January 2006 | Dock of the Bay

Edo Eccentrics

For about 60 years, a group of 18th century Japanese artists led a revolution that would transform Japanese painting and, a century later, influence European Impressionists halfway around the world. These late-Edo period artists, including Yosa Buson, Ike Taiga, and the eccentric printmaker and painter Ito Jakucho, are the subject of an extraordinary two-part exhibit at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum entitled Traditions Unbound.

It showcases some 60 masterworks (hand scrolls, folding screens and gold leaf works on paper) by eight painters — most of them based in Japan’s imperial city and former capital of Kyoto. These artists broke the mold of copying old masters and, like the Impressionists they so influenced, painted both from nature and imagination. Some played with new ideas of perspective and three-dimensionality; others chose new but everyday subject matter, depicting frogs, chicken, and vegetables. They drew from classical Chinese sources (poetry and painting manuals) as well as from the Dutch realists, whose art became known to them through international commercial exchanges.

Taige’s Joy of Fishing is a homage to the great Chinese Tang dynasty poet and painter Wang Wei. While none of Wang’s original landscapes survive, they can be imagined from later copies and his poetry, which are strongly infused with a Buddhist perspective. Taige’s landscape emphasizes the timeless life force that unifies all things — the dreamlike people passing through the landscape are barely noticeable.

Haiku lovers will appreciate the evocation of transient beauty inherent in many of the works, including Haiku master Yosa Buson’s Narrow Road to the Deep North. Another overtly Buddhist theme appears in Soga Shohaku’s portrait of Bodhidharma, the man who brought Buddhism from India to China. The artist renders his body in just three bold strokes, the face filled in afterwards (with typical “foreign” features: round eyes, beard, etc). Nagasawa Rosetsu’s free-form, Herdboy Playing a Flute, a work based on Chinese Taoist and Ch’an traditions, was painted with fingers and fingernails. The ink drips off the image, as if done in a performance for some guests, rather than on a traditional worktable.

These Edo artists experimented with new techniques and materials as well, using gold leaf, silver leaf and satin in some paintings and screens. The effect is stunning, creating new dimensions of luminosity to the quickly brushed scenes.

San Francisco is the exclusive U.S. venue for this exhibit, whose first half concludes on January 8 and whose second half runs from January 10-February 26. For hours and admission, visit asianart.org or call (415) 581-3500. — Gary Gach


Bush Bills

The next time a shop clerk hands you a wad of singles, take a closer look: You may be holding “Bush Bills” — dollars altered to register disapproval of the Bush administration. Some of the popular statements appearing on our national currency are: “No War,” “Impeach Bush/Cheney,” “No Blood for Oil,” and “Buck Fush.” Forget those clumsy placards, banners, and bullhorns of yore: Today’s tool-of-choice for cutting-edge dissidents is a felt-tip pen.

People who “tag” singles with political graffiti are called “Georgers” (a reference to both Washington and Bush) and they appear to have originated the most accessible form of protest in the history of civil dissent. While it takes 37 cents to mail an indignant letter to the White House, it only takes a few seconds to turn an ordinary dollar into a Bush Bill. Since the average dollar circulates for 18 to 22 months, Bush Bills can make an indelible impression on the cash economy. As Swami Beyondananda notes: “In an age where money talks, this is a great way to spread a message the media ignores.”

Inscribing slogans on paper money is an established free-speech tradition. Atheists routinely replace “In God We Trust” with “In Ourselves We Trust.” Feminists prefer “In Goddesses We Trust.” And Native Americans remember the forced relocation of the Cherokee Nation by scrawling the word “Shame” across Andrew Jackson’s face on $20 bills.

But isn’t it illegal to deface dollars? Apparently not. While US Code, Title 18, Section 333 targets anyone who “mutilates, cuts, disfigures, perforates, unites or cements together” a Federal Reserve note “with the intent to render such item(s) unfit to be reissued,” George-ing a bill doesn’t render a dollar unfit to circulate — that would defeat the purpose. LawforKids.org gleefully assures future Georgers that “it is not against the law to draw giant red lips on George Washington’s dollar bill portrait.” In short: the Bill of Rights protects the rights of bill-writers.

With corporate media threatening to throttle the last cries of dissent, Bush Bills offer a down-and-dirty way to Buck the Trend. It’s a textbook case of “viral” advertising — a low-cost, high-impact means of spreading a message fast and far.

“Bush Bills are a great outlet for citizens who feel their country has been taken away from them,” says a local Georger whose nom-de-plume is Billwinkle. “It’s my way of ‘sending a message’ to Washington,” Billwinkle explains. “Even if they don’t accept my message, they’re going to have to accept my dollar.”

For a colorful collection of altered currency, go to: www.johnnyburrito.com/uglymoney.htm — Gar Smith


Clean Money Campaign

In politics, wealthy candidates always have an edge. In traditional politics, it’s unlikely that a good-hearted El Cerrito schoolteacher could ever hope to compete against a Montclair millionaire. That may soon change.

At the urging of the California Clean Money Campaign (CCMC), Assemblymembers Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley), Johan Klehs (D-Hayward) and Noreen Evans (D-Napa/Solano/Sonoma) have co-authored the California Clean Money and Fair Elections Act. AB 583 would level the “paying field” by providing state funds to “clean money” candidates.

With political campaigns financed by corporations and special interests, there’s always a question about a candidate’s real allegiances. In Clean Money campaigns, candidates finance their contests with taxpayer dollars. In exchange for agreeing to a spending cap and a ban on accepting big-buck donations, tax-supported candidates can prominently display the “Clean Money” logo on all campaign literature, posters and lawn signs — the political equivalent of the “Certified Organic” label for shoppers

Successful Clean Money reforms have been passed in Vermont, Massachusetts, North Carolina and New Mexico. Clean Money campaigns are already established in Maine and Arizona. “The Road to Clean Elections,” a powerful documentary by Bill Moyers, shows how these campaigns have revolutionized politics by allowing a new generation of grassroots politicians — teachers, storeowners, housewives — to play a role in the democratic process.

Populist political columnist Jim Hightower touts the reform for offering “fresh faces, new ideas and voter turnout… ratcheting upward.” Last year in Arizona, Hightower notes, clean money candidates won “seven of nine statewide offices, including the governor and attorney general.”

AB 583 is set for a vote before the State Assembly Elections Committee in January. “We need your help contacting legislators and building a groundswell of grassroots support,” says CCMC Vice President Trent Lange. “Now is a crucial time to get involved in the fight to put voters back into control of government.” As Los Angeles Times columnist George Skelton observed, “Either the public buys the politicians or the special interests will.”

A Clean Money Town Hall meeting is scheduled for Jan. 7, from 11am to 1pm at the Oakland City Hall. For petitions, local contacts and more info on AB 583, click on caclean.org or [click to e-mail]. — GS


The Ethnic Pulitzers

Ten years ago, a determined group of writers, editors and publishers from the Bay Area’s ethnic media met for lunch at a Chinese restaurant and created New California Media (now known as New America Media or NAM). Until NAM came along, the variety and vigor of the region’s alternative media resources were essentially invisible. NAM connected Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Arab and Native American media workers in a powerful professional association that has become a progressive social, financial, and political force. These previously fragmented and marginalized voices have risen to a resonating chorus: NAM’s daily news wire now buzzes with stories, essays, op-eds and investigations prepared by more than 700 “ethnic media partners.”

NAM has identified more than 2,000 ethnic publications and broadcasters nationwide, but the Bay Area stands out as one of the major centers of culturally enriched alternative journalism in the US. How many of these Bay Area newspapers and magazines do you recognize? Colorlines, Sing Tao Daily, Asian American Times, World Journal, China Press, El Mesanjero, The Filipino Guardian, India West, The Irish Herald, San Francisco Bay View, Thoi Bao Daily News, Russian Life Weekly YO! Youth Outlook.

NAM helped members win the right to have interpreters assist with federal and state healthcare and workplace issues. It has shown publishers how to cut their utility costs by going “green.” And in its first five years, NAM’s social marketing arm has steered nearly $10 million new advertising dollars to its member publications.

On January 26, NAM celebrates its first decade by hosting its seventh Awards Gala at San Jose’s Fairmont Hotel. NAM promotes the event as “the most diverse awards program in the country” — an evening that honors “the men and women covering California’s immigrant and minority communities.” Jim Lehrer, host of PBS’s Newshour, has gone even further, dubbing the event “the Ethnic Pulitzers.”

For tickets call (415) 503-4170, ext. 224. [click to e-mail] — GS


The Write Stuff

“Writing is easy,” a friend of mine used to tell me as I struggled to bang out a story well past deadline for my college newspaper — a frequent occurrence in those days. “Just sit at your keyboard and wait for the blood to drip from your head onto the page.”

Twenty-five years later, despite a long career in journalism, sometimes writing still feels like surgery without the anesthesia. Which is why I was glad to meet Andy Couturier, an Oakland teacher whose class, “Writing from the Subconscious,” takes the novel approach that writing can be fun, intuitive and, well, easy.

After talking with him on the phone, I was skeptical. “The idea is to free your mind and find out things you didn’t think you knew,” he told me. I hadn’t a clue what he meant but I decided to give it a try.

The first class included a series of spontaneous writing exercises. “Shape Shifting” involved exploring a single topic in several different genres. We began as if we were writing a “letter to a friend.” Then Couturier rang a bell and we explored the same topic as an advertisement. In round three, we wrote it as a scene from a play. Another exercise, “Shatter and Scramble,” involved taking a piece of writing we had done and mixing the word sequences to see what new kinds of writing could be created.

And, sure enough, I felt myself loosening up. My internal editor (the one who often stopped me in mid-sentence before I could get the words out) took an unexpected holiday, and the sentences flowed onto the page with little effort. It seemed like a voice was talking through me that I didn’t know existed. “Congratulations,’ Couturier said. “That’s exactly the idea.”

Couturier, who teaches classes on everything from first-person storytelling to nature writing, recently put his exercises into a book called Writing Open the Mind: Tapping the Subconscious to Free the Writing and the Writer (Ulysses Press). Its playful, inviting style has such headings as “Shaking the Curmudgeon,” “Word Kleptocracy,” and “Automatic Writing from the Interior Terrarium.” He calls it “a radical freedom approach to writing,” and it’s full of the write stuff that I wish someone had shown me a long time ago. — David Ian Miller


Gratitude is Attitude

What if money and abundance inevitably flowed to you like a current in a river? Mathew and Terces Engelheart say it can. The couple has dedicated their lives to spreading a message of abundance. Two years ago, they designed an abundance workshop, workbook and board game and opened raw food restaurant Café Gratitude. The café was conceived as a parlor for their abundance board game, an abundance classroom for employees and an experiment in merging commerce and spirituality.

Monthly, the Engelhearts run a workshop from their SF home. It helps people overcome their scarcity mentalities.

According to the Engelhearts, achieving abundance is not about saving, investing, paying off debt or making more. Abundance is not a numbers game, but a state of mind or, more specifically, a quality of spirit, easily accessible to those who focus their attention on the abundance already present in their lives.

Their Buddhist-based paradigm and spiritually centered workshop maintains that ego, a built-in mechanism for survival, is the source of scarcity thoughts. If the money flow is unencumbered, they believe, there’s no difference between giving and receiving.

Buying into this system takes faith, but the Engelhearts use a power exercise that illustrates it. Participants gather in the middle of the room and pass their money around as quickly as possible. The exercise is liberating until someone yells stop and everyone sits down. Some are left with nothing while others clutch a fist full of bills. The flow of money is blocked when people choose to save or hoard instead of giving. This block creates and perpetuates our perception of scarcity.

Other daily practices to ingrain the abundance paradigm are affirmations, daily acts of giving, laughing out loud and being present to all you have. — Angela Privin