Nickelsville, and the Ugly Underbelly Of Seattle

Seattle was always a pretty good town, but it’s got a mean streak. Just ask the Wobblies, they’ll tell you. Or anybody who was here during the WTO. Or anybody these days in Nickelsville.

Seattle was a little salt water town when I got here, small and friendly. You could talk to almost anybody. I always sat down at the front of the bus and talked with the driver. You could spend an hour buying a tube of toothpaste in the drug store, telling stories, where you’re from, about the weather, anything. I once walked into KING TV and told them that I had a song they should put on the news and they did. It was human back then.

But there was always a group of people who wanted more. They wanted to be like New York, or Los Angeles. They wanted to be “something,” to have penthouses and limousines. They wanted Seattle to be on the map. Well, they got their wish. And they got all the arrogance and stupidity, the swagger and pomp that comes with it. New money is real full of itself. New money sticks out its chest and pushes people out of the way to get there first. New money thinks it deserves it.

Balzac once said, “behind every great fortune is a crime.” I think he was right. I’m not saying that everyone who is well off is a criminal, but I am saying that this is a criminal system and behind the boardroom doors are some real shady characters doing some real shady deals. Massive accumulations of money have to come from somewhere; somebody has to get along with less so that someone else can have more. It’s just common sense: There are four people in a life boat with four gallons of fresh water. The successful capitalist will gather up most of it, say three of those gallons. On TV and the game shows it looks like a winner, but in that life boat it just looks like greed.

So, on to Nickelsville…. We all know that poverty is an issue mostly of irritation as far as the media is concerned. In the depths of the system it serves a useful purpose, keeping wages down with a surplus labor pool willing to work for almost anything, and sending a fear through the private lives of those who might want to be socially inventive. “Better finish school or you could wind up like that!” But for the most part it’s just a nuisance. Who are these people and how dare they take up space in my clean city! I paid for it goddamnit! Get ‘em the hell out of here.

The Times ran a story a few days ago about Nickelsville being forced yet again to relocate, this time to a park. Same old same old. But the reader comments were really scary. And I can’t be the only one who finds it this way. Here’s an example: Some guy who calls himself “The Truncheon” said: “Time for the cops to unsheath their truncheons and get these bums ‘moved on’... to involuntary institutionalisation at De-Tox facilities, work-camps, or insane-asylums.” Someone called “tsgt” said: “Time for ICE and the SWAT teams to get THEIR truncheons out to clean up and DEPORT the illegals and their so-called ‘gangs’ (barbarian invaders).” I’m not making any of this up. “Vitamin G” said: “tsgt.. yeah, suppose your right on this one... maybe we can figure out how to make biodiesel with them... gotta have plenty of booze running through their pipes..” “Magog”says: “They should be sent to work camps and forced to earn their keep. All them jobs we give illegals can be theirs. they can shift though garbage all day sorting class items form plastic items and paper items. Minimum stay five years to make sure they sober up and learn to work for a living and stop asking people to pay their way.”

Now, aside from the obvious lack of viable mentalities in these folks there seems to be a truly nasty mean streak. I mean, these posters are actually suggesting things that would have been normal in the early days of the Reich. So I jumped in with my own two cents. I called myself “SongTool.” I don’t have my posting anymore – it was deleted by the moderator – but I can tell you generally that I referenced the postings above – especially the one from The Truncheon and I made a direct comparison to the early Nazi rantings. I was pretty clear. Now, above each posting is a link that says “log in to report abuse.” I assume that Mister The Truncheon reported me. Here’s his follow up after I was deleted:

“I see ‘song fool's’ pandering comments have been removed. Personally, even 'tho I was attacked, I don't see exactly why, other than being compared to a NAZI.

”That term and comparison get thrown around A LOT these days. The NAZI's were SO BAD that there is really no comparison at all. There is a BIG difference between stating a desire for, and solutions to, basic law and order requirements for society, and a genocidally brutal and sadistic police state.

”Read your history... also read some history about how civilizations rot and fall in part because of the breakdown of the rule of law, and the cancerous growth of anarchy in all it's guises.”

(Pandering? How did he come up with that…) The Truncheon makes the usual right winger’s leap – ignoring the fact that the regime started out small, with grotesque calls for the systematic bothering and eventual eradication of undesirables. First they talked about it, then they did it. In fact, an international precedent was set after the fall of Germany that to propagate genocide, in all of its forms and stages, was to be considered a crime against humanity. It was part of the Nuremburg Principles.

I wish I knew who these people were – The Truncheon, tsgt, Magog. But they remain nameless and hidden. And I would like to ask the moderator, or whoever it was who deleted my post, how it is that pointing out the historical similarities of somebody’s publicly expressed ideas to the ideas of fascism is somehow worse than calling for “the cops to unsheath their truncheons and get these bums ‘moved on’... to involuntary institutionalization…” I am not calling for the beating of homeless people – The Truncheon is!

The Truncheon – come out, come out wherever you are. You and your friends – come out and say these things in public. Let’s have a public conversation. Let’s have a round table discussion in front of an audience. I think that would be good. Not a debate, just a talk. How about it?

Goodbye Joe

Sad news: Joe Paquin has passed away, June 30th 2009. I got the email from TJ Politzer, old friend and mutual musician. Not much I can say, at least not any better than this – ripped off from the web site Marinlocalmusic.com:

“Our dear friend, Joe Paquin, lost his 6 year battle with cancer yesterday, June 30th 2009. At his side were fellow SunDogs Tom Rigney(Flambeaux) & Jimmy Hobson. Just Sunday he said "The Death Card was a tough one, but I revel in the Mystery of it all," showing his true bravery and continued curiosity for life and it's many faces. A Vietman Veteran, A Peace Activist, A husband, A father, A friend, and A great musician, Joe is survived by his wife Nancie, son Luke of the band Hot Hot Heat, and the many musical brothers & sisters he touched along the way. Joe was a resident of the town of Fillmore in Central California, and formerly called Marin County his home for over 10 years.”

Here’s the web site itself: http://marinlocalmusic.com/content/tribute-sundog-joe-paquin-1947-2009


Everybody was on Joe’s side, how could you not be. That we had him with us as long as we did to inspire and to uplift with music humor and plain humanity is something to be thankful for.

Thanks Joe.

Joe Paquin

Speaking of great players… Let me introduce you to Joe Paquin. I’ve known Joe for a long time. He used to be in a Northwest hippie/country band back in the early seventies, I think they were called Swift Current. I played their breaks back then, along with everybody else’s, but never really hung out with them. Fast forward to the mid eighties and Joe’s playing with a California band called the Sundogs. He’s writing songs, playing electric guitar and washboard. My old friend TJ Politzer was also in that band and that’s how I got to be there. They a blending of Cajun, R&B, Funk, and straight ahead Rock and Roll. They were good. Anyway, I liked Joe’s song writing and we hung out a few times, even drinking a little red wine once to see if we could collaborate. We collaborated on the bottle but not much else happened.

Then time went by and Joe got sick. Stage four colon cancer, not a good thing. But Joe was a Marine in Vietnam and he’s hard to kill. He doesn’t lie down and give up when you tell him to. Besides, one of our mutual friends works at Genentech, a genetic research company just south of SF. Now, we all know people who make the sign of the cross at the mere mention of genetic research – all they can see if Frankenstein and the end of the world. Global mutations, creeping humanoid sludge and all that sci fi stuff. The truth is that Helga, that’s the friend’s name, goes to work every day thinking that this might be the day when they make that breakthrough and find the cure for cancer or aids or Hep C. No cures yet but there have been improvements. And Joe has become almost a poster child for the new medications. His attitude never goes cold and his will to survive is solid. Every time I see him he’s got something new.

A year or so ago I added one of Joe’s songs to my repertoire, a tune called Pray For Peace. It’s a great song, about a Vietnam vet who drinks all the time and prays for piece while he’s at it. I could never write a song like that because I didn’t have that experience, but Joe did and he lets me sing it. Thanks.

There’s another one I’m going to learn called Little Winnebago. It’s the only song I’ve ever heard that takes a positive view of people who travel in motor homes. It’s easy to trash them, and to trash the whole culture for that matter – it’s like trashing trailer parks and working class lifestyles in general - but if you spent 40 years working for some company and finally got to retire with a little money put away, you might just want to see the country in style. And you might just have earned it too.

So here’s a little You Tube clip to give you some idea. Go check him out, see him do a gig. You won’t be disappointed.



Pray For Peace



Just A Kid

Time In San Francisco

I’m in San Francisco right now – have been for over a week and will be until the 21st. I love it here, it’s one of the most beautiful places on earth. I grew up down in Cupertino, so this is my old stomping grounds. I graduated high school in 1967, the Summer Of the Big Buzz, and flew right into the waiting arms of Augustus Stanley Owsley The Third! My brain cracked like an over excited light bulb, and I almost drowned in the stained glass worlds of extra dimensional holographic lucidities. It was the time of the home coming napalm terrors, with me and my childhood friends running in cosmic circles around and from the police, in all their many forms. Nothing was ever the same after that. I can go back there in a flash just by going to Golden gate Park.

I’m house sitting here for my friends Richard and Helga who are in Europe on Holidays. I have a few gigs around the area, making a little money so I don’t have to eat off of other people’s plates in the cafes. I played in Fairfax and San Anselmo, Santa Cruz and Pescadero. Soon I do a barbecue in Santa Clara and an Irish bar in san Francisco. Then a gig at winery in Murphy, in Sierra foothills. I drive back up north after that, stopping to see my dad in Medford.

I don’t know how I’m going to do it yet but I need to connect with Michael O Connelly, in Santa Cruz. He’s calling himself Michael O these days and plays with a harmonica player named Virgil Slaughter. (why can’t I have a name like that? What’s with this “Jim Page” nonsense? Why not Homer Destroyer, or William the Decimater?) Anyway, his gigs don’t seem to correspond with my empty spaces. Here’s a little You Tube thing to give you an idea. I go back 42 years with Michael O, and that kind of time doesn’t slide by easily. That carries some weight.



He and I were part of an amazing and magical scene down in Los Gatos in the late 60s. It was me, Michael O Connelly, Chris Ramey, Billy Dean, and Pat Simmons – it was unknown and invisible to anybody who wasn’t in the loop but it made a big impression on me. I left on New Years Day, 1970 – hit the hitch hiker’s road to New York City. The scene went on without me and people went their separate ways. Pat Simmons went on to form the Doobie Brothers. Chris Ramey became the greatest bar singer around, and had the drinking capacity to prove it. Billy Dean died while playing a three day biker party, the way I heard it. And O Connelly moved off into the distance, living in Central America for a while, and later on winding up in Amsterdam with one of life’s habits. Ramey’s dead now too, he passed on about 4 years ago, so there’s not many of us left. Just Pat, Michael and me. Michael was old friends with Robert Hunter, of Grateful Dead fame, and Ramey was one of the original Pranksters, so that’s how that circle goes. Life goes on and there are too many stories to ever all get told. Maybe some of them will leak out from time to time. Maybe I can help in the process.

Anyway, I promised to myself that I would get this blog thing going again. And I promised my writer friend Danny Morrison that I would practice. So here goes.

Nickelsville, the play

Some friends and I got talking not too long ago and we agreed that it was time to do something. Time to push the arts in a little more constructive direction. So we started a little group called Parsnip – don’t ask and I won’t have to make something up… We started having meetings and decided that our first project will be a play about Nickelsville, the Seattle homeless village named after the mayor, Greg Nickels. It’s pretty exciting. Here’s brief outline that I wrote up. I’ll post more later.

Nickelsville - the play

A concept overview

This is a play about the self-governing homeless village called Nickelsville, a very real community named after the mayor of Seattle, WA, and not unlike the Hoovervilles of the 1930s. It will tell the story of the vision and the building of the village, its struggle to survive, its locations and relocations. Why it is necessary, and why it will not go away until certain societal fundamentals are addressed. The story will be presented on stage by actors and by some of the homeless themselves. The through-line idea is to blur the division between the audience and the story in such a way as to make the reality of Nickelsville undeniable. The audience will feel themselves as residents, or at least see the residents as relatives.

The creation is in the tradition and spirit of Theater Of the Oppressed, theatrical method based on the theories of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, and further refined by Augusto Boal, also of Brazil. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_of_the_Oppressed To quote from Wikipedia: “This method uses theater as a means of knowledge and transformation... The public becomes active, so that the ‘spect-actors’ explore, show, analyze and transform the reality in which they are living.” Therefore, the Nickelsville production is envisioned as a vehicle to inspire people to engage in the process of change, to realize that the choice between stagnation and movement is theirs to make. It is not the purpose or the responsibility of the play to make up people’s minds for them, or to direct their thinking – but it is hoped that people will see Nickelsville and the condition of the homeless in Seattle, and in America, in a context that was previously unavailable to them. In other words, it will go behind the two dimensional media bite to reveal the humanity.

The idea of the Nickelsville play has received the enthusiastic support of Tim Harris of Real Change News, Bob Barnes of Seattle Labor Chorus, and the residents of Nickelsville itself.

Concept ideas include giant headlines from Seattle newspapers about Nickelsville projected onto the wall. Participants planted in the audience who will rise from time to time and correct the story on stage. Special name-tagged seating reserved in the front row for Mayor and Mrs Nickels. The residents of Nickelsville include women and teenagers, poor whites, Indians, blacks, and several active members of Veterans For Peace. VFP, Seattle Chapter 92, is the sponsor of the village. In the end it is hoped that this production will serve to open a venue for understanding that didn’t exist before. And that understanding will lead to action.

Snow On My Neck

We don’t get much snow here but when we do everything shuts down. It happens like this: first we get First Alert Storm Warnings. That puts everybody on edge – there’s a run on batteries, canned goods, fire wood and thermal underwear. People watch and wait. Then the snow begins to fall – gradual, fluffy white pillows floating in the air, easily landing on the cars. Only a little but it's enough. First Alert becomes Extreme Weather Conditions and people start to panic. They hallucinate tundra and polar ice caps. They hear strange sounds and imagine saber tooth tigers on the prowl, long jawed prehistoric hunters waiting to feed. People have to make it home before they freeze to death on those dangerous streets, or they slip on the ice and lie there broken, and the tigers get them. It’s a scary picture no matter how you look at it.

The schools close. Businesses close early or don’t open at all. The buses put on chains. People slide around in their cars and hit telephone poles, garbage cans and each other. Some people think that the best way to handle slippery roads is to accelerate, spin those wheels, hit the gas. Some people stay home and bar their doors so the snow won’t come inside and get them. It’s howling out there, there must be wolves.

Seattle. It’s a funny town. Starbucks lives here. I just read a great book about them called “Starbucked.” I don’t remember the author’s name but it's current, came out in 2008, and it’s a good read. Some magazine – maybe Consumer Reports – apparently said that McDonald’s coffee was better than Starbucks. That was in the book. I hope it’s true. If I were Howard Schultz I would be embarrassed. But I suppose he can afford to take it with a grain of caffeinated salt. The company has a nickname now – Charbucks. Some people say they over roast. Hmm

So here I sit, updating my blog and my MySpace page. I’ve been doing a lot of booking. Things look good. Trouble is, I can’t play the guitar. I have herniated disc in my neck and its pinching the nerve that goes all the way down my right arm. My little finger is half asleep and I can’t grip the flat pick. Sometimes my left arm gets weak too. It’s getting better slowly, but too slowly for me. I have two gigs after Christmas, on the 26th and 27th. If things don’t improve I’ll have to cancel them. I’ve already run out of money. Damn.

Maybe this is god’s retribution for my last posting. I wouldn’t be surprised. If the Bible is any indication that guy’s a real ass hole. But personally I think it goes back to a case of bad whip lash that I had about ten years ago. That accident kept me in bad shape for a month. I kept playing and everything but I basically had to hold my head up with my neck muscles –and that thing’s heavy. So I think that’s where the weakness came from, and then I moved wrong, or something – and here I am, floating in useless abandon.

In all reality though, on a scale from one to ten this is about a three. So I’ll just have to keep calm, do my therapies and wait. The real pisser is that I was planning to serenade the Mayor on Sunday. That’s a day and a half away. It’s supposed to snow again tomorrow, get high winds, and a lot more freezing. And I can’t put a guitar strap around my neck. The mayor may get a reprieve. Oh well. Soon…….

Christmas Time Has Come Again

Christmas time, that wonderfully contradictory season full of children, shopping, advertising, family gatherings, family dislocations, obligations to love people you barely know, to give gifts to people you can’t stand, to pretend to be pleased, to honor the mythological birth of a mythological man/god – also the season of loneliness and suicide, freezing in homeless camps and doorways, looking in from the outside. Jews and Buddhists don’t care about it, and neither do Hindus, and god has yet to strike them down for doing other things while the holy birthday goes by. Me, my parents were agnostics and I became an atheist, so I view it through an historical and sociological lens. Or at least I try to.

I remember being in grade school and having the teacher ask everyone in the class which church they went to with their families. I was about 8 years old and got real self conscious when it came to my turn. Everybody else was quick to name and locate their worship centers, but I just played dumb – “that new one down the road,” I stammered, unable in the face of peer pressure to tell the truth, that we never had and never would go to church. I used to be reflexively anti religious, taking a high ground of sorts. Now I try to see it as one of those human definition things, one of those things that will fall away in time. I have a hunch that most people who go to church, or synagogues or temples don’t believe in that stuff, or at least have serious doubts. But religion is necessary as a tool to be able to relate to Uncle Fred and Aunt Helen, and to be a good member in the local civic club. It looks good on your resume and can make it hard on you if its not there in the story hey write about you in the paper. You won’t et elected without it. So people pretend.

Atheism is hugely misunderstood, and often intentionally so. I’m not there on Sunday morning to put money in the collection plate and they hold it against me. But it’s really pretty simple. It’s just a statement of disbelief. Some people say it’s a religion itself, but that’s silly. An atheist is simply saying, “there’s no post office over there,” while other people say there is. The only way to know for sure of course is to go over there and take a look. If there is a post office then the atheist is wrong and should admit it, but if there isn’t then the other people should admit their mistake. The trouble with religion and gods, however, is their vague undefinability, their mercurial slipperiness. It’s entirely possible for there to be a miniature blue rhinoceros behind the television set. Unlikely, but possible. The only way to know for sure is to go take a look. Chances are you won’t find one, only some dust and a lost sock. But the believer, the Rhinocerino, will tell you that it moved when you went to look and it’s back now – it hides, it plays games with you, it is only available if you believe. Or it’s not really a blue rhinoceros anyway, that’s just one of its physical references – it’s really all things at all times. And so the story gets watery, all argument fails, logic goes out the window, and we had better change the subject.

(If Jesus was the son of god, and Mary was the mother of god, then Jesus was his own father)

Here’s a good one that I read recently: if god is all powerful, can he make a boulder that’s too heavy for him to lift? If he can’t lift it then he’s not all powerful, and if he can’t make it then he’s not all powerful either. Personally, I don’t think there ever was a miniature blue rhinoceros behind the TV and almost everybody knows it. (And I don’t capitalize the word “god” because there are so many of them. And why would it be necessary for a one true god to command that you have no other gods? And what would he be jealous of? And when he said, “let there be light,” who was he talking to? Etc, etc…)

Back to Jesus’ birthday. Ahem. I was sitting in a café one day about 20 years ago waiting for my lunch and looking at the table top add for Kirin Beer. The add explained that the Kirin was a magical flying lion that appeared to coincide with miracles, such as the birth of Confucius, who was born of a virgin. That’s what it said. I nearly fell out of my chair. Born of a virgin? I thought only Jesus did that. Then I remembered all the Greek gods that I learned about in high school, deities who came down to earth and fornicated with humans, producing dozens of half gods. So it looked like Jesus was just one of a long string of these characters. That makes sense. And a friend of mine once pointed out that Jesus couldn’t have been born in late December because of the new born lambs, but rather the Christians just took the pagan ceremonies of solstice and renamed them, taking credit in the name of their god for the natural turning of the seasons. Well done.

So here we are, the lights are on every where, carolers caroling, department store Santas laughing, storewide sales in full swing, inventories doubled in time for the rush – and a strange population of stern faced believers daring you to laugh. Funny, isn’t it?

I have a modest proposal, and it goes like this. My friend Stan Burris said nothing will ever change about poverty and homelessness until people see the woman with the shopping cart as their mother, until they see the guy in the sleeping bag as themselves. He’s right. Do we need deities and mythological beasts to treat each other as relatives? Do we need the threat of eternal damnation to lift our downtrodden fellows out of their predicaments? Do we really need Jesus to understand that there’s no sense in having government in the first place if it doesn’t see to the needs of all of us, that it’s criminal for the police to roust homeless people from their meager comforts, and that greed is not a commendable value system? Isn’t it obvious?

So this Christmas give the gift that keeps on giving. Let’s put those mythologies away, turn on the lights, stop being afraid of the dark, clean our windows, get new glasses, talk to each other without magical mediators, take charge of our present tense, make demands for the future, and actually recreate the world in the image of our better expectations. We can do it. We have nothing to lose but our demons.