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M.T. Karthik

~ performances, works, writings from 1977 – 2017

M.T. Karthik

Category Archives: San Antonio

RPRZ Investigation of Coyotes Hunting Deer in Late 2017

25 Monday Dec 2017

Posted by mtk in coyote, deer, landscape, RPRZ, San Antonio, TX

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Tags

antonio, coyote, coyotes, deer, hunt, Karthik, kill, m.t., mtk, point, recharge, rocky, RPRZ, San, texas, tx, white-tailed, winter, zone

Snow in San Antonio

07 Thursday Dec 2017

Posted by mtk in RPRZ, San Antonio, TX, weather

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Tags

antonio, Karthik, m.t., mtk, point, recharge, rocky, RPRZ, San, snow, texas, zone

 

 

Swallowtail Butterfly Papilio multicaudata

18 Monday Sep 2017

Posted by mtk in butterfly, fauna, insects, San Antonio

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RPRZ Backstory: Introducing the Recharge Zone

02 Wednesday Aug 2017

Posted by mtk in landscape, RPRZ, San Antonio, TX

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Tags

antonio, aquifer, authority, background, backstory, bexar, county, edwards, greenbelt, history, intro, Introduction, Karthik, m.t., mtk, point, recharge, river, rocky, San, texas, urban, wildlife, zone

Neotibicen Superbus

29 Saturday Jul 2017

Posted by mtk in insects, RPRZ, San Antonio, TX

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Tags

antonio, audio, cicada, Karthik, m.t., mtk, Neotibicen, RPRZ, San, sound, superbus, texas

21st Century Elections

07 Wednesday Nov 2012

Posted by mtk in elections, NYC, S.F., San Antonio

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Tags

2000, 2004, barack, Bush, chief, City, count, editor, F.Kennedy, fiasco, Filippacchi, Florida, frank, George, Hachette, in, Jeb, John, Jr., Karl, kerry, Lalli, lawsuits, loss, magazine, manhattan, new, obama, publisher, Rove, swiftboat, vote, W., york

In Spring of 2000, Hachette-Filippacchi Inc.,hired me and a half-dozen others to work as independently-contracted temporary employees to fact-check and conduct research for George magazine – whose founder and editor-in-chief John F. Kennedy, Jr. had been killed in a light-plane crash amidst fog off the coast of Maine eight months before. They hired us to ensure George remained, in the wake of its founder’s passing, an audible element of the political discourse during the Election of 2000.

As a national magazine which was read by hundreds of thousands of voters in many states, particular focus was paid to the Presidential Election between Vice President Al Gore and George W. Bush, the Governor of Texas.

My fellow employees, under Editor-in-Chief Frank Lalli, were a tight-knit, smart and savvy crew. In fact, on Election Night we were all together at Mr. Lalli’s beautiful upper westside home where he had invited us to watch returns. But Karl Rove’s fat face and a flipped state later, many of us were back in the office. A few of us stayed up most of the night and by 10 a.m. I was not alone in the office when I was posting coverage of Florida on the George website.

Though admittedly not a heavy-hitter politically, George was engaged throughout the Election and maintained an immense audience of voting readers before the magazine was finally brought to an end in 2001.

In 2003 I covered Schwarzenegger’s Election via Recall of Davis for KPFK, 90.7fm Los Angeles.

I also covered The Election of 2004 and the Presidential Race between George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry for KPFK, 90.7fm Los Angeles and in part for Pacifica Radio. Some of that 2004 Election work exists here and online at Pacifica’s Audioport and in the Pacifica Radio Archives, but I have complete digital copies of everything I did for KPFK and Pacifica between 2003 and 2005 backed up on disc in my studio as well.

In 2008, I was no longer working as a journalist, but did cover Obama’s Victory in Iowa for KPFK and produced short Audio-Visual Installments for Freshjive on the Internet. These were amateurish and clunky by design, yet carried considerable data for anyone who had tuned in to the broadcasts I produced for KPFK four years before.

When Obama won in ’08, I was with Lloyd Dangle, who hosted a book signing and Election Night Returns Party at the Riptide in San Francisco. Earlier in the day I had a drink with former SF Mayor Willie Brown at the St. Regis – we discussed Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s plans for appointing a Senator to replace disgraced Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, forced to retire.

This year,I did not work as a journalist, but rather observed as a reader of the news media and a regular Californian voter.

The biggest single predictor of the elections of the 21st century has to be the margin of difference in registrations for the two major parties.

There are many reasons for this: smaller parties are being absorbed and disappearing for lack of membership, corporate interests fund the two major parties only, people threatened by one of the two parties runs to join the other and the demography of the nation is changing.

I have successfully predicted the last two elections as a result of my study of data and my knowledge of voting history. I think I see the electorate again.

Some points on 21st Century US Elections:

It’s impossible to write a blog about all my experiences voting and covering General Elections in the United States in the 21st Century, but suffice it to say there is a distinct difference between these and the Elections of the latter half of the 20th century, in which I also participated.

Much of this is discussed in my talk Political Media, Messages and More.

2003 was the Recall Election and spawned recalls in the 21st Century because of Schwarzenegger’s success.

2008 was the Youtube Election.

2012 was the Twitter Election.

Money and media are the driving forces of what has become a political system mired in divided, brutal contests between two immense parties which are financed primarily by corporations and special interest groups that define their policies.

We are in desperate need of a new Federal Elections Reform Act, as was passed in the early 1970’s.

Our democracy is sick. Hardly half the people with the right to vote even participate.

We need to update, nationalize and standardize voting procedures and make them more secure. We need to increase registration and participation. We need to subsidize the creation and maintenance of additional parties in the face of the massive expenditures made by Republicans and Democrats that have taken elections out of the reach of the common person. We need proportional representation in Congress.

Have been saying all of this for years, and it has only gotten worse. Here’s hoping the young people who are increasing in numbers at the polls pull off what my generation couldn’t.

various passion flora I have known

27 Friday Jul 2012

Posted by mtk in flora, North Oakland, photography, San Antonio

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Berkeley, flower, Japan, Karthik, m.t., mtk, north oakland, passion, passionflower, rockridge, san antonio, texas

winterpassionflower2012

passion flower

23 Monday Jul 2012

Posted by mtk in flora, San Antonio

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Tags

antonio, flower, Karthik, mtk, passion, San, tx

Grown by Dr. B. Thyagarajan

In the flora tab there are other species of these in my neighborhood in the San Francisco Bay Area and opposite the Pacific in Kamakura, Japan, but this one in San Antonio, Texas seems to open only once, and at midday at that, and then closes and starts the fruiting – unique. Feedback welcomed.

white tailed deer

20 Friday Jul 2012

Posted by mtk in fauna, San Antonio

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Tags

antonio, deer, Karthik, m.t., mtk, San, tailed, tx, white

yellow hibiscus

19 Thursday Jul 2012

Posted by mtk in flora, photography, San Antonio

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Tags

antonio, flower, hibiscus, Karthik, m.t., mtk, San, texas, yellow

grown by Dr. B. Thyagarajan, SATX

Al Gore at Trinity University

23 Thursday Apr 1992

Posted by mtk in Commentary, protest, San Antonio, self portrait, talks, thoughts, TX

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

1992, Al, antonio, april, balance, deforestation, ecology, Gore, Karthik, m.t., mtk, politics, San, Senator, speaking, talk, talks, texas, Trinity, university

Senator Al Gore was on a book tour promoting Earth in the Balance. He hadn’t yet been picked as Bill Clinton’s running mate when I saw him at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, in April of 1992. He spoke for about forty minutes about the grave responsibility people around the world had to be more conscious of environmental degradation and then allowed for questions. I raised my hand and asked the Senator what he thought about the fact that the United States was the world’s greatest polluter and the greatest abuser of the earth’s resources.

I asked what the Senator thought of an editorial suggestion in the Houston Post that countries with large rainforests like Brazil and Malaysia should be allowed to tax the rest of the world for their usage of the primary resource they produce: clean air. (The idea was that the U.S. should be made to pay these countries not to deforest – the Post editorial had called it an Oxygen Tax).

I suggested to Senator Gore that the Global capitalist system – authored out of the U.S. and Europe – may have been the root cause for much of the irresponsibility he wrote about, quoting then Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad, who had that year remarked that “Democracy and free markets are not magic. They do not make backwardness and ignorance disappear.”

In response, Senator Gore asked me if I was from Malaysia.

When I said I was not he replied, “Good – because they’re the worst!” and went on to complain about deforestation of the islands of South East Asia, ignoring the responsibility of facing the economic facts of environmental degradation.

When he’d finished, some grad students in the audience tried to pick up my call for greater responsibility to be placed on the demands of Northern and Western markets, but Senator Gore just didn’t want to get it. While Republican President GHW Bush was the one who’d said he would never apologize for the actions of the U.S.A., whether or not they were wrong, by the early 1990’s the Democrats weren’t much better at owning up.

Fellow Trombonists at Twilight

21 Sunday Oct 1984

Posted by mtk in photography, San Antonio, TX

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Tags

antonio, Band, Clark, cougars, friends, gentz, John, matt, San, sherwood, texas, tom, trombone, trombonist, twilight

trombonists1984001

Matt Sherwoood and John Gentz, age 17

Treehouse Monopoly Record, 1981

30 Thursday Jul 1981

Posted by mtk in games, performance, San Antonio, TX

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

1981, antonio, monopoly, mtk, record, San, texas, treehouse

MonopolyRecord1981001 MonopolyRecord1981002 MonopolyRecord1981003 MonopolyRecord1981004

Image

Arbor Day, 1977

29 Friday Apr 1977

Tags

antonio, arbor, day, elementary, festivities, hill, Karthik, locke, mtk, plant, San, texas, thyagarajan, tree

ArborDay04261974001

Posted by mtk | Filed under flora, performance, San Antonio, TX

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M.T. Karthik

This blog archives early work of M.T. Karthik, who took every photograph and shot all the video here unless otherwise credited.

Performances and installations are posted by date of execution.

Writing appears in whatever form it was originally or, as in the case of poems or journal entries, retyped faithfully from print.

all of it is © M.T. Karthik

a minute of rain

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYLHNRS8ik4

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