I heard the announcement on KCPW (local NPR) about the Alternative Gift Fair today.  What a great idea.

Utah Red Cross, Intermountain Therapy Animals, Salt Lake City Film Center, One H.E.A.R.T. and other charities will be participating in the first Alternative Gift Fair for the Holidays.  The fair will offer sustainable and environmentally friendly gifts to match family and friends’ personalities.  Saturday, December 9th from 11 to 4 on the 11th floor of the Wells Fargo Building.  For more information, please contact One H.E.A.R.T. at 596-3317.

That’s TODAY, Saturday December 9, 11 - 4 pm at the Wells Fargo Building downtown Salt Lake City. 

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Noam Chomsky is 78 years old today, having been born December 7, 1928.

How will you celebrate?

• Give a 5-hour lecture on power and The West. (No 30-second sound bites allowed.)

• Write a review of Hegemony and Survival on Amazon, remarking on the book’s 3000+ sales rank (thanks to Hugo Chavez’ mention of the book during his recent UN speech).

• Settle in for a quiet night, curl up on the couch, and watch Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992).

• Finally dive in and try to figure out what the hell Chomsky and Foucault were saying to one another during their (in)famous 1971 debate. Video included as an extra with Manufacturing Consent. (And when you figure it out, tell me. I’ve taught this to graduate students, and I still don’t fathom the depths. While you are at it, amuse yourself with the knowledge that Foucault would surely be pissed that his name appears second on the title of the 2006 book about the event.)

• Carefully compose a greeting for his 80th birthday. For his 70th birthday, Z Magazine received 2000+ messages. You can see a random sampling of Noam Chomsky birthday greetings. Then, remember that you have two years, but why wait?

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Listening to Seymour Hersch this morning on Democracy Now made so much news I read and listen to seem like the playful circus it is. This goes far beyond Hersch’s article this week on the likelihood of the U.S. going to war with Iran. In talking to Amy Goodman, Hersch connects dots and brings a knowledge of the past political generation that many may not be familiar with. This is no sound byte with a smile. Hersch takes the time to weave together threads of conduct of the Reagan administration during the Iran-Contra era with the two Bush administrations in their Middle East wars.

I would gladly trade 24-hour fake news for a few hours weekly with my copy of The New Yorker.

If you read only two stories this week, make them Seymour Hersch’s New Yorker article “The Next Act” and a little AP story on a review of 866 studies relating to climate change. What else matters?

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As family and I have been driving through the Nevada desert today, I’ve been thinking of Burning Man. Next year’s theme is The Green Man. THE GREEN MAN. I am so there.

Not only will this verdant force of nature be the theme of Burning Man, but the community of Black Rock City is asked to offset the carbon footprint of travel, power generation, and expressive burning. A handy calculator helps with this.

• Burners without Borders will participate in this focus.

With the announcement of next year’s theme for Burning Man–The Green Man–expect to hear about lots of BWB projects focused on environmental/sustainable communities in the coming year.

• Cooling Man offsets greenhouse gas emissions and cools it forward.

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VOTE. Find your polling place.

VOLUNTEER. Find your local party to call and volunteer.

PARTY. There must be a party in your neighborhood tonight. Go! Or make your own party and invite the neighbors.

If you have trouble voting today, call The Hotline 1-888-DEM-VOTE (1-888-336-8683). Let them know if you have problems, need answers, need to find your polling location, or just want to know your voting rights.

Know Your Voting Rights (all three of them)

1. 1. If you have problems, you are still entitled to cast a provisional ballot.
2. 2. If you are in line before the poll’s closing time, you are entitled to vote.
3. 3. You are entitled to view a sample ballot at the polling place before voting.

First, know basic voting rights info.

Are you going to be talking to people today? How about printing an information card or flyer. Here are several flyers that look decent, including one doorhanger with the voting rights and hotline information above.

If people tell you they’ve been deluged with phone calls, listen carefully. Could those have been deceptive Republican robocalls like so many people around the county have been reporting? Be calm, be clear, be prepared. Know what is going on in the rest of the country, and tell people about it.
Be prepared for anything, Howard Dean wrote today.

Count every vote, and make every vote count.

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