It’s been a few weeks since I visited the Occupy Wall Street protests in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan. It isn’t something you see every day and honestly, the myriad messages coming at you can be a bit overwhelming and confusing. But I think the movement in general is fairly straightforward to grasp.

Zuccatti Park at the corner of Broadway and Liberty(! ) is the home of the live-in city that is the Occupy Wall Street movement. I spent the better part of a chilly but bright October afternoon among the protesters, wandering through the park, careful to avoid stepping on tents or sleeping bags or other gear. Following the sound of the steady drum beat to the southwest corner of the park, I made it to the music end where about 2 dozen protesters, among them a shirtless fellow sporting a Eugene Hutz-like mustache, smiled and gyrated and cut through the air to the chants of “Wall Street’s on Fire!”

Squeezed in by the World Trade Center site to the north and west and both the American and the New York stock exchanges to the south, the OWS site was many things all at once.

First, it was surprisingly orderly and calm. The park was filled with hundreds of people and surrounded, literally, by barricades and police officers spaced about 10 feet or so apart. Plenty of foreign news outfits were filing video reports and interviewing protesters.

Inside the park there were well thought out divisions with a media/press section, a space for food services, medical services, massages and meditation and yoga, as well as a big board listing times for workshops on organizing, participation, etc. Toward the Church St. end of the park was where I encountered the drum circle with people wildly drumming and dancing and having a grand old time.

So you have the theatrical aspect, the music, the energy, the barrage of properly worded and spelled signs, etc.

But most importantly is the reason all of these people have gathered here in the first place; the growing awareness that the power balance in this country has so shifted to an elite and virtually untouchable class and that the vast majority (the so-called 99%) are effectively powerless to bring about any meaningful change.

This is not an easy story to explain succinctly, only because this disenfranchisement has so many tentacles and so many layers to it. The world and its financial structures are so inter-connected that pulling this apart would be a complex mess. But the place to begin certainly is the general area of Wall Street and the small but exceedingly powerful financial cartel at investment houses like Goldman Sachs and their enablers at the Federal Reserve and the SEC that helped them create the gambling house that Wall Street became, to their benefit and all of our collective loss.

Which is why the mountain of non-sense and misanalysis from the pundit classes is so shameful and perhaps, in the end, what a sleeping citizenry ultimately deserves. Like the vapid commentary, delivered sneeringly and smugly, that runs like this: “Oh look, isn’t it cute how they’re all against capitalism but they all have iPods and computers and cell phones.” Ha ha… yeah, that’s so right. It’s like believing child molestation or rape to be vile and someone asking “why are you against sex?” Please. Spare us.

What I see is not a protest against capitalism per se, but the abuses of the system by the few who have the power and influence to tilt the advantage for themselves and their interests over and against the majority’s. The fact is that every person in this country who didn’t earn $500 million last year for fucking up the world economy through a system of state-sanctioned theft should be supporting the protests wherever you are. I know I am.

That’s the word that instantly came to mind as I was handed the book that would be my primary reading focus for this summer; David McCullough’s The Greater Journey; Americans in Paris.

At 550+ pages with a wonderfully textured dust jacket depicting a portion of Renoir’s luxuriously impressionistic “The Pont Neuf”, that is as thrilling to run your fingers over as it is to look at, the book entices you to drop everything that you’re doing and give yourself over completely to reading.

So if you have trouble tracking me down over the next month or so, this is most likely where you’ll find me.

along Scranton Rd.

@ the Asian Town Center on Superior

looking out a gallery window

still staring out the same window…

finishing up the night at an undisclosed location…

Tremont Crawl

By Steve Goldberg

What’s In The Bag Press

$5.00 (when he’s sober)

Disclaimer: (of course) Steve has been a good friend of mine for many years and so this “review” isn’t entirely unbiased. Having said that, though, I can say that some of the poetry he’d written earlier lacked immediacy and emotion and was a bit too cloy, trying to be clever and dancing around an issue or an insight. (Perhaps that was the result of the over-analytical engineering mind, an obstacle I struggle with as well.)

It didn’t do much for me, honestly.

The poems in this chapbook, however, are light years away from those early writings.

These are the poems of a grown man, all too aware of the world, both its joys and setbacks. It is mature poetry. And it’s a pleasure to read and re-read, seeing in it not only observations from a single Southside neighborhood but truths about our lives here in the post-industrial world of a once thriving Great Lakes city in the 21^st century, with its contradictions of comfortable living and hard scrabble barely gettin’ by.

This contradiction is finely captured in the opening poem “At 806.” As the poet sits at a swanky nouveau bar in a yuppified section of the old working class neighborhood with his expensive glass of wine, he wonders:

Is this what Kerouac enjoyed?

Listening to

jazz, feeling the

wine, and

digging the

scene

But the poet knows the conceit here, and he isn’t about to let his reader stay comfortable for long:

But would a Beat be

caught dead

spending ten

dollars for a glass

or would he find a

screwtop

and sit on the

stoop listening…

He has this uncanny, natural way of subverting a faux reality, exposing it as something not entirely real, and something you should probably mistrust. And this sensibility runs throughout the book.

But there is plenty of music and rhythm here too, as in the music of this line from “Can Man” about a neighborhood scrap collector:

… the clangathanka cylinders in the handlebar basket

And then, there are the all-too-common daily realities of living which most of us gloss over as unimportant or forgettable, but which form the daily bread of life. So we get to share in the “ugh” moment of the banality of a conversation in “Good Neighbors”:

Yesterday,

West Virginia accents pulled

me into a 20 minute discussion,

soliloquy really, on rain gutters

but also an enumeration of the poet’s world in “From My Perch” where he sees  “…the war vet’s flag… blind dogs… old hillbilly friends sharing their loneliness thru political talk”, all of it an integral part of the Tremont reality, the reality that the poet shares in his own unique style and voice.

Or in “Post 58” where he writes of the patrons of the Polish Legion of American Veterans watering hole in Tremont:

Making the silly jokes of the underdog

enjoying the shadow outside the spotlight

which, you could say, about sums up the tough spirit of Cleveland and the Rustbelt as a whole. To know that there is pleasure in the shadows too. A pleasure that the underdog knows, even relishes.

Tremont Crawl is available at fine bookstores near you. Starting with Tremont’s own Visible Voice.

Every four years, it comes around again. And every four years, I am gripped by the fever and swept up in the excitement.

The World Cup isn’t like the Olympic games, with its over-the-top ceremonies, its endless fragmentation of dozens of different competitions and sporting events. This is one sport with one maniacal focus for 30 days. And when it’s all over, one team earns the right to be called the best national soccer team in the world.

The World Cup is the one sporting event that brings together all that is good and bad in human nature. And maybe that’s what makes it so appealing on so many different levels.

The good; the world comes together (well, at least the 32 teams that make it to the tournament) for a month-long party to cheer on their teams. Some fans have strong allegiances to home countries or ethnic backgrounds. Some just cheer just for an underdog, but on a global scale.

It’s also a great excuse to meet up with like-minded friends who enjoy the sport as casual sporting fans and explore the city’s many watering holes, have a burger and a beer, and just soak up the atmosphere of the spectacle.

But the World Cup also has the potential to stir up the ugly ghosts of past wars, victories and defeats, casting today’s matches in historical terms of colonizers and colonized, invaders and defenders, oppressors and the oppressed.

And it’s within this heady and sweaty mix of intense passion and rivalry that those ugly strains of nationalism that lie just below the surface of the public face of “we are the world” unity can produce such an intoxicating and thrilling touch-and-go with our primal, beastly nature.

Just watch any YouTube clip of an international match with various soccer hooligan types going at it and you’ll quickly see that the kinds of passions generated there make a rivalry like OSU-Michigan or Lakers-Celtics look like ballroom dancing. Seriously.

The experience here in the U.S., as in other parts of the world, varies depending on whether you’re watching a game alone in your living room or at a bar with novice fans or experienced devotes, or in a partisan group of English or German or Serbian fans. But in any case, it’s a spectacle not to missed.

It’s the kind of event that often defines a summer, or at the very least can kick it off in grand fashion.

So even if you’re not much of a soccer fan at all, make some time and watch a game or two. Get swept up in the madness, even if only for a day. Chances are you won’t be sorry.

Complete schedule here or here.

http://www.clevelandareahistory.com

The Cleveland Area History blog focuses on everything you’ve always wanted to know about historic architecture, preservation, and development efforts in the Cleveland area. Sadly, and increasingly, it also documents the ever-growing number of buildings succumbing to the wrecking ball, while putting out the word about buildings in danger of being condemned and torn down.

If you care at all about this city’s history, this is a must-read blog.

This Friday night, one of Cleveland’s most original underground poetic voices is reading at the Borders in Strongsville, across the street from the Southpark Mall, down the road from the new-ish Costco. Dan Smith, author of “Crooked River”, spins postmodern suburban tales weaved from the wispy strings of industrial Cleveland memories. Musical accompaniment provided by Tom Orange (saxophone and other sounds), Morgan Ellington (trumpet, electric bass) and Me (drums, percussion).

Come. Listen. Be enchanted.

8:30 PM

The deep cleveland poetry hour

Borders in Strongsville

17200 Royalton Road

Morning commute

I don’t know about you, but there are green lifeforms popping up all over my front and back yard, pushing through layers of last fall’s rotting leaves and a stray delivery label or string of tinsel blown by long-gone winter winds.

This is one sure sign of spring for us in NEO. Another is the Cleveland International Film Festival, which kicks off this Thursday March 18th and runs through Sunday March 28th. In my opinion, it’s one of the best arts and cultural happenings in the city and we’ve been fortunate that it only gets bigger and better with each passing year. (This year’s festival is the 34th.)

So if you’ve never gone but always wanted to, check out the web site above or pick up a film festival guide around town, find something you like, and give it a shot. You’ll almost surely be back for more.

See ya at the movies.