Snowed in along the dirty, sacred river: #zombiesnopocalypse2016/Marchof the politicos

Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage. -Ambrose Bierce

 

Genius is an African who dreams up snow. - Vladimir Nabokov

1. #zombiesnowpocalypse2016

pic by Daniel Lewis Sherrill, a Kroger near UofL

 The truth is, I don't mind being snowed in as long as I have a few necessaries at hand:

• coffee, to help me wake up;
• a place to write and supplies to write on and with;
• books and music (and instruments) to keep me entertained;
• simple food (rice beans, chili, PBandJ, and some kind of fruit and veggies) to stay alive;
• pipe tobacco;
• water, to stay hydrated; and
• bourbon -- because, well, BOURBON.

And now that #zombiesnopocalypse2016 is upon us in full, my bearish tendencies to hibernate with my supplies kicks in.

Winter in the Lower Ohio River Valley is a contest between those things that force me outside of the house and my body's hatred of the cold -- as well as everyone else's general inability to drive in inclement weather.

When I lived further north, in the tundra of northwest Illinois* I felt much safer going outside during snow events because people were far more pragmatic. There was none of the running after bread, toilet paper, and milk when reports of another snow dump were announced. People prepared calmly, deliberately, and still managed to get out for church, the coffee shop, or to have a few drinks at the bar. The only thing missing were the warm weather tourists making their way from Chicago to Galena to visit artisan shops and a house Ulysses S. Grant used to live in. **   Locals only. Very quiet. And of those, only the ones who really know how to drive go out. Sometimes, that just means the workers with the street and county highway departments.

Now that I'm back home in the land carved out by water, I battle the cold getting into by bones and staying there (whether I'm indoors or not), those obligations that drive me out into the weather, and people's general inability to handle driving in snow and ice. I'm less nervous about the general conditions than I am the lack of someone else's insurance coverage. Generally, I stick to my natural inclinations whenever possible. I'm safely wrapped away in the bunker down here in the south end of Louisville with all of the above mentioned supplies, Amanda, our dog Gypsi and Wasabi the Cat.

It's important to take care and appreciate the little things. My employment outlook of late has not been great. I'm putting together some freelance work and I'm teaching two days a week. This leaves me plenty of time for other things, but sometimes other things don't pay the power company. I'm looking for opportunities and remain optimistic, though. There's no reliable gravy train in this gig economy -- this part-time worker's paradise*** that President Obama and the Democratic Party count as an economic recovery. Getting by means living by piece work. I don't mind it so much, but it seems selfish to have to have three jobs when there are people who don't have one.

But, that's the capitalist system for you. Ensuring that you work harder for less so that the exceptionally rich don't have to work at all -- leaving them time to take care all that tedious domestic governing and foreign policy muckety muck.^

It's important to take care and appreciate the little things. I have shelter, and a woman who loves me. I'm not starving, and I do get to indulge in some creature comforts. Happy is a surprisingly simply state of being.

2. March of the Politicos

Life never ceases to be strange.  But I suppose if I were the sort of person who could keep my elephant mouth^^ shut, these kinds of things wouldn't happen.

The first time I can recall my tendency to fill empty space with the sound of my voice was during my undergraduate years at Morehead State University. One of the more radical faculty members of the English Department^^^ was trying to organize a LGBT organization for students, faculty, and staff. This was during the mid-90's before the alphabet soup was truly a part of the cultural language.  The all-inclusive buzz term was "alternative lifestyle."+ Patty was looking for supportive people across the campus to come to the first meeting. She asked me to come out and show my support. So I did. There was maybe 30 people in attendance. Looking around, I saw that I was the only non-queer in attendance. Patty opened up the meeting, but no one would talk. This was Eastern Kentucky, and even though there was a large community of gay, lesbian, and bi-sexual folks there, it was still not safe to be TOO out. No one would talk. No one offered ideas. It was very quiet and very awkward.

So I spoke. I don't remember what I said, except that I qualified my position as someone supportive of everyone's right to be happy and be who they are without judgement. I can get a little fire-brand when I get warmed up -- I was probably supposed to be a preacher -- and by the time the meeting was over we decided on an initial course of action and the next social activity (a movie night).

I was also unanimously elected President of MSU's Alternative Lifestyle Organization (ALSO).

My tenure was short for a couple of reasons. Part of it was I didn't feel like I was the person who needed to be the voice of the queer community in MSU. Someone queer needed to be the voice of the queer community at MSU. The other issue was that I was already on the path of what would end up being a very messy and painful divorce, and when I went home and told my daughter's mother that I'd been elected President of the campus alternative lifestyle organization.

Her response: "Are you gay?"
Me: "No. Do I have to be?"
Her response: "Sigh."

Needless to say, it was one more nail in a coffin of a marriage.

That sort of thing happens to me on a not-regular basis. I open my big mouth and end up being responsible for something.

Part of the burden of being a vocal (some might say articulate) and opinionated (read: stubborn) person is that sometimes you have to step up to the line you mark in the sand. It's not enough to talk the talk. You have to walk the walk, too.  And because one of the many things I love going off about is politics++, people sometimes make assumptions about me.

What confounds me, though, is how, when I am

1. Branch Secretary of the Kentucky Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World, 
2. openly critical of all politicians and both major parties, and 
3. openly cynical about the usefulness of politicians and government in general

I have been asked to run for a public office not ONCE, but TWICE.

The first time happened when my local metro councilman, Dan Johnson, was up for re-election. He's been a metro councilman for District 21 for 30 years, and is generally thought of as a nice, but not terribly bright guy. He gets elected  because he's a registered democrat in a traditionally democratic part of town in a generally democratic leaning city. I won't go through all of the issues with Dan here, but you get the impression after a while that he makes most of his decisions driving home or between games of Texas Hold'em on his smart phone. I was approached over social media by some people in the neighborhood, asking me to run. I turned them down because they were very clearly mistaken. They assumed that because I'm in my early 40's and openly critical of an incumbent democrat that I must be a libertarian. I'm not.

So, when a local mover and shaker who I know casually -- and who I like, really -- wanted a meeting with me to talk about ways to take back the Democratic Party, I was naturally curious. I broke with the Democratic Party after it was clear to me that they had broken with me and with everyone else it claims to be "there" for. In most every way, they are WORSE than the Republican Party.

He asked me to file and run to be a legislative chair for the Kentucky Democratic Party -- the very party whose malfeasance and ineptitude handed the governor's mansion to a tin pot little fascist who, contrary to his party affiliation, really isn't a Republican. He's a far-right neoliberal. He's the newest face in the rise of the American nuevo-nazi party. And I don't feel like I'm going overboard with that description. Republicans, at the end of the day, tend to be pragmatic. Yes, they're ideological... but to a point. Bevin wants to push austerity measures on Kentucky because he has a politician's taste for power and a zealot's belief that God is on his side -- regardless whether the deity endorses him or not.

This mover and shaker is trying to fix the Democratic Party from the inside, and I wish him well. And I won't lie -- I was tempted. He was ok when I told him I'm a Wob. He didn't even blink when I announced my anti-capitalist stance.

But he was stymied when I told him I'm not a registered Democrat and that I was unwilling to change my affiliation for the sake of expediency and the hope of fixing a broken political party.

I wished him well and we parted on good terms. I told him I'd still think about it, but I suspect he's already made other plans.
______________________________________
*Mount Carroll, IL, I love you. Hopefully I'll get up that way when the spring thaw hits.
** He was born in Pt. Pleasant, OH, near where I grew up. Not to be confused with Point Pleasant, WV, home of The Mothman Festival.
*** The Democratic Party is far more dangerous than the Republican Party. You can see the GOP coming. They don't hide their contempt for working people -- which honestly is why I think so many working and working poor people vote Republican in spite of the fact that Republican policies harm working people.  At least with the GOP, you know you have no standing. The Democratic Party has the same Neoliberal agenda as the GOP. The difference is, they'll try and be your friend before they pick your pocket.
^ Plutocracy
^^ One my father's favorite tirades: "Your elephant mouth is going/has gotten/just got your chipmunk ass in trouble!" He was a master of the mixed-up metaphor. But the tone carried his message quite well.
^^^ Patty didn't get tenure and ended up going to Bowling Green State University in Ohio.
+It was an incredibly problematic term that lended too much authority to the narrative that sexuality is a choice. Patty acknowledged this to me once... but she saw it as a transitional term -- a way to warm misinformed cis-normative (to use the current term for heterosexual) folks into a rational discussion. And since she was/is a lesbian and a long time activist, I ceded to her view on the matter.
++ Politics is the best blood-sport going. There are no roughing the passer rules, no boundaries besides the dark imagination, and the clearest image of who people are when they are devoid of the rules of etiquette.
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Dirty River Media: An Argument For Muckraking

You can't buy a bag of peanuts in this town without someone writing a song about you. -- Charles Foster Kane (Citizen Kane, 1941)

There are a lot of ways to practice the art of journalism, and one of them is to use your art like a hammer to destroy the right people — who are almost always your enemies, for one reason or another, and who usually deserve to be crippled, because they are wrong." - Hunter S. Thompson


 

Julius Chambers, maybe the first muckraker

The first reported use of the term "muckraker"* was by no less than President Teddy Roosevelt in 1906. During a speech, he used it in reference to William Randolph Hearst and Hearst's brand of yellow journalism**. Usage of the term grew and came into include Julius Chambers -- maybe the first real muckraker -- Nelly Bly, Upton Sinclair, and Ambrose Bierce, among others.***

Muckraking is part of the grand tradition in journalism that's dying at the hands of corporate owned media. Keep in mind, Dear Friends and Readers, that no less than 6 corporations own most of the large market media in this country... and that's just TV and radio. Newspapers are corporate owned as well, split between Gannett, The McClatchy Co., Hearst, Cox Media, Media News Co., and Village Voice Media (which has eaten up most of what used to be the alternative weeklies.

Part of the problem is people sometimes confuse muckraking -- which sometimes rears its head under the more polite hat of "investigative journalism" -- with yellow journalism^ -- which is alive and well, as well as well funded.

Another problem is people -- including some who claim to be journalists -- buy into the idea, often espoused by anyone who doesn't agree with the particular brand of facts^^ posited by a reporter or talking head^^^, that journalism ought to strive to be "objective."

That, Dear Friends and Readers, is complete rhetorical bollix.

Journalism can't be objective because its first allegiance ought to be to the truth. The role of the 4th Estate is to drag stories out into the light and hold our elected officials' feet to the proverbial fire. It should not ever be Public Relations for any political party or politician, and should look at everything through a critical lens. And regardless of what anyone tells you, being critical means having an agenda. 

My recent split with LEO Weekly (one of the few alt weeklies not owned by Village Voice Media) occurred over a disagreement on how a particular story ought to have been portrayed.  Another aspect -- which I will call coincidental because it's more of a feeling than something I can document -- is that from their perspective, I got greedy. My work was considered exemplary by the managing editor until I had the temerity to ask if I could be more than a freelancer. After that, all of a sudden, I was breaching journalistic standards.

I'm a contrarian. I'll admit that. But having a natural tendency to disagree is not the same thing as a breach of "the basic tenets of journalism"+ On the contrary, it makes me a good muckraker. You have to have a contrary personality and a solid sense of self to be willing to rub academic department chairs, deans, editors, and politicians the wrong way. A good friend of mine once called this my tendency to "poke the bear." 

And that, Dear Friends and Readers, is what I intend to continue doing.

That's why I'm going to be finding my own press credentials and starting my own endeavor, called Dirty River Media. This will include a few projects, including publishing and podcasting, and other enterprises will hopefully add to the already existing push back against monopolized media and milquetoast reporting.  One project, The Kentucky Muck Podcast, will be a weekly show about local, regional, and state issues, as well as arts and culture, that need to see some light. That's what muckraking is, and that's what I do better than most anyone around. 

I promise my reporting will be honest, authentic, and researched; and I hope it will be entertaining. Stay tuned.

_______________________________________________________________

*Defined as - raking through the muck and finding the real story.

**Hearst more or less invented large scale yellow journalism, the tradition of which is carried on by Fox News, HLN, and MSNBC most effectively.

***People like this are my heroes. So are Ida B Wells, Walt Whitman, Utah Phillips, Hunter S. Thompson, and Pete Rose. Not necessarily in that order. Look 'em up.

^ I just felt like using a bold yellow font. That's one kind of editorial decision that even schooled journalists are comfortable making.

^^ Facts are difficult to find and almost always difficult to use in any critical sense... and generally get confused with "opinion" which everyone has according to one smelly metaphor.

^^^ Talking head -- no, not the band. talking heads read you a news script that they may or may not have had any part of putting together. Probably not, more than likely.

 + The same editor who accused me of breaking faith with "the basic tenets of journalism" is the very same one who quoted HST to me by saying "objective journalism is bullshit."  You can't have it both ways. Either you write something honest and authentic and true, or you write shit. 

The Puritans Never Did This, Part 1: Under an Overload, Loading in, and The Dirty River Press

1. Under and Overload, Loading In, and The Dirty River Press

It's been a while since I sat down to write about life here along the dirty, sacred river. This past academic semester has been doing a number on your humble narrator -- teaching 7 first year college writing classes is more than this fuzzy fella has done a while. I was (and am) grateful to have the work. After a long and interminable summer of not working, I took on what I knew was going to be entirely too much for two very important reasons:

1. to catch up on the bills that had piled up over the summer, and
2. because that nagging, annoying remainder of my socialized male ego told me I needed to in order to hold my head up.

The first of these is self-evident. Even in these, the crumbling days of Babylon, the utilities must be paid and the money My Own True Love brings in will only stretch so far... in spite of us being pretty good at rubbing pennies together.

The second of the above listed reasons for teaching entirely too much for too little pay is the one that has made this semester physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually draining.

While I know that I have perfected the Art of Loafing into... well, an Art... I have never minded working when I know what it is I'm working for. Even in the life of a matriculated conscientious malingerer,  sweat equity is a necessary component. It's impossible to be an anarchist and not recognize that life is a DIY process. Where I start to begrudge work is when I feel like it is NOT for me, or for things, people, and institutions I that I reject as having any place in my life. And while I love teaching -- and I expect that I always will, in some way, be teaching -- one of the couple of things this semester has reminded me of is that in order to actually ensure some future stability as well as my sanity, it's a bad idea to depend on teaching in the crumbling institution of higher yearning for anything more than a temporary stop gap between feast and famine.

And so, Dear Readers, Friends, and Fellow Travellers, I am set to announce The Dirty River Press:

I had been tossing around an old idea... that one being Iron Belly Press. I'd been carrying that idea around since the demise of The One-Legged Cow Press more than a few years ago. You'd think I would have learned my lesson then.

Well, I didn't. I also decided that if this was to be a new venture... Amanda, brave woman that she is, is undertaking this with me in full partnership and commiseration... and that if this was going to be emblematically, symbolically, and in actuality tied to my present and our future, then it must tied spiritually and ritualistically. It must be embodied of new myths and new stories. And here, Dear Readers, is where I find myself: sitting along the dirty sacred river, home of the Gator Men, dead sharks, polluted waters, abandoned pirate ships, and water buried towns.

We don't have a website yet, but we have a space That's right, an actual space, located in The Mammoth an old paper warehouse located on S. 13th Street here in River City. Dirty River Press is sharing the space with fellow worker John Paul Wright and railroadmusic.org, as well as the Kentucky IWW. This is a collaborative space. A raw canvas if you will, full of artist studios and good ideas and powerful world creating energies.  I'm in the process of pricing used off-set printers and will be acquiring one soon. Our first run will hopefully happen around my 42nd birthday, February 20th, 2015. Dirty River Press will specialize in limited editions of hand made chapbooks, broadsides, and pamphlets. We'll publish a small catalog of work, including my own -- because being an anarchist means owning the means of production, even when you are producing art. We will also be setting up shop as a union printer in order to support the literary purpose of the press.

We also have a Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/dirtyriverpress

I'm pretty excited about this. You don't need to wait for a new life. Make a new life.

I have to sign off for now. But expect the forthcoming:

1.  Part 2: Black Friday Protesting Along The Dirty Sacred, River
2. An audio recording. Very Very Soon.

Thanks for reading, and for hanging around.

Up The Dirty, Sacred River May Day and Mulch

First of all, Fellow Workers of the World, let me wish you a happy May Day! For  those of you who may be unaware, May 1st is when people around the world with a sense of history celebrate the contributions that labor -- both organized and oppressed -- have made to the world. May Day resonates with members of different unions in jobs both industrial and office around the world. May Day resonates with those who keep a careful eye on history and another on current events beyond the catapulted propoganda we are assaulted with from memeworld*.  

The above image is of an 1886 flyer. Working people in this country were fighting for an 8 hour work day -- which at that time, was labled dirty and dastardly socialism.  May Day was an attempt to organize previously unorganized and already unionized (aka:  harrassed) behind the single idea that people who work deserve to be treated with dignity and respect regardless of the work they do... and that the people who actually do the work deserve to see the most benefit and the most reward from that labor. 

Friends of mine and Fellow Wobs are gathering all over  the world to celebrate today. They will sing songs -- new and old -- and put out the call yet again that the only people who can fix the problems of the world is EVERYBODY. Today, if all goes well, the Kentucky General Membership Branch of the IWW (the Industrial Workers of the World... The ONE BIG UNION) should be officially chartered. Some fellow workers are gathering in Indianapolis to celebrate and remember today - and I am with them in spirit.

I am here, on the outskirts of Losantiville, planting flowers.

Digging in the dirt, and laying down fresh mulch in front of My Dear Sweet Ma's place is how am choosing to celebrate May Day. It is a small thing. Certaily it is not the sort of thing I need to assume is going to be willfully ignored by the news media, as I am sure that any May Day celebration here or abroad will probably be. Planting some forget-me-nots and a few bushes may not seem like an appropriate way to celebrate what I consider to to be a historic and important day.

On the other hand, I can think of no better metaphor for making the world a better place for everyone than to plant living things in the hope that they will grow.  The actual work of the world is like this: small and deliberate and full of care. The actual work of the world that will ultimately change the world does not include bombs or bullets; bombs and bullets fail in the long scope of history.  The actual work of the world is some people singing while others plant quiet flowers.

Gator People Live In the River, Interlude: Words, Work, Wobs, and The Root of Misunderstanding.

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. - Wittgenstein 

I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant." --  Robert McCloskey

I got a good mind to join a club and beat you over the head with it. - Rufus T. Firefly, Duck Soup

The more I write the more I run into the same  problems. I see it when I teach, too. There's a limit to language.

As a writer and sometimes teacher of the craft, I find this disconcerting. I remind students there are currently over one million words in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and so there are certainly enough words to convey whatever it is we need to convey at any given time.

And then I find myself talking politics with friends.

If there is any topic that will completely unspool the language, it is politics.

  

If there's another, it would be religion, but there's not enough room on this blog to cover that one, and only one picture of monkeys that I liked.

The problem with politics is that by its very nature it ends up covering everything that happens when two or more people get together and do more than sit in guarded silence. (This trick has saved more than one family get together and has curtailed more wars than are recorded in the history of the world.) When two or more people get together and agree on everything by saying nothing it's called tolerance. When two or more people get together and actually speak honestly, it's called "getting political."

It won't surprise anyone who knows me or who has stumbled on my scribbles from time to time that I am something of a political critter. That is to say, I distrust politicians and the entire system for which they stand, but I am motivated to at least discuss my views and to live in accordance with my high falutin ideals as best I can. Recently, after being more or less a Wob without a chapter, I found some people in Louisville who are trying to get a Kentucky Chapter of the IWW up and going.  And since I have been trying to place my actions and my words in the same time zone, I decided it was worth checking out.

That I self-identify as a Wob is nothing new. I long ago discovered, over the course of 10,000 meaningless jobs, that the employing class and the working class have nothing in common. I figured out growing up in the 1980's that it is never prosperity that trickles down. Until moving to Louisville, though, it has been impossible for me to find a group of Fellow Wobs. So I'm pretty excited about the prospect of helping get the chapter up and going and finding useful trouble to get into. Or at least find some way to be useful.

I posted as such on my Facebook page -- that's what we do now instead of yelling in the streets -- which led to an interesting, albeit short discussion with a good friend on what it is means to be a Wob.

When he asked me what the IWW was, I told him it was a union dedicated to the proposition that workers are entitled to the rewards of their labor and that people are more able to control their destinies than politicians and authoritarian assholes.

He asked for a bit more information, so I sent him the Preamble to the IWW Constitution. The Preamble is the pill people on the fence have the most trouble with. For those of you who don't understand the fence metaphor, insert the never ending meme from The Matrix:

Nope. I'm not this bad ass. It's a metaphor, kids.

He responded that it sounded too much like Marxism and Socialism to him. This response didn't surprise me for a variety of reasons, but mostly because terms like "Marxism" and "Socialism" are fundamentally misunderstood and generally used out of context. But then, so is "Democracy" and "Capitalism."

So, a bit of definition and clarification is in order:

• Marxism boiled down: the people who do the work are entitled to reap rewards, and should own the means of production in a stateless society. (Note: Marx was referring to an agrarian economy.)
• Socialism boiled down: people should not be exploited by those who control  the necessary utilities of every day life and should, therefore own and control those utilities.
• Democracy boiled down: One PERSON, One Vote. Not to be confused with a plutocracy masking itself as democracy.
• Capitalism boiled down: the accrual of capital (i.e. wealth, i.e., the means of creating wealth, i.e, the product of labor sold for the purposes of creating wealth) by any means necessary. Not to be confused with democracy, which posits that all people are equal. Capitalism (as described by Adam Smith) means there is always a boss and that boss will always profit more off the collective labor than the individual laborers will.
• Anarchism boiled down: As U. Utah Phillips said, it is an adjective describing the tension between personal autonomy and political authority. Specifically, it means "No Ruler." It only works when people get together and make things happen without the state or the boss.

My understanding of these terms is the result of reading Marx, Smith, Friedman, Zinn, and Chomsky. Also Emma Goldman. Also Albert Parsons. Also Walt Whitman, who explained the high hopes of Democracy in his poetry better than any politician or historian ever could. Also numerous other writers whose names escape me. Also listening to the the music of Joe Hill, Ralph Chaplin, Utah Phillips, Hazel Dickens, Woodie Guthrie, Jack Elliot, and Rosalie Sorrels. Also listening to the stories of people I have run across and whose stories filter through my bones daily: Roger from Grand Rapids, Cletus the Dog Man, Joe from Kansas City, and T.J. down in New Orleans.

The issue, though, is not that people don't understand these terms. The problem is that we have ceded control over the language we think in over to those whose self-interest is more important than the goodwill of all. A hand full of multi-national corporations own 99% of the media in this country. Their first goal is not to create an informed public, but to make a profit. Sometimes they act liberal. Sometimes they act conservative. But in the end, it is all about profit and until we decide we own our words like we ought to own the means of production, then all of our conversations will fall mute and we will continue to tolerate the despots and dictators ... those appointed as well as those who are supposedly elected.

Intermezzo: Don't Mourn (Joe Hill and the Slow Enlightenment)

Now the boss the law is stretching /Bulls and pimps he's fetching/And they are a fine collection/ As only Jesus knows. -- Joe Hill, Where the Fraser River Flows



97 years ago today the state of Utah assassinated Joe Hill by firing squad after a kangaroo conviction for the murder of Salt Lake City grocer John Morrison and his son. According to legend, his final word was "Fire!"

I use the term assassinate deliberately. The evidence against Hill was flimsy, and the only reason they bothered with the firing squad was because the first bullet intended to silence him without the bother of a public trial didn't do its job.

After, according to the legend, Joe's ashes were sent to every state in the union-- except for the state of Utah, at Joe's request; he didn't want his remains to ever exist in the same state that murdered him.

Those of you familiar with his legacy know that his final exhortation to
his fellow Wobblies was not to waste time mourning for him, but to organize. Joe Hill believed that an organized and honest union was the only thing keeping working people from being exploited by organized capital -- those who get rich by mooching off the sweat of others than by their own work.

Today isn't the only day Joe Hill crosses my mind, of course. I enjoy the music he left behind -- those old Wobbly standards, many of them written to parody religious hymns -- and I thought about him quite a bit when I was Out and About earlier this year. I wrote earlier in the year about Cletus the Dog Man, who I met in Rapid City South Dakota; he was one of many I ran into or saw or overheard who were simply out looking for work. Most of them had no interest in leaving the place they thought of as home. But they felt like they had no choice.

That's part of the impossible situation created by those who have political power and influence in order to keep those of us who really have the power from ever being able to exercise it. If there's no work where you live, you're supposed to have the guts to pack and go find it -- as long as you have the gas money or ability to travel, of course. And if you can't do that, well, you're shit out of luck. The Michelle Bachmans and the Rand Pauls of the world would say that maybe God doesn't want you to have a job.

And don't forget the other caveat: if you DO travel around looking for work, don't travel by bus, because that means you're white and/ or ghetto trash and automatically a homicidal maniac and rapist.

Or, as I was mistaken for twice, Mexican.

In other words: work and pray,live on hay, you'll eat pie in the sweet by an by.

I do appreciate Joe's sense of humor. Though fewer people know the hymns, the parody is still a good one, and the satire is apt. The 21st Century is shaping up to be a repeat of history we've already lived but seemed to have learned nothing from.

Good thing I'm learning to play guitar again. There are plenty of songs that still need to be sung, and plenty of stories and poems,too. We're not done yet.

Location:Louisville, KY

Two Clips: A Story and A Song

Some Prominence

Done Laid Around

Eastward-ish - Intermezzo: Call Me Noman (Erasure of Old Self)

Bismillah* your old self
to find your real name. - Rumi


I felt like a dying clown
But with a streak of Rin Tin Tin - The Who


My name is Ozymandias, king of kings!
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! - Percy Bysshe Shelley


It's not completely unheard of to lose your ass at a casino. I mean, it happens all the time. In any movie or television show set in Vegas, if there's a scene in a casino, you've seen someone acting like they've lost their ass. For every story you hear of someone winning at a casino -- it does happen because too much losing is bad for business -- there are countless people who lost their ass ... or more... because the house always wins.

What is, perhaps, a bit more unusual is to completely lose your identity.

Lost. Stolen. Some cosmic message in the form of a pickpocket. Whatever.

The day began on a simple premise. My friend Jamie is, apparently, something of a card sharpie at the blackjack tables and can turn a little bit of money into a slightly larger amount of money in a matter of hours. She wanted to go, partially to have something to do, but also so she could win some money to add to my travel fund.  A dear heart, really. She even offered to stake me some money so I could play myself.

Now, all lines being arbitrary... because, let's be honest, they mostly are... I told her I didn't like the idea of gambling with someone else's money. This, she thought, was completely ridiculous. It was no big deal, she maintained. If I lost my stake, she would be able to make it back. And if I happened to win, I count it as a contribution to the travel fund. And since all lines are, really, for the most part, arbitrary...

I thought, what the hell.

Now, I should also mention that while I am no expert at the game of Blackjack. I have some experience at it.  Actually, other than the horses, the game of 21 is my preferred method of itching the gambling urge. And while the money is nice, it's the adrenaline rush that tends to drive me in these situations. I like blackjack because not only is it an easy game to learn, but it also satisfies a certain egalitarian impulse: you always play against the house, not against your fellow players.

In theory. Apparently there's all sorts of things you can do to put the squeeze on your fellow players and press your own advantage. I will admit a certain ignorance regarding this sort of table etiquette. There are a a few often thought of "hard and fast" rules in how you play the came, like Hit on 16 and Stay on 17. But what they don't tell you is that those rules are as much to the houses's advantage as the odds on a Roulette Wheel. Yes, there are times when it's goo to hit on 16. There are also times when it's good to stay on 14. Because in spite of the seeming simplicity of the rules, the cars are still fickle, they're still shuffled, and they still behave in a random way.

I was doing okay for a while, and managed to a but more than double the stake Jamie had given me. Jamie was doing pretty well herself, for the most part, but she kept giving me advice... which was distracting her from her game. The table was pretty calm, a nice flow was going and the winning was spreading itself around... which is what, in the best of all situations, you can hope for. Then a high rolling Ethiopian, who played loud and nervous and talked smack to distract the order of the game, came and sat in the chair to my right, putting him on the dealer's left and in the first position for cards. I managed to win a few more deals, even getting a Blackjack (a face card and an ace) or two. The more I won, the more smack he talked. He was betting heavy, and had clearly had a number in mind he needed to hit in order to confirm his manhood.

I was up, and the Ethiopian started winning as well. Then he finally hit his number and left. A few more hands were dealt, Jamie was up, so was the other player at the table, and things were going pretty well.

And came The Cooler.

We cycled through two different dealers, both of whom did a good job of spreading the wealth around whenever possible. The third dealer, however -- a cold skinny bitch with fake eyelashes and a pre-teen's love of blue eye shadow -- killed the table almost immediately. And between here and other pre-teen who felt like he'd gained some experience at the $1 buy in tables (There's a 25 cent table fee with each hand. This means that in order to win $1, you have to pay $1.25. To win at all, you have to bet in $5 increments... which means you might as well find a $5 table. But it's good for the kiddies that don't want to feel like they're losing a lot and who never paid attention in math class.)

I lost my buffer and my stake pretty quickly. It was clear that Jamie wasn't finished, though so I told her I'd get some air and wait. 

I went outside and smoked. I could've smoked inside the casino, but it was nice day outside, and I wanted to sit outside and get away from the sound of the slot machines. One of the reasons casinos can afford to let people win at cards is because their money is in slot machines. And spare me the amazing stories of people who have won masses of cash sitting for hours sipping a mojito, smoking a carton of Virginia Slims, and squinting aggressively at the machine in front of them. The odds are always in the house's favor. Yes, they have to let people win so people will walk through the doors to lose and still feel like they had a reasonable chance. But if playing Blackjack is an egalitarian activity, owning a casino is akin to being a successful drug dealer. They ALWAYS come back.

So I smoked, I engaged in some constructive people watching, and felt pretty good. 

Then I noticed my journal was not in my back pocket where I had thought it was.

My first thought was: "I can't find my journal!"

Then I remembered: both my driver's license -- my only form of picture ID -- and my bus pass were in my journal as well.

Did I drop it? I thought about the last time I'd seen it. That was lunch.Sometimes I take it out and set it the table, along with my cell phone, when I eat. I went back to all the placed I'd been. I went to the casino restaurant were we ate lunch. They told me anything left at the table would have been turned into lost and found. I asked where that was located, and was told that I could talk to any white-shirted security officer and they would help me.

So I found the nearest rent-a-cop and described my journal, it's important contents, and asked if he could check. He did. There was nothing in lost and found matching the description. I back tracked every step I could remember. Nothing anywhere. Then I went to the parts of the casino I didn't even go to, around the slots where the wrinkled old ladies say smoking near tobacco-less cigarettes and sipping Diet Coke. Nothing. I found a second security guard. He checked over the radio. Nada. I went to find Jamie and found her at another table, doing very well. Between hands I asked if she had it... maybe, I thought, it slid out of my pocket when I left the table. She didn't have it, and gave the key to the car just in case it slipped out of my pocket there, which I was sure it hadn't.  It wasn't in the car.

At this point I asked another security guard and after the third check, I was sent to a house phone. Maybe some luck?

No. Zack, who was very apologetic, took down my contact information and said they'd call me if it turned up.

I ended up having to get Jamie to take me back to hers and Dave's place to see if maybe, just maybe I had forgotten it there. I knew I didn't because I don't forget my journal. Any one who knows me knows this about me.

Jamie said she had a good feeling, but I didn't share the sentiment. She felt bad because the casino had been her idea, but she didn't need to. Either I lost it because I wasn't paying attention, or it was stolen by someone who mistook it for a wallet or pocket book.

All they'd find is my nearly indistinguishable scrawls and scribbles, my bus pass, my Illinois Driver's License, and my IWW Red Card... which is behind on stamps because I haven't paid dues since hitting the road. Then it occurred to me that if it HAD been stolen, the most they could hope for was to steal my identity.

Let them try, I thought. My credit rating is so bad at this point they'll lose money trying to make it work. If some undocumented worker tried to steal my name for employment, even that record is spotty. Shit. Let 'em have the collectors and parasites that have my name on some list somewhere. Let 'em have my student loan debt.

I drank a beer, ate two cookies, and began to breathe. Yes, breathe. When people panic, usually the first thing they stop paying attention to is the one thing that, without it, they will not be alive. Air. There's a reason that every form of meditation there is begins with a breathing exercise of some kind. Breathing is fundamental. You can have water and food, but without air, it's meaningless. It's something I've fallen back on when I've been on the road and have to change my travel plans at the last minute. Like leaving St. Louis and going to Nashville. Like going to Colorado instead of Salt Lake City. Breathe. Adapt.

Losing my license and bus pass -- which only had a week left on it -- is not fundamentally different from any other change in plans. People place more importance on having photo ID because society is constantly insisting that we prove who we are, that we defend our right to belong, that we identify as one of the group and take our place among them, happy in our very specific anonymity.

I was annoyed at the loss of the journal, my notes since San Francisco, the various bits of poems I hadn't gotten a chance to type out. But I've been writing long enough to know there will always be more words, and the poems... well, they sometimes return of their own volition. As if they will themselves into being.

The universe has a funny way of sometimes giving you what you need when you don't know you need it. People sometimes enter and leave your life at just the right time. Relationships end so that new ones can begin. Although I love my family dearly, I have, over the years wondered what it might be like to have a different name. I have had different names over the years: Mickey, Mic, Michael, Mick, Quill, Papa. I have sought a way to bring the self within myself closer to the surface... to be who I am rather than what the culture dictates I ought to be.

And now, I am divested of my official identification... and in a way, my identity. I can call on a dozen people or more who could attest to my existence, and know me and who I am. There are people who love me, people who see me... truly see me. So, other than the inconvenience of occasionally being carded in a bar... usually by someone who looks 12 ... do I really need more proof of my own existence other than myself?

A name is a marker, nothing more. It separates us from others. Some believe our naming impacts who we become. But really, all a name does is tell others who are.... and who we are not. We attribute more to some names than others. Historical names. Rich names. Famous names. Infamous names. In the end, though, a name is nothing more than an utterance we have been trained since birth to respond to. Sons (many times) carry the last name of their father. Daughters (many times) carry that name unless they decide to get married and exchange it for another person's name. A name has been connected to notions of dependence and independence, to slave ownership, to heritage, to tradition, to the passing on of wealth and affluence, or -- at times -- the passing on of guilt, spite, hatred, and judgement.

What's the line by Shakespeare? A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet?

Granted, in context, Mercutio is trying to convince Romeo to girl he's infatuated with and move on to some other more willing conquest. And then, of course, Romeo meets Juliet and turns into a dumbass.

Sorry. It's not a romantic play. It's farce. It's about how stupid young people can be, and how pointless family feuds are. It's not romantic to kill yourself because you didn't check to see if your girl is still breathing.

My point, though? I am no less who I am just because I can't prove it. In fact, it's possible that  I am more me now than at any time in my life. Ever.

____

*Bismillah: "In the name of god," spoken prior to a sacrificial slaughtering of an animal in the Sufi / Middle Eastern tradition.

Open Letter to the Alumni Association

Dear Sanctimonious Leeches and Intellectual Parasites:

I would very much like to thank you for the glossy quarterly publication in which you highlight the accomplishments of those past, present, and future graduates who you feel distinguish the grand Alma Mater in this age of for-profit degree mills and economic and educational disparity. I have always felt especially grateful to have attended because of the people I met there, student and faculty alike, who encouraged me to grow and to think and have helped me to become the fully realized human being I am in the process of becoming.

Among them, one teacher stands out more than most. And I would mention his name, but since you have never mentioned him in the aforementioned glossy publication you insist on mailing me every three months, I can only conclude that he continues to toil in the shadow of an institution that neither notices nor cares that he has set upon the world more artists and free thinkers than your College of Business has loosed successful entrepreneurs. As a matter of fact, I'm fairly certain that your College of Business – which, allowed by your President and Board of Regents, and in a premeditated and unholy fashion, swallowed whole the English Department from which I managed to graduate … twice … – has done little more for the world than set upon it an army of mediocre middle managers, all of whom were made to retrain their replacements when the companies they worked for sent all the jobs overseas.

Now, this teacher I speak of is a great poet and an amazing human being – and though that statement is a bit repetitive, I feel, nonetheless, obliged to mention both since you may not have yet made the connection. He had done none of the things that merit attention from the College of Business graduates who have risen to offices of institutional power and affluence... the poetry haters who used to pass out ruffies to sorority girls at parties the way priests hand out wafers of bread on Sunday. As a related aside, consider this: people who claim to hate poetry or to not understand it have clearly missed the point. Granted, the Modernists – Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and the like – sort screwed over those of who came after because they removed poetry from the trust of the people and deposited it in the sorry Savings and Loan otherwise known as the modern college and university system. And because of those dead sorry bastards there's a lot of even sorrier living ones who have never known that poetry is a more potent aphrodisiac than chocolate.

But this does not excuse you, leeches and parasites, from the guilt you share in the whole sale theft of the American Dream. Whole generations have come up believing they need you to succeed, and if they can't afford you that they aren't worthy. And if by success they mean living the half life of a cubicle caught middle manager, techie toiler, tax payer, and amasser of debt, then your Ponzi scheme has succeeded. You rotten sons of bitches.

Along with the glossy magazine you send me every three months with the pictures of the unknowing poster children of the apocalypse, you often send me letters asking for money... a tithe, no doubt from the income you feel like you have helped me to earn. And while I would gladly spend that $25 on beer for the teacher to whom I owe so much, or for any one of the people– poets and artists all – who have graced me with their friendship, there is very little you can do, either in your form letters or in your glossy magazine to convince me that I ought to contribute to your war coffers.

If, after receiving this letter, you still feel the need to send me the glossy magazine every three months, it's your postage, not mine; the same goes for the letters you send that have gone unanswered until now and will again after I finish. But if you have any respect – scratch that – you are at all concerned about the time wasted by the poor dumb kids you put on the phone to call and try and talk me out of the little bit of money I manage to gather up, remove my phone number from your rolls; because not only will I try and convince them they need to drop out and go find themselves, I will also try and talk them into setting the the Administration building on fire before they leave under cover of night.

You are weasels of the lowest order, the spoilers of healthy minds and rapists of good solid souls. You will get no more of me.

Regards,

Mick Parsons

Mount Carroll, IL