The Anarchy A

Recently, people keep reminding me that the Circle-A symbol is associated with anarchism,...maybe even with Anarchism.

No shit.

One woman kindly commented on a post of the above sign to let me know that the anarchist crowd uses that, and she wasn't sure if I did it on purpose.

Ahh...yup. Thanks.

A sixty-ish photographer somberly asked me if I knew what that A-in-a-circle meant as he got a shot of my daughter and I at a rally. He looked grim when I confirmed:

Si, Professor.

Maybe especially around here, people think anarchist and they envision black bloc ninjas throwing rocks through windows, but there are degrees and species of Anarchy just like there are of any other -ism.

To begin with, some reject anything but little-a anarchy.

My anarchy dropped orthodoxymoronic Anarchism years ago. My anarchy fails the purity test (I'm a government worker, for Marx's sake). My anarchy doesn't mind government  preventing corporations from poisoning the earth and ripping us off, and it knows damn well that NO government just means the armed and greedy get their way. My anarchy begins in the womb, where no government should be tolerated, and lives in a body and mind that should not be violated.

My anarchy is old and likes naps, but it ain't dead yet.

So yeah, I'll continue to march with Womxn and support Planned Parenthood and protect Mother Earth with my "Dads Against the Patriarchy" sign. Lots of people have said they liked it, shot photos, and been very supportive. Lots of them know what the A means, some of them are really supportive, and a few people get uncomfortable.

Which is good. The Circle-A hasn't lost all its power.

Streaming Fascism

Police State appliances for your home.

Being a liberal, lately I've been inundated with warnings and calls to action, boycotts and protests, petitions and pleas to click and agree,...all of them in response to the election of Trump, who shows the most overt signs yet of being our first flull-blown fascist president. (Yes, Cheney fit the bill, but technically he was only VP.)

Being an American, lately I've been inundated with adds for Amazon's Alexa and some Googly thingy that can sit in my house awaiting orders. They will do amazing things like change the thermostat so that I can have indoor snowmen, or order tape so that I won't have to seal Christmas gifts with band-aids. These are the whimsical examples that tech giants are using to sneak into our homes.

And Americans could care less.

Not that we shouldn't be wary of Drumpf's scapegoating tendencies, his lashing out at the press, his promises to sue any critics and jail the opposition. We should fight that crap tooth and nail.

But we should also resist the urge to invite mega-corporations into our homes, relinquishing increasing power month after month under the guise of convenience. Sure, in aspirational, duped-by-the-dream America, it's common to wish that you are one of the wealthy, that you have a butler, and  these devices play right into that. Never mind that to actually get the right kind of tape, you'll need to answer a bunch of questions that not only take up time but inevitably lead you to Amazon check-out.

Checking out on such mundane household chores as setting the thermostat or thinking ahead and buying groceries is not without cost, and ultimately without loss of your autonomy and freedom. Amazon and Google aren't altruistically taking over your chores--they're insinuating themselves into your life, harvesting data, tayloring their marketing until you're captured. We put up with these intrusions because they're "consumer oriented." You can play with settings still to maintain the illusion of control, but once our homes are linked into a system roamed by artificial intelligences whose goal is to sell us stuff, we've just a flipped the switch to a level of of spying that the Stasi only dreamed of, of monitoring and coercion more thorough than Orwell nightmared of.

Some of you may suspect where I'm headed with this: that such a tool in the hands of a dictator would be ominous. But actually, I think it's bad enough as is. Entities whose only goal is profit are invited to spy on us. Not only do they not pay to collect data, they get us to pay for the data-collection device, they get us to sign up for the services that will deliver our data back to us, processed into gleamingly ads rendered irresistable by virtue that they were borne of our own behavior.

Don't buy this crap. Don't buy the device, and don't buy the message. Be sovereign, un-plug, and read a book.

Cavalier Attitudes Redux

A few days ago, I posted about the cavalier attitude towards rape at UVA frats and their breathern elsewhere. I was among the thousands of bloggers and hundreds of news media outlets that picked up on the story.

Now, it turns out that the Rolling Stone article that triggered the uproar itself took a cavalier attitude with the truth and verification.

Some digging by reporters at the Washington Post, among others, found that "Jackie," the victim spotlighted in the original article, had said some things that are not verifiable, and others that appear to be outright false. Predictably, thousands of bloggers and hiundreds of news media outlets have picked up on this story.

Part of the response is to point at Rolling Stone and accuse the magazine and its reporter of sloppy journalism. True enough, it appears, although I myself have done zero actual reporting on this and don't believe that most of the critics have, either. I see the bandwagon, but won't jump on.

But another common element in reactions is to jump on Jackie. Another girl with regrets or some other problem claiming rape. I see this bandwagon, and would like to stop it, or at least give it a flat.

The Post story--which does show evidence of thorough reporting and includes interviews with Jackie, her friends, and others at UVA--does not say she was not raped, though there are inconsistencies and doubts about the details. The frat accused in the original article turns out not to have had an official even on the date in question, the "main" rapist is not a brother in that frat, and they deny having a policy of including rape as part of pledging (no kidding). Instead of being vaginally gang-raped and beaten, her friends say she was orally gang-raped by maybe 5 guys, not 7.

Merely forced to perform oral sex while being held in a frat bedroom. You comfortable with blaming her now?

Not me.

The frat, with the benefit of money, lawyers, and status, has launched a counter-attack on Jackie, as you would expect whether they had a role to play or not. Money and power have a way of walking away free, particularly in an institution so steeped in tradition and white male privilege. Even is it were no different than other universities, UVA has the added defense of the enclave; campuses have their own law more often than not. This was a main point of the article (for which Jackie was the misfortunate poster child), that UVA and many other institutions of higher learning steer rape victims toward options other than prosecution of their attackers. Out in the real world, rapists have no such options.

The Post's follow-up and fact-checking does not lead them to the conclusion that the entire story is fabricated. They don't refute at all the bigger points of Rolling Stone's article, that UVA has a culture that glorifies frat boys and winks at rape, and presents victims with a range of options that systematically result in non-prosecution of rapists. Not just winks, but shuts its eyes, as evidenced by the lack of student dismissals for sexual assault while staunchly guarding its reputation by dismissing violators of the academic honor code.

Nonetheless, fratboys and their supporters in news and social media attack Jackie. I feel incredibly sorry for her, having to endure this second wave of assault.

Loosies, Not the Sky of Diamonds

Plenty of people are posting about racism in law enforcement, as they should. Black and brown men have reasons to worry that don't really affect a white guy like me.

"Like me," including Middle Classness, and it's class and money that I want to speak about, to add to the conversation. Plenty of poor white people also have reason to worry about law being selectively enforced, and force selectively applied, but this post is not about saying white people suffer too.

No, I just want to ask why Mike Brown (alleged cigar thief) and Eric Garner (alleged seller of single cigarettes, or "loosies") met with deadly force in the course of their alleged crimes. Even assuming that the one guy was stealing smokes and the other selling them, it's hard to imagine that these were the most serious crimes of the moment, much less offences so heinous that the perpetrators needed to be shot multiple times or choked to death.

At the same instant when Eric Garner was executed extrajudicially in a part of New York where selling single cigarettes is a survival strategy, in another part of town men who stole billions of dollars, crashed the economy to an extent where selling loosies is a thing, and then extorted the US government for bailouts walk free. Not just free, but assured that they not only will not be stopped and frisked (or, in the 1%-er analogy, forensically audited), but that were a cop to ever lay a hostile hand on them, massive lawsuit-induced windfalls would follow.

Racism is real, even if race is not. White cops using superior numbers or firepower to overwhelm brown suspects is a shame and a problem; ultimately, it's a threat to democracy.

But so is the fact that police attention is strangely affixed on petty crimes. Call in four cops to take down one alleged cigarette seller, but leave the corporate executives alone. Hell, offer the oligarchs any out conceivable: from paying fines with shareholder money, to bankorruptcy protections, to failing to convene a grand jury identify individuals for indictment. They have diamonds on the soles of their shoes, so the criminal justice system shall not touch them; the sky's the limit for them.

Meanwhile, in the mud beneath the lowest societal rungs, poor people die at the hands of the police.

Cavalier Attitudes

Shut up and take it, b****

[To my one steadfast reader, who has noticed some Virginia-bashing here, I regret to inform you that it's happening again. Click elsewhere and come back next week, knowing that there are Virginians I love and admire, including you, sister. Likewise, good people who happen to be associated with University of Virginia, sorry you have to be connected with the subject of this post.]

Once again the Old Dominion has hit the news in a most sinister way. This time, it's the Rolling Stone article calling out University of Virginia for its utter failure to tamp down the rape impulse throbbing on Rugby Road, Frat Row to what is arguably Virginia's most prestigious institute of higher learning.

I never made such an argument. Being a smart kid in a suburban Richmond high school, I was of course encouraged to seek admission to UVA, but balked at the idea, much to the bafflement of certain counselors and teachers. Partially, this stemmed from a budding rebelliousness; fuck if I was gonna go where all the uber-preppies went, worship the old dead white guys, and give in to The System. After my knee-jerking settled down, though, there were other reasons to avoid UVA: people I knew who were most enthralled with it tended to be assholes who genuinely believed that "nice" clothes equate to civilization, a founder who fucked his 14 year old slave and sold off some of their progeny didn't inspire the same reverence in me as it did in the spawn of Virginia's finer families, wearing ties and swilling cocktails didn't strike me as recreation, going to college less than an hour away didn't seem like much of a horizon expansion,...and so on.

The Rolling Stone article scratches the surface but does not draw blood from the beast that is the Entitled Rich White Boy. He whose dad was a Wahoo, and whose son will be. Maybe he earned the grades to deserve entry, maybe he's even smart at something. But he's gonna sow his wild oats for a few years before moving on to daddy's firm. And those girls better comply. The article failed to name any of these rapists, and won't send any of them to jail.

In addition to the inexplicable "Wahoo," the UVA teams are known as the "Cavaliers," which is illustrative. Originally, Cavaliers were the royalists who opposed Cromwell's rebellion. It doesn't take a Cromwell apologist to suspect that Cavaliers were the vicious dandies who supported the old elite order. In the Crown's Virginia Colony, the influx of cavaliers came when the Roundheads were winning, and the self-proclaimed noble fighters took off rather than nobly face the music. Somehow, this dubious legacy became a swashbuckling logo.

Echoing this history, UVA has in my lifetime (and I suspect at least back through my William & Mary and Mary Washington educated grandparent's matriculations) been a refuge for elites and elitists. Sure, others make it there, but the aura of one of our nation's "Public Ivies" has long been one of wealthy entitlement. Graduate from there, and people acknowledge your academic achievement as well as suspect your birthright, even if you didn't, ahem, "earn" it by being born rich.

Even as "The" University's admissions policy has slipped into allowing non-FFV's, women, and black people to attend, UVA fraternities have proudly flown the Cav flag and maintained sanctuaries for Entitled Rich White Boys.

Women stepping foot into one of these refugia along Rugby Road risk rape. Sadly, women in any college stand a greater chance of being raped than women in general. Unsurprisingly, women walking into a frat house on any campus stand a greater chance of being raped than college women in general. Understandably, both fraternities and universities have a vested interest in protecting their reputations, and tend to deal with the spoilsport women who object to being raped through means other than law enforcement.

At UVA, the ability to avoid having the cops come in and arrest violent felons is enhanced by wealth and tradition. I don't have empirical evidence (such as that available to prove all of the previous paragraph's assertions) to prove this, but the Rolling Stone article makes a pretty good case, and my experience as a Virginian and American certainly fits. Rich guys avoid imprisonment pretty well. Reinforced by the aura of a centuries-old institution founded by a Founding Father, consistently rated highly as an academic institution, posessed of many traditions and a well-heeled sense of Decorum (whatever that is), UVA is not easily dragged through the mud. Not that long ago, one of it's drunken preppie athletes murdered his girlfriend, and yet the Rolling Stone article is still presented by many as an anomaly, an affront, maybe some sort of deviant leftist (or feminazi) plot.

Where Power is worshipped and Money talks loudly while it's partner Tradition silences dissent, people get raped.

"I Feel Your Pain," and Similarly Presumptuous, Phony Bullshit

Someone's scorched earth. Avert your eyes.

A week ago, a kid shot his friends, and then himself. I can tell you no more than that, even though I may 'know' more about the situation than you do. This one happened closer to where I live than usual, and when I spoke with family elsewhere, they mentioned it and expressed regret, but did not dwell on it and did not pretend to make sense of it.

On the other hand, another friend who had not been in touch for a while emailed a message fraught with 'concern' for how my own high school daughter dealt with it, seemed to fish for inside info, and mentioned how a mutual acquaintance sorta kinda knew (OK, recognized) the guy who has been arrested in a notorious murder in her part of the world.

How the hell would I know what happened with that kid, even if I knew him? Why would I speculate if I didn't know him? Why would having fewer degrees of separation from the anguish of several families and tribes make me an 'expert'?

Many people in our society play a sick sick game in the aftermath of murders and suicides. News media try to find out why, and adopt variously sensitive approaches to their prying into victims' and relatives' feelings, often as not posting interviews with people the killers and the killed would never have thought would speak for them. People with no real connection concoct one. The unaffected try on trauma to see how it befits them. 'Sensitive' people affect a variety of emotional effects, and in so doing display an appalling insensitivity to what is for someone (but not them) a tragedy.

It disgusts me and pisses me off, for reasons I won't tell you. You don't know how the killers and the killed felt, and if you are not an immediate relative or friend, or maybe a member of the same tribe, you never will. You should shut up and leave them alone until they ask you to say something.

Suicide is the ickiest paragraph of this sick commentary. Like whe Robin Williams killed himself, and every Tom, Dick, and Henry Rollins* needed to express their personal feelings about it. Aside from a handful of humans, nobody had the authority to speak to this, yet we were all besieged by co-workers, family members, reporters, media-friendly psychiatrists, and publicity hungry celebrities telling us why, or angstily telling us they didn't recognize the signs, or some other brand of bullshit. He might not even have seen it coming until it was too late. The people ostensibly bemoaning his loss did nothing productive, saved nobody, and displayed their own self-centeredness by treating tragedy as opportunity.

Mourn the dead if you knew them. Feel sad even if you didn't. But stop acting like death(s) you heard of on TV or the internet or the radio are personal to you. They are not, and it is an insult to the dead and their loved ones to make it personal to you. If some killing moves you to become an activist against guns or whatever, OK, but don't appropriate the souls of the dead to your cause. "He would have wanted..." is one of the all-time most presumptuous, bullshit-infused opening clauses in the English language. If you are just using someone else's tragedy to act sensitive, or publicly wring your hands, then you are full of crap.

Some people go beyond the show of mournfulness and try to figure out why. They won't know, and should cut it out. Killers and self-killers don't necessarily know why, so who is some outsider to waltz in and speculate?

*Former punk rocker and current media whore, who published an essay about how he no longer respected Williams, and was rightly excoriated for saying so.

"Won't get Fooled Again" (Oh yeah they will)

Having drunk the kool-aid, and realizing that it doesn't work, Rep. Cantor looks ill.

Oh, there were so many choices for titles to a post about House majority leader Cantor getting offed by the even nuttier right. I was pretty close to going with "Meet the New Brat, Same as the Old Brat," but I don't yet know that will prove true.

What is true is that I'm happy as ever to have fled Virginia's 7th Congressional District. Not quite a month ago, I wrote about those of us who have joined the Virginia Diaspora, citing among other factors that Eric Cantor, former Reagan Youth stalwart and petulant obstructionist extraordinaire, was being challenged from the right. Apparently, pundits wrote off the challenge, even though the tea party and Brat brigade had recently ousted Cantor's henchmen in the state GOP convention, under-cutting the now Establishment incumbent. He managed to keep that one fairly quiet, but losing by 11 points in a primary getting national attention is not something that can be ducked. 24 hours after the election, he's already conceded the power he once had.

Which would be cause for rejoicing, if there weren't a pretty solid chance that David Brat, blindered economist, weren't now a very good bet to win the 7th District's seat in Congress. I'd like to think that the Henrico suburbs that voted for Obama might shy away form a Tea Party wing-nut, but odds are they will once again vote against their own self-interest and elect the guy. I'd love to believe that Brat won by virture of Democrats voting in the GOP primary, sabotaging the Republicans by nominating a guy too far right to win in the general election, but I know enough old-minded Virginians (the ones who show up during working hours on a mid-week primary, the ones who feel threatened by the Socialist Negro) to believe that they were the ones that made the difference. They got rid of the sharp dressing guy who compromised once, and installed a more conservative, more dogmatic, more Christian man.

None of the breathless coverage today veered into the fact that Cantor is a Jew in the GOP South. And to be honest, Richmond is the rare southern city that has been fairly accepting of its Hebraic residents (one of the oldest Jewish cemeteries in the US is there, and Jeff Davis even appointed Judah Benjamin to cabinet posts), but the modern voters seem happy to go Old testament on this one, turning him out into the desert as a scapegoat. It's no longer sufficient to be for corporations and big money, the modern Republican candidate must establish his bona fides as an utterly dogmatic right-winger, never giving an inch. The emphasis on Jesus and God from the new Brat, comforting to so many Virginia Christians who imagine themselves oppressed, could have much darker echoes as the radical right gropes its way toward control of the Reichstag.

Hopefully, that dark a future is mere speculation. The bare facts, however, are bad enough. Faced with an economy in which the 0.1% reap all the benefits, and have bought Republican obstruction to anything the Democrats propose--in short, an economy guaranteed to further impoverish nearly everyone--well over 50% voted the punish the guy who they vaguely sense may have compromised somewhere along the way, replacing him with an even more strident anti-government zealot.

Will the Virginians who voted Brat in at the primary hand him a seat in Congress? Probably.

Will they one day realize that votes like that amounted to handing over their hard-earned money to oligarchs, the only ones who can afford clean water and filtered air? Probably not. They'll blame a Black man, or a Jew, or a Socialist (or a Woman, should Hillary or Elizabeth get the Democratic nod). Even if they realize that they were in fact fooled again, it will be too late.

One Time I Knew a Nazi (Who Got the Order of Killing Correct)

So, a couple of people who ambushed and killed some law enforcement officers (using the brave technique of shooting them while they ate lunch) want to call it a revolution. They draped the bodies in a "Don't Tread on Me" flag, and shouted "This is a revolution," amping up Tea Party rhetoric from the typical spittle-spewing talk to a tragically irreversible walk.

Then they killed someone in a Walmart. Then the woman killed the man, then she killed herself. As in most all murder-suicide sprees, they got the order of killings exactly opposite.

When police searched their apartments, they found swastikas and other evidence of the couples' white supremacist views.

Back in Virginia, I knew a guy who turned into a Nazi, big Nazi flag on the wall, SS memorabilia, black Ninja motorcycle (even Nazis will make some adjustments to the times). He sometimes hung out on the periphery of the punk scene, but we were not interested, and pretty much shunned him, like we did skinheads, who never developed critical mass in our city, at least not back them.

I'd grown up knowing him. We were never friends, but still, it was a shock to walk into his apartment and see a Nazi flag. I never went there again. But then again, I didn't do anything about it. I had no idea wht to do, to be honest, other than the basic shunning.

It turns out he knew what to do though. He was into guns, and one day he put the barrel of one in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Brains splattered on the Nazi flag. He got the order right.

Suicide is an unfair beast, and stalks not just the bad and the ugly, but the good and the tortured. Way too often, it compels someone in its grip to snuff out others before he shoots out his own light. But, not the Nazi I knew. It may sound cold, but for that, I am thankful.

We will never legislate away guns, and there is no way to prevent the gun-wielding gutless "revolutionary" or psycho or asshole from shooting a cop eating pizza or just about anyone else. If I had magical powers, I'm not sure I would even make guns disappear. Maybe I'd just embed in every gun-wielders mind that seed that sprouted in that Nazi's mind, "Turn this on yourself before you turn it on others."

Guts, Not Guns

Seems like they happen pretty often, these sickening slaughters. Today, it was close to home, at a college in Seattle. One already dead, and three wounded; sadly, this qualifies as a minor incident compared to some of the rampages that punctuate the American story these days. When will this stop?

There will be people saying that the way to make it stop is to regulate guns. There will be people saying that the way to make it stop is to arm everyone and allow them to carry guns anywhere. All a matter of opinion, I guess. I have my own opinion on the matter, but enough people are spouting, so let's just focus on the facts and look at what actually happened today.

Students and faculty in harm's way got a warning message, and went on lockdown minutes into the attack. The school later said this emergency procedure was in response to another college shooting, back at my home state's Virginia Tech, where some deranged asshole killed nearly 3 dozen people before it was over. Having an emergency response and students and staff trained to take cover saved lives today.

Another piece of data: the slaughter was stopped by an unarmed dorm monitor, Jon Meis, who jumped in as the murderer reloaded, doused him with pepper spray, and subdued him with nothing but his own body. No guns, just guts. 

Walk Away

A few years ago, when I delved into the morass of narcissism and even more unsavory isms that comprise facebook, I half-jokingly started a group called the Virginia Diaspora, for people like me who had been born in the Old Dominion, but had subsequently fled in search of asylum, or peace, or just a change of pace and place. Few people joined, but I did re-connect with a few dozen people I'd known from the neighborhood and school. Many still lived within a half-hour SUV ride of where we'd grown up, some had migrated elsewhere in the Commonwealth or the Mid-Atlantic, and a few had flung themselves farther.

While it was interesting (sometimes) to learn what had become of people, this virtual homecoming reminded me of why I'd left, and set me to wondering how it could have gotten worse than Reagan Era Virginia, which was what had sent me running in the first place. On display: a rainbow of bigotries, a robust sense that rich white heterosexuals were sorely victimized, worship of mammon and guns (and among some, an old white man known as "God"), and intolerance. By no means all of them acted this way, but it was enough to shake my faith in progress, and eventually to turn my back on the virtual place the same way I had on the red clay of my birth-land.

Like I say, not all of the fb "friends" (never has a word been more drained of its soul than when it became synonymous with a single reflexive click) were right-wing ogres. Some had led interesting lives, had opened themselves to more than we'd been raised to accept. A small few became people I kept up with even after the fb environs grew too creepy for me to inhabit. One, I even visited a year ago, when I made my first foray back to Virginia in half a decade.


Which is when I realized (duh) that the virtual world ain't real. The avid gardener hadn't raised more than weeds in years, and was ditching country life for sprawlburbs. Having recently inherited millions, the inheritance tax had become injustice, and people were now threatening to take advantage, including me, when I let her pay for a breakfast biscuit (or, 0.00001% of said inheritance). Roughly an hour from the malaised middle class suburb where we grew up, she was in pretty much the same place, only with more liberal-ish shopping preferences, unable to see the difference between Whole Food Inc. and sustainable foodways.

Oh well.

It would have been easier to take had I not been in shock at what had happened to my old haunts during years of absence. All the farmland and forests were gone, paved over for shopping places that will fade and fall into ruin, and for road after road after road. People doing exactly as the President said in a rare moment of candor, clinging to their god and their guns. Real profits (for a few) and false prophets (for the many) twisting the message of their nominal saviour to justify greed and hatred. Again, not everybody was this way, but enough to make a lefty evolutionist like me damned nervous.

Recently, the news has been no better. A burning trainload of oil falls into the river I once canoed and from which my relatives still get their drinking water, and still the shrill calls for end to government regulation. On Easter morning, people awoke to find eggs in their yards proclaiming racist slogans, and the response was, "Kids are too young to see this," as if it would be comprehensible in a few years. My former US Congressman, Eric Cantor, not ideologically pure enough, is being challenged from the right wing, as people laugh off the concept that there could ever be a Democrat in his position.

I could rant, and I guess I just have (and probably will again), but it would not change anything. Ever since its founding as a commercial colony to benefit the few, Virginia has been driven by wealth and "conservatism." Hell, even the leaders of the revolution against the king started out and ended up being filthy rich, retaining ownership of human beings, and controlling politics in what turned out to be a very English patrician way. Generations later, having jettisoned even the pretense of Enlightenment thinking, Virginians practiced a religion that justified slavery, and backed it up with a war that was, for even the whitest of the common folk, disastrous. From Jim Crow to Massive Resistance to demonized Welfare Queens to the Tea Party, the wealthy string-pullers have mobilized the faithful pawns to protect the interests of the few at the cost of the many.

Maybe it's chickenshit of me to do so, but I choose to be in the Virginia Diaspora rather than stick around and pay taxes to a state so bent on backwardness. I walked away, again.

The Curse of Oh No, or, The Rum Diarrhea

The week took it's time in skulking up behind and bludgeoning me with what I can only assume was a femur unearthed from the San Quentin boneyard. If I'd been more aware, the signs were there: truck reluctant to travel, resulting in a starved frenzied drive to the very tip of the lower 48, a headache so long in the tooth that it reached my manawa, the skull-top whose calcification signals passage to something beyond infancy for all but our Tea Party brethren.

But for the time being, said signs hid and instead I saw the rainbow over an inlet, and enjoyed the presence of mind and present of time to pull over and photograph this glowingly fine apparition. I felt the truck complain and turned back before I ended up stranded hours from town. I got another evening in my own bed. I spent the next two days at an uncharacteristically sunny Neah Bay, basking in the warmth of government and tribal resource managers mostly in agreement. Somewhere offshore, I was sure, sea lions and lambs lay together in harmony.

I, I, I. As long as my phone was back home and the internet proved too slow to deal with. Everything was fine, as long as it was just I. Aye-aye-yai. No them.

Them them phoned in on Thursday. Him, specifically. He who is a legendary island archaeologist and drunkard (there is a difference, so he gets double credit), who began working in Hawai`i about when I did, and whose strait is now dire (same as it ever was). He who was not cajoled into an MA, or out of the field and into the bidness, or into a marriage. He who now faces another bout of unemployment with no back-up. He who is one of the best in his field, but archaeological fields are parochial, so when there is no work locally, emigration is no option unless cannibals nip at his heels. If some project does not emerge soon, he's fucked.

So he was frustrated, down, and was several days out into booze ocean when I heard from him. Gone the moderate wine of the past few months--down the gullet with rum and coconut milk. I had to go not long after he called, but rang back later only to get an answering app. Responding later that evening, having forgotten what day it was and that we'd talked earlier, he was Out...

Of...

It.

Which I can understand. No job. He made the calls and found no work among the usual suspects (the only kind there are in the islands, really), so who's to question despondency and maybe even dependency on a bottle of that which will be there (for a while) when employment (gainful or joyful) has walked out? So a guy may well plead the fifth, and then another, and so further past a gallon, maybe firkins and before all is said and done a hogshead. But to any hard drinker, it's not about the cumulative total, it's about taking it one bottle at a time.

But so goes the spiral that heads down or stagnates. There are few ups from weeks blacked out and besotted. Regrets, yes, sometimes leading to another round. Recoveries, perhaps, but sure to be challenged by another layoff.

If we lived in a world where enthusiasm, skill, and knowledge were rewarded, he'd be fine, and if being funny counted he'd be sitting pretty. But we live in a world where "just" being a field guy comes off as unambitious, and skepticism spiced with comedy comes off as trouble-making. Besides which, it's easier to hire new kids who work for peanuts than to offer a man a living wage because he gathers the data upon which the whole enterprise depends. Predictably and sadly, this is true even if the kids have little clue and the 40-something vet has the benefit of decades of experience. Missed sites are bulldozed away, none the wiser except for the veteran shovelbum who knew the deal, and was cut out or walked out.

But the honor of a guy like my friend, who would walk out on a crook's deal, does not demand much on the market. If it's not for sale, the fixers and fiends find a work-around--someone willing to sell fake honor, typically--and then honor's Cash Value = Zero. As a consolation prize, cast-aways of this system receive enough unemployment to live a seriously bleak life or a drunkenly numb one.

Either ailment in this short list of options weighs so heavily on any one man that recovering without company can crush vertebra. So, I'll keep calling from time to time. Maybe I cannot fix the economy, or thirsty genes, but I can be better than nothing, if only barely.

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.

What the President Said About Race

There has been a lot of punditry and partial reporting, but I finally got around to reading President Obama's remarks about the Zimmerman-Martin case. As a whole, I think it's the best speech he's ever made, and I hope more people read it fully and closely. He spoke as an African-American man, but not just to African-Americans. He was honest about some painful history and present, and made some useful suggestions for the future. He spoke as a true leader, and not just a politician.

But don't take my word for it. Read the original words:

For Immediate Release

July 19, 2013

Remarks by the President on Trayvon Martin

James S. Brady Press Briefing Room

1:33 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:  I wanted to come out here, first of all, to tell you that Jay is prepared for all your questions and is very much looking forward to the session.  The second thing is I want to let you know that over the next couple of weeks, there’s going to obviously be a whole range of issues -- immigration, economics, et cetera -- we'll try to arrange a fuller press conference to address your questions.

The reason I actually wanted to come out today is not to take questions, but to speak to an issue that obviously has gotten a lot of attention over the course of the last week -- the issue of the Trayvon Martin ruling.  I gave a preliminary statement right after the ruling on Sunday.  But watching the debate over the course of the last week, I thought it might be useful for me to expand on my thoughts a little bit.

First of all, I want to make sure that, once again, I send my thoughts and prayers, as well as Michelle’s, to the family of Trayvon Martin, and to remark on the incredible grace and dignity with which they’ve dealt with the entire situation.  I can only imagine what they’re going through, and it’s remarkable how they’ve handled it.

The second thing I want to say is to reiterate what I said on Sunday, which is there’s going to be a lot of arguments about the legal issues in the case -- I'll let all the legal analysts and talking heads address those issues.  The judge conducted the trial in a professional manner.  The prosecution and the defense made their arguments.  The juries were properly instructed that in a case such as this reasonable doubt was relevant, and they rendered a verdict.  And once the jury has spoken, that's how our system works.  But I did want to just talk a little bit about context and how people have responded to it and how people are feeling. 

You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son.  Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.  And when you think about why, in the African American community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away.

There are very few African American men in this country who haven't had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store.  That includes me.  There are very few African American men who haven't had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars.  That happens to me -- at least before I was a senator.  There are very few African Americans who haven't had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off.  That happens often.

And I don't want to exaggerate this, but those sets of experiences inform how the African American community interprets what happened one night in Florida.  And it’s inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear.  The African American community is also knowledgeable that there is a history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws -- everything from the death penalty to enforcement of our drug laws.  And that ends up having an impact in terms of how people interpret the case.

Now, this isn't to say that the African American community is naïve about the fact that African American young men are disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system; that they’re disproportionately both victims and perpetrators of violence.  It’s not to make excuses for that fact -- although black folks do interpret the reasons for that in a historical context.  They understand that some of the violence that takes place in poor black neighborhoods around the country is born out of a very violent past in this country, and that the poverty and dysfunction that we see in those communities can be traced to a very difficult history.

And so the fact that sometimes that’s unacknowledged adds to the frustration.  And the fact that a lot of African American boys are painted with a broad brush and the excuse is given, well, there are these statistics out there that show that African American boys are more violent -- using that as an excuse to then see sons treated differently causes pain.

I think the African American community is also not naïve in understanding that, statistically, somebody like Trayvon Martin was statistically more likely to be shot by a peer than he was by somebody else.  So folks understand the challenges that exist for African American boys.  But they get frustrated, I think, if they feel that there’s no context for it and that context is being denied. And that all contributes I think to a sense that if a white male teen was involved in the same kind of scenario, that, from top to bottom, both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different.

Now, the question for me at least, and I think for a lot of folks, is where do we take this?  How do we learn some lessons from this and move in a positive direction?  I think it’s understandable that there have been demonstrations and vigils and protests, and some of that stuff is just going to have to work its way through, as long as it remains nonviolent.  If I see any violence, then I will remind folks that that dishonors what happened to Trayvon Martin and his family.  But beyond protests or vigils, the question is, are there some concrete things that we might be able to do. 

I know that Eric Holder is reviewing what happened down there, but I think it’s important for people to have some clear expectations here.  Traditionally, these are issues of state and local government, the criminal code.  And law enforcement is traditionally done at the state and local levels, not at the federal levels.

That doesn’t mean, though, that as a nation we can’t do some things that I think would be productive.  So let me just give a couple of specifics that I’m still bouncing around with my staff, so we’re not rolling out some five-point plan, but some areas where I think all of us could potentially focus.

Number one, precisely because law enforcement is often determined at the state and local level, I think it would be productive for the Justice Department, governors, mayors to work with law enforcement about training at the state and local levels in order to reduce the kind of mistrust in the system that sometimes currently exists. 

When I was in Illinois, I passed racial profiling legislation, and it actually did just two simple things.  One, it collected data on traffic stops and the race of the person who was stopped.  But the other thing was it resourced us training police departments across the state on how to think about potential racial bias and ways to further professionalize what they were doing. 

And initially, the police departments across the state were resistant, but actually they came to recognize that if it was done in a fair, straightforward way that it would allow them to do their jobs better and communities would have more confidence in them and, in turn, be more helpful in applying the law.  And obviously, law enforcement has got a very tough job.
So that’s one area where I think there are a lot of resources and best practices that could be brought to bear if state and local governments are receptive.  And I think a lot of them would be.  And let's figure out are there ways for us to push out that kind of training.

Along the same lines, I think it would be useful for us to examine some state and local laws to see if it -- if they are designed in such a way that they may encourage the kinds of altercations and confrontations and tragedies that we saw in the Florida case, rather than diffuse potential altercations. 

I know that there's been commentary about the fact that the "stand your ground" laws in Florida were not used as a defense in the case.  On the other hand, if we're sending a message as a society in our communities that someone who is armed potentially has the right to use those firearms even if there's a way for them to exit from a situation, is that really going to be contributing to the kind of peace and security and order that we'd like to see? 

And for those who resist that idea that we should think about something like these "stand your ground" laws, I'd just ask people to consider, if Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk?  And do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting Mr. Zimmerman who had followed him in a car because he felt threatened?  And if the answer to that question is at least ambiguous, then it seems to me that we might want to examine those kinds of laws.

Number three -- and this is a long-term project -- we need to spend some time in thinking about how do we bolster and reinforce our African American boys.  And this is something that Michelle and I talk a lot about.  There are a lot of kids out there who need help who are getting a lot of negative reinforcement.  And is there more that we can do to give them the sense that their country cares about them and values them and is willing to invest in them?

I'm not naïve about the prospects of some grand, new federal program.  I'm not sure that that’s what we're talking about here. But I do recognize that as President, I've got some convening power, and there are a lot of good programs that are being done across the country on this front.  And for us to be able to gather together business leaders and local elected officials and clergy and celebrities and athletes, and figure out how are we doing a better job helping young African American men feel that they're a full part of this society and that they've got pathways and avenues to succeed -- I think that would be a pretty good outcome from what was obviously a tragic situation.  And we're going to spend some time working on that and thinking about that. 

And then, finally, I think it's going to be important for all of us to do some soul-searching.   There has been talk about should we convene a conversation on race.  I haven't seen that be particularly productive when politicians try to organize conversations.  They end up being stilted and politicized, and folks are locked into the positions they already have.  On the other hand, in families and churches and workplaces, there's the possibility that people are a little bit more honest, and at least you ask yourself your own questions about, am I wringing as much bias out of myself as I can?  Am I judging people as much as I can, based on not the color of their skin, but the content of their character?  That would, I think, be an appropriate exercise in the wake of this tragedy.

And let me just leave you with a final thought that, as difficult and challenging as this whole episode has been for a lot of people, I don’t want us to lose sight that things are getting better.  Each successive generation seems to be making progress in changing attitudes when it comes to race.  It doesn’t mean we’re in a post-racial society.  It doesn’t mean that racism is eliminated.  But when I talk to Malia and Sasha, and I listen to their friends and I seem them interact, they’re better than we are -- they’re better than we were -- on these issues.  And that’s true in every community that I’ve visited all across the country.

And so we have to be vigilant and we have to work on these issues.  And those of us in authority should be doing everything we can to encourage the better angels of our nature, as opposed to using these episodes to heighten divisions.  But we should also have confidence that kids these days, I think, have more sense than we did back then, and certainly more than our parents did or our grandparents did; and that along this long, difficult journey, we’re becoming a more perfect union -- not a perfect union, but a more perfect union.

Desecration is in the Eye of the Beholder

Do this to my grave and I will haunt the Hell into you.

Some people decide what's gonna happen to their bodies when life departs, willing the afterdeath: cremation, burial, embalming, burning viking ship, and so on, hoping the dearly un-departed will live up to the legal document, maybe even the dying wish. I'll cop to having considered all of the above except embalment, and can add a few more to the list, like: worm-food, fertilizer, being planted at the base of a tree, and something like the Zoroastrian end. 

Some people live in fear that somehow their corpse will be defiled, their burial site will be desecrated, their remembrance dirtied. As an archaeologist I've witnessed cases and heard reliable tell of epidemics of graves razed, bones bulldozed, and I'd rather it not happen to my bones, but I don't lose sleep over it, or even comprehend it as more than an abstraction.

But the other day I witnessed the routine maintenance of a US President's grave, a founding father, beloved by Virginians. A guy pulled up, trimmed weeds with one gas-powered machine before blowing trimmings with another. I don't speak for any dead presidents, singular or en bloc, but the racket and fumes felt like desecration to me. Said president remains synonymous with ambitious and creative husbandry, the idealized American nation of farmers, and so it's hard to imagine the guy being OK with a noisome din and gassy humors of the modern maintenance regime.

I don't blame people like the guy in the photo, and if you recognize him, don't be mean. He's just doing his job, and there's a lot to do for only a few staff, not the dozens of slaves and overseers that did everything in the President's day. Blame goes to that culture which cannot get things done without real slavery, or a mix of wage slavery and polluting technology. Maybe someday we'll be forced to do things by hand again, kill the leaf blowers and employ corps of landscapers at fair wages to weed, rake, and in all manners tend the grounds and graves, but I'm not holding my breath (until I die). Until I can keep gas-scaping from tending my grave, I think I'd rather be cremated and put where the weedeaters and leafblowers cannot reach, where the noise blows in on the wind and not out on the exhaust.

The dead were not issued ear protection.

 
 . 

Sole-less Corporations

Devobootion

I'm pretty down-to-earth, and the most down and earthiest part of anyone is the soles of their feet, or the strip of rubber or leather or plastic that forms the soles of their shoes.

I've obsessed before about boots, from their importance to punk rock kids to their evolutionary diversification, to my propensity to buy cheap boots and leave their used-up husks as offerings in various places I worked. I've also ranted about the crappiness of corporations.

Now's the time to lay those threads together into a rope of righteous rage that I can use to flog the boot industry.

A year or so ago, having decided that not all my money is earmarked for food and housing and having run through my supply of hand-me-down boots from my dead dad, I decided to abandon my old policy of buying cheap-ass boots. I'd gotten some hand-me-down shoes from a cousin's boyfriend (who has better consumer awareness than I do, and apparently a larger clothing budget) that had held up pretty well, and there was a new REI store in town, so I went there instead of dropping the usual $35, and bought a pair that cost $130, the logic being that maybe they'd hold together 4 times longer than the cheap Hi-Techs (whose quality had diminished noticeably the last time I'd bought them), putting me ahead of the game. 

What I bought were Keens, famous for being able to handle large-caliber feet like mine (I have what Hawaiians call 'Luau feet,' and Americans generally refer to as 'duck feet,' wide if not clownishly long). The sole began to peel away the first time I wore them. To REI's credit, they allowed me to return them slightly used simply because they suck, no further explanation required.

Boots by Robber Soul, be sure to avoid this patent no.

Having returned my unintentional flip-flops, I turned around and chose a similarly priced pair of Merrills. I know that 130 bucks is not even halfway up the price scale, but I still held hope that they would not be utter crap. But they were. The first photo of this post shows what happens to the sides, which I suppose the corporate PR tools will try to spin as the result of my girthy feet, but I ain't buying that. Besides, the shot above shows what happened to the soles weeks after buying this pair: chunks of sole missing, red stuff wearing away to reveal sof grey foam less than a millimeter below. Besides which, the "waterproof" label is a lie, even before the sides split. 

I guess I could have taken this pair back to REI, but I was busy and the laces still worked, my feet still held within the boot more or less, and I had another newly acquired pair of boots that I could use in situations rougher than cubicle floors and long plastic hallways. Because the new pair were steel-toed, they were considered safety equipment, and therefore part of the $250 or so that they cost was reimbursed by my work. Hiking for miles in high-rise steel-toed boots sucks, though, and inevitably, the soles have started to do this:

"Hi, I'm Dick, spokesman for the Outsourced Sole Council of AmeriCo"

This most expensive pair, by the way, are Danners. I lack the funding to sample all of the boot manufacturers in America (by which, I mean China), but it seems like I will find nothing better without taking out a mortgage. This is a central commandment of life in 21st Century Americorp: Thou Shalt Pay Exhorbitant Prices for Premium Products. [The corollary to which is, All Non-Premium Products Are Shitty.]

Some would say that I should not blame Keen, or Merrill, or Danner, but the sole manufacturer, which happens to be Vibram. Long ago, that name was the gold standard of boot-soles. Rugged, oil-resistant, non-slip. The Danner's Vibrams may live up to that promise, but it won't do much good if they cannot stay attached to the midsole. The ones on the Merrills were slippery as hell even in light rain, and wore out after a few miles. I would not let Vibram off the hook, but neither will I blame them entirely.

Our system of manufacturing--by which I mean our system of contracting the lowest bidder somewhere across the globe and then slapping an American label on it--has lost its soul. If it were just boots, it would be bad enough, but this extends all the way up to the Boeing 787. If you are a middle class or lower consumer unwilling to mortgage your future, you are doomed to getting sub-par goods while the owners of the companies that 'make' them try to make par on some tropical golf course. Maybe it's time to re-aquaint these soul-less robber barons with the steel toe.

Or maybe, something less drastic, something less demanding of my tired and aching feet. Last week, finding myself in a far-flung place (the northwestermost portion of the lower 48, but not the contiguous 48), and done with fieldwork for the moment, that old urge to sacrifice a pair of spent boots struck again. And so somewhere in the 6 square miles or so of Point Roberts lies the pair of Merrills. As I placed them in a thorny thicket, I had no particular prayer--bunions for the 1% and bankruptcy for the offending companies, or even return of the soul of American industry--just a sense of relief, of ditching the silly dream that I could spend a middling amount and get a decent product. 

Back home again after the trip, I bought another pair of cheap boots. Let's see how long they last, and where they end up...







 

Your Team is Called What?!

 

I don't think I've ever blogged about sports, and I guess I'm not really doing so now, but the upcoming NFL playoff game between the two Washingtons does get me thinking about teams, mascots, and logos.

Seattle's logo, according to a history thereof (here) was borrowed from Kwakiutl style artists representation of the osprey, or seahawk. It does not completely follow orthodox Kwakiutl style, and has even less to do with Duwamish or other tribes local to Seattle, but it's pretty recognizable as indigenous-ish Northwest style. Ospreys do live here, and although I don't believe any local tribes helped with the design (or collect royalties), the worst you could say is that the Seahawks football team appropriated the style. On the other hand, you could say that imitation is flattery.

But it's hard to find something good to say about the other Washington's team. Sure, the image of the Native American is not too obviously racist-looking. But the name? You may have noticed that none of the other teams are named for racist slurs. I checked, the Browns have an alibi and the Vikings logo is merely ridiculous. 

I know that NFL team owners are not the type of politically correct guys to go changing a name because it's offensive, but geez. I mean, when DC was the murder capital of the country, the basketball team changed from Bullets to Wizards. Football fans love tradition, maybe, but I'm guessing they'd still root for their team if they weren't known by an insulting name.


 .