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Book Review, Culture

Get A Life: A Memoir by Dress Wedding

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Get a Life

Get A Life: Chronicles of a Conscious Scofflaw

by dress wedding

Get A Life shares Reclaiming activist dress wedding’s journey of engaging in subversive actions and taking chances to build a life of freedom and meaning. The colorful narrative traces his evolution from drug-dealing Grateful Deadhead with self-esteem issues to becoming a nonviolent activist confronting injustice and police over decades in many different facets of the peace movement.

In early activist life, dress became a self-proclaimed witch, embracing the Reclaiming Tradition. And eventually moved to a very different form of action, becoming co-founder of Oakland’s Harborside Health Center in 2006, one of the largest and most respected cannabis retailers in the world.

In 1983 dress was arrested while wearing a wedding dress at an anti-nuclear action at Lawrence Livermore Labs in Berkeley, California. He has been wearing dresses ever since as a personal action against patriarchy, challenging people to think about what it means to “be a man” in our world. Dress writes in depth about how this personal action has impacted others in his life, especially his children and their mother. Also its impact on the Harborside marijuana business as he helped transform the new world of medical cannabis. The book offers a brief critique of the state of cannabis regulation, before outlining hopes for a new venture providing legitimate payments to the industry.

Throughout the manuscript dress notes how imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy has benefitted him and those around him. He explores how depression has affected him as a male in a society that suppresses this possibility. His motivation has always been to improve the human condition and relieve suffering, and his hope for the book is to inspire others to join in this effort.

Website & more information.

Available at Amazon etc.

Direct Action, Politics

Jewish Voice For Peace Demands Gaza Ceasefire

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Protesters calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the Israel-Hamas conflict look down on fellow protestors occupying the rotunda of the Cannon House office building on Capitol Hill. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

October 18, 2023 – The group Jewish Voice for Peace is holding a sit-in inside the Cannon House Office Building in DC. The group claims “over 350 are inside, including two dozen rabbis.”

The group chanted “Ceasefire!” and held signs reading, “Jews say ceasefire now!” The refused to leave “until Congress calls for a ceasefire in Gaza.”

Demonstrations are not allowed inside U.S. congressional buildings.

Jewish Voice for Peace activists, among other protesters, were arrested during a demonstration outside the White House on Monday.

Thanks to Nicole Darrah/Yahoo News for details.

Black Lives Matter, Climate Justice, Direct Action, Immigration, Justice, Photos

Activist Photos from Luke Hauser

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Photos of direct actions and other convergences by Luke Hauser from circa 2000-2015.

Includes Occupy, Black Lives Matter, peace and anti-war actions, climate justice, immigrant rights, and more.

Click here for index of actions.

Culture, Satires

Halliburton Scandal – the Truth Behind the Rumors!

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Rumor: Halliburton equipment worth $7 million was found in the nefarious hands of our mortal enemy, Russia!!

Truth: The cache was two old Navy toilet seats and a used Bible missing all the best parts. The $7 million was the amount Halliburton had charged the US Govt for said equipment.

UK Guardian Story – click here

Image courtesy Home Depot – the nation’s #1 news source!

Culture, Satires

This Is An Ex-Rocket!

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Russia’s Roscosmos space agency reported this week that its Luna 25 lunar mission had “ceased its existence as a result of a collision with the lunar surface.”

Phew! For a moment there I thought it had crash landed.

The whole thing reminded me of the Monty Python Parrot Sketch.

This is an Ex-Rocket!

Mr. Praline: ‘Ello, I wish to register a complaint.

Roscosmos Owner: We’re closin’ for lunch.

Mr. Praline: Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complain about this Luna 25 rocket I purchased not half an hour ago from Roscosmos.

Owner: Oh yes, the, uh, the Luna 25… What’s, uh… What’s wrong with it?

Mr. Praline: I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it, my lad. It’s dead, that’s what’s wrong with it!

Owner: No, no, it’s uh,…it’s resting.

Mr. Praline: Look, matey, I know a dead rocket when I see one, and I’m looking at one right now.

Owner: No no it’s not dead, it’s restin’! Remarkable rocket, the Luna 25, isn’t it? Beautiful landing gear!

Mr. Praline: The landing gear don’t enter into it. It’s stone dead.

Owner: Nononono, no, no! There, it moved!

Mr. Praline: No, it didn’t, that was you hitting the launching pad!

Owner: I never!!

Mr. Praline: Yes, you did!

Owner: I never, never did anything…

Mr. Praline: (yelling and hitting the launching pad repeatedly) ‘ELLO LUNA!!!!! Testing! Testing! Testing! Testing! This is your nine o’clock blast off call!

(Takes rocket and thumps it on the launching pad. Throws it up in the air and watches it plummet to the floor.)

Mr. Praline: Now that’s what I call a dead rocket.

Owner: No, no….. No, it’s stunned!

Mr. Praline: STUNNED?!?

Owner: Yeah! You stunned it, just as it was starting up! Luna 25 stuns easily, sir.

Mr. Praline: Um…now look…now look, mate, I’ve definitely ‘ad enough of this. That rocket is definitely deceased, and when I purchased it not ‘alf an hour ago, you assured me that its total lack of movement was due to it bein’ tired and shagged out from all its testing!

Owner: Well, it’s…it’s, ah…probably pining for the Kremlin!

Mr. Praline: PININ’ for the KREMLIN?!?!?!? What kind of talk is that? Look, why did it fall flat on its nose the moment I got it home?

Owner: The Luna 25 rests on its nose! Remarkable rocket, isn’t it, squire? Lovely nosecone!

Mr. Praline: Look, I took the liberty of examining that rocket when I got it home, and I discovered the only reason that it had been standing on the launch pad in the first place was that it had been NAILED there.

(pause)

Owner: Well, o’course it was nailed there! If I hadn’t nailed that rocket down, it would have instantly blasted off! VOOM! Feeweeweewee!

Mr. Praline: VOOM?!? Mate, this rocket wouldn’t “voom” if you put four million volts through it! It’s bleedin’ demised!

Owner: No no! It’s pining for the Kremlin!

Mr. Praline: It’s not pinin’! It’s passed on! This rocket is no more! It has ceased to be! It’s expired and gone to meet its maker! It’s a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed it to the perch it’d be pushing up daisies! Its metabolic processes are now ‘istory! It’s off the twig! It’s kicked the bucket, it’s shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-ROCKET!!

Monty Python Parrot Sketch – click here

Image courtesy SpaceFlightNow.com

Middle East, Politics

Ten-Year Sentences for Iran protesters

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400 or more people have been given sentences ranging up to 10 years for taking part in recent anti-government protests.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/13/iran-jails-400-for-up-to-10-years-over-widespread-uprisings

The UK Guardian reports:

“The movement was sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish-Iranian woman who was allegedly beaten into a coma by morality police for wearing her headscarf the wrong way. But it has since morphed into the biggest civil uprising for years, with Iranians expressing their rage over decades of oppression, misogyny in the name of religion, and international isolation.

“Authorities have responded with force, firing at and beating protesters. The UN office of the high commissioner for human rights has said more than 300 people have been killed in the crackdown, including at least 40 children.”

FILE PHOTO: Protesters shout slogans during a demonstration following the death of Mahsa Amini in Iran, in Istanbul, Turkey, October 2, 2022. REUTERS/Dilara Senkaya/File Photo

Photo Reuters 2022.

Book Review, Culture, Resources & Downloads, Satires

My New Novel – A Tarot Mystery!

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My long-labored Tarot novel – A Fool Such As I – is complete at last!

A Fool Such As I is a loving deconstruction of all things magical. Imagine a world where everything from the police to the amusement park is pagan!

Click here for links to print and kindle versions – or get a free PDF of the book!

Signed/inscribed copies ($25 US, $50 outside the US) benefit Reclaiming Quarterly and support copy-editing and chants production.

Here’s the back-cover blurb of A Fool Such As I

The owner of Arcane Wisdom Magicke Shoppe is dead. His revolutionary new deck, the Trismegistus Meister Tarot, is missing.

Could the culprit be one of the locals on Oracle Street? Perhaps gnostic sage Madame Bluebloodsky?  Self-promoting raconteur Alabaster Crockley? Or maybe feminist maven Wendy Womansdaughter, owner of the Wiccan Wonderland?

Did the shifty mountebank from the esoteric street faire have a hand? And what about millionaire Cornelius De Roquefort, founder of the Headstone Eclectic Metaphysical Outlet chain?

Will the Universal Pan-Pagan Interfaith Council – UPPIC, the highest authority in the brave new Pagan world of the Great Return – succeed in hushing up the affair?

Worse yet, is UPPIC looking for a convenient scapegoat?

Join detective and resident custodian Jeff Harrison as he immerses himself in the minutiae of Tarot, taxing all of his intuitive and janitorial skills in a desperate attempt to clean up the messy affair – before he faces trial by ordeal!

Click here for links to print and kindle versions – or get a free PDF of the book!

Climate Justice

Nuclear Power – the perfect solution for Utopians

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A well-written article on the disastrous new interest in nuclear power by Serhii Plokhy, from the UK Guardian – click here.

Plokhy speaks of “the hazard inherent in all nuclear power. In order for this method of producing electricity to be safe, everything else in society has to be functioning perfectly. Warfare, economic collapse, climate change itself – all of these increasingly real risks make nuclear sites potentially perilous places.”

Great! As long as we can guarantee world peace and security for the next 10,000 years – not to mention solve all of the environmental crises – then nuclear power and waste make total sense.

Until then, count me out.

Click here for the full article.