When Nothing Works

I missed this original PBS broadcast Monday night on what various Colorado Springs communities thought of the Afghanistan troop expansion, but I participated in this downtown action Tuesday night. It's true that a simple cut and run sounds too much like the British and Russian leaders at the turn of the last century, when they abandoned their "Great Game" in Afghanistan and just let the Pashtun tribes alone. Obama was right in saying that the Pashtuns, left alone, already have demonstrated that they don't want to leave global Salafist practices behind.

But what is better? Joe Biden's counter-terror strategy, where troops are replaced by attack drones, and the U.S. perfects "death at a distance"? A McChrystal surge, which may have an expiration date of summer 2011, but feels like an open-ended police action? One thing we hear consistently from the likes of Medea Benjamin, Dahr Jamail, and Naomi Klein, is that the U.S. always overestimates its ability to determine the futures of others, in any event. As the soldier in the PBS video says, we have not yet perfected a way to force people to change their minds. And combat jihad will live on.

"You Lie!"

I'll admit straight off the bat that I have my doubts about emulating the tactics of your enemies, particularly when both their means and ends are inherently idiotic. Nevertheless, it felt great to disrupt Rep. Doug Lamborn's Town Hall meeting on health care today, if only to use the tactics the tea-partiers have used so effectively in the past.

Why be a jerk? Because Colorado Springs, while populated with many cool people, represents a closed community with closed politics and closed ideas. It is controlled by a tight clique of Libertarians, and its representative in Congress, Doug Lamborn, is the kind of guy who flew down to Honduras to support the coup. Frankly, I don't want no stinkin' dialog. I want to piss people off.

And in the end, the range of issues discussed regarding the public option and the role of health insurance companies was broader due to a rude intrusion than it would have been for playing nice. And I will give Doug Lamborn credit where credit is due. At one point, he said to his conservative supporters, "Well, turnabout is fair play. Some of those tea parties have been pretty rowdy."

Special award to good friend Pat Hill, who gave a dynamite speech on her health-insurance experience to a rally last week, and took on a prime role at the Town Hall. The Gazette ran a great photo of her here.

Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band

I first saw Conor Oberst in the mid-1990s in an early incarnation of Bright Eyes, when he was playing with a cellist and still in the midst of teen angst. The last time I saw Bright Eyes was at Radio City Music Hall at Thanksgiving 2007, where the delivery was top-notch but the acoustics were rotten. Soon after that, Oberst retired the Bright Eyes logo and went down to Mexico, where he since recorded two albums with a bunch of close friends (including Nik Freitas) under the name "Mystic Valley Band."

Conor and MVB opened their national 2009 tour June 17 at Colorado Springs' lovely dive, Black Sheep, and it struck me how much he and the band have morphed into rowdy Americana of a Flying Burrito Bros. or Jayhawks flavor.

Before going further, I should mention he chose two fine opening acts to tour with him: the singer-songwriter Michael Runion, who I regret have no videos of, but who offers dynamite harmonies with his cousin Sarah; and Jessica Dobson, the new guitarist for Beck, who records under the name Deep Sea Diver. Jessica has an EP out, with a full-length in the works, and here's a sample of her new material:



I couldn't begin to video all the tunes I really liked, since Conor played a long set - particularly sad not to get his excellent rendition of "Cape Canaveral." Did capture some pretty nice songs, including "Slowly (Oh So Slowly)", "Get Well Cards", "Souled Out!", and "Big Black Nothing." Then it was on to an acoustic version of "Lenders in the Temple":



Later highlights in the evening included "Cabbage Town", "NYC Gone Gone", and "Hospital"(sorry, I only caught an excerpt at the end). Before his final encore song, he said he had just seen Noam Chomsky a couple nights earlier, and Chomsky put him in the kind of mood he was in when he wrote "Roosevelt Room":



Conor heads to Telluride Bluegrass Festival for a lineup that includes Elvis Costello, Jenny Lewis, and David Byrne (since Conor's sung a lot with Emmylou Harris and she'll be at Telluride, I would expect surprises), then it's on to the West Coast for opening dates with Wilco. Don't miss him!

Black Lips at the Black Sheep

The Ramones are not dead. Neither are The Standells, or even ? and the Mysterians. They live on in the clean-cut Atlanta bash-n-mash antics of The Black Lips, who played Monday night at The Black Sheep in Colorado Springs. Perfectly executed, four-part-harmony stupid garage rock is non-stop fun. Line of the night from Cole Alexander, during banter with a loud audience member: "Look, we're from the South, we have centuries of experience in moral bravado, which is something you ADD-addled mountain people will never understand." Rock on.

Finally got that missing spring blizzard.. mule deer are greatly displeased...

National Weather Service hit this one precisely. Whiteout would begin at precisely 11 a.m., and it did. I-25 was a horror show. Snow will keep up through noon on Friday. These ten deer huddled together on my back ridge, looking for food and half-shelter from the winds.

The Academy Is...

OK, quit laughing. Teenage heart-throb band The Academy Is... hit Colorado Springs last night, performing an all-acoustic set with tour-mates This Providence, and at $10 a ticket, I figured it would be fun. All-ages show at Black Sheep bar, but most of the audience was 14-20. Us old geeks hung out at the bar in back, getting sauced. Above, William Beckett sings 'Pour Yourself a Drink' and 'Rumored Nights'...



Here he sings 'The Fever' and 'Attention'...




And here This Providence sings two songs from their new CD, 'Who Are You Now?' (their label if Fueledbyramen, you have to love it): 'Playing the Villain' as a duo and William Beckett joins them for 'Waste Myself.'

Unfortunately, didn't get any video of opener Evan Taubenfeld, who played at one point for Avril Lavigne. Sure, it's silly, but I'd go see Taylor Swift for the right price. Maybe the Jonas Brothers. Miley Cyrus? Hmmm, maybe I do have some limits. I'll wait til she does the mashup album with Radiohead.

Cog Railway to Pikes Peak

67 degrees at the bottom of Ruxton Avenue, 28 degrees at the summit. OK, did Barr Trail, did the train, did the Garden, gotta get some frickin' work done. Wonderful Rocky Mountain spring, though.

Garden of the Gods on Sunday Afternoon

Credits to Lucinda Williams for background music - demo version of "Rarity."

St Patrick's Day March 2009

No arrests this year, just banners and dancers and drummers and kazoos. Sorry for the shouting.

Mule Deer in the Backyard

Hey! A sign of spring! After a sudden 6 a.m. snow squall today that sent four SUVs careening off Baptist Road.

No Child Left Red-Lined: From District 11 to Your Neighborhood School

School District 11 in mid-city, Colorado Springs, is facing the same kind of pressures as most school districts across the U.S. in 2009: Declining enrollment and aging buildings means more consolidation. Desire for science-centric magnet schools leads to deals with the devil for corporate aerospace companies to run the schools, using district money. Parents are the last to know the ultimate plans of the board.

In late February, parents learned that many of the schools slated for closure in District 11 were in lower-income neighborhoods. Isn't it funny how even kids get red-lined? Even though parents were kept in the dark until the last moment, they have been quick to organize. This is a video of them gathering outside a closed, executive-session meeting of the board on Feb. 25, 2009.

Rev. Lucius Walker of Pastors for Peace

Rev. Lucius Walker, executive director of Pastors for Peace, was in Colorado Springs Feb. 17-18 for a gumbo fund-raising party and a series of talks to promote the work of his organization, which arranges peace caravans to Cuba. He was kind enough to sit down with me for a brief chat at First Congregational Church about the work of Pastors for Peace. To contact the organization for donations of money or goods, write ifco@igc.org, or call 212-926-5757.

Raccoo-oo-oon's Demise and Blizzards from Nowhere

Iowa City doesn't have an abundance of avant-garde music activity, so when the community declines by one, it's everyone's loss. This year already saw the end of the incomparable Yellow Swans, and now Heather at Volcanic Tongue tells us that Raccoo-oo-oon of Iowa is calling it quits. Nothing at their web site, maybe they're just morphing into their alter ego of Night-People. Maybe we'll never know.

Meanwhile, we did a marathon drive from Phoenix at 7 a.m. Saturday, hitting Colorado Springs around 11 p.m. Good thing. The roads were clear, there were no adverse forecasts, and not a smidgen of snow on the ground in town at midnight. By daybreak, there was five inches on the ground, by noon Sunday they had closed I-25, I-70, and US 24. Here's what the driveway looked like. What good is all that high-falutin' Doppler radar if it doesn't tell you what's coming?

Colorado Springs Says No to California's Proposition 8

Dozens of protests were held by the GLBT community across the country on Saturday, Nov. 15, to express opposition to the passage of California's Proposition 8, which seeks to change the state constitution to add a permanent ban on gay marriage. At the last minute, the feisty Spectrum group at UCCS organized a protest in Colorado Springs to augment the one in Denver. Above is a talk from Peterson Toscano, a theatrical performance activist in Connecticut, about the recent legalizing of gay marriage in his state. You can also follow the links in this sentence to talks by transgender activists Argiope and Nancy-Jo Morris, to local activist Rita Ague, to an unknown person at the start of the rally, and to a group shot of protesters (around 75 or so) on City Hall steps.

Update: Mark Lewis took a pic of me speaking at the rally (that's Bonnie Barnes of Spectrum on the left of the photo - she had a lot of responsibility in organizing this). Mark also did an excellent 5-minute recap of the rally here.

Michelle Obama in Colorado Springs

Even if I missed Barack Obama among 150,000 people in Denver on Oct. 26, I got to see Michelle Obama among 3,000 people in Colorado Springs Oct. 28. The beginning of her speech is below, with Part 2 here and Part 3 here (ran out of memory before the end of the speech). You can also see an antiwar protest outside the auditorium here, and Catholic anti-abortion protesters facing off with Obama supporters here. Sen. Ken Salazar spoke prior to Michelle Obama's speech.