Postmarks
Fri., Nov. 20, 1998
Club Loading Woes
Editor:
If Austin wants to promote itself as "The Live Music Capital of the World" then why do the people who make their livings in our music industry repeatedly get treated unfairly?
After just unloading my trailer of 2,000 pounds of band equipment on Sixth Street, I have yet again walked back to my business vehicle to find a $35 ticket. I have commercial signs on the truck and an orange cone behind the trailer. Yes, I realize it is illegal to double-park, but it is also the only way I have of doing my job and getting the needed equipment inside the club so I can make my money and the club make theirs.
It seems funny to me that in all the years I have been doing this and the many tickets I have received I have never seen a ticket on a beer truck's window. They double-park all over Sixth Street every day. What is the difference between what they are doing and what we musicians are doing? We are both loading things into the clubs that make the clubs money. Maybe we should call this "The Alcohol Capital of the World." It seems the city officials must be drinking instead of thinking.
If you're going to call this city the live music capital then why don't you start supporting the people that give the city its title? A simple musician sticker that would allow us to double park for the amount of time of our load-in would take care of this obvious and long-running problem. How hard is that? Hell, you would probably charge us to buy one. Maybe you should just let us double- park when you see a band trailer like you do the beer trucks.
Maybe I should go back to driving a beer truck, which is what I did before I started working full time in the music industry. At least I could load into a club without getting another damn ticket.
Darrell Todd Dragoo
Production Manger,
"Taboo," "Brave New World"
P.S. I'll hold my breath on the issue of barricades!
Breakin' the Bylaws
Editor:
While I think your articles about KOOP are pretty much on target, you missed some points about the legitimacy of the previous Board election. KOOP bylaws contain two main sets of provisions to protect democracy:
1) The Community Board is to be elected annually from eight different constituencies (20% by station volunteers, 15% by individual dues-paying members, 15% by organizational dues-paying members, 10% by Hispanic community organizations, 10% by women's community organizations, 10% by youth/student community organizations, 10% by co-op community organizations, and 10% by other community organizations).
2) Each year's Community Board is to elect only one-third of the Board of Trustees. If vacancies occur, the rest of their terms are to be served by replacements chosen by the remaining Trustees (who represent several years' voters), not by the current year's Community Board.
These provisions are designed to ensure that each Community Board is broadly representative and is not dominated by a narrow set of interests. Note that these provisions do not prevent a change in the direction, philosophy, or leadership of the station. They simply require that any such change be based on support from many membership sectors and on more than one annual election.
The 1997 Community Board elections, which led to the Board of Trustees which has done so much damage to the station, violated both of these basic provisions of the bylaws. In particular, the failure to use the bylaw-specified separate community sectors to elect community organization members of the Community Board, thus forming a dominant 50% block elected by a small group (which then replaced the entire Board at once), is the exact kind of undemocratic practice which the bylaws would have prevented if they had been followed.
Hunter Ellinger,
founding KOOP board member
Exorcise the Board
Editor:
I am Gene Stevens. I do The Liberated Space on Thursdays at 6:30pm. Some of these remarks appeared in different form on our program, November 12, 1998.
After hearing Jim Ellinger's program on Friday, November 6, 1998, and then learning this week that the Board of Directors has voided the election that they could not win, I decided to make some comments about what has happened here at KOOP and our Liberated Space positions on this and some other things that are going on.
I feel in a unique position here because not only was I attacked by name in Board meetings (others have been as well), or on the air, or had a rule created especially to silence me (although it was never promulgated), but I was the only one, so far as I know, voted out of the so-called Friends of KOOP, because I was too radical and wanted to actually throw the Board bastards out!
Many in the "Friends of KOOP" ñ even some of the leaders of "Friends" (with friends like these we don't need any enemies ñ which we certainly have ñ in abundance) ñ do not care about anything except having their little shows on each day. Like the people who support Clinton, they do not care what evil is spread as long as their comfortable, barren little lives are not disturbed.
On Monday, September 28, 1998, during the last pledge drive, I heard Robert Singleton say on the air that people were calling in saying that they wanted us to "put the bickering behind us." You know, I resent anyone characterizing the serious political differences I have with the Board of Directors as "bickering!" All this treacle that was spread during pledge drive makes me retch! I do not pretend to like someone I do not, and I do not like those who have wronged me or who attempt to confound me. I hate my enemies and love my friends and I know the difference. I always take my fights personally. These Board members are liars and thieves, who have stolen more than one election. They have no integrity and no moral authority and I will not smile at them while they steal the station out from under us!
I am really angry about this. As I am one who helped bring things to a head by writing my letter to the Chronicle that said things everyone thought but would not say, especially about Eduardo Vera (the Rodney Dangerfield of the Revolution, "I don't get no respect."). Now we hear Mac Mackaskle frothing at the mouth and chewing at the carpet, and the rest of the "junta faction," who, like Hitler in the bunker, are pulling everyone else into the pit after them. Gotterdammerung!
That's why it just makes me crazy to hear John Duncan call for the Board to resign at two station meetings ago. If it had not been for him the Board would now be gone. The Friends had perfectly good legal advice that they could replace the Board, but John Duncan shopped around until he found a lawyer who told him the bylaws would not let the Friends do that ñ replace the Board ñ which gave them the excuse to do what they intended to do from the beginning ñ nothing.
I joined KOOP because I thought they were activists ñ revolutionaries who wanted to change the world ñ and knew how to do it. (If I just wanted to talk about change I could have stayed with the Libertarian Party.)
But the Friends turned out to be weak-willed weenies who just want to do their music shows. Not revolutionaries but the Tarrytown Democratic Club, white-bread liberals who wouldn't say "shit" if they had a mouthful of it.
Do not be fooled any longer by the weak and wimpy, so-called "Friends of KOOP." Do not support them until they get the nerve to throw out this execrable board! If you pledged during Pledge Drive and have not, as yet, redeemed your pledge ñ don't! Hold it hostage to action.
In the words of General Winfield Scott, "We have to throw away the scabbard and advance with the naked blade in our hand." If you do not have the cold blood of slaves and reptiles in your veins, join with me now in a direct revolutionary action to overthrow the Board and take bake the station! The structure is in place. Invoke the interim Board. Set up a separate governing organization. Get new bank accounts and starve them out of control.
We should treat them like what they believe themselves to be ñ enemies of our blood ñ dead bodies that have been inhabited by malignant spirits. We must drive them from the building with lighted torches, clean the rooms where they have been, fumigate, exorcise their memories from KOOP and from our hearts.
Gene Stevens
Slanted Coverage
Editor:
Your story concerning the explosion of quality Asian cuisine in North Austin ["Heart of the Orient," Vol.18, No.11] was a delicious read. Both well-researched and well-written, it is a perfect example of the type of quality feature that I have come to expect from the Chronicle.
Its author, Mick Vann, shows both knowledge and insight while writing about a subject that he obviously loves. And that is exactly what troubles me about Mr. Vann.
Mr. Vann claims to be a non-Asian and a "Round Eye," but I have my doubts about this claim of his; he knows far too much about the richness and subtlety of Oriental foods, don't you think?
Your pal,
Artly Snuff
A New Slant on Vann
Dear Editor,
Although I enjoyed reading Mick Vann's article summarizing Vietnamese/Asian cuisine in Austin ["Heart of the Orient," Vol.18, No.11], I was somewhat offended by his use of the term "Round Eye" to define non-Asian. Mr. Vann stated that he only used the term to describe himself "out of self-deprecation" and therefore requested his readers not to go "ballistic or get all culturally sensitive." Well, I'm not ballistic but I am feeling a little culturally sensitive. Mr. Vann implies that it is OK to use racially loaded slurs as long as they are being used to refer to oneself. While I believe that he may call himself whatever he wishes, I do feel that by putting it in print, he keeps alive an atmosphere of racism. Am I being too culturally sensitive??? Maybe. As a non-Asian parent of an Asian daughter I am hoping that her world will be filled with folks who aren't too interested in our physical differences. Or perhaps folks who use gentler terms to describe us.
Mr. Vann, I love Vietnamese food and found your article interesting, fresh, and informative. The term "non-Asian" would have been fine.
Carol Brookhart
Here, Kitty, Kitty!
Editor:
The Associated Press recently ran a feature which described the horrendous problem that Vietnam and other Asian countries are dealing with because they are being overrun with rats. It said that almost one million acres of life-sustaining rice paddies were infested last year and predictions are that over a million acres will be overrun by the disease-carrying rodents this year.
On the other hand, Austin and hundreds of other American cities find it necessary to use euthanasia on millions of cats because they simply can't find homes for them. Would it not be possible to solve both problems? Why wouldn't it be possible for one of the animal rights groups to organize a program which would gather these stray cats or unwanted cats in one location and then send a planeload of several thousand cats to a country that needs them badly? This could be done monthly.
Obviously the main reason why native Vietnamese cats haven't solved the problem is because in Vietnam, as in many Asian countries, cat meat is considered a delicacy and so most of them have been served as an entree in restaurants and in homes. The government has recently shut down the restaurants that serve cats, and is attempting to educate the public on the subject.
The objection might be that if we do send our stray cats to Vietnam, what's to prevent them from becoming the main course in many households? To be honest, nothing will prevent it, but hopefully the government's efforts to stop the practice will be somewhat successful. But even if half or more of the strays are devoured, at least some will survive. As unpleasant as it may seem, those that are eaten will at least serve the purpose of feeding a few thousand people. If we kept them here, they would all be killed and their corpses would serve no purpose whatsoever. Say that we send a million cats and 750,000 are eaten. That still leaves 250,000 to hunt down and devour the rats that are causing starvation to thousands of people. Doesn't that make sense?
Harv Morgan
Dope for the Disabled
Editor:
I am a sociology major at the University of North Texas in Denton. I have been employed in human services related to abnormal psychology and developmental disabilities. I worked with a disabled Vietnam veteran who had been shot in the back and was quadriplegic. He required assistance with all of his basic needs, and I provided him with home health care. He suffered from painful spasms which were the result of atrophied muscles and retracted tendons. I witnessed his body convulse as he cried in agony. He tried painkillers, muscle relaxers, electrical stimulation, and accupressure. These options proved futile and costly. His physician suggested smoking marijuana as an analgesic. The results were impressive, as he completed his physical therapy without any spasms. I support medical research of marijuana, and the decriminalization of use by citizens diagnosed with terminal, chronic, and disabling diseases such as cancer or AIDS. It does not serve justice to deny suffering patients quality health care.
Sincerely,
Christopher Largen
Denton
The Dead Smoke Dope
Dear Friend,
So lower grade tobacco leaves have value as ground cover around tomato seedlings, not that companion plants such as marigolds are not just fine.
All three of these plants were developed by American Indians, in their gardens, and it is irrelevant today or it does not matter anymore why Europe's sometime ruling class, some Holy Roman Empire elite, in whose gardens, before, 1492, those garden plants never grew.
Why ever those seven families or so decided to outlaw also earlier marijuana 600AD or later nobody living can even guess, but one European Ruling Class theory goes that if a moderately popular maybe gothic leader dropped dead, maybe sudden death, like maybe a coronary, around 600AD and later, if highly enough placed for a double in attendance, then the corpse was kept on ice, such as brought in bushel baskets from high mountains in morel bags or saddle bags on the backs of mules.
After that, with a bucket of calf blood, the old goths staged a faked imitation assassination, like a grade B movie, saying then, 600AD or later, "Marijuana makes them do it. Marijuana makes them mean."
Alice Kennedy Spooner
You Aren't What I Eat
Editor:
Seeing a reference to Roger Williams' knowledge of nutrition, and the fact that he was at UT, I (silly me) thought, "He'll be at UT's medical school in Galveston." I was going to call the UT system people to find out how to get hold of RW, when I just looked into our UT directory and found he was here in Austin! I gave his number a ring. He said, no, he didn't give nutritional advice to individuals, but an ex-student and -colleague had set up shop to do so: Jim Heffley.
As soon as I could, I read all Roger Williams' readily available, non-technical publications. The greatest eye-popper: his book on biochemical individuality. Any idea about standard needs and/or dosages gets a
12-gauge double-barrel blast in the ass there.
(Furthermore, he includes information from a great oldish study on anatomical individuality or variation. Whereas you take RW's word for his and other's findings about biochemically variable needs and effects, the anatomical illustrations let you see the extent of individual differences; you'll never think about health/medical matters again in the old way. In light of the non-sameness, it's easy to imagine how the slicing off of the frontal lobe from the rest of the brain in the case of JFK's sister could have ruined her: There was a presumption by the MDs of anatomical likeness which made a mystery of why some lobotomies "worked" and others did nothing or made things worse ñ sometimes much worse.)
Roger Williams was emeritus but still working in those years; I occasionally passed his tiny, quick-walking form on Speedway. Once I went to a brown-bag lunch presentation he made. Room packed, and people gathered around the door in the hallway so that I couldn't even get a glimpse of the old boy. (Someplace, he writes that he began nutritional supplementation quite late in life; up to then he was just a biochemist doing his job. Until his academic work pointed, too strongly to resist, to the possible advantages.) Early in his presentation he began listing the supplements that he himself took. Suddenly he nearly shouted: "Stop taking notes! We're all too different to have what I do be any indication of what each of you needs."
S.G. Huskey
Tolerance Is Two Ways
Editor:
Tolerance is a two-way street. Anyone wishing to win converts to their cause should demonstrate the same degree of tolerance towards others of opposing viewpoints as they request for themselves. A recent letter to the editor ["Postmarks," Vol.18, No.8] labels nearly everyone who peacefully voices the opinion that homosexuality is not a morally permissible practice as participants in murder.
Editor, a tragedy occurred in Wyoming and a young man's life was taken. Printing tasteless diatribe such as that of Blayne Turner is not the way in which situations better themselves. What is most misunderstood by Mr. Turner is that while many Americans believe that homosexuality is not a morally acceptable practice, they do not believe that murdering homosexuals is a morally acceptable practice either. Their belief is that both practices oppose the preservation of human life on this planet.
Christopher J. Baldauff
Death From Behind
Editor:
It is very interesting that all other cities say that speed is the biggest cause of fatalities, but for some bizarre reason Austin police claim that people going too slow is the main cause of accidents. The truth is that Austin is the rear-end fatality capital of Texas and our police department does not hand out tickets to people who follow too close to other people even when they hit them. People going too slow!!! Last time I checked the person hitting the person from behind is the one responsible and this usually occurs because of speed and aggressive driving. This is obviously costing lives. What is up with the police department? Can you say denial?
Fawn McDonald
Twinkle in Your TV Eye
Editor:
Thank you so much for finding Twinkles ["TV Eye," Vol.18, No.10]. When I read the "Twinkle in your eye" teaser, it all came flooding back. I know exactly how you felt when you found him. I actually had a chill run up my back when I saw the picture!
Craig Chambers
Can't Vouch for Vouchers
Dear Editor:
The introduction of school voucher bills in the Texas legislature has prompted some very emotional and wrong-headed statements in the media recently. Proponents of school vouchers like to say "It's my money," thinking they should have the right to take the equivalent of their property taxes and use it to send their children to private schools. If significant numbers of parents were to do this, the students remaining in the public school system could not be educated with the revenues left over. Proponents need to take a hard look at the numbers and make their case very cautiously before they start getting people all riled up about "their money."
For years taxpayers without children have made similar complaints about being taxed for the education of other people's children, yet they have benefited from living in a society where education is available for all children. Today similar complaints come from parents who want an education tailor-made for their child: "I want my child's education to be heavy on math and science; don't spend my money on music." "My child walks to school; don't spend my money on school buses." "My child is sound in mind and body; don't spend my money on accommodations for handicapped children." In order to educate all the children of Texas, we have to spend money on a lot of different things, and there may not always be a one-to-one correspondence between what one parent pays in taxes and what one child uses.
The very real problems in the public schools will only be solved by cooperative effort. To label such efforts "socialist" is pure laziness, and to approach a complicated issue with the simplistic cry "It's my money" is self-centered and unhelpful.
Robert Wilks
