shipping news

SHIPPING NEWS

 Oct-Nov 2004

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October & November 2004

As we write this - our country - the United States of America - is in a War. Despite a worldwide plea for further diplomacy in the Fall of 2002 and early Spring 2003 our government decided to use force - lethal force - against Iraq. In the face of international controversy... disregarding voices from the United Nations Security council, the terms of resolution 1441, the opinion of the world's religious leaders (including the Pope)... our government has moved forward leaving carnage and death, spreading mistrust, miscommunication, human rights abuses and providing reasons for people of other countries to fear the United States.

(Okay... firstly, HELLO.... this is the shipping news band web-site... heavy soap-boxing is gonna happen for a few more paragraphs. Don't kill us. We're mostly vegetarian, pacifistic, often self-employed, tax paying, indie rock dudes... people love to hear our opinions. Let's rock! )

Last week, Charles Duelfer, a man assigned by G.W. Bush to provide evidence of Iraq's Weapons of Mass destruction, testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee. The Economic sanctions, the rigorous inspections by UN experts, the world attention to Saddam Hussein's criminal behavior - had prevailed in removing his weapons program, the last facility being dismantled in 1996. Prevailed - without a bloody, urban street conflict. Without bombs falling on civilian's homes. Without cars full of families being gunned down. Without young men and women (from many countries) being put in a terrible position... assigned to fight, without moral clarity, without being given any sense of the truth to guide them. Diplomacy achieved what 18 months of conflict in Iraq has failed to do.

Bush wants to spin this report by focusing on the description, by Mr. Duelfer, that Iraq had "plans to rebuild" his arsenal. Does Bush believe that Pre-emptive War is justified if a country is a "gathering threat?" If Bush is allowed to decide who will threaten us in the future without facts or data - we can imagine a world with multiple conflicts - equally mismanaged - equally devastating, slowly spreading over its face.

As with the evidence of torture at Abu Ghraib prison, the facts come out, and the President and his administration simply ignore them, or misquote them, or actually change the them to suit whatever they need.

People, here, are finally seeing the truth, seeing through the endless white noise of dis-information and outright lies that our government has been spreading. After two Presidential debates with Democratic Party candidate John Kerry, we start to see that Bush has lost, for the first time, his ability to control what is said, or what is questioned, or who is hand-picked to be in his audiences... Bush has seen rooms of people that can't be bought out with false promises.

We're very hopeful that Americans want a more tolerant, more diplomatic government. The fight, in the next few weeks, will be bitter, and - despite the strongest evidence possible, Bush will continue to lie and distort everything he can to reach his goal.

We believe that people need real answers to the situation in Iraq. We believe people need health care, need education, need fair treatment regardless of race or sex or ethnicity... People recognize the massive environmental damage our country perpetrates every day... recognize that our civil liberties have been slowly eroded... that the US continues to disregard the world courts - holding prisoners unlawfully. People recognize - we just can't go on this way.

We think Bush is a dangerous and bad leader for our country and - that Kerry offers a better and more humane approach to these heavy issues.

It's so amazing to see people in the streets, in schools, in churches, being involved in this election. The debate is very strong and loud here. Bush uses divisive issues of religion, sexual preference, marriage and abortion to make us angry and at odds. Tolerance - in the way we discuss our strong differences on opinions - is an echo of how we carry ourselves in the world. If we can't debate with our families or friends without blowing up, without anger, how can we learn to apply those ideals to the bigger questions?

The US needs our votes and our attention. The world needs to hear us say "enough" - needs us to say "we have to change."

Despite the many ways our flag symbolizes a threat... a nation to fear if you don't agree with its ideals... we should take encouragement that no one can every truly own it... no single party or cause. It's a standard that - by its own construction - challenges us to think about what it means. It's a design that can say much more than "isolation" - "power" or "greed." It doesn't have to be stolen - forever aligned with hatred, war, or unnecessary death.

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Thank you - RMSN - Louisville, KY

clearing the palette >>>

Uhm... I guess - since this is a band site - we should mention something about music?

We've recorded a new album that will be released on March 22nd, 2005. We'll play shows in the States in early Spring. Europe to follow. More Information will be posted here as it comes together.

Our booking contact info has changed (slightly) - please get in touch with our good friend >>

Erik Carter c/o The Kork Agency (the NEW Texas branch!)
5438 Winding Way Drive Houston, TX 77091 USA
Phone 713-688-4854 Fax 713-681-5260

email: erik@korkagency.com | www.korkagency.com

please be well!

MEDIA OVERKILL

 more info than you probably want about us:

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WORTH YOUR TIME

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BOOKING

photo by chris higdon

The Shipping News

Cartography for the Year Aught Two

33. A fireproof box - skin is the sea between us. September.

32. Do you remember that show? The one that was so hot that we had to open the back door between songs just to breathe? You don't realize at the time that this will be an important memory to you - signifying something just out of reach from your conscious mind - significant but opaque. Cool air rushed in - a set of lungs.

31. A male cardinal is the exact color of fresh blood - has the color of fresh blood. It stands in nice contrast to recent snow and the black of branches.

30. Wandering in the airport - studying times - the blue graphs of arrivals. Where have you gone?

29. October 00. The Serbians are tearing down a Belgrade radio station - vehicle of Milosevic propaganda. The symbol is beautiful. By October 5th he's out of office. Don't have the experience to know what the Albanians (after 400,000 had to leave their homes in Kosovo, 2,000 dead) would make of this change. What is the hope that's found to end old hatred? It is there though, resistant. How do we unify?

28. They play loud loud music from the back of their van - mainly dense drum beats that are distorted and rattling the frame - the back door is open like a mouth - sending out waves - it's nine in the morning. It always makes us happy - it's nice to feel music wash up against the sides of the old house. Sick of feeling stuck inside - out to rummage in the dirt around the silver dust, peonies and irises.

27. Total thick shake. Milkshake on St Catherine street with a cardboard pouch of fries way too hot to eat.

26. Tivoli - again, realigned by the spirit of people.

25. Seed pods and tape, a wooden box, blown up words from a wrecked heart. Yep. It's like that sometimes. Clawing away at it - clawing clawing clawing at yourself.

23. Excited.

22. An arm - reattached. A real working arm for a human being reattached to work again.

21. The medical student held a set of lungs in her hands. These had pushed the words out - inhaled the frost and smell of dusk fires. Had conjured words and perspiration of some hidden body to body music. Our strange bond - she thinks.

20. The pleasure boat "Southern Elegance" is tipped and dead on the dock in an Alabama bayou, filled with rats. Yellow grass clings at its sides, a yard made of rubber tires and used packets of condiments. Your rotting antebellum mansion is just that, ROTTING.

19. We were born where others wished to be - no scale to say we deserved it or not - but knew it was bought on blood. Noticed the faint coppery streaks in the grass, saw its accumulation in the live oak branches, popped foam of salt sea, orange air, in angles of buildings and human hair - the years rolled up like an “s” , the “o” is a mouth, the “n” is the back that carried it, “g” when the two mouths joined to tell. We saw it as a gift - we were mongrels, syllabic, also - it was stolen - we knew to redirect it. A few of us scribbled on the undercarriage of birds - saying “ You will find others in your otherness” - “transplanted organs” - “we are you” - these birds left for the world - bigger than we knew - some found homes of joy - others - death in frying pans, pellet guns, snow. On returning - the place where travels mended, ebbed, lost - dreams flared - smashed, deflated, revived - veneer of animal waste on the streets, we heard soft music made of all music in the rest that followed day’s work.

18. Go Huskies

17. Go Carolina

16. Creation Rebel, Sebadoh, Drive Like Jehu, Circus Lupus, Crain,
Polvo, Candy Machine, Rex, many more -

15. Canna: n. [L., a cane reed.] A genus of plants, of which there are several species known by the name of Indian shot, from their round seeds. Canna Indica: a common garden plant having red, yellow, or variegated flowers; is valued for foliage and summer flowering.

14. a bed of shapes from an altogether extinct era. it's dry there, the rock is perforated with fragments of something that used to be alive. here is where he has come to rest, imagined 12 feet below sea-level, just the same, he can read the architecture filtered through the screen of midnight. a brain cramped with the weight of too many fossils, it's weight carries it thorough the hard surface, below his station, then raises itself through the layer, just behind him...this world will never be the same.
3. a dog in Kentucky carries a piece of flooded wood through Ohio river mud. a dog in Kentucky has no fear of the river.

13. A snake of cable across ocean floor, air, dust. Mark suggests that we make a number four, and in it, the suggestion is repeated in a loop until number four has written itself before it starts. Number four predates one though three, five hangs around with a ginger ale and tries to jump to the top of the writing. Six is busy doing its own thing.

12. Not dead, as mentioned before, a big bushel of dried pecans and some weird white flowers.

11. A horse that has stopped for water, a long graceful neck that seems prehistoric somehow.

10. A gesture drawing...did you guys, like, go to art school? Well, two of us did, the other has a degree in psychology. We came hear to rock the fucking bells, like LL.

9. Are you all really thinking about changing your name? No.

8. A rooftop in Chicago, a heart drawn on a concrete wall by Georgia and Cyan, that birthday cake, the slow process of cooking soup, bottles of sand, a plate of armor where no arrow has passed to destroy what lives inside it, actual blood, actual love. A printmaking department with caustic smells and the spread of paper and beautiful books. A sink where photographs spin slowly, blooming like a small cut blooms blood.

7. The guitar was broken in Worchester, Mass and then repaired, then broken again, now it's under a bed.

6. The guitar was broken in Worchester, Mass and then repaired, then broken again, now it's under a bed.

5. 8 track cassette recording in the middle of the night.

4. A dog asleep in the sun, January.

3. No sense of "entitled", or "deserved." The blush of goodness, or the sense of being fortunate, given as a precious gift that can't be summed up or spoken. So amazed by the sense of life, its wild curves. Music is just a portion, a moment, in a collective work made by many many people to stay off evil things.

2. The smell of bread in Philadelphia, the smell of soybean in Kentucky. A fire seen from the expressway that was cut through a mountain.

1. Friendship, a stack of glass, the club has only three walls, the map has secret turns, the moon has been eclipsed then pops out like a boiled egg, hello, over and over, to the people that hear this.

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THE LUMINOUS -

Patches of it

   on the lettuce a geography
   on trucks brilliant noises
   on the figure a disrobing
   radiance like sweaters dumped

on water,


weightlifting there in the forest clumps
striking at the underbrush, digging
past the clumsy curves|

skipping certain passages, taking off
the sweaters


that fir cone found its voice on the path
in the light after the sun came out


the postcard illuminates certain features in the face
the notebook lying on the windowsill,
the spindle back, the broken stem, all richer,


niceties tend to drop, also words like "many
loves" come forward like the surprises of white stars

and the boots step by amazingly on the dried rich clay.

----- Barbara Guest

skull and crossbones

Robert E. Bokman presents...