Map:
--Kalamazoo

Me:
--M.S.Wedel

Email:
--

Paper:
--Kalamazoo Gazette

Radio:
--WIDR-FM

Music:
--Blues
--Folk
--Rock
--The State Theatre --Kraftbrau

Movies:
--Kalamazoo Film Society
--Western Film Society

Message Boards:
--Jeffrey Allan Messer's Kalamazoo Michigan Message Board
--Mlive's Kalamazoo Town Talk

Ah, January is almost over. Time to archive. If you want the latest Kalamazoo Blog, you know what to do.

"Kalamazoo?" I just found out about this. It's to be in pre-production next month. Still on track to be shot in the spring.

One more bit on Idle:

It looks like I shouldn't hint (as it sounds like I'm doing below) that he was to blame for missing an interview. I suspected that he wasn't to blame.

If you all were wondering why I didn't mention all of the State Theatre singing along to the classic Monty Python ode, "Sit On My Face (And Tell Me That You Love Me)," in my Eric Idle review, well, I did. But that was a momentary lack of judgment, and was wisely corrected.

Idle has been keeping a tour diary, and although he didn't go into detail about Kalamazoo, he does do a very funny ramble on Davenport, Iowa, which he seems to think is in Idaho. In this post he also mentions that while in Kalamazoo, he hangs out with a reviewer from Chicago -- I won't mention how a lowly Kalamazoo writer was sitting by his phone a few weeks ago, waiting for an interview that never came...

Eric Idle, horny in Battle Creek.

We flew back to Kalamazoo from New Orleans to Chicago, Chicago to here. We got to the home airport to wait for our luggage. Also waiting were The Righteous Brothers and their entourage.

Our luggage was late. So was theirs. We were a little excited to be sharing an annoyance with the famous.

They were to play at Miller Wednesday night, the first stop on a new tour. But Bobby Hatfield, half of the Brothers, died just before they were to leave from their room at the Radisson.

Just a sad sort of brush with fame.

I thought I was going to interview Eric Idle, of Monty Python fame, who is going to be at the State Theatre in November. But the interview is just not going to happen. I am sad.

The Python material helped form my view of the world, now that I think of it. It all comes down to the end of "The Life of Brian," where Idle, hanging from a cross, is helping to cheer up his fellow crucified fellows with this cheerful song.

For life is quite absurd,
And death's the final word.
You must always face the curtain with a bow!
Forget about your sin -- give the audience a grin,
Enjoy it -- it's the last chance anyhow!

Oh, screw it. I'm leaving this town. Gonna eat mudbugs and drink bourbon in New Orleans. See you later.

Well, looks like a major malfunction at www.pitas.com, the free service that is the home of kalamazoo.pitas.com. But they fixed it, and this is free and doesn't put obnoxious ads and pop-ups on my classy minimalist layout. So, if pitas was an airplane, we'd all be dead right now, but as a free blog service, they still rock.

But some of the last posts have vanished. I think the last was how I talked to The Rooster, David Sedaris' brother. You can read that here, along with the review of Sedaris' reading last Friday night.

Grand Rapids Press story on Pun Plamondon. He's working on his memoirs, an obviously long story that's going to take some time to get into print.

When I met him last year he started telling me about how Watergate happened because of him. You could say that that sounds like the rantings of a paranoid, aging hippie, but, as you read in the Press story, it looks like he's grounded in reality.

Ahh... Halloween. It's far off, I know. But, looking at this I just remembered how that product didn't quite work. I wasn't a wolfman, but thanks to the plastic eyes, I was able to freak out my friends.

This stuff gave me the greatest childhood joy. Sigh...

So, should the city of Kalamazoo officially reject the Patriot Act? Here's a good post on a Sept. 4 edition of ABC's "Nightline" that shines some light on the subject.

You might have noticed that WOTV Channel 41 news is no more. Dead. Decapitated swiftly a week ago by someone who obviously cared deeply about our community's need for a variety of southwest Michigan local news voices, some suit at LIN TV of Rhode Island. They own 25 stations around the country, including WOTV, WOOD and WXSP (cable) in this area.

From this story:

"It's part of democracy that's being eliminated," said Tim Malone, news director and anchor.

"Whatever happened to the FCC requirement that, to get a license, you had to provide local news because it was a public service?" he said. "Now it's about the bottom line. It's about conglomerates...."

"Let's face it. It's a perspective that's being lost," he said. "It's a death for the community."

Okay, I'm not sending a virus, I'm not infected with a virus, but there's a virus out there that's grabbed my email address and sending more viruses out, making it look like its coming from me, and I think it's this one. And I'm not the only one.

It's a confusing mess, I know. But I don't have the virus, since I use Netscape on an iMac. But I bet someone I know who uses Outlook on Windows has my email address saved, and they got infected.

So if that's you, do everyone a favor and get a Mac.

Kalamazoo Poetry Slam team ranked 43 out of 63 in the National Poetry Slam in Chicago a couple weeks ago.

What, you didn't know there was a Kalamazoo Poetry Slam team? Well now you do.

I was reading this about the White Stripes, and came across this:

CHARLES PIIPO (Dearborn Heights fan): When we drove over to see them in Kalamazoo, someone had written a negative article about how they were married or whatever, and Jack's up there bitching out this critic. I mean, it really bothered him. He was just up there saying, "Why can't people just write about the music? Why do people have to worry about our personal lives?" I really think that speaks for how much Jack loves music and what it means to him.

That would've been Harvey's, 2001, and the "critic" was not me. Hmmm... it could've been anybody.

But it's a good point to remember now and then -- how much entertainment journalism is about the art, and how much is about the little quirks of the act or personalities or the hype or whatever? I'm thinking of this because I just wrote about a band who used to perform near-nude. It's hard to get beyond details like that, but I try.

Canned haggis.

Found as I was looking into the Kalamazoo Scottish Festival.

Don't forget the Neeps and Tatties.

So, I've been told to write a story for the Gazette's FRIDAY back to school edition about "The Dumbest Thing You Did When You First Got To College." I need to get the dumb stories from a variety of people who've gone to college in Kalamazoo.

If you were dumb, let me know. Or if those you know were dumb, those you work with, live with and/or hang out with, were really stupid 18-year-olds lost in the world of higher education, and would like to talk to me about their dumbness, email me.

Yes, I will also write about the dumbest thing I ever did, as soon as I can remember what it was. I can't think of anything. If any of you who knew me in our early school days come up with something, I'm sure you'll let me know.

My talk with Gene Ween.

Well, I look up from my stupor and realize it's been almost three years since I've updated my Web-based clippings.

So now, for the curious, here's the place for the best of Mark S. Wedel's stuff. Check back as more stories are added.

It's all good. The infamous Kyle Jennings review. My strange talk with Jimmy "JJ" Walker. All you could ever want to know about the Tucker. And more.

Local boy makes international news, ends up in The Smoking Gun.

You know who. You may not want to read the ultra-creepy and disturbing details about an earlier incident.

My cranky aging hipster review of the White Stripes at the Aragon in Chicago.

I was whining about how there's no good "bar" bars in Kalamazoo a few months ago below. How could I have forgotten The Corner Bar?

And here's another page on the Corner Bar. It wasn't on that page, but I saw elsewhere that the place was deemed "locals only." Come on, what's going to happen, we see that you're from Indiana and we might mess ya up? Ohio, maybe... But if you're scared, there are a few Bennigans and TGI McCrappy's around town.

The Silver Leaf Renaissance Faire is coming for three weekends, beginning July 12. This is where people pretend to live in the 1500s.

After reading their interesting facts page, one wonders why the heck anyone would want to live back then.

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May and were still smelling pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the b.o.

...Most people didn't have pewter plates, but had trenchers - a piece of wood with the middle scooped out like a bowl. Trencher were never washed and a lot of times worms got into the wood. After eating off wormy trenchers, they would get "trench mouth."

...Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination would sometimes knock them out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a "wake."

Note what's in the bottom right corner of the page: "Experience the Romance!"

Greater Galesburg Days coming soon... get ready for the excitement!

Talked to John Sinclair, spoken word artist, blues historian, and Michigan's most famous '60s radical. He co-founded the White Panther Party and managed the MC-5. Go here and scroll down to the March 23 entry for more on that.

Sinclair will be at the Kraftbrau tomorrow.

A local paper gets fingered by Tom Tomorrow for printing an "astroturf" letter to the editor. This paper not the only one to fall for this.

See, you've got your grass-roots movements by citizens writing letters to the editor, but what do you get when they send form letters designed by the pr firms employed by moneyed interests? Something a bit more fake than real grass...

But it's real easy to search on Google for the line that Bush is "creating jobs and fostering economic growth" and finding reams of identical letters to the editor.

Pfizer story on The Onion.

It's satire, just so you know. You know The Onion, right? Right.

By the way, go see "A Mighty Wind." It's the funniest movie I've paid money to see in a long, long time.

"Wha' Happen?"

My talk with JJ.

Sebastian Bach is just too rock 'n' roll for Jesus.

An update to Jan. 31 post below.

So, if you managed to get through it, you know about Gallagher's brother from the story linked in the post below. Here is my review of Gallagher II, from November 1999:

When I was 9 my family took a trip to Chicago. On the TV in the hotel room I saw something that bothered me: Another Bozo.

I was a faithful viewer of Bozo The Clown--who I thought to be THE Bozo--who was on the Grand Rapids station every morning. So I could tell when I saw the Bozo on the Chicago station that, though he had the same name, look and schtick, that it wasn't my Bozo. The voice, the finer points of clown style, were different.

This is just not right, I thought.

So I did not believe it when I heard that there was another Gallagher, with the same gags, the same Sledge-O-Matic, the same striped shirt. That can't be true. There's one Gallagher already, and even that may be too many. It's like with two, there's an imbalance that threatens to tear the fabric of reality.

If somebody were to become whatever kind of clown, wouldn't they, shouldn't they, try to be somewhat original? Why would they become a clone?

At Miller Auditorium Saturday night around 700 people paid $22.50 (and one dollar for plastic bags if they didn't bring their own protection) to see Gallagher II, or as he was introduced, "The one and only Ron Gallagher," or as his brother (who personally called the Gazette to complain that the ads for Gallagher II's show were misleading) Leo Gallagher might call him, my little brother the rip-off artist.

Maybe it's because I saw the real, original Gallagher last November when he sold out the State Theatre. Maybe that's why I sat frozen until a lump of red Jell-O came flying at my face.

Gallagher II has a bit more hair, a few more pounds and is a bit taller than the real Gallagher. His delivery is slower, not nearly as energetic as his brother's. These are the only differences.

The act is nearly identical. The throwing, squirting and splattering crap on people--even smashing with a sledgehammer an array of aluminum pie plates filled with substances including a watermelon to the beat of the Talking Heads' "Burning Down the House"--Gallagher II did all this just as his brother has done for years. It's an old routine, but a fun spectacle to witness, provided that you're wearing clothes you don't mind getting stained.

This was the best part of Gallagher II's show--mainly because it's inherently funny when people pay money to have food thrown at them. But even the smashing lacked what II's whole act lacked, the real Gallagher's psycho energy. This was painfully evident during much of the non-smashing portion of the show. II focused on language illogicalities, and many times after a gag he would wait for laughs and then point out the fact that there were few by saying comments like, "I've got people here looking at me like a dog looks at 'Jeopardy.'"

It's not that people didn't get it, it's just that if you give them too much time to think about "Why is 'off' and 'on' written on a light switch when you know it's on when the light's on and when it's off you can't read it?" they realize that it's not worth it to expend the energy to laugh. Or that the real Gallagher has pointed out this before.

There were laughs from the audience, but not nearly with such a fanatical response that I saw last year during the real Gallagher's show.

II gave several comments like "I stay up at night thinking this stuff up." LIES! LIES! He stays up watching his brother's old cable specials, he should've said. And I can't help but to dwell on the fact that people paid $22.50 to see a weaker version of somebody else's act. That's just not right.

One word says it all: Gallagher.

I should post here my review of his brother, who I saw in 1999 at Miller. It's one of my favorite bad reviews. You see, the brother Ron Gallagher, or Gallagher II, was doing Gallagher's exact same act, but poorly. I got to go into detail about how this caused "an imbalance that threatens to tear the fabric of reality."

Things are getting too serious here. Thank god for New Wave.

The Epoxies and the more punkish The Vexers will be at the Kraftbrau Thursday. I might go, even though I'm an old man (old enough to remember when New Wave was new) and need to be in bed by 9 p.m.

Then there's the Red Elvises, Wednesday at the Club Soda, for good old Russian rockenrol. See the end of the story for my proudest journalistic achievement, a Yakov Smirnov joke that many under 30 will not get. I don't mean to be a Dennis Miller, honest.

Got this letter from David of Geeknews.net:

Ive been reading your blog occasionally since I found you via Google searching for blogs local to me. I run a blog/website called Geeknews.net

I have to echo my support for the current affairs and if I get the gist of your posts correct I would have to agree with you about Kalamazoo and the anti-war movement.

Just wanted you to know that there are many others in Kalamazoo that support what our country is doing currently in the Middle East.

Thanks for letting me in on your blog it is a worthwhile endeavor and I hope you continue to maintain it for Kalamazoo's sake.

I've been trying to keep this blog politics-free. I have a lot of friends who are against the war or are expressing strong doubts about it, and I've posted some things they've sent me. Personally, I have some strong doubts about the war, but I avoid going into rant mode here -- this probably leads to my weird sort of dry sarcastic humor (it comes from being an entertainment journalist) where it might look like I'm making fun of a protester getting hassled by the man for chalking the sidewalk, but I'm really, really wanting to go into a tirade about how dumb it is for our police officers to be wasting their time forcing someone to clean up their chalk peace talk.

But I haven't covered the other side much ("covered?" What, is this page supposed to be "the news?" This is just Kalamazoo stuff that's in my field of vision.). I know there are those who are for the war in the Kalamazoo area, and they've been having their rallies. But apart from seeing one "Support Our Troops" type yard sign yesterday and some yellow ribbons, the pro-war message hasn't entered much into my personal space.

In fact I was surprised that I haven't heard of or seen any letters to the editor about my interview with Joan Baez, or my review of her show. In the interview she basically said that Bush isn't quite Saddam evil, but he's evil in his own way. I thought that someone's going to be upset about that, but I've gotten no strong reaction. Maybe I missed the paper the day Baez, the Gazette and I were denounced as un-American. Honestly, if it were someone like Charlie Daniels or Ted Nugent, I'd have done the same thing -- wildly opinionated talk during interviews is many times more interesting than talk of fans' love of the latest CD or how the new bass player is turning out. Look for a coming story on watermelon-smashing comedian Gallagher.

Anyway, thanks for reading. And remember, this isn't "the news." To prove it, here's the first serious news story (found on Geeknews.net) that I've felt like posting in a while: All Sturgis Base Are Belong To Us!

Some web geeks thought it would be funny to spread the "All Your Base Are Belong To Us!" message all over Sturgis on April 1. They didn't bother to think that Sturgis residents might not know about this old web in-joke. For some reason they see militaristic claims in bad English as a threat right now.

Here's a picture of how Kalamazoo's finest are making sure the protestors don't mess up our town. The guy who sent this to me isn't someone you'd call a trouble maker, for the most part. But it's just good he was caught now, or else he might have gone down the road to destruction.

A tale of Sunday's peace rally starring Kirk & Jay of the People's Power Hour, some sidewalk chalk, and the "Pistol Master"

March 23, 2003

Showed up to the Sunday Peace rally late today, about 12:30 or so. First time attending! I must admit my Sundays are usually pretty lazy... Anyway, I walked the length of the crowd from Church st. past the federal building, noting all of the great signs and seeing a few folks that I knew. Thought I was going to see some pro-war people on the other side of the street, but they were all against it too. I found a place to stand, and talked to a Vietnam vet about this war, Gulf War I, Vietnam, Agent Orange, depleted uranium, gov't betrayal of veterans, etc. Got many honks of encouragement from cars passing by. The crowd started to break up at 1:00, about the time that Jay was handing out sidewalk chalk for people to use. I started to write a few words - "Bush Kills" was first, then I decided on "Your President has been lying to you". I only got to "Your president has been ly" when I heard a very authoritative "Sir, stop what you're doing right now!" behind me. I turned around, thinking it was a friend playing a trick on me. No such luck.

It was Officer Stacy Geik (I'd like to think it's pronounced 'Geek'), behaving as if he'd caught me setting fire to his patrol car. He demanded to see my I.D., which I didn't have on me. Cops hate that. He made me tell him my full name, address and phone number, which he called in to make sure there were no outstanding warrants for my arrest (evidently not. Whew!) I asked him if writing on the sidewalk was illegal, and he said it was "malicious destruction of property"! I was surprised to learn that I was committing such a heinous crime. Jay and I were the only two apprehended, and were subsequently bullied into removing ALL of the offending messages, at least for that block. Jay had to buy some water from a nearby shop so we could wash away the dissent. It took us about 20 minutes and nearly six gallons of water to satisfy Officer Geik.

Now and again we tried to make light of the situation, like when I asked Mr. Geik if I really had to ruin the "Peace on Earth, Goodwill to All" statement right in front of the fed bldg. Another one read "Why is peace so offensive?" and really was too perfect to erase, except that we had a guy with guns strapped to his hips telling us to. Geik's logic was truly mind-boggling: he said repeatedly that sidewalk chalking would inevitably lead to spray-painting, chaos, mayhem, etc.

He also tried to humiliate me (as if pouring water on the sidewalk and "scrubbing" the offending words with my shoe with a cop looking on wasn't enough) by pointing out that writing on the sidewalk with chalk was something that little kids do. Innocent, childish (yet malicious) "destruction" of property? I thought that we were respectable citizens expressing ourselves harmlessly, but have you ever tried to debate a cop?

Mr. Geik finally decided he'd had his fun with us, but let us go only after leaving us with a threat: if any spray-painted (presumably anti-war) graffiti is found in our city, Jay and I are to be the first people questioned, the first suspects in the criminal case. Nice, huh? I guess Officer Geik didn't like Jay's idea that he could have helped us clean up with a squirt gun (a super soaker would have been best) - after all, he was proudly displaying a pin on his uniform that said "Pistol Master".

kirk anderson

Just a few snapshots:

A friend wrote to tell me that, on Thursday, March 20, he went to work and noticed that about a dozen "Another Family for Peace" yard signs that had been around Berkley and West Main had vanished. A talk with someone who lived there seemed to indicate that the owners did not take them in, that they were stolen.

Last night a friend called to let us know that her sister in Chicago had tried to call her on a cell phone. All she could hear was a crowd shouting and chanting. As I was being told this, CNN was showing a huge crowd of protesters in Chicago. "I think I know where your sister is..."

Then I go off to cover a story, the "Hometown Idol" contest at Bourbon Street, utterly non-war. There was a group of people holding a candle light vigil at Bronson Park. In the club, a guy I'd met briefly a few months ago said hello. He was wearing an anti-Bush shirt. Another guy drunkenly backed into me, he tells me "Peace." "Yeah, peace" I said. "No, man, I'm serious. Peace," he said.

I reviewed Joan Baez at the State Wednesday night. I talked to a guy at the KNOW (Kalamazoo's peace group) table set up in the lobby, he said some guy was getting "weird" with him. "Weird?" I asked. "Yeah, he was talking like he was Saddam, threatening to kill my family." Basically the old argument, if you were in Iraq then you wouldn't be able to bad-mouth the government, so... you shouldn't be bad-mouthin' the government here? I found out from State staff that this same "weird" guy had tried to get backstage to meet with Baez.

Below is the story on the concert I sent for the special war section of the Gazette. If it were someone like Charlie Daniels I had to review Wednesday night, I would have written the same -- but different -- type of story. The story was cut some to fit it in with more important stories, but here's all that I wrote:

Singer/songwriter and anti-war activist Joan Baez performed for the State Theatre Wednesday night.

The crowd of close to 700 was mostly sympathetic to her opinions. Two left early, according to State ushers, saying that they'd "had enough."

"I'm accused of preaching to the choir," Baez told the audience in the middle of the concert. "Thank God we've got a choir tonight."

Halfway through Baez's set, her band left her on stage. She sang a cappella "Finlandia," the Sibelius hymn that serves as Finland's national anthem, with lyrics calling for international peace. At its end, most of the audience cheered and gave her a standing ovation. She then sang an Arabic translation of the song.

Baez then read from Daniel Ellsberg's 2002 book "Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers." She read from the book a taped dialog between President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissenger, where a foul-mouthed Nixon was urging Kissenger to agree to use nuclear weapons on Vietnam.

"Remember, I was right last time," Baez quietly said, referring to her anti-Vietnam War work.

The rest of her band came out to join her a few minutes after 10 p.m. After a couple of non-war songs, and a short word with her band, Baez announced, "We just now started a small attack on Iraq." There were a few moans from the audience. "A small massacre?" Baez added in a questioning tone.

The band immediately played Steve Earle's "Jerusalem," a song on war in the Middle East, with the lyrics, "I woke up this mornin' and none of the news was good/And death machines were rumblin' 'cross the ground where Jesus stood/And the man on my TV told me that it had always been that way/And there was nothin' anyone could do or say.... But I believe there'll come a day when the lion and the lamb/Will lie down in peace together in Jerusalem."

The crowd gave another cheering standing ovation. Before they'd quieted down, Baez began singing "Amazing Grace." The audience joined her. She stopped singing and directed the audience, who sang like a choir. Baez bowed with her band and left the stage.

Talked to Joan Baez the other day. I have the feeling this'll generate some letters.

Okay The Space will be replaced by people getting dialysis. At least it's not going to become some fern bar. But still, it's too bad they had to choose that spot and not another.

A vibrant place for art, music and coffee, The Space, is closing. The question is, is this going to be chalked up as part of the "revitalization" of that part of Kalamazoo? Will there be sparkling new office space, or maybe a family-oriented restaurant/piano bar, put there?

Photos of New Orleans trip.

It was during this trip when I realized that Kalamazoo has no decent bar. Except for the Green Top, there's no place where one can go with friends for a drink without having some band drown you out, or some guy with a guitar doing a bad rendition of "The Boxer" (ahemsouthtowncough), or somebody banging away on a piano, etc. There's no "bar" bars -- they're all sportsbars, brewpubs, frat hangouts, etc. There's no point to this rant -- I'm just sayin', Kalamazoo is Jankytown when it comes to bars.

Saw George Jones Saturday night.

I've decided that 'ol Possum has the best drunk song ever, "If Drinking Don't Kill Me (Her Memory Will)"

The bars are all closed
It's four in the morning
Must have shut 'em all down
By the shape that I'm in
I lay my head on the wheel
And the horn begins honking
The whole neighborhood knows
That I'm home drunk again

Take the Gazette's Worst Love Song Poll, the results of which will be in FRIDAY's Valentine's Day issue.

There's more choices than an Italian ballot. Some you can't really call love songs. I vehemently disagree with the selection of the front-runner, Chuck Berry's "My Ding-a-Ling," since it only alludes to a mild form of self-love.

I voted for Terry Jacks' "Seasons in The Sun," since it uses death to generate sweet, sweet sentiment.

I hope you're all just about done with Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451", the book all of Kalamazoo is to have read this year.

If so, then this should really creep you out:

"To Ms. Ehrenfeld: This morning I observed that during the morning news program, you and your students were engaged in activities other than watching television."

Well, the students in the story should've been watching an in-school broadcast, and not Fox News or something equally creepy. Still, the problem seemed to be that the kids were reading books, and not watching with blank zombie stares their fellow students mumble about the day's lunch menue.

Sebastian Bach, Superstar

I got tossed a big irony softball, and I hit it awfully hard...

Bush's speech in Grand Rapids.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all. I'm anxious to get started. (Laughter.) So I woke up this morning, and Laura said, "Where are you going? I said, "Grand Rapids, thankfully." (Applause.) And she said, "Home of a great American, Gerald Ford." (Applause.) And home to many great Americans.

Unlike Kalamazoo, with all those damn "Another Family For Peace" yard signs.

Kalamazoo rockabilly legend, Ron Allers.

Walgreens Narcs on Brain Cancer Patient

In a lawsuit filed Thursday in Pierce County Superior Court, Shannon O'Brien, 35, said she went to the drive-up window at a Walgreen Drug Store two blocks from her home last July 7. The pharmacist on duty thought she had faked her Percocet prescription and called police, the lawsuit stated.

Cops arrived to handcuff and take the lady with the cancer to jail.

O'Brien's family posted bail that night, but she was still without her medicine. She was arraigned the next day; as a condition of her release, she was required to attend a session at a drug treatment facility.

Somebody I know had a problem with a Walgreens in Kalamazoo. Not this bad, but someone failed to put a couple facts together: If we, Walgreens, aren't getting these pills from its manufacturer, then the guy who's been taking these pills since April to control a potentially life-threatening condition won't get these pills, therefore he might have some issues with his health.

I should mention that the Walgreens charged this guy for the full amount of these pills, $30 for him, almost $300 for his insurance, when they gave him about 1/4 the perscription. The rest will be in soon, they told him. Just pick them up next week.

The pills never came in. A Hardings pharmacist tells this guy that the pills are being "phased out." Walgreens tells this guy that "we're still waiting. Call us on the sixth." Walgreens is no help.

Guy trys to get a refund for the 400 something pills he did not get. Walgreens pharmacist gets confused over the math and the problems involved with issues of copays and insurance and etc.... Come back when our head pharmacist is in.

Walgreens person stares with a kind of blank minded fear as guy begins talking very loudly about how AT THE ROOT OF THIS PROBLEM IS THE FACT THAT HE'S NOT GETTING THE PILLS THAT HAVE BEEN KEEPING HIM HEALTHY SINCE APRIL.

Guy calls doctor about the plight, doctor sets him up with other pills. Pills work fine.

Guy still goes to Walgreens. He's not sure why.

We are filled with the echos of wild weather...

Tanchack has grown to be the #2 keyword leading people to this page. What's up with that? Dog!?!

Yes, he is gone from our airwaves. But the memory lingers. The other night we were watching Mark Pellorito doing the weather outside in the bitter cold, without a hat. "Jeff Tanchack would be wearing a hat," my wife said.

No, Tanchack would've been naked, or at least bare-chested -- he loved the weather that much, and never flinched from its wrathful barrage.

Remember that time, last summer, the tornado warnings, the excitement that crackled from Tanchack at 1 a.m. as he tracked possible tornados on the doppler? It was like he was calmly warning us of a fleet of UFOs invading the area.

Anyway, older posts on Tanchack that you're all probably looking for are archived here -- Kalamazoo 2002

I heard that someone I know was at the march in Washington this weekend. I asked for her report, and here it is.

Keep in mind that the war hasn't even started yet...

Ahhhh, yes. How quickly those reports from those FBI surveillance cameras reach you news people...I was one of the many waving into those cameras, some installed and some hand held by some very serious-looking folks---never cracked a smile, nor did they wave back.

This was my first major march. Adrianna made many telephone calls, and the original 12 people dwindled down to 4. But we were a mighty 4. One was a 17 year old girl, only child of a musician and his wife who were products of the whole protest scene in the 60's in San Francisco. They briefed Adrianna that Julie was not to be involved in any civil disobedience nor tear gas. As these were our goals, too, Adrianna agreed that we would follow those guidelines. The fourth in our party was Dosia, another psychologist, who is a practicing Buddhist and really fine human being. She brought a sign with a sitting Buddha and words urging compassion.

You've undoubtedly heard the estimates of attendance range from 250-500 thousand. All I can say is that there were people as far as the eye could see. Everywhere. And they were ALL so very well-behaved and mannered. Even the man who had his daughter in a stroller and kept running into the backs of my heels for a few hundred yards. After he did not respond to his daughter's stated concerns about being run into me, I finally stopped and asked her if she was OK. He then became more attentive. He was simply excited to have his lovely daughter, who had her own sign attached to her stroller imploring others to have a world without war, participating in this enormous event.

The rally began at 11AM with many many speakers. Busses continued to arrive while speakers shared their thoughts. Jesse Jackson moved me to tears, and spoke of a fire in the belly that was needed to oppose war and obtain services for the poor and oppressed in this country. A couple of labor leaders were similarly moving. There was a woman who was the head of a homeless person's union in PA who spoke out very strongly and beautifully.

Important in many of these messages was a theme that we have enough needy people and crimes committed by and in this country that required immediate resources. Many people stated that this was a war of the other-than-white and the poor. There was a tribute to Philip Berrigan, as he passed this fall. (Did you know he lived in a commune in Baltimore called Jonah House?) The man who wrote Born on the Fourth of July talked about Vietnam and how we could not perpetrate that kind of action once again. He was paralyzed from his chest down during his duty in VietNam and was in a wheelchair. A man from England spoke about the September 28 rally in London against a war.

Eventually, we began to form a march of about 2 miles (I think--that's what a policeman said to a marcher--but that could have simply been how much further we had to go). It was quite a process of thousands of people curling around en masse, and finally getting onto the street. There was a lot of stop and go. There were many artistic creations and some performance art and musicians. My favorite was a quartet of performance artists walking through the crowd. Three of them had large paper machier heads representing Bush, Rumsfield and Cheney. The Fourth had a similar head, but with an Uncle Sam hat and a skull with a bull horn narrating the actions of the other three in the most lovely deadpan I've heard in some time. We were treated to "George getting down with his peeps," as he did some sort of exotic bump and grind and tableaus featuring Bush, Cheney and Rumsfield. My favorite tableau was the simulated group sodomy. But then, I shouldn't under-rate the sight of Bush flashing peace signs. Rumsfield stroked Adrianna's lovely leopard coat. (She was NOT dressed as Winter Michigan Woman, which was my leopard-free ensemble for the temperatures in the teens and 20's.)

There were pockets of fellow protesters along the route. Some chanting and supporting us, and others with their own performance art, such as the man in total camouflage that was sitting on a lawn with a marionette "sticks-n-strings" suspended above him. There was the American Veterans Against the War group which sang and chanted many traditional slogans from the 60's and 70's and made up some of their own lyrics to military marching chants.

Speaking of chants: Never thought I'd hear, "Hell no, we won't go," again. But it was loud and strong, by many of the young, young participants in the march. Also the familiar, "1-2-3-4, We don't want your ------ war." (fill in the blank with numerous variations) It was a very disturbing kind of deja vu, aside from the technical fact that we have not officially started a war....

The crowd was predominantly white, but of all ages and socio-economic strata. Unbelievable!! And people from all over the country. There were some African American people. One African American woman carried a small placard saying, "Saddam Hussein never called me a nigger." There were some Islamic groups and "Jews for Peace." There were lots of groups representing NYC, with appeals that war is NOT the answer to 9/11. There were some Asian people.

We marched through many different neighborhoods to The Navy Yard. The emotional tenor of the group varied from near silence while walking through a very working-class neighborhood to uproarious as we went underneath a fairly wide overpass with wild acoustics.

There was only one counter-demonstration that I noticed at a hotel with balconies. Two floors up were four people suspending a banner with that cute little republican elephant symbol, and words urging military action. We waved, but like the people with the surveillance cameras, they didn't seem all that pleased with our greetings. Approximately four floors above them, spilling out of many many windows, were other people shouting and waving, suspending Amnesty International banners.

The police along the way had on these opal blue helmets with face gear of various sorts. No riot gear in sight.... Their responses varied considerably. Some were smiling and congenial. Others were veritably seething with--I don't know--disapproval, hate???

At the Navy Yard, where ANSWER was denied a permit for amplification and other speakers were scheduled, people milled about. Many people had to meet deadlines to catch their busses to various parts of the country. People stood and held their banners and we continued to pour into the streets in front of The Navy Yard. People talked to each other and mingled.

The experience, which I anticipated as "exhilarating," was, instead, "peaceful." Very peaceful.

Cheryl

Wal-Mart invades Kalamazoo, China, the world.