The Blasters

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The Blasters

Blast from the Past

Rockabilly legends the Blasters reunite

By Greg Cahill

To read the mid-’80s rock press, you’d have thought that Dave and Phil Alvin were the Cain and Abel of rock and roll. After a six-year run as primary songwriter and frontman, respectively, for the influential rockabilly band the Blasters–which helped launch the roots-rock movement–the brothers called it quits after a bitter clash that saw the siblings parting ways.

But blood is thicker than ink. Dave, 46, and Phil, 48, are reuniting for the first time in a decade, getting the band back together for a few dates that bring the original Blasters to the Mystic Theatre on March 10.

“My brother and I both had the same musical tastes, for the most part,” explains Dave Alvin during a phone interview from his Los Angeles home. “The problem was, as Bob Dylan sang, we just saw it from a different point of view.”

The tour isn’t exactly a family reunion. Rather, it marks the release of Testament (Rhino), a new two-CD anthology featuring outtakes, rarities, and previously unreleased tracks. While the original band split up in 1985, Phil still performs with a revamped lineup. But for hardcore rock fans, the upcoming reunion–with Dave and Phil Alvin, pianist Gene Taylor, bassist John Bazz, and drummer Bill Bateman–is on the par of a roots-rock Beatles union.

“To me,” says Dave, “the Blasters are those five guys you’re going to see.”

Indeed, the original Blasters played a pivotal role in launching the Americana movement that last week saw the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack snag Album of the Year honors at the Grammy Awards. But at a time when America’s airwaves were flooded with easy listening, country pop, and arena rock, the Blasters, from 1981-’85, spearheaded a roots-music revival with songs steeped in blues, Cajun, New Orleans R&B, boogie-woogie country, nortenos, and rockabilly, and with lyrics rife with American archetypes.

Along the way, the Blasters got Los Lobos their first Hollywood gigs and their first recording contract, and brought Dwight Yoakam on his first national tour when Yoakam was too country for Nashville.

It all started in Downey, the L.A. suburb that was home to ’70s easy-listening sensations the Carpenters. Downey also was a blue-collar bedroom community for local aerospace drones and Firestone factory workers. But two blocks away from the Alvin household sat a prime-rib joint with a lounge piano player who had been a fixture on the South Central jazz scene 20-years earlier.

The Alvins and their blues-fan pals ate a lot of prime rib that summer, and before long guitarist and singer Phil was auditioning for a spot on a show that featured Big Joe Turner himself. Another buddy, whose mom had been a jazz singer years before, introduced the Alvins to some of her famous house guests, including blues guitarist T-Bone Walker and New Orleans sax great Lee Allen (the Fats Domino sideman who later played with Blasters).

“I was just 13, so I was the guy sitting on the amp, let’s put it that way,” Dave Alvin recalls with a laugh. “But my brother was playing with all those cats.”

The Alvins learned more than licks during those visits. “There has never been anyone like those guys and there never will be, as cliché as that sounds,” Alvin says. “When you’re in the presence of those kind of people, it’s just magical. We knew then that we were blessed to be around those guys. And the best way to honor them is to be yourself.”

Before long, the Blasters–aided at times by Lee Allen and sax player Steve Berlin (a member of Los Lobos)–were burning up stages on L.A.’s burgeoning punk and roots-rock scene, where they shared the bill with such bands as Asleep at the Wheel, Black Flag, the Cramps, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, the Go-Go’s, and X.

An independently produced 1980 album, American Music (Rollin’ Rock), earned the Blasters a recording contract with Slash Records (distributed by Warner Bros.). The self-titled Slash debut, released in 1981, entered the Top 40, got the Blasters on American Bandstand, and put roots music in the mainstream. Two more albums and a live EP followed. But after the death of the Alvins’ mother, creative differences and personal conflicts started to take their toll. The band’s demise came after a gig in Montreal.

“You see, no matter what sort of soap operas or psychodramas we had going backstage, we never let it drift onstage, really,” Alvin explains. “But one night in Montreal, in ’85, it did drift onstage and I tendered my resignation–to use nicer words than I used that night–and I was gone.”

As for the “psychodrama” behind that implosion, Alvin says it extended far beyond sibling rivalry. “Everybody always pegs it on the two brothers, but it was all five of us–we’re all insane,” he says. “I’m mean, you have five guys who went way back, and there’s a lot of old hometown stuff. Everybody knows everybody’s secret spaces and all that.”

After the breakup, the much anticipated solo debuts by Dave and Phil underscored the creative differences. Phil, who had returned to UCLA to finish his doctorate in mathematics, released the eccentric 1986 solo album Un “Sung Stories” (Slash), which featured cameos by members of Sun Ra’s avant-jazz Arkestra and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. His next and last solo album, County Fair 2000 (Hightone), appeared in 1994 and featured members of the Faultline Syncopators, a trad-jazz band.

Brother Dave has proved more prolific–and traditional–with songs that pay homage to the working man. In 1987, he helped redefine the Americana singer/songwriter idiom with his solo debut Romeo’s Escape (Epic), which included “Long White Cadillac” (later a hit for Dwight Yoakam) and “Fourth of July” (also covered by X). Dave also contributed the title track to director Allison Anders’ 1987 film Border Radio.

Meanwhile, he has chalked up a string of acclaimed folk-based recordings, including King of California and last year’s Public Domain: Songs from the Wild Land.

While his music has evolved since his stint with the Blasters, Alvin waxes nostalgic for those formative years. “I miss those days,” he admits, “because there are times when it’s a Saturday night and someone will say, ‘Hey, let’s go do something,’ and I’ll say, ‘Yeah, let’s go see Big Joe Turner! Oh, we can’t do that.” (Turner died in 1985.)

“It’s one of the reasons that I miss the Blasters in a way,” he continues, “because while there are elements of that music in my solo stuff, the Blasters were pretty darned good at reviving that period.

“I mean, my brother can sing just like Big Joe Turner, when he wants to really turn it on. . . .”

The Blasters perform Sunday, March 10, at 8pm, at the Mystic Theatre, 21 Petaluma Blvd. N., Petaluma. Tickets are $22. 707.765.2121.

From the March 7-13, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Open Mic

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Why does the American Horse Council think equines belong in the slaughterhouse?

By Colleen Murphy

To most Americans, it’s a simple question with a clear answer. Should a horse that has spent her life running the track or working the farm end up as a lump of flesh on a dinner plate in Belgium?

I think the answer is no. But I’ve lived and worked with horses most of my life, and I’ll frankly confess that I love and respect them, so my answer is no big surprise. I’m not alone in that feeling, which is why horse meat isn’t on the menu here in America.

But one group thinks I’m out of line. Am I referring to some shadowy cabal of exporters desperate to trade horse meat to Europe?

Nope. I’m talking about the American Horse Council. In fact, the council feels so strongly on this issue that it’s opposing the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act (HR 3781). This bill, which is sponsored by Congresswoman Connie Morella, R-Md., and enjoys bipartisan support, would ban the slaughter of horses for human consumption.

Why does an organization claiming to represent horse owners oppose a bill that would put a stop to this shameful industry, which slaughters some 50,000 horses a year, including wild horses and an increasing number of stolen animals?

I don’t know. Perhaps it’s because some in the horse industry view slaughterhouses as a convenient dumping ground for unwanted animals, including the thousands who come from racetracks because they’re no longer competitive.

What I do know is that the arguments against the slaughter ban are, to put it politely, full of horse manure.

For instance, some opponents of the bill say it will cause more inhumane treatment. If people can’t easily get rid of their unwanted horses, the thinking goes, they’ll stop feeding them or abuse them in some other way.

There are two major flaws in this argument.

First, the slaughter process itself is not a humane method of disposal. Most horses arrive at slaughterhouses via livestock auctions where, often unknown to the seller, they are bought by middlemen working for the slaughter mills. These so-called killer buyers travel from one auction to the next collecting young, healthy, sick, and old animals until their trucks are full. Some are shipped for more than 24 hours at a time without food, water, or rest.

Indeed, the actual transport of the horses is just as cruel as their slaughter, if not more so. Horse protection groups have observed injured horses being beaten onto double deck trailers only to again be beaten upon arrival at the slaughterhouse.

Second, and more important, we already have a pretty good idea that the law will work well because we’ve tried it here. In California, we don’t slaughter horses, and we haven’t seen an increase in abuse.

There’s another common argument against HR 3781 that has less to do with horses than with political correctness. I call it the “Live and Let Die” argument. Who are we, say some folks, to stop the Europeans from eating horses? Why should equines be any different from cows or chickens?

In a way, I agree with these folks. That’s why I’m a vegetarian. But I don’t think you have to swear off meat to be against slaughtering horses. All it takes is a quick bit of simple analysis.

Sure, some Europeans (along with some Japanese and others) have values and attitudes that makes them feel comfortable eating horses, just as some countries are comfortable with bullfighting or cockfighting.

But in America, where horses remain a vital symbol of the untamed West, we have our own values. The thought of slaughtering a healthy horse (and make no mistake–most horses that end up in slaughterhouses are perfectly healthy) makes most of us shudder. Do we have to put aside our feelings and values and let our country serve as an abattoir for European diners?

I don’t think so.

The horse slaughter industry is already on its last legs in America. We used to kill more than 300,000 of these animals a year for human consumption. Now, only three facilities still do this dirty work: two in Texas and one in Illinois.

Can we get by without those three killing grounds? Yes. Will I sleep better knowing my two horses will never end up in them, no matter what happens? Better believe it.

Horse owner and equine advocate Colleen Murphy lives in Windsor.

From the March 7-13, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Homemade Candy

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Brittle in the Kitchen

Making candy with a broken heart

By Marina Wolf

We cook from cans now in my house. We eat soups and chili, fruit cocktail, tuna fish. Our recycling bin is filling up with the jagged edges of our indifference. It’s survivalist eating, and what is surviving is us. My live-in lover and I have not cooked together in months.

This didn’t use to bother me, back when our excuse was star-crossed schedules. And anyway, we needed a break from the intense list compiling, menu making, grocery shopping that marked a more, shall we say, creative era in our eating.

But lately I, who used to delight in feeding her, have not been able to cook for her without feeling that I am somehow doing penance for acts that we both know I commit, that we mutually agreed on, and therefore aren’t really sins–but there you have it.

Guilt is a highly effective appetite suppressant, and when you’re not that hungry, convenience food is the most efficient fuel.

So it surprised me the other morning to find us both in the kitchen. I suddenly felt awkward, as though we were two strangers in an elevator going all the way to the top of the building.

But we both had a rare day off, and confronted with the pressures of imminent gift-giving requirements, we came to an agreement: We would make candy, a homemade version of Almond Roca, to be precise, with a brittle layer of toffee slathered with milk chocolate and coated with almond bits.

She had a recipe from one of her work parties that I never have the time to go to. I had a confectionery book culled from the teetering piles of cookbooks that we argue about from time to time.

We had our issues, but we also had our mission, and somehow, together, we had to make this work.

Turns out candy is a scary substance to work with, deceptively simple in its composition, but requiring a great deal of attention, being essentially sugar on a controlled burn.

The cookbook I referred to spoke of the fact that you can interrupt melted sugar at any of five stages of increasing temperature and get five different sorts of candy. We were going for extreme confectionery. We were playing hardball, literally, going for the far side of the candy thermometer where it looks as though the mercury might shoot out the end any minute.

As soon as the sugar melted and began to thicken and bubble, I grew entranced by the obvious alchemy of it–a good thing, because at temperatures like this, you can’t look away for a second.

I stirred incessantly at the pale, glutinous mass that formed in our little pan. My lover roamed around our small kitchen, putting away dishes, looking over my shoulder. We spoke haltingly, about gift-wrap, about when I’d be taking off for my next “away” weekend.

I kept interrupting her and myself to peer more closely into the pan, my mind whirling with doubts: What if I burn myself? I don’t know how this goes. How do I know when it’s enough? This feels as though it’s taking forever. Is this how it’s supposed to be?

Here, I said suddenly, tired of searching for answers in a sugary swirl that was as inscrutable as a broken Magic 8-Ball. Will you stir? She took the wooden spoon and cautiously began stirring. I watched at first, not sure that she wouldn’t spill on herself, but then I relaxed a little.

I drank down a glass of orange juice (it was morning–did I mention this?), and then gently took the spoon back from her and continued to stir, scraping carefully along the bottom and the sides.

The changes happened almost imperceptibly at first, with the pale sludge getting more unctuous, roiling with thick, creamy strands that showed golden along the edges. The color deepened, and I stirred, hypnotized. It was starting to look promising.

Then suddenly the magic broke. The candy turned chaotic and ugly, all curds of mahogany bubbling fiercely in nothing more mystical than burning butter. The stuff had de-emulsified, broken apart. I stirred harder, but there was no going back.

Silently I showed the pan to her, and shrugged my shoulders. Maybe this was a lost cause. Almost hopelessly, I dropped a bit into a glass of cold water and fished out the result. The droplet crunched between my teeth, sweet and buttery-rich with promise.

Holding my breath, I carefully emptied the liquid onto the wax-papered pan and watched the substance spread in muddy currents across the pan, leaving hissing, curled-up edges in its wake. My lover, too, eyed the pan dubiously, then we went back to our desultory conversation while we waited for the stuff to cool. The minutes passed, and the surface of the candy dulled. I tapped tentatively on the greasy surface. It had solidified according to plan. But still, it could not be good enough, I thought, poking at the edges.

One shard came free, and I nervously put it in my mouth after offering my lover a piece. We both smiled at once. Yes. The toffee melted on my tongue, its hard edges crumbling away to a luscious, chewy mouthful.

Still grinning, I lifted the wax paper from the pan. The toffee came away in one stiff sheet. If we dropped it, it would break into a hundred little pieces.

From the March 7-13, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

‘Storytelling’

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‘Storytelling’

Gripes of Wrath

Todd Solondz goes after the bourgeoisie in ‘Storytelling’

By

First and foremost, director Todd Solondz is a very funny guy; that is, if one can get past the provocation of his material. The director of Storytelling, whose last film was the unwatchable Happiness, plays with dynamite that would have blown the face off many an erstwhile shock comedian. But is he more than just a bilious humorist?

Storytelling is a two-part film. In the first section, “Fiction,” set in the middle of the Reagan years, a callow punk-rock girl named Vi (Selma Vlair) is used, first privately and then publicly, by her creative-writing teacher (Robert Wisdom).

The teacher, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of a story called “A Sunday Lynching,” is black. He grudge-fucks his silly white students, which has led some sensitive critics to describe what happens to Vi as rape. Certainly it’s sex on the edge of being out of bounds, and it’s hard for the referee to call. Since Solondz had to have an R rating to sell his film, he mutilated this scene by overlaying a huge, red “Censored” box to confound the prim stupidity of the MPAA. The disgusting scene, even covered over, has a hideo-comic payoff: It feeds into the second half of the film, titled “Non-Fiction,” the much more overtly comic section.

“Non-Fiction” plays as a parody on the nouveau documentary–an inside joke. Paul Giamatti plays Toby Oxman, an aspiring filmmaker currently working in a shoe store.

This ox has all the wrong instincts as a filmmaker. His tongue is clotted with sociological clichés, and he possesses an easily distracted mind. Fortunately, nobody notices: neither his subject–an inert suburban kid named Scooby Livingston (Mark Webber)–nor his subject’s grotesquely venal family.

The axe Solondz is grinding here was polished to surgical sharpness by Albert Brooks in his 1979 film Real Life. But Solondz prefers to accuse the suburban dopes as much as the sleazy idiot with the minicam: It’s easy (and just) to say that Solondz himself has shamed and distorted his characters, just as Oxman does.

As the mom, Julie Hagerty, a fine comic, is treated like a cluck for caring about her children. John Goodman, on the other hand, is more real in his truculent househusband role than anyone else in this film (Storytelling is as full of straw men as a cornfield). Goodman brings hints of compassion to the role; he’s too big to flatten. Since we routinely congratulate directors for pushing actors beyond their limits, can’t we also congratulate actors for instinctively refusing to cross certain lines, for having better sense than their directors?

Again, “Non-Fiction” is often funny, especially in its moments of vindictive political comedy about the little princeling of the Livingston family, Mikey (Jonathan Osser), hounding the Salvadoran maid (Lupe Ontiveros). Still, these scenes never pay off, except in the usual crotchets to which Solondz always returns: the cruelty and lack of feeling of the middle class. At some point, a filmmaker has to realize that the bourgeoisie, like the poor, will be with us always.

Solondz has the natural inclination of a humorist, to mock and jibe–and there are worse qualities. But Solondz needs to see his figures of authority, like the bullying teacher and the mourning maid, as worthy of mockery too. He needs to be as ruthless with his own big ideas as he is with the characters he creates.

‘Storytelling’ opens Friday, March 8, at the Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth St., San Rafael. For details, see , or call 415.454.1222.

From the March 7-13, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Pilobolus

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Pilobolus

Staged Heat: The dancers of Pilobolus strike a pose.

Pilobolean Logic

Dance company finds order in apparent chaos

By Marina Wolf

Even if you’ve never watched Pilobolus, you’ve probably seen Pilobolus, if only in one of those calendars or posters celebrating the dancer’s body. You can’t miss ’em, though you might not be able to count them in the tangle of arms, heads, and legs that form some of the group’s more dramatic poses.

“Yes, well, we show off a bit for those,” admits Jonathan Wolken, cofounder and one of Pilobolus’ artistic directors.

But actually the poses aren’t that much of a stretch from the dance company’s norm, as North Bay audiences will see when the group performs in San Rafael on March 16.

Onstage, the six-member company dances along an ever shifting edge between balance and glorious free fall. And Pilobolus, named after a barnyard fungus with equally vigorous habits, has become best known for works that propel the dancers along insane trajectories that intersect in the most unlikely of configurations.

To the viewer, these extraordinary meetings of bodies in time and space might seem impossible. To the dancers, claims Wolken, the positions make perfect sense.

“It’s more about balance than strength,” he says, speaking by phone from Pilobolus’ home base in Connecticut.

“You just learn how to use your weight and strength and balance in an intuitive way,” he continues, “so that when you get in a Pilobolean grapple of any sort, there is an internal logic that appears immediately.”

In another sense, this internal logic is far from immediate; it’s evolved considerably over the group’s 31 years of existence. New dancers must not only learn the repertoire–when to leap, where to catch–they also have to merge with the organic logic of the collective body.

“There is a steeping process, like tea, and you become more of Pilobolus as you do this,” Wolken says.

As Pilobolus has grown in stature in the dance world, its works have been performed by ballet companies around the country. But Wolken and the other artistic directors prefer to work with dancers who have their own movement logic.

“A really useful term is ‘movement intelligence,'” says Wolken. “It’s not really a quotient of anything, but it describes how people choose to move when they’re inventing on the spot. We want to know what they do with what they have.”

The current dancers have, among other things, experience in break dancing and martial arts, as well as traditional stints in modern companies.

In other words, they have dance training that the original Pilobolus dancers did not. The group was founded in 1971, when Wolken and other soon-to-graduate seniors took a beginning-level modern dance class at Dartmouth. The proto-Pilobolus made up for its lack of experience with a lot of excitement, strong bodies, and not a jot of technique to get in the way of creative processes.

“Technique for us was not something we were physically capable of,” recalls Wolken about those first works. “There wasn’t really much we could do that was traditional, so we began moving nontraditionally. We found ways of combining our individual bodies into an agglomerated whole of some kind or another. It wasn’t really a matter of choice. We just did what we could do.”

Then as now the group relied on improv for inspiration. You can see it when you watch them in action, in the startling rushes of their throws, leaps, and catches, in acrobatics that spring from the molten core of pure movement. At the same time, you will also notice a certain dreamlike narrative framework that has emerged with time and which Wolken considers one of the group’s more significant artistic developments.

“There are two poles–we think of them as poles in our style,” he says. “One of them is obviously abstract, and the other is very theatrical. We’ve touched on the abstract, especially in our earlier works, and the real breakthrough for us was finding a way over to the theatrical side.”

In their newest commission, a piece that debuted at the Winter Olympics last month, Pilobolus returned to its abstract origins. “The conceit of the piece was sport and art, which is of interest to us, not so much in terms of sport but the general exuberance of movement and athleticism,” Wolken says. “It taps into one of the early roots of Pilobolus, as we were more physically adept than we were artistically knowing. That has changed, of course, over 31 years, and now to go back and touch on the roots of sport and art is an interesting philosophical subject.”

The audience posed another challenge. The group was warned that the Mormon crowd would require a certain modesty, which could have been a little restrictive for a group whose physicality in pairings and groupings can be as fiery as it is fast.

“Our natural tendency when you see a man and a woman together is to take the situation sexually,” Wolken says. “That’s the direction one is pulled. That’s great, because dance works on that basis as well. There’s heat, there’s real heat. We use that sexuality and play on it.

“But at the Olympics, I think people bring a sort of chaste mind to the audience that helps us a lot.”

And if the viewers come ready to see hot stuff, that’s OK too, Wolken says. “We want the audience to bring something active with it. We don’t want a passive audience.”

Pilobolus Dance Theatre perform Saturday, March 16, at 8pm at the Marin Center, Avenue of the Flags, San Rafael. Tickets are $22-$35 for adults and $18 for kids 18 and under. For details, call 415.472.3500.

From the March 7-13, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Dennis Lee

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Dennis Lee

Evangelist Dennis Lee sells the power of God

By Kate Silver

They say all it takes is a little bit of faith, some cash, and a signature, and if everything goes as planned, subscribing Christians (and maybe a few trusting infidels) will be free of the evil power companies–and their power bills–for life.

Call it the Electric Christian Rapture Test.

“I sold all my stock last year because I would rather put it into this company than the stock market,” says Conrad Sorensen, who owns a dealership in Henderson, Nev., called Grassroot Enterprises of Tesla Inc. “I feel my money’s going to be safer here than any stock market.”

Sorensen is part of a network of disciples of the self-proclaimed anointed one, inventor and Christian evangelist Dennis Lee, who–though he has actions pending against him by attorneys general and alerts filed by Better Business Bureaus in various states–has been traveling the country, registering people for free power.

The modern-day miracle-maker says the Fourth of July will take on special meaning this year. It won’t just be Independence Day for our nation; it will also be America’s Declaration of Energy Independence Day, the day when Lee’s fabulous invention will be unveiled and the faithful will receive the free electricity that Lee and his brethren have been promising for years.

You heard it right: Free electricity will shine down on believers, they say, in a 21st-century revelation, distinguishing the shepherds from the flock. The faithful will bask in light, and the nonbelievers will go on selling their souls to the big electric companies.

Sound too good to be true?

Rising electricity costs and an increased focus on alternative energy sources seem to have exposed the nation’s vulnerable underbelly to these folks, whom skeptics consider little more than snake-oil salesmen. And they seem to know exactly what population to target–for example, disgruntled locals who show up at Public Utilities Commission hearings. At events like these, sales representatives from Lee’s companies paper cars with literature, sell videotapes, and register people for “free-electricity machines.”

Others have found willing listeners in evangelical Christians looking to discover more of the Lord’s power, and the elderly, who find fellowship in Lee’s following and have money to invest in expensive dealerships.

Looks like the nation’s power companies aren’t the only ones hoping to strike it rich.

Perpetual Motion

“Our slogan is, ‘It’s too good to be ignored,'” says Sorensen, 46, a former pipe fitter who bought his dealership from Dennis Lee in November 1999 for $20,000–a good deal, considering they reportedly go for about $100,000 today.

Lee, who owns United Community Services of America, Better World Technologies, and International Tesla Electric Co., is known to attorneys general across the nation as a threat to consumers, and to followers as a practically divine inventor. Claiming God as his companies’ chairman, Lee says he has access to a generator that uses magnets and runs at 500 percent efficiency.

He’s been peddling his devices since about 1987, having made two national tours appealing to charismatic Christian sensibilities and governmental-corporate paranoia. An appearance by Lee at the Marin Civic Center in San Rafael last October drew around 700 people.

While there’s no actual proof that these devices work, Lee insists–in segments you can view and hear on his various websites–that folks on his team have been killed and that the government and power companies will do anything and everything in their power to squash this new, threatening technology.

Attorneys general across the country think otherwise. Many have filed legal action to keep Lee’s companies from selling his wares in their states.

Lee declined an interview via e-mail through his assistant, Mike Hall, who didn’t like my story angle. “If you were doing an interview about the project and what we are trying to achieve, that would be one thing,” wrote Hall. “But if all you are interested in is getting his side to these accusations, then you can do your article without Dennis’ assistance.” (Please note: Hall bargained with me when I asked if I could quote him, saying I could do so only if I also wrote that anyone who mentioned this article could get a free videotape at www.power4free.com.)

But critics aside, Sorensen and 1,999 others across the nation, according to Lee, have invested in his rhetoric. They purchase dealerships and then sign people up for free electricity. Different dealers have different requirements. Some may charge a fee for shipping their materials, others may charge for the videotapes, and some may require membership in the North American Special Discounts Club (you got it–NASDAC).

Sorensen makes money by selling $15 videotapes of Lee’s presentations and by selling goods from Lee’s other companies–silent jackhammers, oil-eating balls, radioactive waste neutralizers, and cars that run on water, among other items. He says that he’s signed up about 800 people for free electricity nationwide, many of whom he met during a stop on Lee’s 50-state tour last year.

Although he went into hock to buy his dealership, Sorensen believes it to be a solid investment that, in due time, will pay off. He says he was willing to invest in it because he believes in the technology and the conspiracy that Lee claims keeps free electricity out of the public’s hands.

“I see how inventors get suppressed all the time,” he says. Further, Sorensen says that his involvement with the company has led him to God, and he’s not alone.

“I think that most people, when they do get involved with it, they’ll see that there really is a God,” he says. “To tell you the truth, I wasn’t much of a believer; it’s just that I know that there’s a God now because I’ve seen so many different things through this organization. We have 500 technologies we literally have on hold right now, waiting to bring out to the world, because we don’t have no finances for them, but when we start selling the power, we will.”

His goal right now is to recruit what Lee and his followers refer to as “witnesses”–people who believe in free power. Witness status used to require a one-time investment of $275, but now, at least with Sorensen’s clients, all one has to do is purchase the company’s videotape and sign a contract.

“We’re trying to recruit 1.6 million witnesses to view these generators being demonstrated in 100 homes throughout the country, two per state,” Sorensen pitches. “We’re sending out invitations to people to come witness on one day, hopefully July 4. We’ll give the people who come view this free electricity for the rest of their life. What we sell is a generator that makes 30 kilowatts per hour; the average home only uses two.

“We’re going to give you that free power in exchange for us to send that excess power back and sell it. We figure if we can sell 5 cents per kilowatt hour, that makes 12,000 per unit. So the homeowner doesn’t have to put up any cost. We just ask for them to buy a video to explain what we’re doing. Then we register you in line to have one of these generators put in.”

After witnessing the proposed July 4 free electricity show, those who’ve already signed up to receive the free electricity are expected to proclaim the greatness they’ve witnessed and proselytize nine people. But since these nine wouldn’t take a blind leap of faith, as the first witnesses did, they have to pay $1,500 for their lifetime of electricity.

“We’ll give them two months to get nine additional people to us, and after that we can get them on our own,” he says. “That was 16 million homes overnight that want this technology. With 116 million homes, that’s 100 percent of electricity needs in the U.S., and 40 million voters. Then we can get the proper deregulation in every state.”

Baddabing! Baddaboom! National domination.

Down to the Wire

Not surprisingly, the scientific community has a different perspective on Lee and his offer of free energy. Yahia Baghzouz, an electrical and computer engineering professor, looked at some of Lee’s websites. He wasn’t impressed.

“I read everything on various websites, and it’s just contradictory what they are saying,” Baghzouz says. “On some sites they say it’s gravity turning the generator; on other sites they say, ‘Oh, we have supermagnets that are powered by a battery.’ If you power something by a battery, you are using electric power to turn the thing. In many places they said, ‘We are not using any input power whatsoever.’ That’s contradictory.”

He’s not alone in his opinion. Eric Krieg, an electrical engineer in Pennsylvania, laughs when he hears that Lee has set July 4 as the date for his revelation.

“For 15 years he’s assigned a date. He said March in one show, July in another. When I first heard him in ’96, he said at the end of that year. That’s part of keeping the faithful perked up. . . . It’s about keeping a flux of new suckers in.”

Krieg has been following Lee’s claims since 1996, when he saw a full-page ad for one of his demonstrations in the Philadelphia Enquirer. His first reaction was laughter. “It was amusing how he had butchered science and manipulated all these redneck people,” he says.

But then he discovered that people were buying into it. After seeing too many older people hand over $10,000 to buy dealerships, Krieg decided to put up a website (www.phact.org/e/dennis.html) debunking Lee’s claims and drawing attention to the troubles Lee’s had throughout the country. Krieg’s even offered Lee $50,000 if he can prove that his machine works.

“I believe it’s impossible for this kind of thing to work,” Krieg says. “You can’t get something for nothing, as far as I know. Hundreds of people have been failing for hundreds of years. I have no idea what percentage are con men versus what percentage are deluded somewhere between stupid and insane.”

Troubled Past

It seems that Lee has learned much after clashing with the law in the past. These days, he words all contracts carefully. For example, when anyone signs up to get information about buying a dealership, they must initial two statements: “I/we affirm that neither UCSA or BWT are making promises about when technologies will be advanced to the market in the future” and “I/we will not be risking the welfare or security of my/our family by purchasing a UCSA dealership from an existing dealer.” And when people like Sorensen accept any money, the buyer always gets something in exchange–like a video. Because Lee’s grown accustomed to investigations.

His name brings familiar smirks to people in attorneys general offices across the nation. With a three-decade-long history of arrests and complaints against him for fraud and violation of consumer protection laws, Lee has traveled the country with a show that’s described as part crusade, part circus, peddling the wares of his many companies.

Here’s a quick look:

* He pleaded guilty to seven of 47 felony criminal counts filed by the Ventura County, Calif., district attorney in 1988 for violating the state’s Seller Assisted Marketing Plan Act, and grand theft. Lee served two years in a California state prison.

* In 1985 he was accused by Washington’s attorney general of violating the Consumer Protection Act. Though he agreed to pay $31,000 in fines, he left the state before doing so.

* Kentucky’s attorney general recently filed a lawsuit against Lee seeking to block him and companies connected to him from promoting their generator and holding seminars promoting the free-electricity device. Attorney General Ben Chandler says that these companies are defrauding customers because they don’t disclose that their device doesn’t actually exist and is based on unproven scientific theory.

* Vermont, New Mexico, and Tennessee obtained temporary restraining orders barring Lee from conducting his presentations.

* Attorneys general in Idaho and Arkansas have issued warnings to consumers to proceed with caution when dealing with Lee.

* Legal actions against Lee and his companies have been taken in Illinois, Alaska, Maine, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington, and include, among other things, charging a registration fee for a product that doesn’t exist, failing to register to do business within those states, and representing that consumers will soon have technology that has not been scientifically proven to exist.

* Alerts have been filed against his companies by Better Business Bureaus in Arizona, Washington, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

* And in states like Nevada, where no complaints have been filed yet, officials seem to be waiting to pounce. “I’m talking to attorneys general from other states to be ready for when something does come, but I can’t take action until I know [Lee’s] done something,” says Deputy Attorney General John McGlamery. “So I’m just sitting here waiting.”

Keeping the Faith

When told of Lee’s record, Sorensen is ready with a sympathetic response: “He was literally kidnapped twice because he was trying to demonstrate free electricity,” he says of Lee. Sorensen also says he thinks that any problems Lee’s had with attorneys general were straightened out after Lee sent videotapes of his demonstrations to them.

Sorensen also blames the media, which he believes is controlled by electricity giants General Electric and Westinghouse, for suppressing proof of free electricity. It’s in their best interest, he says, to ignore the revolution.

And he’s confident that his and Lee’s day will come July 4. They will bask in God-given light and be rewarded for their faith and innovative creation. And the nonbelievers?

“I think crows will be very scarce that day,” he says. “I think there will be a lot of people eating crow.”

Kate Silver writes for the Las Vegas Weekly, where an earlier version of this article originally appeared.

From the March 7-13, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

North Bay Singles Scene

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North Bay Singles Scene

Night Moves: North Bay romance is trickier than it looks.

Hungry Hearts

Down and dirty on the North Bay singles scene

By M. V. Wood

It’s closing in on midnight on a chilly Saturday evening in Santa Rosa, and frosty air spills in through the nightclub’s patio doors. A woman wearing a skimpy top hugs herself and shivers. Sensing opportunity, a young man in a bulky black jacket gallantly steps forward.

“Here, this will warm you up,” he says, nudging his beer bottle toward her.

She hesitates a moment–just long enough for him to catch sight of another woman, a slim brunette. Her tight blouse has plenty to cling to, and she too is obviously chilled. Without another word, Black Jacket Man retrieves his beer and runs off to spread the warmth elsewhere.

Welcome to the Cantina After Dark, where singles come to search for a lasting relationship, or at least a relationship to last the night. Located on Santa Rosa’s Fourth Street, this nightclub above a Mexican restaurant is loud, colorful, and crowded. And, for a while at least, anyone can find a sense of togetherness as the thumping dance music reverberates through each body like a single heartbeat.

But the view from the patio tells a lonelier tale. It’s Saturday night, and the main street of the biggest town in the North Bay is almost deserted. No one is strolling around. No one is milling through the bookstores or mingling at the cafes. Most businesses have been closed for hours now.

Welcome to Green Acres, that quintessential quiet town where couples move to settle down, raise kids, and die.

This side of the bay isn’t an easy place to be single. Black Jacket Man would surely agree with that as he continues to wander about, offering his beer. “Here, this will warm you up,” he starts again.

Is there a better way to meet a match in the North Bay? Sure there is, says Rich Gosse, a relationship expert based in Marin. But you have to be smart. You have to have a plan.

The following morning, around the time the folks from the Cantina are thinking of maybe getting out of bed, about 15 students are already seated in a classroom at Santa Rosa Junior College, ready to take notes. Ranging in age from their 20s to their 70s, they’ve paid $45 a pop to take this class.

Gosse will spend the next seven hours teaching them his 10-step technique to finding a loving relationship within the next six months.

“There are people out there who are so desperate, who hate being single so much, that they’re willing to lower their standards,” Gosse tells his class. “We have a word for people like that. That word is ‘married.’

“It’s easy to get married. I don’t care how disgusting of a human being you are, there is someone out there who wants to marry you. But marrying just anyone so that you won’t be alone isn’t the point, is it? And that’s why you’re here today. It’s because you have standards.”

Gosse is one part teacher, one part showman, and two parts businessman as he works the crowd.

His students don’t appear to be a bunch of losers whom he’s trying to placate with a load of babble about how enlightened and discerning they are. Instead, they look surprisingly normal.

They take turns introducing themselves and sharing stories of how their previous relationships began. An elegant, middle-aged woman from Sonoma relates the tale of an airplane ride that ended in romance. When the plane landed, the pilot stepped out of the cockpit to say “goodbye” to the passengers. As she walked by, he said “hello” and followed her off the plane. The two began dating.

So what’s she doing in a class like this?

“I figured I’m very organized and methodical and goal-oriented in business and just about everything else I do,” she explains. “But when it comes to relationships, I just leave everything to chance. And I’ve decided that isn’t the best way to go about things.

“I’ve been divorced for many years, and I like being single,” she continues. “But I would like to meet a couple of nice men to go out with. And I figured this class would help me come up with a game plan to find the right men.”

Gosse is the man with that plan. The author of eight books on the subject of being single, he started off his career as a Catholic schoolteacher in Tiburon. “I was single, and all the women I was meeting were either married or nuns, so I had to figure something out,” he says.

His quest for a date motivated him to create singles groups, which then led to starting a variety of businesses and giving lectures and writing books. Gosse is also chairman of American Singles, an organization that sponsors events throughout the world and he serves as publisher of the organization’s free magazine, Possibilities, available throughout the Bay Area.

Gosse says he’s distilled his 26 years of experience down to 10 safe and simple rules anyone can follow to find a lasting relationship.

Romantics may not be much inspired by some of his techniques.

For example, there’s Rule No. 6: Eliminate the Competition.

“Go out and do something your sex hates to do and the opposite sex loves to do,” he tells his students. “That way, you’ll be surrounded by the other sex, and there’s no competition.”

If you’re a woman, go to a sporting event. If you’re a man, visit that ultimate female hunting ground: the local shopping mall.

Or, if looking for a woman with traditional values, go to a church. “There’s no competition at a church,” Gosse says. “The only other men there are the young ones whose mothers make them go, or the married ones whose wives make them go. But there are plenty of single women who attend church.”

And try out all the different houses of worship. “The religion doesn’t matter,” he adds.

Later, as the class lunches together at Adel’s on College Avenue, a few students question Gosse about the ethics of posing as a churchgoer in order to pick up women. “You should never lie to meet someone, or you’ll destroy their trust,” he says. “But it’s perfectly OK to be honest and say, ‘I’m an atheist, but I’m really horny.'”

As far as eliminating the competition and meeting loads of singles, Gosse heralds personal ads as the “easiest and most efficient” method of doing so.

For men, Gosse says, “there are two magic words you should place in your ad if at all possible.” The magic words? “Successful” and “professional.” The top three words a woman should put in an ad are “young,” “slim,” and “attractive.”

“I know that’s completely politically incorrect,” Gosse says, “but it’s true.”

How young is young? “The magic number is 40,” he continues. “If you’re a woman over 40, don’t tell another living soul. You can tell your cat, you can tell your dog, but not one person.”

According to Gosse, the favorite lie women tell in ads is about their age. And the favorite lie men tell is about their height. “Only 10 percent of the U.S. population is over six foot,” he says. “But judging from personal ads, you’d think we were living in the land of giants.”

Tonight, Uncle Patty’s Bar and Grill in Sonoma is the land of giants. There’s a car parked outside with a license plate frame that reads, “Proud to Be Tall.” The car and the plate belong to Judy Hirsch, who was nicknamed the Jolly Green Giant in school. Hirsch, 5’11”, and her husband, Bob, 6’5″, are the founders of the Redwood Empire chapter of the Tall Club.

Inside the bar, the group is eating dinner and socializing a bit. These folks look pretty average sitting down. But when they stand, heads turn. The club has two requirements for membership: You must be at least 21 years old. And you must be tall. For men, the minimum height is 6’2″, and for women it’s 5’10”.

Although some members are married, the national organization is predominately a singles club where the tall can meet their own kind. Membership is particularly helpful for single women looking for a man they can look up to, says Hirsch, who met her husband while the two were members of the San Francisco chapter of the Tall Club.

“Many tall women aren’t comfortable dating shorter men,” she explains. “You know, they go out dancing, and the man’s head is right between her breasts. Things like that. It’s tough.”

The Tall Club is just one of a bewildering array of local groups that, although not formally singles clubs, do serve the function of bringing romantically inclined people together.

Singles who have outgrown the bar scene tend to gravitate toward these types of gatherings. Athletic clubs such as the Santa Rosa Cycling Club and the Winers, the local chapter of the international running group the Hash House Harriers (self-described as a drinking club with a running problem), have good word of mouth as being prime places for singles to meet.

The Sierra Club is a perennial favorite. The San Francisco Bay chapter includes the group Sierra Singles, which organizes about 50 events each month for singles, many of them in the North Bay. There are also two subgroups within the Sierra Singles: the Solo Sierrans, for those 45 and older, and the Gay and Lesbian Sierrans.

Single parents, whether divorced, separated, widowed, or never married, can also turn to the Redwood Empire chapter of the Parents without Partners organization.

Although the North Bay has many organizations aimed at singles, Gosse says they are not evenly distributed.

“Marin County has the most activities,” he says. “Napa is the graveyard for singles groups. The people in Napa who want to join a group go to Sonoma County.

“And then in Sonoma County, the single women are always complaining how the local men are a bunch of chicken farmers,” Gosse continues. “They say that if they want to meet a quality man, they have to go to Marin or Napa–‘quality’ meaning a white-collar professional.”

“The number one thing women are looking for in a man is that he’s a good provider,” he adds. “Oh sure, when a girl is young, she doesn’t care about money. She cares about looks. And that cute guy working at McDonald’s is just great. But when she gets a little older and is ready to settle down, all of the sudden, looks slip to number two and money rises to the top.”

It’s hard to say how much money and looks really have to do with it. Or age. Or height. Or even a game plan at all. But Gosse seems to be on to something when he talks about eliminating the competition.

Time, of course, is the greatest eliminator of all. Robert Olsten of Santa Rosa didn’t attend Gosse’s lecture. He didn’t need to. Olsten has discovered the main secret to being besieged with the attentions of innumerable single women.

At 79, Olsten has slipped into the golden years. Countless women in his age group have outlived their partners and are now competing for new companions from the ever dwindling supply of widowers.

For example, during the lunch at Adel’s, one of Gosse’s students tells about widowed life in the Sonoma County retirement community of Oakmont (or Croakmont, as some of the younger folks call it). As soon as a female resident is buried, “all the widows in the neighborhood start lining up at the husband’s door bringing over casseroles” and trying to hook up with him, she says.

Olsten says he has never experienced anything that extreme. “But it’s true there are more ladies than men my age, so, yes, it does becomes easier to meet them,” adds Olsten, who’s been single for a quarter of a century. Following the death of his wife of 42 years, he eventually joined a widow and widowers support group through his church.

“In the group, there’s now 12 women and one man–me. And at the last potluck, I was the only man at a table full of women. One of my friends called us ‘Bob and his harem,'” he says with a chuckle.

Dressed in a pair of Dockers and a crisp shirt, Olsten looks and acts a good 20 years younger than his age. He’s spent the morning delivering food for charity and walking his dog a couple of miles in Howarth Park.

“I’ve learned that as long as you keep busy doing the things you love to do, you end up meeting people you like spending time with,” he says.

But he’s quick to point out that he does have “one special lady friend” who’s a few years his senior.

“We have a fantastic time together,” he says with a smile. “A while back, we went to Bodega Head and flew a kite, and it was wonderful. I felt like a kid. And when I came back home, I was still flying. That feeling you have when there’s someone special–that feeling is still there no matter how old you get.

“It’s just the way people are. We always want to have the companionship of that special someone.”

From the February 28-March 6, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

J. J. Cale

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J. J. Cale

Photograph by James Minchin

Call Him the Breeze

J. J. Cale blows into the North Bay

By Greg Cahill

I’ve never considered myself a songwriter,” says J. J. Cale, his slow Oklahoma drawl sliding lazily down the phone line. “Most musicians who write songs just do that in the back room, and that’s kind of what I do. You know, laying down whatever comes into my own mind, whatever kind of rolls off my tongue or has a rhyme to it. But I’ve never given much thought to it. I just grab them out of the air anyway.”

Few songwriters can lay claim to such prize catches.

Over the years, Cale’s tunes have been recorded by everyone from Captain Beefheart to Bryan Ferry. In 1974, Lynyrd Skynyrd covered his “Call Me the Breeze” on their Southern rock classic Second Helping. And Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits has built his entire career as a Cale sound-alike, copping his guitar style and vocal phrasing.

But it was Eric Clapton who really opened the doors for the Oklahoman in the ’70s by recording two big hits–“After Midnight” and “Cocaine”–written by Cale. At the time, Cale (born Jean Jacques Cale) had abandoned his rock-star dreams and returned to his native Tulsa for a stint as a picker in an obscure country band.

“When folks find out that Eric Clapton cut one of your tunes, they want to know what else you’ve got,” says Cale, now 64. “So I’ve put down 12 albums based on the theory of ‘what else you got,’ and it’s turned into a career. It surprised me.”

Cale, who for years lived in the shadow of Disneyland in a tiny Anaheim trailer, has flirted with Top 40 success, but for the most part he’s remained on the periphery of pop music, churning out laid-back ballads and shuffling country boogies.

As a teen, Cale played in several country and western outfits, including one that featured a young Leon Russell. Moving to Nashville in 1959 at the age of 21, Cale was hired by the Grand Ole Opry’s touring company. After a few years, he returned to Tulsa, reuniting with Russell and playing local clubs.

In 1964, Cale and Russell headed for Los Angeles with fellow Oklahoman Carl Radle. Within months, Cale hooked up with Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett, the husband-and-wife team whose band (including Radle) later formed the core of Derek and the Dominoes. But in 1965, Cale went solo and cut the first version of “After Midnight,” which eventually would become his most famous song. The following year, he formed the Leathercoated Minds, releasing the psychedelic album A Trip Down the Sunset Strip.

Yet L.A.’s burgeoning psychedelic scene didn’t sit well with Cale. He returned to Tulsa in 1967, recording a set of demos that later led to a recording contract. But first, Clapton–who at the time was looking to move away from the acid-drenched rock of the then-defunct Cream– covered “After Midnight,” a Top 20 hit that provided Cale with much needed exposure and royalties. In 1971, Cale released his solo debut album Naturally on Russell’s Shelter Records.

The album featured the Top 40 hit “Crazy Mama,” a re-recorded version of “After Midnight,” which almost entered the Top 40, and “Call Me the Breeze.”

During the ’70s, Cale embraced his laid-back image, becoming reclusive and releasing an album every other year or so. His album sales slowed in the ’80s, and a six-year layoff ensued. Cale reemerged in late 1990 with Travel Log, a more rhythmically aggressive outing on the British independent label Silvertone. While sales remained slow, Cale nonetheless established himself as an important cult figure in the emerging roots-rock scene. His last studio album, the very relaxed Guitar Man, failed to generate either critical or commercial heat.

In 1997, Mercury capitalized on Cale’s cult status with a two-CD, multilabel anthology, Anyway the Wind Blows.

Last year, Cale released his first live album on the Virgin/Back Porch label, showing that at least in concert his languid grace remains intact.

J. J. Cale performs two sold out shows, March 10 and 11, at Sweetwater in Mill Valley. He also appears Tuesday, March 12, at 8pm, at the Mystic Theatre, 21 Petaluma Blvd. N., Petaluma. Tickets are $25. 707.765.2121.

From the February 28-March 6, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Milk

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Milk

Mad about Milk

Should healthy consumers quit the cow juice?

By Shanti Rangwani

Got milk? If not, then thank your lucky stars. Because if you do, medical research shows that you are likely to be plagued by anemia, migraines, bloating, gas, indigestion, asthma, prostate cancer, and a host of potentially fatal allergies–especially if you are a person of color.

Ignoring this, the federal government declares that milk is essential to good health, subsidizes the milk industry to the tune of billions of dollars, and requires milk in its public school lunch programs.

And celebrity shills sporting milk mustaches tell us that milk is rich in proteins, calcium, and vitamins–and very cool to boot.

They forget to tell people about the dangers lurking in that innocuous-looking glass of white stuff. Once criticized only by naturopaths and vegans, now the health effects of milk are being decried by many mainstream doctors. That supposedly hip milk mustache is actually a creamy layer of mucus, live bacteria, and pus.

Frank Oski, an MD who is the former chairman of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University, even has a book called Don’t Drink Your Milk, which blames many health problems suffered by kids on hormone-ridden commercial milk. Sixty percent of ear infections in kids under six years of age are milk-induced, and milk consumption is the number one cause of iron deficiency anemia in infants today, according to the American Association of Pediatrics.

Milk is also a racial issue. Almost 90 percent of African Americans and most Latinos, Asians, and Southern Europeans lack the genes necessary to digest lactose, the primary sugar in milk.

The milk industry’s response is classic: They have launched new campaigns arguing that nonwhites can digest milk if they take in small sips during the day. There is a burgeoning industry worth $450 million a year churning out products designed to minimize lactose intolerance.

Lactose intolerance is the most common “food allergy,” but to call it an allergy is to take a white-centric view that trivializes the fact that most of the world’s people are not biologically designed to digest milk.

Milk does no body good, but for the vast majority of the world’s people–people of color–it is a public-health disaster.

No other animal drinks cow’s milk–not even calves once they are weaned. The late Dr. Benjamin Spock, the country’s leading authority on childcare, spoke out against feeding “cow’s glue” to children, saying it can cause anemia, allergies, and diabetes, and in the long term will set kids up for obesity and heart disease, the number one cause of death in the United States.

Most of milk’s much vaunted protein is contained in casein–which is also a raw material for commercial glue. Undigested, casein simply sticks to the intestinal walls and blocks nutrient absorption.

The mainstream media and the government ignore the medical studies showing that milk is a serious health threat, in part because people of color are the primary victims. The institutionalization of racism is highlighted by U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesperson Eilene Kennedy’s statement on milk claiming that the government’s recommended food pyramid is intended for “the majority of Americans. It doesn’t communicate to all Americans.”

The USDA continues to require that school lunch programs provide milk with every meal and recommends that we glug milk for calcium, even though Harvard studies show an increase in osteoporosis and bone breakage in people who consume milk. It also says we should drink milk to prevent heart disease even though saturated fat constitutes 55 percent of milk solids.

The dairy lobby perpetrates lies to ensure its profits. It benefits directly from the exaggerated support prices the government shells out for this “health food.” The government pays over a billion dollars a year for surplus butter. A General Accounting Office study concluded that a reduction in the government price support system would have netted consumers a savings of $10.4 billion from 1986 to 2001.

And the USDA pays inflated prices to purchase dairy products for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children as well as for federal school lunch programs, milking the taxpayers and actually getting them to pay for poisoning 26 million school kids.

The milk lobby has whipsawed its way into the highest echelons of power. Staffers under Richard Nixon were indicted for accepting $300,000 from the dairy lobby for making milk part of the school lunch program.

Dr. Robert Cohen of the Dairy Education Board, a nonprofit organization dedicated to exposing the milk lobby, contends that the dramatic 52 percent rise in asthma deaths among minority kids in New York coincided with the surplus milk, cheese, and butter pumped into them under the USDA’s free school lunch and breakfast giveaway programs.

The incidence of asthma deaths may be even higher since asthma is not a reportable disease, and asthma deaths are sometimes certified as cardiovascular disease.

There is also a direct link between milk consumption and prostate cancer among African Americans, who have the highest incidence of this disease in the world. A study in the journal Cancer has shown that men who reported drinking three or more glasses of whole milk daily had a higher risk for prostate cancer than men who reported never drinking whole milk.

The controversial Bovine Growth Hormone–banned in most countries–is pumped into U.S. milk cows to increase annual yield (50,000 pounds of milk per cow today compared to 2,000 pounds in 1959). Milk from cows treated with BGH is likely to contain pus from their udders since the hormone leads to mastitis, or udder infection. BGH use results in a tumor-promoting chemical (IGF-I) that has been implicated in an explosive increase of cancer of the colon, smooth muscle, and breast.

The antibiotics dairy farmers use to treat BGH-caused infections in cows appear in their milk and greatly hasten human tolerance to most antibiotics, a potentially life-threatening state of affairs. The Center for Science in the Public Interest reports that 38 percent of milk samples in 10 cities were contaminated with sulfa drugs and other antibiotics.

But some consumers are fighting back. Last year, protesters picketed then New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s planned milk promotion campaign with a photo of the mayor wearing a milk mustache over the caption, “Got Prostate Cancer?” Giuliani (who, like his father, has prostate cancer) dropped the campaign.

And doctors from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine persuaded Washington, D.C., mayor Anthony Williams not to declare May 11 “Drink Chocolate Milk Day” by presenting evidence that milk is harmful, especially to people of color.

The PCRM–composed of some of the leading doctors in the United States–has campaigned extensively in the health and consumer press and led a successful legal effort in 1999 to make dairy products optional in the federal food guidelines. The campaign was supported by a number of prominent civil rights organizations and leaders, including the Congressional Black Caucus, the NAACP, Martin Luther King III, Jesse Jackson Jr., the National Hispanic Medical Association, and former surgeon general Joycelyn Elders.

The dairy lobby remains cozy with most medical practitioners to perpetrate its “drink milk” propaganda. However, not one of the 1,500 papers listed in the journal Medicine that deal with milk points to its goodness–only to the pus, blood, antibiotics, and carcinogens in milk, and the chronic fatigue, anemia, asthma, and autoimmune disorders milk consumption causes.

The time has come for the milk industry to face the kind of scrutiny that the tobacco companies face today. Meanwhile, discard the moo juice.

Shanti Rangwani is an allopathic doctor and a columnist for the Times of India.

From the February 28-March 6, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Patricia Johanson

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Patricia Johanson

Water Works: David Yearsley of the Petaluma River Maintenance and Enhancement Committee surveys the site of a proposed environmental art project.

Art in the Marsh

Renowned nature artist has big plans for Petaluma

The glistening mud flats of Gray’s Field at low tide are a slick, mucky wonderland. Slit open here and there by narrow channels, the flats are illuminated by intermittent shafts of yellow sunlight seeping in through breaks in the gloomy, gathering clouds. The surface of the mud is stamped with crisscrossed hieroglyphics created by bird feet.

Just beyond the flotsam-littered levee, the Petaluma River moves slowly back in from San Pablo Bay, meandering past the riotous bird sanctuary of Shollenberger Park, which spreads out to the north, immediately adjoining the bird-covered marsh at the edge of which I now stand.

Glancing in the direction of Shollenberger–Petaluma’s most frequently used and probably most ecologically important public park–I can see joggers, dog walkers, and bird watchers making their way along the gravel pathways that lead to the river.

From where I stand, a softball’s toss from a mob of shrieking seagulls feeding on the flats, I can trace my deep bootprints through the mud back to the trail I descended to get here. As the tide begins to return, those indentations will fill up with the water trickling in through a 30-foot breach in the levee.

A pair of ultralights swoop low over the marsh, emitting an insectlike buzz and casting shadows that startle the birds, stirring them into a cyclone of winged pandemonium.

Other than the planes and the noise of the gulls, the only sound is the eerie roar of the wind in my ears. What seemed to be a relatively small expanse when spied from the Shollenberger trail now seems immense, remote, dangerously wild.

It’s the perfect place for an art show.

“I like very physical experiences,” says artist Patricia Johanson. “I like experiences that put you right in the middle of nature, rather than leaving you standing on the edge as an outsider looking down on nature.”

An internationally renowned environmental artist, Johanson lives in upstate New York but travels the world creating and implementing vast, one-of-a-kind installations.

Mainly interested in environmentally sensitive areas, Johanson crafts projects that combine nature trails and freeform sculpture, weaving together the familiar experiences of being at a public park or attending an art exhibition with the thrill of having landed in the midst of messy, unpredictable wilderness.

Johanson’s creations dot the globe, ranging from the “sculptural playgrounds” of The Rocky Marciano Trail in Brockton, Mass., to the Millennium Park in Seoul, South Korea, which turned the world’s largest landfill into a vast figure of a nature guardian, interlaced with terraced areas for recreation and meditation.

Johanson’s other projects include the linear Endangered Garden in San Francisco and Fair Park Lagoon in Dallas, Texas, a hard-to-describe ecological artwork that includes paths, bridges, seats, and animal islands, all designed to resemble the curves and entanglements of indigenous plants and insects.

She has also created such enormous projects as the Park for the Amazon Rainforest and Kenya’s Nairobi River Park. The latter, built on what was once among the most polluted rivers on the planet, employs specially selected vegetation and ingenious sculptural installations to filter and purify the river water.

As part of the historic agreement reached by the Petaluma City Council in January, Johanson will be designing a wetlands experience for the tidal lands and pastures of Gray’s Field.

That’s presuming, of course, that enough money can be raised through grants and private donations to purchase the land and build the park.

The effort is connected to the city’s proposed $88 million wastewater treatment plant, which will include an environmentally friendly wetlands filtration process of filtering and removing algae.

The proposed marshland park is tentatively titled The Trail of Tides and will eventually link the Petaluma Marina to Shollenberger Park, continuing out to the bay and playing a vital role in the city’s treatment and purification of water.

It will also be fun.

Or so says David Yearsley, chairman of the Petaluma River Maintenance and Enhancement Committee, one of the project’s most committed advocates.

“It will be an interactive park with interactive experiences,” Yearsley explains. “The changes in the tide will determine what kind of interaction you have with the park at different times.”

But don’t slip on your mud shoes just yet.

“It’s not a done deal,” says Petaluma City Council Member Janice Cader-Thompson. “The property has to be acquired [the land is currently owned by Petaluma Poultry Processing], but the city is moving forward to work with PPP and I feel comfortable and confident that this will happen.”

Estimates put the price tag for the park, which includes the cost of the land, at a minimum of $3 million. Under the terms of the agreement reached by the city council, that money must come from sources outside the city’s coffers.

According to Cader-Thompson, if fundraising is successful, the remarkable art trail through the wetlands should be at least half finished by the time the new treatment plant goes on line in 2006. If the funds have not been locked down within a year, however, the city could choose to allow development on the land instead. And Cader-Thompson would hate to see that happen.

“We have a rare opportunity to do something that most communities would leap at,” she says. “We can create a park that people will travel from across the world to see, while also creating a wastewater facility that will be a model for future communities around the country. It’s clearly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

What isn’t clear, however, is exactly what the finished park will look like.

“I have my own vision,” says Yearsley. “But like most people, I don’t have a clue what this art installation will look like.” Earlier reports suggested a layout that, when viewed from the sky, would resemble a giant chicken head.

Describing one design she’s considered, Johanson envisions walkways and staircases that lead through the marsh during low tide and then become cascading waterfalls, transforming the park as the water rises.

“I want to design a way for people to walk out along the levee,” she says, “which is really an amazing experience, because you are so close to the river. When you walk Shollenberger, you are on a raised path, and you’re really quite far from the wetlands; you are removed from it, you are above it, in a God-like stance, looking down on all the activities of nature.

“I want to put you right down into nature,” she adds, “to give you a different sense of how you are connected to all of these birds, to the water, to the land. So you see the power of nature up close and personal.”

Despite living on the other side of the country, Johanson has come to love the tidal plains of the Petaluma Marsh. She’s pained by the thought that the park might not happen, that the rare experience of walking among the tides might be lost beneath end-to-end industrial complexes.

But Johanson has reason to be optimistic.

“One thing you can say about Petaluma,” she says. “It’s got the smartest people in the world. Petalumans are so well-educated, so well-versed in the issues, so aware of all the importance of sustainability issues, they just blow me away.

“They’re smart enough, most of them, to understand what they’re going to lose if they don’t do this.”

From the February 28-March 6, 2002 issue of the North Bay Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

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