Language front: from which all wars really begin.

The relations between rhetoric and ethics are disturbing: the ease with which language can be twisted is worrisome, and the fact that our minds accept these perverse games so docilely is no less cause for concern. ~ Octavio Paz

To handle a language skillfully is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery. ~ Charles Baudelaire

Less is always more. The best language is silence. We live in a time of a terrible inflation of words, and it is worse than the inflation of money. ~ Eduardo Galeano

 In spite of the historical precedence dictating the fighting a war on multiple fronts almost always leads to disaster, nearly every war we are in is fought this way.

The culture war is no different. The New Wave Fascists have been at it for longer than most of the centrist Left realizes... and only now,  when it looks like the Nazis popped out of the closet all of a sudden to attack anything they consider liberal -- whether it's funding for the arts, free speech, higher education, or the previously sacred privacy of the voting booth -- do they decide that maybe, just maybe, something ought to be done.

Back when there were rumblings of a budget proposed by then newly elected Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin that would de-fund the Kentucky Arts Council, I reached out to artists groups online, asking if it wasn't the time to begin organizing a response.

I was called a reactionary and told that the then Democratically controlled legislature would protect the arts. Then the mid-term election came and the Republican Party, with it's New Wave rejuvenation, took the legislature away from the Kentucky Democratic Party. Then, the people who previously called me reactionary, who said there was nothing to worry about, were suddenly faced with the realization that MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, THEY OUGHT TO PAY ATTENTION.

By then, national politics were on everyone's minds, and the thought of a Tin Pot Fascist in Frankfort and a Fascist Godhead in the White House was just too much. And we saw how that worked out.

But the truth is that Bevin didn't win because of a sudden surge of conservatism in Kentucky. Except for Louisville, Lexington, and Frankfort -- and, thanks to Kim Davis, my heart's home Rowan County -- Kentucky is largely a conservative state. It has been for years.  The reason Bevin won, other than the KDP's decision to run a cardboard cut out for Governor, is because he embraced a language and a rhetoric that was already in place. That language and that rhetoric was established by early right wing culture war veterans like Pat Buchanan, Richard Nixon, Dick Armey, Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, Mitch McConnell, and Rush Limbaugh... language that later picked up and funded by the Koch Brothers, spread by the likes of Bill O'Reilly Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Alex Jones, Richard Spenser, and others.

The same is true of Trump's election win. I have written before that Trump did not create the New Wave Fascism that carried him into the White House. I'm not sure that Trump is particularly ideological -- as opposed to Bevin and Vice President Mike Pence, both of whom walk the social conservative culture war that they talk. Trump has been successful not because he's an innovator, but because he's had a good nose for where the trends are. He saw his chance and took it, and in the process took the GOP, the electorate, and the entire country for a ride.

Neither Bevin nor Trump invented the language of nationalism. Neither one of them invented the rhetoric used by creationists, anti-choice activists, or those opposed to marriage equality, LGBTQIA rights, racists, and other bullies.  To suggest they somehow crafted their messages in some For White Men Only vacuum gives them entirely too much credit and ignores history. It also lets everyone else who insisted that these folks were too marginal to ever impact the larger culture off the hook.

The ugly has always been there. And now we have to face it on every front before it consumes everything.

Part of this means that those of us who are word workers -- writers -- have to start taking the language back. We cannot speak of democracy, equality, peace, and love if we do not have the words.

from libcom.org

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Wayward Sacredness: Mount Carroll Reprisal: Part 1

It is the waking that kills us. - Sir Thomas Browne


My first sense memory of Mount Carroll is the sound of my friend and current host (along with his more than patient wife, Julie) Dave Cuckler singing and playing the guitar:

One of the reasons why this place still retains some resonance for me is that I relearned something crucial here. I relearned that people, when given the chance, can get together and do the right thing, and that people will often be kind if given the opportunity.  This place, like me, is a bit quixotic. There are musicians and artists and artisans and writers of all kinds -- some who are from here and some who migrated here for one of any number of reasons and stayed because there's just something about the place.

I also relearned that the rate of goodness or badness of most anyplace is directly proportional to the amount of time and effort you're willing to put in to it.

My temporary return to this place has been the mixture I anticipated. My friends, many of whom were not happy with my leaving, are happy to see me now that I've come back for a bit. The stories of my departure were varied and vague... which was deliberate on my part. The thing I've noticed is that it all gets easier to talk about the more I talk about it. And because I've been visiting friends along the way, I got to talk about it quite a bit more than if I had stayed around town -- which, I'm convinced, would have made things far worse than they need to be.

It's true I ran low on funds... even though people have been more than generous in regards to donating to the travel fund.  But I could've huddled somewhere else and prepared for more traveling. I came back here in part to plan, and because I missed my friends and the sounds of the music.

I found myself talking about this place a lot on the road... maybe more than I've ever talked about any place I've ever lived, including New Orleans. (And I loved and still love New Orleans.) 

But I also came back because I have to settle up; that is, I need to finish the recent past so that it's not hanging over me in the future... which means coming back temporarily, finding someplace to store my books and various sundry things until I figure out where to put them long term, and tie up the other loose ends of my  marriage.

Typing that paragraph just now, I noticed how much easier it is to type the utterance than it (still) is to say...

"and tie up the loose ends of my marriage."

I still don't know what that means. I'm still not sure if I'm going to be filing for divorce, or if she is. That depends largely on finances and partly on finding the emotional will to get it done.

Or maybe I have that backwards. It's possible.

Even though it's a thoroughly civil separation -- in as much as such a excising can be civil -- it's not without pain. And I expected it to be a little uncomfortable at times. I expected it to be painful. And I have moments when it is. Mostly because I don't know how not to care and how not to worry about her.

The only thing I have going for me in this regard is that I'm probably way more selfish down deep than I generally like to admit; and I'll admit to being fairly selfish. I don't know how you can be a writer, or an artist, and not be a little selfish with your time. The trick, I'm finding, is making sure to maintain a watchful eye and maintain a social conscience. And lately, that hasn't been too difficult. Between visits to D.C. and New York, keeping up with various Occupy movements across the country that are preparing for Spring, and being vary aware that the over this past weekend around 80 different tornadoes struck a large part of Midwest -- near where I was only weeks ago. The death count is around 30.

And, as if efforts weren't hampered enough, parts of Indiana and Kentucky were hit overnight with snow.

Meditating on this lends me perspective. Mount Carroll, like every other small town, has it's share of drama, infighting, and bullshit. Most of it driven into the public (notably on the City Council) by longstanding bitter rivalries, gossip, and underlying control issues that blossom into full fledged factions, cutting up the town, dividing friends and sometimes family, and doing more to slow the necessary growth and change that will enable this town to survive than the myopic, self-serving Agribusiness controlled County Board -- of which I have even less positive things to say than I do the City Council, which tends to resemble an Elementary School cafeteria, minus the lousy food. It's all words and hollow rhetoric with juvenile digs that gets tossed around.

It's a good thing that they, like the County Board, are only as necessary as people let them be. And at this point, I wonder why we bother with either one.

Since  returning, I've remembered the things I HAVEN'T missed... the juvenile and puerile political leadership, especially... and I'm thinking about pushing my trip up to see if I can go down to Kentucky and Do Something, rather than sit here and Think About It. 

That also means getting my shit together here, and quick. 

By the way... THIS GUY is an ASSHOLE. Pat Robertson is blaming the people for building houses where there are sometimes tornadoes. Also, he says the people didn't pray enough. 

I only point this particular idjit* out in order to illustrate the difference between humanity and douche baggery.. Luckily, I still find more humanity than I do douche baggery. Mount Carroll resonates with humanity, in spite of the back biters that infect local government** and greedy assholes who run the county^.  

And it's precisely that humanity that echoes in the songs played by my friend Dave and by other musicians, (who I will mention by name soon enough), and in the art done by friends like Heather Houzenga that will make my short stay more pleasant than it would be anywhere else as I plan the next step.

* For a proper definition, look in The Parsons Dictionary of Often Used Words and Phrases.

** There are one or two people of note who are not idjits. Since I'm not naming any names, I can't name you. But hopefully, Doug and Tom (oops!) you know who you are.

^I'm referring directly to a few people here... but the county is run by three of the 15 current members anyway. And since I've written about them ad naseum when I wrote for The Prairie Advocate News, I won't name them here. No. Really ... Fritz, Rahn, and Riebel. (Oops.)

[Thanks for reading. Remember, if you like what you're reading:

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My exit window, for the moment, is still 3/21-4/1, though I'l go back through Kentucky before I head west.]

A Baboon in New York, Part 1.2: The Chaotic Columna Ceruluia (Cont.)

New York has a trip-hammer vitality which drives you insane with restlessness if you have no inner stabilizer.
-- Henry Miller 

The simple, compact, well-join’d scheme—myself disintegrated, every one disintegrated, yet part of the scheme:  -- Walt Whitman


When I found Steve, he was standing right in front of the gate, facing it with his back toward me, waiting. It had been a few years since I'd seen him,  but I recognized him instantly. In his winter coat and pointy winter beanie, at a distance he looks something like an elf;  his small bearded features lend dimension to the description, but so too does his general demeanor. He is neither nervous, nor impatient. He is just standing there, waiting, watching, expecting. Standing, like I said in my previous post, "as if he has always been standing there primordial, separate from the passage of time, as if the Earth and the whole of  The Port Authority had risen up around and engulfed him without his even noticing" .  


I called his name three times, but he didn't turn until I was nearly up on him. If it were anyone else, I would say he was simply conditioned against the noise of city life (Which is Considerable); but I really think that, owing to the way he simply lives in his own space, regardless of where his, and quietly mediates his way through the world like a permanent visitor, trying to harm no one, hoping that no one harms him. 


He was glad to see me, and Susan was glad we found one another. He asked whether I wanted to see some of the city or go home; but I was tired from traveling and a little hungry. So I said I'd rather go back to his and Susan's place, if that was okay.  So we headed for the subway.

Now: to understand New York, you must understand the subway. And to understand the subway, you must appreciate that it is a system based almost entirely on chaos and absolute democracy.

I took my lead from Steve, being as I was in his city; I assumed he knew his way around -- or at least, how to get home from The Port Authority. Of course, I wasn't taking certain things into consideration:

1. No one who lives in New York goes to The Port Authority unless they're taking a bus out of town, buying drugs, or trolling the restrooms for anonymous sex on the down low; and
2. The only possible reason Steve would have to be there is waiting for a country bumpkin techno-hobo, who, like him, has a sometimes questionable sense of direction and is easily lost in his own thoughts.

First things, first, though. Before I could slink around under the city streets first I had to buy a Metro Pass. Travel and the cheap ass motel in Norfolk and spending a bit too much at an Irish Pub in D.C. with my friend Eric had diminished my funds substantially.

My travel plans through back through the Midwest have been plotted and paid for, however, and I have already announced the date of my imminent return to see friends, tie up loose ends and plan for more travel. My plans are to go south and west eventually going to the West Coast to check out life on the Left Coast a bit more closely.

I knew I had about $17 left, so when I approached the Metro Card Vending Machine I looked for the lowest amount I could put on the card that would still be useful, at least for a day. [Note about New York City Subway Metro Card Vending Machines: I'm sure they all start out any given 24 hour period in perfect working and vending condition. BUT THEY DON'T STAY THAT WAY.]  The machine I approached would no longer sell single ride passes. Each time you walk through the gate to enter the subway platform, it costs you $2.25. Now it's possible to catch multiple lines once you've entered, so it's not necessarily $2.25 every time you ride. And according to Steve's wife, Susan, the New York City Subway is so well organized that it puts most other public transit systems in the country to shame... particularly Chicago, a place for which she has little affection.

Probably has something to do with the fact that she grew up around there.

NYC Subway System Map

I put 10 bucks on a metro card. I figured that while some walking would be involved, that Steve and Susan probably lived near a subway entrance. I knew they didn't have a car anymore, having fully embraced the New York urban lifestyle. 

Steve checked his Metro Card twice because he didn't have enough on there to ride. Then he approached the same machine I purchased my card from. Standing back and watching Steve interact with the world is, in many ways, a cultural anthropologist's dream.  And for some reason, it reminded me of the movie Brazil.

After a few minutes of standing in front of the machine, trying to feed it actual money, he walked over and told me it wasn't taking his money. He wanted to find an attendant -- which, he said, were there the last time he was at the Port Authority. So we went back into the station to the information booth. The woman in the booth was busy trying to communicate in English with a tiny Far Eastern girl who's English was probably as bad as the woman's was, only for different reasons. One of them was from another country. The other was probably a survivor of the New York City Public School System. After a couple of minutes of waiting, Steve asked the policeman wearing a riot vest where the nearest metro card attendant was, since the machine would not take his money.

The guard looked perplexed. I could only assume that underground air was affecting him, or maybe he was dreaming of pepper spraying attractive Wall Street Occupiers as a way to heat up his sex life. Then he said there weren't any attendants and told Steve he had to purchase his Metro Card through one of the machines.

So we went back and I suggested that he try another machine. That one seemed to work. Then we entered the turnstiles that led to the subway platform, and he stopped dead in his tracks.

"Let me think," he said. "I know how to get home, but I'm not quite sure."

While we wait, a few notes about New York City Subway platforms.

The first thing I noticed is that the general ambiance of the MTA subway platform is actually... surprisingly... much grimier than on television. It wasn't horrible. No disgusting smells, no bums urinating on the third track, no pickpockets. No one was especially rude, either. As a matter of fact, it was almost the opposite. No one was friendly. But no one was an asshole. Now, it could be because it was a weekend. 

Susan later explained to me that post 9/11 New York was a different place in many ways; Steve agreed, saying it was very different than when he lived here in the 1970's.  People, they told me, were just a little bit more aware, a bit more polite. People didn't generally rush the subway train doors when they opened anymore; Susan said people had offered her their seats more than once and that she had seen numerous examples of basic kindness while riding the subway. Steve agreed, half-joking that the whiteness of his hair helped as well.

Steve said he THOUGHT we were on the correct platform, and that the subway was going the right direction. We stood there for a few minutes, waiting for the E Train to Queens. When it stopped, the conductor stuck his head out the narrow window to look behind and make sure they're not going to be in the way of the next train and to make sure no one was blocking the doors. Steve spoke to him briefly, probably asking if we were boarding the right train. The conductor nodded noncommittally; so we boarded and found a place to stand and hold on.

It's important to either hold on to something, lean against the side, or sit. The ride is smooth, for rail, but it's bumpy because of the rail and because of the slight turns it has to make, and the stops and starts do require some balance ... which I was having trouble with because of my satchel. [NOTE TO SELF: GET A BACKPACK.] 

So we rode along for a bit. Before the first stop, though, he started looking around; I could tell he wan't sure we were going the correct direction. Right before the first stop, he asked another passenger if the train was going to Queens. The passenger, who was not at all sure he wanted to talk to anyone... but who was unwilling to be rude... told Steve the train we were on was headed towards The World Trade Center.

(That he called it The World Trade Center struck me as odd. Was it habit? Some grief/denial strategy?)

We got off at the next stop. We stood there for a few minutes, Steve trying to decide whether the train was indeed going the wrong direction, or whether we needed to make our way to the platform going the opposite direction. On the other side of the turnstiles, there was a booth with a MTA Attendant inside. Steve was going to go ask her about which train we needed to be on. He asked if I wanted to wait in case we really were heading the right direction; but I still had faith in Steve's sense of the place he lived and exited the turnstiles with him.

Turns out we were going the wrong direction, which meant going up a few flights of stairs to the next platform.

More on subway platforms: the subway feels like a world unto itself. Music... sometimes piped in, sometimes by live musicians trying to earn a few bucks... could be heard in between the rhythm of the rattling trains. Kiosks selling newspapers, magazines, and cold drinks were open. People milling around, nearly all of them on the way to somewhere. There are scads of beautiful women here, by the way. Lots of walking, and a smoke-free city (which I object to on principle)... not to mention where I was, I'm sure, was an entry exit location for people who work/live/play in Manhattan.

After making our way upstairs and waiting for the E train -- this one REALLY going the right direction -- we  got on the train and rode to the correct station in Queens, where we exited and walked to his and Susan's apartment.

As someone who rides a lot of public transportation, and has ridden it in enough places to be able to compare, I have to admit, the New York City subway isn't that bad... at least... in my limited experience. One of the things you notice very quickly is that the subway absolutely egalitarian. I'm sure the very wealthy folks and those who are claustrophobic or who are formerly obsessed fans of that miserable show, Sex in the City (link omitted deliberately) and believe you have take a taxi everywhere in order to be cool don't ride the subway often; but the mixture of people, ranging from tailored and fashion forward to dirt poor, from post-millennial mod to goth to hipster to hippie-go-lucky to conservative casual makes for a good cross section view of one part of the city... the area between downtown and Queens. It's all public space and everyone has to mediate it, one way or the other.

Or get ripped off by cab. Or be dumb enough to drive a car.

As someone who, as I mentioned, has no real context for understanding New York, the subway was a better introduction than most. 

And my pass assures me I will ride it again... at least two more times.

At this point, I need to thank Noah S. Kaplowitz and Rebecca Fitkin Jones doe their generous donation. Although Kap wanted me to make sure and paint him as an asshole, I cannot, in good conscience. The good news is, I don't have to, since he does quite a fine job on his own, without my assistance.

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