New Book now available

Words Worth 1,000 Pictures: articles from the underground newspaper the Chicago Seed 1969-72

Words Worth 1,000 Pictures collects over 60 articles from the underground newspaper the Chicago Seed 1969-72, all written by the author. Now available on Amazon. $2.99. Free for download from January 1-5, 022.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B091517BHB/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_EWKFCH6EXQ6477KS6Z29

In memoriam: Joffre Stewart

Devastated. My long time friend Joffre Stewart has died. Joffre, a long time anarchist and pacifist (after serving in the military during World War 2) was a poet and was referred to in Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. [Ginsberg was taken by Stewart when they met years ago at a gathering in San Francisco. In his poem “Howl” Ginsberg refers to Stewart as a man “with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing / out incomprehensible leaflets.” Stewart says, “Later I met Ginsberg again, and I said I did not think my leaflets were incomprehensible. He said that was a reference to his state of mind and that it had nothing to do with the leaflets themselves.”].

He was active at various times in the IWW, Peacemakers, and the War Resister’s League. He was a regular contributor to the Bulletin of the Social Revolutionary Anarchist Federation (SRAF). He attended, as did I, Roosevelt University. from which he received a B.A. in 1952 In June 1948 he was arrested in downtown Chicago for attempting to get a haircut at a barbershop in downtown Chicago which would not serve African-Americans. [Some at Roosevelt said he had “embarrassed” the university, but others supported his battle against segregated barbershops. The controversy led to the election, in the Roosevelt student government of a slate led by Harold Washington (who became student body president) , later to become Chicago’s first African-American mayort. He was an early participant in the Beat movement. He was barred from the Roosevelt University building at one point because as a speaker at a student organization program he burned an American, an Israeli, and a UN flag to signify his rejection of government, and a number of student groups subsequently made it almost a point of honor to invite him to speak at least once a year to defy the ban, quickly sneaking him in nd out of the building. On April 29, 1994, he was arrested while trying to attend a poetry reading at the Barnes & Noble bookstore in downtown Evanston, Illinois, after being mistaken for a vagrant (as if a vagrant had no right to attend a poetry reading, what a messed up world we live in), and spent 11 days in jail. He at times worked as a doorman at various bars and music venues. I first met him in 1965 and we had many friends and interests (both political/anti-political and literary) in common. He was a frequent overnight guest on my couch back in the 1960’s during the years that I customarily always left my door unlocked for him and several other people frequently in need of temporary lodging on the northside of Chicago. That led to numerous fascinating all night conversations with him from time to time. He had an amazingly broad range of experiences. He was well known for attending a wide variety of protest demonstrations and public meetings and passing out handwritten or photocopied versions of his poems and statements and for submitting long letters to various publications with the admonition to “print all or nothing at all” as he loathed being edited. His book Poems and Poetry was published by the Every Now and Then Publishing Cooperative in 1982. He was a unique individual and the world will be a far sadder place without him in it. Most of all I will miss his smile and his laugh.

There will be a wake for him at Taylor Funeral Home on 79th Street on Tuesday, March 19th from 6-7 PM.”

On this year’s Hugo Ballot

A brief but absolutely necessary statement. As a science fiction person, a fan for well over 50 years, and an author, I have been literally sickened by the vicious right wing “Sad Puppy”/”Rabid Puppy” all too successful attempt to stack the Hugo Award ballot for the awards to be given out at this year’s Worldcon.

It is also unfortunate that a number of authors were put on the “slate” of these evil people without being asked, and may be unfairly tarnished by the association. The impetus behind all this, it must be said, is plainly against diversity in science fiction, against authors and fans who are people of color, women, gay or lesbian, or advocates of social justice. I personally will be voting “No Award” on the Hugo ballot categories that have been hijacked, as the process has been tainted and that must not be allowed to stand. I urge my friends to do likewise.

I have been gladdened, in recent years by the increasing diversity of authors welcomed in the science fiction world, and an attack on that is an attack on everything that is decent and good in this world. I want a future where all people (or other forms of sentient life) are brothers and sisters, where we all work together to create a more just universe.

Dixi et salvavi animam meam.

Support Amazon, Email Hachette

Support Amazon, tell Hachette to drop its unreasonable stand that is harming both readers and authors based on its greed, and that is holding back e-publishing from becoming the standard it should be. http://www.readersunited.com/

Free short poetry ebook on Amazon

For the next 5 days, my short collection of early poems is available for free on Amazon at http://amzn.com/B00A8X5FZ4

The Stars Are in the Sky for Blind Men to Look at. Terrible poems I wrote in high school and later is a short ebook collection of poems by Max G. Bernard written in the mid-1960’s through the early 1980’s.

It begins with this fragment:

The Drowning Man

“Save me! Save me!” yelled the drowning man.
But there was no one to hear.
So in truth, he didn’t yell.
At times, reason overcomes instinct.
The drowning man was me.
–written sometime in the early 1980’s.

Highly personal and reflective of the turbulent times in which they are written, the author is aware that these poems will not be to everyone’s liking. But each is an honest expression of what he was feeling and seeing at particular points in time. He wrote them as a troubled young man, and publishes them now as a troubled old man, approaching his second, and much happier childhood. They are “terrible” poems in two senses of the word: in some respects, they reflect a certain lack of maturity and experience on the part of the author when they were written. (Despite that, they are raw and almost embarrassingly honest). The second sense in which they are “terrible” is that they reveal some feelings and revelations which may be, if taken seriously, be hard to cope with. The author hopes you find them moving or disturbing. He knows he does, almost half a century after some of them were written.

The Real Issue in a possible U.S. debt default

With the very real possibility of a U.S. government default on the debt October 17th, if Congress does not raise the debt ceiling, there is one vital issue that almost no one is talking about, except some folks suggesting a very bad response, for obvious reasons. When the government is not able to borrow further money, it will be faced with the question of what outstanding bills to pay. The bankers and their bought and paid for servants in Congress will argue that the FIRST and most important thing to pay will be interest payments on bonds and other outstanding debt instruments in order not to “upset” the banks, the “markets,” foreign creditors, such as China, etc. They will argue that because of that, there is “no money” to pay Social Security benefits, disability benefits, federal pensions, veterans benefits, Medicare and Medicaid payments, etc.

In essence, they will try to rob tens of millions of people (or more) to once again bail out the banks and international finance, as they did once before in 2008 and its aftermath, on a lesser scale. The correct position, of course, is that payments to actual people should be made first and primarily and if there is any supposed “shortage” of money, it is the interest on the”debt” that should not be paid. This whole charade has been set up as a means of attacking so-called “entitlements,” which are really the pitifully inadequate and meager benefits that people get after paying in taxes for a lifetime and which don’t come even close to paying them what they are owed. Meanwhile, even while the government is supposedly “shut down,” they are finding plenty of available money for what the vast majority of the Congressional members of both parties seem to think is truly “essential”–continuing done warfare to drop bombs to murder children and other innocent people in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and undoubtedly other places that we don’t even know about.

New article on Gun Violence in Chicago

The new issue of Lez Elegance, a very professionally done Chicago lesbian magazine, has, among other things, an article I wrote  on “Gun Violence in Chicago.” It is available today for a limited time only at the following link for a free preview. This issue of the magazine is being release this week for Pride week, and will cost I believe, either $1.99 or $2.99 at the Pride Parade and after. http://www.joomag.com/magazine/lez-elegance-spring-summer-2013-1/0994812001371912415

Self published authors should not be allowed to be members of SFFWA

One of the two candidates running for President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFFWA) this year proposes that self-published authors be allowed in as members. I am  one of those self published science fiction authors, and I strongly oppose that proposal. I personally do NOT think SFFWA should alter its rules to let in myself or others like me. That is not because I think that the things I and others like me write have no value, although obviously Sturgeon’s law applies (90% of everything is crap).

SFFWA is what it is, and represents authors who publish through the traditional publishing mode and are concerned with the ins and outs of publishers, editors, agents, publishing contracts, etc. They need their own organization that represents their interest. Letting in a whole bunch of people who are essentially uninterested in all that makes no sense, and if done, would most probably either immediately or ultimately lead to an exodus of the edited, agented, published by a publisher authors, whose work is infinitelty valkuable (as most self published authors would acknowledge).

Instead, a new group should be founded, to be comprised exclusively of the self-published, unagented, unedited authors, and representing their interests and sharing resources and ideas for those of us seeking a new paradiigm in publishing/writing. Such a group, in the best of all possible worlds, would have some sort of friendly fraternal relationship with SFFWA and support SFFWA’s initiatives for fair publisher contracts, etc. while not trying in any way to influence SFFWA’s policies, which essentially do not effect us in any way. This could be a basis of mutual respect and support. Traditionally published, edited, agented authors should not be members of the new group of self-published authors, amymore than self-published authors should be members of SFFWA. Anyhow, that’s my considered opiinion

How I Earned In…

How I Earned Incredibly Tiny Amounts of Money on the Internet now available on Amazon.

Barfly now available exclusively on Amazon.

My new story Barfly is now available exclusively for the kindle on Amazon.

http://amzn.com/B008J0BSSG

While a myriad of giant green and yellow butterflies from outer space landed in Chicago, the other spaceship only had one occupant–a sentient lead elephant. The lead elephant that landed in its own spaceship, and appeared on my block, was as different from the butterflies as night from day. As salt from sugar. As reality from dreams. Had the butterflies actually launched their interstellar flight as part of a quest for a soft drink? And what was the lead elephant doing here?

Steve and I nicknamed the lead elephant Prudence Pachyderm. When it got drunk enough at our neighborhood watering hole (which took a lot of liquor), it wasn’t half-bad when it sang along to “You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille” on the jukebox.