neintales

Must vent. Rant ahead.

GOP in Texas are releasing ad videos and things about Obama "Letting Texas Burn While He Fundraises!ELEVENTY!" and they're popping up on friends FB's and other sites and.. grah.

Ok, yeah, Texas could use more help, mostly we need rain, which of course no government can send, but we'll need funding help to fight fires, rebuild, replant, etc. We've had amazingly little loss of life here, especially where I live in the state, but the fires are eating us away a bit of rangeland or a few homes at a time...

But it's the same GOP-Mostly pinning the blame on Obama who are cutting funding on all sorts of important educational, medical, and also INFRASTRUCTURE, giving huge tax breaks to the rich and corporations so that small towns like mine are having to go severely into hock for new fire stations and schools, and for fuck's sake, the GOP like governor Goodhair have even flirted with the secessionists WITHIN THE LAST FEW MONTHS before the fires started. Because Fed Government TOO BIG and too nosy and states' rights waaah!

Frankly, even though even part of ME feels conspiracy-theorist for thinking this... I have to wonder if our GOP government's even bothered to really and truly ASK for federal help through the proper channels.

And I know, my community and others in Texas have nerves stretched thin right now*, but I don't trust Canseco, Perry, and their cronies any more than I can throw them, and it's bothering me to see people I care about in my community jumping on the "OBAMA IS NOT HELPING US BECAUSE HE HATES REPUB STATES! OBAMA HOLDS US HOSTAGE!" bandwagon.

And I mean, I don't even really like Obama these days, except for brief moments on certain things/incidents.

*My town currently still not in danger danger, but there are FOUR FIRES that I know of around my town- the one way in backcountry NW that started last month (Rock House Fire), The one that started Sunday west of us (Holland-Gage fire, formerly Roadside Park Fire), the Schwartz fire to the east of us that is now visible on our side of the Glass Mountains, an that other fire that started on Iron Mountain or so. ( http://www.marfapublicradio.org is still best catch-all site for updates )

Oh and there was a house/structural fire IN TOWN last night. When our VFW was out at all these other fires, though they still managed to get folks here and put it out real fast.

The air is hazed with smoke, my own nerves are stretched, but I just am now even more stressed worried about how the GOP are going to play our dangers, our tragedies, into their sick Us Vs. Them, TEXANS vs US/YANKEES/LIBERALS games.

Edit to add:
Plus, yes, aware there are much more life-costing disasters happening around the US. We've been getting off light in TX *in comparison* to other places, but I did not want to turn this into comparison post. Because yes, we're getting off lighter but it still is hurting, and I don't want belittle ANY of the suffering happening due to the disasters here, or elsewhere. They are all bad, some worse than others, but whether it's a cut that needs 3 stitches or a cut that needs 100 it still is a cut that is hurting the person it's happening to, as it were. This post is JUST ABOUT the way the TX GOP is spinning what /is/ happening here into a selfish blame game wankcircle and good distraction from the shit they themselves are pulling.

Taken from my back porch 20 minutes ago maybe? Anyhow it's grown since. Fire is 2-3 miles west of town north of HWY 90 around Paisano Pass. Being fought by air tankers and all the local VFW's/emergency teams are on scene. The last report said it's moving pretty fast, but said it's going west- though all the smoke and ash is coming east, so we're listening and getting ready in case we have to evac.

Not good way for anyone to ever wake up. Will be tweeting it http://twitter.com/bakafox as I can, also though if anyone wants to stream http://www.marfapublicradio.org they're breaking news whenever they can again. Meanwhile, getting dressed, and getting ready in case we have to evac.

EDITS

They say it's moving very slow, so far our edge-of-Alpine selves are fine, but they are evacuating the Sunny Glen subdivision NW of us. Only 50+ or so acres burned so far by it, so it's pretty small, can hope hope hope that they can get it out/contained easier due to slowness, though it's in rough country (juniper/brush mountainsides/hills)

EDIT THE SECOND:

Wind shifted, my house/neighborhood's safe unless it shifts again. In deference to the vagaries of W TX winds and weather, everything's still packed other than we'll have to re-wrangle pets.

Hopefully it won't shift. And hopefully the neighborhoods it IS more seriously menacing get through OK too.

Just noting I'm giving Etsy another try, slowly adding stuff to it. Unlike my own site it's not free to list so it'll only have a limited number of things at any given time. Also unlike my own site at the moment though, I'm actually able to get it to bloody work.

http://bakafox.etsy.com

Currently I have mostly some of my stencil & spraypaint greeting cards and a few new drawings up. The cards are $4.50 each not including shipping, the drawings are $50. Planning to get more work listed this week, but I've got a sinking feeling I just can't compete price-wise. I mean, even for shipping- I have to actually get out and drive to send things via USPS, since they don't do street pickup or delivery where I live, and it's not a long one, but every drop of gas counts =/

I really wish I could hammer out what's wrong with my site's cart. 20 cents a listing seems like not much, but I literally have HUNDREDS of things to list. For printmaking I'm having to just list a handful at a time even if I have more editions left, since it charges per inventoried piece, not per listing on Etsy.


I'm also trying to hammer out details and get some stuff decided for some charity eBay auctions for various relief funds. The inertia's just being tough to fight, since right now I'm in CREATE mode, not "upload listings and work on that sort of thing" mode.

..which is also why I will be the first to admit my descriptions and write-ups on Etsy at the moment suck.

Hey, for anyone wanting a classic movie, that is pretty damn relevant, and would never really be made today (or if it were, OH the whitewashing). I'm rewatching "Salt of the Earth" today. This film was banned during McCarthy era and made by 'blacklisted' director and such.

Unionizing
Actual Latino cast as the New Mexican miners
Feminist themes

Yeah.

http://www.archive.org/details/clacinonl_SaltOfTheEarth is where you can download it free as an archival film

"Don't you ever think of anyone but yourself?!" "If I think of myself, it's only because you never think of me."
"Ok, so the discrimination hurts the anglos to, but it hurts me MORE"

I wish I had more info about how to help elsewhere, but this post is about the fires nearest to me. There's since original posting been fires ALL OVER down here- including more in West Texas just not so close that I could actually see the flames outlining the mountains at times (photo actually taken by my friend Alex, but that's the view on the night of the 10th from town):



Folks who follow me on Twitter and Facebook got possibly more updates than they wanted- didn't mean to leave LJ-only folks out of the loop, just sort of forgot to post here, since while things were happening, brains were in short supply in me due to anxious.

But yeah. Starting last Saturday, 400 or more square miles in my area burned over the course of five days or so. The biggest of the several fires that sparked on Saturday is known as the Rock House or Rock Shop fire. There's even NASA pics of the fires http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/fires/main/usa/tex-20110411.html ( http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/fires/main/usa/20110417-texasfires.html is the more recent image )

My town was spared entirely- winds never shifted hard enough to bring it here, but the town of Fort Davis, and most of Jeff Davis county had some serious damage. 50 structures burned may not sound like a lot, but we're dealing with communities and rural areas where there's not a whole lot of people and structures to begin with, also with an area that's not exactly well off overall- and really the worst might be the ranches, some of which lost a LOT of livestock who couldn't outrun the wall of fire. The descriptions are ones out of nightmares, with panicked, burning animals even spreading the fire around.

It was NOT a good few days here. The community rallied- neighbors saved each others' homes in the stricken town with garden hoses and buckets of swimming pool water and wet towels, the volunteer fire crews (and the crews that came in from across the US THANK YOU ALL) worked without stopping, and people dropped off food, and bottled water, and then everything else they could think of at the VFW stations and other points. Hotels in my and other untouched towns opened up all vacant rooms to evacuees, the local phone company's loaning of heavy equipment helped make firebreaks that kept an eastern fire (the Roper Fire) out of my town, and the utilities companies also had crews out repairing poles and lines almost 24 hours, their men working sometimes still with smoldering hotspots in the fields around them.

Miraculously, there were no human deaths, and only faily minor or moderate smoke inhalation victims needing treatment.

But it was rough, and while FEMA's here, there are needs still that are pretty immediate and not prone to waiting for full assessments to be made.

There's a relief fund up at http://www.westtexasfirerelieffund.com/ If you want to be sure your funds go to specific rancher needs like feed and fencing (there's NO graze left on many ranches that had cattle spared) put it in a memo with donation. Trigger Warning on that page's video- there are a few images of a small herd of horses that died. Otherwise, that page's video is actually TAME compared to some of the pics on the Facebook page linked below in terms of viewing the inferno and aftermath.

(editing to note, I was wrong if I said fires were out, as of 4-16-2011 there is still burning happening with the Rock House Fire, and the mountains/sky are so hazed from smoke if you replace them with buildings you'd think it was LA or Atlanta on a BAD pollution day)

(editing again: as of 04-18, still burning, though 'mostly contained' it actually came back to re-threaten ranches around the Boy Scout Camp. Also I will note, this isn't even the only fire in TX, just one of the biggest in terms of sheer territory it covered large areas of the state are burning, including near Dallas/Ft. Worth. I don't have help out links for those fires alas, I just.. don't have the heart or energy to trawl news right now for them. And while one fire was 'accidental arson' there's suspicions of a serial arsonist behind others and another man has been arrested as a possible arsonist for a Midland county fire. OVER ONE THOUSAND firefighters from around the US have come into TX to fight these fires.)


http://tinyurl.com/43wf82z is the FB photo album full of pics taken over the weekend by people, I think people not on FB can see it.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fort-Davis-Fires/166184330102232 is the actual Facebook Community Page about the local fires

http://www.facebook.com/#!/media/set/fbx/?set=a.10150158232344123.293278.16147034122 is a Facebook gallery of photos taken from around the MacDonald Observatory

http://tinyurl.com/6h8f9xr is a new aerial view of PART of the "Rock Shop Fire" burn area, the bits that involved Fort Davis. Fort Davis is the tiny little star-like bunch of streets in the center, and that's not even the entire burn area, which is the blackened bits as one may guess.


The best sources of news I've even found for our fires are local ones, the national/AP articles seemed to be very scarce, and a few had misleading information:

The Big Bend Sentinel: http://www.bigbendsentinel.com

Marfa Public Radio: http://www.marfapublicradio.org (they had equipment damaged by fire but did emergency repairs, they probably could use some donations, and have been one of the big lifelines for local folks along with the Alpine radio stations)

EDIT:
My friend, who works in hotels, pointed out some folks may want to help reimburse the hotels that opened their doors free to evacuees. I do not have a full list of the hotels that did this perhaps, but these are the ones that were listed on KRTS:

The Paisano in Marfa– 432-729-3669
Thunderbird in Marfa – 432-729-1984
El Cosmico in Marfa – 432-729-1950
Marfa Guest Quarters – 432-729-4599
Eve’s Garden in Marathon – 432-386-4165
Antelope Lodge in Alpine – 432-837-2451
Highland Inn in Alpine – 432-837-5811


Also for people really extra wanting to help out critters, Grand Companions is an area shelter that's helping with displaced pets and the like. http://www.grandcompanions.org/

And the Ft Davis Pet Shelter also is doing this http://www.facebook.com/notes/pet-spotters/fort-davis-pet-shelter-needs/179335665450920

I had several pretty much equally bad teachers, but for MOST of them one common thing I'd tell them is:

"No, it's not my fault for being too smart, too fat/large for my size, maybe gay, artistic, and *oversensitive*, it's YOUR FUCKING FAULTS for not daring to call other kids into line, and make clear that their behavior is crap and won't be tolerated.

And every time you say those shitty lines about how if I ignore the other kids they'll stop, or that I just need to learn to deal with being bullied, or they're doing it because they like me, a freaking unicorn kitten angel DIES and future me wants to come back in time to scream an appropriate curse word at you, and probably sue you and the school boards, even if I know I won't win, just to make sure you're all paying damn attention.

You are the adults in these situations, and you're the authority figures, and while maybe you managed to teach some kids some facts and such, you also have been teaching them they can get away with anything as long as they find suitably easy to ignore or blame victims."

I can't help but notice LJ keeps recommending communities/journals about fashion and dieting/health to me. Gee, wonder if this is due to my listed gender...

Anyhow. Stuff. Continues!

Have friends trying to help me see deadlines for art shows without exploding by helping out with some image editing and things. Thanks friends!

Am back to about 4 hours of sleep a day. Holy hell this makes getting things done difficult, especially getting things done without HUGE ERRORS. Or me at least becoming convinced that whatever I just did is horrible.

But mostly am posting because, any fellow children of the 80's (or even late 70's!):

NETFLIX HAS STREAMING "MYSTERIOUS CITIES OF GOLD" YOU GUYS!

Which I've tweeted and stuff about, and so far most of my friends have responded with "..whut?" but SURELY there are a few more out there who saw this series as kids and stuff. Right? RIGHT?

Because I was totally in love with this show when it aired on Nickelodeon. It was right up there with Mr. Wizard for shows I did not ever ever want to miss.

Even though in fact I never did see the ending.

Anyhow, I have gone 7 eps in so far, and it's held up well. It's clearly a kid show, but it has less fails than I semi-expected, and while it's not RIVETING to me at age 31, I've been enjoying it more than most modern cartoons/kid shows I've had inflicted on me while waiting in lobbies and things.

The little history lessons/documentaries at the end of each episode, I had not remembered, but they're also not terrible over all, and I think that those, with their images of Incan artifacts/gold did for South American Art and History what Disney's animated Robin Hood did for foxes for me-- left a HUGE impression on kid-mind and started some near obsessions. Hm.

I actually also always thought Esteban's sun ability thing was awesome and have actually made some OC's that are vaguely like him from time to time through the decades.

I still haven't gotten around to working with my studio site. I should do that tonight. But 2 new drawings up at http://www.bakafox.tumblr.com for now as I continue my exploration of various social networky things.

In other news, four or five hours of work from technicians later and our phone lines and dsl are no longer in fail territory. Unfortunately we're probably going to be paying because it was 'in house' and not 'on street' damage, but it's not like mom and I could've tracked down the bad splicing and wiring and fixed it. *sigh*

Netflix is very very convinced I want to watch "Transylmania" and "The Wizards of Waverly Place".

Nope.

EDIT:
Ok, I have to admit to a sort of terrible curiosity about "Transylmania" but a viewing of that WOULD require at least one other friend to snark at it with.

So Big Bend friends- I have a pretty big project I am outlining, to bring more attention to the arts out here- both in a tourism sense, and maybe to help show Austin how important the arts are in this area for things like SRSU/state funding.

The goal is monthly or twice a month podcasts, interviewing creative professionals and students throughout the Big Bend region. Writers, musicians, actors/performers, painters, sculptors, students, teachers, retirees and making-a-living-with-art types. Also planning on some "Art Lovers Speak" ones where people can write in or call in and discuss their love of the region.

It's very much not something I can do all by myself, and while the BBAC may be able to help with some costs/space a little, I am needing to hunt outside it for interested people who could donate a few hours of time a month as: Interviewers (mostly over phone or long-distance/internet) and Sound Engineers (mixing/editing interviews). If you know anyone who might be interested, have them contact me ASAP.

Interviewers preferably have a decent computer and internet connection to record with, and either ability with or willingness to learn how to use programs like Skype. Sound mixers it'd be great if they already have some experience, and their own computer and programs- though in BOTH cases, there is a possibility of them doing the calling/mixing with equipment I have from my house as a base of operations.

I cannot train the sound mixing, it's something I myself have no experience in, so even someone willing to TEACH other people how to edit would be awesome.

Bilingual interviewers would also be a great thing to have, so that we can reach out to the Spanish-speakers in the community.

I will help plot out and arrange timetables, get appointments for interviews, and do general organizing and setup, as well as some interviewing and possibly some mixing as I learn how. I also will be the main one who does file uploading and webwork including setting up some marketing. If there's people out there who'd be willing to assist me in this that also would be nice, since I do have to work around some health problems, but mostly to get this off the ground, need more interviewers and sound engineers!

I estimate it'd be a day or so of work a month (not necessarily all in one day)- if we get enough volunteers though, could rotate months or work in teams to cut it down a bit. The project would be umbrella'd by the BBAC for web hosting and some other things if all goes well, but I need to have some folks ready and willing to help out before I take it to the board.

I am in a bit of a hurry to get this going- the BBAC has been helping submit paperwork in to the state Arts Commission to get Alpine listed as having a historical/cultural district and be an arts destination- and from Alpine, it is a quick by TX standards trip to go to other Big Bend communities, so I'd like to have this project coincide with this.

Again, this podcast project would promote ALL the arts throughout the region, a little more at a time, and give individual artists a chance to be heard/found by a wider audience- as well as paint a picture of our community.

So yeah, if you are interested, let me know so I can call some kind of planning meeting or set up a planning forum, if you know someone else who'd be interested let them know about it and get them in touch with me (if you message me I'll share phone number and e-mail and such if you do not already have it)