Stevens Point (and neighbors) Calendar of Events Art
Through January 26 Heap: New Work from Joseph Bertsch and Jamie Bertsch. The Scarabocchio Art Museum. Reception January 13, 6 p.m. - 8 p.m. Through January 29 UWSP Juried Student Exhibition. The Edna Carlsten Art Gallery, UWSP. January 13-March 10 22nd Annual Midwest Seasons. Center for the Visual Arts, Wausau. Reception January 20, 5 p.m. - 7 p.m. January 14 Watercolor Energizer Workshop. UWSP continuing education. Register by January 14 or call 715346-3838 for availability. January 20 - February 19 Winter’s Garden: An exhibition of floral inspired art with live orchids in bloom. River Front Arts Center. January 21 Glass Fusing Mini-Workshop. UWSP continuing education. Register by January 13 or call 715-346-3838 for availability. January 23 - February 20 Digital Photography 101 course. UWSP continuing education. Register by January 18 or call 715346-3838 for availability.
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Music
Other
January 27 Late Night Acoustic Catch-Up, Featuring The Daredevil Christopher Wright with Nicholas Boehm. 10:00 p.m., The Encore, UWSP.
January 26 Yoga Relaxation Mini Session with Maureen Houlihan. Alumni Room, DUC, UWSP. 8:00 p.m. $5. Bring a yoga mat or towel. 715-346-2412.
January 28 Paper Diamond (Dubstep). 8:00 p.m., The Encore, UWSP.
January 27 Plant it, Water It, Forget It!: Build your own self-watering planter. The Encore, DUC, UWSP. 8:00 p.m. $5. Bring an empty/cleaned 2 liter plastic soda bottle. 715-346-2412.
January 21 Tim Grimm (Americana). 7:30 p.m., Jensen Community Center, Amherst.
January 28 8th Annual Green Tea Winter Fest: Daytime festival includes Celtic/ folk music, Irish dance, instrument workshops, vendors, food, and more. Green Tea performances at 1:30 and 7:30 p.m.
January 1 Polar Bear Plunge. Rusty’s Backwater Saloon. 715-345-2490.
Theater
January 14-15 Nonesense in the Northwoods presented by P.J. Jacobs Junior High School. 7:00 p.m.
If you would like to see your event in The Bitchin’ Kitsch next month, please email the details to chris@talbot-heindl.com.
content january 2012 I smell like tangerines - Rachel Peeters
Chris Talbot-Heindl - pg. 10
Calendar of Evens
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The Birth of Icky - Mike White
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Changing Conditions Under the Power Structure - Mike Wilson
Chris Talbot-Heindl - pg. 11
cover
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You - Jan Haskell
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Untitled - Jan Haskell
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Heindl/Golla - Chris Talbot-Heindl
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Fitzwalkerus: Creating Hell in Wisconsin One Stupid Idea at a Time - Chris Talbot-Heindl
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Donors & Index
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on the front cover: I Smell Like Tangerines
Rachel Peeters Mixed media www.wix.com/rpeet811/rpeeters
about b’k:
bitchin’ kitsch is a zine for artists, poets, prose writers, or anyone else who has something to say. it exists for the purpose of open creativity. if you have something you want to share, please email it to chris@talbot-heindl.com.
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mike white. The Birth of Icky by: Mike White
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, a boy child was born to the Three Wise Men. No one was really quite certain at the time how all this came about, but it didn’t seem to trouble anyone much all the same. Perhaps their wisdom alone was responsible for the unprecedented and seemingly impossible conception, gestation, and birth of a child without the aid of a female. The child, however astonishing his entrance into the world may have been, was himself unremarkable in every way. In fact, once this child reached the age of five, it was concluded by the elders of his people that he would accomplish nothing more in life than to be an incompetent and unintelligent dullard of little or no use whatsoever to society. Having given up on their most disappointing offspring and collectivly plummeting into something akin to abject despair, the Three Wise Men sailed off toward what they hoped to be the edge of reason in a ship made of denatured cotton balls. Packing only provisions of Spanish peanuts, canned Mandarin oranges, a few cigarette rolling papers and a tin of Altoids; our intrepid trio of learned men cast off and pointed the bow of their great ship East-ish in hopes of finding peace, hope, knowledge, and with good fortune an Argyle cummerbund. Soon enough however, they discovered that wisdom is often not sufficient in nautical endeavors, and that a bit of skill in the craft of shipbuilding would have proven itself most useful. You see, having built their craft out of denatured cotton balls it was found to be not entirely buoyant, and thus ending their story. The story of Icky though, is yet to unfold. Through the years, our hero Icky has proven to be much more than what the elders predicted. Icky grew to be a man. Icky became someone who would touch the lives of many people. More often than not, he touched the lives of many of the wrong people. He may have even touched the wives of some of the wrong people as well. Yet, through it all the legend of Icky remains one for the ages. Now is the time to sit back, relax and calmly await our next episode in the Chronicles of Icky.
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mike wilson. Changing Conditions Under the Power Structure by: Mike Wilson
“Policies don’t change, interests don’t change, institutional sources of these don’t change, but conditions do. And the most important condition is the domestic population. And that changes because of dedicated activism, sometimes inspired by great tragedies.” – Noam Chomsky, Kent State University, May 2000. The Kent State and Jackson State shootings became emblematic of the sacrifice made by the peace movement, and the repression that the government was willing to enforce in order to suppress dissent in American colleges and broader society (although the latter school’s shootings were not as publicized, as it was a predominantly black school).
reinforced each other. The Iraq war was “lost politically before it began militarily.” The refusal of the SC to condone the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was “the UN’s shining moment . . . one of its finest hours.” Then UN Secretary General used a phrase from a New York Times article of the time, referring to world public opinion as “the other superpower.” We live in a highly militarized society, in terms of foreign and domestic policy as well as cultural values. The DoD, a leviathan emblematic of the military-industrial complex made up of unelected people working in consensus with defense contractors, has a nearlyunlimited budget. When it comes to its funding, money is no object. Meanwhile public schools everywhere across the country have to cut essential educational programs (like literature and the arts, just as an example) to stay afloat. This is no accident, as the power structure’s last goal is to educate the masses.
On February 15, 2003, more than ten million people gathered in the streets of more than 100 cities across the globe to say no to the imminent war in Iraq. As the United States and Britain prepared for a final attempt to bring the case of the invasion for authorization from the Security Council, the citizens of the world demanded that their governments demonstrated accountability and responsibility towards the protection of the thousands of innocent civilians that would die in the conflict. This is not to mention the “Holocaust of hunger,” as was termed in a Methodist publication about the arms race published during the early Cold War period, that is caused by the siphoning of resources away from humanitarian needs to building a massive arsenal. The mass demonstrations of February and March of 2003 led the international community and the United Nations to reject the case for war. The Security Council is by design intended to support the interests of its five permanent members. Pressure on leaders by grass-roots demonstrations for peace thus denied the United States of the legitimacy for their case. Although the U.S. went on with its plans to invade despite lack of international legitimacy, and without approval from the Security Council, thus illegally, the power of the people was evident in the decision of the United Nations, which strengthened the peace movement. It was a victory for both, it was, as David Cortright wrote, a sort of dialectic through which the international community and the anti-war movement 5
mike wilson (con’t). An educated populace would break through the façade of democracy, in which a very small number of the population control the majority of the world’s wealth. In the United States the National Taxpayer’s Union estimated that 10% of the population controls 71% of the wealth. A United Nations University study reported that in 2000, 10% of adults in the world accounted for 85% of total wealth. That is not a democracy, and the power structure knows that. You cannot claim to be free when you are impaired by the chains of economic slavery. The power structure understands that to retain their power and wealth, they need to keep the populace uninformed. They have to provide a notion of freedom and democracy, but constrain these as much as possible. They do that, as Albert Einstein pointed out in 1932, by controlling our sources of information, the press, the churches, our schools, and most of our institutions. In 2007, when I was a freshman, according to my political science 101 textbook, 98% of the U.S.’s public opinion was dictated by four media conglomerates (General Electric, Viacom, Time Warner and News Corporation), which have a vested interest in maximizing profits for themselves and their partner corporations. G.E., for example, which owns NBC and MSNBC, is one of the largest weapons-parts manufacturers in the world. And so you provide a short level of actual liberty to people to keep them subservient, but as soon as a catastrophe happens, governments seize the opportunity to further subvert democracy and liberty. The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1789 made antigovernment speech or documents illegal—if you were an immigrant, you could be deported for speaking against the government of the U.S.; Abraham Lincoln removed Habeas Corpus during the Civil War (though he was one to return it after the war’s end); the Espionage Act of 1917 made it criminal to make or convey any statements which interfere with military operations; the Sedition Act of 1918 made “disloyal” language about the government, the military, the flag, or the constitution of the U.S., as well as the uniforms of the armed forces (yikes!), or any language “intended to bring the above into contempt, scorn, or disrepute,” illegal; the government in Mexico City imposed a state of martial law during the H1N1 crisis early this summer; the Honduras golpista government did the same thing soon after their coup d’etat at around the same time.
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Under the Patriot Act, any person in the world can be detained without a charge, indefinitely, without access to counsel or a notification to family, if the president of the United States deems it appropriate. Once released, even if never charged, even if you were tortured or starved, it is also illegal for you to pursue legal action against your captors. Also, under the patriot act, any criminal act can be considered an act of terrorism, and any act of terrorism can punishable by death. Surveillance is another part of the patriot act. This has a particular psychological effect on people, making them afraid to speak against injustice as perpetrated by their government. The spiral of silence goes on, and feeds onto itself. This essay is by any means an act of terrorism and can be considered a capital crime by a martial court. Once the power structure manages to subvert democracy and civil rights, it is very hard for the people to make the pendulum to swing back. In fact, the power structure makes sure that there is not even a discussion about it, that there’s no debate in the streets with regards to the unconstitutionality of the Patriot Act, for example. And so this isn’t going to chance, and in fact gets worse and worse in terms of law. The pendulum can only swing back with the pressure of the people. Current demonstrations for greater environmental protection are taking place by brave members of the global society in Copenhagen. Last week, Danish authorities are boasting on the media about their new “anti-riot equipment” and gigantic cages where, they will temporarily hold protestors until they’re processed and transported to jails. The Danish Parliament has rushed a number of stiffened penalties against protesters. All of these scare tactics aside, the people need to speak, and the way to be heard, by authorities, decision-makers and by others who might be too afraid to dissent, is to stand up and protest. They are sending a message to the world. To decision makers, they let them know that they are aware, and their voice on the issue is being heard. To others, protestors let them know that they’re not alone, and that their silence is the enemy’s greatest tool. They let us know that the spiral of silence can be broken. The people need to break through the systematic atomization and disinformation, the process by which we are separated from each other and kept in blindness and ignorance, which fosters obedience and
mike wilson (con’t). consumerism, deference and blind nationalism and xenophobia. We need to realize that sometimes laws are not above justice, and that in order to regain moral laws based on true justice rather than the protection of the power structure, we need to unite, learn to cooperate, and demonstrate to the world that we’re not going to sit and watch TV, and complain from time to time about how much we’re underpaid producers. We’re wage slaves. To the powers that be, we’re nothing but consumers of overpriced goods, which are the product of resource extraction, labor exploitation, and environmental degradation. Ipods, for example, are a commodity that most people embrace, are highly over priced and made in—let me check mine—China. They travel the world to be sold in different consumer markets, consuming fossil fuels. They’re made out of led and copper, which are hazardous, and end up in landfills all across the globe. We need to stand up and change things. We can make a difference, as affirmed by the former UN Secretary General when he referred to world public opinion as “the other superpower.” We must gain confidence, despite worsening conditions. We need to let our voice be heard, because if we don’t do it now, then things are only going to be worse. State terrorism, the scare tactics to keep us afraid to speak for ourselves, the same tactics used throughout history, always evolving and perfected by the next tyrant, are not powerful enough to stop the people. Once united, we cannot be defeated.
targets,” meaning defenseless citizens, he was met with opposition from all corners of the country, from women, from church groups, from all unexpected places. It prompted his administration to create a state propaganda machine, the Office of Public Diplomacy. This was exposed during the Iran/Contra Hearings in Congress, which incidentally were themselves a theater to appease public discontent and left the establishment largely untouched. Still, it was progress. Atrocities still occurred, but they could have been much worse. After the Tet Offensive, President Johnson asked the Pentagon for 200,000 more troops for the war in Vietnam. They refused, stating that they would need those forces at home to calm civil disorder. This, argues MIT Professor Noam Chomsky, was proof of the military’s mentality that led to the Kent State and Jackson State killings not long afterwards. It is widely recognized that the Vietnam War was ended because of pressure from below from peace and anti-war activists. Contrary to the Reaganite deception that Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War because of his doubling of the defense budget, his SDI, the success of his “war on drugs” and counterrevolutionary operations in Central America, and his increased reliance of militarism as pressure on the USSR, which in reality only escalated tensions, the Cold War ended because of Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika. By the 1980s, Soviet militarism and its competition with western militarism was beyond unsustainable, despite its long-suited egregious
The way to do this is through increased democratic participation and outspoken, nonviolent activism. Dr. King said, “Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.” Cowardice in the face of injustice is perhaps even worse than aggression. We must oppose violence with love, and change the conditions through which the power structure acts. We have the power to broaden or constrict their options, because they won’t do so themselves. When John Kennedy authorized in 1962 the bombing of crop storages, of rice fields, deliberately cutting poor people from a supply of food, his actions were met with discontent in the form of a few crossed arms. When Ronald Reagan tried the same thing against Central America, the deliberate targeting of “soft7
mike wilson (con’t). exploitation of natural resources and slave labor, to which layers of bureaucracy gave increasingly eroding cover. As Gorbachev recounts in his memoir, his “new thinking” and will to concede to Western demands, in some framings, was a consequence of pressure from Eastern and Western peace movements, which learned to cooperate with each other in the late 1970s. These movements bridged their divide and emphasized demilitarization in the West and respect for human rights in the East. It was the work of movements such as that led by composer Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia and Lech Walessa in Poland that brought down the iron curtain. When it became evident that the United States would invade Iraq, millions of people took to the streets in more than a hundred cities across the globe to say “no.” Millions of Americans declared their patriotism by standing up against government-sponsored injustice and the way it was openly diverging from its role and guiding principles set out in the constitution. Out of love and as the most powerful form of patriotism, peace activists spoke against the intentions of the neoconservatives in the Bush administration, who had published their National Security Strategy before 9/11, and labeled Iraq part of the “axis of evil”–again, before 9/11. Others in the opposite isle in government also used the age-old argument that the protestors were unpatriotic. More moderate people even today say things like: “you shouldn’t speak against your country.” Because you have respect for liberty and democracy, it is imperative that you question the intentions of your government. Dissent is integral to a democracy. The militarization of our policy and culture—which has led to the creation of the National Security state (a euphemism for police state) and justified our interventionism across the globe— has pushed the masses into deference, yes-man-ship, obedience, unquestioning and xenophobic nationalism. That is not characteristic of a democratic society, but its opposite, in fact. “We will have to repent in this generation . . . for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make
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real the promise of democracy.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Civil Rights and anti-war activists complained about the rising police state in the 1960s, but they still rose to resist it. Imagine what they would think about the lack of inaction that has followed the state terrorism in the most recent decade. We like to think that there needs to be a better time for peaceful protest to regain our country. The time is now. UPDATE: Since this essay was written, the year 2011 happened. On December 17, 2010, Mohamed Boazizi, a Tunisian college graduate and vegetable seller burned himself alive to protest his conditions after police illegally confiscated his vegetable cart, thereby springing a rebellion against abject conditions and a lethargic plutocracy–in one of the region’s most prosperous and stable countries. As 2011 dawned, the Tunisian revolt proved the merit of peaceful protest when the man who har ruled with U.S. support for 23 years, Zinedine Ben Ali, fled to Saudi Arabia in January 14; as popular uprisings in Yemen, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and Syria followed, it became clear that something big had started. In all of these places, nonviolent protests were met with violent repression from police and military forces, often with U.S. approval. In Bahrain, where the U.S. negotiated and directly assisted the Saudi military’s brutal crushing of the uprising. In Yemen, the U.S. supported Ali Abdullah Saleh and facilitated his affluent ceding of power to a puppet pseudo-democratic system. The U.S. also turned a blind eye on Syria’s Assad as he murderously and bloodily silenced the country’s movement. Egypt was a significant and emblematic struggle for the year. By the end of January, dictator Hosni Mubarak’s police forces lost an intense and brutal fight against protestors, who held onto their encampment in Tahrir Square, Cairo despite four nights of intense fighting. The dictator’s continued subversion of civil rights and media, his paid thugs’ assaults with machetes, clubs and whips on the occupiers, and his speeches against the mobilized masses, only encouraged protestors, who on February 9 began organizing a massive worker strike against the military regime. In February 11, on the same day that peaceful protesters in Cairo celebrated the ouster of their U.S.-sponsored dictator–whose regime was for decades propped by the U.S. taxpayer, as one among the top four recipients of U.S. military assistance
mike wilson (con’t). in the world (along with Israel, Turkey and Colombia)– the Governor in Wisconsin introduced his “Budget Repair Bill,” which united teachers, students, workers, police and firefighters in the struggling middle class, who sprang into action against budget cuts, corporate handouts and anti-union laws. By the summer, when the Labor Party’s youth leadership was the target of a radical right-wing extremist in Norway, student protests in Chile had opened yet another new chapter in full-scale rebellion for the world, as the country’s middle class majority now favored the restructuring of public education and other services away from privatization. Chile’s model of neoliberal prosperity, jumpstarted three decades ago by the openly fascist and U.S.-sponsored Pinochet regime and its top economic advisor Milton Friedman, was soon uncloaked and its true face of injustice was exposed by a democratic youth rebellion. In Spain, millions of public workers and youths protested as the “indignados” and, despite (or perhaps because of) police brutality, they occupied their universities and public squares in cities big and small. Like their Spanish comrades, Italian protestors creatively escalated their tactics against police forces who turned out almost as repressive as in the Middle East. Protests against budget cuts, privatization, racism, unemployment, austerity and international banking occurred from Ireland to Bulgaria. In the UK, racist police violence In Greece, workers and students stood up against the austerity dictated by bankers and bureaucrats to stage massive protests and general strikes. Like their counterparts south of the Mediterranean, Greek citizens resisted with violence the constant police crack downs on their public square encampments. Peru and Bolivia were not far behind the global movement, as indigenous protestors there rejected government deals with transnational mining companies that would immediately and disproportionately harm their communities, but also the global environment in the long-run. On September 17, the Occupy Wall Street took on the legacy of the year’s struggles and asked the “99%” in the U.S. to seize the moment, to realize that the rising economic crisis was not temporary but a necessary product of capitalist doctrine, and to stand together against the 500 or so individuals–the majority of whom
are American–who own half of all the wealth in the world. Organized labor joined hands with the middle class students and youths in the Occupy movement and successfully staged two strikes in Oakland and a global “occupy the bridge” day. By the fall, students in Angola and Colombia had followed the Chilean example and had spurred a massive popular movement of resistance against economic injustice. Then, on October 15, a global day of action was called for by the “Occupy” movement. More than 1,000 cities in the U.S. alone were occupied, and hundreds if not thousands of others in at least 82 countries were the scenes of participant protests during this day, which evidenced the power of this movement; its internationality exuded airs similar to the protests that took place across the world in 1968. The year 2011 was also reminiscent of 1968 because it was difficult for the corporate media to contain images of police pepper spraying peaceful protestors, including an 86 year-old woman, using tear gas against nonviolent crowds or beating students with clubs. In this way, 2011 also showed to be a different revolution altogether– the democratic nature of user-generated media in the internet gave more strength to the movement, which had begun making solid transcontinental connections. Social media now allowed us to continue communicating ideas and demonstrating the realities that the media attempted to cloud. The November strike of 30 million workers in the UK was the largest labor action in the country since the 1930s. The Wisconsin Spring was the largest social movement in the state’s unparalleled history of labor activism. The rebellion in Tahrir square remains actively demanding the end of the security state and military control over Egypt. With such record of rebellion, it can only be expected that the seemingly defeated revolutionary struggle has resurrected from its grave, and will continue to push back against an increasingly obvious attack on decent standards of living for people across the world. Our political discourse has been once again awakened to the possibility of social change and the inevitability of struggle; these changing conditions will doubtlessly accelerate as we head further into the multiplying crises of capitalism.
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jan haskell, chris talbot-heindl. You
by: Jan Haskell Sundays, the effect is so surreal. Except for a hand full of shops, everything is closed. Sundays are my favorite times to walk down town. Its quite of people, yet full of sound, trees, wind, the river, and sometimes a distant train whistle. One time I was walking down town in winter; it had just snowed. It was a dry snow, and the windchill brought the temp down to +10’. As I walked across a parking lot, ( empty of course) the wind would catch a spot of snow. As the wind moves, it bounces off buildings and turns back on itself. Such a wind caught the different patches of snow, and formed little cyclones. They would rise up about a foot and last for a moment, and then drop flat. I find comfort in the simple beautiful things that most eyes pass. When things like that happen, I have to give pause, to my life, find a moment to be reminded of greater and more important things then me. You are one of those non stop moments in my life. A continual pause to say thanks
Heindl/Golla Chris Talbot-Heindl Ink and watercolor on wood panel www.talbot-heindl.com
Untitled
by: Jan Haskell Take it for what its worth, pen to paper. Let your heart determine its value, treasure or trash.
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chris talbot-heindl, donors, index. advertisers Bitchin’ Kitsch
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mcfishenburger
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Second Space
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www.talbot-heindl.com
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artists Rachel Peeters
cover
Chris Talbot-Heindl
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Mike White Mike Wilson
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Fitzwalkerus: Creating Hell in Wisconsin One Stupid Idea at a Time Chris Talbot-Heindl Illustration
www.talbot-heindl.com
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