2003-05 Vital Source Mag – May 2003
Dr. Judy Hall’s mission of medicine for the Iraqi people
By John Hughes On a recent unseasonably warm Monday evening, I sat with Judy Hall on the front stoop outside of her home, and as the breezes cooled us we watched neighbor children ride bicycles up and down the city street. Judy, an M.D. and psychiatrist, told me about her recent 10 day visit to Baghdad, Iraq, on a mission to teach Iraqi physicians. “I’m not really an activist,” she says. “My interest in Iraq began in medical school days when an Iraqi woman was my supervising resident. I’ve been thinking about her and worrying for all the ensuing years. So, in 1991, I was actually hopeful about the sanctions, when they were imposed, because I thought that might be a diplomatic solution to the Hussein problem. But in the end those sanctions were worse than any war could have been, for the suffering they’ve inflicted on the Iraqi people, without bothering Hussein at all.” “I was actually hopeful about the sanctions… But in the end those sanctions were worse than any war could have been, for the suffering they’ve inflicted on the Iraqi people, without bothering Hussein at all.” Her blonde hair falls in her eyes, over her steel framed eyeglasses, dancing in the breeze. She is, I estimate, roughly 50 years old, relaxed and unpretentious, the highlight of her clothing being her bright red clogs. She speaks freely. “In 1996, I became aware of a group called Voices in the Wilderness, who were bringing suitcases of antibiotics into Iraq. With the poverty inflicted by the U.S. sanctions, the water system was going bad, and people were getting sick. I thought these deliveries were good, but I also thought it would be more effective to clean the water system. So, although I supported Voices, I looked for a different group to be involved with. “Now realize, it was illegal to help the Iraqi people like that, or in any way, against the sanctions, without a license from the State Department. And the penalty for doing so is 12 years in prison and a $1.25 million fine.” I ask Judy how a person might go about giving a license. “In reality, they don’t give licenses,” she says, and laughs. “Finally, I was called on the carpet, though. I heard about something called ‘Campaign for Conscience’, which was the American Friends Service Committee, working in conjunction with Pax Christi and the Fellowship of Reconciliation. And they were importing small chlorinators so that they could at least purify the water for hospitals and orphanages, and perhaps some villages.” She then described to me a “Quaker Summit on Iraq” which she attended in January of 2002. During this event she learned of greatly increased incidences of birth defects and childhood cancer since Desert Storm, attributed to the depleted uranium casings left after the fighting 11 years before. She learned that Iraqi physicians had inadequate medication to deal with this endemic situation. She also learned that the U.S. sanctions apply to a ban on […]
May 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
MC Honky
By Jeremy Saperstein "Sonnet No. 3 (Like A Duck)" has an irrepressible beat that combines physical fitness records, orchestral stabs and Shakespeare, while "Soft Velvety ‘Fer" seamlessly melds a very disturbing series of telephone answering machine messages with a backing track that recalls the Beatles’ "Flying"; while "3 Turntables & 2 Microphones" could be a rejoinder to Beck written and performed by his own bad self.
May 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
Borrower Beware
By Bethany Sanchez PART ONE OF A TWO-PART SERIES A cautionary tale “Mrs. Green” is a 72-year-old widow, who has lived in her home for 28 years. When a home repair contractor knocked on her door in April 2000, Mrs. Green had great credit, and she had almost paid off her entire 30-year mortgage. The contractor told her that it looked like her house needed some work. Mrs. Green acknowledged that her roof leaked, the house needed painting, and that the front porch was deteriorating and unsafe. However, she told the contractor that she could not afford to make the needed repairs, as she was on a very limited, fixed income. The contractor told Mrs. Green about a lender who would give her a home repair loan. The lender came to Mrs. Green’s house, helped her with her paperwork, and then sent out an appraiser who valued her house at a surprisingly high amount. The lender gave her a loan that not only paid the cost of the repairs, but also refinanced Mrs. Green’s mortgage and consolidated her credit card debt. The new interest rate was twice that of the old mortgage. Mrs. Green paid almost $5,000 in fees on the new loan and doubled her monthly debt payment. Shortly after the loan closed, Mrs. Green’s brother-in-law died. She used some of her monthly income, and tapped into her very limited savings to travel to New York to help her sister with the funeral and burial expenses. These expenses stretched her resources and caused her to, for the first time ever, send in her loan payment late. When the next month’s statement arrived, Mrs. Green found that she had been assessed a huge late payment fee, and when she did not pay the fee, the amount considered to be overdue continued to increase until the lender threatened to foreclose on the property. Not having many options, Mrs. Green decided to sell her house and move in with her son, but she found that the loan amount was $20,000 more than the market value of the house. The appraisal had been falsified. Mrs. Green was trapped in a loan that she couldn’t pay, and couldn’t even sell her house to entirely pay off the loan. She had no way “out.” “Mrs. Green’s” story is only one of hundreds involving Milwaukee area homeowners who have become victims of what is called a predatory loan. The details of these stories and loans vary widely from homeowner to homeowner, but the despicable practices of predatory lenders usually take a devastating toll on the homeowner. What is a predatory loan? A predatory loan is a loan that is unsuitable for the borrower, designed to exploit vulnerable or unsophisticated borrowers. A predatory loan has one or more of the following features: Mrs. Green’s story actually combines several of the things the Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council hears over and over. The most common reasons people are seduced by these loans are an urgent need for cash […]
May 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
White Stripes
By Jeremy Saperstein A college chum and I used to earnestly discuss how Guns’N’Roses were most certainly the future of rock. Paul Westerberg of the Replacements once said something like “Most bands stand outside and throw stones at the house; I think we have a chance to throw ‘em out from the inside”. I remember being blissfully happy, then slightly addled, then feeling angry and usurped when advance copies of Nirvana’s “Nevermind” played on the stereo in every record store I visited, back in that day. Does the new White Stripes record sound like any of these artists? Is that why I’m bringing them up? Well, no. The feeling of new discovery is really the thing here. Odds are you’re at least passing familiar with the Stripes’ schtick by now: boy & girl/guitar & drums duo, playing the hell out of some well-written and unique originals, not straying too far from roots in basements and garages all over the world. Elephant is all of that, for sure, but more. Indeed, it’s the record on which the Stripes begin delivering on all of the potential & hype they’ve been saddled with. “There’s No Home For You Here” with it’s fist-pumping 60s vocals and taut playing (including electric piano filigrees!) is my early favorite, but “Seven Nation Army” (the first single) and “Well It’s True That We Love One Another” (which features guest vocals by Holly Golightly) are climbing in my view as well. This ‘un is a good ‘un, to paraphrase Otis Rush.
May 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
Private Thoughts of War
By John Hughes One of the many stories of the Iraqi War and Reconstruction is the personal thoughts and feelings of rank and file Milwaukeeans. Beyond poll numbers, beyond anti-war demonstrations and radio talk shows, beyond politicians, pundits and headline grabbers, there are the common woman and man. In a series of five interviews with Milwaukeeans of both genders, from different neighborhoods in the city, Vital Source spent time with some of your neighbors, who shared their thinking on this war and its widespread implications. We asked them why the United States went to war. We asked whether or not the consequences of not taking action are worse than the bloodshed and death that continue after weeks of fighting. The interviewees shared their hopes and fears for the outcome of the war. They were asked their opinions on military intervention in North Korea, which, like Iraq (until weeks ago), has a murdering despot at the helm and, far more demonstrably than Iraq, possesses weapons of mass destruction. Finally, we asked the two women and three men what should and would happen if, once democracy is established in Iraq, the citizens there were to freely vote to cut off the supply of oil to the United States. The people in question were thoughtful. A query would be posed and, almost universally, a reflective pause would follow before an answer was given. Each appeared to be nurturing the question, thinking his or her way through. They were all well informed, and had been following the news on television and radio, in the press, and on the Internet. They weighed the pros and cons of the war with gravity. At times, even their stated position (for or against the war) could not be easily delineated once in conversation on the subject. And even those whose viewpoints came out at the same place arrived there by very different paths. In all, our conversations with these “average Milwaukeeans” reflects the complexity of millions of conversations on the subject of war and its aftermath heard daily in our city and around the country. Five people, five perspectives. An East Side woman, Katherine, who professed to viewing spirituality from an Eastern perspective, who spoke of “karmic loops” and quoted Sartre, called President Bush “an idiot” and then came down squarely on the fence with regards to endorsing or opposing U.S. actions in Iraq. She called herself “a hybrid hawk and dove.” Dan, a Milwaukee man living a stone’s throw from the West Allis border in a traditional blue-collar neighborhood, was opposed. Dean from St. Francis was also opposed. Terry, from Racine, spoke at length and with fervor using language that made me refer to him as “pro-war.” He became quiet at that moment and said, “Sometimes war is a necessary evil, but it is always evil. I prayed every day that the war would not happen, that a diplomatic solution would be found. But when the war began, I prayed for victory.” Mary from Glendale was articulate […]
May 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
Xerophonics
By Jeremy Saperstein There’s a definite warm solace to be found in the fluorescent hell of work. Once you’ve arrived for another eight-hour sentence, the rhythm of the workplace begins to nudge you like a tide, making action and reaction easy as you work through the day. Coffee at eight and ten, lunch at noon, candy bar at three. Without the routine, most of us would go insane. Xerophonics, a new ‘genre’ assembled entirely from the sounds of office appliances by one Dr. Stefan Helmreich is simultaneously the next great idea of industrial music and its denouement. Largely built on the repetitious patterns of noise that high-speed copiers emit (and named things like “Toshiba 2060” and “Xerox 5425 (Bookmark 35)”) Copying Machine Music is that great rarity in popular culture – a catchy prank – and exactly what you might expect to find on Negativland’s Seeland imprint. The unending rhythms of the copiers relax and capture me, taking me back to the countless copier rooms and desks I’ve occupied as a worker drone in America. From now on, I hope to hear more of the music that always plays around me.
May 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
A Poet’s Journal
By Russ Bickerstaff 04-09-03 The Bucks just won a game which brought them within one game of the playoffs. I don’t care. I’m wondering what happened to all the poets. I’m at the Y-Not II on the second Wednesday of the month and there are less than six of us there for the East-Side Milwaukee Poetry Slam. When had Milwaukee’s oldest poetry slam become such a secret? The whole scene on the east side has seemed pretty inactive in the past couple of years. In the past seven years, I’ve seen attendance at poetry venues on the East Side run a strange parabolic wave. There are high points that mirror this low: I remember the summers of ‘98 and ‘99 when there were four or five open mics every week and no one made it to them all. Now things are scarce. The Y-Not II is a long corridor of a bar with an elevated stage in back. There’s a podium there with a microphone that amplifies the voice throughout the room. Geo Kiesow shows up early to turn on the stage lights and the sound system. Geo’s been hosting the Y-Not II poetry slam for years. Fresh from a fishing trip, he does a piece from years ago that he wrote about fishing with his dad on Lake Poygan. It’s a very conversational piece that wraps the mind in the feel of northern Wisconsin. This is Geo’s literary home: the poetry of genuine rural life – not the romanticized visions typically found in nature poetry. The words feed through the speakers and Geo’s out there on Lake Poygan fishing in his childhood. I nearly drowned in that lake the day after my high school graduation. Geo and I were born in the same hospital down the road from the foundry in Neenah, Wisconsin. In spite of this, we come from very different places. The co-host for the evening is Tim Grair. He’s doing cover pieces: the poetry of Patricia Smith (no, not Patti Smith – Patricia). I’ve heard him do pieces of his own stuff. It’s a very diverse body of work. He’s covered everything from the fashion industry with his “Max Factor Massacre,” to the intricacies of growing-up with “Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll at 11.” He’s not performing his own stuff tonight. Maybe he’s just not feeling it. Or maybe there just aren’t enough people here tonight. Years ago the Y-Not II poetry slam was much better attended. We don’t have enough people performing for the night to hold the slam competition, so the evening ends with only an open mic. Long-time East-side poet JoAnn Chang tells me that there’s a big poetry performance at the Mecca’s poetry slam on the west side Thursday night. Slam competition teams from another state are coming in to perform with national slam poets from Milwaukee. I can’t make it. I’ve got my own poetry venue to host that night. 04-10-03 I’m brooding pleasantly over a cup of coffee at […]
May 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
Various Artists
By Jeremy Saperstein Man, there’s no reason I should like this as much as I do. OK, sure, it’s a tribute album not to a band, but to the (relatively) obscure 70s film Two-Lane Blacktop, and that’s a movie I have a strange place in my heart for. That conceit alone makes the work of Filippo Salvadori in compiling this disc something special. But the music, unlike tribute albums, which have an unfortunate lack of width and breadth to them evokes the odd, existential feeling of the film wonderfully – from the opening banjo stomp of Sandy Bull’s “Little Maggie” to the closing drum-machine and fuzz-guitar freakout of Roy Montgomery’s “2LB”. The music surprisingly takes you on a little journey, with bits of the monotony and featurelessness of a long cross-country drive (Sonic Youth’s “Loop Cat”, which evokes distant memories of Kraftwerk’s masterwork “Autobahn”) and brief bright spots that arrive to break things up (Cat Power’s “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”, itself an odd echo of the movie’s female lead Laurie Bird off-handedly singing the song). There are plenty of reasons to own this: current faves Wilco, Mark Eitzel, Calexico and Giant Sand all contribute songs, with the trophy going to Will Oldham, who offers a song (with Alan Licht) that combines all of James Taylor’s movie dialogue with an interpolation of Evita’s “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” in an ear-friendly nugget.
May 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
Confessions of an Old Paperboy
By Andrew Hollis I found myself unable to sleep one night last week, which resulted in my wandering aimlessly around the house in the ghostly predawn hours. I finally settled in on the couch to watch an old black and white on the tube when I heard a muffled but distinct “thud” just outside my front door. Upon investigation, it turned out to be the early morning delivery of the Sunday Journal. I stood, barefooted on the frosty porch, strangely transfixed. There it was – clinically wrapped in blue plastic, catapulted all the way from a shiny white truck driven by a tired-looking man in his late thirties. At this moment, childhood memories of my life and times as a paperboy for the Milwaukee Journal came flooding back to me. Ah, the good old days! First off, for those that may have forgotten or were simply unaware, in the not too distant past, gangly boys aged 12-16, once delivered the daily paper right inside your door. For many a middle-aged man like me, this was their first “real” job, an entrepreneurial rite of passage and a ticket to get out of the house (and onto the streets) that your mother couldn’t argue with. The newspaper designated routes and established regional managers to ensure papers were delivered to homes on these routes from “stations” scattered across the city, better know to us paperboys as “shacks.” The shack for my route was on 25th and Morgan – a short bicycle ride from my home in the Southlawn Housing Project. Seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year, me and hundreds of other paperboys across Milwaukee would spill out of our shacks and into the pre-dawn morning like raccoons, making our way across empty streets and playgrounds and into quiet neighborhoods to deliver our routes. Back then, routes were handed down from generation to generation like family heirlooms and good ones were hard to come by. A perfect route (a paperboy’s Xanadu) was a big route with only apartments. You couldn’t do better. Next best were those closest to your shack or routes that took you through neighborhoods where your friends hung out. There were some routes where it felt you had to walk to Illinois to drop off your first paper. I was somewhat lucky – I had a route with half apartments, but still a hike from the shack. Life at the shack. A paperboy lives in two worlds: the shack, and out on his own – on his route. The manager who ran our shack held our unfailing respect, primarily because he was the biggest ox of the neighborhood. The shack was akin to a nuclear fallout station: a 15 x 30 foot steel box with a pitched roof and riveted doors at each end. The inside was lined with military surplus type steel tables, the kind you would find in the County Morgue, standing on a chewed up wooden plank floor. Overhead hung a large […]
May 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
Various Artists
By Jeremy Saperstein It’s perverse to review this: there’s no identification on it (beyond label name), no titles or artists, and it’s rumored to have been removed from distribution for copyright reasons. It’s nigh impossible to find a copy (I got mine on the Internet at Turntable Lab – turntablelab.com/index1.html). Perverse, yes. So why review it? Aside from displaying how cool I am to own a copy, I want to share the news about this release for the handful of others who are sure to enjoy a digital copy of some truly funky old 45s. The CD is a nonstop death-ride of white-knuckle funk, through-and-through, played with the sort of garage-rock enthusiasm found in collectors-only ‘Pebbles’LPs. If you ever wondered if a funk revolution was being spawned by those initial groundbreaking releases by George Clinton, this is the proof that all around, the youth were getting restless and working to emulate Uncle George – and even top him. If all of that sounds tasty to you, I recommend this with no reservation. If you can’t find a copy, drop me a line and we can arrange a listening party with some malt liquor and cheese-whiz refreshments.
May 1st, 2003 by Vital Archives
May 2003
By Jon Anne Willow Dear Readers, It’s been a month of highs and lows, a state of being which seems to be going around. Science buffs may recall here the first law of thermodynamics, which states that energy under normal conditions cannot be created or destroyed, but simply transformed from one type of energy to another. Sounds kind of astral to apply physics to events and feelings, maybe, but I’ve never seen a reason why such a sound law wouldn’t apply across the board. So, while I’ve got lots to be thankful for in terms of Vital’s progress this month, we’ve also felt the stresses that always accompany troubled times, when people aren’t feeling quite themselves, are worried about the future, and feel cut off from the sense of surety that generally accompanies life in America. On the other hand, applying the above law, maybe there’s hope in loss of complacency. But anyway, enough of that. We’d like to thank everyone who came out for our first birthday party at Onopa (see pictures below, or visit our web site for a full gallery). The bands were amazing, the food delicious, and the party-goers looked beautiful. As the song goes “Everybody had a good time.” We raised a good piece of change for 91.7 WMSE, to which all proceeds from the night were given. We also gave away a trip for two to Las Vegas from Funjet vacations and lots of other prizes from our local sponsors. We’ll see you again next year. At long last our web site is up and running. Check us out at vitalsourcemag.com. In the coming weeks, in addition to reading, printing and sending your friends articles and features from Vital Source magazine, you’ll be able to write your own book, film, theater and music reviews, rant in 50 Words, give us Your 2 Cents, sign up for our email list and much more. Check back often, as we’ll also update Vital’s Picks throughout the month. This month’s cover story is from Andrew Hollis, a former paperboy and petty larcenist. Confessions of an Old Paperboy will bring back memories of youth, even if you never experienced news carrier life yourself. We The People explores whether it’s realistic to “teach” a love of democracy to an ancient theocratic society. Today, Iraq. Tomorrow, the world? We continue to hone Vital Culture, and our commitment to covering the arts community beyond their events schedule. You’ll find more ink dedicated to the important outreach work our arts groups do throughout the year, as well as season announcements, employment openings, auditions and more. We hope you like it. Peace, Jon Anne
May 1st, 2003 by Jon Anne Willow
