over the security, and then they'll get a constitution, I mean, that seems to be the..."

Hersh: The word today is "process." Tomorrow it will be a different word. I mean, there's just no question, there's absolutely no game plan except to get out before the elections in some way that makes sense.

Stewart: The mid-term elections?

Hersh: Yes. You know...

Stewart: You believe that the political process will make it that so that they at least withdraw a certain number of troops before the midterm elections?

Hersh: I think they're really upset. They've seen the tipping point, it's beginning to turn. Cindy Sheehan, for example, is getting attention now which she didn't get a year ago. I think the public now is getting to the point where they're beginning to tune in to what's going on. We're talking about the average Joe. This is bad. We lost 20 Marines.

Stewart: The whole month has been absolutely abhorent.

Hersh: And this is not slowing down. They're there, they're in control. It's not outsiders. There is a certain percentage of them, but most of the stuff is homegrown, people who don't like occupiers.



Stewart: And you don't believe that if at a certain point we get out of there, the insurgency goes "well, look, we don't just want to keep...or at that point, we're in civil war and it doesn't really matter what's going to happen."

Hersh: You know, John, a year ago I would have said to you, going back to Vietnam, in 1965 or 1966, if somebody had said, let's talk to the North Vietnamese or the Vietnamese communists, everybody would have said, "are you kidding?" And we ended up talking to them. A year ago, we talked to the insurgency. The Sunni insurgency, we could have done something, got the insurgency talking, got them in the process, it's too late now, we've blown it. So the only thing we can do now is just crawl away. I would argue, the faster the better. I'll tell you, our soldiers, they do us proud, they may do a lot of bad things, there are bad things happening, but this country in some collective way that's pretty amazing. Unlike in Vietnam, we're not mad at our soldiers. In Vietnam, we were mad. Nobody wants to be there. The faster we get these guys out of there, the better the country will be.

Stewart: As I always say, it's always a pleasure to talk to Sister Mary Sunshine [referring to Hersh].

Farmers Market, John the Baker, Jeff the Musician

The Civic Center Farmers' Market, which is held on Wednesdays and Sundays, was very lively at lunch hour today.



It was filled with nearby office workers (the state, city and federal governments all have their headquarters around here) along with the usual neighbors.



I bought some grapes (which are Good For You!)...



...peaches...



...and nectarines.



I'm not a big egg or dairy fan, but I loved the egg display even though the Egg Lady ran and hid rather than have her picture taken.





The most popular place, at least during lunch hour, was this tamale stand.



There was a line that went all the way past the fishmongers.



At the very end, almost on Market Street, there was a lone fellow selling different kinds of bread.



He was also selling fruit tarts, all of it homemade by him in his house in Twin Peaks.



I don't have much of a sweet tooth so I didn't go for any of the tarts, but I did buy a loaf of sourdough bread.



This is John the Baker. His loaf of bread was good enough that I ate half of it before I made it home. Check him out next time you're at the market.



On the way home, I went by Bill Graham auditorium again where the "Digital Divide" event was still taking place.



I thought there would be something going on inside but the hall and the lobby was empty.



The three days of "Digital Divide" were all on the sidewalk in front of the hall.



It was an opportunity for city government offices to get rid of their crap, mostly.



I spoke to one of the workers who told me that all this stuff was going to the Goodwill on Mission Street where it would be refurbished and sold cheaply or distributed through nonprofits.



"And the stuff that doesn't work is going to be recycled, safely."



"There IS no way to recycle this stuff safely," a guy standing next to me said.



We were both eyeing the boxes with the Apple Powerbooks, wondering if they wanted to give them to us since we were both poor, though I doubt if we could be called part of the Digital Divide.



I started asking my companion, whose name was Jeff, impertinent questions like where he lived (he had just moved back to San Francisco from Los Angeles after living here from 1987 to 1997), where he was staying (on friends' couches for the time being), and whether he had any skills. "What do you mean?" he asked me. "Well, to get a job, and they really haven't existed in San Francisco since everything, including the tourism industry, crashed, what skills would you have?" He looked amused and not at all offended.



That's when he told me had been a rock musician in a band for the last ten years as a singer/guitarist and songwriter. "And you made your living doing that?" I asked him and he said yes. "Congratulations," I told him, "making your living in the arts is a tricky business," which he acknowledged. Anyway, he quit the band recently and is making a new life up here. I told him I'd take him to my favorite hangout, the opera house, which he'd never visited all the time he lived here and which I look upon as my personal clubhouse. And if you happen to see this, Jeff, I'm quite serious about the invite. The season starts in September and the John Adams opera, "Doctor Atomic," starts in October.

Public Access and the Digital Divide

A group from Channel 29, the public access station, were hoping for a major media event at the Polk Street stairs of City Hall where they were protesting the secret deal Mayor Gavin Newsom had made with the local cable monopoly, Comcast.



Michael, who works at the station, was referring to the fact that money is supposed to be going to Public, Educational & Government stations but the "Public" and "Educational" parts tend to get the short end of the stick.



Part of the reason for that is the terrible management team running the nonprofit, CTC, which is in place at public access. Above is Stu, an amiable soul, who is a board member of the station and at least had the courtesy to show up at the protest.



Unfortunately, the mayor was doing plenty of photo-ops for the television media, but they had nothing to do with public access or Comcast.



At Bill Graham auditorium across the plaza, there was yet another "Homeless Connect" event.



This one involved the so-called "Digital Divide," where the poor and homeless couldn't afford computers, so I guess they had found some donated machines to distribute.



"Do they actually work?" I asked one of the volunteers, and he gave me a shrug and an eyeroll as if to say, "Your guess is as good as mine."



The mayor was slated to give a short speech at 12:30 for the media.



In truth, the poor and homeless already have internet and computer access.



It's called the Main Public Library.



Unfortunately, the wait for a computer can be quite long. (The gentleman in the middle didn't want his picture published which is why he's literally blacked out.)



Newsom gave his Digital Divide speech and then moved to the front of City Hall where he gave a speech about guns.



At least, that's what it sounded like from what I could make out, how there was only so much he could do on a local level about violence.



The public access protestors were still 25 yards away on the front stairs and I said, "Hey, if you want to do a media event, get over where the media is."



So they all picked up their signage and traveled to Newsom rather than having him travel to them.



The fabulous Deena, hostess of "Tranny Talk" on Channel 29, was getting video footage.



Still, Newsom did his best to ignore the protestors and hustled back into City Hall flanked by his nervous bodyguards.

A Burrito Salon and Voting Machines

There's a newly opened burrito parlor on Howard Street that's cheap and delicious. I won't tell you the name because it might get too full on Friday afternoons...



...when the great political polemicist h Brown (click here for his site) won't be able to take over the table for 12 in the middle of the room for his attempt at a Salon.



"How did you meet h?" I asked this lady, and she told me it was at the Jewish Vocational Center's computer classes. Another guest was a political fixer who didn't want his picture taken.



I spent the whole afternoon talking to Ann(e?), a Hill Dweller (Telegraph), writer, dancer, and would-be graphics person. She works with Street Sheet and the Coalition on Homelessness but is also a landlady which can be problematic, particularly when the tenants are not paying their rent.



After the stimulating Salon, I went to the Department of Elections in City Hall to test out two brands of touch screen voting machines, but I was too late to be one of the guinea pigs.



Beth Lipski, a Department worker who confessed to being "exhausted," apologized but I got my answer about which one was best anyway.



There was a representative from Sequoia, one of the two companies being considered (she looked a bit like a pharmacy rep and she was looking at the results of the two weeks of testing along with young people who are passionate about voting rights.



"Which one is better?" I asked Will Doherty, Executive Director of the Verified Voting Foundation (click here for a link) and told me "ES&S. Definitely. They combine a touch screen with an actual ballot that can be counted later if need be. Sequoia offers a paper trail given to the voter to confirm their votes, but nothing that can really be used later."



So there you have it. Contact your Supervisor and the Department of Election's office and ask for ES&S. What the acronym stands for I have no idea, but I do trust Will Doherty.

The Force of Destiny

At the San Francisco Opera, for the last fifteen years, I have been a supernumerary, an extra number, which means a non-singing extra. I've played a spear carrier, a soldier, a sailor, a peasant, a zebra, and members of the clergy high and low.

There was a cattle call audition last Friday for parts in the upcoming fall season, which was amusingly described by Paul Szcesiul on the Supernumerary website, "Spearhead News" (click here for a link).



To my utter surprise and delight I was chosen to work in two operas this season, Verdi's "La Forza del Destino" as a Friar and Bellini's "Norma" as either a Celtic warrior or a Roman soldier.



My fellow friar is being played by Albert Malkin (aka Grove Wiley) who was the first person I knew who had a blog, "Albert's World of Artsy Fun." And it IS artsy fun. He's the first person I've seen to take those annoying emoticons and do something amusing with them, sprinkling them around like glitter among his animated gifs. He is also proudly, defiantly neurotic, which can be entertaining. Click here to check it out.



As it turned out, Albert and I were given the task of bringing on a caldron filled with confetti which was supposed to be soup, leaving the stage, and then returning at the end of the scene to take it off. It was definitely not a Star Supernumerary moment, and I could tell it made Albert very depressed.

Oh well, the chorus was sounding its usual magnificent self in between their mumbled grumblings, and Ian Robertson, the chorus director (pictured on the right) seemed in a very good mood. I've got a good feeling about this production.

Cindy Sheehan's Crusade

After running into the Scary Lesbian Cop again at the corner of Market and Montgomery Streets, where she and her partner had stopped to harass a schizophrenic who was talking to voices on the stairs and who was harming nobody, I went to the weekly peace vigil in front of the Federal building on Golden Gate Avenue.



There was quite a good turnout today...



...bolstered by an East Indian tourist currently living in Detroit...



...along with a crew of Military Mothers and Cindy Sheehan supporters.



I love the fact that the militant mother who is embarrassing Dubya just outside his Crawford ranch during his five-week "vacation" is from Vacaville, which literally means "Cowtown."



She has an article today on Arianna Huffington's new blog. Though my friend Ellen Toomey absolutely despises everything about Arianna for some reason, I've always enjoyed the Callas biographer, golddigger, fag hag, right-winger morphed into wild left-winger.



A lot of her blog, called the Huffington Post is pretty inconsequential stuff written by celebrities like Deepak Chopra, but there has also been some interesting reporting and Arianna is really a good writer. Once they started allowing comments, it got even more interesting. Click here to check it out.

Lightwalking

Any backstage has an atmosphere of magical wonder to it.



The San Francisco Opera backstage, however, is huge, amazing, and special. You can almost feel all the good and bad energy that's been expended there over the years. The politics can be brutal and Borgia-like in their intensity, which are balanced by the beauty of the performances.



Seven of us had volunteered on a Sunday morning to be "lightwalkers," human objects who could move around the stage while lighting was adjusted.



The set was for a new production of Verdi's "La Forza del Destino," easily my favorite title in opera and an extraordinary piece of music. Staging the thing can be problematic, though, because the opera is so episodic and sprawling.



Thankfully, there's a great director on board, Ron Daniels, (not pictured) who comes via the Royal Shakespeare Company where he directed a lot of the Bard. After a morning break, he did something I've never seen before, which was to invite all the stagehands to come out into the opera house while he explained the story and what they were trying to achieve visually.



"There are two parallel stories going on at the same time," he explained. "Part of the libretto is taken from a Spanish play, and parts are from a Schiller play about war. The Spanish narrative is all about guilt, pursuit and revenge. The war narrative is about how "fun" it is to be a soldier and examines the culture of death."



He spoke for about 15 minutes without a trace of condescension to his fairly blue-collar (actually black T-shirt) audience, and it was quite brilliant.



I hope the production turns out to be as good as what is in his mind. It's certainly an interesting set, though like many of the larger opera productions, it has a dangerous feeling, with raked black stairs on all sides.

For more info, check out the San Francisco Opera's great website by clicking here.

Peter Galbraith and Iraq

The weekly Thursday peace vigil in front of the Federal Building (noon to 1PM, join us if you're in the mood some day) was as charming as ever.



However, I was busy with a work deadline so my one-hour vigil was more like a 15-minute cameo appearance before everybody packed up the signs.



This gentleman, whose name I have regrettably forgotten, is one of the ringleaders of this group. He puts out such good energy you can almost see it radiate around him.



I bought a "New York Review of Books" the other day just because I needed something to read while having a solo lunch at Chow on Church Street, and the first article in the issue was by Peter Galbraith about Iraq. It is the ONLY great essay/article I have ever read about Iraq that actually explains what is going on, relating a complex story in clear, simple language, describing the past, present and possible future without having a lot of axes to grind. It's really fascinating. I was going to quote from it extensively but it turns out you can read it for free at the New York Review of Books website.

Click here to do just that.

A Suspicious Object

While a delightful East Indian lab tech was extracting some blood from me this morning in the Davies Hospital lab, a "Code Red" was announced over the speaker system along with "this is not a drill, this is a real alert." "What's a Code Red?" I asked him. "A fire," he replied. As it turned out, it was a completely false alarm, with some miserable character having pulled a fire alarm on the second floor and as I left, the fire engines were driving away from the entrance to the hospital.



Returning to the Civic Center, where I live at the corner of Franklin and McAllister streets, there was more phony mayhem. At about 3PM, a small contingent of police and Department of Parking and Traffic guys were keeping cars and pedestrians off of McAllister Street between Van Ness and Polk. "What's going on?" I asked, and they replied that "a suspicious object" had been found. "And WE'RE not checking it out."



The police in San Francisco, at least compared to what I grew up with in Southern California, are a pretty mellow lot. Many of them are as lazy as can be and the department itself doesn't solve many crimes, but that's okay too. Anyway, the group in these photos were genuinely friendly, particularly when I told them I lived in the neighborhood.



I went home and worked for an hour before deciding to check out how the situation was evolving. I asked one of the policeman if City Hall was open and to my amazement it was, but that one had to cross Van Ness and walk on the Opera House side, and then enter through the Grove Street basement entrance.



Inside City Hall, it was as if nothing was happening outside. In fact, quite a few people I told about the situation had no idea it was even occurring.



I have an acquaintance who works for a City Supervisor, whose names will remain anonymous, and he let me take a few photos from the second floor windows directly above where there was supposed to be "a suspicious object."



If anybody should have been evacuated, it was the people working in those half a dozen Supervisors' offices that overlooked McAllister Street.



It also made clear the ridiculousness of redirecting bus routes, pedestrians, and cars for a "suspicious object." In half an hour, the police presence had quadrupled and the taboo areas for pedestrians had expanded to include the block I live on.



There were a few creepy cops who had joined the party who obviously loved yelling at people and ordering them around. They were in heaven.



This policeman was one of them, and the person waiting for a bus was trying to sneak by. It didn't work.



Still, I really wasn't prepared for the very masculine, presumably lesbian cop who was standing on the sidewalk in front of my apartment building who yelled, "Keep it moving." I replied that I lived here, and she yelled, "so get inside!" My response was "Excuse me?"



And then she walked over, got in my face, fingered her handcuffs and said, "Do you want to be arrested and taken to jail? Then get inside." My response was "Okay, but first I want to take your picture." which caused her to turn around and leave.



This is a note for Heather Fong, San Francisco's police chief. This cop needs some retraining. Her communication skills are not winning your department any friends.



In fact, when I went back to my apartment to resume work, all I could hear was her horrible voice carrying four stories into my apartment. "You! Get back! Move!" At first, I started yelling back, "Shut up!" but decided to be civilized and put on Terry Riley's "In C," a classical minimalist masterpiece from the 1960s by a local composer. And I played it loud.



There was an interesting coda, where this well-dressed gentleman actually intimidated this awful woman, and she let him through. I have no idea who he might be but it was obviously Somebody Important.



At about 5PM I heard a small boom that wasn't as loud as some of the firecrackers in the neighborhood during the latest Fourth of July weekend and by 6PM the show was over. And let me say it right here and right now. Just using a bit of common sense, the chances of my being injured or killed by a local policeman/BART cop/security guy is probably about 100 times more likely than my being injured or killed by a "terrorist." This is just silly and dangerous.

Hayes Green Community Art Event

The Black Rock Arts Foundation, who commissioned the David Best pagoda/temple, decided to hold a party for the Hayes Valley neighborhood on Sunday.



They didn't overpublicize the event so there were just enough humans for good people watching without being at all claustrophobic.



On one side of the green, there was a disco bus with a DJ playing booming music that was quite amusing.



A group with "distressed" flowers...



...was assembling a beautiful flower mandala in the middle of the park.





The fabulous Sk8 Godfather was manning the outdoor sound system...



...for the roller disco skaters who were wonderful, as always.



If you couldn't skate, there were hula hoops to work off the excess energy.



The crowd was varied, with kids...



...along with beautiful young people...



...exuding an easygoing sensuality.



Old people were more than welcome, too...



...in any garb they felt like.



At one point, a "ParticiParade" arrived on its long trek from Hippie Hill in Golden Gate Park to join the festivities.



The vibes were so charming, in fact, I proceeded to fall in love with San Francisco all over again.



It almost made me want to go to Burning Man for the first time.



The operative word there, by the way, is "almost."