It’s beefsteak when I’m working and whiskey when I’m not

The old  Pontiac Gran Prix with its gray paint splotches gets pulled over,  a flashing red light, a small town cop. Poverty is suspecious. A Beamer rarely gets pulled over regardless of how fast they go. In Germany you pay your ticket based on your income. The police should have to pay to stop old clunkers (based on income of course). **I like the idea - an incentive to only harass the rich folks - that policy wouldn't last long)**.  No privacy in this town, the waitress remarks. Is this chicken night? No, honey, this is catfish night. It’s an old couple; they stay anyway. How much chicken could they have eaten anyway? Evidently, a lot. I see their plates piled high with deep fried mounds of filleted catfish, hushpubbies and french fries, all golden brown. I’m having a hell of a time with my BBQ Brisket Sandwich and American fries (sliced baked potatoes that have been fried crispy). The dinner crowd is just starting to arrive – it’s already after five at the Wagon Wheel

The three waitresses scurry about. I may have even sat on this exact same stool fifty years ago, it has endured at least that long. Twenty-five cent blue-plate specials and five cent mugs of coffee. Mom worked across the street at the Allis-Chalmers dealer. Now it’s almost six. Here’s mud in your eye Mr. Policeman.

Entertainment is the counterpart of dehumanizing work and has the same stultifying characteristics

You can shine shoes and wear a suit / You can comb your hair and look quite cute / You can hide your face behind a smile / One thing you can’t hide / Is when you’re crippled inside – John Lennon

Around and around in circles beginning anywhere, but ending when it begins to make sense. So don’t start unless you are prepared for the unsuspected. And I ask how can you ever be prepared for everything. My point exactly, I am told. Well I said, I was not prepared for that. And I was told that this was not yet  the time for making my journey. But I left  anyway. Drove out of town. The Wagon Wheel with its blinking red neon light in my rear view mirror.

It matters not a thinker’s dam / on the hither or thither side of the Acheron / how many rivers you cross / if you fail to cross the Rubicon – M B Tolson – Harlem Gallery, 1965 p42

A snake seen

            On the bridge

Trying to escape

Record highs

            Across the Mid-West

                        And the East Coast

Thirty degrees above norm

Slithering down the railing

            And into the water

In the end, it is always the ruling classes… that long mourn the empires, and their grief always has a stagey quality to it – Benedict Anderson – Imagined Communities, 1991  p111

Out of the 36 OECD countries US Medical care ranks:

-       first in cost  at $8,402 per capita

-       last in ability to provide affordable health care

-       10^th in the number of practicing nurses

-       27^th in life expectancy

-       29^th in the number of practicing doctors

-       29^th in the number of doctor visits per capita (3.9 visits vs OECD avg of 6.5)

-       30^th in hospital beds

-       31^st in health coverage

-       31^st in infant mortality

-       31^st in preventable premature deaths

What the US Medical system does well:

-       4^th in preventing death by stroke

-       9^th in preventing death by cancer

It’s easy to imagine the end of the world. An asteroid destroying all life and so on.  But you cannot imagine the end of capitalism – Slavoj Zizek

By Wednesday the last of the week-ends recreationists leave and by Thursdays the first of next-weeks begin to arrive at their reserved sites

The summer would end, as all seasons always did, the shopkeepers boarding up their windows and salting their pork for the larder, the reproachful church masters preparing for the last sermon and the stiff breeze that would blow away the time, or cast it like a fisherman’s rod or cadet’s brimmed hat; the summer would end, but not as soon as the night – Charles Bernstein – The Sophist, 1987  p20

There are many things

            That only a few

                        Know

And then no one

                        Knows

And there are already

            Many things, many

                        Many things

            That no one

                        Knows

When I eat chicken, I don’t ‘become’ chicken. Chicken becomes me – Henry Ward Beecher

Italian Opera in North Beach with my morning coffee. I am practicing; trying to learn how to be homeless. It is more difficult than you would think. I establish a few simple rules; stay out all day, don’t start drinking until after 4PM, and most importantly know where the public urinals are. Not to simple, not too difficult. Just right as Goldilocks said and looked at the trouble that she landed in. Anyway I’m not really homeless, just pretending to be. Trying it on for size. It’s much easier when you have a place to come back to. A place where you don’t have to take your things and leave when the sun comes up and can’t come back to until it gets dark. A place where you don’t have to attend a prayer meeting first. A place you don’t have to pretend to be meek when they splat a pile of watery mashed potatoes and mystery meat on your plate.

It’s beefsteak when I’m working and whiskey when I’m not – Gillian Welsh