Accosted On the Streets Demanding the G20 Privileges of Sheep

The back of the car is filled with knitters. They aren’t knitting right know – just talking about knitting, knitting, knitting. How much can one talk about knitting – well evidently a lot. Famous knitters that I have known– they have fancy pieces of equipment, just like cooks – it’s much much more that a simple knitting needle and a piece of string– perl one, perl two – much, much more than just this, too hear all the talk. There are all the classes have to be  taken or which should be taken – and more important than that is the gossip about the their  knitting instructors - do they have coaches -  there are knitting conventions (evidently) and I think that that is why they are headed to Chicago or maybe they had just attended a class together in Kansas City and are returning to Chicago as their conversations are much like their knitting it is hard to make sense ofl – perl one perl two – and to hear them talk, they can converse and knit at the same time –  they are the original multitaskers - they are telling the story of a TV watching party (I doubt that it was the Superbowl but may have been, there being no specific reason that knitters would automatically be adverse to football), the food, the conversation, the camaraderie and of course the simultaneous knitting (these mlultitaskers). And they talked about knitting supply stores and how someone bought the wrong yarn and what a shame that the store was still open – but one of them knew someone who just loved that paticular shop. Someone was talking about a yarn-winding machine. Someone else had yet to use that make and model and wanted her opinion on what she thought of it. Andt after all of this I still don’t know the difference between knitting and crochet and may never find out..

I could describe [brain damage] better if I weren’t afflicted with it – Donald Barthelme – “Brain Damage:, 1970

It need not make any sense
But it has to be written down
How else is nonsense
To make no sense
And still give a sense
      Of this


Babbling in the street
The poet is to be avoided

Only 31 percent of college graduates can read a complex book and extrapolate from it - Michael Gorman

The national average expenditure per K-12 student is $10,814. About 3.3 million students will graduated from highs schools in the US this year. 70% of them will enroll in college. The annual cost of an undergraduate education (tuition, room and board) will be about $12,000 for a public university and $30,000 at a private university. 714,000 associate degrees, 1.6 million bachelors and 659,000 masters degrees will be awarded this year.

“What’s disturbing is that the assessment [National Center for Educational Statistics assessment of adult literacy] is not designed to test your understanding of Proust but to test your ability to read labels – Mark S Schneider

God wrote none of this in stone- it is not a  commandment  – what man wroth man can undo

Young growing ecosystems have a tendency to maximize growth efficiency measured by production per unit of existing biomass. In – Herman E Daly – Economics in a Full World (Scientific American Sept 2005) Daly p105

A mature eco-system would be incompatible with a concept like that of ‘creative destruction’ – does creative destruction prevent capitalism from reaching its mature stage as a stable and static process? Certainly our obsession with growth efficiency measured by production per unit is not indicative of a mature economy.

It is not slavery they detest; it is simply the Negro completion, and the monopoly of the opportunities to make money by Negro owners, which they [poor southern whites] feel and but dimly comprehend – Fredrick Law Olmsted – The Cotton Kingdom, 1861 p400

Fascism: where people serve the processes rather than the reverse:
     - The historical process
     - The economic process
     - The educational process
     - The industrial process
     - The regulatory process
     - The security process
     - The political process
     - The healthcare process
     - The welfare process
     - The pacification process
     - The scientific process


A project has a point of cessation
Something is achieved and then it ends
Sometimes it is called a ‘package’
        Something that is do- able
        A process does not ever end
Otherwise a projects is a lot unlike the
        Onset of a process


Between the project and the process
Is something sometimes called a War
Meaning a program – the implementation
Of a strategy. Wars are not achievable either
They are considered proper nouns
        - The War on Poverty
        - The War on Drugs
        - The War on Terror
        - The War to End All Wars

All projects, wars and even processes
Are begun with the best of intentions
Except perhaps the Final Solution
Which was achievable and did end
(But not on its own terms)


But somewhere along the road
From project to process
It takes a life of its own
Then it takes many lives
(Depending on how much
Cannon fodder it is fed)
       - A housing project
       - The moon landing project
       - My school project
       - The Berlin Airlift

Trucks and trucks loaded with crates of arms / all marked USA. MADE IN USA, / arms to catch more prisoners, to hunt down books, / to steal five pesos from Juan Potosme – – Ernesto Cardenal – Pluriverse, 2009 p61

That Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Saved thousands of lives if not
        Hundreds of thousands
They were sure
But can we really be sure
Was an invasion really necessary
       What would have been accomplished

       That could not have been done by a blockade
But the American people they protested
       Would not have stood for that
       They were geared up for an invasion
And it is true that the more newly sonless mothers there are
The more The People scream for blood


But at least they admitted that
It was not all that different than
          Nero feeding Christians to the Lions
And now that the Christians have become Muslims
          It is so much easier – the public needs blood
          Or at least a bit of charred radioactive bone


It was necessary and it saved lived
They were still sure
But were willing to admit
          Not strategically necessary
Revisionist history sure makes one squirm
Our stories need to be authorized

Maybe tonight you’re on the list! / And the night goes on. And there’s a lot of night left. / And the day will be only a sunlit night. / The quietness of night under the scorching sun – – Ernesto Cardenal – Pluriverse, 2009 p62

Generally speaking good writers have important things to say and bad writers do not and when there is an exception it is with the bad writers

The girls came and went with their jars, / singing an old love-song as they passed. / Those who came up, as erect as statues: / beneath their cool red amphorae with painted patterns, / cool bodies, with the shape of amphorae. / And those who went down / went prancing and dancing / leapt like deer, / their skirts unfolding in the wind like flowers – Ernesto Cardenal – Pluriverse, 2009 p35

By 12:30 I am at the theater playing hooky. I’m watching a film called “The Fog of War”. I’m calling it lunch and feeling just a ping of guilt about this deception. Not enough though to prevent me and knowing that no  one at work gives a damn. So why is it that I feel this guilt – it difficult to unlearn the habits of a lifetime - I've just been too well trained to be anything other than a worker bee.

My simple minded heart aches for another life. Why can’t I make a living trout fishing? The same question I posed sixty years ago to my father. I got drunk last night, an act now limited to twice a year – Jim Harrison - In Search of Small Gods, 2009 p49

Walter says “I am [was] coming out of the Library, the Main Library, yesterday with a load of books. While I’m waiting to cross the street, out of the corner of my eye, I could see this man crossing the street and making a bee line towards me. Just before he reached me, he tripped and fell. He blamed me. He said with a French accent that I had a powerful energy that drew him towards me. Walter vemently denied that it was his fault.