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And the first thing he wanted was chow mein!
I was ready to barbecue.
He looks wonderful.
I was ready to barbecue.
He looks wonderful.
So binge drinking is the cause of the day. They've introduced a bunch of measures to cut down on binge drinking at the University: draconian anti-partying laws on the part of the city (kids get one warning and the next loud partyu they have they are fined some amount and their landlord is required to evict them) and a campaign on campus to talk students into "partying small," which means -- pressure against assembling in large groups.
Binge drinking among college students, is of course, a bad thing, and is, of course, a traditional problem in some schools, and a growing problem in other schools . . .
Only, according to the numbers, not UCSC.
So . . . what is this all about?
On other fronts, the neighborhood in Salinas which was partially evacuated due to a foul-smelling substance that gave them headaches and made them ill was not victim to methyl bromide escape from the strawberry field across the street. Nope, it was another chemical, which I heard as "chlorotryptin," and which was identified as being, besides an omnicide (my word! I made it up!) squirted under plastic to sterilize fields before the berry plants are put in, a component in tear gas. But it can't be called that: Google says there is no such thing and suggests "cholorotryptamine," which gives many manby results but nothing that tells me whether it's the right thing.
And still further fronts . . . general hurricane news has begun to be pushed aside by dog reunion stories. You know -- local shelters reconnect hurricane refugees and their dogs.
I love my dog, but there's something corrupt about this.
Binge drinking among college students, is of course, a bad thing, and is, of course, a traditional problem in some schools, and a growing problem in other schools . . .
Only, according to the numbers, not UCSC.
So . . . what is this all about?
On other fronts, the neighborhood in Salinas which was partially evacuated due to a foul-smelling substance that gave them headaches and made them ill was not victim to methyl bromide escape from the strawberry field across the street. Nope, it was another chemical, which I heard as "chlorotryptin," and which was identified as being, besides an omnicide (my word! I made it up!) squirted under plastic to sterilize fields before the berry plants are put in, a component in tear gas. But it can't be called that: Google says there is no such thing and suggests "cholorotryptamine," which gives many manby results but nothing that tells me whether it's the right thing.
And still further fronts . . . general hurricane news has begun to be pushed aside by dog reunion stories. You know -- local shelters reconnect hurricane refugees and their dogs.
I love my dog, but there's something corrupt about this.
Frank writes today of taking a truck loaded with stuff to a neighborhood which has been left on its own since Katrina.
Frank has been, now , a bunch of places I haven't. That's interesting.
Frank has been, now , a bunch of places I haven't. That's interesting.
Guaranteed to make you cry.
He sends copies to his friends (which should answer the copyright issue). You can be his friend by sending resources to send resources to musicians, AIDS_HIV groups, or Houma Indians.
1. Fats Domino: Walking to New Orleans
2. Champion Jack Dupree: Hometown New Orleans
3. Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, from the soundtrack of "New Orleans"(1947): Way Down Yonder in New Orleans
4.Memphis Minnie and Tennessee Slim: New Orleans Stop Time
5. Al Wynn's Gutbucket Five (1926): That Creole Band
6. King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band (1923): Canal Street Blues
7. Sam Morgan (1927):Bogalusa Strut
8. Louis Armstorng, Billie Holiday, from the soundtrack of "New Orleans (1947): Farewell to Storyville
9. Louis Dumaine's Jazzola Eight: Franklin Street Blues
10. Bunk Johnson (1942): New Iberia Blues (New Orleans Revival)
11. Randy Newman (1974): Louisiana 1927 (a little history)
12. Ida Cox, Lovie Austins's Blues Serenaders (1923-24): I've got the Blues for Rampart Street
13. New Orleans Wanderers (1926): Perdido Street Blues
14. Kid Thomas' Algerian Stompers (1960's): Algiers Waltz
15. Muggys Spanier's Ragtime Band (1939):Relaxin' at the Touro (local mental hospital)
16. Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers (1930): Ponchartrain Blues
17. Jelly Roll Morton (1923): New Olreans Joys
18. New Orleans Rhythm Kings (1923): Milneberg Joys
19: Piron's New Orleans Orchestra (1924): New Orleans Wiggle
20: C J Chenier and the Red Hot Louisiana Band (1994):Jambalaya (On the Bayou).
21. Steve Riley and the Grand Mamou Playboys (1999): La Danse de Mardi Gras
22. The Dirty Dozen Brass Band (2000): Li'L Liza Jane
23. The Tragically Hip (1989: they're Canadian): New Orleans is Sinking
24. Billy Holiday, from the soundtrack of "New Orleans:" Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans?
He sends copies to his friends (which should answer the copyright issue). You can be his friend by sending resources to send resources to musicians, AIDS_HIV groups, or Houma Indians.
1. Fats Domino: Walking to New Orleans
2. Champion Jack Dupree: Hometown New Orleans
3. Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, from the soundtrack of "New Orleans"(1947): Way Down Yonder in New Orleans
4.Memphis Minnie and Tennessee Slim: New Orleans Stop Time
5. Al Wynn's Gutbucket Five (1926): That Creole Band
6. King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band (1923): Canal Street Blues
7. Sam Morgan (1927):Bogalusa Strut
8. Louis Armstorng, Billie Holiday, from the soundtrack of "New Orleans (1947): Farewell to Storyville
9. Louis Dumaine's Jazzola Eight: Franklin Street Blues
10. Bunk Johnson (1942): New Iberia Blues (New Orleans Revival)
11. Randy Newman (1974): Louisiana 1927 (a little history)
12. Ida Cox, Lovie Austins's Blues Serenaders (1923-24): I've got the Blues for Rampart Street
13. New Orleans Wanderers (1926): Perdido Street Blues
14. Kid Thomas' Algerian Stompers (1960's): Algiers Waltz
15. Muggys Spanier's Ragtime Band (1939):Relaxin' at the Touro (local mental hospital)
16. Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers (1930): Ponchartrain Blues
17. Jelly Roll Morton (1923): New Olreans Joys
18. New Orleans Rhythm Kings (1923): Milneberg Joys
19: Piron's New Orleans Orchestra (1924): New Orleans Wiggle
20: C J Chenier and the Red Hot Louisiana Band (1994):Jambalaya (On the Bayou).
21. Steve Riley and the Grand Mamou Playboys (1999): La Danse de Mardi Gras
22. The Dirty Dozen Brass Band (2000): Li'L Liza Jane
23. The Tragically Hip (1989: they're Canadian): New Orleans is Sinking
24. Billy Holiday, from the soundtrack of "New Orleans:" Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans?
93 degrees F, 46% humidity, winds 8 mph, chance of Hurrican Rita by Friday 6%.
That's nasty weather but not dangerous if he keeps hydrated and he can do that, his pack is full of bottled water.
Or, ongoing:
That's nasty weather but not dangerous if he keeps hydrated and he can do that, his pack is full of bottled water.
Or, ongoing:
Frank got his marching orders today. He's flying to Montgomery, Alabama, on Sunday morning (early Sunday morning: his flight is at 6 something in the morning, and he has to be there an hour or so before that, and the airport is an hour and a half away, so I guess we're leaving at three in the morning or so.
Emma's moving onto campus Saturday morning, not nearly so early. The two of them are going to a Pokemon convention for the rest of the day Saturday.
I'm all weepy and motherish.
The historical significance of Montgomery is not lost on any of us (Bus Boycott, lunch counters, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Freedom Riders, all of which I was too young for except as a faraway kid who helped collect books for a book drive and marched in supportive demonstrations far away -- closest was Washington, D.C.)
The Saturday after this was already scheduled as a big demonstration, nationally, and I guess there's no way I'm missing it now.
I really am all weepy and motherish.
Emma's moving onto campus Saturday morning, not nearly so early. The two of them are going to a Pokemon convention for the rest of the day Saturday.
I'm all weepy and motherish.
The historical significance of Montgomery is not lost on any of us (Bus Boycott, lunch counters, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Freedom Riders, all of which I was too young for except as a faraway kid who helped collect books for a book drive and marched in supportive demonstrations far away -- closest was Washington, D.C.)
The Saturday after this was already scheduled as a big demonstration, nationally, and I guess there's no way I'm missing it now.
I really am all weepy and motherish.
Tell me, can you remain calm while discussing with your son whether he needs to be prepared for cholera? Also, I worry that he's taking too much stuff. Or not enough. His pack is too heavy. But what if? -- what if? You know, nobody ever talks about how the volunteers in these disaster scenes get fed.
On other fronts, Emma's fees were almost as much less than I expected as her books cost. Almost. We've spent $334 on the first quarter and she has not gotten them all yet. The Porter core course requires five books and a reader -- I guess I'm glad she's not in Stevenson, which has a year-long core course and thirteen books in the first quarter.
On still other fronts, it's not even the middle of September and I've already made two apple pies and three messes of applesauce. The most recent applesauce was the best: two Pippins from the tree, a Mackintosh from the store, a pear, and unfiltered apple juice. The best apples are beyond my reach, even with a ladder. We should chasten that tree.
On other fronts, Emma's fees were almost as much less than I expected as her books cost. Almost. We've spent $334 on the first quarter and she has not gotten them all yet. The Porter core course requires five books and a reader -- I guess I'm glad she's not in Stevenson, which has a year-long core course and thirteen books in the first quarter.
On still other fronts, it's not even the middle of September and I've already made two apple pies and three messes of applesauce. The most recent applesauce was the best: two Pippins from the tree, a Mackintosh from the store, a pear, and unfiltered apple juice. The best apples are beyond my reach, even with a ladder. We should chasten that tree.
It must be time that possum mommies kick out their possum babies. I know that possums have like a three-month childhood and generally die before they are two years old, but I don't know about their year cycle. I do have evidence. Baby possums in the almond tree. Baby possum slouching across the yard from the compost ehap across the violets towards the delapidated shed. And now, a baby possum corpse at the foot of the stairs. I almost photographed it but it had ants on it and I figure you can get macabre pictures of dead baby possums any time you want to without me adding to the pile. Just google-image "dead possum" and you'll get a hatfull. Easy. You will even find a cartoon of a zombie possum, or zombies and possums, I can't tell which.
It had been dead for a while, but the nice fellow and I had been going up and down the back stairs all day for various reasons and hadn't seen it right there at the foot of the stairs. My thought is it died elsewhere in the yard and Truffle found it and brought it in that far and then lost interest, possibly remembering how unenthusiastic we were when she brought a stiff little rat corpse to the back door. She was utterly uninterested in it while I was dithering about how to dispose of it but became a little interested when I was actually burying it. I had a time thinking about where to bury it that it would not be disturbed until it had finished decaying.
On other fronts:
Hurricane photos by Dr. Ben Marble who is the man who said "fuck yourself" to Dick Cheney. Via the whole darned web.
Chapter eight is long and I don't know how long it will take to get it up.
.
It had been dead for a while, but the nice fellow and I had been going up and down the back stairs all day for various reasons and hadn't seen it right there at the foot of the stairs. My thought is it died elsewhere in the yard and Truffle found it and brought it in that far and then lost interest, possibly remembering how unenthusiastic we were when she brought a stiff little rat corpse to the back door. She was utterly uninterested in it while I was dithering about how to dispose of it but became a little interested when I was actually burying it. I had a time thinking about where to bury it that it would not be disturbed until it had finished decaying.
On other fronts:
Hurricane photos by Dr. Ben Marble who is the man who said "fuck yourself" to Dick Cheney. Via the whole darned web.
Chapter eight is long and I don't know how long it will take to get it up.
.
We walked downtown to the Greek Festival, where I danced one fast dance in a line with mostly little girls in it and then had a coughing fit and no inhaler and we ate too much Greek food and stopped in at the library where I found an Angela Carter Book(Wise Children because I didn't like the first page of Nights at the Circus)so I can read it and answer ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
papersky's question about Carter and magic realism if I can remember what it was (I can only recall "What do you think about Angela Carter?" but it must have been in a context which made it more specific than that). Then we walked home again. On the way out we met with an insane person hanging on to the arm of a terrfied young woman and while another bystander extricated her we called 911 -- cell phones are useful, it got my flat tire fixed yesterday -- and on the way back we watched a hummingbird and a butterfly (a Viceroy, I think) fluttering around a Mexican sage bush and it really, truly looked like the butterfly was harrassing the bird the way blackbirds harrass crows and kestrels harrass redtails. The hummingbird did fly away while we were watching and the butterfly did return to the flowers. I've never heard of this before. Could that have been happening? Don't hummingbirds occasionally snatch off a bug to round out their nectar diet?
Other than that the main activity around here is outfitting Frank for his trip to Louisiana (or Texas, or Mississippi). We bought him an amazing backpack. The first one was so complicated we couldn't even figure out how to close all the buckles. The second one had an external frame which is supposed to be good for distributing the load but Frank had a vivid vision of carrying that around in Southern heat and getting a burn from the metal. The one he decided on was still pretty complicated and still prety expensive but it will hold everything, probably. And we got a floating flashlight and a very fancy serrated pocket knife -- having considered a Leatherman and deciding against it. Dang. I was going to get him a fanny pack too. I can do that tomorrow.
We also did a Costco run for a flat of half-liter bottles of water, a large bag of apricots, two boxes of energy bars, a large bottle of antacids, and I forget what all else. We're putting together a first aid kit. Oh, else includes a strange bandage kit in a funny plastic sleeve.
Yesterday the nice fellow got him a pair of boots which he's been wearing nearly all the time to break them in. I should get him a disposable camera too. I have figured out that I need a cell phone when I'm driving all around the wilds of the mountains above Watsonville (nobody can tell me what those hills are called. It's not Freedom, and it's not La Selva -- is it Larkin Valley? It's not off Larkin Valley Road) but I'm going to send him my phone and share Emma's phone with her. SOmehow. I mean to pick it up from her Weds night and get it back to her Friday night so the rest of the week she can keep in touch with her friends. Hilarity will ensue, I am sure. Anyway, it's three weeks. Or so.
This is all complicated by the fact that a week from today she is moving in up at the University, which means we're going to have to be clever about things.
I am not happy about the existence of Ophelia (the storm). It's weakened a little and it's going the other way, but NOAA is not relaxing the hburricane watch.
On other fronts, I bought a hop plant today, partly because it's pretty but also because its spring shoots are supposed to be a nice little vegetable, but I am not sure that one plant will provide enough shoots for a mess of veggies.
One last thing: I have 101 readers.
papersky's question about Carter and magic realism if I can remember what it was (I can only recall "What do you think about Angela Carter?" but it must have been in a context which made it more specific than that). Then we walked home again. On the way out we met with an insane person hanging on to the arm of a terrfied young woman and while another bystander extricated her we called 911 -- cell phones are useful, it got my flat tire fixed yesterday -- and on the way back we watched a hummingbird and a butterfly (a Viceroy, I think) fluttering around a Mexican sage bush and it really, truly looked like the butterfly was harrassing the bird the way blackbirds harrass crows and kestrels harrass redtails. The hummingbird did fly away while we were watching and the butterfly did return to the flowers. I've never heard of this before. Could that have been happening? Don't hummingbirds occasionally snatch off a bug to round out their nectar diet?Other than that the main activity around here is outfitting Frank for his trip to Louisiana (or Texas, or Mississippi). We bought him an amazing backpack. The first one was so complicated we couldn't even figure out how to close all the buckles. The second one had an external frame which is supposed to be good for distributing the load but Frank had a vivid vision of carrying that around in Southern heat and getting a burn from the metal. The one he decided on was still pretty complicated and still prety expensive but it will hold everything, probably. And we got a floating flashlight and a very fancy serrated pocket knife -- having considered a Leatherman and deciding against it. Dang. I was going to get him a fanny pack too. I can do that tomorrow.
We also did a Costco run for a flat of half-liter bottles of water, a large bag of apricots, two boxes of energy bars, a large bottle of antacids, and I forget what all else. We're putting together a first aid kit. Oh, else includes a strange bandage kit in a funny plastic sleeve.
Yesterday the nice fellow got him a pair of boots which he's been wearing nearly all the time to break them in. I should get him a disposable camera too. I have figured out that I need a cell phone when I'm driving all around the wilds of the mountains above Watsonville (nobody can tell me what those hills are called. It's not Freedom, and it's not La Selva -- is it Larkin Valley? It's not off Larkin Valley Road) but I'm going to send him my phone and share Emma's phone with her. SOmehow. I mean to pick it up from her Weds night and get it back to her Friday night so the rest of the week she can keep in touch with her friends. Hilarity will ensue, I am sure. Anyway, it's three weeks. Or so.
This is all complicated by the fact that a week from today she is moving in up at the University, which means we're going to have to be clever about things.
I am not happy about the existence of Ophelia (the storm). It's weakened a little and it's going the other way, but NOAA is not relaxing the hburricane watch.
On other fronts, I bought a hop plant today, partly because it's pretty but also because its spring shoots are supposed to be a nice little vegetable, but I am not sure that one plant will provide enough shoots for a mess of veggies.
One last thing: I have 101 readers.
Tags:
I wrote the first draft of this standing on the shoulder of Highway One just north of Buena Vista Road waiting for the Triple A to come and put on my spare. Not because I’m incapable of putting on my own spare. But for some reason my car didn’t have its tire irons in the trunk. I think I had bett.rer check out both cars for tools and evacuation supplies.
So here goes. This morning I was talking about class. That was the p[reamble, really, to what I want to talk about, which is the implications of the principle that the health of a community depends on the health of its working class. Having defined the working class this morning – or no, I didn’t, did I? I just undefined “underclass” and “middle class” and folded all of the first and most of the second into the working class where they belong – I’m ready, now, to think about what the health of the working class entails.
What makes a healthy working class? Decent work, with decent working conditions: affordable, decent housing: safety (and how we define safety has a lot to do with what we do to secure it and what we get in return): comfort: culture: and a sense of community.
What decent work entails is: a reasonable wage that allows the workers and their families to do more than survive: protection against physical hazards, injustice in the workplace, and harassment (which entails clear, enforceable, and enforced rules): a say in the policy and operations of the workplace and the business of which it is a part: and work that is itself not harmful to the community or to the world, including the natural world (which we should please be a little relaxed about when it comes to tiny venal things like liquor stores and smut shops, okay? Let’s save harmful for toxic or exploitative or criminal, okay?).
So cities can encourage decent workplaces with a little encouragement and can discourage indecent workplaces with the clever use of land use permits and fees and taxes and ordinances. Let me return to “encouragement.” Some communities in the past have gotten themselves declared “enterprise zones” which means the employer coming in pays less taxes and lower wages and lower benefits on the promise that somehow their being there is going to revitalize stressed towns. Excuse me, how? If you lock a town in to a bad deal, where it is paying for infrastructure and getting no return for it, where its population is getting screwed and not making enough to buy those extra things that feed the local economy – how does that revitalize anything but the pockets of whatever corrupt politician designed this foul deal in the first place?
But communities can offer other kinds of encouragement. Infrastructure guarantees, locked in with clear obligations. “We’ll build and maintain public transportation with routes timed to be convenient for your workplace, if you make promises about hiring, promotion and training. If you guarantee a distribution system, we’ll even make reduced fares available to your workforce! We’ll build the water mains in your part of town, state of the art, if you make commitments to water conservation and pollution controls above the Federal guidelines. We’ll make sure to include training programs relevant to your industry in our adult education programs if you commit to a fair promotion policy. We’ll zone for housing convenient for your workforce if you make commitments to stay in the area for at least fifty years.”
Sorry, tax breaks are stupid. Communities need money to provide infrastructure and protection, and large workplaces make large demands on communities. It’s no good letting them off the hook, because you will end up paying your public safety officers less than they could get washing cars and that will result in personnel shortages and corruption. Employers need communities to provide these things. Privatizing those services results, as we have seen, in waste, chaos, and abuse.
(as I write this, Gloria has the television going, and I swear the reporters sound drunk. All they seem to know anything about is that some of the people in New Orleans refuse to leave. They don’t seem to know anything else. Is there a connection?)
Employment is only one way that good planning for the working class is good planning for the whole community, but this is already quite long and I will have to get to housing, open space, and the rest, some other time.
On other fronts, I’ve seen “Broken Flowers” with Gloria, and you don’t have to. It has some very good things about i, but it is not a must-see, especially if you’re burned out on long slow scenes and ambiguity, or if it is possible for you to have enough of long loving shots of Bill Murray’s depressed face. The ambiguity is interesting, and the characters are portrayed sympathetically, even the monsters. It’s downright sweet. But not a must-see.
Late tonight, or tomorrow, I'll share my amazing insights about housing.
So here goes. This morning I was talking about class. That was the p[reamble, really, to what I want to talk about, which is the implications of the principle that the health of a community depends on the health of its working class. Having defined the working class this morning – or no, I didn’t, did I? I just undefined “underclass” and “middle class” and folded all of the first and most of the second into the working class where they belong – I’m ready, now, to think about what the health of the working class entails.
What makes a healthy working class? Decent work, with decent working conditions: affordable, decent housing: safety (and how we define safety has a lot to do with what we do to secure it and what we get in return): comfort: culture: and a sense of community.
What decent work entails is: a reasonable wage that allows the workers and their families to do more than survive: protection against physical hazards, injustice in the workplace, and harassment (which entails clear, enforceable, and enforced rules): a say in the policy and operations of the workplace and the business of which it is a part: and work that is itself not harmful to the community or to the world, including the natural world (which we should please be a little relaxed about when it comes to tiny venal things like liquor stores and smut shops, okay? Let’s save harmful for toxic or exploitative or criminal, okay?).
So cities can encourage decent workplaces with a little encouragement and can discourage indecent workplaces with the clever use of land use permits and fees and taxes and ordinances. Let me return to “encouragement.” Some communities in the past have gotten themselves declared “enterprise zones” which means the employer coming in pays less taxes and lower wages and lower benefits on the promise that somehow their being there is going to revitalize stressed towns. Excuse me, how? If you lock a town in to a bad deal, where it is paying for infrastructure and getting no return for it, where its population is getting screwed and not making enough to buy those extra things that feed the local economy – how does that revitalize anything but the pockets of whatever corrupt politician designed this foul deal in the first place?
But communities can offer other kinds of encouragement. Infrastructure guarantees, locked in with clear obligations. “We’ll build and maintain public transportation with routes timed to be convenient for your workplace, if you make promises about hiring, promotion and training. If you guarantee a distribution system, we’ll even make reduced fares available to your workforce! We’ll build the water mains in your part of town, state of the art, if you make commitments to water conservation and pollution controls above the Federal guidelines. We’ll make sure to include training programs relevant to your industry in our adult education programs if you commit to a fair promotion policy. We’ll zone for housing convenient for your workforce if you make commitments to stay in the area for at least fifty years.”
Sorry, tax breaks are stupid. Communities need money to provide infrastructure and protection, and large workplaces make large demands on communities. It’s no good letting them off the hook, because you will end up paying your public safety officers less than they could get washing cars and that will result in personnel shortages and corruption. Employers need communities to provide these things. Privatizing those services results, as we have seen, in waste, chaos, and abuse.
(as I write this, Gloria has the television going, and I swear the reporters sound drunk. All they seem to know anything about is that some of the people in New Orleans refuse to leave. They don’t seem to know anything else. Is there a connection?)
Employment is only one way that good planning for the working class is good planning for the whole community, but this is already quite long and I will have to get to housing, open space, and the rest, some other time.
On other fronts, I’ve seen “Broken Flowers” with Gloria, and you don’t have to. It has some very good things about i, but it is not a must-see, especially if you’re burned out on long slow scenes and ambiguity, or if it is possible for you to have enough of long loving shots of Bill Murray’s depressed face. The ambiguity is interesting, and the characters are portrayed sympathetically, even the monsters. It’s downright sweet. But not a must-see.
Late tonight, or tomorrow, I'll share my amazing insights about housing.
Thinking about the mismanagement of the disaster is now something I have to leave to other people. Not that I don't think about it, but that I shouldn't, because it gets personal when I think about my son going into that and what could happen to him because of it. So -- since I'm trying not to think about it, I'm trying to replace all New Orleans thoughts with rebuild thoughts. I just started doing this but I'm going to make a discipline of it.
So.
On the radio they had an extensive interview with a member of a very large family from the Ninth Ward -- almost thirty people, who owned, by her reckoning, nine houses among them. One of the things she wanted to say was that to portray her neighborhood as poor was inaccurate: her family members were all professionals, mostly in public service. She said that was the character of her neighborhood, almost all black professionals. That is, they were in law enforcement, they were project managers in state agencies, things like that.
It's time to get honest about class.
First of all, I want to expunge the word "underclass." It's demeaning, dishonest, and disingenuous. It's obfuscatory. I don't even want to go backto the old word "lumpenproletariat," which is about the same (although I retain the riught to call myself, at least jokingly, "lumpenintellectual"). The very poor -- the usually unemployed (let's drop "habitually unemployed" too -- it sounds like they're snorting poverty through an unemployment check, which of course they don't get one of, having been unemployed for more than six months) -- are members of the working class. They are the reserve army of the working clas (I'm sure I didn't make that up. Where did I get that from?). Their status is an essential part of the capitalist long-term strategy: their existence keep the working class fragmented, and provides a lever for ratcheting down wages, benefits, and protections. In times when an expanded workforce is needed, they provide new workers to be discovered and trained in magnanimous gestures that just happen to cost very little (notice how similarly the very poor at home serve to the way that new workers in undeveloped countries do). So get that: the very poor are a part of the working class.
Now. Categories, and category names, are invented by people to understand things, to express things, to prevent alternate understandings or expressions . . . and "middle class" is a category which has been defined in such a way as to confuse the relationships between the working class and the owning class. Because we use that term in the US to mean plumbers, teachers, low-level county clerks, Burger King managers, and also -- owners of large car distributorships, board members of corporations, directors of companies, and middle-to-large scale investors. It's not meaningful the way we use it. People used to call Angela Davis' parents "middle class" and use the label to question her credentials as a social critic (really). Other times some clearly rich, powerful, influential person gets called "middle class" in order for that person to seem all folksy and "just like us" and not like they have so much power and connections that their world is not ours.
I don't know how "middle class" can be resurrected as a meaningful term of any use in discussing real world problems. It probably can be made to mean something somehow, but the world in which we live right now doesn't seem to have a middle class in it that I can understand. I am reminded of an old longshoreman nicknamed Seagull (because all he did was "eat, shit, and squawk," according to his colleagues), who my mother met while working at a fishpacking plant and incidentally participating in the organizing drive there: he used to, according to my parents, punctuate conversations with a tendentious repetition of "THere's just two kinds of people, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie." I don't mean to be tendentious, I just honestly can't see how the term can be of any use in political, social, cultural, economic, ecologial, or any other discussion I can imagine taking part in at the moment.
So. Now I'm ready to talk about what I want to talk about today, and I'm just about out of time. I guess I'll continue this late tonight, but here's what the theme will be:
The health of a community depends on the state of its working class. Planning for a healthy working class should be the organizing focus of community planning. A no-brainer, right? No.
So.
On the radio they had an extensive interview with a member of a very large family from the Ninth Ward -- almost thirty people, who owned, by her reckoning, nine houses among them. One of the things she wanted to say was that to portray her neighborhood as poor was inaccurate: her family members were all professionals, mostly in public service. She said that was the character of her neighborhood, almost all black professionals. That is, they were in law enforcement, they were project managers in state agencies, things like that.
It's time to get honest about class.
First of all, I want to expunge the word "underclass." It's demeaning, dishonest, and disingenuous. It's obfuscatory. I don't even want to go backto the old word "lumpenproletariat," which is about the same (although I retain the riught to call myself, at least jokingly, "lumpenintellectual"). The very poor -- the usually unemployed (let's drop "habitually unemployed" too -- it sounds like they're snorting poverty through an unemployment check, which of course they don't get one of, having been unemployed for more than six months) -- are members of the working class. They are the reserve army of the working clas (I'm sure I didn't make that up. Where did I get that from?). Their status is an essential part of the capitalist long-term strategy: their existence keep the working class fragmented, and provides a lever for ratcheting down wages, benefits, and protections. In times when an expanded workforce is needed, they provide new workers to be discovered and trained in magnanimous gestures that just happen to cost very little (notice how similarly the very poor at home serve to the way that new workers in undeveloped countries do). So get that: the very poor are a part of the working class.
Now. Categories, and category names, are invented by people to understand things, to express things, to prevent alternate understandings or expressions . . . and "middle class" is a category which has been defined in such a way as to confuse the relationships between the working class and the owning class. Because we use that term in the US to mean plumbers, teachers, low-level county clerks, Burger King managers, and also -- owners of large car distributorships, board members of corporations, directors of companies, and middle-to-large scale investors. It's not meaningful the way we use it. People used to call Angela Davis' parents "middle class" and use the label to question her credentials as a social critic (really). Other times some clearly rich, powerful, influential person gets called "middle class" in order for that person to seem all folksy and "just like us" and not like they have so much power and connections that their world is not ours.
I don't know how "middle class" can be resurrected as a meaningful term of any use in discussing real world problems. It probably can be made to mean something somehow, but the world in which we live right now doesn't seem to have a middle class in it that I can understand. I am reminded of an old longshoreman nicknamed Seagull (because all he did was "eat, shit, and squawk," according to his colleagues), who my mother met while working at a fishpacking plant and incidentally participating in the organizing drive there: he used to, according to my parents, punctuate conversations with a tendentious repetition of "THere's just two kinds of people, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie." I don't mean to be tendentious, I just honestly can't see how the term can be of any use in political, social, cultural, economic, ecologial, or any other discussion I can imagine taking part in at the moment.
So. Now I'm ready to talk about what I want to talk about today, and I'm just about out of time. I guess I'll continue this late tonight, but here's what the theme will be:
The health of a community depends on the state of its working class. Planning for a healthy working class should be the organizing focus of community planning. A no-brainer, right? No.
So I skipped out of town for a couple of days. I wasn't doing anything useful and we had not had an overnight for months. It was just the nice fellow and me. Photos will be following. Lately I've been having him take lots of pictures of me because I'm really unphotogenic and most of the pictures people take of me are hideous. I've learned the rule for pictures of Lucy: outside: standing up: squinting into the wind. Those pictures please me. Others don't.
My son Frank had called the Red Cross to volunteer in hurricane aid. It was my idea: I found the number in the phone book. Helping people is what he likes to do, and he's applying to med school right now, so it all seems sort of natural. Tonight he had a four-hour orientation, tomorrow they'll call his references (his best friends) and then they'll tell him when he's going. The assignments are for three weeks, and he's supposed to get good boots and to bring food and water for two days, so he's going to take more than that.
We're all sort of nervous and excited. This evening I keep finding myself ready to cry. I'm sending my son into toxic waters for an indefinite amount of time (don't believe the three weeks). Of course I want him to go.
I've just read the account at sfsocialists (by way of Making Light, naturally). I can't say much but go read it. THere are two stories here: there is the story of heartless, actively vicious people in authority, and the story of people in crisis trying to stick together, help each other, survive, and get out. If they're shooting at pedestrians trying to leave town, will my kid be able to keep his temper on the ground? Injustice tends to make him livid.
I had more to say but I forgot it in the chaos that erupted just now when the dog wanted to go out and show those raccoons a thing or two. I think they were coming in to raid her bowl again. I thought they only did that late at night if the dog door was left opened. You cna tell when they've succeeded because they wash her food in her water bowl and that leaves crud.
I'm going to bed. My firstborn is going away, and I don't know when or for how long.
My son Frank had called the Red Cross to volunteer in hurricane aid. It was my idea: I found the number in the phone book. Helping people is what he likes to do, and he's applying to med school right now, so it all seems sort of natural. Tonight he had a four-hour orientation, tomorrow they'll call his references (his best friends) and then they'll tell him when he's going. The assignments are for three weeks, and he's supposed to get good boots and to bring food and water for two days, so he's going to take more than that.
We're all sort of nervous and excited. This evening I keep finding myself ready to cry. I'm sending my son into toxic waters for an indefinite amount of time (don't believe the three weeks). Of course I want him to go.
I've just read the account at sfsocialists (by way of Making Light, naturally). I can't say much but go read it. THere are two stories here: there is the story of heartless, actively vicious people in authority, and the story of people in crisis trying to stick together, help each other, survive, and get out. If they're shooting at pedestrians trying to leave town, will my kid be able to keep his temper on the ground? Injustice tends to make him livid.
I had more to say but I forgot it in the chaos that erupted just now when the dog wanted to go out and show those raccoons a thing or two. I think they were coming in to raid her bowl again. I thought they only did that late at night if the dog door was left opened. You cna tell when they've succeeded because they wash her food in her water bowl and that leaves crud.
I'm going to bed. My firstborn is going away, and I don't know when or for how long.
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