The State Dept Visits the Waves of Change Site

For 11 Minutes...
the search terms were "community radio Senegal"

NYU/Yale Open Media Conference

lots of boys.
lots of code talk
drupal, plumi, etc

and then there's a whole other bunch talking
about things like elevator pitches.
which i thought must be a new form of muzak-- something
that goes directly into your blackberry while you're in an elevator ..
but no
it's just how to get your "concept" to the CEO in the time it takes you to get from the first to the 12th floor.
In other words,
lots of guys looking to sell their 'concepts".

lots of the presentations are on line at www.openvideoconference.org

this is no next five minutes.
unfortunately.

but there are some good ole indymedia friends.

On Friday night they had a great lineup of the workshops and speakers archived on their web site.
But today (Tuesday) I am trying to catch up with some of the stuff I missed on Saturday and all that is
up are a few "remixes". Where are the talks? Where are the workshops?

So much for "open video"...........
Did all the geeks jump on the pirate ship and sail away?

Arise you prisoners of starvation !!

In honor of Harvey Goldberg and Paul Buhle

Harvey Goldberg Day at the Brecht Forum in NYC

Daniel's Tango

Happy Birthday, Pete Seeger

This rousing version of the Woody Guthrie song was sung by Pete Seeger on October 28, 2002 at a rally against the invasion of Iraq held in Kingston, New York. Today Pete Seegar is 90 years old.

The Wrens Came Back Today

This is from last year--one of the many off-springs of our yearly visiters:

Bailout for the Media Moguls?

Comments on the Nichols/McChesney March Nation Article
Thinking Outside the (Newspaper) Box
DeeDee Halleck, April 4, 2009

John Nichols and Robert McChesney have written a widely posted Nation article searching for answers to the current emergencies in the newspaper business. ("The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers") They recognize the crisis as an opportunity to rethink public media in general and their suggestions for remedy are at least a provocative starter for the needed reassessment and creative activism. They suggest the government pump in $60 billion over the next three years, a pricetag that is similar to, though less, than the handouts to AIG and the US banks.

However, it's hard to believe that anyone could seriously want to salvage the "print-fitted" U.S. corporate news. In their article, the media reformers are trying to prop up the bankrupt "fourth estate" with proposals for salvation, requesting that Congress help the media corporations-- well, at least the ones that own newspapers--by subsidizing delivery by the U.S. Post Office and even free delivery for some periodicals. They would also bequeath to readers limited tax exemptions for newspaper purchase. How this would work is a bit fuzzy and their definition of journalism is more Washington Post and New York Times than the Indypendent, the NYC based Indymedia weekly, let alone community radio and public access TV. Missing in the article is any discussion of the popular tabloids. I doubt if Nichols and McChesney consider the NY Post or even the New York Daily News as capital "J" Journalism. It may have been a long time since either Nichols nor McChesney rode a subway, so perhaps they don't have a clue as to what the masses read. The authors must read the NY Times with their croissants.

Subsidies

The papers they would subsidize are replete with advertising. Why should U.S. taxpayers subsidize the delivery of ANY ads? Their proposal does put a tepid limit on subsidies to "ad-supported" news --only ones which have 50% or less ads. We are already paying for ads in the cost of promoted goods. The postal service is burdened with the weight of the ads sent as catalogues and all the other junk mail that has flourished with "bulk" rate subsidies. Junk mail is just that-- the "bulk" of postal business today.

I'm surprised that these media reformers have undertaken such a rush to resuscitate their own often blasted past targets. They agonize that without newspapers, "Politicians and administrators will work increasingly without independent scrutiny and without public accountability." They admit that the U.S. press has sadly missed that sort of independent scrutiny for decades, but there is a lingering belief that journalism (with a capital J!) is usually "on the case." How does New York Times' war-monger Judith Miller fits into that ideal? Certainly it wasn't just "bad apple" Miller who lead the war chorus. The Times wasn't "reporting" about Iraq prior to the invasion, but actively orchestrating the battle cries--as they were soon to follow with their treatment of the Iran "threat".

Where are the Nichols and McChesney of their New Press 2005 book, Tragedy and Farce: how the American media sell wars, spin elections, and destroy democracy? One longs for a systemic critique, not a band-aid and a pat. They have good impulses, but they are compromised and essentially brought down by their allegiance to established professional hierarchies and by their inability to acknowledge (even their own!) critique of corporate media. There is no recognition of the on-going process of "manufacturing consent", so brilliantly laid out by Herman and Chomsky. Instead there is almost an apology-- similar to the Times' own mea culpa vis a vis Judith Miller. Nichols and McChesney say: "The news media blew the coverage of the Iraq invasion". "They missed the past decade of corporate scandals." (My emphases) It's as though these are just some mistakes--aberrations that could be rectified by some additional resources and a few more good reporters. They call for the system to create "far superior" journalism. There is an abiding faith in the system itself.

Journalism Education

The Nation article proposes that there be subsidies for journalism education. Why feather the nests of the mainstream journalism schools? An interesting survey would be to find out how many of the winners of, for example, the Polk Journalism Awards, have actually attended those stodgy bureaucrat factories. The heroic journalists who come to mind didn't hatch in those halls. Amy Goodman studied anthropology. Seymour Hersh and Studs Turkel went to law school. Naomi Klein attended the London School of Economics. Robert Fisk was a literature major. Even deceased mainstream ABC anchor Peter Jennings didn't attend journalism school. He never even finished a BA, saying he "lasted about 10 minutes" in college. Polk award winner Jeremy Scahill cut his teeth at the Catholic Worker. Scahill once said that journalism schools produce only lemmings. His solution is to declare journalism a trade and insure that young people learn out in the field, apprenticing as he did with Amy Goodman. He claims to have learned more from his work cataloging Amy's piles of news clippings than he would in any college classroom.

The U.S. junior high schools and high schools don't need journalism classes, but courses that encourage young people to take an interest in history, economics, political science and yes, literature. In terms of the media, U.S. schools need CRITICAL media education, so that students learn to critique not only the New York Post, but The Nation and Hulu and the twittering prose of Face Book. Scandinavia has a long tradition of requiring media analysis even in primary schools. "Tell me kids, why is Teletubbies sponsored by Kelloggs?" Our high school students, many of whom are members of My Space, need to be taught to understand how data mining works. Those cute Face Book questionnaires and attitude surveys are conceived by marketers who are building profiles, for their next round of "push" ads.

Public, Educational and Government Access

McChesney and Nichols suggest that there be government support for school newspapers and low power radio. Great. There are high schools where radio and internet reporting is happening right now. Students and community organizations have had access to technical and training support for coverage of local (and national) issues in the often dismissed world of PEG channels. PEG (Public, Government and Educational) access in many communities are required by local governments as a payment for use of the local "right of way." This has resulted in media centers in several thousand municipalities where communities can have access to cameras, computers and channels, all maintained by the cable operator. PEG has done admirable work in a providing opportunities for gaining technical proficiency, moreover, in providing an authentic "public sphere" for creating and exchanging information and opinion. The impressive PEG infrastructure is currently threatened by the heavily funded lobbying of ATT and Verizon. These corporations are seeking to get state legislatures to enact laws which gut the local regulations that require cable corporations to provide access. McChesney and Nichols' Free Press has not foregrounded this battle, preferring to highlight the sexier struggle for "net neutrality". However, recently after a bit of prodding, Free Press helped by urging their list serve members to make FCC comments in support of PEG. This is part of an inquiry by the FCC into how cable corporations have been "slamming" access channels by moving them into hard to find digital "closets" not easily accessible to channel switching remotes. .

The struggle for an open internet can’t be limited to "neutrality". Sure, the preferential use of speed and access by internet providers should not be allowed, but as technology enables telecommunication companies to pursue video distribution, we are moving closer to the convergence of these technologies, as any owner of an I-phone can attest. That means that the battles for PEG and the net all have the same protagonists, and all of these companies should be required to provide space and resources for the public. Enacting regulations which require support for public communication across all platforms should be part and parcel of the internet governance fight. Our airwaves and our "rights of way" enable these technologies and there has to be a public "pay back." Timber cutting and resource mining in national forests must compensate the public. Why not "rent" for our sky?

Nichols and McChesney speak of the need to protect public media from government interference, but PEG activists and administrators have developed concrete examples of how public media can be shielded from government and corporate interference. Many of the cable franchises now in place are far more effective than the "safeguards" at PBS, CPB and NPR. In terms of media regulation, PEG is a pretty good model, although in many cities and towns PEG is underfunded and neglected. However, in those cities where PEG has flourished with comprehensive contracts with the cable corporations, such as Tucson, Cambridge, Burlington, Portland and many, many more, public communication via access channels provides many of the things right now that Nichols and McChesney want "public broadcasting" to do in the future.

"Quality"

The Nation article has confusing proscriptions for a future "public media". McChesney and Nichols state: "Only government can implement policies and subsidies to provide an institutional framework for quality journalism. We understand that this is a controversial position." But then they go on to say they don't endorse "government support". They then argue for expanding funding for public broadcasting, and argue that in their proposed future, "no state or region would be without quality local, state, and national or international journalism." They do not outline how the programming would be protected from government (and corporate) interference, nor do they define what "quality" is, any more than they delineate the "vibrant democracy" that they say was the goal of Jefferson and Madison. That the views of women and non-landholders weren't part of that "vibrant" consensus in our early Republic is not mentioned in McChesney and Nichols' enthusiastic statements about the press.

That quest for "quality" is one of the ruses which mainstream journalism, from the NYTimes to public broadcasting, has used to maintain their status quo. The position is succinctly put in the quote by James Carey in the McChesney/Nichols article. Carey asks for "journalists to be restored to their proper [sic!] role as orchestrators of the conversation of a democratic culture." Is "orchestration" what we need for a "vibrant democracy"? A different critic, Communication Professor Herbert Schiller, in the first Paper Tiger TV program (critiquing The New York Times in 1981) saw that role as being "the steering mechanism of the ruling class."

Public Broadcasting

Nichols and McChesney are right that this is an opportune time to re-think the structures of U.S. media, and public broadcasting is a good place to start, but there are other more general problems than the need for multi-year consistent funding. Pouring money into the "public broadcasting" that now exists will only strengthen the elitism that has evolved from these convoluted, bureaucratic structures. The whole structure of PBS and CPB is designed to squelch any "vibrant democracy." While Nichols and McChesney warn about government involvement, they don't mention the gorilla in the room-- transnational agribusiness and the oil and insurance corporations. The subservient accommodation by PBS to corporate interests was recently clarified in the treatment given a Front Line program on health care which was initiated by Washinton Post reporter T.R. Reid, entitled "Health Care Around America". Although originally designed to critique profit-oriented health care insurance, PBS officials demanded major changes and any reference to profit oriented insurance being a "problem" was deleted. The script was changed to actually promote the insurance companies, much to the dismay of Mr. Reid, who tried, unsuccessfully, to have his name and his interviews taken off the show. The whole thrust of the program became diametrically contrary to the original intention of the correspondent. This is just par for the PBS course. Corporate funding (though only a fraction of the whole budget) is the power component not only for specific program selection, but for the operation of the whole system, and when the views expressed are in opposition to the corporate mind-set, those views are censored, not the corporation.

The boards of directors of the public television channels across the country are self-perpetuating elite representatives of corporate and mainstream interests. For a brief time in the 1970s there was a movement to have elected boards. Rather than change the make-up of the powerful who run these channels, the response to local and national activism was to set up "advisory boards" of "community" members. Most of those advisory boards have long since disbanded, realizing early on that they functioned only as public relations props and that they had no real clout to effect programming direction or station management. A new reassessment would have to take on the democratic restructuring of public television. Serious democratizing of the public broadcasting system must be a prerequisite for receiving any funding from Congress, or from any sort of fee based mechanism such as that which is the basis of the BBC.

Reconfiguring the funding in ways that are independent of party politics and corporate PR could help to make our public media true expressions of the lively issues and arts that exist in our country. Funding for public media can have strong prerequisites-- ones that foster independence, creativity and promote collaborations. The example of ITVS-- the Independent Television Service, founded by the lobbying efforts of independent producers in the 70s and 80s, has pioneered various ways (with a small budget) to support serious creative programming on public television. Democracy Now! is an example of new journalism that uses a hybrid mix of everything including camcorder/internet activists and cell phones to provide a daily program of hard hitting investigation and commentary by historians, lawyers, politicians, artists and those directly effected by wars and injustice. On no other outlet do we hear so often from the victims of global warring (and global warming). Because of the burgeoning "do it yourself" media sphere, there is great potential for cooperation between the many sectors of public expression: public television, public access, community radio, ipods, community projections and the internet. Each of these entities has infrastructure that can expand and develop with creative interchange that is open to sharing.

'The division between "professionals" and "amateurs" is exploited by such programs as the popular American Idol, in which a few talented "amateurs" vie for a "starring role." But the whole notion of "professional" media is constantly challenged by the millions of YouTube posters, eye-witness news gatherers, hip-hop DJs and the whole world of bloggers. The explosion of popular video and audio creation, combined with supportive infrastructure for distribution and exchange of this material can herald an era of public art and dialogue not seen since the WPA.

Communities of Location and Interest

Just as local food has become a rallying cry, local information, as Nichols and McChesney note, is what we want. Local media was consistently the overwhelming demand at the many community hearings that the FCC conducted over the past few years. In part, this was a tremendous reaction to the deregulation of radio and the swift consolidation of hundreds of broadcasting outlets. Let's hope that era of Clear Channel gobbling up local radio stations is over. The need for "local" is great in both the commercial and public arena in both television and radio. One has to look far and wide to find a public TV station (or even an NPR station) that does any local news. In the Northeast, WAMC FM out of Albany, NY has gobbled up local frequencies and is heard from Vermont to Connecticut, from Plattsburgh to Utica, from Pennsylvania to New Hampshire. Instead of local information this "mega channel" provides a hodge podge of "regional" programs squeezed in between the franchised NPR programs and their endless pitching for money.

I can recall when local radio would broadcast the menu for school lunches. Reviving that practice might improve the diet for a generation of youngsters. Parents might be scandalized in they could listen to the listing of catsup and potato chip meals that dominate school cafeterias. Local farmers can provide schools and colleges with fruits and veggies that are healthy and don't require carbon-spewing cross-country/world shipping. In a similar mode, local independent producers, youth, professors, musicians, elders, activists and immigrants can provide information, history, entertainment and art that is relevant and "home grown." At the same time we can exchange with international colleagues and friends. When information can travel freely (and neutrally!), community can be defined by interest and passion, and not limited by geography.

Happy Easter

New School Arrests

Brandon's film of the New School arrests was on the NYTimes site today.

talk about hand held visions?

this is really scary.

Banner on Thames in London -- April 1 2009

....from indymedia UK, but it took me forever to find anything-- the documentation of on-going actions is hard to follow-- but obviously there is more to come.

Letter from Radio Victoria in El Salvador

"it is election day"

Election day in El Salvador, the ides of march, oh boy, and it rained last night in the driest time of the year, either it was the "bendicion de Dios" (God´s blessing) or weeping for the sad days to come. I am holding on, trying not to think about it, who will win, what will happen, can it go smoothly, can there really be a change.

i do believe that if things were relatively transparent and fair the FMLN candidate would easily win. But there has been such a dirty manipulative campaign going on, especially this last week, that it´s hard for me to feel sure. AND then there is the "legal fraud" which is people with voting cards that they got under false pretenses, people from neighboring countries who have been given these cards perhaps with a dead person´s name that still appears in the voter registration and their picture dropped in, or they were simply given a birth certificate at some point and then could get their identity card for voting.

there are many reports of people being bussed around to vote where they don´t belong, we just heard of 3 hondurans kicked out of a small town that doesn´t even border honduras, but they had voting cards. And ARENA activists have been trying to buy votes by giving out sheet metal to poor people in rural communities and today they are shamelessly handing out party t-shirts at a voting center which is a clear violation of the electoral laws since all campaigning officially ended 3 days before the elections. This is a violation punished by law yet the police stand by and do nothing. Could it be because the ARENA candidate is the ex-police chief????

also there have been program after program on Venezuela, ha, you´d think Hugo Chavez was one of the candidates here. there is a slogan "i won´t turn over el salvador" as if to say by voting for the FMLN we are opening the door to the great dictator, Hugo Chavez!! the programs on venezuela are aimed at scaring people and that has been the main thrust of ARENA´s campaign.

so it goes, it is really sickening to witness, the whole circus because the right wing has taken this to such a gut level, of fear, using images of children, talking about atheism and that Funes is the enemy of private enterprise, it just goes on and on.

i just watched Mauricio Funes vote on a TV channel, i really got emotional i have to admit, he was pressed upon by all the media yelling mauricio, mauricio and he spoke of massive voting and how this favored the change to come and that all FMLN activists and supporters should remain calm and wait for the results and that he was going to form a government of national unity, i really almost started to cry because i am repressing my emotions, my great hope and desire that he will win, i just can´t completely go there, it´s too scary, but seeing him was amazing, he kissed his ballot before putting it in the box and i just felt so much hope. We are all hoping there will not be violence however it goes.

i will try to send out something a bit later. love to all of you and light a candle for us, there is so much hope and excitement i don´t know if i could bear a big disappointment.

bye, love you, C*

"first results"

preliminary FMLN 57%
ARENA 42%

still a lot to go but these are many of the major cities
*******************************************************************************


" ¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡ sí se pudo !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! "

It has happened!!!!!!!!!! incredible, unbelieveable but TRUE !!!! what an
amazing feeling after 20 years and i have been here for all of these 20
years. we have a new president and really a new country, this is just so
exciting. an intelligent, articulate, quick big hearted ex journalist who
has the capacity to make a difference, to form alliances and to try to turn
around 20 years of bowing and pandering to the very rich.

at 9:30 p.m. with 90% of the vote in the Supreme Electoral Tribunal
announced that the FMLN had 51.27% and ARENA 48.73%, that meant a consistent
lead by the Frente since the counting had started.

Funes announced victory amid a massive sea of cameras in a hotel in the
capital, wall to wall national and international press. He could barely get
through to the microphones. I heard that the ARENA candidates campaign head
accepted defeat but the candidate himself has not gone public.

In Funes?s announcement he spoke of hope and reconciliation as in the Peace
Accords

oh right now Rodrigo Avila is accepting his defeat !!!! it is for real
now.

it is so unbelieveable after living through these last weeks, months and
years but especially thinking that this victory could happen with all the
millions and millions of dollars that ARENA pumped into the media (there are
no limits here on campaign propaganda), with all their dirty tricks of
buying other politicians to give them a better edge, making pacts behind
closed doors, twisting words like freedom and democracy, with all their
sneaky ways of stuffing the ballot boxes, of bussing in non-salvadorans to
vote, giving out free voting cards, even making the dead vote, their
smugness and superiorness, their hubris, arrogance and disdain, their fear
mongering, their culture of fear, their warping history, that may be what
most angers me, someone said "now all our dead can finally rest peacefully".

to get back to his speech Funes also spoke of tolerance and respect, of a
spirit of national unity, of a government of dialogue and concertation. He
said that he will respect and listen to ARENA as the opposition party, that
he will respect private property and create a regimen of freedoms, freedom
of expression and freedom of religion. He said he would work to make El
Salvador the most dynamic economy in Central America. He also referred to
Monseñor Romero?s example as a prophet saying "my route of acting will be a
directed preference for the poor and excluded", and that he will work for
peace, unity, progress, social justice and development and will leave
vengeance aside.

this is a bright new sun rising and as Oscar wrote in a note he put by a
burning candle: This is the light of hope, the light that shines in the
heart of just people, the light that will see a new day born, this light
represents our leader Mauricio Funes.

it was so great to be here at the Radio waiting and hoping and tense all
day long, carrying out a labor that began at 3:30 a.m. and now it is 11:30
p.m. We sent reporters and 2 groups of visiting U.S. youth off to the
municipalities to cover the elections, brought them back at mid-day to vote
and took them back again to cover the closing of the polls. Waited as
results began coming in but always cautious, afraid that there could be more
tricks sliding out of some very long sleeves. I was here in 1989 when the
first ARENA government was elected so this has been a long long journey, and
a very deserved victory.

and Mauricio Funes has a special place in our Radio?s heart. We visited him
when he was the head of the news team at channed 12 and he spent 3 hours
answering all our questions, showing us around the station and taking photos
with us. And ours was the first community radio that he visited during his
campaign.

so let this day end, i haven't cried yet but i want to. I want to cry for
all those who have suffered so much because of these selfish and greedy
leaders. And for the bright hope of change.

The day after tomorrow we will think about what new dirty tricks ARENA has
up their sleeves. Until then we will celebrate and enjoy.

love to you all, sorry for going on and on, hasta la victoria siempre,
c*/ww.

The End of the Willow Tree House and the Beginning of the One at the White House

CRACK WENT THE TREE.
DOWN CAME THE TREEHOUSE.

Even in death, it shows the exquisite elegance of Jonathan's design.

Meanwhile--- on the White House lawn......

Gulag USA

Saturday I went with the Church of Life Beyond Shopping and REv Billy to two immigration prisons-- one at 201 Varick Street and one in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There were speakers-- immigration activists and former detainees. Part One:

Click To Play

Click To Play

Click To Play

This is the immigrant detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

East and West: Signs of the Times

Sign at the Christopher Street Subway Stop, Greenwich Village. February 26, 2009
Mall in Albuquerque. The only shops left standing. Footlocker closed. March 2, 2009

Atomic Ed Died This Week

You could say Ed Grothus was a man of many stories. Whether you agreed with him or not, the Los Alamos anti-nuclear activist and owner of the Black Hole was a likable guy who was always quick to use his sense of humor as a way of engaging those around him, community members said.

Grothus died Tuesday after a prolonged battle with colon cancer. He was 85. "I only met him in person once, but it was impossible not to like the guy," said Frank Young, who runs a popular blog about Los Alamos National Laboratory called lanl-the-rest-of-the-story.blogspot.com. Young stopped by Grothus' store a few years ago, and was treated to a warm welcome and in-depth tour of the Black Hole, which resells computers, lab equipment and other old junk no longer used at LANL, he said.

One of the things that struck him right away was Grothus' sense of humor, Young said. "You had to meet him to realize he wasn't serious," Young said. "He talked about holding 'critical Mass' at the church." Grothus was also a bit of a notorious prankster, a habit that got him in trouble with the authorities more than once, said his daughter Barbara Grothus.

One of the more famous stories is when Grothus sent cans of "Organic Plutonium" to President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, she said. Her father replaced the label on an ordinary can with a fake label for Organic Plutonium designed by a Santa Fe artist, then sent them to the White House, Grothus said. "That got the attention of the Secret Service, who came to pay him a visit," Grothus said. "When they came they called me and asked me if I would vouch for my dad."

Grothus also kept a "Top Secret" stamp in his store, which he used on various disks that he picked up at yard sales, a habit that also got him in trouble, his daughter said. "He got a little visit from the FBI for that one," Grothus said.

Although he's probably best known for his anti-nuclear musings and for running his store, Grothus also had a lengthy history in the town of Los Alamos. Grothus was born on June 28, 1923 in Clinton, Iowa. He grew up in the state and graduated from the University of Iowa, then went to work as a machinist in Los Alamos in 1949, not long after the Manhattan Project.

He worked in the lab's R-Site, where his job was to help make "better" atomic bombs, his daughter said. But by 1968, he had changed his tune and become an anti-war activist. He left the lab in 1969 because he had become so opposed to the nuclear work done there, she said. As a man who always had several projects going at once, though, Grothus was able to settle into his business, the Los Alamos Sales Company, which he formed in 1951 to buy and resell "things" — mostly surplus equipment from the lab.

That company later became known as the Black Hole because "everything went in, and not even light could get out," an obit written by the family said. Grothus also kept himself busy writing countless letters to the editor to various newspapers, and he was featured in several stories in magazines and newspapers because of his activism.

In 2006, he got a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Indigenous World Uranium Summit for his work to promote a nuclear-free future. He also was an integral part of the Los Alamos community, and somebody it was pretty much impossible not to know if you lived there, said Susan Musgrave, former president of Community Bank's Los Alamos branch. "He was a valued member of the community, always very outspoken and he never wavered in his position," Musgrave said. "You might not have agreed with him, but you always respected him."

Greg Mello, executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group, an anti-nuclear organization, said Grothus' sense of humor and history in the town helped him get his message out in a way that was not overly offensive. "It gave him a way to speak within the context of Los Alamos that would otherwise have been too tense for anybody to handle," Mello said. "Whenever I would see Ed, he'd say 'Greg, we're not reaching them all yet. How can we reach them better?' Ed was always working to get his point across."

Grothus was diagnosed with cancer several years ago, and while he did have a few surgeries to slow the progression of the disease, he never did chemotherapy or took Western medicine for the problem, his daughter said. "He didn't like doctors and he didn't want anything to do with Western medicine at all," she said. But he also wasn't one to dwell on the illness, she added.

"When he was dying he was making jokes up to the end," Grothus said. "He didn't think dying was very interesting. He thought it was boring." Grothus is survived by his wife of 57 years, Margaret, their children, Barbara Grothus, Tom Grothus, Susan Burns and Mike Grothus, and grandchildren Casey and Michelle Grothus.

Friends can visit DeVargas Funeral Home at 623 Railroad Ave. in Española from 1-5 p.m. on Sunday for an informal memorial. Following that, there will be a private interment at Guaje Pines Cemetery. A formal memorial service will be announced at a later date, the family said. Contact Sue Vorenberg at svorenberg@sfnewmexican.com.
***************************************************************************************************************************
I posted this two years ago when I visited him with Nancy Holt:
We visited The Black Hole in Los Alamos. This amazing collection of used war material was collected by Ed, known as Atomic Ed. Ellen Spiro did a wonderful film about him and his struggle against atomic weaponry.Ed has stacks of obsolete media stock.
The Pied Piper of Atomic Mountain...

Someone posted this comment on the blog:
Once he worked for the Pied Pipers of Iron Mountain
But the dreams
The dreams
Rattled around his mind
Until he could do it no more.

God Bless Ed Grothus and his guts - guts to stand-up to the war machine in Los Alamos. The entire town should be torn down and everyone up there sent packing just as they did to the old families who really owned that area. Only The Black Hole should remain and it should be named a National Monument to the waste of a militaristic society.

Fighting the Devil's Big Box

This Land Is Your Land, This Land is Our Land

This rousing version of the Woody Guthrie song was sung by Pete Seeger on October 28, 2002 at a rally against the invasion of Iraq held in Kingston, New York.

Flag

I voted for Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente.
I never thought I would hang an American flag on my porch.
But when the inauguration started, I had to do something.
When I was in 9th grade I worked in St. Louis in 1954 to desegregate movie theatersas pat of a CORE/NCCJ campaign.
I went to high school in Tennessee where the water fountains at the train station had "Colored Only" signs.
I attended Highlander workshops where civil rights leaders met and strategized on weekends off from high school.
In school we stood up when we sang Dixie at assembly.
The event of the year in Chattanooga was the Cotton Ball where the guys wore Confederate uniforms and the belles wore hoop skirts.

Barack Obama is President of the United States.
I never thought I would see this day.
Watching the crowds fill the Mall, I cried.
Then I rummaged through the blanket chest where this flag was stored. It is made of wool and has 48 stars and lots of moth holes. My parents hung it from our house in Saint Louis every Fourth of July. The only time I ever hung it was for a Paper Tiger show with Conrad Lynn, civil rights activist and lawyer for Puerto Rican Nationalist Don Pedro Albizu Campos.
Albizu Campos went to Harvard too.

**********************
My friend Amina commented:
haha! who'da thunk it
nice that your flag is antique... the only large one I have has 41 holes burned in it and red paint like bloodstains in memory of Amadou Diallo.
The small ones I had were put back on their sticks upside down and last used during the funeral of Shaka Sankofa, outside the US consulate in Amsterdam. Viva Obama!

A Broken Humerus is not Humorous

A Child's Drawing from Ramallah