Ken Cheetham

Ken Cheetham is an animal residing on a tiny planet hurtling through space. He has existed for the last 55 of the universe's several billion years. Ken's current goals are to work to increase corporate profits for another decade or two, see the important movies on the weekends, and then be dead forever.

Ken also maintains A Bay Area Progressive Directory on this web site, and is the author of The Nose Cover and other random cruft.

email:        ken.cheetham@comcast.net
postal mail:  POBox 11232, Berkeley CA 94712 USA

Preserving the Gill Tract in Albany, California for Urban Farming and Instruction

Here are my photos of reclaiming the Gill Tract, and my statement to the Albany City Council. And now some new photos for 2013.

Hiking Photos of Strawberry Canyon, Hamilton Gulch, and Claremont Canyon in Oakland, California

If you like to escape from all the cars without using a car to do so, then you may want to check out the open space in Strawberry Canyon, Hamilton Gulch, and Claremont Canyon in Oakland on the East side of Berkeley. The mouth of Strawberry Canyon is only a little over a mile east of downtown Berkeley, within walking distance of BART. Here's my shorter sequence of some favorite photos, a longer sequence, and even a ridiculously complete sequence of many of the canyon photos that I've kept.

Music! Here are a few songs of mine.

"Under" is a straightahead fun funky number. Fnoo is a jazzy classicalish work in a fast three. Boof is rude on the outside but somewhat mellow in the middle. Wake Up is a song for waking up to gradually in the morning. Urnk is hard-hitting and then spacy. The first two are new recordings of very old songs. The other three are older recordings of less old songs, with somewhat lower-quality mixes.

Download the songs for keeps here:
http://bapd.org/songs/Under.mp3
http://bapd.org/songs/Fnoo.mp3
http://bapd.org/songs/Boof.mp3
http://bapd.org/songs/WakeUp.mp3
http://bapd.org/songs/Urnk.mp3

At the moment these recordings are free for any not-for-profit use, though they may not always be. The songs and recordings are copyright Ken Cheetham.

Video! Here's my video of the Occupy Oakland demonstration at the Port of Oakland on Wednesday, November 2, 2011.

The middle of the video demonstrates the human microphone being used to pass instructions back through the huge crowd, one block at a time. The end features a splendid drumming & chanting happening back in downtown Oakland.

Footage of the Creative 2003 Bay Area Protest of the War on Iraq

The following six videos cover some large protest demonstrations in San Francisco and Oakland, California, shortly before and just after the March 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Parts 1 through 3 are planned permitted marches before the invasion, while parts 4 through 6 are impromptu protest just after the invasion, on Friday and Saturday, March 21 and 22, 2003. Part 4 covers a mass arrest for walking in the street without a permit. Parts 5 and 6 feature interesting interplay with police attempting to keep the protesters out of the streets. This is raw video heavily edited down into short clips to keep it moving along. The footage focuses on drumming and other music in the streets.

For busy people, here are super-compressed versions (about 48 seconds each):

Parts 1 & 2 (2003-02-15, pre-invasion) View on YouTube or Download for keeps (36 mb)
Parts 5 & 6 (2003-03-21, post-invasion) View on YouTube or Download for keeps (39 mb)

And here are the full-length versions (about 55 minutes total):

Part 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OskTW3VPlT4
Part 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkhfdxWyqsA
Part 3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQFTOhXv7HE
Part 4 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs7uqK6Vg2k
Part 5 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKrKXb2zPzs
Part 6 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8M7ifYEm4c

Why Economic Growth Is Ending for Good due to peak natural resource extraction (Richard Heinberg)
The Rules Are Rigged to keep shifting wealth to the rich. (Dean Baker)

One product makes you stylish And one product makes you score But the ones that we keep buying Quickly turn into a bore Go ask Darwin Why we thirst for More And if you go chasing status Well you know you're going to fail Cause a cigar-smoking corporate feller Is holding a phantom grail Call Darwin Or send him e-mail When the men in the boardroom Get up and tell you what you need And you've just been watching television And the Joneses look in the lead Go ask Darwin I think he'll know When your genes only want to pass themselves on After you've fallen sloppy dead And they've tricked you into an endless rat race Though like the Red Queen you can't get ahead Remember What your gut once said Ease your dread Ease your dread

And here's the obligatory Net Cop Filter Clog page.

Cheetham's rule-of-thumb on beer: If the beer has the word "red" in the name or has a red label, then it is probably quite good. If, on the other hand, it has the word "gold" or "golden" in the name or has a yellow label, then it probably sucks huge donkey noses.

On "Spiral Knob" overlooking Oakland, July 2009

It's later than it's ever been!