Bang the Drums Loudly

In this era of military arsenals jammed with poison gas and nuclear warheads, everyone needs a little good news, and I have some today. Vomiting will not become a weapon of protest among California’s environmental activists. I knew you’d be pleased.

I mention this due to its unexpected appearance Tuesday at a Redwood Summer demonstration in Westwood. While chained to the front door of the hated Maxxam Corp. with three others, one of whom glowed with a patina of maple syrup, Valerie Sklarevsky suddenly threw up.

At first there was stunned silence, then concern for her health and then disturbing questions raised among those of us who chronicle unusual forms of social upheaval:

Has environmental protest escalated to the stage of physical disgorgement? If so, what’s next and how will the targets of these protests respond? Just thinking about it makes me queasy.

“If they’re going to start doing this,” a fellow journalist said, watching them clean up the mess, “I’m going into PR.”

Had anyone else regurgitated during the protest, the action would have been dismissed as show-boating or, at the very least, a questionable form of bio-kinetic art.

But Valerie, who has gone to jail in support of her beliefs, is a respected demonstrator for liberal causes and would not, as the British say, sick-up for the sake of attention.

So I called her later and am pleased to report she has the flu. What I mean is, she didn’t barf for notoriety and does not intend to incorporate it into future demonstrations . . . although she did say, somewhat thoughtfully, “It worked out perfectly, didn’t it?”

Other than Valerie’s bravura performance, the demonstration was noisy but tepid. Maxxam was chosen because it is headed by Charles Hurwitz, who is to the ancient redwood forests what the Romans were to the Sabine women.

Hurwitz engineered a drive-by takeover of Northern California’s Pacific Lumber Co. five years ago, and since has doubled the rate of logging among trees as old as 1,000 years.

The very mention of his name causes dedicated environmentalists to salivate, and sometimes worse.

They were all out there Tuesday to indicate their displeasure in what was billed as Redwood Summer L.A.

I arrived in time to see a gallon of “tree blood,” i.e. sap, being poured over someone named Michael Mudd, who posed in bare-chested defiance while television cameras rolled and strobe lights popped.

Thereafter, I noticed a sweetness in the air that doesn’t usually accompany social protest, and was told the tree blood was really maple syrup.

This surprised me. When Valerie spatters human blood during anti-war demonstrations, it is really her blood. In fact, she has extra blood drawn over a period of time so that others will have some to spatter too.

I guess draining real sap from a tree runs contrary to environmental principles, since trees are not in a position to voluntarily agree to having their sap siphoned. Symbols substitute when reality becomes troublesome.

Other than occasional chants of “Corporate greed kills our trees,” most of the noise at the protest was provided by the continual banging of celestial drums.

These are tambourine-type instruments that were held by people who said they represented Communist Buddhists from Japan called Nipponzan Myohoji.

One wouldn’t imagine Buddhists would be Communists, but since a lot of Catholics are Republicans, I guess it’s all right.

The drummer I spoke with, a woman with tattoos up and down both arms, wasn’t sure of the spelling of Nipponzan Myohoji, but I guess you don’t have to be able to spell it to belong to it.

I would have asked additional questions about the presence of Communist Buddhists at an environmental protest, but none of them seemed willing to stop the banging.

Fortunately, nothing much that occurs in a university town is very important anyhow, so I could do without it. As a friend says, same old circus, different clowns.

Later, there was discussion among those chained to the front door of Maxxam whether or not they were willing to be arrested (“I’m flexible,” the Maple Syrup Man said) when Valerie upchucked.

She was unchained, Maxxam graciously allowed her into their bathroom and everyone jumped in to clean up. Make that everyone joined in to clean up.

Since continued protest would have seemed anticlimactic, the demonstrators thereafter packed their chains, signs and celestial drums and went home early.

“I’m sorry about that,” Valerie said over the phone, “but I guess the point was clear. Maxxam makes me sick.” I guess.