What's That Smell?

I must be doing something right, because I only started the kim-chee this afternoon, and already the kitchen smells like cabbage gone bad.

This must be a theme, or a season. In the few days betwixt Thanksgiving and Get-Back-to-Work-It's December, I've harvested a few quarts of sauerkraut, started a few more, pasteurized and bottled vinegar, and just now got kimchi going.

Cocktail Attire

That is one weird cock-tail.

Due to some oversight, I was invited to my high school reunion. They must've forgotten the omnidirectional scorn that characterized my relationship with most everyone I graduated with. Or, because another member of the Virginia Diaspora (a legally married lesbian!?!) tipped me off.

I did show up for the sesquidecadal reunion, for the same reason that most people show up to such things: spite. "Yes, preppie kids who stuck around town and do boring shit and glom onto our parents' revenue stream," I thought, "I am a fucking archaeologist,...in Hawai`i."


Well, no more. Now I am a fucking archaeologist in the Pacific Northwest. Which will sound less cool to them, but only due to their ignorance. And I am happy enough to stay home and skip their forced revelry.

Which includes: drinks at a place named "Bar Louie," (turns out to be a franchise chain, one that did not even exist when we were in high school, located at an "upscale" mall that was a farm at the time; in so being, it is a multi-dimensional  tribute to shallowness and land-rape), a football game (we were a new high school, booted around by every other school, but I guess we're supposed to forget that), and a reunion at the country club (apparently, it is no longer segregated).

For the latter, we are advised to come clad in "cocktail wear." According to the internet, this is a clothes-class I do not own. I do have a suit, but someone has to die for me to wear it, and it is probably full of moth holes by now anyway. Fixation with the idea that there are "correct" outfits is one of the main things that turned me off to these people in the first place. I'd have thought they'd have grown out of it, but apparently not.

And I have not, it is now clear, grown out of my disdain for the money-worshipping fools of western Henrico County. Pose at your upscale bar. Go to the football game as a bloc, and pretend you were never the jealous backbiting bunch you were. Live it up at the country club while darkies and the wastrel sons of millionaires serve up drunken dreams. I'll be home, or in the field, doing something worthwhile instead.

My Sporadic Ritual of Cellphonicide

My flip-phone may be gone, but this shirt is forever.

It would be easy to blame the occasional destruction of cellphones on my work. If I just told people that it was dropped into a bottomless lava tube, or drowned in a Cascadian stream, or even dropped in some remote spot where the next person to see it will be an excited archaeologist (who happens to be a cousin of President Bush VI), they would believe it.

Other than one that was swampified on a wapato hunt (I'd held a camera over my head for hours, while the phone was in my pocket, in the mud, so it was a stupid waste), however, the culprit has generally been the washing machine, into which I'd thrown the phone, again in the pocket. Maybe if I'd had one of those phone holsters, accepted awkward accoutrements in the name of protecting the phone, but no, I liked the pocket of my fake Carhart work pants, the skinny one on the side that's so convenient for a phone. Two fingers reach in and chopstick the phone up, an instant of weightless apex, then it falls into my palm and the thumb flips it open. Tactile satisfaction that became one of those small rituals we don't even recognize as rituals.

That one will be no more, because after destroying my most recent phone, the cheapest phone they have now is the kind with the little keyboard that slides out. Not as fun, so far. I mean, it's not smart and there's no touch screen, so I can still embarrass my kids with it, but it's just not the same as flipping, which for someone my age is so layered in meta and ironicool. As a kid, Star Trek's communicator was the future. As an adult, the future arrived, and a huge percentage of first-calls on first-generation flip-phones included a Shatneresque pose and the words "Beam me up." Now, those times and tech are archaic (the actual flip-phone era, that is, the Trek ones still being acceptable on a certain level to younger hipsters). But I digress, and recognize that I am in way over my head trying to talk Trek.

No telling how long this phone will last. I don't think I'll miss it like the flipper, which is not all that much, to be honest, flip-phones being a flimsy substitute for the old Nokia brick.

The Brick, in Period-appropriate Resolution

Compared to the flip-ritual, the less frequent (and thus, more momentous) ritual of cellphonicide embodies much more. Like the drift into reminisce I got into above, a lamentation that the consumption economy leads always to new models, more features, more intrusion, a big shallow network in which nobody is worth more than a few seconds' attention and the ads will not cease. Killing the phone may have been an accident, but as with any religious act, retroactive imbuement with significance is allowed, and it can be ruled a sacrifice. The disdain for the dead phone, stripped and recycled (resurrected, perhaps, in some 3rd World place, but that's not my doing) is also a statement: I don't care about this gadget and its demise.

Of course, I do end up going out and getting another phone. I'm no John Henry (especially since I have no more Nokia, which oculd be used to hammer a jack). At the store, I subject the young staff who actually feel sorry for my backwardness to a cold luddite demand that they get me something that's cheap as shit and goes on my prepaid plan. No contract, no data plan, no upgraded phone. No small talk foreplay to the upsell, get me my archaic phone so I can get back to embarrassing my kids.

Losing the phone means losing the numbers stored up on its card, and though I could just ask the NSA to tell me, getting a new phone means I'll seek out people again. Contacting them some other way and asking for their number again, renewing the connections, and talking with some people whose voices I've not heard for a while when I do finally find them. It used to be easier, because I used to remember numbers instead of making my phone do it, or, if you can believe it, I would write them down. Also, there are the connections that don't continue. For one last time, I think about that person I don't think about anymore, or someone I do think about turns out to be out of reach, no number I can get at. That's the difference between evanescent reminisce and a fistful of wistfulness.

So, here I go again. My number's the same--in case you're reading this and know me--give me a call. I'll reconnect, and enjoy that. I'll celebrate the death of another phone (forgot to mention how this one went: it fell out while I was at the county landfill, never to be seen again), and shake my fist at the demons Verizon, 4g, and Smartphone. I'll have fuzzy nostaligia for old tech.

Then I'll wait til next time.

Forsake Fossil Fuel

Of all the energy sources powering the blogosphere, dissatisfaction with the status quo ranks pretty high. From carefully constructed criticism to ad hoc rants, blogs complain about where we are, where we were, and where we're headed. Often as not, the blogger thinks that by calling out some flaw, highlighting a problem, readers might be inspired to change their minds, maybe even take positive action. But the status quo is one hell of a grindstone, and while a brilliant critique may nick it, more often the critic is worn down. Once in a great while, some random or sudden event may lead to change, but more often it is action, collective and directed and occurring in the non-cyber world, that re-shapes the monolith.

The ways we power our society, by burning fossil fuel and by coaxing electrons from rivers or water, wind, and photons, has been a recurring subject here at Mojourner Truth. Sometimes, I've argued against continuing to rely on oil and coal, but of my small audience, I have a feeling that many agree already, and doubt that my words pulled anyone off the grid. Other times, I've extolled the virtues of renewable energy and low-tech efficiencies, but how many people have a heatilator? Blogging is impotence, published.

Recently, though, I actually took action that may make a real difference. For the past year, I've gotten a small block of my energy from renewables. The utility offers you the opportunity to purchase your energy just from wind, hydro, solar, and reclaimed methane, $4 at a time. A month or two ago, I switched to 100% renewable. It costs marginally more, but since I'm not much of a power consumer (no air conditioner, no TV, and a near-Ludditic reliance on muscle-powered gear rather than electro-gadgets), electricity overall is a minor part of my cost of living.

I am not quite so green as Ed Begley in that Simpsons episode where he speeds off in a car "powered by my own sense of self-satisfaction," but my 100% renewable electricity does have me feeling pretty smug. And the more people who do this, the less incentive industry has to drill and frack up the earth. I don't share many Americans' belief in the magic of The Market, but I do understand that changes in consumer choice affect what's for sale, and if we collectively choose renewable energy (imperfect as it may be), maybe a mountain in West Virginia doesn't get flattened, maybe a midwest aquifer won't be pumped full of frack-chemicals, maybe the climate will stabilize.

An extra 1.25 cents per kilowatt-hour buys me this non-fossil energy. The energy company says that for a typical house, the environmental benefit is equivalent to taking a car off the road. But there's also no military cost to using power that is 100% domestic. It's a small act, but it's meaningful, and in aggregate, it will help shift us away from our dangerous reliance on oil, gas, and coal that are killing us and ruining the earth for our progeny.

If you live on the Puget Sound Energy Company grid, the way to do this is here. Everywhere else, just do a search on "green power" plus your local utility.

Victory, Demogracrats?

Dumbest of the smart kids, pundits have flocked to the obvious mistaken lesson of the last election. That is, that the GOP is a victim of demographics. Again and again, I have heard Latinos trotted out as the example,roughly 3 of 4 voting for the Democrats, the narrative goes. Asians too, some have said, went big for Obama. (Sorry, black people, but you are ignored even in your imbalanced support of the half-yours president.)

Republicans, they say, mistakenly counted on winning by appealing to whites alone, they hoped to win on the backs of the Saxons, winning the hearts of the Anglos in such numbers that they would be swept to victory one last time before the melanin-rich take over from the money-rich. 

Bullshit. Just as any "red" or "blue" state has a goodly number of folks of the other color, so do "white" people hold opinions other than the birther-believin', gun totin', Jesus-lovin' dogma. A large (if not majority) percentage of us voted for Obama. Not me, of course, I voted for Jill Stein. Others voted for Gary Johnson, a white guy who for some reason thinks that marijuana should be legal and oil companies should not rule the country, which is blasphemy in the church of the holy Caucasus. Others voted for Others, or sat the election out. We are no more a uniform group than Latinos, Asians, African-Americans, or Sikhs. 

Pundits imagine an era upcoming in which the GOP will not get elected because burgeoning blocs will vote the other way. Maybe, but not all of them, not forever. The commentators wish to imagine that the GOP will scramble now to win over groups who we all know have very little in common with a philosophy whose radical left consists of the Chamber of Commerce/Country Club set. Sure, a few will follow the Cuban Right, the Allen-West African-Americans, the Brahmans. 

But the election we just had seemed to show other patterns. That people do occasionally vote in their own interest, instead of their most crass aspirations. That money cannot buy elections with a measly 4:1 spending advantage. That we really cannot succeed by redistributing all our wealth upward.

The day we all vote according to race (whatever that is) is the day democracy is over. White guys had a nice run, but there is no more permanent demographic majority.

Redistribution is Scary

Following last week's debates, the media quickly settled in on a few themes and sound bites that, as usual, I didn't quite grasp. Even though I watched the debate, I guess I also failed to pay enough attention to body language, and spent time listening to what I thought mattered in America, which is the money, and a couple of things stuck out in my admittedly idiosyncratic mind.

Two things that Romney said stick firmly to the ends of an unstated policy that he and the GOP put forward at every opportunity. The policy should become clear as this post progresses, but first for the bites (dull and under-reported as they may be):
Thing 1: "The top 5% pay 60% of the taxes."
Thing 2: Under a Romney tax regime, "There will be no tax on your interest, dividends, and capital gains under $200,000 a year."

At first glance, nothing scary, and it even sounds truthy, but ultimately these things are obfuscation and bullshit.

The point of Thing 1 is that the rich pay more taxes than the poor because some of the poor pay no taxes, and because the rich have so much money that even though they can avail themselves of shelters and lower rates, they contribute more revenue. A rate of 13% tax on $10,000,000 certainly more cash than 28% of $60,000, but the fact is that it does not amount to a proportionate contribution, since the top 5% in fact control more than  60% of the wealth in this country. As the chart below illustrates, even if you only count net worth, the "top"* 5% control more than 60%, and if you zoom in on "financial wealth" which subtracts the amount of equity in the house you live in (i.e., shelter, as opposed to luxury crib or investment), the 5%-ers control 72%. If they contribute only 60% of the tax revenue, then they are doing less,  proportionately, than I am.**



This distribution, the control of the vast majority of US wealth by a small percentage of the population, is unknown to most of the American populace. A couple of years ago, an academic study revealed that Americans think that the "top" 20% of the population should control less than 35% of the wealth, and that they do control over 55% of the wealth. The truth is that they actually control nearly 85%.



As it happens, this is a situation that has become more extreme over the past few decades, ever since the 20th Century nadir of US wealth inequality during the Carter administration, when the 1%-ers controlled a mere 20% of wealth (sad that that seems so fair). As of 2007, this group controlled nearly 35% of the wealth. It is instructive, I think, that the 20th Century peak of wealth inequality was in 1929, just before economic lunacy and instability led to a crash that would not end without a decade of alleged socialism and then a world war. Don't believe me? Check out the data:



If the charts did not send you clicking elsewhere, then maybe you wonder why I digressed, and what ever happened to Thing 2. My intent was just to show that despite the current GOP/Tea Party dread of redistribution, we are 30 years or so into a redistribution that benefits their wealthy supporters. The rich have gotten richer, and everyone else has contributed to the effort.

Thing 2 is that the process is not over, and we commoners should be scared. Pitiful as my own life savings may be, and even though after 5 years come another 5 years until I am vested in my paltry pension plan, Washington state employees as a whole put a lot of money into "the market," where bit players like us are babes in the woods compared to the wealthy who can ante up millions and billions as individuals and small groups, able to demand results from their brokers, while each of the rest of us is one of a million.

The proles may no longer have pensions or 401K plans, but those of s in the shrinking middle class who do maintain a nest egg of sorts should be wary, because our numbers (if not our per capita wealth) attract the attention of the professionals who sway the market-bucket and pocket the slosh. The "top" 1% owned (as of 2010) a mere 35% of stocks and mutual funds, while the unwashed 90% had somehow held onto a whopping 20% of the same market…clearly a situation calling for rapid redistribution upward. And while the 59.8% share of the homes that people live in held by that same "bottom" 90% is often underwater and rarely liquid, the nearly 35% of pension account held by the same lump is also a part of "the market," and thus open to upward redistribution as well.



So that is why Mitt's tax plan is the scariest thing I heard in the 'town hall' debate. We in the shrinking middle class still hold enough cash to be attractive to the parasites who for some reason are still hungry, despite the gluttonous display of the past few decades. To sate that hunger, what better than a leader who encourages us to invest by promising that the profits will be (because almost no commoner will earn more than $200,000/year on investments) tax free? Sounds like a great deal, unless you are aware that the financial sector has a caste system, in which commoner mutual vends and public sector pensions are not allowed at the tables where the payoffs are large and predictable. The bait--tax free income--is calculated to make the gullible jump.

There are times when I lament the lack of differentiation between the Depublicans and Republicrats, but this debate was not one of them. Obama said that people whose income (not capital gains and dividends, taxed at a lower rate) was less than $250,000/year would see no tax increase, while those above would return to Clinton era rates (still way below the 90% tolerated by Ike Eisenhower).  Romney offered a sweet-sounding deal that could only be used to its utmost by people able to earn $200,000/year in investment income. Let's put that in real terms: My credit union pays 0.1% interest on savings; to earn $200,000, I would have to have  savings account of $200,000,000.00.

If I had that kind of money, I would not have a credit union savings account as one of my main "investments." If I were charitable, my interpretation of Romney's tax policy proposal would be that the guy is out of touch. If I were cynical (and I think I am), it would look like another ploy that acknowledges and strokes the American desire for upward mobility in hopes that it will override reason. Stop paying taxes like a chump, and join the investor class. Just don't come asking for a handout after we fleece you. Bailouts are for the big boys, fool.


* This "top 5%" stuff galls me. Reporters and pundits demand shorthand, but to substitute "top 5%" for  "wealthiest 5%" reinforces a semantic difference that actually shapes our culture in a significant way. The top 5% were mostly born into lives where wealth was already present and easily expanded compared to a poor person. The worked "top" implies superiority on any number of variables not having to do with money, but I refuse to stipulate that the richest 5% are more successful than I am in terms of moral, community, artistic, compassionate, environmental, and other dimensions.

** Disclosure: I control several thousand dollars of financial wealth. Twenty-something years after graduating college, I have amassed a fortune of less than $10,000. I will never retire.