Mike Palecek
www.iowapeace.com



18th Dispatch, May 30, 2007

"I'm just a soul whose intentions are good. Oh, Lord, please don't let
me be misunderstood."  — The Animals


Is This Heaven?

by Mike Palecek


No. It's Iowa.

God Bless Rosie O'Donnell, huh? Having the guts to question the
official government story of 9-11 on national television. What if Matt
Lauer had guts or Katie Couric or Jay Leno?

It really wouldn't take that much to really, really change this country.

You know, there are so many people working hard — hard — every day to
make something good happen.

And then somebody like these pretty boys and girls with so much power,
if they would just decide one day to make something of themselves —
they could do in one day, one hour, what a million of us out here will
not be able to do in our lifetimes.

Hey.

How you doing? It's been rainy and cool here in northwestern Iowa. I
have been working again at the group home, got my old job back after
the book tour.

A few minutes ago I heard the voice of Mumia Abu-Jamal for the first
time, on YouTube.

Now I am interested in him.

You know why?

Because he sounds like a white guy. Or at least an educated black guy.

Prior to a few minutes ago I didn't think much of him. He was just a
black man who probably did the murder he is accused of.

That's pretty bad.

On at least a couple of levels.

What do you want me to say? That I have always understood?

Shit. There is so much I don't know. I have a list that runs from here
to Hy-Vee.

And the fact that what he sounds like makes any difference ... I'm not
sayin' it's right ... I'm just sayin'.

I got out of jail for — so far — the last time in 1989. I remember
being quite surprised and suspicious at some point afterward to find
that not all black men were violent and dangerous and vulgar and
stupid. I grew up in a town where there were no blacks, went to an
almost all-white college, seminary, then to jail and prison.

In the mid-1980s I was in prison in Chicago — Metropolitan Correctional
Center, the downtown, high-rise federal prison.

I was put into a unit that housed mostly Hispanics: Cubans, Mexicans,
probably every Latino group in the book.

And then me.

A bit after I got there a group of Brits arrived. They had been picked
up in Chicago in some big-news immigration, green card something or
other.

I envied them so much. They had a group. They were together. They
talked together, had meals together, played cards. I was alone, the
homeless person on the unit, pariah.

I remember huddling over my meal tray one night, unable to eat.

You ever get so depressed you really can't stand the sight of food? I
have not been that way for 18 years now, but I recall that it's bad.
And you get a feeling in your chest like someone is sitting on you, and
a rash on your hands, and your lips get numb, you can't smile, can
barely talk, you turn corners at a right angle.

Well, a fellow prisoner bent down that evening and whispered softly in
my ear, "Die."

It is kind of complicated, but see the unit used to be for law
enforcement officers going through the federal system, so that they
could be safe.

During my intake interview they asked me if I had ever been a cop. I
said yes.

I had been a correctional officer for two months in 1978 at a work
release center on the old state hospital grounds outside of Norfolk,
Nebraska.

I quit there to be a county welfare worker and then got disgusted with
that because I still did not feel I was doing enough.

So I took a trip in my dad’s ’59 Chevy with my dog to Oregon. Then I
joined the seminary, etc., etc., etc.

Anyway. The black woman correctional officer asked. I told the truth. I
was not smart enough to lie.

The unit was an open dorm, no bars, no cells, no protection.

There was still a contingency of cops on the floor, but they sat
together during the day on this kind of raised cement platform, reading
the paper, smoking, like a patio in hell. And they were locked in these
glass cells at night.

They called me a cop but left me in the open dorm. It could have been a
“conspiracy” against me, but I don’t know. I had just come off of a
hunger strike in the Douglas County Correctional Center in Omaha,
seventeen days of only eating a dab of toothpaste after each cigarette.

I was doing it to try to get Omaha Archbishop Daniel Sheehan to say
that the targeting of nuclear weapons at Offutt was immoral. He would
not.

Well, it got a lot, some, press in Omaha, and they could have been
trying to retaliate.

But, really, I think I just kind of got myself into this mess on Floor
21.

I was serving six months for protesting at Offutt AFB against the
United States military. Trespass. Federal misdemeanor.

Part of the reason I did it was to protest the injustice of so much
money going to Offutt and letting the poor people in North Omaha, the
blacks, wallow in poverty. Nobody seemed to care about that.

I remember the first night, in Chicago, MCC, one Hispanic guy asked me
about my situation. Everyone else there was unsentenced, going through
the court system. But I was sentenced. What was I doing on Floor 21 if
I was sentenced?

Well, they sent me here because I was once a cop.

Ohhh.

He asked me. I told the truth. I guess that's stupid, huh? It is for a
prisoner. There is more peer pressure in prison to do what everyone
else does than in a Catholic school eighth grade restroom.

You lie, you fight, you hate, you scowl. You don't smile and say, yep,
I was a cop, nice to meet you. You from Chicago? I've never been here
before.

Oh, wait, it was only two months. That's not who I am. Wait a minute,
let me explain.

I smoked constantly, for something to do. Ashes ran down my dark blue
jump suit. Me unable to care enough to brush them off.

You had to hand it to those guys. They hated and they knew how to
punish. They knew that I understood just a little spanish, so they
would all get together in a group and mumble and say "cinco." They made
sure I heard "cinco."

And so I knew the attack would come at five in the morning. I buttoned
my jump suit to my Adam's Apple and stared at the ceiling from my top
bunk all night long, watching the shadows, getting ready to fight for
my life in prison, wondering how in hell I had come to this.

And so I stayed up all night. No attack came. And so for three days
this continued and I never slept.

Yes. It's funny now. But that was twenty years ago. It took me awhile
to get the joke.

I eventually got into a fight with two young Hispanic guys who were
sitting next to me playing dominoes. They kept saying "chinga" and I
thought it was about me. I kicked their dominoes, challenged them,
fought, etc.

Before I was taken to the hole, administrative segregation, for some
reason they took me to another floor and put me in an empty room. The
door was locked behind me and all the Hispanics on that floor crowded
into the little window, pounded on the door and hollered at me.

Die. Die. Die.

I lay on the bed and turned my back to the door.

So, then, this is the big city, I thought.

And it went on from there. I got transferred to a federal prison in
west Texas where practically everyone was Hispanic.

And as the prison grapevine goes, by the time I got to La Tuna,
everyone knew about what had happened to me in Chicago, as well as what
I had for lunch at Sacred Heart Elementary on the day JFK was shot.

But I got through it. I think they wanted to see if I would go to
protective custody when I arrived at La Tuna. During that intake
interview the correctional officer asked if there was any reason I
could not be in the general population. I said, no.

And that night I walked the yard, by myself, in the dark, up to and
past every little Hispanic group out there. I was so sick of hearing
all this talk. I just wanted whatever needed to happen to happen.
Nothing happened. I finished my sentence and actually had quite a few
friends to shake hands with on my release day. Some of them Hispanic.

And so now when I see a group of Hispanics at Casey's and they are
talking loud and not in English I get a flash of hate and fear and
distrust, and paranoia.

I also notice when they come outside and smile and pick up their kids
and walk with them towards home, holding the children's hands.

Maybe it's a cliche. It is.

But we hate what we fear and we fear what we don't understand.

At the Oasis Bar in Norfolk way back during the time of the Iranian
hostage thing there was a sign over the bar that said: Kill An Iranian,
Get A Check.

I think it was a play on a car commercial popular at that time.

And another sign: The Ayatollah Ass-a-hole-a.

It's easy to get by with that kind of thing in a town where you know
you won't be challenged. Nobody would be brave enough to put up a sign
over a bar that made fun of farmers or ranchers. And besides, everyone
knows some farmers, and they aren't all evil fuck slow drivers, only
some.

______________________

This passage is from my novel "The Last Liberal Outlaw."

Outlaw is published by New Leaf Press, of Chicago. The editor is Teresa
Basille. I met her for the first time a few weeks ago at my reading at
Barbara's Books in Chicago.

I signed a whole bunch of books at Barbara's — they won't be able to
return those to the publishers — so that is one place you can find a
copy of at least a couple of my books.

TLLO is about a young man in Iowa working as an editor for a small
daily newspaper. Tom Blue fights against the construction of a federal
prison near Liberal, Iowa, and ends up going to federal prison himself,
for sedition.

There should be more reporters in jail charged with sedition.

There should be one.

From "The Last Liberal Outlaw."

“On six round tables half of the inmates ate, while above them the rest
looked down from a rail encircling the amphitheater. Tom felt warm,
safe, flush — confident this was not happening.

“The floor had once been reserved or FBI, DEA, CIA and Chicago city
cops waiting for trial or serving a sentence. Those cops were now
overrun by Cubans, Guatemalans, Chicanos, Mexicans, Salvadorans, in
some phase of the BOP system.

“The homosexuals of the floor occupied a far corner. Tom recalled
Midnight Express. Thin, white men with sparse beards smoked and played
dominoes on beds with sheets hung around the frame. Their world had
narrowed by steps from bedroom to school yard to one hundred feet in
the sky.

“Tom lived in the open dorm. He wrote to Cheryl, clutching the borrowed
pen with his fist like a toddler with a crayon. All he could say was
"Daddy loves you" in the scrawl of a lunatic second grader.

“Those three days he spent walking around, talking to himself. Once he
called home on the pay phone in the middle of the upstairs tier, but
couldn't talk and hung up. The three nights he spent awaiting attack.

“They gathered in a circle, grinning, everyone saying, "Cinco." Knowing
the attack would come at five in the morning, Tom buttoned his jump
suit to the throat and lay awake on his top bunk, counting off the
hours as the guard made his hourly flashlight checks.

“Esta loco. El grande montana. Muerte pinche gringo puta. Azul y rojo y
verde des colores son bonito. The beauty of spanish, that much more
cruel when meant to injure.

“And in the morning there had been no attack, while Tom had been up all
night. The Hispanics awakened, smiling, refreshed, loving every minute
of it.

“Out of control, like a toddler driving a garbage truck on ice with
marble tires toward a cliff, the pain in his head, his heart, his whole
being banged so hard Tom burned from within. His temperature rose to
103, he was sure. He smelled his fear, like iron simmering in the ashes
of yesterday's fire.

“He chain-smoked for something to do. The ashes covered the front of
his clothes, he unable to care enough to brush them off.

“At lunch one day — though Tom could not eat he was required to sit at
a table — a prisoner bent down and whispered softly in his ear:
"Muerte."

“And die he was sure he would, one way or another."
________________________

This is Iowa.

Where all the birds are colorful, all the grass is green, and all the
thermostats are at 70.

See ya next week when our guest will be Rudy Guiliani.

We'll ask him why he didn't stay in his office in WTC 7, why he had all
the metal from the towers removed before the investigators had a chance
to do their work, and what did he get out of agreeing to be a party to
murdering 3,000 people?

— Mike
_________________________

Palecek books:


KGB [Killing George Bush], The Truth, Joe Coffee's Revolution, Terror
Nation, The Last Liberal Outlaw, Looking For Bigfoot, Twins, The
American Dream .

Mike Palecek website: http://www.iowapeace.com

Contact Mike: mpalecek@rconnect.com

Palecek books are available through local bookstores, Amazon, or by
going to cwgpress.com, howlingdogpress.com, badgerbooks.com,
newleafbooks.net, essentialbooks.com, mainstaypress.com.






17th Dispatch, May 7, 2007

"I don't care if it rains or freezes, long as I got my plastic Jesus,
ridin' on the dashboard of my car."  — Cool Hand Luke


NEW YORK CITY — If I can make it here. I'll make it anywhere.

I got skunked Friday night at Bluestockings Books in New York City.

Oh, well.

Right now I'm sitting in Everything Goes Books & Cafe in Staten Island.
It's Saturday afternoon. A beautiful day.

Did I tell you?

I was in Rochester, New York on Thursday, then drove down to NYC for my
evening debacle on the Lower East Side.

I don't think I told you.

I crossed myself about a hundred times and then drove into New York
City in the brown Honda yesterday afternoon. That car, if it were a
person, deserves most of the credit for me getting this far on this
trip. What heart that old soul has, seven thousand miles already,
170,000-plus all told.

Actually drove into the city, through the city, down the Palisades
Parkway, the FDR, across the Williamsburg Bridge, into Brooklyn. I was
going under the train, on the street.

It reminded me of some movies, maybe "Finding Nemo," maybe "The French
Connection."

And I think about Jimmy Breslin, going all-effing around these freaking
neighborhoods, with his tie loose, his shirttail out, his hair stickin'
out every-friggin'-way, a pad in one hand, pen in the other, walking
fast, headed to his desk to punch out literature with two fingers, on
deadline.

I got lost and stopped to ask for directions, twice.

The people were extra nice. I kind of knew they would be. Ruth and Sam
and Emily and I had been to New York over New Year's. We saw
"Hairspray" and walked around Times Square for four days. The people in
the city were nice. The cab driver talked to us about Queens and Harlem
and the bridges we passed as we stared out the windows trying to take
it all in.

And the New York drivers were not the eleven-headed monsters the folks
in Rochester had told me about.

I made it to Jim Fleming's place in Brooklyn. Jim lives there with his
partner Lewanne Jones in an old warehouse building. It's huge. It used
to be a publishing house, back in the 1800s. I think he said McLaughlin
House. They published children's books, then moved to board games when
that became more profitable. One of their games was a puzzle called
"Chopped Up Niggers."

Then they either moved somewhere else or they got real jobs, I dunno.

Anyway, Jim and Lewanne moved in about twenty-five years ago and live
in this huge loft with walls made out of books and a view of Manhattan,
the Brooklyn Bridge, the Hudson River.

For about the first hour when you walk into this place you just say
"Wow" about one million times.

Jim is a small press publisher, Autonomedia. He is originally from
Clear Lake, Iowa, not so far east of where I live now in Sheldon, Iowa.
Lewanne does research work for documentary films. She worked on the PBS
Eyes on the Prize series, and also Fahrenheit 911. Her name is on the
credits. She is working now on something about the life of George H.W.
Bush.

On 9-11-01 Jim watched the burning buildings out his living room
window. Their son was in a school about a block from the burning
buildings.

You know the first time you drive into anywhere it's like, I LOVE this
effing place. And then after you meet some people, do some things,
maybe you change your mind. Maybe you don't and you stay twenty-five
years.

Well, me driving into Brooklyn on this sunny day in May, it's like,
"It's A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood!" There are Hasidic Jewish
people all over, and I can see that some of them live in these huge
high-rise buildings, and there is the neighborhood grocery store, and
there is a Mom with her kids and the grandpa. And I'm pumping my brake,
down-shifting, looking here and there, searching for Big Bird and Elmo.

That's just me. I like Sesame Street. I like the Barney show. You know
why? Because I remember watching those shows with Sam and Emily when
they were young. They've outgrown them. Doesn't appear that I have.

That was pretty cool. I was so worried about driving into New York City
and then it was fine.

Jim accompanied me to my reading over on Allen Street. He and Lewanne
moved into their neighborhood when it was much more dangerous than it
is now. Now it is dangerous because they are being forced out by a
raise in rents.

On one of the pillars in the kitchen there are height marks for their
kids Ryder and Bronwyn, up, up, up. Now those kids are in college.

Jim moved here from Iowa to be with this wonderful woman and it worked.

Well, down at Bluestockings they set up all these effing chairs and I
want to say, no, maybe don't do that.

I talk to Jacob because he has read my T-shirt: No Seriously, Why Did
We Invade Iraq? He is a young man with a blond mohawk. He shows me the
anarchist "A" he has etched permanently into his left forearm. I ask
him if he is glad he did it. He says, yes. His eyes say, I dunno.

That time leading up to a reading is always tense, especially when it
really looks like nobody is going to show up. There's nothing you can
do about it, though. I'm a writer, not a magician or a harmonica player
or a rodeo clown. It's a novel, not a new brand of beer, or movie, or
car.

Anyway, I decide it's time to fold it up. We go over to another part of
town, the Brecht Forum, where one million people are sitting and
listening to Grace Lee Boggs.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Lee_Boggs]

It was a boring talk.

Sorry.

I had never heard of her. Probably my own fault.

These people should have been over at Bluestockings listening to me.

She was talking about Malcolm and Martin Luther King Jr. and a million
years ago and how to build nurturing relationships and ... zzz ... zzz.
It's naptime in the neighborhood.

There was nobody to hear me talk about stopping the war, impeaching
George Bush, putting George Bush in Terre Haute Penitentiary and
finding out how Dick Cheney planned and carried out 9-11.

I'm supposed to be a gracious loser, say that I understand this. I am
nobody, and Grace Lee Boggs is an icon and zzz ... zzz.

They had wine and cheese and crackers, and thanks for that, but, well,
I don't remember much else. I must have blacked out.

In Rochester on Thursday, after drinking with the Democrats at Monty's
Korner I got pulled over by a giant Rochester police man. I was not
drunk, had two beers during five of the longest hours of my life, so
the reason I failed to stay in my own lane was because I was so tired
and bored with Democrats, not the two glasses of Guinness.

Sir. [He shines his giant cop flashlight into my eyes.] Have you been
talking to Democrats?

Yeah, I mumble.

Would you step out of the car, sir.

Please place your index finger, sir, next to your lips, run it up and
down and go "bbb-bbb-bbb."

Scared the shit out of me. Couldn't find my registration, anything. Why
are you here? Book tour. What kind of a book tour? There are kinds? How
long have you owned this car? I would have to ask Ruth. Where are you
going? Some Democrat's house.

Oh, well, now I am on/in Staten Island. My reading is in one hour and
then I am going to find my shorts and some beer and go sit by the water
like an old man should.

I am staying at something called the Ganas Community, on Scribner
Street in/on Staten Island. The owners of the bookstore are members
here. I guess Ganas is spanish for having the will to do something, In
other words, the balls, the cajones.

I'm here for one night for twenty-five dollars and laundry is free and
food, too. They have businesses owned in-common on the island and they
have a bunch of houses and kids running around and everyone greets you
and smiles and a garden and shit. And already I need to get away from
here.

I guess they started about twenty-five years ago when some people from
San Francisco wanted to live together, moved to New York City, then
over to Staten Island where the housing was easier to come by.

Aviva just showed me around. She is having her fifty-first birthday
tomorrow and the community is having a picnic down by the water. She is
from Argentina and Israel, has been here three years.

Later I meet someone working on the house who has been here since 1991.
Geezuz-god. Then I talk to Robert, who has just moved into the
community. He drives a rickshaw in Manhattan, charges people
twenty-five dollars a ride. Some are tourists, some really need to get
places.

I'm not going to ask if I can bring in the rest of my twenty-four pack
of Coors that's heating in the backseat of my car. Better to apologize
than ask permission. Didn't Geronimo say that?

Oh, well.

Did you know that Staten Island is pretty large and at least the part
that I am on is extremely hilly? The Honda is parked on Scribner Street
and looks like an old car on the launch pad ready for lift-off. It
wants to go, is ready for the journey, willing.

May we all have the ganas to do what we really want to do.

It is a beautiful day on the island.

Aloha.

— Mike


Next stops on The American Dream Book Tour & Protest Across the USA:

May 7, Monday: AS220 Performance Space, 115 Empire Street, Providence,
Rhode Island, 8 pm.
May 8, The Book Cellar, Brattleboro, Vermont, 120 Main St.
May 10, Lucy Parsons Center, Columbus Avenue, Boston, 7 pm.
May 11, Elizabeth, New Jersey Catholic Worker, 7 pm.
May 12, Richmond, Virginia [To Be Determined]
May 14, Robin's Books, Philadelphia, 7 pm.
May 16, McIntyre's Books, Pittsboro, North Carolina, 7 pm.
May 17, Internationalist Books, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 7 pm.
May 19, Bound To Be Read Books, Atlanta, 7 pm.
May 20, Koinonia Community, Americus, Georgia, 7 pm.
May 21, The Iron Rail Bookstore, New Orleans, 6 pm.
May 22, That Bookstore in Blytheville, Blytheville, Arkansas, 7 pm.
May 23, Monkeywrench Books, Austin, Texas, 8 pm.





16th Dispatch, May 3, 2007

THIS JUST IN:

Cold Type is a Canadian Magazine.

Dude. Check out the front cover.
http://www.coldtype.net

_____________________________________

"There are things we don't or can't understand. A reasonable man, a
healthy man ... a sane man ... when he encounters the inexplicable ...
forgets about it." — Maurice Minnifield, Northern Exposure


The American Dream Book Tour & Protest Across the USA

Buffalo University, Buffalo, New York — Nancy Pelosi is hot.

I have noticed I am surging toward old-guy status. Women who used to be
the principal or someone's nice grandmother on the porch in the blue
flower dress down to her ankles now kind of get me going.

Oh, God.

Nancy is on C-Span right now, talking about stuff.

So was the woman running for president in France just a minute ago.
Lots of stuff.

You should have seen this debate between the two candidates for
president of France or whatever they call it, premier, general
secretary, bunga-bunga-something-something.

They were really going at it, discussing, arguing. It was not
controlled. There were no microphones in their ears or packs on their
backs where smarter people told them what to say.

They say America is a model for democracy for the world.

Not.

I used to think Hillary was hot.

I don't anymore. I don't know why. Things just kind of cooled.

Nancy has just said we need to rebuild our military.

She still looks pretty good to me.

Hey.

Dude.

I am staying in this effing guest house on the campus of the University
of Buffalo, The Center For Inquiry, in Buffa-effing-lo.

Not bad for a guy who graduated 283 out of 289 from Norfolk High School
in 1973.

Well, it's not a chauffeur and caviar on Ritz crackers, but definitely
I'll take it.

I drove this morning [Wednesday] from Pittsburgh.

I am from Norfolk and I have not travelled all that much, so please
excuse me.

THERE WERE TREES AND HILLS AND A BIG-EFFING LAKE AND IT WAS WAAAY COOL.

I don't know, it's just exciting to see some things.

I was traveling today on the Blue Star Memorial Highway.

"Dedicated to those who fought for ... blah, blah, blah" ...

Oh, God, did I fall asleep for a moment there?

How many of these effing things do we have around?

A whole effing-bunch.

Methinks we protest too much.

_________________________________________

"Anyone STUPID enough to join the military ... ought to be able to."

— Bill Hicks
_________________________________________


I think we know the military is bunch of hired thugs, paid killers,
that do not protect us, but rob and rape and kill in order to secure
markets for American business, and we build all these memorials — like
someone who has just committed some crime just keeps on talking and
talking, because he knows as soon as he shuts up, he is going to be
found out.

I don't know. Or else they are effing heroes for killing millions of
people and making sure that we are able to gamble in the casino of our
choice.

Well, for those who didn't know — everybody but me — western
Pennsylvania is hilly and there are vineyards and shit.

And Niagara Falls billboards.

I am on Interstate 90, which goes all the way back to Sioux Falls,
which is near my home. When I was in prison in Texas in 1986 I used to
look out over the prison yard at night and see the full moon and
reassure myself by thinking that Ruth was seeing the same moon, even
though it seemed we were not even inhabiting the same world, we were so
far apart.

Well, Interstate 90 runs all the way back home and so maybe I'm not so
far away.

"Correctional Facility. Don't Pick Up Hitchhikers."

I pass that sign somewhere headed toward Buffalo and I cross myself.

I used to cross myself when I passed a Catholic Church. My mother did
that and so I did it.

But it was pretty stupid.

However, crossing yourself when you pass a prison makes a little more
sense.

There is so much evil and suffering inside a prison that it makes more
sense than doing it when you pass in front of Sacred Heart Church.

The prison is more holy. Not because of it being a prison. But because
of the suffering.

I find my way into Buffalo, Main Street, Talking Leaves Books. I shake
hands with Jonathon, the owner, with whom I have exchanged emails for
the past one hundred years trying to set this up.

I read and then go over to Buffalo University.

David Mussella directs me to The Center For Inquiry.

He parks at the edge of the lot.

Why?

If they bomb us, at least I'll be able to get to my car.

Bomb? Who? Why? While I'm here? Big bombs?

Maybe little, teeny-weeny bombs?

David says the center is about secular humanism, which pisses some
people off.

I don't really know what secular humanism is, but I don't mention it,
because I have heard they have this private guest house I get to stay
in.

And there's more to it than that, but I kind of lose interest.

David shows me inside and introduces me to Joe Nickell.

Joe takes me to his office as I listen for bombs.

He immediately begins to tell me that his is a paranormal investigator.

"I'm not a believer," he says.

In what?

His small office is packed with green blow-up alien dolls, voodoo
figure things with things sticking into them, bigfoot foot plaster
casts, leprechaun posters.

There are caps from "Unsolved Mysteries."

"We have a laboratory."

There it is.

Joe tells me right off that he does not believe in ghosts because,
"where does the brain go."

I'm like, I dunno.

He says that Hilary Swank is starring in a new movie based on his work.

"It's a terrible movie, though," he says.

I tell Joe that I've probably seen him on TV. He says that could very
well be true — and he has written twenty-one books.

There they are.

On the desk is a magazine: Fatima Mysteries.

What about Roswell? I ask.

Military balloons.

No alien bodies. Hoax.

He also implies that those who believe the Bush people were involved in
9-11 are also quite delusional.

I shift my feet, stand up straight.

That makes me feel a bit unsettled. I don't want to be wrong, a fool.

I believe in Bigfoot, UFOs. I believe Bush did it.

But ... you know ... it's not about that, is it?

What it is, it is.

I really believe that.

The truth is what is important.

It is not important that certain beliefs be sustained, regardless.

The truth.

In debates, UFOs, Bigfoot, starting wars.

I am in favor. I vote yes.

Show me where it shows that Dick Cheney did not kill all those people
in the Twin Towers and I'm heading home this morning, back to Iowa, to
sit on the patio and pet my cat and sip beer from a quart bottle
staring at my lovely wife mowing the lawn.

That night [Wednesday] I was part of the Literary Cafe at the
University of Buffalo. It's a regular thing where people get together
to read their poems and stuff.

Mostly it's writers reading to each other is what I figure.

It is damn hard to get anyone else to listen.

But still, it's good. For one thing, it's good to know these people are
out there, writing their poems. They are like the monks in a monastery,
praying, and having that praying somehow help us all.

I really enjoy the chance to read. There are about twenty people there.
I have developed the habit of counting people so that I can report to
Ruth how many were there. I'll find myself in a men's restroom on the
Interstate thinking, one, two, three-four, five-six-seven — this would
make a pretty good crowd.

The podium has a lamp on it. There is [are?] cheese and crackers in the
hall.

Before I read I was nervous because there were so many people and Joe
Nickell, the debunker guy — who is also a good poet — was in the
audience and practically everything I talk about is about ghosts and
spirits and little green leprechauns flying big white planes into
buildings.

But just before I walk up there I realize, I like this shit.

I like doing this. I still get nervous. I am still maybe not real great
at it, but I think I have good material and maybe I'm learning how to
deliver it.

I think we have a history of being lied to by our government. I think
we have too many war memorial highways for no good-goddamn reason.

And I can't make myself forget about it.

— Mike


Next stops on The American Dream Book Tour & Protest Across the USA

May 3, Rochester, NY, Drinking Liberally. Monty's Korner, 8 pm.
May 4, New York City, Bluestockings book store, 7 pm. [172 Allen Street, Lower East Side]
May 5, Staten Island, ETG Cafe, 3 pm.
May 6, Providence, Rhode island, AS220 Performance Space, 8 pm.





15th Dispatch, May 3, 2007

THIS JUST IN:

Cold Type is a Canadian Magazine.

Dude. Check out the front cover.
http://www.coldtype.net
____________________________

"I opened up my eyes, took a look around. I saw it written across the
sky.  The Revolution Starts Now."   — Steve Earle

 The American Dream Book Tour & Protest Across the USA

SWALESVILLE, PA — "I don't like today's world."

"There's going to be two kinds of people — rich people and poor people."

I was sitting in the Joseph-Beth bookstore in Pittsburgh on Tuesday,
scanning through John Updike's book "The Terrorist," cozied up in a
soft chair, kind of listening to these three older people. Older than
me? I'd sure like to think so.

I then went and put some more quarters into the meter so the Pittsburgh