December 2005

Greetings from Philadelphia. I just found out that radical guitar improviser Derek Bailey died on Christmas. I’ll be remembering him tonight by going to a concert featuring, among others, radical improvisers Todd Margasak and Jack Wright. I must admit I’ve always gotten Todd’s music, and never gotten Jack’s. That’s part of the appeal of seeing Jack play again.

Anyhow: If you want to get arrested for protesting in California, you could go to some boring air force base in the desert, or you could join Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir at Disneyland! Rev Billy:

With watches synchronized, the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir walked onto “Main Street USA” at 1:50 PM on Christmas Day, with the Disney faithful lining the curbs, waiting for the dancing of Tinkerbelle and Donald and Mickey.

…the entire choir entered the theme park undetected, hiding their robes at the bottom of backpacks and purses. …Once marching up the street in the rocking motion of gospel, the singers were able to complete three full songs, with the Reverend preaching throughout. The heightened strangeness of the place may have contributed to the hesitation by police to resist the church.

The performers marched back and forth on the theme park’s Main Street, a distance of about a half mile, contacting several thousands of on-lookers, for a period of about 25 minutes. After Reverend Billy was surrounded and hand-cuffed, the choir was detained in the filthy back lot of the park. …The Rev was held in the Disneyland holding tank and then the Anaheim jail.

Be sure to read the Rev’s “Letter from the Disneyland Jail.” (Here’s a nice picture.)

A happy Christmas to all readers and contributors.

Here is a small collection of homilies and messages from our brothers and sisters.

• Urbi et orbi
• Christmas message to the Commonwealth
• Sermon in Canterbury Cathedral
• Address from the Moderator of the General Assembly

Editor’s note: This is our 100th post.

In the heart of the dead (as advertised) but employees can’t find it, the inventory number is missing, the bar code won’t scan, ‘Price check on aisle one nineteen!’ they have promised again and again so we are here to collect: health, happiness, fulfillment, quality and especially savings in the isles of the only home we know.

The statement also applies to the 49 hours I had previously spent at Wal-Mart. Despite the ironic tone, those Wal-Mart pieces were an experiment in compliance. In Wal-Mart, I endeavored to accept the offers of consumer culture—health, happiness etc.—as if they were made in earnest. I decided that the intense, extreme, adventurous and sublimely happy life displayed in product advertisements was the thing for me.

Wal-Mart was a perfect site for the quest because it is the ultimate experience of abundant promise and dismal reality: the products versus the customers. There, amidst a crippling one billion choices, the perfect item is said to lurk; as customers our mission is to find it. My visit to Wal-Mart was an act of total compliance with that mission. The stipulations I brought were a sincere expectation of achieving that goal and a preference for process over product. In the end I felt successful for having made good on their false promises.

On the one year anniversary of the 49 hours I spent at Wal-Mart, I endeavored to colonize another modern fixture, the abandoned city building. Beginning on the evening of Thanksgiving 2002, I operated under the following procedure:

• I will illegally enter an abandoned building.
• I will have the door locked behind me.
• I will have no prior information as to what is inside.
• I will bring the clothes I wear, flashlight, paper, pen, camera, water, food, chalk, pliers, screw driver, and a two-way radio.
• I will remain inside the building for 72 hours.

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Lots of new stuff since I’ve been away.

• New York Catholic Worker Matt Vogel made an appearance in a New York Times op-ed. It referenced a march by Catholic Workers to Guantanamo to oppose torture there. It also mentioned 80 people gathering in NYC to remember Dorothy Day. Among these were Clinton’s Patty Angevine and Worcester’s Rev. John Madden.
• Volcanoboy reports that Mike Duffy has died. I got to know him a few years ago working on a production of “The Trial of the Catonsville Nine.” He played the judge. Damn nice guy. There’s another remembrance of him at Wormtown.
  
  Joe Finneral, Andy Keefe, and Mike Benedetti salute Mike Duffy (center, with pizza) after their final performance. Photo: andrewkeefe.net.
• Many people have pointed out another CW mention in this New York Times story:
  

  One F.B.I. document indicates that agents in Indianapolis planned to conduct surveillance as part of a “Vegan Community Project.” Another document talks of the Catholic Workers group’s “semi-communistic ideology.” A third indicates the bureau’s interest in determining the location of a protest over llama fur planned by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

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Rumor has it that you can get anything at Wal-Mart. That is one of the many reasons to avoid it. But on the day after Thanksgiving, 2001, I endeavored to submit entirely to the world of Wal-Mart. My intention was to hyper-accept the offers of consumer culture—health, happiness, fulfillment, comfort, etc.—as though they were made in earnest. On the day after Thanksgiving I entered a Super Wal-Mart planning to stay continuously for seventy-two hours or until I was thrown out.
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Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.

November 23, 2007 is Buy Nothing Day. If you oppose the commercialization of Christmas, make your voice heard by not shopping that day.

Letters to the outside:

Hi drew,

Believe it or not, I am writing you from Wal-Mart. I am now well into my thirty-seventh hour of continuous occupation. My plan was to stay for seventy-two hours but I have had absolutely no luck finding a suitable place to sleep—go figure! Actually I just got busted trying to bed down. I guess the camping section manager saw the rack of orange camo cover-alls wiggling as I tried to get comfortable below. Just as I settled down I saw a pair of feet approaching. “What are you doing under there?” she asked. I assumed that I’d be escorted out the front door (or worse) so I didn’t bother with an elaborate excuse. “Hiding,” I said as I climbed out and waited, like a good criminal, for the firing squad. But the strangest thing happened! She just stood there looking at me. I know she wanted to open the application but she didn’t have the right program. After a few seconds I just walked away. I took off my wig and spent the next few hours hiding in the magazine section. Now the “Radio Diner” is open again and I’m back in the booth where my “refill” cup hides… I think the whole thing’s blown over.

Always Wal-Mart tm
Always
Mark
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Both Karl Barth and Thomas Merton passed away 37 years ago this Saturday.