Friday, October 30, 2009

A New Day Rising: An Interview with David Swanson

Posted by Bob Sommer at 10:50 AM
David Swanson recently visited Kansas City to promote his new book, Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union.

I interviewed David for Rain Taxi Review of Books in a wide-ranging discussion of politics, history, and writing.

Here’s a brief excerpt from the interview:

Bob Sommer: While many would consider you politically on the far left, Daybreak, especially the first half of the book, espouses relatively conservative attitudes toward the Constitution and the Republic. You describe how far we have “strayed from adherence to the Constitution” and rather ominously state that “we are in unprecedented territory, far closer than ever before to losing our republic, and losing it in much the way that Rome lost hers.” Conservatives, in particular George W. Bush, have campaigned on the principle of strictly interpreting the Constitution. How do you reconcile that?

David Swanson: Well, I would need to see the evidence that many would consider me on the far left—I think what that would probably mean is that people have seen on television that advocacy for peace and justice and workers’ rights and healthcare constitute far left positions. It would mean that people have not looked at the opinion polls done by those same media outlets, which show that most positions I advocate for are strong majority positions in the United States. Most of us falsely believe we are in a fringe left minority because our televisions tell us that over and over again. But I think we have to constantly keep correcting that wrong understanding. Single-payer healthcare is seen as a crazy, commie, lefty, pinko position, except that a strong majority of Americans has favored it for decades—and down the line through most of the issues I talk about and care about.

Read the entire interview here.
0 comments

Saturday, October 24, 2009

350 Day in Kansas City

Posted by Bob Sommer at 5:41 PM
by Bob Sommer

350 parts per million! That’s the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere – safe for sustainable life.

Exceed 350 ppm and greenhouse gases accumulate, warming the planet, melting the ice caps, decreasing the reflective capacity of the Earth and so beginning a positive feedback loop that further accelerates the warming tendency. Floods, drought, species extinctions, extreme weather, and crop failures are some of the consequences of rising CO² levels, which have already reached 390 ppm and are increasing!

(all photos by Bob Sommer)
Activists gathered at Mill Creek Park in Kansas City as part of an International Day of Climate Action. Over 5,200 similar gatherings took place in 181 countries worldwide, serving as a virtual march on the world’s capitals to raise awareness and demand action.


John Kurmann addresses the gathering at Mill Creek Park in Kansas City.
“People in the industrialized countries throughout the world are primarily responsible for creating the climate crisis and we need to take the primary responsibility for solving it.”

Rep. Beth Low of the Missouri State House.
“These issues are pressing, critical, and must be addressed immediately.”

Kristin Riott
Bridging the Gap

Tom Bailey
Repower America

Following the rally, activitists marched peacefully through Kansas City's Country Club Plaza.

“We are going to send our message to the shoppers here in the Plaza, the symbolic heart of consumerism in Kansas City,” said John Kurmann.


0 comments
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

WHERE THE WIND BLEW

WHERE THE WIND BLEW
What they’re saying about WHERE THE WIND BLEW …

“This blistering, fast-paced tale of a man whose radical past catches up with him…cross-examines our culture, then and now.”
—Nina Shengold, Chronogram

“WHERE THE WIND BLEW is a story of the past and an allegory of the present.... Bob Sommer hears the music and voices of the past and gives you what America has become today.”
—Mason Williams (of “Classical Gas” fame)

“I found WHERE THE WIND BLEW engrossing and heartfelt…. Emotionally taut and historically intriguing, this novel explores the psyche of a man whose past finally catches him. Although set in the past, its themes transcend time.”
—Ron Jacobs, author of The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground

“I had a hard time putting WHERE THE WIND BLEW down.”
—Robert Pardun, author of Prairie Radical: A Journey through the Sixties

"...WHERE THE WIND BLEW is not intended to be a story about a hero but a parable of regret, and those stories are truest when the protagonists are people like us, ordinary people who are neither excessively virtuous nor intrinsically evil."
—Stephanie Eve Boone, American Book Review

“WHERE THE WIND BLEW…is sure to ignite strong reactions, regardless of political affiliation….The novel is vividly-realized, bringing both past and present to life.”
—Cynthia Reeser, Prick of the Spindle

“This story if so believable and well-told that I felt I had an insider's knowledge of what it would have been like to live through the protests on college campuses during the Vietnam War era.”
—Kristin Johnson, Whistling Shade

"I was 18 when the Vietnam War started, and the author does a wonderful job of creating a sense of time and place that brought back my memories of those days."
- Norm Jensen, onegoodmove

“I wanted to let you know that I am reading WHERE THE WIND BLEW and LOVE it!…Excellent writing! I am recommending it to everyone.”
—recent email from a manager at Borders

“What a great accomplishment! The emotional range in this book is just great. I felt close and attached to the characters.”
—unsolicited email from a reader

Two passages from WHERE THE WIND BLEW:

From Chapter 3:

"The idea seemed not only clearer to him last night, but vital, even urgent, and the conversation comes back to him now—how they sat for a long time on a rug beside the coffee table, passing joints and downing beers, while Simon picked the tobacco of filterless cigarettes from his teeth and described his tours in Vietnam—to Peter, to a couple of others nearby, but mostly to Peter—described the sharp, booming explosions of the five-inch guns on the Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin in ’64, firing hundreds of rounds into the darkness, hitting what Simon never knew, he said, ammo bunkers, VC, children, water buffalo, maybe Americans. What the fuck were we even shooting at? he asked Peter, leaning close, lowering his voice into a sharp whisper, as if Peter might explain it to him, might finally clear this up, and he waited until Peter shrugged helplessly and then continued, There’s no sense to any of it, man. No sense! He described his second tour, also, this time on a swift boat in the Mekong, where he saw a stack of rotting bodies on a buffalo path alongside the river, and what it was like to unleash the fifty-cal into a free-fire zone without a clue if they were hitting the enemy or just terrified villagers who had the bad luck to live where the VC wanted to hide. But Peter, these people—the North Vietnamese, the Vietcong—they just want their country back. They want everyone out—the French, the Americans, even the Communists. They’re nationalists, Peter. Their country’s been overrun by foreigners for decades, for centuries. He squinted, knowing what Peter would say next before he said it, and asked, Did you know that Ho Chi Minh wanted Truman’s help against the French before he went to the Communists? No, Peter said, as expected, trying to follow him, trying to piece together the fragments of unfamiliar history in his narrative, trying to listen as people came and went, as laughter and talk surrounded them, as someone strummed a guitar along with a Beethoven symphony booming through the stereo speakers; as he tried to fit classical music into the kaleidescope that whirled around him, and to connect the water buffalo and the North Vietnamese and Truman, searching for a pattern, an image, a story woven into the fabric of Simon’s talk.”

***
From Chapter 18:

“And she wondered, too, if he—if all those people like him back then—hadn’t done some of the things they did—maybe not…no, not all of them, but some of them—would anything have changed? It was true, she reasoned, that changing things meant rupturing what existed. That’s what was happening to her—right now. They had all been living on this thin, shiny veneer, living comfortable lives, fretting over trifles, burying themselves in the vicarious lives of celebrities, entertaining themselves with the false realities of reality television, but the veneer had cracked, and when they crashed through, nothing was underneath it, and they were still falling. And now she looked back up as she plunged downward and saw that all around her, that’s how others were living, though they didn’t know it yet, and anything could change their lives, just as hers changed. That was how she lived when she was young, too—while a war exploded, while the country nearly came apart. But she knew so little of what was beyond her small world. She’d been oblivious to everything else. Boyfriends, dances, dresses, music—that’s what that time meant to her, while all of this turmoil bubbled beneath it, and she wondered now, if everyone had just gone along like that, oblivious, indifferent, would the war have ever ended, would blacks still drink from separate water fountains, would the FBI spy on you?”

WHERE THE WIND BLEW (a novel), by Bob Sommer
BIG RIVER DISTRIBUTION is the official distributor for WHERE THE WIND BLEW.

AMAZON CUSTOMERS!

Please order WHERE THE WIND BLEW through Big River's on-line subsidiary, BOOKS-ON-ST-LOUIS, found under USED AND NEW BOOKS at Amazon.com.

Retail booksellers: Please call Big River directly at 314.918.9800 or e-mail Info@BigRiverDist.com.