The Rest of the Claremont Blogosphere

A run down of the larger Claremont blogosphere is necessary to understand why a blog of Claremontlibre's perspectives is truly necessary. Claremont, needless to say, is a conservative place, stifled by its suburban, moneyed, Southern California setting. Conformity abounds here in lala land, from the resort style living to the excrutiatingly mediocre thought processes. As such, the large percentage of publications in Calremont come out of the members of this confused faction.

That isn't to say that there aren't diamonds in the rough; keep reading here and you'll be sure to lead a bejeweled life. However, it is worth keeping your eye on the other local blogs, if only to reassure yourself of just how worthy diverse thought is in Claremont.

The Claremont Port Side deems itself a "progressive newsmagazine," amongst many other lofty descriptions, but my favorites are the "rockin' the boat" mantra on every issue and the campusprogress.org advertisements on the inside of every cover. Even though it's published out of Claremont McKenna College, they do a decent job covering interesting articles, and now have a blog up and running.

The Claremont Independent is "unabashedly conservative and libertarian" and recieves no funding from the 5c's, so enjoy they slew of corporate ads that pollute their site. As far as I can tell, they're purely an online publication, as opposed to the PortSide's monthly issues, and an ongoing ethnographic study of CMC stereotypes.

The CMC Forum is a less politcal and more informal site than those above, but often does news articles of some substance. Again coming out of CMC, it's mostly the infighting spill-over from around the blogosphere.

In essence all these on-campus publications and their contributors try hard to immitate the big name newsmagazines in which I'm sure they hope to one day tell all the friends that an article of thiers has been published. Beyond the explicitly local, you can find most of these articles in the New York Times. Of course they're astronomically better in the times.

Finally, the Claremont Insider is useful every now and then for detailed and thoroughly followed-up on articles about all the crazy townie shit you hear about going on in Claremont. Nonetheless, the blog reeks of suburbanites and droll, predictable interests.

Spend ten minutes cruising these sites and you'll see why, so desperately, this place needs a firm, swift kick in the pants.

Dumpster Diving and...Lewis Black

So this week has been pretty shitty in terms of weather. Rain rain and more rain, and it's not even good, mellow, normal Mediterranean rain. Everyone I know has been telling me LA needs it, but what isn't understood is that the over-paved, over-channelized wasteland people call a desert absorbs little of the water, deposits massive amounts of pollutants into the ocean and frankly is spooky after the 80-degree-in-the-middle-of-January weather we had three weeks ago. Climate change? You tell me.

Just about the only good thing about the crap weather has been that it's turned every dumpster in the greater Claremont area into a natural freezer (that, the lack of smog and the abundance of jaw dropping views of a snow covered Baldy...though be wary of the crowds before you set off to hitch a ride up the mountain). And why is that a positive? Because the massive amounts of food being thrown out all around town are kept nice and fresh for those smart and brave enough to pay tribute to the dumpster gods and harvest said abundance.

I won't give away the choicest locations around here because half the fun is figuring out who, what, when and where (which will, having solved all those criteria, invariably reveal "why"). I will say however that diving is very much something to be done in Claremont, where you'll probably be the only gleaner at these most abundant and unaware dumpsters.

Finally, if anyone was unconvinced by my last post on the badass-ness of KSPC, tonight yours truly won two free tickets to see Lewis Black perform on Friday at Big Bridges Auditorium. I only brag to keep everyone on their toes. Go get it Claremont, get that freedom.

KSPC 88.7

I caught KSPC, the College's local radio station, Spring Blowout show tonight, or at least the latter half of it. I haven't made it to one of these things in years so I was happy to at least be present, but also for the mother-father, baby-in-attendence duo Faun Fables rocking the stage, trash drums in full swing (I have got to start taking pictures to post on this thing).

I did miss Pitzer's own Fitness, part of the larger Rainbow Destroyer Collective, which, if you've never seen, is quite simply a trip; they take themselves literally, putting on a "post-modern" performance a la Jane Fonda.

Anyway, in continuing to lay the explanatory groundwork for the larger alternative Claremont life, KSPC 88.7 "The Space" is a jewel not to be missed. You can pick them up POR GRATIS online anywhere on the planet, or during the rare ocassion you find yourself in a car, or pretty much on anything in the Claremont area that picks up a radio signal as they drown out nearly all stations on the low range of the FM bandwidth; but hey, it's quite nearly the best damn radio station you'll come across.

Today was the station's 53rd birthday and they've just started a pretty sweet blog to keep you updated on the constant flow of cool shit they provide to the community, usually at low or no cost.

It's always been a strange dream of mine to kind of fall into a rut in life, place some bad bets or something, and end up with absolutely nothing. Only then I'll come crawling back to Claremont, march down to the KSPC bunker of a station, and revitalize my being with a radio show (which I'm pretty sure is open to any and all community members) where I'll play recordings I've made of all the libre adventures I have sneaking into dining halls, or hauling dumpster dived groceries across town, or taking classes for free.

Anarchist dreams...

First Posts Don't Have to Be Mind Blowing, Right?

They don't. I've been fretting and procrastinating about putting anything up on this for want of grandiose words, manifestos, yaddah yaddah. So whatever, here goes nothing.

In Tom Hayden's "From the 60's to Barack Obama" course that he's teaching this spring at Pitzer, he's having us read his Reader (which if you've spent five minutes in a room with Tom, seems to be a laughably Tom-like thing to do...people, myself included, love to refer to Tom as if they were Tom himself talking in the third person about himself). In the reader he cites Naomi Klien as being one of the brightest minds writing today. He's right.

Klien spoke in Claremont last Fall, the day after the infamous Karl Rove incident, while I still had pepper spray in my eyes. You can check out her latest article, a great rundown of Iceland's recent riotous response to neo-liberalism with a bi-lingual bevy of great lines to yell the next time you're demonstrating against corporate raiders.

I got to Klein's article from Open Left, a blog that, while admittedly more political than what I see this space shaping up to be, is just, well, right again.

Anyway, more to come on what Claremontlibre means. In the meantime, do you homework on the e-lineage of which this blog comes from; see Professor Dana Ward's world renowned Anarchist Archives (notably his classes on Anarchy and the Internet) and the YouTube course taught at Pitzer, I believe, last-last fall semester, by Alexandra Juhasz.