To have known Alexander is to have known lots of style surprises… like what to drive across the country. Can you say “gas guzzler?” Somehow it all fit. He talked Andy Kopkind into going down with him to Florida in the summer of 1981 to help him pick up his old Imperial. They had a great road trip back to the farm. We posed on the Imperial with Alexander’s wonderful daughter, Daisy.
l to r: Andy, Daisy Cockburn, Alexander, and John, Treefrog Farm 1981
This week JoAnn Wypijewski and John Scagliotti, friends of Alexander, will be organizing a remembrance. Stay tune here for details for those who would like to attend.
Meanwhile we will have a few pictures posted here from Alexander’s times here at Treefrog Farm in Vermont.
John Scagliotti, Kopkind Administrator
Alexander Cockburn, July 4th BBQ (1982) Treefrog Farm
still from AMERICAN AUTUMN
On Sunday, July 22, the Kopkind Colony will open its summer season with American Autumn, a film that documents the action and articulation of grievances that began in New York City as Occupy Wall Street, spread to cities and towns across the country, and continues in myriad projects under the banner Occupy.
Filmmaker Dennis Trainor, Jr., takes a view of the early months of the Occupy movement from the inside out, from the meeting rooms to the streets, from the encampments to the police lines and beyond. American Autumn follows the people and the actions in New York City, Boston and Washington with a style, an energy and a politics that, as MichaelMoore.com put it, is “radically different from what you’ll see at your local movie theater…. This is a movie with us in it. I don’t mean our little group of activist friends. I mean us, the people of this country, our stories, our hardships, our triumphs, our injustices, our tragedies, our humor.”
With an original score by Goldi, of the OWS music Rebel group and the street band Guitarmy, plus additional songs by Mike Lawrence-Yanicelli and the legendary punk band FUGAZI, the film captures the beat of the moment and the movement. It weaves together the voices of protesters, the vivid action in the streets and interviews with veteran writers and activists including Cornel West, Naomi Klein, Medea Benjamin and many more.
Kopkind’s Movie Night begins on Sunday with a potluck barbecue at 5:30 pm, outside the Organ Barn in Guilford, 158 Kopkind Road. The screening of American Autumn will begin at 7, followed by discussion with Trainor and members of the Occupy movement, who will be in residence for this, Kopkind’s first summer seminar/retreat session of the year. Contact John Scagliotti, Kopkind Administrator for directions to the Organ Barn in Guilford. stonwal@sover.net
“…reaches back to the radical roots of liberation, to the joyously skewed visions of sex, love, culture and camp that lie outside the conventions of the straight world,” A Queer Nation, Andrew Kopkind, 1993
With that defining thought, Kopkind is pleased to be sponsoring CineSLAM, Vermont’s LGBT Shorts Film Festival. CineSLAM is part of the pride events that take place in June for Southern Vermont. You can see some some great short films starting Friday, June 30th in Brattleboro VT at 6:15pm (repeated at 8:15pm) at the Hooker Dunham Theater (139 Main Street) ; the next day there are two more sessions of shorts and a community bbq at the Organ Barn in Guilford. for a list of films and descriptions and to make reservations, go to the CineSLAM site www.cineslam.com
The Center for Independent Documentary and the Kopkind Colony are pleased to announce a call to independent documentary filmmakers who would like to participate in a week long seminar and retreat in southern Vermont. The retreat is limited to nine filmmakers.
It’s very easy to apply. Go to the CID “Invitation to Filmmakers” page at http://documentaries.org/newsevents/kopkind2012/
JoAnn Wypijewski, the president of our Kopkind foundation, continues to report and write on some of the important issues facing us.
Click the photo to get her latest thoughts on Strip Searching and the Supreme Court.
Class K22, 2011
Sniffing the Zeitgeist has be sent to our supporters via the US Mail. If you are not on our list and would like to be added, email John Scagliotti, Administrator of Kopkind, at stonewal@sover.net. Below is an excerpt from this year’s edition.
From JoAnn Wypijewski, President of Kopkind and columnist (“Carnal Knowledge”) at The Nation, on the road in Iowa:
A little over a year ago, at Kopkind’s 2010 Harvest event, Vijay Prashad had declared, “What a wonderful time to be alive!” In the crisis, in the rupture, in the cracks, something new can sprout. Something has. It is not the encampments alone or the GA’s alone or the headlines of the day. It is, as Vijay has recently written, “the new political momentum toward a new horizon”. That momentum uplifts the young, the precarious, the unions and community groups, the world of hip hop. It uplifts our politics in a way that won’t be swept away by police eviction squads.
Class K23, 2011
If you would like to make a donation to Kopkind, click on our “Donate” tab at the top of this page. Thank you.
Please join us on this 250th anniversary of our town, Guilford, as we celebrate an important chapter in its history, commemorating the commune movement that brought Andy Kopkind to Vermont and honoring our friend, neighbor and community conscience, poet Verandah Porche.
Not long after the town’s bicentennial, young people began coming to this area, first in a sprinkling, then in a wave: dreamers and artists and drop-outs from a mad world, people with utopian visions or just looking for something, something else. By the 1970s many were, as Andy said, “refugees from the New Left”. He himself packed a bag in 1970, left most all he owned on a street corner in DC, and drove his motorcycle to a commune in Guilford. Verandah had come here two years earlier, to Packer Corners Farm just up the road from the Organ Barn, which has been standing almost as long as Guilford but which owes its name and peculiar feature to those days. The people who came changed Vermont, and were changed by it. Andy came out as a gay man, left, and returned a few years later to spend every summer at Tree Frog Farm, the reason we are here today. Verandah made Packer Corners her permanent home, enchanted Guilford with the creations of the Monteverdi Artists Collaborative, and has been telling the stories of people’s lives in poetry here and throughout the country ever since.
We are therefore honoring Verandah and this special moment in our town’s history at our annual Harvest Late Brunch benefit. There will be a delicious Tapas Feast. Afterward: a video tribute, a reminiscence of commune life by Verandah, and a screening of The Stuff of Dreams, which documents Monteverdi’s magical production of The Tempest, on an island in Sweet Pond.
Tickets are $35, $25 for students. With your support, the Kopkind Colony will weather the storms of nature and politics, preserving its connection to the past while developing ideas for the future. 10% of the proceeds will go to the campaign to resurrect Sweet Pond, a place once as pleasant as its name, recently drained and now the locus of community action. Reserve tickets now!
For more information or directions, contact 802.254.4859, or email at stonewal@sover.net.
Friday,
July 22 – Speaker’s Night
7:30
– Talk, followed by discussion, dessert and coffee
MARIA MARGARONIS, European
correspondent and London editor for The Nation, on
“Euro-Turmoil: Notes on Greece
and Politics in Extremity”
Contact John Scagliotti, Kopkind Administrator, for directions to the Organ Barn.
Learning From the World
Sunday, July 17 – Movie Night
5:30 – Potluck barbecue
7:00 – Screening
“LIVE FROM THE MEDIA REVOLUTION”, a selection of videos shot in the midst of the thrilling Arab Spring among some of the people who made it,
with filmmaker Greg Berger Email John Scagliotti, Administrator of Kopkind for directions for the Organ Barn.. stonewal@sover.net You can see more about this with this local article from the Brattleboro Reformer
Greg Berger will be at Tree Frog Farm July 17
Kopkind Colony 