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Waiting for the Sunday Paper
I don’t like to blog this early on a Sunday morning. I like to drink coffee and read the newspaper, cover to cover, less the adds and sports. But no paper. I see Mary across the street looking under all the cars and wandering around the front yard. Its tough for the newspapers in this brave new world we’re creating. The newspaper continues to shrink, both in content and type size, while the price continues to climb.
I have more compassion for my ever changing cast of newspaper delivery folks. They seem on average to last about 6 weeks, some a little more, some a lot less. Its a tough gig, piece work pay, hard wear and tear on the vehicle, tough hours, especially on the weekends and your paid as independent contractor so no taxes taken out and that wicked 11% Self Employment tax coming next April. Probably good none of them make it. Its mostly black folks here in Columbia. I’ve had 2 clients land this job or helping their girlfriends do this job because the Tribune won’t let Felons deliver the newspaper.
Its a mean old world I tell people, almost every day. Most people don’t know, they think they’re losers and fuck ups and young ones don’t know that it used to be different. If you stay on track you mostly catch some traction and move forward. Unless your on the sex offender registry and live in a tent in the woods. Then you do the right thing just to keep death at bay and stave off the inevitable physical decline as best you can until some random tragedy closes this chapter.
I am bitter without a newspaper, my little church of knowing what happened yesterday. That’s where they put the good stuff too, the funnies in color, the gardening column, the travelogues, and high art biopics that my brother found amusing for redneck Missouri.
My legs are a little sore. Did some serious damage on the strawberry patch. Last years month of super hot hit them hard and the zoysa grass is quick to fill the gap. Its hard to pull those long roots all intertwined with the surviving berries. But I keep plugging away and putting in the super cheap off season tulip bulbs I bought. Its not helping me get other things done with Christmas coming but its getting more off season every day so it too has its time pressures. It’ll be worth it in the Spring.
Made Split Pea Dal for Erica and Jamie’s Solstice party. It was fun. Make a dish that looks like baby poop if you want a lot of leftovers to take home. I also took some green tomato chutney in a santa cup. Glad I did because Erica gave me one of her Skin Grin All Purpose Herbal Salve. Gave me a tour of her garden with keyhole beds and discussed her experience with chickens (layers doing nicely, eating chickens were more trouble in that stretch of heat I mentioned). It was fun making the scene and hanging out around the fire. I have a reputation as a sort of recluse (“an Indian who stays close to the fort”, Jamie said.) So people made a big deal of my showing up.
Also Kevin is starting to move out so with just Fido around, he’s running around with his Santa doll now, pretty cute. I think he’s watching for the paper as well. I’m probably projecting though. I helped him with a load yesterday and promised to help him today but I have a lot on my agenda. This being social thing takes time. Sarah and I are doing a little Christmas shopping and hope to catch Christina in the Christmas Chorale this afternoon. I also pledged to go to the off leash areas by Cosmo park with Michael and Olive. I am hoping Olive will teach Fido to stay closer when we’re on the trails.
Hold that thought. I’m drinking some medium-light Ethiopian this morning. Pretty yummy. Whoops there’s the paper. TTFN faithful reader.
Good News for Chimps
I just saw a story that the NIH is getting rid of almost all animal testing on our closest cousins chimpanzees. I’ve got a soft spot for chimps and grant them a certain level of personhood. Its not complete but its pretty close. Now we need to protect their habitat and keep extant their natural culture and genetic diversity and start building from that. I was all fire for chimps back in the day and wrote this song that kind of speaks for itself
Chimp Poem
Out in the jungle were some chimpanzees
Eating some fruit, swinging through the trees
Minding their own business, not hurting anyone
Raising their babies, and having fun
Until that fateful day when they were nabbed
And shipped to the States for a research lab
They were poked and prodded, separated from their mates
Ninety five percent of chimps shared the same fate
But our superior intellect the scientists say
Gives us the right to do what we may
Torture the dumb chimps in our quest for knowledge
Because that’s what the ethicist taught us in college.
Driving through the suburbs in their SUV
Was an upper middle class American family
They were driving to Junior’s first soccer game
On that fateful day when the aliens came
Sucked up to a saucer by a tractor beam
They were sent to another world by a teleport machine
They were poked and prodded, separated from their mates
Ninety five percent of humans shared the same fate
But our superior intellect the aliens say
Gives us the right to do what we may
Torture the dumb humans in our quest for knowledge
Because that’s what our ethicist taught us in college.
Believe it or not half of this tale is true
And you know you wouldn’t want it to happen to you
So keep in mind the Golden Rule
And don’t use chimps as your research tool
The wild chimps should be left alone
They need habitat to call their own
The research chimps should all be set free
To be the wild things God wants them to be
To be the wild things God wants them to be.
#######
Free Mumia
It seems like there has been an inordinate amount of good news in the paper today. Driving is down 6 months in a row, as Baby Boomers stopped driving their kids around is the biggest factor. Desegregation is rolling along as more black folks move to the suburbs. Asians and Latinos open the door moving in creating space for black folks in white neighborhoods. (Whites don’t move into black neighborhoods except in isolated cases of gentrification. Boo whites.)
The biggest piece of good news was that Mumia Abu Jamal was taken off of death row. I knew it yesterday, because even though I’m pretty attached to paper newspapers (anything worth doing is worth doing like in the 19th century) I appreciate what my brother said when his buddy asked “what’s that?” when he tossed me the paper in its tight plastic sack. “That’s a newspaper. Its what people read before there was an internet. It tells you what happened yesterday.”
So yesterday Mumia Abu Jamal was taken off death row. I have heard some of his stuff and read one of his books. I worked a short quotation of his into a wedding I did in Canada on “the primordial forest”. I went to Philadelphia and protested many years ago. This has been going on so long. There is good evidence his trial was fraudulent and the circumstances are murky. Even if he shot the cop he’s been in the joint a long time and has done much good. It was a racially charged time and there was a lot of weirdness around the whole thing. I was moved largely by my gut which has always told me he’s a good man.
I also wrote poem about his situation. Its pretty dated but I am putting everything up and archiving it and its probably worth sharing. I take a light, almost tongue in cheek approach as I was poking fun at my strident to the point of humorless activist friends who have as little room for dissenting thought as the mainstream they rail against. I love them nonetheless and largely root ’em on. The biggest thing about the piece is its dated. This might be my last chance to share it with any kind of relevance. I always thought it was a tight little piece and I like the ending a lot. Almost feel like I squandered it on a piece so set in a particular time.
He’s as innocent as OJ
And Clinton, well of course
So why’s he on death row
And not on the golf course,
Looking for the real killers
And the guys who killed Vince Foster?
Why aren’t there black tie dinners
With key note speaker Kevin Costner?
He’s as cool as the dolphins
As exotic as Tibet,
And they say there might be riots
But they haven’t started yet,
And so they will try to kill him
In the name of God
Because if you spare the child
Then you spoil the rod.
Punch and Judy
I’ve already titled this post, if I wait to see what its about sometimes I forget to title it, but its a decision not to write much of an update. I’ve been posting a lot so not much to touch on. I had a nicely paced workday which was good because in retrospect I pushed through the weekend pretty hard. Today I have been doing stuff all day which then if I still feel a little bad about not doing something it means a question of priorities because there’s not a slack in my day to add on.
Work is largely a no brainer, it pays the bills and gives me an opportunity to be a part of something that’s trying to help. After work its a brief with visit with Fido, essential and I wish I had more time for that, then I went to the Odd Fellows meeting. Parker fried fish and there was homemade corn bread and cake and it was fun helping out and eating and getting to know more people. Everybody’s pretty friendly and though I’m just getting into it I am ultimately intrigued by its history and mission.
I am deeply concerned about the future efficacy of government and other large institutions. I am thinking that some of the ones that predate an effective public social service system are important and need to be rediscovered by people who give a damn and prepped to pick back up the load. We can’t afford to keep generating cohorts of children that are casually nurtured and poorly educated and unleashed on a world without jobs or legitimate opportunity. Not unless we want Trouble.Health care is regressing in practical efficacy for most of us and the ranks of the poor grow and become more desperate. At least we can still bury the dead.
So I’m getting involved with the Odd Fellows. What I’m not doing is standing with Occupy Como to make sure they get to keep their tents up and no one is walking around spraying a big can of Pepper Spray, or should I say CS Gas with some Pepper in it. Pepper Spray makes it sound organic and not a dangerous chemical that can kill people. Right now I am more into building for the future then opposing the present, though I think both are necessary and good.
So yesterday I mentioned I dreamed this song/poem. Definitely the first line was written asleep and I got up and wrote it down verbatim in minutes so maybe the whole thing so I don’t know how much credit to take. Its not that different then the stuff I write awake so maybe I do a good job of getting my conscious mind out of the way and let it flow.
If you don’t know Punch and Judy shows go back to at least the Middle Ages and I think it was a Roman thing. Punch has a stick and hits Judy, they’re puppets, did I mention they’re puppets. This piece updates it for the modern age:
Punch and Judy went to a show
I think it was about five nights ago
Punch brought his stick he was feeling cocky
The retro theater was playing Rocky
There was nothing Punch liked more then fisticuffs
A big tough guy who liked to play rough
Punch thought the only thing that was a pain
Was that Rocky never took a stick to Adrian
The clerk asked how many and Punch said “Two please”
They went in the wrong door into Thelma and Louise
Punch couldn’t believe it he was aghast
He wanted to get out of there something fast
But Judy wouldn’t leave she wanted to see the show
Punch hit her with his stick but the usher said: “no”
He through Punch out right into the street
“When Judy gets home, she’s gonna get beat”.
But Judy’s not gonna take it anymore
She bought herself a forty-four
She can’t match Punch’s brawn but she has friends who can
By the name of Mr Smith and Mr Wesson.
Punch took his stick and hit her in the head
Judy filled his puppet body up with lead
Punch dropped his stick he was dead as a nail
There’s not a jury around that would send her to jail
She’s been taking Punch’s beatings since the Middle Ages
Its time that old script got a few new pages
Violence isn’t the answer to domestic abuse
But its appropriate for puppets who were meant to amuse
Because Judy’s not going to take it anymore
She bought herself a forty-four
She can’t match Punch’s brawn but she has friends who can
By the name of Mr Smith and Mr Wesson.
Watching True Lies and realizing I don’t really like any of the characters and I am having a lot of tro0uble caring what happens to them. It is not uninteresting though, zany characters in preposterous situations, like an Elmore Leonard story. Its scratched, second one in a row Netflix. I might join the masses and cancel. I think I’m going to dump cable as well. Go to broadcast TV, I think its been a week since I’ve had it on. I’m going to wait for a week or two, when I will have a guest(s).
“What’d we learn Palmer?” “I don’t know”. that about sums it up. After rating 500 movies Netflix doesn’t have a clue what I really like. I’m going to have to start doing a little research before I get movies. Watching some True Grit now, the old one still has charm, liked the new one a fair bit as well.
Today got rolling pretty early and cleaned house in further preparation for the formal giving of thanks. The fridge was way over do and Kevin pitched in on the bathrooms so the place is now pretty tidy, although there is always still more to do. Kevin and I hit the market and i had a list and bought mass quantities. [“I would not put a thief in my mouth to steal my brains”, when asked if she wanted whiskey, nice line.]
At the market I stopped by the Legacy Beef place. Figuring the market before Thanksgiving everyone is having a good day but him. We talked cooking cube steaks and he had me tell his wife how i made my swiss steak. They had the buy one get 2nd half off so I got that and decided to stock up on ground round since Brenda was coming and it was slow day for him so he sold me hotdogs at $6.25 for 2 pounds and threw in a couple beef sticks. All in all pretty sweet, might start buying in quantity less often if its going to save me money.
I also told them I’d stuck up for them with someone saying Veganism was the solution to the envioronmental problems. I told them I would put the carbon footprint of my local pasture raised beef against processed vegan food from California. There isn’t a solution, there are lots of solutions. They liked that which started a general conversation of OWS and one was with the “they don’t have a message or specific demands”. I said if the experts can’t fix it we can’t expect a bunch of hippies but economic justice was definitely the theme. How about putting some people in jail, fixing the regulations that allowed it to happen, getting rich people to pay some taxes.
I got more new red potatoes, onions, butternut squash, brats, eggs. The egg boy had his give aways, this year a pen with a pull out two year calendar. I gave him a tip when I went to the credit union I had gotten some crisp new 2 dollar bills and some dollar coins so i gave him a bill and one for his brother. God its been 5 years I’ve been buying their eggs, watching them grow up.
Had Guy and Gretchen over for coffee. Guy is my realtor so he was curious to see what I’d done with the house. Didn’t get after me for not doing anything with my floors yet. Liked the window I had put in, thanks again Eric, and I gave him credit for the wooden picket fence as Dad was trying to talk me into going with the vinyl fake stuff.
I showed them the coffee roasting set up and roasted a batch and made a pot of the medium roast Guat which was better then the light, a pretty good coffee. Tomorrow I’ll try the Honduran, I am hoping it gets better as well, none of them were great as a light roast in this batch. Gretchen is also interested in the Odd Fellows and agreed to pick up my turkey for me on Tuesday.
After a little rest I couldn’t really gear up and decided I would do a nap. I have a fairly productive day planned for Sunday with a project and an elaborate dinner. I cut up my roasting chicken, its huge. I saved the neck and back and innards and such and am going to make stock to cook the turkey in and maybe Kevin needs some for the dressing.
I am brining the chicken now in salt, sugar and apple cider vinegar and water. Tomorrow I will paprikash it up plus i think i need paprika so i will try to get my Thanksgiving grocery shopping in as well as finally complete the horse manure project. There’s some cleaning tasks I wouldn’t mind doing but that’s already a pretty full day. Its a short week but a chock full one.
Maybe I’ll try to start winding down and get some sleep before I get back in it tomorrow.
Black Iron Prison
Phillip K. Dick talked about the Black Iron Prison as a descriptor for ever growing systems of control. I like the term and have been working on a piece about it for the last four or five years. Five years after posting this I am putting in the final (for now, I’m still not entirely satisfied with the ending) stanza. I finished it maybe three years ago and reads a little prescient with the election of Trump. I am putting together a chap book tentatively called “Words for Dark Times” and leading with this piece. I finished it on a road trip to Death Valley for Christmas I believe three years ago. That Christmas John thought it was my best yet.
Black Iron Prison
There’s a Black Iron Prison
Casts its shadow across the land
From the tar-sands of the North
To The Wall at the Rio Grande
So show us your papers
Your biometric ID
And remember a time
When you thought you were free.
And power corrupts
As always we have known
And absolute corruption
Is what we have sown
Just as the sun sets in the West
It rises in the East
and Total Control is the Mark of the Beast.
And you’ll show The Mark
to buy your bread
And show it when you sell
And without a trace of irony
You’ll call out for your Hell:
“Oh keep us safe from terrorists
Those oh so evil men”
And lock us up in cages
‘Til its safe to go out again.
And watch our every movement
And listen to every call
Analyze the meta-data
Until you know it all
And what Hitler wanted
But could not have
Will have finally come to pass
And we shall be a people
A people…
Made of glass.
Drive By Darlins
Just got home from the Drive By Truckers show at the Missouri Theater. Sort of my last hurrah with John as he is hitting the road early next week. It was a pretty good show and a fun evening. Stopped by Gotcha and got my Guy Fawkes mask for Halloween (don’t tell anyone but I think I’m coming as Anonymous). It was priced at $11.05 which should have been a clue but the owner asked if I knew why it was priced that way and sang a little “Don’t you remember the 5th of September…” Very cute and with a busy set of activities glad to have come up with a costume idea and gotten the thing I need.
We had dinner at Booche’s a downtown bar opened in 1884 and I had felt negligent that I hadn’t had John in for a cheese burger. We also had the chili which was quite good but they serve it in a styrofoam bowl (I bet they didn’t do that in 1884). I do like the sign on the door, “closed on Sundays, see you in church”. They have some premium beers now with Boulevard Single Wide on tap. I had had Dad in some time ago to play pool and after having him in so many breweries and fancy bars where he couldn’t get a Budweiser he tried to order a Sam Adams which they didn’t have sticking close to the classics.
Then it was on to the show with the opening act Those Darlins. They were a little disappointing live not really able to fill the room. John was impressed with the Missouri Theater which is a fine looking building and looking sharp these post-rehab days. But the Drive By Truckers were pretty good. I liked the acoustic set which really let the steel guitar shine but mostly I liked that they were sincere and looked like they were having fun. I’m really not a music guy, I’m both tone deaf and fond of my own internal dialogue so I don’t listen to much and was only casually familiar with their extensive repertoire. They opened with Carl Perkin’s cadillac a catchy little ditty and there best song was “Let There Be Rock” which they had a lot of fun with.
I should be going to bed its well past my bedtime but still pretty wound up and game 6 of the World Series just went into extra innings. Congratulations for my local peeps, keep hope alive. I have a fairly busy weekend coming up. Going floating with Kirk from work, his first time in a canoe. We’re going to the Finger Lakes and doing it in spite of the Fall chill. Saturday going to the market with Sarah and getting some horse manure for the garden since compost doesn’t work in my schedule. Saturday night halloween party. Sunday I might take John out again, would like to show him Sycamore so he says good things about Como when he returns to the Golden State.
civil unrest
I am disappointed to learn about the escalation on the Occupy Oakland protest. An Iraq war veteran was shot in the head in close range with a police projectile. They were firing rubber bullets, tear gas canisters & flash grenades. How ironic to survive to tours of war in Iraq then to get a skull fracture at a protest. People in wheel chairs hit with flash grenades. The over-reaction begins which will only swell the crowds. God forbid we have people sleeping in a park.
I stopped by the Como Occupation today to see how it was holding up in the rain. There was a sleeping dude under an overhang. I dropped off some bottled water, apples, hygiene kits & a poncho. I am proud to live in a city that welcomes democratic action, free speech and freedom of assembly.
Rumor has it a coalition of law enforcement entities will try and clear out the San Francisco protesters tonight. People in masks have torn down the fences around the area cleaned out by the cops and are building a memorial to Oscar Grant, the unarmed guy gunned down by BART police.
All of this both troubles me and gives me hope that the movement will grow and change will happen. It has shifted the debate and energized folks for change. These are good things in spite of the cost as change needs to happen. If you don’t have people invested in the system then they withdraw their consent to business as usual and things get rearranged.
It doesn’t matter that there are no simple concrete demands. Radical action wins victories for liberals.
my house smells like vinegar
Well I missed a day on my blog every day in October challenge and its almost 7:00 so I don’t see getting caught up. I just wasn’t feeling it last night, watched a little World Series and went to bed early. I got out of work on time but came home tired. I lay down for a nap but didn’t go down. I read a Fantastic Four comic from 1981. It talked about austerity measures when the Torch was trying to do a little record search. Everything that is old is new again. I think I’ve written how the whole economic downturn has made me nostalgic for the 80s. The way things are going it will soon enough be the 30s.
I got a late start on dinner, making a meatloaf to celebrate the cooler weather of Fall. My cooking is pretty seasonal both with what ingredients I can garner and how I cook. Summer to keep the house cool and winter for the opposite.
I made a sizable loaf with some local grass fed beast and some sausage. I was going to set some aside for weekend breakfast but am going out of town so i put it all in. I added onion, garlic, turmeric, basil I dried out of the garden, some snack crackers Brenda gave me, and a local egg. I coated it with mustard from the market and Sticky Pig barbecue sauce out of Centralia. I added a few potatoes around the edge and some better then bullion in the empty mustard jar with some water and poured that in. Should be good I expect.
I wanted to use up the mustard so I could use the jar for my Green Tomato Chutney project. Last night I thin sliced the tomatoes 2 yellow onions and three little red ones from the market. I coated them in 4 tsp of canning salt and let them sit. Today I brought to a boil maybe 10 oz of malt vinegar, 8 oz of apple cider vinegar and 2 oz of balsamic vinegar. I added less than half a bag of brown sugar and a bit less then a cup of local honey. When that was boiling I added half a container of roughly chopped raisins.
The recipe I’m using is English and all the directions are in metric and I didn’t really check how much stuff i have so I’ve been winging it a bit. I had to get up and add the pepper I forgot. I added about 3 teaspoons of fresh ground mixed pepper. The recipe called for white but that seems cosmetic. Now I’ve got to let that cook til the moisture is gone and it looks like chutney, then slop it into jars. I hope its good.
Been steering clear of the news. I’m not much into the graphic pictures of dead dictators. I did predict we would see Kadafi’s head on a pike. A little slower then I expected but the outcome is the same. Its not a good time to be a dictator. I expect more disruption as the world economy fits and coughs and limps along for the foreseeable future.
We also are pulling out of Iraq, apparently. What a mess. Quicker out then I thought. I guess Obama has to keep some of his promises. Can’t believe they gave that guy a Peace Prize. Better check the chutney. Coming along nicely, might be up later then I planned. I was optimistic about how long that was going to take, looks like its going to need to boil for a couple of hours.
I have the Horde to watch. French crime noir zombie flick, its gotta be good.
an engaging world series of chutney debates
Watching the world series and my brother is telling me about those big braided necklaces that so many players wear. He says they have bits of metal in them and baseball lore has it that it improves the game, “an ionic baseball stitch braided necklace”. Baseball is full of magic and superstition. I remember in my Magic, Witchcraft & Religion class in college we read a piece on baseball magic. The anthropologist compared baseball magic to Polynesian fishing magic. In the communities studied there was lagoon fishing and deep sea fishing. Lagoon fishing was pretty safe and relatively easy and had little ritual. Deep sea fishing was uncertain, dangerous and had a big pay off. Deep sea fishing had lots of taboos and ritual and magic tricks to guarantee safety and success. When you look at baseball players there is little ritual and superstition around fielding where percentage success is in the high 90s. But batting has lots of ritual and magic tricks when you’re 1 out of 4 or 1 out of 3 if you are a superstar.
Mostly I don’t care because my team is out. I could root for the Cards living in Missouri but I like the Texas Rangers. They’re just more of a ball team and less an assemblage of hard hitting free agents. I was actually more into the debates last night even though I don’t have a dog in that fight either. Overall I was pleased with the debate better then some of the past ones with less sound bytes and more real answers. Some of the sparking annoyed me. Tonight’s Tribune had the picture of Romney putting his hand on Perry’s shoulder which I used as an example of what not to do in a staff training I put on today. Unless you want someone to punch you in the nose.
I called it “the ethics of engagement” and it came off pretty well. I laid it out on a graph that I developed for another training with Bond Strength on one axis and Bond Integrity on the other. High Bond Strength and High Bond Integrity leads to engagement. Strong therapeutic alliance with your client but you’re still separate like two gears interlocked where we get that metaphor. Strong bond strength and low bond integrity leads to enmeshment, an unhealthy emotional attachment. High bond integrity low bond strength is what I call Arms Length Professionalism which is what I am afraid is taught out of fear of enmeshment. Low bond strength and integrity I call Case Failure, client drops out or is otherwise unsuccessful.
It was a nice framework to talk about how to engage and how not to enmesh. I also touched on transference and counter-transference and normalized those feelings and talked about their need to be managed not eliminated. It was a little draining though when 1/2 hour later I had an 1 1/2 group to do. three hours of presentations in quick succession wore me out.
It was my late day and in the AM I got out and got the stuff I need to make green tomato chutney. John talked me out of green tomato jam. The recipe looks good and being British got us started talking about the metric system. If it wasn’t for Reagan we would be using it. It made us wonder if the kids are learning it.
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