Bob Sheldon

My friend Bob Sheldon: somebody gunned him down during the first weeks of the Persian Gulf War on this date, February 21, 1991, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Shot him in the head and left him for dead after closing time for Internationalist Books, the enterprise he'd created from scratch. As far as I know, the case is still unsolved.

Bob had recently spoken out against the war just as he'd spoken out against Vietnam and when he died, he must have been barely in his forties, younger than I am now. He was visible and vocal, providing rare dissent to the Gulf War on TV. His killing was as senseless as today's Iraq War, as the disappearance of Turkish feminist blogger Istanbulwitchy, as the vicious hooligan attack on Ash (Deviant Anamoly) in Australia, as insane as the assassination of Hrant Dink for simply writing about the Armenian Genocide in Turkey.

I first met Bob when he was working at UNC as a sort of medic-nurse in 1981 -- he treated me, an undergraduate, for a nasty case of poison ivy, bandaging my arms like a burn victim. I was reading an article about the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and he struck up a conversation. Not long afterwards I checked out his new bookstore on Henderson Street, and when he set up shop on Rosemary Street not far from where I worked maybe a couple of years later, I began working at Internationalist Books, too. We had a lot of pithy conversations over the years, and he was one of the few people I knew to provide moral support for a sit-in protesting American involvement with the Contras in the time of Reagan.

Internationalist Books and Community Center lives on at a third location, right on Franklin Street. Much more to write about Bob Sheldon and Internationalist Books, but today is his remembrance day.



Today's Rune: The Self.

Ash Wednesday. Bob Sheldon, RIP.

She'll Be Waiting In Istanbul

How many bloggers have we lost in the past year? I haven't given up on Ashley and her Deviant Anamoly blog and have kept her link, though we haven't heard from her in months. She was last heard recovering from a vicious assault by a hooligan in Australia.

The latest loss is more of a mystery, and I fear the worst. Istanbulwitchy was a strong-minded woman who always wrote what she felt was the truth, regardless of consequences. Her English language blog harshly criticized Islamic ways, heterosexual men, and anything else she considered distasteful. I didn't agree with her all of the time, but I loved reading what she had to say and always found her interesting. I removed her link because her site had been hacked in such a way that 1) her blog is no longer accessible and 2) instead of reaching her blog, my own computer was assaulted, automatically bringing up my anti-virus defense software. Instead of Istanbulwitchy, one is attacked by "Oriental Green Grocer" or something like that. Istanbulwitchy had defined herself as a lesbian feminist and she openly disagreed with Islamic customs. She posted her writing from Istanbul, Turkey. I hope she is safe and alive and free.

Meanwhile, on January 19, 2006 (today), Hrant Dink, a 53-year old editor who had written about the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire that occurred in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was shot four times in the head as he walked out of his newspaper office in Istanbul. He was apparently murdered for having "insulted Turkishness" in his writings. Horrible. What next?

Fellow bloggers, let's fight tooth and claw to maintain freedom of expression, free flow of ideas, and remembrance of the past -- and let's continue to seek truth and compassion in the present.

If anyone knows if Istanbulwitchy is all right (also if anyone knows the title of her published book and art criticism), please let us know.

Birthdays today include Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) and Janis Joplin (1943-1970).

Today's Rune: Partnership.

Adieu.