Holly Northrop Blog

Last Thursday, while I was riding with my eyes closed on an overcrowded 6 train to my dentist, a older man stood in front of me and started talking. The only reason I noticed him at all was because I felt a slight warm breeze on my face that smelt like garlic. The nose curling stench immediately made my eyes pop open and bam! There he was, his lips moving around a slightly disturbing smile. I could not understand a damn thing he was saying because I had my headphones on. I pulled the left ear pod out of my ear and said, "Pardon me?"

His smile grew bigger at the thought of a conversation with me and he said, "You so old school with the cassette tape. What you listen to... REO Speedwagon?"

The second he smiled, I tried to move back away from him but I stepped on a small Hispanic woman who had climbed up my ass at some point during the trip uptown. She proceeded to bitch at me, in Spanish, and then pulled my hair, which had managed to weave itself inside her backpack. My head jerked back towards her even further as she screamed at me, "What'd a gotta move for! Stand still. Chica blanca estúpida"

As she glared at me, I yank my hair out of the zipper on her backpack and attempt to adjust myself back on the pole. But another woman had moved into the tiny space I had been blissfully in seconds before. I was left with nothing to hold onto as the 6 train came flying into 42nd street, Grand Central Station. I couldn't even ride it like a skateboard because there was no room for me to spread my feet apart and balance my ass. I was angled all wrong.

I just stood there laughing as I bounced from passenger to passenger like the silver ball in a pinball machine. No one else thought it was funny, but I thought it was perfect. It was either laugh or start punching people as I fell into them and they pushed me off. The only reason I didn't fall to the ground was because there was no room for me to fall to the ground. We came to aggressive stop and as the majority of the car exited at 42nd street, I was kicked around a few more times before I found refuge on a folding seat in the corner. It was there that I adjusted myself, smoothed down my frizzed out hair, and fixed the flat that someone had given my right shoe. I then stopped and rewound my tape to the Dylan song that had started this whole thing, thank you very much.

COMING SOON: STARBUCKS
I had to shoot the South Bronx for the Neighborhoods column and I swear to god I will never do anything thing like that again. Mott Haven is no place for me to be strolling around with a head full of red hair and a camera. The sad but tired fact of having white people wonder about in a predominantly black/Hispanic neighborhood means that gentrification cannot be far behind. Why the hell else would they have sent me up there? Other then secretly hoping I would be killed, but my editor is one of the few folks who happen to like me, so I doubt it. Supposedly, the South Bronx has a few urban pioneers hold up in a loft or two, although Martha and I didn't see a one, but for the most part me, my camera and my girlfriend were not welcome sights and it showed.

White folks go up there to either buy drugs or buy property. Neither of which are well received. One keeps the neighborhood in a depressed state and the other drives up property values that will ultimately force generations of families to move from whatever cluster fuck of a community they have managed to carve out for themselves. It pushes or pulls in all the wrong directions and why yes, I do hate what I represent. I still don't want to be shot on a Sunday afternoon in the South Bronx. I mean Christ, I haven't even seen The Lion King yet.

A GUN AS LONG AS MY ARM
I have been listening to Dylan for two weeks solid in a massive ramp up for Martin Scorsese documentary, No Direction Home: Bob Dylan on PBS American Masters Monday and Tuesday. I can't wait. Martha even let me play the soundtrack, Bootleg Series Vol. 7, in the car on the way up to the Sharp Company picnic somewhere in the woods of New York. That's right, I went to a creamy, dreamy 24th Annual Family Day Picnic. There were all the normal white bread things that corporate picnics bring, kids, beer, prizes, clowns and bees. We stayed long enough to not win any door prizes and for Martha to shoot a gun. Watching her shoot a rifle at the sky is, in my book, a most excellent reason to leave the house.

Martha was in Pittsburgh over the weekend for a golf event, which meant that I was home all alone and left to my own neurosis. And what do I do? I watched Bergman film, a Fellini film, and made a tape, but of course! The closest I came to going outside was on Saturday when I had to linger near the front door of my apartment building in order to pick up the mail. Seeing how I had to collect my urine for two days for two separate tests that my shinny new Endocrinologist wants me to take, I had a somewhat limited range. That whole urine collection thing was fucking disgusting and it made me feel like a crazy person. You know, like THAT kind of crazy. But, one urine test is the only way to see if I am truly back to normal, (what are the odds on that?) or if... oh let's not go there. The other test is to try to figure out why I still have hives.

But whatever, I'm a mess and that really isn't so surprising.

The Ingmar Bergman film, Autumn Sonata, probably wasn't the smartest thing for me to watch alone in the dark, seeing how I have big time MOM issues and all, but I had never seen it and besides it was Ingrid Bergman's last film. Did you know that she died on her birthday? Talk about a full circle. The Fellini thing (Nights of Cabiria) was that whole crazy screaming Italian woman mania that I just can't seem to take my eyes off of. All that black and white camera work in the hot sunlight of Rome can be quite stunning. The story was just so desperately sad that I should have my head examined for adding that on to the end of my day. Federico Fellini is not something to toy with, especially on a full moon.

AND I AM YOU AND WHAT I SEE IS ME
So this tape I made is a selection of a few songs from this silly list I've been intermittently working on in my spare time. The list consists of all the songs that have been an inspiration to me over my entire life, starting from my first musical memory of playing on the tile floor of the kitchen while my mom was washing dishes. The clock radio on top of the fridge was on and Nancy Sinatra's Boots came floating on down to me. The big list moves through the close-n-play period to the girl-group dance numbers that I used to do with the neighborhood kids in the unfenced backyards all along Hearts Avenue. Yes, I grew up on a street named Hearts Avenue. Anyway, the list goes on and on, winding around the teenage wasteland of southern Ohio, to college radio and alternative snobbery. The list fades out to 2005 but my focus has been mostly on the '60s '70s and a good block of the '80s. I have it in five-year chunks, because it is the only way I can keep my head around it. It's like my top 300, I guess.

Some songs are songs that when I heard them the first time, they totally changed the way I listen to music. Others, mark a personal event and some songs were the backdrop to long ago.

But all this list making and bullshit melancholy just makes me want to hear it for fucks sake, so I set out to crush some of it down into a 120 minute taster tape, if you will. But I got sidetracked deep in the 1970's, particularly '72-'77 and arguing with myself over whether or not The Beatles had a place on the tape there or before/after. Then there is the total bias that I have towards the Stones but in all fairness between '69 and '74, the Stones were putting out amazing records. Let it Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main Street, Goat Heads Soup and It's Only Rock-n-Roll. I couldn't have avoided them if I tried, and I so didn't. At thirteen, I was more of a Stones chick instead of a Beatles girl. The Stones were played in every bedroom, in every basement family room, in every pool hall, and in every Mustang I ever slid my Levi's into.

I actually put Pink Floyd's Echoes on the tape. Without so much as even an ounce of hesitation, I slapped the 23-minute Opus right there in the middle. Side two of Meddle had such a profound effect on me the first time I heard it a billion years ago that even to this day I can't help but smile and drift away whenever it is played. When reviewing my tape work Sunday morning, Echoes came on just as the black and white (Lily) jumped onto my lap. I put my feet up on my desk, laid my head back, closed my eyes and proceeded to let her kneed my stomach the entire length of the song. A feeling of such internal peace and safety washed over me. I tell you what, music and pets, now there's the shit.

It is September and I'm just trying to walk softly and keep my head down.

Last weeks unraveling of horror down in New Orleans left its mark on everything. Even Rehnquist's and Gilligan's passing could do little to crack the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina reporting.

My favorite quote pertaining to Hurricane Katrina, hands down, is from Barbra Bush (MOM) and her smug observation after touring the Houston Shelter. "So many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."

WOW. What a perfectly Christian thing for her to say. This thinking explains volumes on why President Bush is such a dick. That apple did not fall very far from the tree.

Bush runs this country just like a redneck family at Target with a brand new shiny credit card. I mean, what is our national dept? Five years ago, we had a surplus but now, with a slash and burn mentality at the helm there seems to be no end in sight. How in hells bells are we all supposed to pay a million people to relocate? How can this country absorb 400,000 jobs lost? I read somewhere that New York, just New York mind you, lost over one million jobs since the World Trade Center collapsed four years ago. Most of those jobs were in the first two years. On his website, Mike Bloomberg is touting out that he has created over 62,000 jobs in two years with his Five-Borough Economic Strategy. That is it? There are 8 million people here Mike, and that ratio is not at all impressive.

Another thing, Mike, the pit is still a pit, and it looks like an ashtray. Construction has yet to start on anything. The only thing you have managed to fix is transportation (above and below), and that is because the World Trade Center is the number one tourist destination in New York City. The only time anything happens down there is when ramping up for the live TV coverage of the memorial, so you look good against a backdrop of grey dirt. All week long, I watched as fabric and orange cones were strewn about, marking the space where the two towers actually stood; also known to every one outside of New York, as the 'footprints'. Crowd control gates were moved around and a new blue-sky backdrop with kid art was installed in the tourist area. Workers also, quite quickly I might add, built a special 9/11 StoryCorps booth in the same area. It's all just a big spit shine and a quick polish for 9/11 day because we all know that nothing is going to happen afterwards. Before long, snow will once again cover the piles of rusty steel beams that were delivered last summer in preparation for construction of the goofy Freedom Tower.

Ah yes, but back to this horseshit. Bush has been too busy hoarding federal money to fund his crusade to insert a puppet régime in Iraq that he left a gaping hole in this country's ability to advert a major natural disaster. He has managed to cut funding all over this country and especially in places just like New Orleans. We all pretty much knew by midweek that the FEMA guy was going to go. Someone needed to take the fall and he just looked the part of a puffy fall guy but he isn't the only one. Other heads must roll. That house has many snakes in it and we shouldn't let them stop with the first one they let slither out of the nest. I knew Michael Brown was expendable the second I saw his face. Many people within the Bush administration are expendable because that is how Dubya likes to keep it. Just like in a book of matches, keep a line of idiots in front of you so you can flick them off to the press, one-by-one, as needed.

They can promise all the money in the world but, trust me, when the cameras have been turned off and rug-cutting time comes around suddenly the rules will have changed. New York City never received all the federal aid that Bush promised. Instead, it is locked up in tax incentives for Lower Manhattan projects that in spite of everything haven't happened. Four years later, it is still hard to find a good job, and affordable housing, yet we are still at orange alert and now we can be searched at any point on any part of public transportation, pushing our civil liberties even further away from the original intent.

It all makes me wonder how the president is going to handle the total devastation of a major tourist attraction and displacement of one million people. How is he going to find jobs for people who didn't have jobs in New Orleans? That city had enormous unemployment before Katrina. City, State and Federal governments had long ago turned its back on the general population of New Orleans and now that same population is sprinkled out across America. Very white, Republican places like Salt Lake City or San Diego. It is not just money; it is education, health and welfare that are in serious jeopardy.

I worry about the people of New Orleans because their outcome, their livelihood speaks to the larger human condition of us. How far will we go to help people that we never gave a damn about before? What about the people that we don't give a shit about now and have no National Tragedy to call their own? Maybe Barbra was right. Maybe, we need little National Tragedy's all over so we can help the underprivileged by ripping them from their communities and culture to then turn around and assimilate them into the government subsidized fold.

It's not about rebuilding New Orleans, it is more about a shift in perspective as to what is important and demanding accountability of our elected officials. Or maybe we all need a good history lesson.

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
—first two graphs of The Declaration of Independence. Read the rest of it here.

For more fun historical documents go here..

American Red Cross

Amid a three-day weekend filled with Noam Chomsky and CNN's constant live video feeds from New Orleans, one could say I am more than just a little disappointed with my government. One could make the leap to total outrage and disgrace with my government.

I have to agree with the general feeling that if al-Qaida had bombed New Orleans instead of this all being just a weather issue, then things probably would have moved a little faster for the folks of the gulf coast. The death toll wouldn't be nearly as high. Dubya would have locked that city down, and American flags would have been waiving from every rooftop, instead of the white rescue flags of desperation. If this is the timed response that is to be expected with Homeland Security in a catastrophic event, then we are either fucked or being fucked with.

I really enjoyed the coverage of Mr. Bush leaving his vacation two days early and the flyover photos of him gazing out at New Orleans. I'm glad that the Vice President saw no need to interrupt his little stay in Wyoming. And Condi, Condi, Condi, tisk, tisk. Condi, I am so glad you felt so comfortable here in New York City to walk the streets of Madison Avenue and slap down five big Benjamin's on a nice little pair of pumps. Aren't you from Alabama? Maybe you can wear your big city shoes when you finally get around to going down home to survey the disaster. I hate where I grew up too but I'm not in public office where playing state favorites can get you a whole lot of trouble. But I guess not if you are a Republican, right? You are pitiful.

But the real stellar star is Michael Brown, director of FEMA and a friend of a friend of the Bush's. [Sigh] No wonder FEMA acts as if it has never ever seen a hurricane before.

Ultimately, all of this rests on our president's shoulders. It has to. That is what half this country hired him to do. The other half of us are waiting for him to actually do a good job instead of a butcher job. This would have been a great opportunity for him to step up. The only good thing that slid out of his smirky mouth on Friday was that the Army Corp of Engineers got two of the pipelines back up. An issue very close to his heart I am sure. With gas prices headed to the sky, his directive to relax the EPA guidelines so refineries can make dirty gas and keep the machines going, was the stuff of a true discriminatory thinking. Of course, this idea is temporary, but Mr. Bush will figure out a way later to make it permanent.

I can't help but think that the lack of response on the part of FEMA, the National Guard, and Dubya himself is racial. I mean, if it is as they claim the only reason it took so long for troops to arrive was that it takes "time" to mobilize them (bullshit) and not that we are over extended with the war in Iraq, then what other reason is there? Let us compare catastrophic events, shall we?

In New York City, almost four years ago this September, when the Trade Center's North and South Towers fell because of an act of terrorism, (Bush's favorite word), the National Guard had this city under lockdown by nightfall. The city was under a curfew and completely immobilized. Hell, by late afternoon the black fighter jets were flying up and down the Hudson ready to shoot anything that looked the least bit funny. Within 24hours of that disaster, the crazy eyed Marines were here and ready to shoot to kill if necessary. No one went anywhere or did anything, except sit in their apartments and watch the steady stream of horrific images on the TV.

In New Orleans, it took five days for the National Guard to even show up and drop off water. It took five days for anything to happen on the federal level. The amount of human suffering made a hundred times worse because of a cowboy, an equestrian flunky, and a big bucket of apathy is staggering.

In New York City, terrorists' hijacked two planes and plowed them into the heart of America's financial center. Corporate white people jumped from the burning towers before they fell and destroyed lower Manhattan's skyline and sanity. A nation mourned, and troops were in place by nightfall. The American Flag wrapped its arms around the city.

In New Orleans, poor black burdens on the economic social structure of this country drown in a Category 4 Hurricane. Thousands more died over the course of the week as food and water supplies were exhausted. In a city stressed to the point of madness in 90-degree temperatures, lawlessness prevailed. A nation mourned; The National Guard arrived five days later. Under Homeland Security, the city is now considered a military action. The backpedaling had begun.

A few random questions buzz around in my head. Where are the fucking pussy assed Democrats? Why isn't the Congressional Black Caucus calling for a march or at least an investigation? Why is the head of FEMA still the head of FEMA and why did Mr. Bush tell that fucker on the air that he was doing a great job? Why isn't the media doing anything more than just showing live feeds of folks being pulled to safety? Where is the timeline reporting and in-depth coverage of who some of these people (like Michael Brown) are? Why did the mayor of New Orleans apologize on 60 Minutes for lashing out on the radio against the governor and the president?

I haven't felt like this in four years and I am so very pissed at our president for making me feel like this. I can't even watch him speak on TV, because within minutes I start to get all "Squeaky" Fromme about it, my heart starts racing and I feel like I could puke.

These people work for us. Remember that. They work FOR US. We elected them not just to take care of shit that we don't want to deal with but to take care of things that are in the public interest. Our interest, not what they think our interest should be but what we indicate is important. This administration needs to get off the God stick and stop playing daddy. Someone must be held accountable for this.

[Sigh]

But then again, Karl Rowe committed treason and he still walks the halls at 1600 Pennsylvania sucking on fudgesicles in the middle of the day.

I am so ashamed.

American Red Cross