Will of the People for Buena Vista Park, public hearing, 250 Hamilton, April 13, 2015

Posted on April 13, 2015 by markweiss86
Erica Escalante and family plea their case, for Buena Vista Residents association, before City Council, Palo Alto; she is a Gunn graduate

Erica Escalante and family plea their case, for Buena Vista Residents association, before City Council, Palo Alto; she is a Gunn graduate

edit to add, the next day: I sat through the four hour public hearing on the Buena Vista Mobile Home Park possible closure or opportunity to convert to homeowners association, which featured about 70 brief speeches, the bulk of which were by actual tenants, many of those English is their second to Spanish language, some with interpreters and the most touching talks were by school children, pleading to remain at Barron Park School, Terman or Gunn.

I spoke for about 2 minutes. These are my original notes, which probably would have taken me 6 minutes to get thru. Plus I had the advantage of riffing off of what was already said. I will try to recreate the exact 500 words or so in a minute.

Notes on BV

Highest and Best Use is flawed, in that it does not weigh properly the covenant; Smith and associates april 18, 2013
2. Obvious pro-developer bias in the press, especially Jason Green’s reporting, on the ownership history and timeline.Jisser LLC of 2000, v. “Jisser family” 1986 blurred
3. Prometheus is irrelevent; don trump might pay $80 M
4. on the other hand, please disclose contact between this group and council?

5. Molly Stump was wrong to gag the candidates, this should have been solved long ago.
5.a burden this puts on the residents

6. todays’ Merc has something about rent control
7. todays Times has something about Blackstone investment in real estate. They manage $278 B BILLION IN ASSETS. in real estate along they made $2 Billion in profits in two years.
8. here in PA alone, its is a billion dollar industry, commercial real estate. apples and oranges thingy, or how monolithic, but pressures are considerable, incentives.
9..

if it were a dirt lot, yes its worth $30 M and you could move around the dirt. but there are people there, they are not dirt, cannot shovel them into bags, toss them on a freight train or something.

the clear moral choice is to force a deal and be done with the current ownership.

i’d rather be sued for leaning too far in this direction than to not do enough on this point.
it’s still one person one vote and not one dollar one vote.
Its sort of like Huck Finn, feeling he is going to hell for wanting to help Jim escape slavery.
When Enron went out of business, and we knew they were corrupt and going away, we still paid them $20M rather than fight, which is a disappointment;
per the recent GJR of 6/14, we tend to kowtow to power rather than stand by principles. that’s still a valid observation about leadership here, sorry to say.

its the greed of one guy or one entity versus the need of the 400 humble people, and I think the will of the people is to side with our morals and these people and not give in to mammon, or babylon or moloch.

John Barton backed by Gail Price and others on his board seemed to weigh in in support of the poignancy and humanity of rejecting the ownership entity's designs on gentrification. Gail later made her own address.

John Barton backed by Gail Price and others on his board seemed to weigh in in support of the poignancy and humanity of rejecting the ownership entity’s designs on gentrification. Gail later made her own address.

For my actually address, I avoided using the name of the ownership entity, the so-called family.

I also shot and texted the photo or emailed rather to John Barton with Gail Price.

the meeting re-convenes today Tuesday at 6 p.m., with deliberations by our 9-member council. I have to admit the presentation by Ms. Nanda, attorney for the ownership group was impressive. She seemed to imply that the covenant, of 2000 (I thought it went back further, to the 1960s?) written by then City Attorney Ariel Collone (sp?) was pretty weak, weaker than we assumed. What popped into my mind is the Hebrew term “a stone and a stone” which is etymologically linked to the word “ebony” and the concept of false measure. As in, what we thought was rock solid was maybe just a dark wood that looks like stone. I continue to believe that The Will of The People is to save these 400 people, and let them become owners here.

I sat next to Joe Simitian — actually I sat by his assistant or aide Micaela Hellman-Tincher — Veronica’s grandkid and a fellow Gunn grad — and then Joe sat down and I noticed that despite pledging $8 M from county coffers that he did not stand with the people who were asked to stand if they support the residents. He is officially neutral.

My notes, rewrote in a book:
1. HBU ignores covenant >> unrealistic valuation
April 18, 2013 Smith & Associates device of “hypothetical value” inappropriate, caused damage, although I’m not a lawyer, I said
2. Press has run with this, fanned the flames. Pro-developer bias
–blurred the distinction between the ownership entities
since 2000, LLC
family since 1986
(I noticed that the attorney refers to her client as a “family” when in fact it is an LLC a corporation)
(also when I passed Jason Green of the Merc I held out Matthew Artz page one story Monday, “A New Call For Rent Control: With runaway increases displacing many, activists reviving progressive tool” but he ignored me; I had written he and his editor Mario Dianda five times on these same two points; when I pigeon-holed Jason on this a few months back he muttered “Property rights…property rights” which is a tell. But yes Jason you are right that I wrote in my blog that you were playing with a digital device at the candidates editorial meeting in September 2014 when you were actually scrolling thru a recording device, or not deleting, and I printed that verbatim).
3. Barton John former Council, PAUSD bd, architect
Paul George, Peninsula Peace and Justice Center
Who are we?
What has changed since 1964, when we cut this deal?
>>
I submit that we will not be the same, Palo Alto, if we let this happen. To those Palo Alto family members.
Maybe we would have to change the name from Palo Alto, after I said Oak but I mean mighty pine to Palo Corto, Palo Bajo, Palo Flaccido, Mayfield or may not field? I gestured back and forth, our ambivalence and weakness of intention.

My outro which the buzzer barely permitted and I did push thru a click or two to the other side, Rabbi Janet Marder (I greeted on my way up, I also fist bumped Lydia Kou speaking before me) referenced Levitticus “love your neighbor” but I also know Matthew “that which you’ve done for the least of my brethren, so have you done for me” There’s a moral imperative here to help these people.

outro, Bill Frisell doing John Lennon, “Nowhere Man” and “Strawberry Fields”, NPR Tiny Desk concepts which has little or nothing to do with BV other than its a nice break from all this, if you have the full 20 minutes to listen to this, take a break. It dawned on me, and several of the residents said this, that the three year period of doubt and loathing exacts a toll as well. Frisell of course did two shows at Cubberley, including one solo guitars, in the late 1990s I set up, and Terry and I saw him but did not get back stage to greet him July.

Posted in Plato's Republic | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘all the patient dignity of a human form’ by hummingfish channelled kinda sort on a Sunday and Monday

Posted on April 13, 2015 by markweiss86

“Herons” is a song by Hummingfish an indie band out of Portland, out of the 1990s.

Thoughts of which folded into this:

Hi, Bill.
I am the one that bought your BEML cd based on the fact that the first track was by Deb Talan.
I listened to the performance the next a.m., that song, ‘rock and water” or what not, and then hummed it the rest of the a.m.
Did not know the tune but cannot imagine a better performance than the version you and Megan created.
you own the tune now.

I saw Hummingfish exactly once, dropping everything to zip up to Sweetwater Mill Valley to see their show, with another admirer of Deb and them. It was actually a tune called “Herons’ that me and this temporary fellow traveler bonded over; she had it as her outgoing message on her old school answering machine, this is 1996 or so. It turns out that “herons” was written by her then-partner and maybe that is why, despite others calling for it, or posting about it, Deb Talan apparently does not play it nor is it in repertoire of The Weepies. someone else wrote in to say that the song was not ornithologically correct in that herons do not travel in packs as depicted in song. Of course, my memory was of a bird entering the water as in your song choice not rising up to fly. But there is something great about her voice on that song, which she only co-wrote. the melody to his lyric.

And that Weepies years later were signed by Mike Kappus of Rosebud as r.a. if not also p.m. is to my mind the best imprimatur in the business and caught my eye even if I have not ever caught up with her or them, nor do I know their book.

Sad news you passed on about her health troubles. I perused their site and postings about such.

Another case I monitor is Candye Kane the blues singer fighting pancreatic cancer. Tough lady, raised a boy who graduated from Cal, and another son played drums in her band for a while. Candye in recent years hired a young guitarist from Mountain View named Laura Chavez.

And I also asked you about Danny Barnes. I once hired Danny Barnes Trio, not Bad Livers mind you, to play the Edge or Illusions in Palo Alto, circa 2002, a trio with Danny, Amy Denio on bass and Oliver something on accordion.

Mark Weiss
Earthwise Productions and Artist Management of Palo Alto
PO Box 60786
Palo Alto, CA 94306
(650) 305-XXXX
if your phone or office pinged briefly sunday a.m. I was fixin’ to ring you, moved by all this…

i also chatted up Mr. Spurgin about my Kerrville and Austin days, and Mr. Crary about Dao Strom who grew up in Placerville, lived in Austin, is based in Portland but coming thru town in June, s/s plus novelist…former client

edit to add, almost exactly one year later, or one year minus two days later: this thing is pretty darn post-modern and random so it does not dilute much worse to add this:

Back at Stanford, Brooks, who took classical voice lessons while growing up and was a member of the Stanford Chamber Corale, realized she would rather write her own songs than sing ones written long ago.

“I realized I couldn’t do this anymore,” she said. “What was I singing about? I had to do a performance that was more a synthesis of my ideals and my values. When I started playing guitar, I realized, wow, this was the medium I was looking for.”

Shelagh Sandstedt, a friend of Brooks’ who lived with her in Synergy, still remembers the first time she saw Brooks pick up a guitar.

“We were all sitting downstairs in the house, hanging out,” Sandstedt said. “She knew only two or three chords and she created this really humorous, great song. We were all laughing. And from that point, she was always creating. She was just totally enveloped in it.” which is by Heather Knight of the Chronicle in 1997, about Lisa Allette Brooks, and her cd “Silicon Valley Rebel”, Lisa who is now a PhD candidate in Sanskrit at UCB. It is Lisa’s pal Shelagh who was my companion the night we drove to Mill Valley to see Hummingfish. And kudos to Mark Buchanan who wrote this song and keeps fighting for all that is right, in Oregon, and whose comments follow, calling out my red heron of bad bird omenology or don’t bee leaf all that you reed on the internest.

I can almost conjure thru the synapses bits and pieces of that song but could not find, as I did once or twice before the actual or virtual digital simulacra of Mark/Deb and dem years ago or on an analog cassette I played once or twice. But I recall playing it years later and it still moved me. Buchanan is in my pantheon and I added his name to the tags here.

Posted in art, sex, words | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Kim Gordon LOL twice in ten minutes

Posted on April 13, 2015 by markweiss86

Kim Gordon “Girl in a Band” I procured this a.m. around 9:30 good start to the week, b/w the Brian Grazer book that Charlie Rose plugged the other night, and I used my buy 10 get the 11th kinda free, from Books Inc at Town and Country.

I laughed out loud twice in ten pages: that on her first trip to England a worker at the venue found a syringe and assumed it was from her band; that Henry Rollins invented “twerking”.

I saw Sonic Youth exactly once, opening for REM at Shoreline circa 1998 with half the staff of my Earthwise crew from the Cub, which is sort of like saying I’ve never seen them. I have to admit I never heard of Gerhard Richter until I met Terry my Terry or about 2009, so kudos for Daydream Nation and apparently the Death Valley ’69 single cover or something.

Jon Wuster never wrote back to say how useful or not my notes for him were, interviewing Kim at Cat’s Cradle last month. No worries.

At Cubberley, I remember patrolling the parking lot after a show and being too tired to pick up four semi-crushed beer cans. I said to self “only four cans”. Of course the facilities manager, in the City of Palo Alto Recreation Department, called me that Monday morning and said “Hey, Mark, we found FOUR beer cans in the parking lot…”.

edit to add: minutes later, sitting at Coupa downtown P.A. cannot help but overhear the banter of the next billionaires and think that I must have laughed out loud five times in the 30 minute season premier of “Silicon Valley” tm on HBO, which I noted had Roger McNamee as a consultant. I might have to re-watch to mark where the laughs lay. I am also re-thinking my chance meeting with someone who beliviaby claims to be a former Pandora employee, take the money and run, but that she said first that she was in advertising then that she did finance for Pandora, which might have meant keeping track of what passes for royalties and maybe she is just a great liar which helps meeting strangers in a cafe or working in Silicon Valley, I’m sure, but I would say probably does not deserve to wear even a quasi-lame Record Store Day t-shirt with a Crosley faux-retro turntable depicted, I own. I’m also over due on a 3-pronged “fox” story or post about cover of PAW, my and Syrett’s “fox says ding” and maybe that I met “fox-face” from hunger games who is enrolled at Stanford.

yeah yeah yeah i’m only making it verse to outro with this:

Posted in sex, words | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Palo Alto hat trick

Posted on April 13, 2015 by markweiss86

her the cap fit, wear it, especially if you can rock a Helen Kaminski kalava, at Malia Mills, at Town & Country, Palo Alto

her the cap fit, wear it, especially if you can rock a Helen Kaminski kalava, at Malia Mills, at Town & Country, Palo Alto


In Palo Alto we’re talking a “Downtown Cap” although some describe it more like a halo, a scarf (scharff?) or hint, but a short stroll to Town & Country yields actual, practical wearable and stylish millinery objects, like at Malia Mills, where I cajoled Rhea to pose in a smart and classy Kalava hat by Helen Kaminski ($245).

Malia Mills has 11 stores, which kept them out of certain SF neighborhoods, to the Palo Altans advantage. Malia herself is a Cornell grad, but her brother went to Dartmouth. (I had name-checked Eugenia Kim ’96, which drew me further in, that Rhea, and then Jessica, kept me talking: Malia herself had addressed but probably not dressed the Dartmouth Club recently).

Come for the sonja pants, stay for hats by Tracey Watts, Lisa Battaligia, Kokia* or Kaminski.

Terry, my Terry, has a birthday coming up in June so we shall see. (Terry shopped and partied at “Malika’s” which added to my confusion. Oddly and not to ruin it, but I ran in to Christy Wolf, who said that Remi is at USC Thornton furthering her musicality; maybe deals can be made to dress or top Remi Wolf with hats by Rhea and Jessica at Malia Mills; if you get her going, but before getting 86’d, Jessica also can riff on Tim Draper and his proposal to divide The Golden State into six fiefdoms; she’s reading poli sci at SJSU; Plastic Alto the blog is a weird conflation of everything from Plato’s Allegory of the Cave to Capri pants invented by Sonja, or am trying).

edit to add or and1 or and2: what draws me into to these situations, clearly I’m on thin ice, or thick fall risk ice, is that I once pitched the Raleigh, North Carolina milliner Mary Michele Little, circa 1992 and pre-dating Earthwise of Palo Alto, and that it calls to mind my Gunn classmate and Oracle colleague Jean Watt now known as Lucky Magazine editor at large former product editor Jean Godfrey June, although I hear tell months later that Conde Naste sold the title:

we knew her as jean jean

we knew her as jean jean

*I’m such a poseur: it’s KOKIN, darling.

two days later: I stopped Lori Hobson in front of Coupa Cafe on Ramona and channeling Bill Cunningham shot her in a Eugenia Kim she bought locally from a department store:

Lori in a Eugenia but dig the necklace to boot

Lori in a Eugenia but dig the necklace to boot

Posted in art, filthy lucre, Plato's Republic, sex | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Stan Chu Boy Shot From Car April 2015’ by Mark Weiss15 after McClung, after Hockney after Lorrain

Posted on April 12, 2015 by markweiss86
Mine is not actually photo collage but faux naive in that the car window and boy obscure the church, but add some reportage

Mine is not actually photo collage but faux naive in that the car window and boy obscure the church, but add some reportage

Posted in art, media | Tagged | Leave a comment

Only that Patricia McClung ‘Stanford Arches’ calls to mind Claude Lorrain’s ‘The Sermon on the Mount’ (1656) as refracted by David Hockney as ‘A Bigger Message’, I saw in 2014

Posted on April 11, 2015 by markweiss86

strange how stuff enters our minds and to what it connects

strange how stuff enters our minds and to what it connects


edit to add, four years later: I stumbled, lost, starving hysterical and naked into the offices of Kleiner Perkins and saw this Patricia McClung work, but couldn’t recall her name.

Posted in art | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Former Gunn footballer Rich Freed stands and delivers for kids v. technology, or sits at his desk for a very, very long while, rather

Posted on April 11, 2015 by markweiss86

Kudos to my Gunn classmate Richard Freed, Phd for his book “Wired Child: Debunking Popular Technology Myths” which attempt to counter the billion dollar behemoth of hype for computer proliferation and gadgets and information as consumer electronics. In the vein of both Mander and Thoreau, Freed, a clinical psychologist in the East Bay, husband and daddy to two girls, he is concerned that what we think helps us or is fun, may actually be doing more harm than good, or we are not calculating the harm, at the very least.

Some of his sources and name checks: Walter Mischel(former 3x Gunn parent), Alan Eagle(former editor of Gunn Oracle and Dartmouth football play-by-play air talent), Jane McGonigal, Marshall McLuhan — I counted 260 citations in the notes.

Dr. Freed, Johnson Park, fall, 2014, photo by Dave Freed, c Plastic Alto

Dr. Freed, Johnson Park, fall, 2014, photo by Dave Freed, c Plastic Alto

I am a little iffy on the Dave Grossman log-rolling and shout and blurb: I wasn’t familiar with this guy but apropos of Colombine and the like this guy says “arm the teachers” I beg to differ.

I caught up with Rich recently by phone — and he sent me a review copy, or his robots did, via Amazon — and we were formerly and for a while quite close — which means we partied, in the 1980s — and told him he could or should put more of his personality into this book and campaign. It reads a bit like a grad school dissertation. I suggest Oliver Sachs as well, especially the story about the deadhead dude. And David Burns. And that he keep blogging on these topics. Like John Henry. Hammer away. If the Michael Moore movie about Columbine is not in his background and gray matter and zeitgeist maybe it should be, if only for the David Lowery slash Victor Krummenacher-ism of the title track, which Rich I am sure would have known primarily, meaning when it was new and unadulterated, for better and worse, I am mean Camper Van Beethoven:

he’s up to 3 positive reviews on Amazon even if there are merely confederates
that’s actually a reverse Putnamism, take them bowling.

Posted in Plato's Republic, words | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Sufjan Stevens “Cali and Howl”

Posted on April 11, 2015 by markweiss86

national record store day is next week april 18 tonite in palo alto is a bluegrass jam at church on waverly past kingsley, first press, bill evans of all names

national record store day is next week april 18 tonite in palo alto is a bluegrass jam at church on waverly past kingsley, first press, bill evans of all names


Sufjan Stevens has resumed his much-anticipated “Fifty States” project, adding The Golden State to his paens for Illinois and Michigan. It is called “Cali and Howl” and beyond being about California it focuses on Beat poet Allen Ginsberg as a muse and his famous once-controversial 1957 screed “Howl”. You know, I saw the best minds o fmy generation destroyed by technology and greed and other forms of progress as madness.

There’s a song about Pandora, the music service, the one that steals all the performances under the firmament, repackages them as data, sells them or gives them away, goes public, takes a couple billion out of the zero-sum economy, helps Henry fucking Ford and his descendants of all people, and pays composers, performers and publishers less than they would make, after a million spins, or streams, than for one t-shirt, as David Lowery (take the skinheads and VCs bowling, take them bowling) more famously said. Lowery guests on the Sufjan Stevens cd.

Pandora and its ilk (or elk? who am I quoting here?) are like the buffalo soldiers. They are killing it. Literally.

I met a lady wearing a Crosley Record Store Day t-shirt with the exact same pseudo-retro self-powered turntable that I got, for a 50thbirthday present,(Terry, Terry my Terry bought it at Urban Outfitters, to replace the cooler and more real one I got at Streetlight San Jose that the burglars, the burglars of 2/1/08 absconded with) at Coupa and that started my rap, was my opening. She said she is or was an MBA from SJSU and did finance for Pandora but recently quit her job and is on sabbatical which I took to mean she made bank on the IPO. She (“N”) admitted it was not sustainable, the Pandora model. This wraps around to the lady (“B”) with the tattoo on her foot that reminded me of “Howl” but she was not familiar with it.

The Ben Stiller flick, “Bitch, I’m Ben Stiller” rocks. I didn’t recognize Ad-rock until twelve hours after leaving. A touch of gray kind of suits him any way. No sleep in Brooklyn. The Noah dude is best known still for Bill Murray Seu Jorje Wes Anderson thingy, live aquatic. I thought the Adam Driver dude was based on James Franco. Definitely did not recognize Peter Yarrow. Likewise Charles Grodin it took me a minute. Terry thought “that’s Angelie Jolie’s father!”.

History repeats if you let it. Then it comes back as farce. Satire per se is a defense mechanism. David Shields is right again. Livan Hernandez played five seasons for the Giants but I just yawned-did. I had no idea until I just saw that HBO 30 30 thingy how dramatic and what a great story escaping from Cuba, Livan and El Duke is, that the two brothers both were World Serious within a couple years, 1997, 1999. I was sort of keeping baseball as background music during those times. Livan for all the hype was 179-179, pretty mediocre, yet quite an earner I would think. My anti-Yankee and underdog complex probably trumped being open-minded to feeling that part of his personal success. Of course, it is also possible that this doc is hagiographic and is now manipulating me. I remember that it was Renteria, a Colombian, who had the gamer (or the seasoner, like a Schilling Salt) but mainly because of my friendship for Andres Fajardo. And that Huizainga the Garbage King owned the team. And also Auto Nation. It’s kinda like the English patient, he’s not actually English. D’Oh!.

But nice meeting you. Did I mention booking Spoon into a community center on their first tour? Harmon Killebrew was on the poster. Twin Harmonic Pop Festival, bad puns, all around the horn. I was also, apropos of all this, thinking this a.m. about Enorchestra and Dirty Power, and how they ended up in Noise Pop, supporting Devotchka, and DuNord only because Ryan Kantner of Man Man worked at Last Drop when I was briefly a regular. (I got into a cab and called Jim Romeo and he said “what are you working on” and I said “a band that covers ‘Taking Tiger Mountain’ and he said, big ears he, ‘I heard that! and the rest is his story, and mine. Better story than finding a way to make $50 M on the backs and necks of better musicians. At least Andrew Mason of Groupon shlepped for Steve Albini, and dated or maybe married a poet and singer-songwriter).

I saw the best minds o fm y generation destroyed by progress.

You know, for kids.

edidt to add: I have not heard this, probably don’t have the hour it would take to “get” it, and admit I supported Schauer over Snyder in Fall, 2014 if that speaks to the subject of users or surface v. reality or injustice — and it cost me $600 just for my ego, long story:

Posted in filthy lucre, media | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

I’d rather tax the realtors

Posted on April 10, 2015 by markweiss86

steve?

steve?


I’d rather tax the realtors.

That’s my post under Steve Levy column in the Palo Alto Weekly. Steve usually deletes my posts, in whole or in part. Sometimes he neuters them and then goes “sissy!”.

The topic is Measure A — should we — and I’m am paraphrasing which might be an ironically bad idea here — carry forward and increase the parcel tax which amounts to about 7 percent of our school budget.camilleish

I am a renter and hope Garson Bakar would not take the opportunity to use Measure A’s success to raise my rent again (He’s already bumped me 40 percent in five years, or twice the CPI).

I am a Gunn grad and active in alumni affairs.

If Camille Townsend’s photo was more prominent on the glossy brochure I was sent, maybe my vote would get to the post office quicker.

I’m on the fence.

And yes I did react strongly to the Mayor of LAH when I read that he accused PAUSD of “bleeding” him and his people. His name is Radford. He’s got a business that both promotes furthers and profits from the phenomenon of executive pay outpacing worker pay, yet he does not have the $750 for public schools.

I’m a litte uneasy with gimmicks to replace more basic and traditional social welfare commitments. I felt the brochure I was sent was a little short on facts, like the exact amount of the bump and the historical context. Maybe I support this even so.

It’s a bit of a regressive tax but most people can probably handle it.

Yet it’s not slam dunk to me.

I will report back to see if Dr. Levy deletes or attacks me.

edit to add, the next day: sitting at Peet’s or Peet’s #4, or #5 and carrying the sample ballot and a brochure; no one wrote an argument against A; I think someone should, just for the dialectic opportunity; note to self: “origin of ‘devil’s advocate’ trope”??; maybe if I can find just one fellow traveler or “second” here, we can get some traction on this. It would be interesting to take credit for knocking six points off of the proposal and making The Machine work harder in 2016 and not be so arrogant and presumptive to extend the tax. I think it is wrong to not discuss this in context of The Elephant in the room, which is some type of relief or just airing for the middle class and working class Palo Altans who are worried, beyond the $750 being significant or a burden but that their rent has gone up $750 or so, as mine has, EVERY MONTH. What does it mean as Palo Alto eats its middle class? Or what does it mean to America with no middle class. The Elephant is not merely in the room, he is sitting on my chest.

Do the Math: how many houses do we have to sell such that a 6 percent on residential real estate transfer matches or I suggest substitutes for the $750 regressive parcel tax??? I am saying “tax the realtors” because it is catchy and pithy, but probably more realistic (!) is to add a tariff to the transfer. Who benefits, besides realtors, from the irrational exuberance in that market? (okay, leaving members). If the real east

edit to add, May 6:
I’ll go on record as saying I voted “No” here.

I feel that this discussion should have happened in the context of a broader discussion about the changing economics here and whether, beyond the extreme and atypical example of Buena Vista is there a significant number of lower and middle class families being displaced by rising rents? Is there anything we as a communinity can do for tenants rights and for the least among us, so to speak? Are there many Palo Alto families who, say between 2009 and 2014 were pushed out by rent increases? I met a few on the campaign trail.

That and a nagging feeling that the political machine is too efficient, that a non-electable entity has too much say on policy and influence on elections. Good point a poster made about the switch to even years for PAUSD board. I felt the marketing brochure for this was a little too slick.

Don’t get me wrong: I supported all five of the current board members, and like Max McGee.

But I felt there was still time to recalibrate our parcel tax within the existing timeframe and some of these issues deserve a wider consideration.

We can do better.

edit to add the next day, or day four of my cold medicine regimen: one of the biggest ding-aling (as Ms. Glass my GSH composition teacher would call it) errors, I made a unsound point about voter turnout by not noticing that the website from the county includes Campbell and Palo Alto voters:

My math says that 13,358 YES out of 85,914 (and remember the district includes 60,000 population Palo Alto voters plus Stanford and parts of LAH) registered voters is about 16 percent and hardly a mandate (and thank you Hinders, Musgrave, Hawkinson, Steinhauser, Struthers and Holmes belatedly for the gift that keeps on giving –they were my Gunn and Terman math teachers, plus Olive Borgsteadt fifth grade and Chris Creighton sixth grade).

It’s also true that so far only 5 of the 78 comments here are signed by name, which to me is a troubling sign about the quality of the discourse. Less than 10 percent (did that one in my head).

I support the schools, as an alumnus and community member but in terms of the big picture and what has changed here in my 40 plus years, I would rather be in the Monkey Wrench Gang than the Palo Alto 300. So I dissent here.

Report Objectionable Content Email Town Square Moderator

+ Like this comment Posted by Mark Weiss
a resident of Downtown North
0 hours ago
Mark Weiss is a registered user.
Well, ok, back out the Campbell votes…anybody?

Posted in Plato's Republic | Tagged | Leave a comment

Do Muslim women need saving?

Posted on April 9, 2015 by markweiss86
Attiyah Ahmad, after Abu-Lughod, Sharin Nesrah, Stanford April, 2015

Attiyah Ahmad, after Abu-Lughod, Sharin Nesrah, Stanford April, 2015

The lecturer, who has two degrees from Duke, and is a visiting scholar in the Stanford Humanities program, recommends this book:

and1: I have a tremendous respect for the Cantor exhibit “She Who Tells A Story” and have covered if in abundance here. I have more measured reactions to the excellent panel I caught the bulk of yesterday. And I wanted to further my tribute my posting or re-posting or re-contextualizing a group of portraits of women I shot or collected recently, here and on my smarty pants phone-camera do-hicky.

Not sure this belongs here but the madness must be catching:

Near the spot I read "Howl" destroyed by madness et cetera a clerk I could see from the street had a matching message on her right foot, damn the kerning

Near the spot I read “Howl” destroyed by madness et cetera a clerk I could see from the street had a matching message on her right foot, damn the kerning

Which somehow reminds me I want to translate Ginsberg “Howl” into Farsi.

If I had to try to make sense and be stood here I would say the entirety of the matter is the distinction between surface and substance, and that media only makes the issue worse. So RTFO for the countering efforts of heroic artists and utterers, with or without udders. But I must say I am torn or see-sawing between reverence for the text/content versus poet/photographer/artist/scholar. I did briefly correspond (and basically worship) Rania Matar; I actually wrote a graffito on a bench near Cantor: matar. Partly for the pun. I came upon the panel quick by accident, stayed for close to an hour but not the entirety. Then I re-visited briefly the show itself. I’ve seen several eye-opening and horizon-widening Persian programs at The Farm.

I was also thinking of Brian Swimme notion that the universe is a story as much as a place. Mixed with Whitman notion that all our thoughts, our words and deeds all matter. Mixed with Chaos Theory. Add in Heisenberg. And magic. Namaste. One love. Shalom. Salaam. Peace.

To the matter put. One, I don’t know. Two, I am guessing she AbuLugod is arguing against intervention and for a version of “sisters are doing it for themselves”. When I left NPR had a show about Kotex ads for very young women. Weird segue. Rahimieh added to Ahmad’s notion on the hand. Oh, yeah. And later that evening Courtney Love was on Letterman while Madonna was on Fallon. And she has a song “bitch, I’m Madonna”. Also: It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature. Theres apparently a youtube about kotex with 30 million views, for vetter or for verse.

Posted in media, sex | Tagged | Leave a comment