SHEWHO AND WOODY

 

CLGM HOLIDAY NEWSLETTER

 Hi All,

   

      It’s been a good year here at the CLGM, with much to be thankful for. After the Covid shut down for services in 2020 we resurrected church in the summer of 2021 with two services. The second service was "911 Disco Emergency Church" on September 11, 2021, the twentieth memorial anniversary of the WTC 9/11 attack. Many thought this was a step too far, but once again the congregation and Band of All Faiths proved the naysayers wrong and rallied for the event. We are nothing if not adept at walking the razor’s edge between blasphemy and heartfelt empathic joy. We laughed. We cried. The first church this past summer was "Talk to the Animals CLGM." This is especially appropriate given Samm’s bosom buddy the past few months- Woody Harrelson the partridge. This wild little bird showed up in Samm’s backyard with a lot to say and remains completely attached to Samm every day. It has been a wonderful gift from the animal kingdom to all of us. Deer season has been a bust so far. I missed an opportunity with the bow at a giant ten point buck at five yards and again at a bear at fifteen yards. Both animals escaped my best efforts to kill them. So all your prayers have been answered. The freezer remains empty. After hunting hard for three months I’m taking a holiday break. Today I got my booster. Some unvaccinated friends are deathly ill and we should all encourage our loved ones to get vaccinated. The consequences of anti-vaxer rhetoric are dire. The variants will keep coming and best efforts to keep them at bay will be needed by the entire extended global congregation. We all look forward to Spring "Children’s Church" and being able to gather safely with no fear of contagion. Two babies have graced us with their presence: Leo and Uma. Hopefully their parents will present the tykes to the community in the Spring with a little holy water sprinkling. Blessings and good vibes to all! Stay safe. Stay healthy. Sending much love your way throughout the holidays and beyond. See you all in church in the Spring….the LGM willing.

THE CULT OF MOSES (MO) DAVID- not affiliated with MO David Gallery or the CLGM

 

RELIGION and ART

 A totally willing, virgin fool fucked by a ghost, ain't that cool?

A tale told again and again to the savages and the wayward men

Say hallelujah, say amen

Praise the Lord......I'm born again.

   This little snippet lyric is from the old Purple Geezus song Born Again. In my view it goes directly to the heart of what religion is.... a suspension of disbelief. As a leader of a church purposefully devoid of religion, I feel it is important to try to define exactly what that means from time to time. Bear with me.

    I came to my interest in religion and art almost simultaneously as a teenager. The art was in the form of copying Christmas card scenes as pen and ink country landscapes, as well as trying to accurately represent the wildlife printed in my father's hunting magazines. I wasn't very good at it. But I was committed to the task and it was a great way to get away by myself and not be bothered by my siblings and parents. I was busy with my cue-tips and Testor's car paint in the basement while the rest of the family did their thing. A little paint high didn't hurt. I still have a few canvas boards of these early works. 

    On the religion front my cousins, siblings, extended family and I all went to Sunday School at the Presbyterian Church. As we got a little older we attended "Youth Group." These teenager get togethers were fun, run by a young minister with a wandering eye for the local housewives. The spirit was willing but the flesh was weak. The minister didn't last, but he had a lasting impact on me. Christian dogma was a soft sell for the Presbyterians, but they did instill a great sense of community, albeit a bit hypocritical. Nobody's perfect. The folded CLGM programs are a direct rip off of the Montgomery Presbyterian Church program. As I matured as an artist religion once again began to creep into my oeuvre. It never left.

   I see myself as not only a participant, but a critic of religion as well as art. In my humble opinion the world has fucked up both. Recently a Frida Kahlo self-portrait sold for $34.9 million. Everybody celebrated. A woman artist finally getting her due! What crap!!!!!! I love Kahlo's work, but is this the only way to gage her greatness by a market affirmation so obscene it begs to be condemned? All belief systems and religions fall into the same ostentatious trap. From Vatican riches and that big spider in the basement to those Mormon female virgins (baptizing the dead) in bathtubs held up by giant, golden oxen,  places of worship drip with excess. Nobody seems to question it. Guru Rolls Royces are excoriated while the Pope gets a pass for all his cheesy gold and  bejeweled bling. That's fucked up.

    The CLGM has been burning dollar bills since 1986. I can count the number of art works I have sold in a forty-plus year career on one hand. Now the art world has discovered NFTs and bitcoin in order to line everybody's pockets. Even work done by artists with a social agenda is commodified (if it wants any attention) the money never finding its way to the people who really need it. The laundry keeps churning. Christian missionaries used to baptize indigenous peoples just before stepping aside and letting corporate or state actors kill them. It was seen as a positive step towards salvation, a tribute to a God who had given the earth to Western European Colonialists. Art and religion today reflect this bloody, selfish, capitalist history. Maybe I need to buy some Testors and crank out a few landscapes again. I'll be in the basement if you need me.   

        

FAKE

 

UNCLE JOHNNY SYNDROME

     What is identity and how fluid is it? Now that we hunters have a holiday break I will have nothing to report from the woods. So my experiences will be limited to what humans have been up to online as well as in the hood. It seems that since I've been in the woods identity politics, and all that come with it, has been raging unabated. What sex are you? What party are you? What is your occupation? Are you are citizen? How do you identify racially? Did you serve in the military? How many white supremacy organizations have you friended on facebook? Are you vaccinated? Have you tested positive? What race were your birth parents?

   I just watched Laura Brownson's 2018 film on Rachel Dolezal The Rachel Divide on Netflix. Dolezal is the white woman who passed for black and became the Spokane, Washington NAACP President. Once exposed as having been born to two white parents Rachel's identification as "black" becomes problematic and the film follows the unraveling. The film takes a pretty even-handed, unflinching look at Rachel Dolezal, her black children and mixed race baby. Widely vilified as a "fake," and "cultural appropriator" by the black community, Dolezal sticks by her identity guns and never wavers in her insistence that she should be allowed to identify as any race she pleases. She sees herself as black. End of discussion. Her "trans-racial" argument is surprisingly similar to my attempt at "trans-species" identification as "Mammalien." The difference being that there are no Mammaliens on the planet who were enslaved by people who look just like Rachel and her parents and would argue the point.

    Did Rachel Dolezal do good work as a Black Lives Matter activist and NAACP functionary, all the while lying to her community? Absolutely. People can lie to themselves and others quite effectively and simultaneously do good works.. My Uncle Johnny Osterhout was a perfect example. He came back from Vietnam as a Green Beret. As the years went by he became an advocate for Vietnam Veteran's rights and was named the Grand Marshall of the Veteran''s Day Parade in New Windsor. Another vet read about Uncle Johnny's war record in Vietnam and a few things didn't add up. Major John Osterhout's identity was as a proud, patriotic, war hero and activist. He unarguably also did good work for vets. Then, his whole world of complex lies unraveled. He was not a Green Beret. He never served in Vietnam. He was in the U.S. Army in 1963. That was about the extent of it. His less than impressive real identity was soon discovered. It was too late. Within months Uncle Johnny died of Louie Gehrig's Disease. He didn't know or care who he was by then.

    Rachel Dolezal reminds me of Uncle Johnny and a little of the white journalist and author of Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin. The major difference being that Griffin (after darkening his skin) passed as a black man among hostile, racist white people in the South, not in a trusting black community in Spokane who now rightly feel duped. Like those trusting, battle-scarred, PTSD ridden Vietnam Vets, how could a woman born white know a life under fire on the battlefield as a black woman? In the end Rachel Dolezal has the same syndrome as Uncle Johnny. Something is cross wired and logic or even overwhelming social media shame by trolling critics won't change Rachel's mind. In her mind she is black. In Uncle Johnny's mind he was a war hero. It would seem a waste of breath to convince either otherwise.                  

          

MYSTERY GIRL

PHOTO: Marianna Rothen
 

WINTER SOLSTICE 2021

  This would have been the last day of the deer season in past years. But this year, after a short holiday break we get an extended muzzleloader season. There's still time to take meat after Xmas. From Dec. 26th until Dec. 31st we can draw blood legally. Today, even though I previously alluded to the fact that our deer drives had been  canceled. Savage, Bird and I convened - as we did yesterday - to put on drives. Things changed. 

    Yesterday Bird shot a nice doe behind the shack and today we were to start off the day at Paradise Pond. This is Savage's home turf. He would do the first leg of the drive and then we would switch places and I would finish it. On the last drive I put six deer in front of Savage and he took a mature doe. One eye and a bum leg and the guru drilled her right behind the front shoulder. I dragged her out.

     By the time we got back to the shack for lunch it was 2:30 pm. The venison stew that had been cooking on the wood stove for three days was a thick, savory soup. Lunch done, burning daylight, I drove behind the house once more for Bird and Savage. Yesterday Bird jumped a shooter buck across the road that went out the backdoor and could now be in these woods. As I slogged through the swamp I thought back to another solstice. This one was the shortest day of the year in 1818. 

    Instead of enjoying a day of deer hunting with his brother and friend my 5x great uncle was pissed off at local farmhand and a black sailor for taking trees off his property. The black sailor and the white farmhand explained that they worked for my uncle's nephew and were just doing their job. Then the sailor swung his musket around and shot my uncle in the head. Missing and ripping off an ear, the farmhand then grabbed the musket and beat my wounded uncle to death with it. It only gets crazier from there. True story. The drive continued. I see deer moving.

   I spent the past two days putting on deer drives for my brother and my best friend. I never had the hammer back. My musket remained unfired as I wore off boot leather and drug their deer out of the woods. I can't remember a better couple of days I've had in years. I love to hunt. Whether it's by myself or with a couple of people I'd trust with my life, it's the hunt not the kill that's paramount. 

     Today Bird shot another deer behind the shack. This time it turned out to be a shedded buck. I also drug it out. This will be the issue as we approach the extended season- shooting bucks we think are does. As I was reticent to shoot a doe with her yearling a couple of days ago, now it may become a prerequisite so as not to shoot a prematurely shedded mature buck. These are the real world concerns in a world of deer hunters. It's so much more fun to hunt with friends and family than worry about hillbillies taking trees off your property. We all know how that can end up. I just got my pot delivery. Phew! Things are looking up. The shortest day of the year just got a little bit longer. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..........           

NURSE

 PHOTO: Marianna Rothen

NO VAX NO RACKS- JACK

 Hunting is a mostly solitary pursuit. All season long we deer hunters hit the woods, morning and afternoon. After dark we check in with each other for "the report," the day's sightings and possible kills. There hasn't been much to report lately. The deer seem to have disappeared. It's been a year of diminishing returns. But, we all had the last two days of muzzleloader to look forward to for meat. This is our tradition, to gather at my shack and put on drives to take does. It usually works and it is always fun. Last year (before the Covid vaccine was available) Bird shot a nice doe and UB had a big four point pass under the cemetery stand. This year that buck is a nice six point shooter. Everybody was looking forward to these drives, a little holiday socializing and possibly getting one of these shooter bucks off their beds. Then, like an unwelcome guest who pours "one more" drink and keeps putting another record on the turntable at 4:00 am while you check your watch and yawn, the Covid is back.

      Most people stay away from discussing politics and religion with close friends and family. These prickly subjects are divisive and in order to maintain the peace everybody seems to sidestep them. But health is another matter. Even though the pandemic was politicized by Trump at the outset and Q-Republicanism is resembling a cultic religion, I have no problem asking people their vaccine status. To my surprise one of our hunters had a very sick (unvaccinated) daughter at home in bed and he was also unvaccinated and sick. WTF? How is this possible? In a word: Trump. This two legged virus, a boil on the ass of society can be blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths and the mass hysteria that is infecting half the country.

   I can honestly say I have no Republican friends (or so I thought). I knew of a few in-laws and maybe a niece or nephew or two who leaned right, but over the years I've stepped away from my more racist or rightwing cohorts. I just have nothing to say to them anymore. Life's too short. Their flaccid reasoning and absurd rationales for their "beliefs" are weak, non-critical pablum that falls apart at the slightest objective examination. I can't be around them. So, to find out one of my hunting buddies was an anti-vaxer, sick as a dog on his couch, as our deer drives loomed was more than disappointing.

   The consequences of not taking responsibility for your own (as well as your family's) health almost two years into a global pandemic are becoming crystal clear. Not taking advantage of a vaccine that has been proven safe and effective, while spewing a litany of excuses that run from government body intrusion (abortion anyone?) to fear of needles is just plain ignorant and shameful. You may be a smart, tough, fearless person, but you are acting like a complete idiot, a petulant child. Now you are sick. Your daughter is sick. Your other children, wife, father and grandchildren are all at risk of catching the virus. If you go to the hospital you are stressing out the system and all my health-worker relatives who will take care of you. Think of your community. Did you not see this coming? You are way smarter than this. I fear for you and all your family's health. This was all perfectly avoidable.

   So Monday is a bust. Drive drives 2021 have been canceled. As photogGeorge put it "No vax no rack." No poke, no joke. As much as I thought I had purged my inner circle, my Covid bubble of outliers, this was not in fact the case. Now we are all paying the price. I'm to get my booster on Wed. or before. I thought everybody I knew was at least vaxed. Turns out I was wrong. Because of this we all may be eating canned chicken and Majestic Farm pork chops in 2022. But at least (the LGM willing) we will be alive to sit at the table, venison or not. To all my friends and loved ones (Republicans or not) Pulleeeeze-  GET VACCINATED!!!!! Before it's too late.                

        

ROCKET BOY

 PHOTO: Sara Budde

THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE

 "I had a dream I was twenty and there was no virus." This came out of the mouth of an eight year old boy. It's hard to imagine what kids have gone through the past couple of years. Acquiring cognition during the Trump years, observing adults pick sides in a divisive battle for  hearts and minds, parroting racist, conspiratorial mindsets or woke dogma only to be shut out of their schools, ripped from playgrounds, sequestered from friends, Zoomed by teachers and scared to death by an unseen virus that could kill grandma and grandpa if they got too close after not washing their hands for five minutes, kids these days have a tough row to hoe. Not since tykes watched their parents switch off the Teletubies to tune into a pair of high rises tumble on a bluebird September day, has a vulnerable generation been so traumatized by world events. But, unlike the 9/11 spectacle this is a slow moving tragedy that is but one of many mud slides, floods, forest fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, a lava flow of racism, sexism, and Republican white supremacy that threaten any fragile sense of security a kid can hold onto. "I was at a pig roast." the eight year old continued. "Everybody was happy."

"Out of the mouths of babes." my mom was fond of saying. She recognized the unvarnished wisdom of the innocent. Kids realized immediately that their lives would never be the same in that cold spring of 2020 and there wasn't a goddamned thing they could do about it. I remember this same boy along with his sister and father waiting in the snow for the the school bus, not to pick them up, but to drop off a free lunch. The bus never showed and the kids had to walk home empty handed. "I hate this Koran (quarantine)!" the little girl mumbled, kicking angrily at the snow. This was a peek at their future - lockdowns, masks, loneliness, fear, sickness, death and cold free lunches. Who could they blame? The grownups of course.

    "Another story, Mike!" the eight year old screamed in my ear. This kid was so amped up, jonesing for a little socializing with somebody other than his sister, the baby hedgehog and his parents. School was closed again! Normalcy has been denied a generation. And these kids have loving parents, friends and an extended support structure. Imagine the ones who are locked in stifling apartments, backseats of cars or wrapped in a thin coat on some icy forest floor. Imagine the ones with strung out drug addict parents, victims of weak spirited fathers who eye pre-pubescent daughters with predatory leers or alcoholic mothers asleep with the kitchen stove on. "Did I tell you the one about my grandfather's cane?" I ask. The boy nods frantically and screams, "THE BULL DICK!" Sis grimaces and pets the hedgehog "Thorny" with her heavy glove. I love these kids. I need their energy as much as they want to hear my silly stories. "What do you think about Children's Church for spring?" I ask, trying to think of another story that is age appropriate. They ponder the prospect of running a CLGM church service while terrorizing me. It sounds like fun. I worry about these kids. Then sis adds, "If you live that long." Snap. Maybe they'll be OK. They seem to know way more than I do.             

$ORRY

 

MY MISTAKE

We all make mistakes. Here's a few classics I've committed over the years:

1. 1969- THE AQUARIAN EXPOSITION (WOODSTOCK)

My brother Bird and I attended. The last thing my parents said to me was "Take care of your brother." As that creepy Yogaville cult guru Swami Satchidananda droned on, I pulled out a five dollar bill and told Bird to go get us some food and a couple of cokes. While it was still light out he disappeared into a sea of sunburned skin and faded bellbottoms. I didn't worry. I was sure he would be back in a half hour or so with the goods.  Hours later, the field now filled with a half million souls, in the dark, put to sleep by Ravi Shankar, somebody stepped on me. "Hey man." I barked "Watch it!" "Osti?" a lost and terrified Bird uttered. He had been wandering aimlessly through the crowd with two cold hotdogs and a couple of orange sodas, lost for hours. If he hadn't randomly stepped on me he'd still be there. "Orange soda!!!? I told you I wanted a coke." I complained. I thought of sending him back, but relented. Arlo Guthrie was about to go on. Fine. Sit down. Watch the show. Ugh. Cold dogs. "What, no mustard?" Then it started to rain.

Mistake: Sending a fourteen year old to do a sixteen year old's job.

Lesson learned: Don't go to rock concerts. They suck.

2. 1991- LOLLAPALOOZA

  I obviously had not learned (or forgotten) my lesson learned in 1969. This time instead of being a clueless, scrawny kid with his little brother lost in the crowd I was accompanying Chuckles McC as a 39 year old V.I.P. guest of The Butthole Surfers to a field somewhere in New Jersey to bring in the nineties in style. I drove. As soon as we parked the car we ate a couple tabs of L.S.D. For the uninitiated, acid is the great social equalizer. As it poured outside (just like at Woodstock) we sat snug and dry in the Buttholes' backstage trailer, Ice T popping his head in from time to to blow some weed. The way I was feeling I could've taken the stage with the Buttholes or played one on one B-ball with Ice T. "Take that bitches!" I told BHS lead singer Gibby that I only knew one guy from Texas who lived in some bum-fuck town called Dogshit, Texas. His name was Don Rock. "You mean Driftwood?" Gibby asked with an angry glare. Turned out Don had bought Gibby's old house in Driftwood. My bad. I made my exit, bought a tub of beer and went out to groove in the crowd. As I took a big swig of beer a bee entered my mouth on full buzz. I spit a giant mouthful of beer and the half drowned bee all over the people in front of me. "A b-b-b-bbub-bee......" I feebly explained as the sour faces about to rip me to shreds stared back. Somehow my innocent, glazed over acid eyes saved me. Again....my bad.

Mistake:  Drinking beer, on acid, at a rock concert without checking for insects first.

Lesson learned: Don't go to rock concerts. They suck. That was my last. 

3. Date unknown- THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

   My old friend the famous downtown NY underground filmmaker Lady T. Whifflebottom was about to screen a selection of her work from the 1980's at the museum. Shewho, Marianna Louise and the Buddes were all in attendance. Who did I meet in the lobby as we waited to buy tickets? Don Rock. As we caught up he gave me a cookie, which I immediately popped in my mouth. After I had swallowed it whole, Don grinned and said "Hold on." I didn't know what he was talking about until Lady T's short film "Rat Trap" came on. In this notorious piece of transgressive filmmaking the "actors" drown a rat. Turned out that cookie was dosed with enough pot to bring even me to my knees. As the poor little creature gasped for air, blowing bubbles on the screen I leaned on Marianna Louise's shoulder and told her "If I pass out don't call 911." She nudged Shewho and all eyes turned my way. By some miracle I remained conscious. I'll never watch that snuff film Rat Trap again.

Mistake: Eating anything Don Rock gives you without asking what drugs are in it. 

Lesson learned: Don't watch animals (you don't eat) die for the sake of "art" while on drugs. Maybe get Don't Call 911 tattooed on my forehead.

4. Yesterday- MY HOUSE

     After cleaning up my porch I took a bunch of cardboard boxes out to my burn pile alongside the church. As I tossed them on the pile I noticed something peculiar. A bunch of little pine saplings had been lopped off around the burn pile. Huh? For those who read the blog you will remember the pissing match I got into with some so-called loggers who were taking pine boughs off the adjoining property. It turned out that they were not satisfied staying on their own land. I was not happy. A little later in the day I came across my neighbor Carlito and told him of the encroachment. He sympathized but told me that he did not know the name of the property owner or who these culprits were. Then, about fifteen minutes later I received a phone call from Carlito. "That woman who owns that land is parked on the road." I grabbed a pen and paper, put on a face mask and stomped towards her Range Rover, writing her license number down on the fly. I made the universal finger gesture for her to roll down the window. She was a rather pretty black woman. She cracked the window and asked "Yes?.....I'm on the phone." I didn't care. "Do you own this property?" I asked abruptly. "I'm not on your property. I'm on a public road." she said. "You don't own this property?" I asked again, fully prepared to ream her out for her trespassing "loggers." "I'm just trying to have my coffee, talk on the phone in tranquillity and watch the animals." she explained raising her coffee cup and pointing to the puzzled camel staring at the two of us. Carlito (and I) had made a terrible mistake. This poor woman thought I was a crazed cracker on some racist rampage to get her off MY property. It was all a giant misunderstanding on my part. I apologized repeatedly and tried to explain myself - not very sufficiently. I'm sure she thought I was nuts and racist. Thank God I wasn't on my way into the woods with my gun slung over my shoulder. 

Mistake: Pick one. Overreacting. Unleashing anger. Not knowing all the facts. Scaring innocent people. Being an asshole in public. Running out of pot two days ago.

Lesson learned: Write license plate numbers down when hillbillies are cutting pine boughs anywhere and tell you they have permission. Know the name of your neighbor. Never run out of marijuana.

I'm sure my mistakes will continue. I just hope I can keep learning from them. Again, to that poor woman just trying to find some decent cell reception and peace and quiet on a public road: I am so sorry.          

          

THINKING

 PHOTO: Marianna Rothen

READY AND WAITING

 I grew up the grandson of a small town butcher. My grandfather Wray Osterhout had a small grocery store (in the old Grange building) in Montgomery and a butcher shop in the back. By the time I was old enough to wield a knife he had closed up the shop but kept his hand in the game by butchering the local hunters' kills during deer season. I loved hanging out with "Gramp." We piled up the deer carcasses in his dirt floor garage and went to work. First we skinned out the deer on a specially designed table. Then we strung up the deer by its hind legs and sawed it in half. Once quartered we humped the quarters into the hot basement and in front of a diagram of a cow we cut it up into chops, steaks, roasts, and stew meat. The scraps were ground up in a giant hamburger grinder. Gramp never missed an opportunity to show me his stub of a severed finger from a hamburger grinder back in the day, warning "Somebody got that finger nail in their hamburger." with a wink. I would listen wide eyed, believing everything that came out of that man's mouth. That was not always to my benefit. He also encouraged me to lick a cane made of mysterious wood. "What's it taste like?" he asked. I had no clue. "Pine?" That's a bull's dick cane." he exclaimed bending over in laughter. I got a lot of that old man in me. A few years back I found a bull dick cane in a thrift store. I've yet to find the right kid to try Gramp's trick out on. Maybe Rocket Budde? If he gets much older he may not appreciate the joke and hurt me.   

     I still butcher my own deer.  Only these days I use another technique I learned from Bird and Savage. While I was not hunting in the seventies and eighties in SF and NYC, Bird and Savage were hard at it and refining their butchering skills. They hang the deer, skin it out, then take out the back strap. Once quartered it's up to the individual. I cut the whole deer into steaks and stew meat. If it's a little guy sometimes I'll smoke the hindquarters and slow cook the front shoulder. Of course none of this is relevant if you don't shoot one. So today I cleaned up my front porch, set up my chopping table and readied MO David North butcher shop in anticipation. I lost my grandfather's butcher block to a fire in SF and his grinder to Bill Kovar. Poor Bill (now dead) was guilty forty years later about losing that grinder. I'd long forgotten the heresy. But the shop has a fireplace, plenty of light and a boom box. I still have Gramp's sharpener and a few cherished knives. I'm ready for blood. Now all I have to do is shoot a deer. Stay tuned.        

RUNAWAY SLAVE AD

 

NOT DREAMING OF A WOKE XMAS

 In that hot, pandemic, "woke" summer of 2020 I made it my business to rid the streets of the little town of Mountaindale of a Confederate flag flown persistently from the back of a local woman's Jeep. I was still on social media in those days. So I posted my "antiracist" crusade and started a 90 person group email hoping concerned (mostly white) citizens could come together and shame this cracker into compliance. What happened was both enlightening and unpredictable.  Although, in organizing a predominantly "woke and white" Love Parade, we were able to get the stars and bars replaced with a "Blue Lives Matter" flag on the Jeep (small victory) I was faced with a backlash from my own community, disparaged as not being "woke" enough and in the following months canceled and marginalized within a town I thought was on my side. I withdrew from social media and participation in town affairs. If you think a thirteen year old girl is at risk of social media mob pressure, try being a sixty-eight-year-old, heterosexual, white man. Down with the patriarchy! Day after day of sitting in a tree NOT seeing deer makes one's mind wander and masticate the past. It still hurts. I just got a new book by John McWhorter, Woke Racism How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America. I think Mr. McWhorter is onto something. Here's a taste of what I went through on that email chain during that summer:

Mike, 

We need to listen when black and nonwhite people in town say that they don’t feel safe coming to this event. If this is going to be anything more than a performative feel-good pageant for white people, we need to take these concerns seriously.  If we’re doing this to show support for black and nonwhite folks, we need to listen when they tell us they don’t feel safe. We can’t rely on the police to keep black people safe. Police kill black people with impunity.

() and I are going to paint a king sized sheet with black lives matter than can be used to block the flag if they bring it.  I think that because the confederate flag is a targeted threat of violence toward black people, the opposing message should be specifically in support of black people.

I think it’s also important to report back whatever we come up with to the larger group so that people can decide whether or not they feel safe coming.

Here is my reply: 

     I Just had dinner with the “black” folks you are referring to. And they trust me. Enough with the listen to POC bullshit. I’m doing everything in my power to make this safe and fun for all. Again, AGAIN, fucking AGAIN. This is about LOVE- not color. I’m trying to make this fun for everyone who wants to profess love and not get bogged down in color line crap. I’m just saying this to you. So report that back [to the larger group] if you want.

    If I understand John McWhorter's premise correctly that "...Third Wave Antiracism forces us to pretend that performance art is politics." he puts art in the same compartment as religion; something that exists outside of logic and critical thought. I agree. Yet, politics these days seem to be neck and neck with these absurdist endeavors - only way more dangerous. I can freely admit that I'm racist. I think we all are. It's how you deal with your racism that matters. Just because I love children doesn't make me a pedophile.

    In 2016 I learned two things: my ancestors (both maternal and paternal) were enslavers of captive Africans in the Northeast....for generations. The second thing I learned was that the descendants of these Osterhout slaves were the aunts, uncles and step-grandparents of the great Harlem Renaissance photographer James VanDerZee. Inserting myself into the VanDerZee legacy has been a complex, exhausting and ultimately very rewarding process. I feel a kinship (albeit fictive) with VanDerZee and am friends with his widow Donna. Am I woke? Not even close. I'm an artist. I have the freedom to be as much of an asshole as I wish. I just ordered a rug emblazoned with a runaway slave newspaper ad image from one of my relatives. Problematic? You bet. I can't write books like McWhorter's, but I can organize Love Parades, put on "churches" and do my best to create performance art that may or may not deal with our history of racism....as an old, straight, white man. Now back to the hunt.       

SMOKING

 PHOTO: Richard Kern

WITH A WHIMPER

It's not a sport nor a game, but there are winners and losers. You don't have to guess which I am. Here's the tally so far:

Bow

Two eights- pass

One ten- Within five yards and a loss of concentration when an umbrella tipped cost me the kill. No arrow released.

Crossbow

One bear- A shot placed too low was not lethal. Nothing is a certainty but I am confident after examining the arrow that the bear was not harmed. Good news.

One eight- While looking the wrong direction a nice eight point shooter came within range. I did not spot him until he was walking away offering no shot. No arrow released.

Rifle

One seven- pass

One six- pass

No shooters spotted.

 I never had the safety off the .30-06 all season.

   Today was the last day of rifle season. From tomorrow morning until New Years Day (with a short break for Xmas) it is muzzleloader season. I've never hunted so hard with so little luck. It seems like the deer become harder to find every day. I have to binge watch Youtube videos just remind me what they look like. The lack of movement or rut activity is demoralizing. But for many readers of this blog the outcome so far is all good news. I realize that many of you are rooting for the deer. I understand. If it was easy I would've been done weeks ago. If I was just hunting for meat I also would have been done by now, with a full freezer.  But this is not about killing for meat...yet. For the next week I'm hunting horns. When our traditional deer drives begin  just before Xmas I'll attempt to shoot a doe. Maybe I'll be successful, maybe I won't. In any case this has been a season for the books. I'm in shape. I feel good, healthy and up to the challenge. I congratulate all the other hunters who have scored and encourage them to pace themselves so we all walk out of the woods upright. It's not over yet. Good luck in the morning.    

KAMASUTRA

 

"BOB DOLE!"

Ok. I'll be the first to admit it when I'm wrong. I overreacted to the lack of hunter phone porn after Bird shot his buck. Here's another email from Ginger with a further explanation for the lack of aural satisfaction:  

"He shot the deer about 4:40pm, came down to the house by 5p looking for Matthew or John, neither home. He took the gator up, dragged the deer about 50yards, and got it into the gator with difficulty. Had it hanging by 6:30, jumped in the shower, ready to go by 6:45pm. Katie had made 7pm reservations for dinner for all of us to celebrate my 65th birthday.

He is amazing and will give you all the specifics of the shot as soon as he can. 

Today, he will quarter it to get in the fridge as the temperature will be in the 60's. He then is heading up to His friend Herbs property for the weekend.  Your time will come. 

Have a great, safe day.

Love You hunters, 

Ginger"

I apologize. Even though I have yet to speak to Bird I got the skinny from Savage. Combined with Ginger's email I get the picture. He waited until last light and thought the buck was a shooter. As it turned out he wasn't as big as Bird thought. The ground shrinkage exposed a 2 1/2 year old in the half light of dusk, still a solid buck, just not worthy of the hit list. As I told Savage to get a decent buck on the ground this late in the season and hump it out of the woods by yourself is no small task these days. Both he and Bird have nothing to be ashamed of in the size of their bucks. Here I am obsessed with Clocker and not even seeing does. My freezer is empty. What the hell does all this has to do with Bob Dole you ask? I'll tell you.

   I like sex. Thankfully so does Shewho. Before you go "icky....TMI..." It all ties in. When you get to be our age you need to do everything carefully. It's just like climbing in the tree stand or dragging a deer out of the woods. Get in shape, check your equipment, make sure you are strapped in, and if, God forbid, something goes wrong......always have a safe word. For Shewho and I it's always been Bob Dole! With the recent passing of the elder statesmen I can't turn on the radio or CNN without tensing up and looking around for a handicap rail every time a politician or pundit utters his name. I look over at Shewho and she smiles, giving me the thumbs up. Everything is OK. False alarm. She wipes the beads of sweat from my brow and places a calming hand on my.....forearm. In all our years together we have not felt it necessary to utter his name. No step too far....yet. Butt....he's always there if we need him. Nobody's getting any younger. Thanks for the memories. R.I.P. Bob Dole.  

TEEHOO AND DAFFODIL

 PHOTO: Shewho

GO HOME LITTLE SPIKEY

  Every day I come out of the woods and make my phone calls. First I call Shewho to let her know I'm alive. I give her the run down on what I saw (or didn't see) and get the report from her relationship with Woody the partridge. Then I call Savage and Bird. It's our routine. Savage is tagged out. Bird and I are still hunting. Shewho doesn't hunt. She loves animals. This wild bird has adopted Shewho. At first she would call it - "Woooooodyyyyyy..." and the bird would come running. Now all she has to do is slam the door and Woody knows that his friend is outside. It's time for a little corn and a stroll around the property. If Shewho ignores Woody he gets under her feet and bats at her boots until she bends down and engages. Then the crazy little bird coos and chatters, jumps in her lap and when she goes back in the house he tries to bum rush the kitchen door. Lassie sticks her long nose out to block his passage and Monkey the cat skulks and plots an assassination. Woody has no fear. I mention all this because I'm beginning to have my own relationship with an animal in the woods.

   This season I've been hunting four shooters, with a specific eye towards Clocker, the ten point buck who bettered me in the tree stand at five yards with the bow. Targeting specific bucks is possible only if you hunt the same property day after day. It's been over two months of almost a seven day a week task to get on any of these four bucks. I haven't seen any of them since gun season started. This weekend is the last of gun. But what I have seen (way too many times) is a buck I call "Spikey." You get to know your deer and this little guy with  two straight four inch spike antlers is easy to spot. Every time I think it's a doe he turns his head and I recognize this teenager. He lives in the core area of Clocker. The other day I was creeping through the leaves, careful not the step on sticks when I looked up and there stood Spikey....twenty feet away! In another encounter he ran up behind me and stopped short of almost butting my back. He never spooks and when I wave he sticks up his tail and walks away, unperturbed. I'm waiting for him crawl in my lap like Woody and whisper in my ear......"Please don't kill us."

    But, until that happens I'm in the cemetery stand for an all day sit today. The second rut is kicking in and it's my best chance to get on Clocker. I hunted the spot last night and before I could get in the stand I saw two deer bust out of Clocker's bed. The first looked like a good buck. They were the only deer I saw until Spikey showed up. Last night I received an email from Ginger with a picture of an 8 point hanging from Bird's tractor. I waited for my phone call for the story. The phone never rang. Then this morning I got another email- "We had dinner plans. No time." WTF? What kind of brother prioritizes dinner over telling his fellow hunters about killing a nice buck. Savage cried himself to sleep. I'm sure Bird slept in so he won't read this until the sun is up and he's having coffee and looking at his buck. Where am I? Huddled in the cold, watching for any deer to feed across the cut. Wait......is that movement in the bed? Is that......? Then he raises his head and winks. Spikey. Some of us are still at it. I guess you'll read about it tomorrow if I score.      

JOHN AND YOKO

 PHOTO: Annie Liebowitz 

ON THIS DAY...

     One never knows when one will skirt close to history. Life is weird and seems to be unfolding on many different levels simultaneously. Yesterday was the 80th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. December 7th was also my girlfriend in 1980, Kai's, birthday. Because Kai, a woman of Asian descent, dispelled all the  stereotypes of the passive Asian woman I never forgot that her birthday fell on December 7th. Forget her birthday and suffer the consequences. She made the attack on Pearl Harbor look like a cakewalk. In 1980 we lived in Berkeley, Ca. and were visiting NYC in order for me to try to crack into the art world with my blood prints and cow. After a week of gallery hopping and museum going I had one more task. I wanted to track down Yoko Ono and try to sell her my cow as a conceptual art work.

   John Lennon and Yoko seemed to be everywhere in New York in 1980. They were getting plenty of press, living at The Dakota and I had read that Yoko was invested in a dairy farm somewhere in upstate New York. I thought that if I could find her (and The Dakota) I could pitch her on the idea of buying MY COW and let it live out its natural life on her farm. The problem was that after living in California for five years I was completely ignorant of New York City. I had no idea where The Dakota was or how exactly to find Yoko. As the departure time for our flight loomed I scrapped my plan to find and stake out The Dakota and we caught a car service to the airport. The pilot announced that John Lennon had been murdered somewhere over the Rockies.

Nine years later:

    I was guest teaching at The San Francisco Art Institute. One day after class Mark McCloud came by and drug me to a ritzy party on Nob Hill. There was Fee Waybill (of The Tubes) on the piano, Todd Rundgren was nursing a drink on the couch and who was in front of me waiting for the bathroom? Yoko Ono. I said hi, introduced myself and began to tell her the story of MY COW. It had been hit by a truck a few months after John had been killed. I was about to tell her about my plan to stalk her at her home on the day her husband was killed.....and thought better. Instead, I gave her a cassette recording of my band Purple Geeezus. She was gracious and I wouldn't meet her again until five years later....at The Dakota.

 In 1994, broke, sick of working doorman jobs in the East Village, I got a job as a restoration carpenter with Strasser and Assocs. We had many clients at The Dakota. So, one day in early December, during deer season, I was rushing to finish a job for Joe Namath so I could leave and join my father deer hunting in Cooperstown. To that end, I took one of the many Dakota elevators that was verboten to carpenters.  Who was on the elevator? Yoko. My mind raced. Did I remind her that we had met? Did I bring up MY COW again? Context is everything. My hair was now long and I had a big greying beard. I did not look like the same person I was five years prior. I stared at the ceiling, clutching my tools, hoping she wouldn't notice that I was a worker. No such luck. She called the management and I got reamed out for taking the private elevator. I never met Yoko again. The next day I shot my first deer in the middle of Lake Otsego. But that's another story. John Lennon was murdered forty-one years ago today.        

  

DESPAIR

 PHOTO: Marianna Rothen

KIDS WITH GUNS- the good, the bad and the very ugly

 I grew up in the country in the 1950's. This was the post-war heyday of plastics aplenty and the promise of jet pack travel within a decade or so. We cluelessly played cowboys and Indians and "Army." Nobody told us not to call Japanese "Japs," or that Indians actually lived in the woods and corn fields we roamed long before our ancestors claimed it as their own. (Somehow the Nazis got a bye. The combo of WWII and the Korean War effectively demonized Asians in America as the "other," the enemy. Nazis were more like family gone astray). We were happy children, free as the wind, let out the door in the morning and not expected back until dinnertime, or if somebody (like my younger brother Ross) got hurt. Nobody worried about child abductions, sexual predators or any of the many dangers that would face future parents. From slingshots, penknives, and BB guns, we kids were all heavily armed.

     I received my "official" gun on my 12th birthday. It was a beautiful little single shot, bolt action .22 ca. rifle. But before that I had a "secret" gun. This simple, lethal little device was purchased for $5 from a classmate. It was something called a zipgun. It looked just like a fountain pen. All you had to do was unscrew the front "barrel" cap and place a .22 shell in the cap. The firing pin was no more than a spring and needle assembly that slid back and engaged in a notch. Once released the "gun" fired. I fired it once back in the fields. It scared the shit out of me. I gave it back to my friend and got my fiver back. I wouldn't own another "handgun" until receiving a pistol permit in my forties.

   The recent acquittal of teenage murderer Kyle Rittenhouse and the horrific Michigan school shooting enabled by the parents of Ethan Crumbley are about to - like everything else in America - be politicized. In an unusual move Michigan prosecutors have charged the Crumbley parents with involuntary manslaughter. Their egregious lack of responsibility in failing to recognize their son's propensity for violence or other deep seated emotional problems, while buying him a 9 mm. SIG Sauer SP semiautomatic handgun as an early Xmas present seems unexplainable. 

    Once again, let's go back sixty years. With so many heavily armed youth, guns given as a right of passage to kids barely old enough to lift them, a violent society recovering from a World War and the emergence of TV culture filled with violent imagery, why were there no school shootings in the 1950's, 60's, 70's or 80's? It wasn't until the 1990's that these horrific events became a thing. Now, it finally takes the arrest of the parents of a school shooter to put the discussion once again in the village square. In my less than researched, gut reaction, unofficial opinion a few things happened in society in those decades. The first was the Vietnam War and the hippies that opposed it. Killing was real. "Army" was no game. The flag draped coffins and wounded relatives proved that. Secondly, historians began to question our colonial, enslaver, genocidal past as media (TV and movies) became even more violent. The disconnect between a rural and urban upbringing (already wide) widened even further. As the NRA told white parents gun ownership was their children's birthright, black children found other, more creative means to arm themselves. Once again, the kids were armed. Only now the kids were black and the weaponry were no longer BB guns and slingshots. The Clintons had an answer to these gun-toting, tiny "super-predators"- lock 'em all up. The generational prison pipeline was the response to black kids with guns. No urban parent (black or white) would be caught dead giving their 15-year-old a 9 mm. from Santa. But in the hinterlands, the bastard child of those hay fields, in suburbia, all bets were off. Maybe going to the local range with a new gun would give troubled, lonely Bimmy a sense of purpose. What could it hurt?  

     Suburban white kids brought up in a post- 911 world of internet porn, unhinged violence, political turmoil, racial unrest, first-shooter video games, oppressive social media, and no way to assimilate it all, mass school shootings are now the all too common result. The Sandy Hook shooter was given a gun by his mom. Kyle Rittenhouse got his older friend to purchase his AR. When caught googling "ammo" in class Ethan Crumbley's mom's response was, "LOL. I'm not mad at you. You have to learn not to get caught." I predict within a few days the NRA, Republicans and Trump will all get involved, screaming about the Second Amendment rights of parenting. Disarm your troubled children for your own safety. It's a brave new world out there. No child should be armed (without constant supervision) for all our sakes.* 

* I did give my stepdaughter a pink .22 ca. rifle for Xmas when she was 13. But that rifle never left my closet without my supervision and there it still sits.                     

MARINA ABRAMOVIC

 PHOTO: Richard Kern

ON BUTCH'S NIPPLE

 Savage's motto is "Those who stick get." The deer hunting guru swears by climbing in your tree stand and waiting for that target buck to show....no matter what. Day after day of empty woods are to be met with resolve and persistence. Eventually the tactic will pay off. For Savage it always seems to work. It's hard to argue with a man who spends the entire season not seeing deer only to shoot a ten point on the last day. I wish I had the patience. But hunting to me is more strategy and tactics. I like to switch it up. Those who creep may get meat. So yesterday with wet, quiet woods I decided to still hunt around the farm. 

   My morning started at 8:00 am (late) behind the schoolhouse. I kicked two does out just this side of the late Extension Road John's house. Then I saw the back of a deer. It was a buck. Wouldn't it be nice to shoot a slammer while still hunting and prove the guru wrong? When the deer raised his head two little spikes came into focus. Ugh. Another teenager. But, the tactic was working. I was on deer.

   By noon I'd only made it half way around the ridge. I hadn't planned an all day sit, but when a half dozen does busted I knew would put in the daylight hours at a spot I call Butch's nipple. I crawled under and through a tangle of laurel and set up on top of a fifty foot ledge, a rocky nip that gave me a view four hundred yards into open woods. No sooner was I settled than I saw a deer move. It was a four point at the outer edges of my panoramic vista. A good sign.

At 2:30 I saw movement coming from my left. A flash of antler brought the gun up. Could it be the ten? No. But it was a nice main frame six and maybe an eight. The scope fogged as I strained to see brow tines. My thumb found the safety. Unable to grow tines on that six I lowered the gun. I was so far back in the woods that shooting and dragging out any deer would require help. I couldn't very well assemble the troops to help me drag out a little six point. A full court press could only put on to drag out a shooter on the ground. Then, at 3:00 pm that buck bedded down 100 yards in front of me. As turkeys gobbled across the river and squirrels frolicked that buck went to sleep. Sitting stock still for hours on end is a kind of endurance performance. I'd like to see Marina Abramovic try sitting still in the cold without spooking a buck staring her down. 

    The six point was still bedded when I crawled out of that laurel patch at 4:45pm. No other deer showed. I walked home in the dark. It was a great day's hunt. The time passed quickly and I'd seen nine does and three bucks. Savage may be right. His tactic may be the best. But, when all's said and done I need to move. I'm going back to same spot today. It's already daylight and the wind is blowing 30 mph gusts. Whether hunting Butch's nipple, John's nob or the Majestic taint, I like to mix it up. I'm trying to be one step ahead of that ten. All he has to do is make one mistake.....