Monday, April 28, 2008

So Goes Ghettoville Ohio So Goes The Nation



My Mother used to say that C-town (Columbus - meaning Ohio the capital of Nowhere USA) was a sort of test market city for new products and for the mental pulse of the Nation. I suppose that would explain all the fast food merchants and fast food drive thru style aluminum shed building churches of the Heinz 57 varieties of Christendom. If mother was right then look at these photos. What does this say about the future - are we all soon to be Oakies struggling with our own tiny lives and similar Grapes of Wrath difficulties? Angry Oakies who gather hungry in the many Wal-Mart parkinglots in search of food with no money in our pockets, no food in our stomachs and no gas in our cars fuel tanks. Where will we go? To Wal-Mart I suppose because there are no town centers now, no town halls, no seats of Governance that are actually inhabited.
Actually this house is beautiful - the undulating foundation and facades a living example that is a current living example to the way the late and forgotten Ohio painter Charles Burchfield viewed Ohio and the idea of the North around him - an idea which he painted onto his canvass like some time capsule message to viewers in subsequent generations.
This photo looks like places I saw alongside the carcass of the old Mother Road in the springtime in Oklahoma - Route 66 - whom Ronald Reagan ironically killed off like the last of the great American dinosaurs - much like himself. Oklahoma is sublimely beautiful in the spring wildflower season. I travelled a good portion of that historical American highway after it was decommissioned (as if you can put a road and history like that out to pasture like a discarded former President and his wife). I think I got my kicks on Route 66 in 2003. So goes Route sixty-six so goes the Nation. So goes Columbus so goes the future....
At which point when everything you shop for, work for and ultimately live for materially speaking are made in a foreign country - just one other foreign country - namely China - do you yourself wake up and think - Do I live in a foreign country?
Speaking of foreign countries and foreigners - the good, the bad and the ugly - When the German Pope paid us here in North America a visit - and this so feels like an entry in a twenty-first century Poor Richard Almanack Benjamin Franklin of a blog to comment on this - but honestly... How can the German Pope travel around the world and talk of Christendom while Israel has systematically and effectively driven out almost all indigenous Christians from the land of Palestine - namely from good old Palestinian towns the likes of which Jesus Christ himself hailed from - Bethlehem or places like Hebron and all that - I mean what kind of German leader in such a high held and gilded throne dare travel around on behalf of Christendom and ignore even discussing the fact that Christians indigenous to Palestinian Christian heritage sites have been culturally and ethnically cleansed? I'm talking about the very descendents of this worlds first Christians and first Churches. What kind of Zion is that? The seat of the Holy Roman Empire in the form of the Catholic church has always throughout it's history sided with those in power. At one time the Vatican sided with the Germans and the Zionists of the latter half of the twentieth century will not let us forget that. And now a German Pope is siding with the international Zionist Oligarchs and their multi-national corporate will and saying nothing - NOTHING - about the cultural and ethnic cleansing of indigenous Christians trapped from within or driven out of Palestine (To say nothing of all those pesky Muslims who just wont go away as easily). This is as unforgivable as the Zionist war machinations that ruthlessly proclaimed and chanted in May of 1948 about a land without a people for a people without a land. Except there were Christians and Muslims and Jews living side by side in peace more often than not in that land supposeably without a people for a people supposeably without a land. What do you do when recorded history was recorded as a blantant and bold face lie? You go shop at Wal-mart with someone elses money and forget being told as fast possible - that is until finding out that a typically American made invention that your grandfather once had is now proudly made in China. Help me Lord to accept the things that I cannot change.
Today I met and I really have to write this - I had to meet with some officer or agent of sorts regarding my Blogger profile. I was pleased to do so. I wrote that Blogger profile as an excersize in free speech and stand behind every word of it. The fact that I am being tracked down - as if I were in hiding to give an account in person regarding all that is interesting. I felt like I was simultaneously in both the Matrix and the Fight Club. The interviewing officer was charming and very skilled - beautiful and built like an angel or some super human. If only I myself were. At the end of our interview of sorts I said I had hoped I was being contacted for a job - one that would get me out of the endless cycle of financial disillusionment of being trapped on the very short leash of working poor Cheney/Bush II il capitalismo. I should have just offered to trade sexual favors for cash instead. Still I feel like Allen Ginsberg would be proud of me following his example - that he who dies with the fattest FBI file wins - well that's my paraphrase anyway. The interviewing officer suggested I write a book - well I have - I wanted to tell him that the publishing industry IS the Zionist ministry of Propaganda and that I had no chance in getting published for money given what I know about the other history of Palestine that has been erased, erradicated and driven out. I wanted to tell this fine young man of this great nation - the US of A - that the US is only involved in Iraq to contain and redistribute Blowback the US has earned to another part of the world - to a land the Zionists of the Middle East see as the grass being greener than in their own stolen back yards. Or in this case the Oil being blacker and the dollar being bigger greener and fatter in their bank accounts.
Meanwhile the US still pays Is-royale (Zions Israel) 22 million dollars a day and meanwhile Ghettoville, USA gets poorer, sicker, stupider, fatter, angrier, rustier and more dissatisfied with the dirty and discarded empty pie pan they were left with. When will the New Romans turn in disgust and just walk away from New Judea? Obama-nation - Clinton-nation - POW Repuglican McCain and Able nation no matter what little vote you do or don't cast nothing will change the matrix of lies we are fed intravenously.
When I met with those agents I almost expected them to offer me a Red or Blue pill - with me wondering if it was available as a suppository. Either that or I half expected my mouth to disappear and while I was literally bugged via my navel like Neo. Except life is never that interesting even though the truth is always stranger than fiction. The truth doesn't sell and isn't convincing anyway. And who is to say that Osama bin Hidin' won't actually go down in history at some point as some sort of new Paul Revere? Meanwhile I'll be writing the coffeetable book/illustrated Biography of Bin Laden for Children. Now if I could just find a publisher for that one....
DISCLAIMER (as if I really needed to write this) Jews aren't the problem neither is Israel - Christians aren't the problem, Muslims and Arabs aren't the problem - neither is secularism or Atheism - The problem is ZIONISM and only Zionism. History has shown Jews, Christians and Muslims have lived in centuries of peace of prosperity rather than in hatred and suffering. The Islamic nations never drove the Israelites into the sea - But the AIPAC political Matrix of control needs to be turned down if not altogether stopped for enabling Zionisms atrocities to continue.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Mecca Park

Mecca Park in Mifflinville or as I call it Ghettoville, Ohio USA. This is a forgotten Park nestled off the Ghettoville infamous corner of Agler and Perue in a old and equally forgotten AmVets neighborhood from the 1950's. This isn't Columbus, Ohio the state capital this is an autonomous township with a long and separate history within the modern day metroplex and urban sprawl of the Capital of Nowhere - Columbus - Ohio.

Mecca Park used to be serviced off of the old 3C highway - by three little roads - Albert, Mecca and Eddystone (better known these days as stoned Eddie). But at some point Columbus did a venomously French thing - akin to building nuclear reactor power plants on their borders to minimumize French national damage in the even of a Chernobyl. Not very neighborly - just ask the Belgians about all that. So Columbus dumped a cheaply built housing project atop Mecca and Eddystone roads while adding to the population density of Mecca Park dramatically. Now all of that traffic in and out of Mecca Park to the 3C (or Westerville road at this part as it is called) gets bottle necked on Albert at the projects.

I'm not at all against public housing or those who utilitize it. But this project was not built to be something to look at, neither was it built to be considerate of its neighbors neighborhood. C'est la vie I suppose. Typical Columbus. Like Dallas is all money and no taste Columbus is neither. Fortunately the housing complex in question is now home to a large and unique Somalian community with a grand Mosque just built to facilitate their prayers. There is even now on the old Albert Avenue a delightful Minaret built to reference the grain silos of barns from this regions architectural history. Although no body seems to ketch this bit of subtle architectural language. In an area of town sadly lacking any landmarks or city parks this inadvert minaret seems to anchor on an axial line just at the bend in the street and connecting it all up over the horizon. If only the minaret were larger and more visible from the lost end of Albert at Perdue.

Observing all of this has me thinking how much more unique this neighborhood could be. Restore Mecca Road to Mecca Park connect the Mosque on Albert with access to Mecca road - and viola a lovely middle class Muslim community with affordable housing options occurs and all within walking to a Mosque for those early morning and late night prayers. Property value would go up and traffic would be less congested in an area where the children play.

I do like observing all this happen. For some this is a bad neighborhood. For others this neighborhood went into a rapid decline in value and self worth with the advent of the Mosque being built. For me I have a more optimistic view: In a community that has suffered socially in the last couple decades from a lack of moral and ethical awareness this neighborhood could use all the religion it can get and a few less liquor establishments. A Mosque brings men and women out onto the streets to gather and interact the way a city park once used to as a vital free space in a community. Given their nighttime prayers the neighborhood is kept that much safer throught the day and night with or without all the extra city lighting.

Seeing the women in all their color from African fabrics billowing about like sails caught on the wind - gliding by in elegant and foreign ways is a tremendous gift from Somalia for this bored neighborhood. Seeing the men in their beards and kufi hats and long ankle lenght shirts - with prayer beads dangling from their finger tips and all with very clean clothes - is all a welcome relief to a neighborhood built out of an unaware 1950's consumerist domestic commercial nihilism - I don't know but Ghettoville now has a new dimension of soul added into it's melting pot of flavors.

This new dimension is a very much welcome relief to the lines at the corner and night shops selling liquor and lotto tickets to a rather desperate and nervous driven, over caffeinated and nicotined customer. Perhaps all the prayers coming from the Mosque and neighboring homes five times a day is spilling over into the surrounding homes and lives and woodland - ushering in a some much needed hope for change for this old quartier of Ghettoville.






Monday, April 7, 2008

Farewell Linden Air Drive-In




Farewell Linden Air Drive-In movies and way cool sign. Actually the Linden Air Drive-in has been closed for many years. After that the place was a flea market, however, the sign stood until sometime in March '08 when it was dismantled. Until last month that sign was in my opinion a landmark and a neccessary one at that. Without this sign I can't find where my street is off of the old 3C highway. Neither can I find the entrance for Habitat for Humanity the thrift store for DIY home owners (or slum lords). For some reason I was mesmerized by the sign and it's cinematic history. America has no sense of the Sacred - whether pummeling Native lands and culture to build concrete and aluminum shed buildings for shopping on once woodlands and wetlands just to be surrounded by acres of tarmac for parking - or for the US's own history from back in the day in the nineteen fifties to build drive in "theaters".
The old Linden Air Drive-In Screen still stands and I can see it from my back yard though no movies play on it. One less thing to do in Ghettoville in this decade. The rows of hill like humps for parking to see the screen still remain like a strange forgotten burial mound for a culture with no history and no intention for a history. Those mounds now holding the trees that grew up there over time. I suspect the cinematic graveyard will be raised for future Ghettoville housing to play out in after the plastic freshness wears off. For the moment in the economic times of this day and age in this region the woodland areas prevail and the ravines going to Alum Creek "river" flow and flood with Springs arrival.
To compliment my interest in doing my part to protect the ecological sphere or membrane around the planet that all known life in our solar system depend on, I've hung up a cotton rope clothes line - actually I just can't afford my electric bill. The pulley's that I bought are plastic and will survive all life forms on this planet except maybe Ghettovilles die hard cockroaches I suppose. In the mean time my clothes dry rather fast and cheaply on this line. Despite Columbus' air pollution when I bring in the clothes they smell better than synthetic fabric softener fragrances. In the photo below the clothes line is some reproduction made in China enamelled metal glider built like the Ohio trademark Lustron home. That new glider is considerably smaller than the one grandma used to have. I guess I should string up a hammock for napping in while waiting on the laundry to dry.
I'm behind in my utility bills - juggling which one will get paid this month. I still don't have the money for a refrigerator. I need to put up a fence to keep the dog in some part of the yard without a leash and to keep neighborhood bad boys from crossing into the yard because there haven't been any new city parks built in Ghettoville for a long time - so there is no place to hang out and keep out of trouble in.
The photo for FOOD sort of says it all. Closed up former Garage Station advertising food as a basic staple I guess - not really appetizing - no wonder obesity and colon cancer run rampant. The US invades an oil rich nation for a lie - gas prices go up and the economy bottoms out. You can just observe all of this anywhere if you care to look from your car windows. It all looks like a Depression when you take your eyes off of the TV screen or from the wind shield and look around - especially when I look at my bills verses my income. To say nothing of absolute unhappiness with the meaning of this lie called l_i_f_e.
I just want to at least pay my bills. Steer clear of debt and save some money. But all of this is nothing more than peace pipe dreams from the book Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee. No wonder every day and night there is a heavy haze just under the layer of automotive brown exhaust, a heavy haze of a disreputable libertine bluish green haze of can-o-bliss hanging over Ghettoville blowing north east outta Gangsterville.