ON THE AVENUES: A few thanks to give as we eagerly await Trump's forthcoming eviction.

Consider it a quasi-retired blogger’s fallback credo in times of holiday-inspired gluttony.

"Cutting and pasting leaves more time for mandated eating and drinking."

Over a period of years, I'd pause only momentarily to update the previous Thanksgiving Day column before rushing off to Vietnam Kitchen for the Baylor family’s holiday tradition of K-8 or clay pot catfish, and often both.

Ironically, this habit of appending something topical to hurriedly regurgitated past musings soon came to resemble the procedure at family gatherings occurring throughout the nation during this uniquely American celebration.

Unfortunately, Vietnam Kitchen ceased being a factor in 2015, when the restaurant commenced a fresh tradition of its own and began closing on Thanksgiving Day. 2016 found us vacationing in Catania, Sicily, where I swapped Southeast Asian staples for Pasta alla Norma, followed by a delectable mixed grill of horse meat.

With each bite I dreamily pondered revisionist Kentucky Derby thoughts.  

Abroad again in 2019 (be still, my throbbing heart), our Thanksgiving meal was taken at Gostilna Pri kolovratu, a cafe and eatery in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Located strategically opposite the cathedral, this restaurant dates to 1836 and has been recently revitalized by new ownership. 

The food at Gostilna Pri kolovratu was impeccable: barley soup with sausage; Vodnik salad from the 1799 "classic" Slovene cookbook (local greens, beets, cauliflower, hard boiled egg); lamb knuckle (sun-dried tomato and balsamic reduction); ribeye steak. The wine was Slovene merlot and the parting glass Pelinkovac, a bitter herbal liqueur. We actually had our dessert of Prekmurska gibanica (layered cake) and štruklji dumplings earlier in the day while strolling, not realizing an evening return was in the offing.

This year we'll be cooking at home with the help of a stuffed, deboned turkey from Taylor Cajun Meat Company, and to prepare for the task I've already gone to the store — the package store, that is. No sense interfering with THAT most noble and enduring of traditions. I have been, and always shall be, a practitioner of the drinking arts, whether on Thanksgiving or any other delightfully pagan day.

---

It will surprise no one to learn that it isn't my habit to "give thanks" in clichéd terms to non-existent deities using code language I personally find meaningless, although from each according to his credulity, to each according to his needs.

This isn’t to imply that I refrain from thankfulness.

Top billing goes to Diana, who is my rock, followed closely by friends both old and new. They comprise a diverse extended family and are greatly appreciated. With the advent of Pints&union in 2018, the family has grown.

I can’t put into words what this pub-building experience has meant to me. In the aftermath of my career at NABC, it was understood that a stint in the wilderness would be necessary to purge and cleanse. Joe Phillips needed a rhythm guitarist, and here I am, doing what I do best. It has been redemptive, and I’m very appreciative.

Three years of civic notoriety as an under-employed dissident and "non-person" afforded me unprecedented opportunities to learn. It felt like a graduate degree without the onerous tuition — and I'm thankful for the education. Any day is wasted without an opportunity to learn, and a whole new stack of books awaits. I've read more of them in 2020 than ever before during a single year, owing to COVID-19 and spending a great deal more time than usual at home. 

Thankfully, we've both made it through the pandemic healthy, so far. 

Overall, I’m constantly reminded of my good fortune after six decades on this planet. There has been lots of dumb luck, and I’ve also “made” some of my own breaks. Serendipity and opportunism both have played roles. I’ve worked, worried, absorbed and forgotten in equal measure, with time still on the clock for restorative boreassing.

Balance. That’s always the most important thing.

For a quarter-century, until the ownership coalition at NABC dissolved, I was able to make a living from drinking beer, most often in my natural preferred habitat of the public house. It was a business, but at the end of the day intangibles and ideas mattered far more to me.

They still do, which is another reason the Pints&union gig is such a good fit.

Being in a position to educate and challenge always was the real motivation, because the pub truthfully remains the poor man’s university. I tried to make my former workplace perform this function as often as humanly possible, and I’m doing my level best to reformat the experience at our new venue. 

What we've learned at Pints&union this year amid the pandemic's many foundational challenges has been a post-graduate course in survival. It isn't over, but Joe has put us in a very good place to make it through to whatever follows. 

One thing I don’t regret at all is the absence of filthy lucre. 

There were times when a higher percentage of it might have been useful, but I remain a reluctant capitalist. I've never been rich and likely never will be, but I’m delighted to stand on my record when it comes to teaching, agitating, creating lasting memories and trying to get to the heart of the matter – whether it’s beer, localism, travel, complete streets, running for mayor, music or all the above, tied together as they should be, sensibly and coherently, because absolutely nothing exists in a vacuum.

Legacies needn’t depend on wealth. They’re about doing what you can, while you can, as best you can, and producing a body of work impervious to calculations of interest, percentages and historical revisionism. Twenty years on, if someone smiles because they recall good times at the pub, then it’s the very best return on my time and investment.

---

As an aside, there aren’t many parts of my first career in business that I genuinely miss. It was time to go, and I went.

However, I do miss some of the crazy things we were able to organize during the “imperial” period, such as Saturnalia, the annual celebration of winter seasonal and holiday beers. From 2004, Saturnalia was calibrated to begin each year on the day after Thanksgiving, and to run through Christmas. I liked it far better than Gravity Head.

In pre-Christian Rome, Saturnalia was the annual winter solstice celebration coinciding with the feast days for Saturn (the god of sowing and the harvest), Consus (god of the storage bin) and Opa (goddess of plenty). Many of our contemporary winter holiday traditions derive from Saturnalia’s pagan roots, including the hanging of wreaths and garlands, donations to the needy, prayers for peace, time off work to be enjoyed with family, and of course eating, drinking and merriment.

There was a resonance to Saturnalia because so many fine people return home for the holidaze. It always seemed to me that winter seasonal beers provided the most suitable accompaniment to the joys of reconnecting, sharing war stories, and remembering those who no longer are with us -- the folks I’m very thankful to have known while they were here on earth.

As this column heads for the stretch, it’s time for some boilerplate.

A few years ago in the Jeffersonville Tom May Good News Bugle, I made an observation.

There’s never any better time than Thanksgiving for an iconoclast’s thoughts to be made public.

Naturally, it's futile to expect anyone to read my outpouring of words Thursday, on the holiday itself. Given the inability of many New Albanian readers to wade through my commentary without scratching their heads in confusion, it’s plainly impolite to ask them to waste valuable time gnawing leftovers to engage in a frustrating, household-wide search for seldom-used dictionaries and thesauruses.

But I am nothing if not stubborn, so let’s revisit the notion of “iconoclast”:

1. A breaker or destroyer of images, esp. those set up for religious veneration.

2. A person who attacks cherished beliefs, traditional institutions, etc., as being based on error or superstition … rather like your humble correspondent.

Regular readers know my heroes have always been iconoclasts. From Socrates through Tom Paine, and not exempting 20th-century polemicists like H. L. Mencken, there’s nothing as thrilling as an iconoclast taking a headlong swipe at unexamined assumptions.

The most wonderful aspect of iconoclasm is that personal dissipation does not pre-empt the message. It actually may enhance it.

Consequently, it is my duty to remind you that Thanksgiving, while perfectly enjoyable from a hedonist’s standpoint, and wholly conducive to this bibulous trencherman’s standards, actually stands for something of importance.

This certain “something” isn’t the prevailing pastel-colored viewpoint of Puritans and Natives merrily gathering for a quaint New England picnic, pausing only occasionally from the consumption of corn chowder and non-alcoholic cranberry wine to pray before their respective deities.

The need for apologetics aside, and whether or not Squanto miraculously facilitated a peaceful first Thanksgiving at Plymouth Rock, the subsequent history of the white man on the North American continent featured the unabated slaughter of Native Americans, incessant pillaging of the environment, and an exculpatory doctrine of “manifest destiny” interwoven with prevailing religious belief, as intended to ease the consciences (if any) of those pulling the triggers.

We’ll leave the open approval of African-American slavery, emanating for many generations from Christians occupying American pulpits, for another day of faux “thanks.”

In the context of real American history, and to the exclusion of mythology and wishful thinking, the holiday we term “Thanksgiving” is ironic, to say the very least. I prefer reflections on all human history to be in accordance with the record, and as events actually occurred, without the tidying impulse to obscure and sanitize them.

I accept that people in all places and times do what they can with what they have, and believe that the best we can hope for is to learn from the past in the hope of learning worthwhile lessons and avoiding mistakes. In my opinion, the worst error of all is to misrepresent the historical record to justify theological needs.

Like what happened to Jeff Speck’s traffic study when it finally was “implemented” beyond recognition for maximum monetization by New Albany's resurrected, non-book reading Orwellian cadres.

Yes, I observe Thanksgiving, too. It’s just that I do so realistically, dispensing with personality cults and fake facts.

Meanwhile, America’s Christmas shopping season started on July 4, and it will reach a crescendo on the day frenzied pop culture vultures have dubbed Black Friday.

Pavlov’s overworked and fever-ridden mutt can be expected to salivate continuously as university economics school analysts (I’m gazing at you, IU Southeast) read imported tea leaves to guess whether holiday season retail sales will be sufficient to keep Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Home Depot and Meijer’s solvent for another year as Amazon’s dark clouds continue to roll ever closer toward a One Store State.

I prefer the idea of Plaid Friday, and shifting my shopping to independent small businesses. But at least there’s food on Thanksgiving, even if the Vietnamese joints are all closed. Iconoclasm aside, I always enjoyed the traditional Norman Rockwell bird-spread. This year we'll enjoy a scaled-down version. In 2021, who knows? 

After all, to each his and her own tradition. May yours be peaceful, and not harmful to others.

As they say in Haiphong: Một hai ba, yo! The phrase means "cheers" -- or maybe it's "someone bring me the leftovers."

---

November 24: ON THE AVENUES: Doc Harris and the Commissioners at the No Clue Corral.

November 15: ON THE AVENUES: Karma, karma, karma, karma, karma chameleon (The Big Bang Remix).

November 7: On (or off) the Avenues, there's got to be a morning after. 

October 8: ON THE AVENUES: I'm voting for Biden. Otherwise it's Trump's burgeoning fascist GOP death cult. 

October 1: ON THE AVENUES: Welcome to the last will and testament of NA Confidential. 

Fire in the Hole.

Just a wee bit of clarity, then some music, and finally a benediction. The content herewith is derived from past posts.

Labor Day is May 1, by Jonah Walters (Jacobin)

Today is a boss's holiday.

 ... Tragically, our labor movement was never strong enough to buck the tyranny of capitalism for good. And today, with union membership in dramatic decline and workers under sustained attack from the political establishment, this militant past often feels like a distant, even irretrievable, memory.

But American workers did contribute at least one lasting legacy to the international movement for working-class liberation — a workers’ holiday, celebrating the ideal of international solidarity, and eagerly anticipating the day when workers might rise together to take control of their own lives and provide for their own well-being.

That holiday is May Day, not Labor Day.

---

Fathom the note on Woody Guthrie's guitar, and follow the link to hear the songs.

Top Ten Labor Day Songs, by Peter Rothberg (The Nation)

In honor of Labor Day, I’ve revised a previous attempt at the impossible task of naming the best songs ever written about working people. The list is highly debatable; songs about work and working people cut across genres and generations. I know it’s a travesty to neglect “Which Side Are You On?” and Johnny Paycheck’s classic “Take This Job and Shove It.” It also seems impossible that I’ve excluded Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg, Nina Simone, and John Mellencamp, and given such short shrift to the rich history of punk rock odes to the insanity of wage slavery. Hopefully, these songs will get people thinking about their own favorite musical celebrations of the working condition.

Dan Canon's congressional campaign was in full swing on Labor Day, 2017, and the candidate (he lost in the 2018 primary) had cogent thoughts about Labor Day. Well, it's about time someone around here did, and consequently, I believe they're worth repeating.

---

A couple of thoughts about Labor Day:

I've represented workers against big business here in my community for a decade now. Union folks don't often get to me, because they have a line of job protection that most American workers don't have. Most of the employment protections non-union folks *do* have were also a direct result of the labor movement. Overtime pay, workplace safety rules, anti-retaliation provisions - these are all thanks to unions, and affect most workers whether they've ever paid dues or not.

The issues brought to the fore by labor unions are more important now than ever. As plenty of people have rightly pointed out, our insane wealth gap has just emboldened the rich to take even more, not to generously lavish the working class with raises and pensions, because almost no one is telling them they can't. Labor unions tell them they can't. So oligarchs over the last decade or so have been pretty brazen about trying to break the back of organized labor as a whole. They keep the concentration of wealth at the top from getting even worse, and the top is pretty adamant that they'd *like* for it to get worse.

But it's too simplistic to say that the effort to gut unions is just based on greed. It's also part and parcel of the GOP/new-American-fascist agenda. Down here, if we are organized, we are a threat to the top. The more and better we are organized, the more of a threat we pose. And so naturally, the more divided we are, the less a threat we pose to an increasing concentration of wealth and power at the top. In fact, if we are very divided, we might not even notice such concentration at all. We might deny that it exists. We might think it doesn't affect us. We might not have time to care.

This is why there's a concerted effort to divide us up. Black v. white, Christian v. Muslim, straight v. gay, cis v. trans, etc. It makes us disorganized. Unfocused. Weak.

Where would you start a campaign of disorganization, were you to run one? Who would be among your primary targets? I bet one would be: the folks who have already known how to organize and get results for more than a century.

That's the reason we see our friends, families, and neighbors in the labor movement under attack. It's not just about making a few more dollars at the expense of someone else's hard work. It's about perpetuating divisions and preventing the amalgamation and galvanization of those of us down here below.
Let's all buy a drink for a union member and tell 'em we've got their backs. They've had ours for more than a hundred years.

Life with the Macbeths.

The Astor Place Riot figures prominently in Shakespeare in a Divided America, by James Shapiro.

On the evening of May 10th, 1849, the streets outside New York’s grandest theatre, the Astor Place Opera House, ran with blood. The New York state militia opened fire on rioters who were part of a vast crowd, estimated at 10,000-24,000, who had gathered in one of the most furious demonstrations in the city’s history. About 20 people were killed and a hundred wounded. Newspapers called it a “massacre”, “wholesale slaughter” and an event “the most sanguinary and cruel that has ever occurred in this country”. That was hardly true, but the exaggeration is understandable. The theatre came to be called the Massacre Place Opera and Dis-Astor Place.

What was this about? The crowd’s determination to stop a performance of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, with the great English actor William Macready in the title role. Previously, rioters inside the theatre had violently interrupted his performance. Now, the rage against Macready had become deadly. It had its origins, bizarrely, in accounts of another performance by Macready, this time of Hamlet.

That's right -- the Shakespeare Riot. There's a hidden reminder at a New York City subway station.

The Forgotten Entrance to Clinton Hall (Atlas Obscura)

 ... But often overlooked, on the southbound entrance is a bricked up doorway with a lintel inscribed “Clinton Hall.” At one point, this led directly into the old New York Mercantile Library in the former Astor Place Opera House. The library, known as Clinton Hall, at 21 Astor Place, was created for the growing number of clerks in the city. With a membership of 12,000, the library held over 120,000 volumes, one of the largest periodical subscriptions in the city, cabinets of curiosities, and held lectures by such luminaries as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, and Mark Twain.

The address, named after America’s once-richest man, was the site of one of the most bizarre events in New York history. The library building’s previous tenant was the Astor Place Opera House, and in 1849 there took place an evening of violence, whose after-effects are still felt today: the Shakespeare Riots!

WHEN THE MUSIC'S OVER: This three-hour documentary film about George Corley Wallace is a must-watch.

I didn't expect to embark this week upon a long-delayed detour through the life of George C. Wallace (1919-1998) in order to process what obviously are a handful of unresolved issues from my upbringing.





Well, you never know when it's going to happen, do you? Ever since the advent of Donald Trump, the parallels between the coddled New Yorker and the rural Alabamian have been obvious and frequently discussed.

I sat them out, because I really didn't want to think about how my father and so many of his friends were huge Wallace supporters in the late 1960s.

Time to get my act together. Here's an article about the making of the documentary (which was released in 2000). I strongly recommend that you set aside three hours, with strong drink if that's what it takes, and watch the complete film.

My weekly ON THE AVENUES column this Thursday likely will explain the rest ... well, insofar as it can be explained.

Puppet Man.

This is a long but highly worthwhile read. I'd like to think it couldn't happen here, but we all know better. Ft. Wayne's councilman Jason Arp even looks like our former councilman Dan Coffey.

This article is highly recommended.

When the Culture Wars Hit Fort Wayne, by Charlie Savage (Politico)

A quiet Indiana city declared a holiday to celebrate its founder. In the age of Trump, nothing is ever that simple.

One chilly February evening last year in this Midwestern town where I grew up, a city council member named Jason Arp proposed a resolution: Starting that summer, the city should annually celebrate a “General ‘Mad’ Anthony Wayne Day.”

My hometown is a rust-belt industrial city of a quarter-million people on the confluence of three slow rivers, today home to branches of several defense contractors and a regionally famous zoo. Wayne was an early American military leader who in 1794 built a frontier fort here, during the period when white settlers from the young United States were pushing west into the Ohio Valley and coming into conflict with Native Americans. As a piece of city business, having a day in Fort Wayne to honor Anthony Wayne might seem—from a distance at least—to be correcting an oversight. Why wouldn’t the city have a founder’s day?

At the meeting, Arp, a stocky man in his mid-40s with close-cropped hair, leaned back and put forward a glowing portrait of Wayne as a hero and role model, clicking through a slideshow. Not only had Wayne won the Northwest Indian War and established the outpost that grew into the city, but he had earlier won fame in the American Revolution for leading a charge that overran a British outpost at Stony Point, New York. This feat, Arp said, had thwarted a British attempt to capture top American military leaders like George Washington and Henry Knox after the traitor Benedict Arnold had revealed their location. “We can thank Anthony Wayne for the fact that we even have a United States of America,” he said ...

"The United States of America is, by its very nature, anti-Black."

Some will be tempted to stop reading after the first three paragraphs. This would be shortsighted. Get past the discomfort, and immerse yourself in the author's point.

Oh, and wear your mask when you're out in public.

Let It Burn, by Robert Jones, Jr. (The Paris Review)

In 2017, I wrote an essay titled “I Don’t Give a Fuck about Justine Damond,” which outlined my perspective on Ms. Damond’s death at the hands of Mohamed Noor, a Minneapolis police officer who also happened to be Somali American and Muslim. My thesis was this: How can I be concerned about a white woman shot and killed by a police officer when there are countless Black people who suffered that fate to the stunning silence and antipathy of the vast majority of white American populace?

The essay was met with the characteristic outrage from white people (but not only white people). They accused me of disrespecting Damond’s memory and being inconsiderate of her family’s feelings. I was also accused of being a hypocrite for not condemning the actions of the cop as I had in previous incidents involving Black victims. Even some of the people closest to me believed that I had crossed a line and thought that I had been too harsh in my assessment and should if not show reverence then certainly remain silent on the matter.

But I could do neither, not with the blood of Black people flowing endlessly in the streets. I insisted that there was a purpose to my position. I had predicted that the outcome of Damond’s death would be unique and that, unlike in the numerous cases in which the murder of a Black person by state agents was considered “justified” and the agents themselves regarded as valiant, the officer who killed Damond wouldn’t have access to the protections or rationalizations that his white compatriots had always been given.

And I was correct.

Without so much as a raised pitchfork, Noor was fired, abandoned by a union that defends even the most egregious actions of its officers. He was swiftly charged, swiftly convicted, and swiftly sentenced to twelve and a half years in prison. And Damond’s family was swiftly compensated, settling for a hefty $20 million from the city of Minneapolis, not at the expense of police forces but at the expense of the taxpayers.

If we are to accept that this is what justice looks like in a penal and punitive nation like the United States of America, the question, for me, is then, why isn’t it applied universally? Why did it take the threat of burning the entire country to ash before the forces of “law and order” would arrest and charge the non-Black (and that’s important to note) police officers caught on camera murdering George Floyd, a Black man? Why are the officers who murdered Breonna Taylor, a Black woman, inside her own home in Louisville, Kentucky, still free to murder another day? Police kill Black people at 2.5 times the rate they kill white people. In 2015, for example, more than a hundred unarmed Black people were killed by police, and only four cops were convicted of any crime in those cases. Experts believe police kill Black people at an even higher rate, but since the nation keeps such spotty records, perhaps intentionally, it’s difficult to grasp and easy for some people to dismiss the magnitude.

The answer to these questions is obvious and yet it’s an answer that this country—from the time it was just a patchwork of greedy and insatiable Europeans who pillaged and plundered the unsuspecting Indigenous people of this land until today—refuses to confront:

The United States of America is, by its very nature, anti-Black ...

Independence Day? One, as Charles P. Pierce writes: "We're in Another One of Those Moments Where the Great Bluff Gets Called."

The speeches referred to by Pierce are lengthy, eloquent and worthy. In my estimation, they're best read prior to hamburgers and fireworks; for those seeking an antidote to The Trumpian tendency to spew verbal sewage, they're especially helpful.

But you see, you must want to learn genuine facts, as opposed to the bilge fed you since kindergarten days.

This Fourth of July, We're in Another One of Those Moments Where the Great Bluff Gets Called, by Charles P. Pierce (Esquire)

It is the same bluff Frederick Douglass called in 1852, and Dr. King called in 1962.

This is a great year to have a Fourth of July. This is a great year to have a Fourth of July because we are in the middle of another one of those historical moments in which the great bluff gets called, loudly, raucously, and in the public square. You remember that great bluff. It is the bluff that Frederick Douglass called in Rochester in 1852.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

It is the bluff that Dr. King called in front of the Lincoln Memorial in 1962.

In a sense we've come to our nation's Capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check; a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds.”

It’s the one that is being called by thousands of people in the streets, and by the removal of every memorial to every traitorous gossoon, and by defiant young people who are pushing all their chips to the center of the table. This is the bluff they’re all calling ...

Three oddball factoids from American history.

"Well, that was some weird shit."
-- George W. Bush, surveying Donald Trump's inauguration in 2017

Following are three weird items I've run across lately while perusing the digital archives.

1. For starters, the forgotten American president Rutherford B. Hayes is venerated in Paraguay (story at Atlas Obscura).

Maria Teresa Garozzo de Caravaca is disappointed to learn that Americans don’t share the same degree of appreciation for Hayes. “It really surprises me,” she says. “Everyone knows who Hayes is here.” His name was recently proposed for a multimillion-dollar bridge under construction over the Paraguay River. He’s appeared on stamps. There is even a soccer team in Asunción named Club Presidente Hayes, whose players are known as “Los Yankees.” On one reality-TV show, the grand prize was an all-expense-paid trip not to Disney World, but rather to the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library & Museums in Fremont, Ohio.

2. Smithsonian Magazine reports: "The Last Person to Receive a Civil War Pension Dies at Age 90."

Irene Triplett, whose father defected from the Confederate Army and enlisted with the Union, collected $73.13 a month.

3. Dispassionate etymology does not support the theory that the word "hooker" (a prostitute or sex workers) come from the surname of the Civil War's Joseph Hooker, a Union commander who famously botched the battle at Chancellorsville. It has long been supposed that Hooker's indifference to drinking and other diversions on the part of his troops prompted the term. However, the essay here is very much worth reading.

An Exploration into Why the Word ‘Hooker’ Came to Describe Sex Workers, by Trista (History Collection)

"The pandemic patchwork exists because the U.S. is a patchwork to its core."

A long read but entirely worthwhile. Throughout American history we see the many instances of an unprepared country muddling through a crisis. COVID is the most recent. It's likely we'll continue arguing viciously about symptoms instead of addressing the rotten superstructure. 

America’s Patchwork Pandemic Is Fraying Even Further, by Ed Yong (The Atlantic)

The coronavirus is coursing through different parts of the U.S. in different ways, making the crisis harder to predict, control, or understand.

There was supposed to be a peak. But the stark turning point, when the number of daily COVID-19 cases in the U.S. finally crested and began descending sharply, never happened. Instead, America spent much of April on a disquieting plateau, with every day bringing about 30,000 new cases and about 2,000 new deaths. The graphs were more mesa than Matterhorn—flat-topped, not sharp-peaked. Only this month has the slope started gently heading downward.

This pattern exists because different states have experienced the coronavirus pandemic in very different ways.

The U.S. health system isn't being fixed. As noted occasionally hereabouts, we also can't fix stupid.

This point cannot be overstated: The pandemic patchwork exists because the U.S. is a patchwork to its core. New outbreaks will continue to flare and fester unless the country makes a serious effort to protect its most vulnerable citizens, recognizing that their risk is the result of societal failures, not personal ones. “People say you can’t fix the U.S. health system overnight, but if we’re not fixing these underlying problems, we won’t get out of this,” says Sheila Davis of Partners in Health. “We’ll just keep getting pop-ups.”

And the conclusion ...

The pandemic discourse has been dominated by medical countermeasures like antibody tests (which are currently too unreliable), drugs (which are not cure-alls), and vaccines (which are almost certainly at least a year away). But social solutions like paid sick leave, which two in three low-wage workers do not have, can be implemented immediately. Imagine if the energy that went into debating the merits of hydroxychloroquine went into ensuring hazard pay, or if the president, instead of wondering out loud if disinfectant could be injected into the body, advocated for health care for all? “We have decades of social-science research that tells us these things work,” says Courtney Boen, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s a question of political will, not scientific discovery.”

And while a vaccine will protect against only COVID-19 (if people agree to take it at all), social interventions will protect against the countless diseases that may emerge in the future, along with chronic illnesses, maternal mortality, and other causes of poor health. “This pandemic won’t be the last health crisis the U.S. faces,” Boen says. “If we want to be on better footing the next time, we want to reduce the things that put people at risk of being at risk.”

Of all the threats we know, the COVID-19 pandemic is most like a very rapid version of climate change—global in its scope, erratic in its unfolding, and unequal in its distribution. And like climate change, there is no easy fix. Our choices are to remake society or let it be remade, to smooth the patchworks old and new or let them fray even further.

"America won the cold war. What went wrong?"

Tear down the (Berlin) wall, 1991.

The writer Andrew Bacevich:

"Globalisation was meant to create wealth, but many Americans complain of inequality; military dominance sucked the country into never-ending wars that sacrificed the children of lower-income families (but, for the most part, no one else’s); the pursuit of fulfilment led to the withering of duty and a selfish, atomised society; and the supremacy of the presidency became a recipe for voters’ disappointment."

Which book should I buy? I'm leaning toward Bacevich's.

(He) warns that, although Mr Trump offered no definition of post-cold-war America, just a rejection, there is no going back. That is a lesson for Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, who gives the sense that going back is what he would most like to do.

As with the coronavirus ...

The victor’s curse: America won the cold war. What went wrong? at The Economist

Three contrasting books examine a superpower’s malaise

• Do Morals Matter? By Joseph Nye. Oxford University Press; 268 pages; $24.95 and £18.99.
• The Abandonment of the West. By Michael Kimmage. Basic Books; 368 pages; $32 and £25.
• The Age of Illusions. By Andrew Bacevich. Metropolitan Books; 239 pages; $27.

The United States, Andrew Bacevich writes near the start of his account of post-cold-war America, is like the man who won the Mega Millions lottery: his unimagined windfall holds the potential for disaster. Things are not quite that bad. But almost three decades after America watched the Soviet Union fall apart, victory feels like a disappointment.

The end of the cold war established America as the most powerful country in history. Its armed forces were unmatched and its governing philosophy seemingly had no rival. Yet it has struggled either to prevail against illiterate tribesmen and tinpot dictators or to get to grips with a newly assertive Russia and a rising China. In a pandemic its allies might have expected America to co-ordinate a planet-wide response. Instead, it has turned inward. Just as startlingly, America itself fell prey to bitterness and division, culminating in the presidency of a man who won office by rejecting many of the values which had helped bring about that original victory.

This is the sombre backdrop for three very different books about America’s place in the world. Joseph Nye, a former dean of the Kennedy School at Harvard, looks at how presidents have struggled to embody their country’s moral leadership. Michael Kimmage, a fellow at the German Marshall Fund, teases out the contradictions in the idea of an American-led “West”. And Mr Bacevich, a professor emeritus at Boston University, depicts the construction (and then, he argues, the demolition) of a post-cold-war doctrine of American power.

None of these books is the last word on an important question. But each offers tantalising insights into how victory soured ...

I need to read this: "American Rule: How a A Nation Conquered the World but Failed It's People."

It's exactly who we ARE, and it's who we've always been. I'm confident Howard Zinn would be in full agreement.

The book is American Rule: How a A Nation Conquered the World but Failed It's People, by Jared Yates Sexton, who is a Hoosier. It is published by Penguin Random House and will be released in hardback on September 15.

And I will buy it.

From writer and political analyst Jared Yates Sexton comes a journey through the history of the United States, from the nation’s founding to the twenty-first century, which examines and debunks the American myths we’ve always told ourselves.

In recent years, Americans have faced a deluge of horrifying developments in politics and culture: stolen elections, fascist rallies, families torn apart and locked away. A common refrain erupts at each new atrocity: This isn’t who we are.

In American Rule, Jared Yates Sexton upends those convenient fictions by laying bare the foundational myths at the heart of our collective American imagination. From the very origins of this nation, Americans in power have abused and subjugated others; enabling that corruption are the many myths of American exceptionalism and steadfast values, which are fed to the public and repeated across generations. Working through each era of American growth and change, Sexton weaves together the origins and perpetuation of these narratives still in the public memory, and the acts we have chosen to forget.

Stirring, deeply researched, and disturbingly familiar, American Rule is a call to examine our own misconceptions of what it means, and has always meant, to be an American.

I became aware of the writer and book via Twitter: Jared Yates Sexton, @JYSexton. I agree with the gist of these tweets. Hasn't it always been obvious?

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Trump just said he wants to reopen the country by Easter, to which a Fox News host says it would be "a wonderful American resurrection."

You need to understand something. The Cult of Trump is a merging of white supremacy, religion, nationalism, and the worship of capitalism.

I keep talking about the Cult of the Shining City. It's a Neo-Confederate, white-identity evangelical cult that was started by Jerry Falwell and his conspirators in the 1960's as the Civil Rights movement used Christianity to further its fight.

Because MLK wanted to highlight the social justice aspects of Christ's gospel, Falwell and other pro-segregationists preaching Confederate religion, shifted the Christian focus from social justice to prosperity and wealth as markers of God's favor.

This has its roots in Adam Smith's capitalism, which talked of an "invisible hand" of the market that would choose winners. This religion made that invisible hand the hand of a Christian, racist God. We're still dealing with that cult.

This Cult of the Shining City merged with Ronald Reagan's economics in the 1980's and promoted an idea of poverty as a marker of sinfulness. It is a bizarre marriage of ideologies, but deep down it is rooted in white supremacy as the wish of a racist God.

People are constantly confused by how the Cult of the Shining City worships Trump as a messiah and stands by him, but he is the literal embodiment of their ideology. His wealth and power, not to mention his defense of white supremacy, makes him a perfect pope-like figure.

This idea of "an American resurrection" is rooted in this nationalistic idea that was furthered by Falwell and Reagan. It's an extension of Reagan's belief that America was established by centuries worth of manipulations by secret cults and societies.

I've pinned my thread on this to my profile if you want to read more, but you need to understand that the history of America as we know it is a religious myth. It's a parable of a country chosen by a racist god to carry out his will and rule over inferior people.

This worship of the market is inherent to the ideas of Falwell and Reagan. When you watch the DOW jump or fall, these people inherently believe it is a measure of God's pleasure or displeasure. They see a plague like this and see a supernatural punishment.

It's not a coincidence that Trump wants to reopen the economy by Easter. It's a furthering of the relationship between his white-identity, Neo-Confederate, nationalistic, capitalistic cult and the cult of the market. They have been intertwined now for decades.

Here's a warning: The Cult of the Shining City is an apocalyptic cult. They're not afraid to sacrifice lives. They're not afraid to drive civilization over the cliff. This policy of reopening the economy despite the warnings of scientists does not frighten or impede them.

The Cult of the Shining City that worships Trump will watch while millions die from the pandemic and they'll chalk it up to God's will. You already hear that. I'm seeing it left and right in white-identity, evangelical circles. It's economic Darwinism made into scripture.

I know this because I grew up in it. It's how my worldview began. I didn't understand there was a reality beyond this indoctrination. I've only learned after years of research and self-reflection.

People are in denial because it sounds crazy, but it's true.

I only learned about the roots of the Cult of the Shining City by researching my new book AMERICAN RULE. It's affected American culture for decades and most people aren't aware of it.

We're watching it now. We're threatened by it every single day.

If you want to read more or share with others, here is a distillation of the thread with history. We're really, really in danger right now. These people will sacrifice millions and millions. They'll let society fall apart. It's their End Times prophecy.

Recommended COVID-19 reading: "The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History," by John Barry.

In 2005, just as the 7th edition of Gravity Head started (today's is #22), I came down with pneumonia. The book already on my nightstand became accompaniment to a period of forced convalescence: The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, by John Barry.

Arguably this wasn't the ideal choice given the circumstances, but Barry's account of the deadly influenza pandemic's arrival at the end of World War I was and remains riveting reading. I consider it one of the most influential books I've ever read.

ON THE AVENUES: The 32 most influential books in my life.

There's also a solid American Experience documentary called "Influenza 2018," released in 1998.

Returning to Barry’s book, the opening chapters are given over to the author’s recounting of the history and development of medical science. In essence, at the dawn of the 20th century medicine had changed little for 2,000 years owing to a generalized reluctance to apply scientific methods to the theory and practice of it.

Medicine remained an obstinate realm of quackery, of humors, miasmas, and the interference of theology with science -- you know, as Donald Trump and Mike Pence still view it.

Eventually technology provided instruments such as the microscope, and daring pioneers proposed to link biology and chemistry to a potential doctor’s educational qualifications, but for the most part these innovations were ignored and the bleeding and mustard plasters continued with the full approval of society’s movers and shakers.

In fact, 19th-century American medical schools were an unvarnished joke, accepting anyone able to afford tuition irrespective of educational background. Poorly educated and barely trained doctors became increasingly discredited in America, while in Europe, researchers like Pasteur and Koch raced ahead with crucial scientific discoveries with vast implications for the future.

The balance only began to shift when a small and determined group of visionaries took advantage of a huge bequest and created Johns Hopkins as the first research university in the United States, patterning it on European lines.

Author Barry points out that these founders of Johns Hopkins proceeded with their organizational work as though in a vacuum, because American medicine’s degradation at the time was so complete that they could draw on no foundation or local experience for such an endeavor. Instead, they modeled Johns Hopkins on Europe’s research universities … and succeeded in the end.

By persevering, Barry notes, these visionaries created “a revolution from nothing.”

Following is the full text of a 2004 review by Peter Palese of Barry's classic book by The Journal of Clinical Investigation, as cited at the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

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John M. Barry. The great influenza The epic story of the deadliest plague in history.

(2004)

The great influenza: the epic story of the deadliest plague in history is a great book. It is well conceived, well researched, and extremely well written. The appropriate audience goes beyond the interested physician, scientist, or medical student. The book will also appeal to history buffs, who will be fascinated by the dangerous mix of politics, war, and pestilence presented here. In the first third of the book, the word “influenza” rarely appears, because author John M. Barry is painting the landscape of science, medicine, and politics in the pre-World War I era. What comes to life in these pages is the sad state of US science and medicine at the time. For example, admission to US medical schools was dependent not on academic achievement, but rather on whether the applicant would pay the tuition. This changed with the Flexner Report, published in 1910 by Abraham Flexner, and with the establishment of such institutions as the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, ably led by Simon Flexner (brother of Abraham). As highlighted by Barry, the other major change leading to the modern era of American medicine was the founding of Johns Hopkins Medical School at the very end of the 19th century, with William Welch as the legendary force behind it. For anyone who has had the opportunity to interact with Johns Hopkins University, this introductory chapter in Barry’s book is mandatory reading.

The writing is facile and gripping at the same time, and the author does an extraordinarily good job of creating a fluent narrative from historical research. Even when Barry describes the replication of the influenza virus in the cell, the writing is easily comprehensible and convincing. He creates numerous wonderful images, such as likening the translation of a messenger RNA to reading Braille. When it comes to the actual influenza pandemic of 1918, Barry does a brilliant job. The facts of this extraordinary event are well presented and discussed. The reader is given the diverse data on the number of people who died during this pandemic; descriptions of those who did the analysis and the basis for arriving at the different numbers allow the reader to decide for him- or herself what the best estimates are. A conservative — and the most convincing — estimate is 50 million. In the context of the present world population of six billion, compared with two billion in 1918, this would translate into 150 million deaths today.

The political and military scene of 1917 as described by Barry is equally fascinating. Despite major scientific and public health advances, many of the influenza casualties resulted from uninformed and misguided decisions by military and political leaders. Hiram Johnson is quoted as saying, “The first casualty when war comes is truth.” This statement certainly remains true some eighty years later. When Barry recounts the suspicion that “German agents . . . from submarines” are suspected of having brought influenza to the United States, we can see that propaganda is not new either. Barry raises the frightening possibility that President Wilson was weakened by influenza in April 1919 and that this caused him to give in to the demands by the European allies, which resulted in the unfortunate outcome of the negotiations at Versailles.

The book is particularly powerful when it describes the actual disease and its effect on the population. The outbreak in Philadelphia must have been horrendous, with 4,597 influenza deaths in a single week. The effects of influenza in other parts of the world are described as equally harrowing. Barry quotes a report about an Alaskan village in which “ . . . it was quite impossible to estimate the number of dead as the starving dogs had dug their way into many huts and devoured the dead . . . ”

A few good things did come from this devastating pandemic. A restructuring of the country’s public health system had its beginning as a direct result of the events of 1918, and efforts were made to push for the establishment of the NIH, which became a reality about ten years later.

Overall, this book is engrossing reading, with plenty of relevance for our own time, which is threatened by natural (and/or deliberately released) emerging pathogens. It is a question not of if, but of when we will be faced with another epidemic of this magnitude. On the last page of the book, Victor Vaughan is quoted on the 1918 influenza pandemic: “Civilization could have disappeared within a few more weeks.”

LIVE TO EAT: "Why do we celebrate Thanksgiving?"

Thanksgiving at Churchill Downs?

In 2016 we chose to spend the Thanksgiving holiday week in Catania, Sicily. Afterward more than one person asked me, "How do they celebrate Thanksgiving in Italy?"

"The same way as the 4th of July," I replied.

No snark intended; people forget the specific nature of national holidays.

I celebrated Thanksgiving while in Catania by eating a mixed grill of horse meat. There were no lamentations about the absence of turkey and the fixings; we'd long since stopped bothering with all that, and picked up Chinese on the big day. It was a household tragedy a few years back when Vietnam Kitchen stopped opening on Thanksgiving, although we still go there on Christmas Day.

Prior to Catania, the last time I'd been overseas for Thanksgiving was in 1991, during the English teaching gig in Košice, Czechoslovakia (now independent Slovakia). Given that the traditional "national dish" of Slovakia is bryndzové halušky, or potato dumplings with sheep's cheese and bacon bits, it's what I chose to eat on Thanksgiving Day, at a wine cellar with something resembling Tokaj.

For Thanksgiving in 2019 we're south of Slovakia, in Slovenia. Beer and sausages sound peachy keen to me, but whatever you choose to eat, drink and do today, here's food for thought.

Why do we celebrate Thanksgiving?, by Soleil Ho (San Francisco Chronicle)

I don’t really know what to do with Thanksgiving.

I enjoy flipping through recipes for sweet potato pie, roasted brussels sprouts and spiced cranberry sauce as much as anyone else, but it’s difficult to disentangle the holiday from our colonial history. It seems like we certainly try our hardest to do so.

When I was in elementary school, my teacher had my class draw straws to divide us up into Natives and Pilgrims; the former made feathered headbands out of brown construction paper, and the latter crafted black buckled hats. I think we sang a song about togetherness. (My mother-in-law, an elementary school teacher in the Midwest, tells me her school no longer does this. Another teacher who works in the North Bay says his school barely acknowledges the holiday in its curriculum. I’m curious to know what other schools do.)

Though one could argue that Thanksgiving can and should be an apolitical occasion, the persistent retelling of history that occurs around the holiday is steeped in our national myth making. We still popularly romanticize the origin of the holiday — and by extension, the origin of the country — as one where pilgrims from Europe broke bread with Native Americans, who freely gave and gave until there was nothing left to give. I’m sure I’ll get more than a few email responses that speak to that fact.

Yet so much ink has been spilled and so much breath has been expended in service of clearing up the story of the holiday. As Dennis Zotigh, a cultural specialist at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, writes, “Why should Native peoples celebrate Thanksgiving? Many Natives particularly in the New England area remember this attempted genocide as a factual part of their history and are reminded each year during the modern Thanksgiving.”

The responses to his question from Native folks from around the country vary. I was struck the most by one from a reader in Montana: “It’s important to share the whole, true story of the first Thanksgiving... I will say this, The generic idea of Thanksgiving, or taking the time to be with family and friends and give thanks for all the blessings in our lives, the big and small, is a great practice and should happen more often. I wonder how we can turn a negative into a positive? Can we have an honest Thanksgiving? Can we move forward and, if so, where do we begin?”

Is there more we can do than watch as the turkey dinner magazine and newspaper spreads are published on cue?

The idea of tapping Native American thinkers to comment on occasions like Columbus Day or Thanksgiving and surface what may be traumatic experiences for the benefit of a largely non-Native audience feels mostly crass to me, though I think the New York Times’ great piece featuring chef and activist Sean Sherman was a step in the right direction. Here at The Chronicle, we also ran a story over a recent Thanksgiving about how Northern California Pomo and Yurok Indians are striving to restore nearly lost food traditions.

Still, I would rather that Sherman or others get full-on columns in food publications so that, again, that subject matter isn’t relegated to holidays where we want to feel a bit absolved. It’s like a blushing acknowledgment, a wink to show that we can see the bigger picture, but the rest of the holiday goes on without issue.

To backtrack to what the writer from Montana wanted us to consider, what are some ways to reframe the holiday that might make space for all of these contradictions and complications? I’d love to hear from you if you have any suggestions that we could share with your fellow readers.

What strikes me about switchel, or old-fashioned haymaker's punch.

More at the The Old Farmer's Almanac

Thanks to my friend MB for posting on Facebook about switchel, a bit of Americana with which I'm largely unfamiliar. It seems to have been intended as non-alcoholic in the main, but of course a bit of additive never hurt.

Delving deeper, I see there are dozens of commercial varieties available these days, with spices, fruit and all the attendant foo-foo to appeal to those consumers who are unfamiliar with the concept of "authenticity."

Health faddism and health fascists are annoying, but couch switchel in terms of history and I'm all ears. What strikes me about switchel is that it's much like the impetus for homebrewing, at least back at the start when you found a recipe that tasted good and kept making (and drinking) it.

RECIPE: SWITCHEL (1853), by Eric Colleary (The American Table)

... And if you suffer at all from allergies, you’ll want to know about switchel.

Also known as Harvest Drink, Harvest Beer, Swanky, Haymakers Punch, and a host of other aliases, switchel is a refreshing beverage that has been fortifying the American immune system since at least the founding of this nation.

At its most basic, switchel is water, cider vinegar, ginger and a sweetener (molasses, honey, sorghum, etc.). Rum, whiskey, brandy or hard cider can be added to give it a bit more oomph. I’ve seen some recipes, particularly in the south, that add cayenne pepper to the mix as a cold cure.

One of the earliest written references to switchel comes from Philip Freneau, known as the “Poet of the American Revolution,” in his 1789 poem “On the Demolition of an Old College.” Describing an incident at Dartmouth College where a group of students tried to take down an old log building, Freneau suggests switchel is not boozy enough to lead a man to destruction:

Relent, relent! to accomplish such designs
“Folks bred on college fare are much too weak”
For such attempts men drink your high-proof wines
Not spiritless switchel and vile hogo drams
“Scarcely sufficient to digest your Greek–“

Each cook had their own recipe for switchel. The amount of each ingredient depended largely on the personal tastes of those making it, and exact measuring wasn’t necessary – one would simply add more of something until it tasted right. Sweetners depended on what was available. Molasses was more common in New England where the rum trade from the Carribean made the black syrup a staple on pantry shelves. In the frontier, switchel would often be made with honey, and in the south, sorghum would be used to soften the beverage’s bite ...

"America's 'democratic experiment' is inextricably tied to the history of slavery."

Solid, thought-provoking essay for Sunday morning coffee. But maybe you'd rather be watching a film derived from a comic book.

America's 'democratic experiment' is inextricably tied to the history of slavery, by Peniel E. Joseph (The Guardian)

The year 1619 laid out rough boundaries of citizenship, freedom, and democracy that are still being policed

This year marks 400 years since enslaved Africans from Angola were forcibly brought to Jamestown, Virginia. This forced migration of black bodies on to what would become the United States of America represents the intertwined origin story of racial slavery and democracy. This year also marks what would have been the 90th birthday of Martin Luther King, the most well-known mobilizer of the civil rights movement’s heroic period between 1954 and 1965.

While Americans are quick to recognize Jamestown as the first episode of a continuing democratic experiment, the nation remains less willing to confront the way in which racial slavery proved crucial to the flourishing of American capitalism, democratic freedoms, and racial identity. The year 1619 laid out rough boundaries of citizenship, freedom, and democracy that are still being policed in our own time ...

This writer doesn't disagree with the consequences of slavery, but isn't in favor of selecting a specific year (1619) as the jumping off point.

The Misguided Focus on 1619 as the Beginning of Slavery in the U.S. Damages Our Understanding of American History, by Michael Guasco (Smithsonian)

The year the first enslaved Africans were brought to Jamestown is drilled into students’ memories, but overemphasizing this date distorts history

1619 is not the best place to begin a meaningful inquiry into the history of African peoples in America. Certainly, there is a story to be told that begins in 1619, but it is neither well-suited to help us understand slavery as an institution nor to help us better grasp the complicated place of African peoples in the early modern Atlantic world. For too long, the focus on 1619 has led the general public and scholars alike to ignore more important issues and, worse, to silently accept unquestioned assumptions that continue to impact us in remarkably consequential ways.

Labor Day 2019: It SHOULD be honored on May 1. Today is a boss's holiday, but we'll celebrate with songs about working people, and thoughts by Dan Canon.

Just a wee bit of clarity, then some music, and finally a benediction. The content herewith is derived from past posts.

Labor Day is May 1, by Jonah Walters (Jacobin)

Today is a boss's holiday.

 ... Tragically, our labor movement was never strong enough to buck the tyranny of capitalism for good. And today, with union membership in dramatic decline and workers under sustained attack from the political establishment, this militant past often feels like a distant, even irretrievable, memory.

But American workers did contribute at least one lasting legacy to the international movement for working-class liberation — a workers’ holiday, celebrating the ideal of international solidarity, and eagerly anticipating the day when workers might rise together to take control of their own lives and provide for their own well-being.

That holiday is May Day, not Labor Day.

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Fathom the note on Woody Guthrie's guitar, and follow the link to hear the songs.

Top Ten Labor Day Songs, by Peter Rothberg (The Nation)

In honor of Labor Day, I’ve revised a previous attempt at the impossible task of naming the best songs ever written about working people. The list is highly debatable; songs about work and working people cut across genres and generations. I know it’s a travesty to neglect “Which Side Are You On?” and Johnny Paycheck’s classic “Take This Job and Shove It.” It also seems impossible that I’ve excluded Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg, Nina Simone, and John Mellencamp, and given such short shrift to the rich history of punk rock odes to the insanity of wage slavery. Hopefully, these songs will get people thinking about their own favorite musical celebrations of the working condition.

Dan Canon's congressional campaign was in full swing on Labor Day, 2017, and the candidate (he lost in the 2018 primary) had cogent thoughts about Labor Day. Well, it's about time someone around here did, and consequently, I believe they're worth repeating.

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A couple of thoughts about Labor Day:

I've represented workers against big business here in my community for a decade now. Union folks don't often get to me, because they have a line of job protection that most American workers don't have. Most of the employment protections non-union folks *do* have were also a direct result of the labor movement. Overtime pay, workplace safety rules, anti-retaliation provisions - these are all thanks to unions, and affect most workers whether they've ever paid dues or not.

The issues brought to the fore by labor unions are more important now than ever. As plenty of people have rightly pointed out, our insane wealth gap has just emboldened the rich to take even more, not to generously lavish the working class with raises and pensions, because almost no one is telling them they can't. Labor unions tell them they can't. So oligarchs over the last decade or so have been pretty brazen about trying to break the back of organized labor as a whole. They keep the concentration of wealth at the top from getting even worse, and the top is pretty adamant that they'd *like* for it to get worse.

But it's too simplistic to say that the effort to gut unions is just based on greed. It's also part and parcel of the GOP/new-American-fascist agenda. Down here, if we are organized, we are a threat to the top. The more and better we are organized, the more of a threat we pose. And so naturally, the more divided we are, the less a threat we pose to an increasing concentration of wealth and power at the top. In fact, if we are very divided, we might not even notice such concentration at all. We might deny that it exists. We might think it doesn't affect us. We might not have time to care.

This is why there's a concerted effort to divide us up. Black v. white, Christian v. Muslim, straight v. gay, cis v. trans, etc. It makes us disorganized. Unfocused. Weak.

Where would you start a campaign of disorganization, were you to run one? Who would be among your primary targets? I bet one would be: the folks who have already known how to organize and get results for more than a century.

That's the reason we see our friends, families, and neighbors in the labor movement under attack. It's not just about making a few more dollars at the expense of someone else's hard work. It's about perpetuating divisions and preventing the amalgamation and galvanization of those of us down here below.
Let's all buy a drink for a union member and tell 'em we've got their backs. They've had ours for more than a hundred years.

Dicky, meet Jeffrey: "I Am Not A Crook: How A Phrase Got A Life Of Its Own."

Funny dude, that Richard Nixon. From 2013, this explanation.

'I Am Not A Crook': How A Phrase Got A Life Of Its Own (NPR)

Forty years ago Sunday, then-President Richard Nixon first uttered the now infamous phrase, "I am not a crook." Nixon made the declaration during a press conference in Orlando, Fla., amid charges related to the Watergate break-in and subsequent scandal. Host Arun Rath explores the five little words that brought down the presidency.

Frederick Douglass: "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" (2019).

Dave Zirin, one of a select group of sportswriters who really matter, introduces a speech by Frederick Douglass, originally delivered in 1852.

Here’s hoping people take the time to read the entirety of Douglass’s brilliant speech. Even though his were words that spoke directly to his moment in history, they still ring with an unsettling power.

As Douglass says, “Had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.”

The speech itself is lengthy, eloquent and worthy. In my estimation, it is best read prior to hamburgers and fireworks.

‘What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?’, by Frederick Douglass By Dave Zirin (The Nation)

... But, such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, lowering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!

All about the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919, which is no laughing matter.

History is endlessly fascinating. Does anyone remember the London Beer Flood of 1814?

The Boston Molasses Flood Is Worth Taking Seriously, by Cara Giaimo (Atlas Obscura)

In 1919, a viscous 40-foot wave slammed into the city’s North End, killing 21 people.

On January 15, 1919, 10-year-old Pasquale Iantosca went out to gather scraps for firewood. Although it was a warm day, his father, Giuseppe, was taking no chances: He had bundled his son into two crimson sweaters, and was keeping an eye on him from the second-story window of their small apartment building in Boston’s North End. But peril is not predictable, and as Giuseppe watched, Pasquale suddenly vanished. “A dark wall had consumed him as though he never existed,” the historian Stephen Puleo writes in Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. It would be hours before rescuers found the boy’s body, his arms and pelvis broken and both of his red sweaters gummed with brown.

The Great Molasses Flood was a tragedy. Twenty-one people died horribly, 150 were injured, and homes and buildings were destroyed. But it has become tragic in the Greek sense, too: The thing that makes it most memorable also undercuts it. The only mark it has left on the landscape is a brief plaque embedded in a wall near Boston Harbor, describing a “40-foot wave of molasses” that, like some sort of delicious Godzilla, “crushed buildings” and “buckled … railroad tracks.” The sight and smell of “brown syrup and blood,” so memorably described in the Boston Post, has been replaced in the city’s consciousness by a charming “scent of molasses” that supposedly still permeates the North End on hot days. As Puleo puts it in Dark Tide’s introduction, “the flood today remains part of the city’s folklore, but not its heritage.” The punchline takes away the punch.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The Great Molasses Flood has plenty of lessons to offer at all levels: about corporate responsibility and negligence, about immigration and disenfranchisement, and about human bravery and suffering. One hundred years after the molasses tank burst, some people are trying to restore the disaster to its rightful place in Boston history ...