Posted by panch from pool0096.cvx25-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.216.96) on Thursday, June 27, 2002 at 8:11AM :
In Reply to: No Melody;.... NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO posted by Jeff from bgp01107368bgs.wbrmfd01.mi.comcast.net (68.42.59.180) on Thursday, June 27, 2002 at 7:17AM :
: : By the way, I am not coming to the convention this year. After what happened to Fred last year, I s to die for.
: I am not sure the convention is my kind of place. It was all very surreal...
: +++++****
: Melody, I hope that's your cynical mood speaking!
: First of all, you will have the chance to meet yours truly (which should be reason enough to go :-)
: Secondly, you might also meet Stella and others that I'm sure you have been dying to meet.
: Thirdly, I know that Fred has already received "oral" confirmation that Fred is very welcome to show his art at the convention. He's still waiting for "written" confirmation.
+++A part of me wants to say, "Hell no, I wont go". They're asking Walter Ebrahimzadeh to return also but he has remained adamant...that until the Federation apologizes to him for sliming him in front of the Hotel Security people at the Hilton in Los Angeles by saying it was possible that he stole his own merchandise...they wont see him again.
+++On the one hand you don't want to deny or hurt the younger people and the ones of sense among us because of the many who are so damn stupid...on the famous other hand you don't want to let these bastards keep getting away with it...
+++Same dilemma I have about attending. It was never about money...Walter and I and all the other artist type freaks who attend these slugfests hardly make money...which would be inexcusable because we are supposed to be beggars now and forever...emulating Jesus and them saints I suppose. The notion that anyone makes anything for Assyrians with the thought of making money is ridiculous.
+++At the Chicago convention two years ago Dr Eden Naby was pressured to drop me from the speakers program by the Chicago thugs...to our credit she told them to fuck off....well, in her own way. They gave in because they saw she was about to abandon them and the whole idea of trying to shed some light on the caves we live in.
++++Having a premonition that there might be more trouble to follow...a little voice said, "get a written invitation"...and I asked for one, and got it, from their vice president...something I, or anyone else had never needed before. When they tried to remove me from the room I had been promised in writing...they responded that the invitation I showed them, signed by their own Federation vice-president, was "not a letter from God"...and they tried to have me arrested when I would not comply. They only made fools of themselves in the end...but that experience was most unpleasant for my children and wife to witness.
+++I mean here I was, the one Assrin who got a public monument installed in 2500 years in one American city...had a second one accepted by their own damn city...and their own Federation chief of security was threatening to knock my teeth out.
+++The next year the convention was in San Jose, a city whose Assyrians consider themselves to be far superior to the tribes of the MidWest...and this time Jackie is in charge and I figure I'm safe...and Atour Golani, a man in whose bed I've slept and broken bread with, whose wife and he and their friends in Detroit have worked for two years to find buyers for the Hammurabi Monument, which is slated for their own friggin city...and Atour, a man who bawled his eyes out in front of the Ashurbanipal Monument in San Francisco , back before we'd ever met...this guy is now president of the Federation, so I figure I'm as safe as a guy can reasonably expect to be...that there wont be any problem because for one thing Atour and Janey want the Hammurabi to happen and they know how we've worked to raise $90,000 and they know this is my one best chance in the year to attract more support so we can finish the thing.
++And what happens? Jackie goes ape shit because I say no to her...question the fact that her brother has to be the only one to sing...wonder why she isn't attending meetings of the Art Committee if indeed she is working her whatever to the bone...and almost lose us the Shumirum because I believed her...and then SHE says I can't show at the convention...tells me there are armed policemen to take care of a known "troublemaker" such as myself and generally lies her head off and intimidates her own club into going along and does something similar to Atour who all of a sudden turns on me as well and they let me come then hand me a "contract" meant only to stop me, then say they'll throw me out if I don't agree to my own humiliation.
+++And NOW the very pals who did this...who were "forced" by Jackie of all people, who can';t stand either of them...into betraying me and themselves and all the people who wanted the Hammurabi...now THEY run the convention...and they say I am "welcome"???
+++Tell me...how stupid does an Assyrian have to be to be a REAL Assyrian? What do Atour and Janey have waiting for me? Then Wilfred Alkhase, the only man in our histopry to be scared INTO marriage...says I am scum and he'll labor like a giant ant to make sure I am NOT welcome at the convention.
+++And yet...and yet. What fault is it of our poor children who will be dumped in the hotel lobby to entertain themselves in "Assyria" for three days while their parents gossip and dance? How long will our children have to look elsewhere for a culture, even this Pop one, because we can do nothing for them? Am I supposed to go where it's easy, where there is profit to be had...among white people...civilized people, who are very often in awe of what this work represents? Is this just about my ego, and my bank account in the end?
+++What humiliation can be in store for me in Detroit? What's left?
++++Assyrians were fair. I'll at least wait to see the standard contract they are offering all artists this year...one that I presume isn't intended just to be used againt me. I said I would wait to see it, and that if I could, I would sign it, and I would abide by it.
++++You can't blame a guy for being nervous...we can do anything...anything at all to one of our own...we will do nothing but fawn all over someone else...the whiter and more Germanic the better.
++++Oh, to be a Nazi among our people.
-- panch
-- signature .