Black Friday

From THE OLD BEATNIK, my one act play:

O America
if Paris had kept his cock in his pants
would a thousand ships have failed to launch?

O America 
if you had kept your cock in your pants 
would you have built your city not on a hill but in the valley? 
If you had kept your cock in your pants,
would you have settled for a destiny less than manifest?

O America 
if you keep your cock in your pants, 
will our sordid history finally come to an end? 
Let me tell you the sad truth, America: 
your history has been driven by the one-eyed tyrant between your legs.

America, here are your divorce papers 
I can't live with you any more 
We are too different   

You get noisier every year 
with your ad campaigns   with your patriotic speeches 
and I cherish silence 
for reflection and self-discovery   

You think change is progress 
and I think change also kills what does not need changing 
rituals and cycles lost forever   

You are forever buying things 
a hoarder of possessions 
and my mantra is Less Is More 
my essentials on my back   

You worship the dollar 
and I worship the blade of grass 
breaking through the sidewalk   

You want to save the world 
and I want to save myself   

America, here are your divorce papers 
I don't want your City on a Hill 
I don't want your Manifest Destiny 

I sing the music of the universe 
My soul is dancing to Mulligan and Miles 
and my spirit soars like a bird

Deemer, Charles. 3 Plays About Family . Unknown. Kindle Edition. 

6 Things Every Non-Native Should Do On Thanksgiving

Check it out.

Back in the day

This was once my favorite holiday, a celebration of friendship, from 1967 on, for about a decade, when the Deemers, Fuquas, Bradleys, Richardsons, Crookses, five couples, six kids, would gather for several days of celebration, centered on Thanksgiving. Most of us were folk musicians, so we had lots of music. All of us drank too much, so there was much partying. It was grand! Started in LA but continued after some of us moved.

A grand time! Never the same since.

Now we're talking

Elizabeth Warren Unveils Bill Revoking Medals Of Honor For Wounded Knee Massacre

The Remove the Stain Act strips the highest military award from 20 U.S. soldiers who slaughtered hundreds of Native women and children.

Read the story. 

Happy holidays??? Today's UN Report

We're on perilous ground

We are on track for a temperature rise of over 3°C. This would bring mass extinctions & large parts of the planet would be uninhabitable.

We need to supercharge our #ClimateAction ambition NOW to close the #EmissionsGap: https://t.co/AQiWUdoCzi pic.twitter.com/yCCvn3wDS8

— UN Environment Programme (@UNEP) November 26, 2019

I cannot image a scenario in which we do what needs to be done. Instead I see widespread disaster, suffering and eventually upheaval and chaos. I should be dead by then. 

v. Thanksgiving

Fourth Thursday in November marks National Day of Mourning, others celebrate Thanksgiving

Nov. 28, 2019, marks the 50th anniversary of the National Day of Mourning and is an opportunity for non-native youth to explore Thanksgiving from the perspective of Native American and Indigenous people.

Read the article

Right the first time

From The Washington Post:

“He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the values that the men and women in uniform are fighting for,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham in December 2015. In another interview, Graham said, “I think he’s a kook. I think he’s crazy. I think he’s unfit for office.” Graham has now become one of Trump’s most ardent advocates.

Many, many Republicans made the same shameful switch. That's politics for you.

Ramblin': the songs and stories of Woody Guthrie

Check it out.

I've heard a storm of words in me. I guess I got to where the only way that I could cry was on some piece of paper in words like these. But I know that these words that I hear are not my own private property.
I borrowed them from you. I borrowed them, the same as I walked through the high winds and borrowed enough air to keep me moving. You may have been taught to call me by the name of a poet but I am no more of a poet than you are. I am no more of a writer of songs than you are, no better singer. The only story I have tried to write has been you. All I am is just sort of a clerk and climate tester, and my workshop is the sidewalk, your street and your field, your highway and your buildings. I am nothing more nor less than a photographer without a camera.
I knew that my trail would be a story that whirls. I knew the tale would be a freewheeler, a quick starter, a high running circling chorus that keeps on repeating over and over, and would sing every song to be sung under the one tune and the one name.
And that song and that tune ain't got no end. It ain't got no notes wrote down and there ain't no piece of paper big enough to put down on.
Every day you are down and out, and lonesome and hungry, and tired of working for a hobo's handout, there's a new verse added to this song.
Every time you kick a family out of their home, cause they ain't got the rent, and owe lots of debts, there's another verse added to this song.
When a soldier shoots a soldier, that's a note to this song. When a cannon blows up twenty men, that's part of the rhythm, and when soldiers march off over the hill and don't march back, that's the drumbeat of this song.
This ain't a song you can write down and sell. This song is everywhere at the same time. Have you ever heard it? Woody has.

How socialist Kshama Sawant triumphed over Amazon in its own backyard

Read it.

Kurt Vonnegut on Making a Living as a Writer

PART A: FROM WRITING

I used to teach a writers’ workshop . . . and I would say at the start of every semester, “The role model for this course is Vincent Van Gogh—who sold two paintings to his brother.” —Kurt Vonnegut

The toughest, most fundamental question for a serious writer or artist of any kind, if you’re not born with a silver spoon in your mouth, is how to support your habit.

Read it. 

I supported mine in several ways during the course of my career: first, like Graham Greene, by making a distinction between entertainment and literature, a journalist to pay the bills, a literary artist to stay sane. Then, primarily in 1980s, I got good at the grant game. Later, in the 1990s,  Portland State University invited me to start a screenwriting program, and I taught part-time for the next twenty years. I consider myself lucky and, with regard to grants, having good timing.

But I feel the consequences in old age, having less retirement income than I would have had if I'd have taught full time. It was worth it.

Reading (a long time ago)

Olive bread

My cousin in LA is a great fan of my olive bread, so I always send her home with a loaf when she visits. And she always sends me a photo later.

Veterans Day

New member of the family

Whom we call "honey" after his coloring.

Photos by Robin Deemer

Sabrina Ionescu, Satou Sabally lead Oregon women’s basketball to stunning upset of Team USA

What a game to watch! And the season hasn't started yet.

A teenager in 1950s LA

I became a teenager in the right place at the right
time. Although you could count on one hand the number
of blacks enrolled at Woodrow Wilson Jr. High or
Pasadena High School, Los Angeles County had large
enough a black population to justify the existence of
radio shows that played "the very best in Negro
entertainment" around the clock. One such show was
Hunter Hancock's afternoon "Harlematinee" on KFVD.

Read BIRTHING LITTLE RICHARD.

Chesterton

Ordered a book of essays. Haven't read him in a while, might be just the leveling agent in these surreal times. My late poet friend Ger Moran kept trying to get me to do a one-man show on him, taking advantage of what Ger saw as a resemblance.