some arts.

I am trying to post more art up, as I do it, so heres some art from today/this week. This is a flyer I just finished for a really awesome sounding show in Phoenix. I employed new photoshop skills I just learned

Today I started a portrait drawing class at The Educational Alliance, a Jewish community center on the Lower East Side. The teacher had us do a series of short, 2-8 minute portraits of him, and then loaded them on a class blog, from which i stole these pictures:












Then we had to do a 5 minute self portrait from memory. here's the class with ours.


looking forward to making/posting more. paintings posted soon.
<3

on voting:

Its hard not to scoff when they talk about hope and freedom
Its hard to want to participate in a government you fundamentally don't have any faith in,
its hard to put trust in a voting system that election after election has proven to be at best, unreliable, and at worst, utterly corrupt,
and its hard to overlook how vastly insignificant your one little vote is,

but SEVEN YEARS of pointless war, hundreds of thousands of people dead for no reason, the most inane, backwards and racist education policies imaginable, the fanatical restrictions on science and choice, billions upon billions of OUR dollars wasted, and further permitted corporate destruction of our natural habitat has proven to me that voting is worth doing anyway, because the difference between the lesser of two evils might just mean the difference between living and dying for more real actual people then there are endangered species to kill, fetuses to save, jobs to outsource, or inner-city children to forsake, or any of the other shenanigans these liars, gluttons and thieves might try to pull, given the power to do so. But the power will be given to one of them, no matter what we do right now.

This is not a surrender, not a compromise, voting is only the smallest of actions of self defense one can take.
in conclusion,
I'm rooting for Obama.

Happy New Year to all

Well, I am back in New York after a long vacation in California for the holidays.
I travelled back with my dearest friend Andrea who is now on a train going north to her new home in Montreal. We pulled her two giant suitcases through the streets of Manhatten during the first minutes of sunrise this morning and discussed the lovely phonetic quality of the sound "Monreal" just as we had of the sound "Hallelujah" a few hours before as we lay in my bed, both of us unable to sleep. So she is off and I am here at an internet station at Kinko's on 7th ave, waiting for the hours to pass before I have to go to work just a few blocks over. Presently there is a homeless man washing himself in the drinking fountain in the corner. He wished me good health and advised me of a drug store down the block because of my coughing. New York has been nothing but courteous and accomodating on all fronts in the two days I have been back. Despite my rather horrendous cough, the disaster in my room I left for myself to come home to, the fact that my two dear china-town turtles died, and the fact that I have so far only been able to sleep every other night, I have been surprisingly productive and in good spirits because of it. Even the wheather has been delightful. Hopefully the impending 8 hour work shift standing around trying to get charitable donations out of strangers in on the street (yes, that is what im doing now
) wont crush my momentum.
So its 2008 and the theme of this year so far has been "Kidnapping."
More on that soon, as I am hungry and feel like taking a walk before work, and as writing more on my blog is a goal of mine for the new year.

Hope you all are doing well.
all my best, Maggie

taxi driver

today i was paid to drive a new york city taxi from long island city, queens to times square in manhatten and back. i got honked at so much and so many people tried hail me to get into my car. more on all this later.

drawing strangers.

Today, after Andrea and I were kicked out of the subway for attempting to (me) draw people and (her) do spoken word (I think it was actually because we were sitting and had a hat out), I decided to sit in Union Square with a sign that said "Free Portraits, 5 minutes, Donations Accepted" and some sharpies and highlighters. My new job doesnt start until next week and I feel so out of practice when it comes to figure drawing, i figured I would see if I could get some practice in and make a few bucks. I drew about 12 people. They were slow coming at first but by the end i had a huge crowed of teenagers around me, and I would have drawn them all, but by then it was so cold I could hardly move my hands. I felt like I could feel myself slowly getting better as the say went on. My favorite drawing that came out was of this tough-looking deaf guy with a mustache and a NYC beanie and no neck. He read my sign and pointed to himself with his eyebrows up. When he sat down he frowned and kept his chin high. I tried to make him look powerful and put blue highlighter lines coming out from all sides of him and he seemed delighted with it. i got both a thumbs up and a high five. In the end, I made about 5 dollars, and got a free hip hop cd, and a free hair cutting/coloring coupon from some students at the fancy haircutting school, which is nice because i was just thinking that I could use a good haircut.
(these were some of the drawing of andrea (which some bum told me looked exactly like steven tyler), and unsuspecting people sitting on benches i did in the down time early on. by the end of the day, i was banging out psychadelic masterpeices in five minutes flat, honest.)





speaking of drawing, yersderday, i finally went to the Society of Illustrators jazz and figure drawing session I have been bookmarking for months that was in this classy old building on the upper east side with free coffee and a bar and these beautiful burlesque nude models doing 10-20 minute poses for three hours. And because it was through the society of illustrators so most people there were professionals and really really skilled, so it was good to watch them work. oh, did i mention the live blues singer and backing band? incredible.

also, we are trying to learn french. if anyone knows a good way to make that happen faster, let me know!

an elegy for midge.

for all of you that knew and loved the great midge, our little old pug who was blind and deaf (not to mention courageous) and had only one eye, i am very sorry to announce that she passed away today.

I loved Midge because she defied all laws of nature. We think she was born sometime circa 1994, and while her early years remain a mystery, and we have no idea what happened to her right eye, she came into our life via the guy that runs the gun shop/pug rescue center in Livermore in sometime in 2004 and she spent most of her days foraging for food in our living room with her heightened sense of smell (it really was her only sense that functioned) and sitting on the couch making fun pig noises while my mom knit and watched Law and Order. She was loved by all who met her and leaves behind a lifetime of memories that will no sooner fade from our minds then her pee stains from my parents carpet.

Im pretty upset about this, I think we all are. She was a warm and fuzzy little bitch with a heart of gold and was unlike any other dog on earth.

RIP Arrow Midgery Lucky Princess Muldoon c.1994 - 10/18/2007
Lil dog, I dont think we could forgert you if we tried.

Rooftop show, The Opera House, 9/9/07

So this here is a photo journal of the amazing show that happened on my roof on 9/9/07. its also a little bit of me showing off my digs here in brooklyn, The Opera House:
heres my flyer:


this is my living room/kitchen/hallway and Tory of Cartoon Monster.

the show begins on my roof, with The Blanket Truth. check out the skyline, the projects, and old glory in the backround:


this is the Blanket Truth, from Seattle/T.O. with Hoshwa on drums:


Rebecca and Josh as Watercolor Paintings, strait outta Thousand Oaks/Isla Vista, CA:


next was Cartoon Monster of Portland OR, playing behind a barbeque:


This is the Peach Colored Jog Smugglers, from all over CA, specifically "the Chad Shack" note that the boy on the end is not in fact playing air guitar, but rather, the spoons.


more of that fine spoon action:



this is madame flodd: two amazing girls, from Eugene, OR playing klezmer/gypsie music on a fiddle and accordian



they also brought the dance party:


this is Brooklyn's own The Lil Hospital, playing a killer set in my living room. about ten seconds after this picture was taken 'The Man' made us stop the music and break up the party. Boo Man. regaudless they were great.


afterwards everyone hung out in the courtyard of my building and had a fine time:


that night nine extra people slept in my tiny house. my four roomates are pretty amazing to put up with me, at the time of this show id only lived here a month. here we are hanging out with my new york bff, and fifth roommate, vinyl the dog


she got a little vicious... check out those beautiful teeth!


and then in the morning we went to the soul food buffet down the street (its 4.59 a POUND! for good food) and then we took this picture and said goodbye!


and that was it! hooray. it was pretty much the best night ever. hooray music, friends, and brooklyn.

no, please, tell me all about it:

one of the best things about new york (file under: perks of being nocturnal) is the way weirdos sit around and kvetch.

no, really.

as is my nature, i often find myself staying awake all night in a 24 hour cafe in manhattan (my favorite yet is the esperanto), drinking tea, working on projects of some variety and every single time, come four or five in the morning, I wander outside to get a look at the sky turning to blue, and i find the oddest assortment of people, usually all strangers, sitting around, all in a huff about some topic that somebody must have pulled out of a hat.
(says the big bass player in his thickest new york accent) "my mother always said, 'marraige is the biggest admission of a lack of self confidence a person can make'. discuss."

tonight the huff was about: motorcycles (specifically: motorcycle safey education, near death expiriences, the coolest bikes they have seen on craigslist) traps that bosses set to test their employees, marraiges of convenience (all the reasons why its a bad idea), and draft dodging (did you know: "during 'nam you didnt have to go all the way to canada! just go to Minnesota, like in Fargo, and nobody'd bother you there!") with a slight sidetrack somewhere in there about how marraige in general, was for fools.

invariably, if you are awake at this hour, and are spotted outside of a cafe, someone pulls out a chair and says "sit down, honey!!" and then you get sucked in. these people are not crackheads or bums. they are artists and actors and barflys and hotel clerks and forign nationals and the strangest array of people. they talk to you like you are an old friend. while I have also expirienced this odd sort of random stranger kvetch-sesh during the day, I feel like I am in some sort of secret club when it happens at night, for i am quite certain nocturnal new yorkers are by far some of the friendliest and strangest people alive.

goodbye my coney island baby.

Tonight I went to Coney Island (which is less of an island then I had imagined) and met up with old friends (the kind I hadn't seen in years) I rode the Cyclone, which is a rollercoaster that just had it's 80th birthday, and is, apparently, a UN national heritage site. it is as rickety and horrifying as you might imagine, and more so. I walked under carnival lights. I ate fried clams and drank beer and caught up with friends and looked at the Atlantic ocean (realizing this may have been my first time really seeing it from US shores.) It made me think of the last time I stared into the Atlantic, while flying over it more then a year ago now, coming home from Ghana, and all of the things that any ocean, Pacific or Atlantic came to symbolize for me when I was first home. I would stand on the cliffs of Isla Vista and think: Sacrifice, Dependance, Poverty, Labor, Slavery, Danger. Children still in diapers throwing nets out into the ocean for a days eats, or being offered up to the ocean as human sacrifice. I got annoyed when the people around me looked at the same thing and saw nothing but an elegant backround, or a place to play, or something calming and non-specifically poetic. In my first few months back, hearing the waves crash out my window every night would drive me mad. It exahsted me to think that they never ever stopped. It exahsted me to imagine all of the people lacing every shore on every side of the world toiling to dump things into it, or pull things out of it or move across it, and how it all came down to what side of the ocean you came out of the womb on. But as I looked out at the ocean tonight, it wasn't until relating a travel story to this friend whom I hadnt seen since before I left and came back from Ghana that I realized, at some untracable moment somewhere in Isla Vista, I had come look at the ocean and see peace again.
On Coney Island, the ocean was just a pretty black and sparkling backdrop to a fun night on the peir catching up with friends, and a subtle, and wisely ignored urge for some nightswimming. The transition must have been so slow that I hadnt been able to feel it. Its a relief, but not without the wonder if I have been trying to forget something I really ought to remember. I think now, that maybe I can feel both things simultaniously.

It is an odd feeling, to know a group of people in a way that is very attatched to one particular time and place, in this case, Isla Vista, California, circa 2005 and then suddenly several years later, after having only minimal contact, realize you are all in the same place at the same time again, only somehow, this time, it's Coney Island, New York, and then spontaniously reconveine. It's an odd way to measure what's changed and what hasn't changed. It never seems to be the things you think it would have been

A Threat to National Security

Today, as our benevolent Captain David was giving us a rapid passenger seat tour of his native city, our nations capital, we were stopped by Homeland Security boys and issued a warning for taking photographs of the Pentagon from out of the window of his rental car whilst driving down the freeway, and for “that little bit of attitude” David bravely took with the officers about being Glad to Still Have his Freedoms.

In conclusion Washington DC is crowded and ridiculous. We are leaving tomorrow.

Learning what 'Life' is all about... Pheonix - Denver.

Hey everyone,

So I am in Denver, Colorado right now. We got in yesterday evening after a very long, very silly rideshare with a man named Life, a slight misunderstanding about where we were going, and then a nice busride from Colorado Springs. We decided to go to Colorado rather then Texas as planned at the last minute for a multitude of reasons including but not limited to our inability to find a suitable ride east, and the fact that the heat seemed to be making us expand. As in, our calfs and ankles had joined into cankles. Maybe it was just our imagination, but regaurdless, the heat was getting to us.

So we found a ride for three up to Denver with a man who's real name was Bryan, but had somehow been deemed "Life" at Burning Man, and from then on had referred to himself as such. "Hello Life, so nice to meet you." He told us that he would be leaving Tuscon around 8 pm, so we should expect him to pick us up in Pheonix about an hour or two after that, but, he warned, he wasnt the best at estimating these sorts of things. Five and a half hours later, 2 hours after the coffee shop we were waiting at closed, he arrived, wearing a 'Life is Good' t-shirt, rearrainging all his drums in the trunk to make room for our backpacks. He had just gotten his PHD in sociology from ASU, and taught African American studies. He had dreadlocks and a fake sunflower dangling from his rear view mirror. He listened to electro-Hindu chants when he drove and talked about collective consciousness, oneness, energy, and how he was the spiritual avatar of the hindu concept of creation. He would respond to questions by saying "no, thats the CAPITALISTS way of thinking... " but then had us pay for ALL of the gas on the raod. He meditated at gas stations. Like, full on "Saluting the Sun" yoga move meditation. He was going to colorado to meet with his spiritual brother, who was an avatar of the hindu concept of destruction whom he had met at burning man for his 42nd birthday. He was excited about it because "42 is the meaning of life!" Get it? like hitchhikers guide to the galaxy! We talked about religion, science and philosophy. When he talked about Plato and his theory of forms, I imagined 'Life' being Plato's perfect form of the North-American-Eco-Hippy-Stereotypeous who had just decided to decend from heaven to give us a ride to Denver. "Denver? actually my spiritual brother just called and said he was in Colorado springs instead... so I'll get you guys to a bus station or something? Maybe you could get someone you know in Denver to drive down to Colorado Springs instead? Its only like 45 minutes! (AAA guide: Colorado Springs-Denver: 80 Miles, 1.2 hours) It took us about three hours by bus.

In the end, I would say we enjoyed our 15 hours of Life-time. Despite his gross underestimation of how long anything took, his sudden changes of plans, and the whole us paying for all the gas thing. He was smart, fun to talk to and a good enough driver. He danced in the drivers seat and and sang along to the Dave Mathews Band and Spearhead and everything you might expect a guy named Life to dance and sing along to. And despite the fact that we made him buy us the bus tickets to denver since we had just filled up his tank, he gave us all goodbye hugs and good wishes.

When we arrived in Denver we all jumped with delight at how NOT scortching hot the night air was compared to Pheonix, and contimplated putting on sweaters, just for kicks.

Instead, we decided, in celebration of our last few hours together before Leslie left us to see her brother in Central City and then head back west, to get dressed to the nines and have a nice, quiet dinner together. Now, you have to understand that since high school, the three of us have practiced the sacred ritual of getting ready to go out together before any special occasion, which was especially fun in the cramped underground bathrooms of Denver's central bus station. We used the reflective surfaces on the hand-dryers to put on mascarra and eye shadow, and dug our classiest outfits out of our giant backpacks in tiny bathroom stalls. Despite having driven all night and all day, not having slept in the Arizona/New Mexico heat, I dont think a fancier-looking group of people have ever been seen wearing backpacking gear before in history. You should have seen us trying to find a place to stash our massive packs, sleeping bags and all, in the fancy little italian place where we decided to eat.

So we said goodbye to Leslie at the casino-shuttle stop and went off to find my first cousin once removed, who seems a lot more like an unkle, so we've taken to calling him my cunkle. He is everything a cunkle should be: kind, generous, and funny funny funny. we talked for a bit, checked out his amazing new house, and then he showed us to what he called the "freeloaders room" and we were sound asleep about five minutes.

Tomorrow we are off to the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul Minnesota. It's a 15 hour drive. Till then!

Cities of angels, origin, and endless heat ("But it's a DRY heat.")

So I'm backpacking cross-country with two best friends I've known since high school, Andrea O (as she will be referred to as until she decides what she would rather change her name to) and Leslie "the" Hammer. We are on a somewhat meandering, uncharted course, aiming for expirience above expidience, although all three of us are here for differant reasons:
Leslie has some time off and wants to visit her brother in Colorado and her family in Pheonix, but has to head back west to California soon, so our paths will split once we head for Texas and she for Denver. Andrea's final destination is Montreal. As for me, I am kind of just along for the ride, because I just finished college and there is nothing I would rather do, and because I want to do this little project of mine, the psuedo-ethnography/art project about the people who pick up riders on Craigslist.com Ridesharing.

Our first day on the road, July 6th 2007, I had been up all night packing, fretting about leaving so soon because I hardley felt ready, only having graduated and gone home a week and a half before. Because we didnt have much money, because I everyone else seemed to think it was dangerous and insane, because I didn’t know when I would ever come back. Our first rideshare was a 23 year old girl named Autumn. She was beautiful, loved the beach, drove a Jetta, went to UCLA. The kind of girl I, having gone to UC Santa Barbara,thought I knew all about just by looking at her, but the best thing about our trip with her was how quickly she made me realize what absolute bunk that was. That and the fact that we got to LA in less then five hours and $40 worth of gas. She told us about how she used to swindle old men gambling on the ohio river, how her life plan was to move to Central America and start an NGO based on AIDS education and releif, how she was nothing like my narrow little assumptions would have pinned her as. Wonderful.

She dropped us off on the corner of Venice and something in Culver city, where my friend Chris, an all-around fun chem grad student lived, who actually might have been the first person to ever buy art from me several years ago. He came and met us on the stoop of his apartment, hung out for about half an hour and then gave us the key to his apartment and went off to a previous engagement. The three of us spent the night walking the streets of LA, eating ridiculous attempts at vegetarian food from Fatburger and standing in line for half an hour to go inside a 711 that had been converted into a Kwik-E-Mart in promotion of The Simpsons movie. They had redone the outside completley to look like a cartoon, and had Duff and Buzz cola, Krusty-Os and big pink sprinkled Simpsons donuts, which Andrea, Leslie and I all enjoyed. They even had clerks in Kwik-E-mart uniforms. Half the fun was seeing all the over the top Simpson enthusiasts in line in front of us. The lady behind us had already stood in line four times. hah.

In the morning, our friends Josh and Rebecca Redman drove down from Thousand Oaks to pick us up on the way to the 10 east. They pulled up on the street under Chris's balcony playing the ukelele from the drivers seat of their minivan, with both doors open. With them, we drove for several hours into the desert until we got to the Salten Sea, which apparently is California's largest lake, hidden out in the flat, arrid desert of south-eastern California. It comes at you out of nowhere, a vast, clear blue sea out in the badlands, bordered mainly by boarded-up motels and deserted gas stations. Outside the van, the air was hot and thick and smelled aggressivley like fish. A few miles up the road we stopped at Bombay Beach: a well-below-sea level town famous for a flooding that happened in the 1950s, where the Salton Sea buried an entire neighborhood of trailors, completely submerging them in water, and as it evaporated over time, left an eery, post-apocolyptic feeling wasteland, once half submerged in water and now just deep in dry cracked mud. The heat and the smell were overbearing, but the stop was well worth checking out.

After that we went a few more miles down the road to Salvation Mountain, which I have already written about previously on this blog, and it was once again amazing and inspiring, except it was SO HOT. Something about July during a heatwave in the desert makes walking even the smallest distance seem like murder. That night Andrea, Leslie and I went back to Indio, the town where Andrea was born, but hadn’t been to in years and years and where her aunt still lived. We stayed one night with her Aunt Toni, enjoying her air conditioning, her gatoraide, and her outragously generosity. In the morning, she treated us to a Del Taco breakfast, loaded us up with snacks for the road, and bought us 3 greyhound tickets to Pheonix... for safety’s sake. And Andrea left the state of California for good through the same city she entered it.

In Pheonix we stayed most the time with Leslie’s extended family, and one night with my good friend Zach (of the band iji)

The last few days in Pheonix (three days? four days?) have all sort of a blurred together in the heat. The things that stick out to me the most are, in list form:

-Reuniting with an old best friend of mine, seeing that despite the rather unbeleiveable things the eight years since we’ve seen each other have brought, she is still the same glittering one-of-a-kind personality I remember her as

-hanging out for hours at Pheonix’s two finest social establishments, being the Willow House and the Trunk Space, both all-ages cafe-turned music venue/art gallery type places where Andrea did spoken-word for the first time, and where we saw, over the course of several nights, The Teeth, Andrew Jackson Jihad, and Visions of a Dying World, Polka Dot Dot Dot, Jordan O’ Jordan, and lots of other good bands and good people

-Going to Crafts and Conversations with Leslie’s indomitable 90 year old grandmother and a feirce crew of other old ladies at their local church

-The amazing breakfast we ate at the Zach’s house

-Playing lots of Guitar Hero with Leslie’s fantastic cousins

-Being really hot

-eating soooo much Mexican food.

Thats about it for now, I guess. Til next time.

home is a time not a place.

My Last Radio Show!

This is playlist from my last regular radio show ever on KCSB 91.9 fm!
Tomorrow I move outta this town and up to the bay area for a week or two before I head off on my big adventure.

For this last show, I took a really free-form, no-theme, spur-of-the-moment approach to what I played, spinning whatever I had on hand and felt like playing in the moment, in the style of a radio show I had several years ago on KCSB called Atomic Garden Salad. It was a fun show. I am going to miss this place!

6/21/07, 10pm-Midnight:

Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper -We Gotta Have More Soul!
Crass - Truth
Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys - I'm Living in the Middle of Nowhere
Old Time Relijun - The Blinding Light
Wire - Mr. Suit
Stephan Malkmus and the Jicks - Hook
The Oolahs - Rupert
Headlights - TV
Cheap Trick - Surrender
Operation Ivy - Yellin' in my Ear
Brainiac - Fresh New Eyes
The Dirty Projectors - Fucked for Life
Musique - Push in the Bush
The Specials - Too Hot
Spoonboy - What You Want
Bruce Springsteen - Downbound Train (For Dave for the Grave)
Kimya Dawson - I Like Giants (for Caitlin)
Mates of State - Nice Things That look Good
The Magnetic Fields - All My Little Words
Seven Seconds - The Music, The Message
Reagan Youth - Queen Babylon
Brian Eno - The Big Ship
Elvis Costello and the Attractions - Last of the Lipstick Vouge (Live at the El Macambo)
Pidgeon John - End of the World
Put Down That Science Pole - Where's the Gold??!?!!
Mr. Bungle - Air Conditioned Nightmare
Bad Religion - Mediocre Minds
Fred Schnider and the Shake Society - Summer in Hell
Song Stories for Little Cowboys and Cowgirls - Pony Boy
The Subhumans -It's a Dying World
Die Toten Hosen -Till to the Bitter End
Wizo - Du bist
Ani DiFranco - Both Hands
RAWHIDE
Against Me! - We Laugh at Danger and break all the rules.

Have you seen...

The Milkman Ballet?

(its a bunch of little kids doing tumbling and ballet to Newhaven Community School's renditions of Deerhoof songs from the album Milkman. pretty genius.)

Radio Radio

I sometimes produce a weekly radio show on KCSB 91.9 fm in Santa Barbara called
Home-Made Fresh-Baked Radio! on thursdays from 10pm-12am.

This is my playlist from 5/31/07:
Habib Koite - Wassive
Mariee Souix - Two Toungues at one Time
BARR - Half of Two Times Two (Newer Version)
Tom Waits - What Keeps Mankind Alive
Dog Day - Lydia
The Harlem Shakes - Old Flame
Wilco - Either Way
Taxi Taxi - Hide and See
Panda Bear - Comfy in Nautica
Madagascar - When Last we Heard
Matthew Dear - Deserter
The Capricorns - Ghost
Leonard Cohen - So Long Marianne
Aeroplane Pageant - All the Day
Volt - Where did Body Go?
Kings of Leon - Knocked Up
Epo 555 - Spirit of Fun
Bears - Those Years
Sufjan Stevens - The Vivian Girls... (Henry Darger)
Best Friends Forever - Eisenhower is the Father...
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - Graceland
Madeline - Sleeping Dogs
The Teeth - The Trumpets Blared
Lemuria - Alturist
Pangea - Gloden Arches
Shapes & Sizes - Split LIps, WInning Hips, a Shiner
The Terrordactyls - Shipping
Paul Baribeau & Ginger Alfers - Bobby Jean
The Shins - Caring is Creepy
Nouvelle Vauge - The Killing Moon

Tune in to the live webcast on thrusdays from 10pm-midnight on kcsb.org!

salvation mountain

If you dont already know, Salvation Mountain is a big hill in the middle of the desert in south eastern california, near slab city that a very old, amazing, big hearted man, Leonard Knight, has been pouring hundreds of thousands of gallons paint on top of for at least (at least) 22 years. he doesnt even own the land... just started pouring paint on it and now its his. he sleeps in his Salvation Van parked in front of the mountain and works on it tirelessly. it will never be "finished." when hes not working he is showing anyone who made the middle-of-nowhere drive out to see it around. he doesnt charge admission or solicate tips, he doesnt make you sign a waver if you want to climb it, there arnt even really signs for it until you get to the dirt road its on. he just tries to spread his messege, which is "God loves every person in the whole world" by painting this big crazy "mountain."
ive been dying to go ever since i first heard about it, and this past saturday, on the road to pheonix with jon, andrew and rebecca, my dream finally came true:










this is leonard:


the forrest: (he makes these giant "trees" out of old tires he finds in the desert, and adobe, and sticks and paint. so amazing!)




he also incorperates other junk he finds in the desert, like car doors:










man, the photos dont even do it justice! go see it yourself! im so serious.

some thoughts from roadsideamerica.com, where i first heard of salvation mountain: "A few years back, environmental fanatics stirred up the local government. Samples were drilled and tests were done -- Salvation Mountain was declared a "toxic nightmare" by county officials. Signs went up warning about "Hazardous Waste," and Imperial County was on its way to hosting a veritable Superfund cleanup site. Plans were laid to treat it like nuclear waste -- haul it away in trucks and bury it in Nevada.

We imagined a "Raiders of the Lost Ark" scenario: the first bulldozer cleaves into the sacred mound, and out bursts a blinding light. One by one, the bulldozers and environmentalists burst into flame, poisonous smoke filling the air. Soon, nothing is left of the troublemakers save for some greasy stains. Leonard pops out of his truck-house and starts incorporating the stains into his living masterpiece."



for the guided tour look here: (play number one then number two... they go together.)
(number one)


(number two)

Akwaaba Obruni!

This is my new blog.
To check out my old blog from my time in Ghana, click here.