Posted by pancho from ? (64.79.4.3) on Monday, March 25, 2002 at 9:23AM :
When it would have been to her glory to install the Shumirum in San Jose...all was good with the world and it was "very important" to have this symbol of Assyria installed...so good for our little pickaninnies and chitlin babies to see their history blah blah blah. But when she got caught by me with her pants down...lying about how much work she was doing and how hard it all was etc. and I realized she was waiting for me to get to Mexico so she could do as she wished and get the glory for having "brought" this monument to you lucky people...and I told her to forget it...that what I wouldn't let Nimrod or Golani do, I wasn't about to let her do, even if she did pay SO MUCH for such a TINY sculpture, and with no balls too. Then all of a sudden the worst thing that could happen..to Jackie, would be to have the Shumirum installed in San Jose.
Why? Same as John in Chicago, because it would come without HER! She has the people in her club convinced that the sun rises on San Jose because she crows in the morning...that such a terribly difficult thing can only happen because of her. She's right...it was terribly difficult to work all those years learning how to sculpt and it was hard finding ways to make enough money over the thirteen years it took to make the damn thing...hard not to give up, hard not to see that I was risking my family's well being by basically working for minimum wage...these things were indeed hard. But it was NOT hard to attend a meeting in San Jose, as it hadn't been "hard" to get monuments approved in San Francisco and Chicago...and answer the simple concerns raised and get the job done. But it had to appear to be difficult...it had to look like we needed Jackie to pull the thing off...that four months was not enough time...especially if she didn't attend the meetings. I'll post the letter from Harriet Traurig in which she tells me that they only heard from Jackie at their April meeting and except for some "sporadic" contact after that...never saw her again at their meetings.
In her letter to someone she claims to have had a medical emergency...a sense of delicacy keeps me, for now, from revealing what that emergency was. But why didn't she have me at least accompany her to the first meeting. Why take Wilfred Alkhase? Did they need whipped cream there? After that meeting she told me that one of the commissoners, an Asian fellow, had told THEM that the lioness with Shumirum was "not Assyrian". They hadn't known what to say...and he had further said that Shumirum looked like a 19th century French sculpture. In other words we don't know our own history OR have any business improvising OR doing any of the things everyone else does. As Assyrians we are locked forever in what these people think they know of us...and to prove we don't know anything, Jackie sent herself and Wilfred down there to talk to them and present MY goddamn sculpture while I sat twiddling my thumbs.
On our Shumirum photo page you can see side by side the lioness of Shumirum right next to a photograph of a lioness in the same position on a bas-relief carving taken from the palace of Ashurbanipal. And there are several representations of women with their hands crossed in front of them...it was a position of reverence etc.
When I appeared before the same committe last month I sat opposite the Asian fellow and though all of them had a hard time making eye contact...I stared steadily at the guy as if daring him to open his mouth about the lioness NOT being Assyrian. He didn't...of course.
Jackie's dilemna now is that the Shumirum will be accepted and in much less time than she insisted it would take...that all her contacts and her lunches with the Mayor's assistants and meetings with this one and that one were not necessary, indeed were a distraction and a great fucks pas because the Arts Commission does not appreciate the idea that someone is getting "leverage" all over the place as if to admit that there is something lacking or deficient with what they are presenting as a valid work of art... that instead of standing on its own merit requires "special handling and influence". In other words...we would have to have Jackie's special contacts if we expected to have this otherwise "wrong" thing accepted by San Jose.
All of that puff and self-serving fluff will go up in smoke if the monument gets installed with Jackie nursing her doodles on the sidelines, all her contacts and smooth political doodles totally unnecessary...as they always were and are.
That explains the phone call from John Nimrod to Narsai last week. Jackie doesn't dare approach the Art Committe directly...that would be too obvious. Just as she didn't sign that stupid contract she put those children at the convention up to. She places a call to Nimrod and says the Shumirum that he OWNS is going to go up in San Jose...did he know that? John gets on the phone to Narsai, and when that doesn't get him anywhere, must now be planning to send a letter to San Jose telling the Art Commission that the monument belongs to HIM because his sister gave one million dollars to it. Like he owns military helicopters because his taxes buy them.
She will also manage to let them know there is a pending lawsuit and she would "hate" to see the city get involved with such a bad character...and she will get one of them to read this site and see how I swear and discuss her doodles etc.
I don't give a good damn. The real monument in all of this is the task of showing these leeders for just what they are...self-serving, self-aggrandizing and plain selfish people who use our love for this Heritage to further their own status...a status that can only be maintained if they keep us stupid and enthralled by what they convince us they achieve FOR US. Also to inspire some people who would otherwise never get involved with the community at the dumb and mundane level that has been available to us so far. These are the ideas and the spirit behind the monuments and all the work for the last 20 years...without that spirit the monuments are just metal.
I didn't start out to expose anyone or prove a point. I started out to make the kinds of monuments that would be worthy of the standards in this country, not our community in Turlock or on Clark St in Chicago, but in major cities in this country and anywhere else. I next had to figure out how to pay for the damn things and came up with what I thought was a nifty way. It was only after all of this and only gradually that I realized that there were people among us who not only wouldn't support such endevors, but would actually get to work to ruin them. That was an eye opener and a shock. When I became convinced that this was indeed the case...that even those who presented themselves to us as Leaders and Lovers of Assyria and workers for the Heritage would turn out to be the ones working the hardest to either get the credit and use the monuments in their silly and vainglorious attempts to be the biggest fools among us...that I decided they had to be exposed...that they were the canker and cancer that was robbing our young people of any interest to join in meaningful work to preserve and enhance this Heritage.
John Nimrod doesn't go to Geneva or Marbella or New York or Iran for US. He goes for John, saying he does it in our name because he get's into more doors that way. Jackie isn't running her club for the member's benefit, even though she "does so much". Of course she does so much, because there is so much she wants to GET out of them.
I'm the jackass who tried for twenty years to do something for the HERITAGE and "out there" where our only hope is. I could give a good goddamn if I was a "star" in this community. Big fucking deal. How easy it would have been, and profitable in moneydoodles, to have remained Jackie's "friend". That's what she and John were counting on...that I wanted to "get ahead" as much as they do and would never ever cut myself off from them and their contacts.
And really, I can't think of another schmuck who would tell a woman who has bought $70,000 worth of sculpture and would buy more, to go fuck herself, for a change. And you guys who follow these people just don't "get it" either.
-- pancho
-- signature .