A cold front moves in. I can’t stay out here without any
heat. The temperature is supposed to get down into the single digits for the
next few nights and not much above freezing during the days. I take a break from
camping, stay with a near by relative. Stay as long as you like she says. Mr. Duck is parked in front, I hope he don't get ticketed. I’m
thinking about getting a small generator. God did I hate listening to them
running all night when I was tenting. I am reminded of a Gil Scot-Heron song –
There Comes a Time When You Gotta Put On a Suit and Tie - actually it's called - PUSH GOMES TO SHOVE (see lyrics below). I mentioned that to
Meg and she asked if I planned to go back to work. Oh hell no! I’d rather
freeze to death in the woods, but fortunately I don’t have to.
PUSH COME TO SHOVE - GIL SCOT HERON
Can nobody scold you
Can nobody blame you,
And make you feel bad
Nobody should tie you
Tell you I told you
Nobody should ride you,
About the commitments you had.
Cuz they done learned you
And they done burned you
Showed you idealistic is all you were
Everybody gotta realize
That we all had to compromise
Had to put on suit and ties
When push came to shove
(it seems like)
Push comes to shove once in your lifetime (yes and)
Push comes to shove to find out just what's on your mind
Push comes to shove to find exactly what you're made of
Nobody can know you
Nobody should tease you
Not try to rezone you
And make you feel strange
Nobody got to explain
Ain't really nothing to explain
Everything got rearranged
Can I weather a change
But they done taught you
Cuz they done caught you
Showed you unrealistic is all you were
So everybody once believed
Was only showing how naive
Gotta give up to be free
When push came to shove.
It seems like
Push comes to shove once in your lifetime (yes and)
Push comes to shove to find out just what's on your mind
Push comes to shove to find exactly what you're made of
Well, everybody knew we was somehow running late
And with the captains overboard, who was handling a ship of fate?
And all we knew was what we really did not know
And that's when push was sure 'nough coming to shove
Push comes to shove to find exactly what you're made of...
Cuz they done learned you
And they done burned you
Showed you idealistic is all you were
Everybody gotta realize
That we all had to compromise
Had to put on suit and ties
When push came to shove
Push comes to shove once in your lifetime (yes and)
Push comes to shove to find out just what's on your mind
Push comes to shove to find exactly what you're made of
Good poetry is the barest – most essentially complete – form
of presenting a subject – Louis Zukofsky – A Taste of Poetry
Waiting in line
Down at the
roaster
Waiting waiting waiting
For a morning latte
Waiting waiting in latteland
The lazy read the paper
The industrious are
On their laptops
Get back in your car
With your Styrofoam cups
In time to
punch the clock
A black Lexus gets you
There
In this land of opportunity
There’s no time for jealousy
When you're making money
When you're making money
But any fanaticism that is not a group fanaticism is
precisely what society understands as a madness – Susan Sontag – Under the Sign
of Saturn, 1980 p65
USA USofA
With the
same viciousness
Of a dog
guarding a bone
The monotone of the chant
The crowd
grunting
The stadium
itself
Rumbling
The deep aftershock of an
Horrendous
quake
Steel and concrete tremble
Wave after wave – the wave
Around and
around
USA USA USA
The President spoke. I can hear
You. I can
hear you
American had spoken; it had been
Put on a
new footing
He achieved his dream – running
The length
of the field
For the touchdown
He grabbed a flag and it flared
Behind him
as the ran
Around and around the
field
They hollered and they hooted
USA USA USA USA
But it was not clear to him to what degree he was a
believer, it quickly became clear that
he was an opponent of unbelievers, and he trained himself to think with
conviction that he was convinced, and that it was one’s responsibility to be
convinced – Robert Musil – The Man Without Qualities, 1956 o1290
The United States is now tied with Argentina, Romania and
Latvia in the annual World Press Freedom Index
In the army what counts most is being able to report
progress; a certain optimism is indispensable even in defeat – Robert Musil –
The Man Without Qualities, 1956 p1125
Those with the greatest need get the fewest resources
The schools identified as
low-performing not only serve a growing underclass of impoverished families;
they also typically do so with fewer state and local dollars per pupil than
wealthier districts around them – Linda Darling-Hammond – The Nation, 1/30/12
p12
There are many want-a-be conservatives but few want-a-be
liberals
All that expresses a radical discontent and aims at
shattering complacencies of feeling risks being disarmed, neutralized, drained
of its power to disturb – by being admired, by being (or seeming to be) too
well understood, by becoming relevant – Susan Sontag – Under the Sign of
Saturn, 1980 p68
There are three major mistakes that a young person can make
for which there is no redemption:
1 – driving
drunk and killing someone
2 – having
a child by someone that they cannot stand
3 – taking
out a student loan
People are conceived and slain in an instant, and small
birds fly from one branch to another with the same right of existence – Robert
Musil – The Man Without Qualities, 1956
p1478
There are some sheep in wolf’s clothing among the liberals,
but among the conservatives there are many wolfs in sheep’s clothing
The diplomats pretend to be ignorant even when the really
are – Robert Musil – The Man Without Qualities, 1956 p1232
Nutmeg can fuck you up. It contains a psychoactive chemical
called myristrcin which has a chemical structure similar to mescaline. Malcolm
X wrote that in prison a “penny match box full of nutmeg had the kick of three
or four reefers.” Side effects may include loose bowels, vomiting, accelerated
heart rate and nutmeg burps at twenty minute intervals. Or so I've been told, I really don’t know – I have
not tried it myself.
There are two kinds of saviors: those who want to soothe the
soul of the suffering and those who want to heal the sores of the flesh of the
suffering – Ngugi Wa Thiongo – Wizard of the Crow, 2007 p94
The medical cost of a prison inmate (per year):
Average $ 5,800
Age 55-59 11,000
Over 80 40,000
California’s elderly prison inmate population has grown from
4% of all prisoners in 1990 to 17% in 2010. Because the state does not have
enough prison hospital beds it must contract for impatient care at a cost of
$850,000 per bed per year. California is currently building a $750m prison
hospital facility with 1,772 beds.
It’s a distinctive mark of our times that we have too many
geniuses. How is one to understand them all and not overlook any – Robert Musil
– The Man Without Qualities, 1956 p1347
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