Joy of Winter, 1997, a Christemas Mistle
10 December 1997
Dear Ones,
Hail Bopp! Did you hear about the last Heavens Gate cultist? They found his body in the
cabinet under the sink, behind the Comet! [Brrr..]
I have a stomach ache. It's worse when my stomach is empty. Ah, a piece of mince pie! That's
better...
It has finally gotten chilly. Weather was late this year: no nice days till the 4th of July, but an
autumn lasting so long that Christmas comes as a surprise. Marlin have been sighted off the Washington
Coast, and still the President is dragging his feet on global warming, and Gore is shredding his
credibility as an environmentalist: they care about fat cat corporate contributors and the stock market;
you, me, and the planet can shrivel and die.
Gee, I thought I'd get further our without political invective, but to paraphrase Brecht, even a
conversation about the weather leaves so many evils unremarked. Yes, alas, 'tis true, in our times, as in
all others, evil has the upper hand. Onto the Year in Review:
Health:
Unfortunate news this year. I'm getting older, (O tempora! O Mores!) and in February
got my first bifocals. In March, I learned that I was officially diabetic, have to monitor blood and take
pills. Not a surprise, mind you, given its ubiquity in my ancestors, but still a concern. Luckily, control is at
this point easily successful.
Livelihood:
Couldn't I make it right livelihood? Met with a retirement planner (gasp) and
thinking about what to do before or after leaving Boeing, no later than age 55. Although I have better
technical work and colleagues for next year, I still dread working for Corporate Republican Military
Capitalist Suits. Human rights be damned! There's MONEY to be made in China. Homelessness? Not
our problem, just take the money "saved" from ending housing assistance, and hand it over to us rich and
greedy: Boeing gets a cool billion from taxpayers for merging with McDonnell. More useless bombers at
$2,200,000,000 per. The company is more military-oriented than ever. Killing machines are us! I don't
need any more negative motivation to make a job move, but some positive motivation would be most
welcome.
Love:
came and went. The new year rang in with a new carillon at St. James' Cathedral, kissing
my boyfriend Read. Read finished his naturopathic degree in June, his boards in August, and
disappeared into a black hole on Canada. Residency is what they call it. So I'm single once more,
recovering my spirits in solitude, and hoping for the best in the new year. The year was also brightened
by exchanges of visits from two men I met on the Internet, Julian from Australia(spending the year in San
Diego), and Kelson from North Dakota (who worked at Yellowstone this past summer).
Said goodbye this year to Allen Ginsberg and Wm. Burroughs, mainstays of the Beats that
presaged the holy upheavals of the sixties that still make the right-wingers howl.
Acronym Soup:
I seem to have spent weekends or longer with groups of activists, gay men, and
professionals:
- VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language)
- a technical conference in Monterey, California.
How to bring 3D computer graphics and behavioral animation to the World Wide Web.
- GMSR (Gay Men's Spiritual Retreat)
- A gathering of gay en from all denominations and none to
compare notes and experiences on living the life of the spirit in the gap between sex-negative religious
traditions and a commercial-sex gay subculture.
- SBNW (Sacred Brothers Northwest)
- who trade massages and do breathwork to reinvigorate the
body.
- ONRC (Oregon Natural Resources Council)
- aggressive defenders of the environment, especially
the old growth forests of the Northwest and the water supplies and salmon runs that they protect. A
highlight of this year's "Wilderness Revival" was an evangelical preacher who decided to take Old
Testament injunctions seriously, like the covenant between God, Noah, and the creatures of the earth. A
chance to visit the Opal Creek wilderness, ironically dedicated to Mark Hatfield, author of the
"salvage" destruction of countless thousands of acres of old growth.
- Lambert House
- (not an acronym, but a place for gay youth where I help out in the computer lab
and help them to survive: Windows '95).
Travel
this year was confined to the western states. Easter in Eugene (the nearest U.S. Byzantine
church not staffed by a neo-Nazi). Conferences in Monterey and Phoenix, a week at the Lake Chelan
Bach Feste singing the highest temperature B Minor Mass I have ever sung, mid nineties F. The high
point, not only in altitude, a visit to Yellowstone National Park, after nearly a quarter century. Visit to
Frank Lloyd's Taliesin West in Scottsdale, but no $10.75 martinis for me at the Biltmore resort.
Watching the upper class misbehave behind locked gates...
[And speaking of Gates (Bill) , that S.O.B. got rid of his secretaries and receptionists
("unimportant workers") and offered them their old jobs back as "independent contractors" with no
vacation and no benefits. He had to have $32 billion instead of $31 billion RIGHT NOW, so he wrecks
5,000 lives. Urination on him!]
Future travel sees two solar eclipses: Curacao in Feb. of '98 and Turkey in August of '99. Hope to
visit relatives in Ukraine on the way to the latter.
Music:
My favorite singing was Monteverdi's "Si chi'o vorrei morire," all about kisses and tongues
and breasts. The Catholics won't allow it in church. Luscious music though. At the opera, Helen Donath
doing "Dove' Sono" from Marriage of Figaro. Favorite chamber music here in West Seattle, Schubert's
string Quintet in C. A great joy to know there are a few great works I haven't yet discovered. The worst:
a tuba-for-dollars player outside the opera doing "Ride of the Valkyries" interspersed with the
Knack's "My Sharona." All I could do was fart along rhythmically. Of such epiphanies a life is
formed...
VisArt:
An interactive video in Portland misnomered "Tall ships." Effective ghostly character
loops triggered when you walk near them.
Architecture: New Portland Public Library. Old Wright Stuff in Arizona.
Film:
Enjoyed "Kolya" a story that would have been made tawdry and sentimental had
Hollywood gotten its mitts on it, but refreshingly iconoclastic and upbeat in deft Bohemian hands.
Unexpected erudition in "Evita:" in a movie otherwise about Madonna getting into and out of vintage
cars, the chorus is singing "ad Te clamamus exules filiae Hevae (to Thee do we cry, poor banished
children of Eve/Eva)." "Ponette" is shot from the perspective of a four-year-old, physically as well as
theologically. In "Brassed off" British workers cope with the predations of Thatcherite capitalism,
bravely and hopelessly. In "The Full Monte" they come up with an interesting moon(light)ing scheme.
And on the pornographic side, there was Rod Garetto getting the ride of his life.
Food:
Great meals at Relais in Bothell, Ponti's by the ship canal, and La Catalana in Portland,
"alligator eggs" pasta at PJ's in San Francisco. After the birthday dinner at Relais, walking down to the
Sammamish river with Read, watching the ducks glide by in pairs...
Lit:
Liked "Mason & Dixon" by Pynchon, hoary tales of colonial America and more. Anne Rice's
vampires are running out of steam. A good beginning to and some interesting futurism in Neal
Stephenson's "Diamond Age" but it winds up being a potboiler. A "90'a Catcher in the Rye" called
"After Nirvana" by young Lee Williams. Not for the sex-squeamish, though.
House
Construction of two decksÑone on my rental house in Portland, and one behind my money pit in
Seattle. They look great, have gotten many compliments, and now have only to be paid for! Gentle
expansion of the garden of tomatoes, peas, and herbs.
Housemates: several during the year, one real stinker, the present one a delightful but
overworked florist facing the holiday rush.
Anticlimax:
Clinton's Inauguration. The best Republican President this century. Anti-labor, anti-
environment, welfare cuts for the poor, welfare increases for billionaire corporations, nothing more than
lip service for gays. Blecch!
Corruption:
of the political process by Paul Allen (Gates' henchman, worth $11 billion): a feast of
$600 million in taxpayer money to tear down a recently refurbished covered stadium and put up an open-
air one (in Seattle!!) with more room for corporate luxury sky-boxes that you and I will never see the
inside of. He buys an election, saturates the airwaves, and walks off with $200 of public money for
every dollar he spends. If you're rich, every day you win the Lotto at taxpayer expense. But no money
for schools...
Well, be well, persevere, and have a great new Year!
your Annual Anarchist,
David Kerlick
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