Silence Equals Death

Tomorrow is an embarrassing day for gay liberationists. Somehow some "committee" ... and I use the word with some derision notwithstanding my long history on committees ... decided that they would name May 7 as National Day of Silence for gay people. The idea is so retrograde, so obviously out-of-touch and ignorant of gay history, so ludicrously out-of-touch with what it means to be a gay person in society today. Less significantly, it signals again and once again the degree to which the left has self-absorbed itself out of relevance to the movement.

So some history. The regular reader of my scratch will know that I was a gay activist through the 70s. The photo that follows is pure credentialing ... I may be an old crank now, but I were a yute once, and nobody is taking that away from me ... this is a photo of me addressing the National Gay Rights March in 1976 in Toronto ...

I wrote a little more of my history in the movement here.

I can tell you that the notion of a Day of Silence for gay people would have been viewed as the work of double agents in those days ... if it had not been laughed out the door, it would have been the subject of a stream of those special 70s-style polemics. We were not about silence, and the gay movement was not about silence. For crying out loud, one of our most infamous tactics was the "zap" when a bunch of fags would go to a straight place and kiss and hold hands and queen it up. We had guts, and we knew that silence was the language of cowards. If silence had been our kit bag, my dear friends in the movement today, we would all still be in the closet.

Think about it. The history of gay people is nearly impossible to discern because of the silence which our enemies brutally, murderously, enforced upon us. Remember the phrase "the love that dare not speak its name." That is silence. Remember what they said about us in the 70s when we finally spoke up, they called it "the love that will not shut up." That's me. I am a faggot who will not shut up, even if a bunch of cloistered self-styled radicals came up with the lame idea that sitting around with tape on their mouths represented homosexuality and our struggle for freedom. Our movement is about making noise, and every success we have had is because we have not shut up, not because we wandered around in a daze pretending to have lost our voices.

The modern gay left needs to study the history upon which they are built, and they need to shed the blinders of post-gay-liberation apologies ... I'll explain that shortly ... and look at what really happened.

First though ... how can you have a day of silence when the slogan of our struggle against AIDS was "Silence Equals Death". Let me tell you that all my friends whom I lost in the plague, they are silent. And I can swear to you that if they could speak now, they would tell us to shout and make noise and never to allow anyone to silence us. Every Saturday morning, my dog and I make a pilgrimage to the AIDS memorial grove where I recite thrice the words of my friend, the late poet Thom Gunn, in memory of my silent friends in the stone circle where these words are carved:

walker within this circle pause
although they all died of one cause
remember how their lives were dense
with fine compacted difference

Yeah ... that is what I am saying ... the notion of a Day of Silence dishonors their memory. It is as if all that we did has been pointlessly forgotten in favor of some half-baked idea that nobody with any sense questioned. Imagine what the committee meeting must have been like when this idea first reared its head ... was there no one with any sense of history, of the struggles which have made us what we are today? Did no one think to look at where we came from? I mean this idea has less consciousness than Boys in the Band ... no, the characters in Boys in the Band had the balls to be loud, but whatever committee came up with silence as a strategy could no more have led gay liberation than the Log Cabin Club.

You know, a year ago, I tried to write this post, and it made me so viscerally angry that I stopped. I am writing it this year because only a week ago I promised to blog thrice weekly, so I am stuck with having to spit out what I sat on before. I run my brain like a committee, and I keep commitments even if just to myself ... and my inner committee has enough sense that it tosses lousy ideas into the trash heap without a vote.

So back to gay history. In the 70s, a key debate in the movement, expressed in sundry ways, was between the notion of single issuism and the notion that the gay movement had to "link up" with other movements. The genuine gay liberationists ... I was one of them ... ignored multi-issuism because it obviously spelled the death of our demands. No one liked us. My friends in the movement today, listen to this ... feminism hated us ... the women's movement did everything they could to distance themselves from us. The reason why dykes boycotted the gay movement was the homophobia of the women's movement.

They wanted us to shut up ... they wanted us to be silent. We were inconvenient. They might nod to the fact that we ought to have rights, but it was inconvenient. It played, in their minds, to the bigotry of the opponents of the women's movement. So, better the fags should shut up and go back to their drag shows in shuttered bars.

We did not shut up. We shouted. We screamed. We invaded their precincts and we made them listen. And with reference to above, that is why we do not need to apologize to the myriad ex-post-facto "supporters" who chide us on overblown claims of racism and sexism in the most liberal community in the country. We made our own liberation, not only against the bigots of church and state and common sense, but also against such bigots on the self-absorbed left who still congratulate themselves on finding ways to dump on gay men for being free.

No excuses, no apologies, no silence.

A couple of stories from my past ... at a march for abortion rights led by a group called CARAL (Canadian Abortion Rights Action League) in Vancouver in the 70s ... we jumped into the lead of the march with our banner. The organizers tried to get rid of us, but we wouldn't leave. We wanted to speak at the rally at the end of the march, and they wouldn't let us. So, with the encouragement of my comrades, I simply walked on to the stage as if it was my turn, took the mike and gave a speech. That is one of the proudest moments of my life. There was silence through the speech, but at the end, I remember a rousing cheer. Why? Because we refused to be silent.

Hear this ... Silence is death. Get silence out of your lexicon.

Another moment ... in the 70s in Vancouver, there was a lot of left wing political action to prevent the deportation of the native activist Leonard Peltier. So, as a kind of object lesson to the scolds on the left who kept telling gay liberation that it had to "link up", we "linked up." The homophobia in the native movement was thick. I was at a meeting in somebody's house ... remember I was a 20s slip-of-a-thing hippie-esque gay guy ... and I got to playing with this 5 year-old. Later I found out that there was an angry meeting in the kitchen where the father of the 5 year-old was demanding that all the gay guys be kicked out of the meeting because he didn't want me playing with his kid. That happened. Link up be damned, faggots were last. But we still did not shut up. No silence for us.

So we went to the big march for Peltier. And again, we simply took the microphone when the committee denied us the right to speak. Their silence, our voice. I have this exquisite photo of that moment, and I promise to post it here some time when I find it ... there is this little girl looking right in my eyes when everyone else is looking elsewhere. Why? Because they wanted us to be silent.

We were not silent. And now we are free. Do the math.

Another example ... the Democrats were livid at Newsom because he took a public loud position on gay marriage. But look what happened. Now gay marriage is a prairie fire. If we, and Newsom, had been silent when our "friends" and "fierce allies" told us to be silent, would we be winning in Maine and Iowa and perhaps even in California? No. Because ... my young friends ... Silence Equals Death. BTW, don't forget the episode where Obama long ago refused to be photographed with Newsom ... he has yet to prove to be our friend. Are we going to be silent with him as some have advised?

Has the "silence" crowd seen Word Is Out? Do you have any idea how that film galvanized the movement when it came out? Came out. Because today, yesterday, tomorrow, the gay movement is about coming out and civil rights. Coming out is about being loud and open and speaking. Civil rights is about refusing to be silent in the face of oppression. Any committee who sponsors Day of Silence events should have the self-respect to do a showing of Word Is Out ... because it is the counterpoint that exposes the foolishness of this idea.

Dinner is ready. So let me conclude.

I am not going to be silent tomorrow. I am not going to be silent until they give me six feet of dirt. Silence is the wrong way to go. Kill this stupid idea.

Let's have a National Day of Screaming Queens. Gay pride, not silence.

Silence Equals Death. No excuses.

Postscript: FWIW ... here's a history of the National Day of Silence. Frankly, pretty bloody lame. They actually ask "what are you going to do to end the silence? ... well, how about organizing a National Shout-out to All Oppressed Gay People. That would actually make sense.

Photos ... top by Arod of a bus shelter on Church Street ... middle by unknown of me addressing the 1976 National Gay Rights March in front of Toronto City Hall in 1976 ... bottom by Arod of the AIDS Memorial Grove.

American Idol et al

Just a few quick notes before all the fun begins tonight. I predict that Kris Allen is gone tomorrow. I see it this way. Adam's fans got the message and will vote until their tiny little fingers start to get numb. Allison is the only woman and that will carry her one more week. Don't get me wrong ... I think either Allison or Kris would make a perfect runner up.

But what goes around comes back to bite you. And that is Danny Gokey. I never thought he measured up ... I thought it was a one-trick pony and a voice that was not very pleasant even if he hit notes and had volume and all that. I admit that last week he nailed it ... his best performance yet. But he is no American Idol.

That said, it turns out he really does have gawd in his corner. One of the best AI blogs, mjsbigblog:American Idol - I Love This Cheesy Show, revealed there is an organized evangelical campaign for him. Check it out.

Like every election, American Idol is about who votes. And like every time a fag is up for election, beware the christians! If Adam doesn't win, well, it will be the work of the devil.



Pastiche: I was sitting alone and reading my Herodotus in the cafeteria of the school of business, an entirely graduate affair, at MRU, the Major Research University where I hull grains in exchange for a sack of the same, sufficient to keep me adorned in dress pants and clean shirts. I decided to grab a coffee and when I returned, a noisome spectacle confronted me. A deliciously bronzed, albeit stereotypically crass and straight, laddie of mid-20s vintage had occupied a seat at my table along with a tall, pale, and evidently supercilious female. He was supercilious too but in a coarse, overbearing sort of way. I nodded my approval at their arrival ... seats are rare, after all. He proceeded to loudly declaim on his many opportunities for work in London, and New York, and Austin. He scorned her for preferring London ... "you think I want to live in London just because I'm Australian." Yawn. She had no spine, and was apparently just happy to be with the big stud. And he was a stud.

We fags see a lot of heterosexuality, and it is always a little mysterious. But the young-stud-looking-afield-with-grateful-female-hanging-on phenomenon is one of the stranger expositions. To be blunt, I'd screw 'im if he nodded at me, but I wouldn't waste 15 minutes trying to lure him into my life. And as for her, what does he think she's gonna do for him? She was retreating before every one of his "excursions", but he was so wrapped up in himself that he did not notice.

This is where the "promiscuous" gay male pattern is so superior. If these were two gay guys, they'd screw around a bit and mutually realize that there is no there here. And then move on to the next trick until something eventually made more sense. But heterosexuality seems to move so slowly that such unlikely pairings as these get stuck rather more often, and to frequently deleterious effect.

I am being obnoxious, of course, and arrogant and all that ... but not one whit more obnoxious or arrogant than my big Aussie hunk. And, yeah, he was a hunk. Yessirreebob.


Photos by Arod from around town. Top photo from a year or more ago on a billboard in the Castro; middle photo recent from the Lower Hater store window on Haight Street; bottom photo recent from a window in the Castro.

Sunday Fish Wrap

In yet another bold stroke against the "new atheism", one Charles Blow, occasionally of the New York Times, has written a little screed which he entitles "Defecting to Faith". Yawn, double yawn. The title itself is a rather non-subtle sniffle in the direction of christian self-pity, and gawd noze we see plenty of that. When they're not excoriating sinners and condemning faggots to hellfire, christians love to beat their breasts at how misunderstood and oppressed they are by those horrible child-eating, Jeezus-bashing secular, rational modernists. That's the subtext of the title, though it is rarely sub at all. So in Mr. Blow's title,"defecting" implies christianity as transgressive when, as anyone with even a passing knowledge of western history knows, christianity has been normative in "our" part of the world since 312 C.E. ... and "faith" is that modern buzzword of overweening nodding and winking. The word nauseates me not only because it implies that belief in some imbecilic superstition is a positive character trait, but also because it arrogates the notion of faith to the suspension of reason.

In a greater sense than that religious arrogation, I am a man of faith. I have faith that notwithstanding that the human species will always produce a bumper crop of morons, it will also produce enough transcendental genius to make the entire enterprise worthwhile. I have faith that the Sun will rise, although I also know that my faith is completely irrelevant to the Sun's project. I have faith in the loyalty of friends, and I have faith that my dog will come when I bark at him.

None of this has anything to do with the suspension of reason.

Back to Mr. Blow who postures a self-styled courageous stance against an implied antagonist cabal of rationalists that read atheism into recent reports about the growth of religious non-affiliation. In other words, he argues that recent reports of a statistical drop in religiosity need to be buffered by his particular insights. It turns out that good science has discerned that a greater number of Americans state they have no religious denomination (I will endeavor to find a link when I have a little more time than right now when I am into my second Manhattan as R, my sainted roommate, friend, and bartender, has just lowered the once weekly beef onto the grill.) So he boldly adduces an increase in religiosity in the evidence for its statistical decline. This is typical, to quote the television. Ideologues find evidence of their immanent perfection both in victory and defeat, in affirmation and abnegation.

So it turns out that some children of agnostics turn religious, and lots of folks still end up in the bosom of holy mother church. Whoddathunkit?

But Mr. Blow misses a significant point. Let him speak for himself; I quote at length, notwithstanding the ellipses:

While science, logic and reason are on the side of the nonreligious, the cold, hard facts are just so cold and hard. Yes, the evidence for evolution is irrefutable. Yes, there is a plethora of Biblical contradictions. Yes, there is mounting evidence from neuroscientists that suggests that God may be a product of the mind. Yes, yes, yes. ... But when is the choir going to sing? And when is the picnic? And is my child going to get a part in the holiday play?

Dale McGowan, the co-author and editor of the book “Parenting Beyond Belief” told me that he believes that most of these people “are not looking for a dogma or a doctrine, but for transcendence from the everyday.”

Churches, mosques and synagogues nurture and celebrate this. Being regularly surrounded by a community that shares your convictions and reinforces them through literature, art and ritual is incredibly powerful, and yes, spiritual.

My mouth is agape. It turns out that religion has nothing to do with god, but is simply an excuse for a good picnic. Mr. Blow, have you let old Pope Ratzinger in on your little insight? If the only reason why people are getting involves=d with churches is that they like the tea parties, is this an argument for a transcendent god who controls everything?

If people want a transcendence from the everyday, how about spending a little time with a good book, or perhaps working on an environmental project with fellow citizens? Why would superstition be the first resort here?

This is the stuff of your critique of atheism? He carries on:

As the nonreligious movement picks up steam, it needs do a better job of appealing to the ethereal part of our human exceptionalism — that wondrous, precious part where logic and reason hold little purchase, where love and compassion reign. It’s the part that fears loneliness, craves companionship and needs affirmation and fellowship.

We are more than cells, synapses and sex drives. We are amazing, mysterious creatures forever in search of something greater than ourselves.

Good lord, what a pile of twaddle. Let's get some things straight. Atheism is not a religion. It is the recognition that there is no god. That's all it is. There is no god. No old man with a big beard, not Jesus in sandals and a curiously Germanic face. No Allah thundering and condemning. There are no virgins waiting for the faithful, there is no hellfire, there are no pearly gates. It's all a crock.

Once you recognize that, you are not thereby charged to fill in for the role that churches like to pretend that they invented. You know, labor unions have picnics, atheists go to bars, agnostics have wedding parties. The god bit is completely irrelevant to human existence. It is a thick overlay of ignorance and fear and oppression.

Religion is the root of all evil.

Not so for Mr. Blow, who ends his little piece wit this pearl:

The nonreligious could learn a few things from religion.

If the only argument for religion is that people would otherwise be lonely and would not have picnics to go to, then religion needs some better defense.

So this is it. The only real argument for religion is that there is a god. But there is no god. So religion is a cruel imposition that condemns our species to ignorance. We don't need it. Even if it makes Mr. Blow feel good about himself and his tawdry little piece and his easily dismissed excuses for superstition.

So that is the Sunday fish wrap.


Photos by Arod of local religious sites; no picnics that I could discern.

Saturday in the City

I went downtown today. I've been going downtown again lately since my roommate RL suggested that I cure my eternal schlumpiness ... my word, not his ... of dress casual by letting Macy's do it for me. This all started with the new glasses, my first pair of all-day bifocals, whose fashion-forward frames are handmade by the German outfit Mykita. You have to check out the web site ... it is almost a parody of the features of German design that they lampoon on Saturday Night Live. Still, they are cool glasses, and they had the effect I solicited from them. They changed my sight lines.

Life in the broad masses, even for us eclectic do-it-our-own-way types, has a certain feel of longue durée, and it is worthwhile taking each little blip on the horizon, each change of yarn in the knitting, as a way to revisit commonplaces and habits. True even for those of us who seek out habits and hang on to them.

So I have been upgrading the haberdashery with the aid of Leland, fourth floor salesman. Leland is an elegant middle-aged, impeccably dressed black guy who has to be gay, though I have no warrant on that. He interrupted me chiding my fabulous ex, Richard, for daring to assert that I might try something different, and he has led me through this intense process of dressing like a grown up. Two pairs of shoes, four pairs of dress pants, five shirts, three ties, and sundry accessories later, I am looking a while lot better. Still not good, gawd noze, but better. It's been fun.

So I went downtown today to pick up the latest altered pants, and ended up in the Daily Grill Where I ordered a martini and a slab of seared tuna. The waiter, an older guy with a surfeit of personality reminiscent of bygone days in San Francisco, asserted with jocularity, when I took a pick of the eats, that this was his intellectual property. I volunteered to give him a plug and I hereby do ... he is Ken --------. Alas, he does not have a computer, so he will not see this, but if any friend of his stumbles across my little screed, please let him know that I fulfilled my part of the bargain, and I enjoyed his service.

Ken also asked what I was reading, and was impressed that I was reading Herodotus. He is currently reading a biography of Patton, before which he read a biography of Walt Disney. He also scorned MRU, the major research university where I count stitches just in time to get the nine that feeds me and pays for my new duds. He was schooled, evidently some time ago, at Cal, as was I. I variously told him that I had been in printing for life, that I have a PhD, and that I work for MRU. He did not ask that I stitch this unlikely pastiche into a whole cloth and I did not volunteer. I originally planned to use this post for such a stitching .. but that would seem contrived.

Martini consumed, Ken tipped, Herodotus stowed away, I took one of San Francisco's classic streetcars home and had a nap. That was Saturday in the city.

Photos by Arod, today, in downtown San Francisco

Writing

There's a point to this post, and I'll get to it. But the peroration has to come first.

I spend all day on a computer ... in this I am not unique ... and I write more very day now than ever before in my life, even when I was writing a dissertation. This too is not unique, at least the writing-a-lot part. But I have to admit, or aver, that I part company with most when I say that I loathe sloppy writing almost to the point of obsession. Of course in "averring" this, I expose myself to the virtual scorn of those who might, inexplicably, think that I slop around in my prose. George-Costanza-like, I protest too much. But, fortunately, complaints on the new social media Internet are fleeting, Peter-Pen-like, if I may. So even the Costanza-being in which all of us participate to one degree or another dissolves before we can fulminate sufficiently to make it a hard fact. You cannot dissolve that which never congeals.

So at MRU, the major research university where I string pearls in exchange for just enough oyster meat to keep me from shrinking into oblivion, we had a little micro-contre-temps in which I was confronted with a couple of examples of sloppy prose. Sloppy prose, like the inexcusable driving that passes for navigation these days, depends upon proximity. If you are in the crosswalk, then the feather-brain on the cell phone in the giganto SUV planet-killer is a proximate threat to life and limb and deserves a full-voiced reproach. But in the office, the sloppy prose which invades one's space cannot be the subject of reproach ... people are sensitive, and one wants to be sensitive ... but still, you have to put paid to it. Sloppy prose is like a rash ... untreated it creeps and grows and invades warm, moist, private places that you thought you had under control.

I cannot abide sloppy prose.

But abide I must because this is a world of sloppy prose, and it is a world in which sloppy pose is lauded and lavished and insufficiently lamented.

So, at MRU, there occurred a couple of instances of sloppy prose, and they came to my attention too late for effective intervention. In terms of proximity, this prose would be in web sites and on monitors which are immediately proximate to the one which I directly control, and in a zone over which I am supposed to exercise a certain oversight notwithstanding that the terms of authority are neither clear no exercisable. I was confronted with the need for a stratagem, and I could think of nothing better than changing the sight lines. I went into a meeting with my earnest, likable, engaging, and committed colleagues, and I regaled them with raw rhetorical theory on the relationship between authorial voice and postulated audience.

I live and breathe rhetoric ... and it was a little spasm of joy to spend a few hours perusing Aristotle on rhetoric in preparation for a meeting at MRU. And I practice rhetoric in my job all the time. But is is always the same rhetoric ... as it must be given my position as a content maker for a central office in one of the most important academic institutions in the world ... I do not exaggerate. The rhetoric at MRU consists of an authorial voice that is authoritative, cool, composed, concise, and a postulated audience that is attentive, open, pressed for time, and rational.

The problem in contending with people in the writing zone about audience is that they always substitute real or biological audience for intended audience ... and in any event, they ought to be talking about postulated audience. When you think that you write for an actual audience, you are condemned to pandering or ignorance, or both. But when you sit on the cusp of a dialectic between real/intended audience and the audience that you choose to invent, the postulated audience, you grasp at the possibility that writing is a mode of changing people. You pull an actual audience to the image of audience that you create in writing.

That's how I think.

But I have not been applying that in my blog. It bugs me that I seem to blog less and less, that each night starts with good intentions and ends with a promise to look at it again tomorrow. There is no excuse at MRU for not getting one's writing done ... that is the way of the work world, of course. And I write and I write and I write. But the blog is silent. I post on Facebook ... I have at least two Twitter accounts that I feed. I write dozens upon dozens of emails every week ... and I am such a punctilious little putz that each email is tightly composed and subject to non-negotiable rules of composition and form.

But the blog alone suffers ... and that must stop.

So in aid of writing, and blogging, I have come to the conclusion that the answer to not writing enough is to create the requirement not merely to come up to one's previous standards, but to exceed them. With this post, I am committing to posting something thrice weekly, with deadlines of Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday before I go to bed. And I have created a new blog where I plan to post collections of reflections on educational technology. I'll link to it when it gets a little more substance.

And that, dear reader, is the point I promised. I'm a-gonna blog like I mean it, because I do mean it. Thrice weekly, or else.

Photos by Arod, part of my alphabet series that is seeing the light of day right now for the first time.

Disco Nite on AI

Listening to superannuated disco divas ... and divos, as it were ... on the kick-off show on American Idol. It makes me nostalgic for the sweet years of my youth when I spent countless hours dancing. I like to point out ... damn it, it's the truth ... I was an exceptional disco dancer in the gay male style. I am riveted with nostalgia.

So let me bring you down ... I compare that to the fate of our brothers right now in Baghdad. Do not click on this link if you have a weak stomach. It is horrible. Our brothers are being horribly slaughtered, and no one cares. Imagine if this were happening to Christians in Baghdad. It is still a fact that killing fags is not nearly as contemptible as killing dogs. Witness the difference between the Michael Vick story and the slaughter of the innocents on our watch in Iraq right now.

Being a gay man means both remembering disco life and remembering how religious bigotry kills. Don't trust the bastards, brothers and sisters. They kill whenever they get the chance. We have two millennia of history to prove that.

Saturday Night

Had a weird week ... sore throat kept me home Tuesday, then a wild ear ache Wednesday, and a doctor's appointment Thursday ... so three sick days, each of which actually produced about a half-day's work. So got totally out of sorts, out of routine. The doctor is actually a nurse practitioner whom I chose when my previous Kaiser doctor, whom I affectionately called Doogie Howser, moved on to other career opportunities. Quite a character, my NP ... but I believe in primary care from NPs so I went with him.

He gave me a steroidal inhalant because he said my earache was from allergies and there was no infection.

He also put me on Zocor, so I am now officially on the other side of some kind of line because I have a pill that I will take daily for the rest of my life. Huzzah for modern medicine.

All of this is completely uninteresting.

What kept my interest last week was Herodotus ... I am reading the fabulous Landmark Herodotus because I figure it is the best way to submerge oneself in the consciousness of the ancients prior to my project of re-reading ancient history. Since I am being mildly maudlin in introspection ... it was in the Cluny in Paris in 2006 that something moved my consciousness and made me realize that it was time to return to the reading habits to which I subscribed before graduate student life beat the joy of reading out of me. Since then, I have read history period by period ... especially revolving around my favorites, to whit, Central Asian, early Islamic, and medieval European. I want to go back to the Cluny as a pilgrimage of thanking.

But I digress ... I digress from digressing ... reading Herodotus makes one remember that history was created by people whose perspective on the functionality of reality does not match ours. You have to keep that in mind in thinking about history. Yes, of course, there are human universals ... eating, stealing, screwing, war, aging ... I mention only the first five things that come to mind.

Aside ... it is all flowers tonight in the Saturday evening libation department ... we started our cocktails with an Aviation with violet and now we are on a Petit Prince ... both with organic sweet violets floating in the glass.

So in the midst of my physical travails, and the pressures of work ... Herodotus wrote this ... more to the point, I read what Herodotus wrote two and a half millennia ago:

Amasis [king of Egypt] retorted [to those who reproached him for spending a part of his day every day in drink and banter with his companions]: "when archers need to use their bows, they string them tightly, but when they have finished using them, they relax them. For if a bow remained tightly strung all the time, it would snap and be of no use when someone needed it. The same principle applies to the daily routine of a human being: if someone wants to work seriously all the time and not let himself ease off for is share of play, he will go instance without even knowing it, or at least suffer a stroke. And it is because I recognize this maxim that I allot a share of my time to each aspect of life.

Of course, we all know that is true ... ancient wisdom and all ... my mother tells me the same thing. But here's the difference ... we pay lip service to it today, that all work and no play makes Jack a dull person, but we have so industrialized our play that the seams between work and play no longer exist. Whether I work or play, I am in front of a computer. My one escape ... dog walks ... always have the option of the iPod, but never the iPhone which I would no more answer on a dog walk than I would deliberately bang myself in the shin.

In the ancient world, and in most of the world until very recently and only among the self-anointed, surviving occupied the better part of every day and every life. When things went awry, the world went to hell, and that meant death and misery. Play, then, was more deliberate and apportioned. A festival is for us a dalliance by choice ... shall I lounge about in my pjs or shall I rouse myself to go to the park and listen to the music while littering and feeling superior. But in the ancient world, the festival was a communal compulsion, an exit from the brutality of every day life.

They did not have kooky NPs to cure their momentary ills. They did not work remotely. They knew the sharp boundaries between survival and play ... life was overwhelmingly survival with a little bit of intense play.

We have the play in the midst of our self-absorption, and they had play as a rare fruit of having survived.

Oh well ... will I regret this in the morning. Dinner is ready. I will add photos if I get to it before the move to write moves again.

Love for All ...

The perfect riposte to religious homophobia ... from Bjorn Borg!



Worth repeating that anyone interested in the actual history of same-sex marriage must read John Boswell's myth-shattering Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe.

Fear and Loathing ... and the Storm a-Coming

So to set the scene ... beautiful Sunday afternoon. I am preparing to add 4 koi to the pond in the back yard. Skipping a meal each of yesterday and today because I have slipped above the limit of what I am prepared to tolerate ... not that I am technically overweight, but I do have a limit and I am not going over it! Wee Timmie Lincecum looking merely mortal pitching against the Padres ... the stuff is there but the killer instinct seems a little soft. I figure he needs a bit of time to get over the off-season celebrity and get back into the desperation for winning that undergirds every great athlete. Went through my closet and tossed a pile of clothing roughly three feet high to Community Thrift. And I am preparing to devote a few of these declining hours of the weekend to The Company, as I sometimes like to call MRU, the major research university where I stuff m&m's into tiny boxes in exchange for enough candy to support my heathen lifestyle.

So life goes on ... even as our christian friends are dressing in strange colors and weird fruity hats in order to celebrate this high holiday of their death cult. Yes, death cult. One does not have to be a historian these days to understand how much this religion is a death cult ... one need only review the ludicrous and bizarrely amateurish new ad that the curiously named NOM has created ... A Storm is Coming.

First off, har-dee-har, we have the bizarre experience of a week in which the extremist fundies start a campaign called 2M4M (2 Million 4 Marriage) AND the extremist wingnuts start a campaign called teabagging. Do these people live in some cellar somewhere immune to everyday life? But ya gotta laugh!

So, there are plenty of critiques of the ad ... for reference, a bunch of actors mouth short lines in front of a montage of the dark clouds of a gathering storm replete with lightning. The actors look fearful, almost weak. You can search for it on YouTube ... I don't want them to count my site as a link.

Or you can watch all the parodies here. I think this is the coolest one:


So much has been written about the dishonesty of the ad ... that the performers are actors, many of whom tried out for multiple parts. That the ad primarily addresses civil rights cases in which church organizations and religious individuals offering public accommodations were required to offer those accommodations to all comers. Yawn ... it is such a problem for bigots living in a free country.

But I think the darker side of the psychology of this ad has received insufficient attention. The storm predicted gets us coming and going. It is a direct reference to the apocalyptic vision of end times, the gathering storm of all these evils terrifying the good souls faithful in Christ. But the storm is also a direct call for action against gay people. This is a longtime subtext in christian homophobia ... the love the sinner, hate the sin is a giant lie, and those of us who suffer from these bigots know it in our bones. This ad gives cover to those who would physically attack us, and it is an unmistakable call for violence.

The bigots make much of their being a rainbow coalition founded in love to protect traditional marriage. What a crock. We do not want their love ... history is replete with how painful their love has been.

History, too, plays a role here. I think this is yet another attempt by the extremist fundies to put the medieval back into christianity. And by that I mean the superstition and the fear and the death.

The regular reader of my musings will know that I am a voracious history reader, and that the Middle Ages is a favorite period. Among the fascinations of history is the idea of trying to imagine the mindset of an era who assumptions and modera operandi are, at bottom, utterly alien to our own. So ... not to put too fine a point on this ... the medieval mind accepted the notion of an active god and an active devil who intervened directly and personally in all affairs. Evil was incarnate, in the flesh. Now, the Middle Ages were not a monolith, and as the church developed its power to command souls, it did so in large part by augmenting its role in direct intervention in personal life. The church always railed against a rising tide of evil, and blamed all reverses upon the sordid nature of human error.

But it was only in the 11th century that the Church changed its mind about the meaning of the Sodom myth. It never liked homosexuality ... it never liked sexuality ... but there are few homosexual purges before the Crusades. That said, the entire era groans under the mindset that human affairs are the active battlefield between the divine and the diabolic incarnate.

We ... rational, secular society ... find that nonsensical. Most of the religious see God as vastly further away, more ethereal, less corporeal than did our medieval predecessors. Heaven may still be for the righteous, but righteousness for most of us is honesty and hard work and goodness. We just do not believe to the same degree in the notion of incarnate evil ... pope Ratzinger's handwringing fulminations notwithstanding.

Now, that may not be as true for the fundies ... but I would argue that even fundies, and especially the young, share in this notion of the distant God. Their nearly erotic love of Jesus as personal intercessor is a way of bridging the distance between an ethereal God and everyday life. (As an aside, this is not what Constantine had in mind when he signed off on the Trinity in 325.) But there is a danger here, because the personal relationship with Jesus is fungible, individual. It threatens to allow individuals to decide for themselves what Jesus means to them. It might even allow homos to decide that Jesus thinks that gay is okay.

So these ads are an attempt to put the Jehovian God ... and the fear and the superstition ... back into the conversation. I think it is a feeble attempt ... but that is the subtext. Jesus may love you, but Jehovah of the flaming sword and gathering storm is an angry God who slays and brings torments and plagues. Love Jesus, but fear God.

Fear God ... fear the homos ... fear the government.

Fear. There is a storm coming, and it is a storm of fear. The righteous will fear god ... and the faggots will fear the righteous.

Yes, the campaign is laughable and it has fallen on its face. But we must remember what it meant to mean, and what it speaks to and about our implacable enemies who still actively fantasize our corporeal destruction.


Happy Easter ... in the strictly pagan sense of that greeting. And long live the multicolored egg-laying Easter Bunnie ... the perfect riposte to the death cult that still threatens our lives and happiness.

Photos by Arod, the first two are street art on or near 16th Street in San Francisco, the last is a pic of Easter Eggs at Le Zinc Café on 24th, one of my favorite eateries.

... p.s., here's another riposte, a kick to the ribs ... with all due deference to Genesis ...

American Idol

Top eight ... gonna write as I watch and take some pix off the tube.

Danny Gokey, 1980, sings Mickey Gilly's Stand by Me. He's murdering this thing ... missing notes, and the same earnest rasp. The judges always seemed to like him, but he is a one note orchestra to me. And so earnest. Yeah he's got rhythm, but that was just a routine day in a dumpy bar. There's something about this guy that really annoys me ... but the judges all seemed to like it. Harummph.


Kris Allen, 1985, All She wants to Do is Dance. I thought that was flat and uninteresting, and it just missed the deep tones of his voice that makes him so fascinating. Really boring after the way he blew us away the last couple of weeks. That said, he is the sexiest thing this year by a long shot. Simon hated it. He'll survive, but that was disappointing.

Lil Rounds, 1984, What's Love Got to Do with It. She's showing a little more voice, but this song is so much bigger than her that it puts her in a shadow. I think she underperforms every week, and it is very disappointing. Because you figure that under there somewhere is a breakout performance. This one is not that one. Competent, but not nearly big enough. Even Paula agrees. Simon was meaner but exactly right. We're still waiting, Lil.

Anoop Desai, 1986, True Colors. Those big brown eyes, and a voice you can hardly remember. Not ridiculous or anything, but nothing special. Straining a little at times. I just don't care. Randy says a nice vocal, but still "so what"? Simon seemed to like it, and notes that "we can be horrible to you and you can be horrible back."

Am I just being cranky, but I am underwhelmed tonight. Last week had 3 or 4 knockout performances ... so far, none this week.

Scott MacIntyre, 1985, The Search is Over. The vocals are a little more up, but there are all the flat notes. This may be the end of the line for him. Sometimes, there are notes that hurt, but there is a quality to his voice that makes him good enough for wedding singing, and that sort of thing. He's behind a guitar this week, and he does not seem comfortable with it. Probably a mess, but you keep hoping for the guy. Will they finally call things by their real names. The judges ... commend, give credit ... hmmm.

Allison Iraheta, 1992, I Can't Make You Love Me. Out of the park. Wow. This girl is a star ... Bonnie Raitt is cheering ... what a handle. Man. That is what we watch for. 16 years old, and just the most amazing singer. She is a star right now. "One note and you know it is Allison" says Paula. Yes.

Matt Giraud, 1985, Part Time Lovers. Theatrical and jazzy and sexy. I thought he topped that song. It was fascinating and enthralling. And he finally got everything out of his voice. Whoddathunkit. The guy has soul ... he needs a coach and an agent, and he could be a very successful niche singer.



Adam Lambert, Mad World. He's on another planet. That is so far away from anything anyone else could do. Simon gives a standing ovation. This guy could be as big as Bowie. I am blown away.

Photos by Arod from the tube.

Birthday Ramblings

Yes, it's my birthday ... and to spare any suspense, it would be #56 ... gawd.

I took a four-day weekend ... spent Friday touring West Marin and Sonoma counties with Roy and Jim ... got some pix here. My friend Tony put together a little dinner party on Saturday ... very pleasurable. And then today I did something I have done many times on my birthday ... wandered around town, stopping at cafes and reading, ended up in North Beach at City Lights Books and then a black-and-blue filet mignon at a sidewalk table at Calzone on Columbus.

The beef ... I try to eat beef rarely, and when I do I want it to be sublime ... was accompanied by Herodotus. That Herodotus. After another dalliance in late antiquity, I have decided that I should re-read ancient history systematically for the first time since my freshman year at Cal. My friend Ian gave me The Landmark Herodotus for Christmas, and that seems like the perfect way to get back into the ancient mindset. First off, this volume is all of what is great about the new academic history. It is well-produced, critical, and lavish in its resources, and it starts from revisiting all of the commonplaces and shibboleths that have bedeviled history for two centuries. Virtually all of history has been rewritten in the last three decades, so much so that one must very wary when reading old scholarly works.

But Herodotus in this magisterial translation is new.

I am in the early stages, and this concerns the story of Croesus and fall of Lydia. There is a story which concerns one Adrastos; his name means "no escape." He ends up, quite by accident, being a double murderer, and he kills himself on the tomb of Croesus's favored son, Atys, his second victim. The episode is useful psychological situating because Herodotus reminds us through the words of the grieving Croesus that Adrastos is not a murderer, but rather a victim of fate and merely the vehicle of the gods' whims and fancies.

Reading history always requires a certain psychological empathy with mindsets that are utterly foreign to one's own. Again, that is why reading Herodotus is such an excellent re-introduction to reading ancient history. Of course, there is also some sense in which the predilections of the past inform the present ... not in the sense of some coarse rhetoric of crass relevance, but in the sense that nothing human is alien.

So, to be coarse, I got thinking about the notion of being named "No Escape." I tried to tie it to the heartsick undergirding of current era, to whit the fear that somehow the crisis will find me too. Adrastos could not outrun his fate, and I will only know at the end if the fate I am running from will find me ... and whether that will be good or bad. Which again ties us to a moment in Herodotus ... ancient literature is like that ... in which he depicts s meetings of Solon and Croesus in which Croesus more or less demands that Solon accepts that Croesus is the happiest man. Solon's retort, so exquisite, disgruntles Croesus, and puts him in his place. It is a place where we enjoy seeing so many of the greed-riven monsters who have destroyed the world economy:

The man who has great wealth but is unhappy outdoes the fortunate man in only two ways, while the fortunate man outdoes him in many ways. The former is more capable of gratifying his passions and of sustaining himself in adversity, but the fortunate man, although he does not have the same ability to sustain himself in adversity or passion, avoids those by virtue of his good fortune ... but the man who goes through his life with the most blessings and then ends his life mot favorably, he is the man, sire, who rightly wins this title [of most fortunate]. We must look at the end of every matter to see how it will turn out. God shows many people a hint of happiness and prosperity, only to destroy them utterly later. [Strassler, pp22-23; Herodotus 1:32:6 - 9]

Herodotus sees an "end of every matter" ... in the postmodern world we admit of no endings. Instead, I like to talk of pivots. I am actually uninterested in who might be considered the most fortunate, because the most fortunate in our world so often, if not always, are so undeserving and so ungrateful ... some time I will write in a crankier mood than this one of the contorted faces of entitlement and excess that I see in the tonier parts of Menlo Park and Palo Alto when I bicycle around for lunch. And certainly in the current earth shattering crisis, there is evidently no shame, no shame. As the unfortunate burn, the privileged bemoan that they have to cut back on caviar.

Greed, loathing, comeuppance ... nobility, courage, honesty ... eternal themes.

So back to eating filet mignon on Columbus in San Francisco. Earlier I was in a cafe I occasionally frequent ... the Cafe Abir on Divisadero at Fulton ... and there ws a man whose laptop was emblazoned with a sticker that read:

blah, blah, blah ... good point, but fuck you anyway

I laughed, but that is as much a psychological outpost of the era as Herodotus' notin of fate. And as Herodotus' notion of fate made me wonder about the shape of our world to come and my place in it, so this tinpot jerk's finger to the world makes me wonder what happened to my city.

When I arrived here in 1981, and when I visited three times in the late 70s, there was a different odor to San Francisco. Yes, there was a different odor to the world. But San Francisco was still the place that people came to create new tribes, to challenge orthodoxy, to make new realities and to rub out old ones. It's not like that now ... I don't want to be too cranky ... it is now a city of the smug, it is a city of people who like to model for themselves with the city as nothing more than backdrop. "Aren't I cool ... I live in San Francisco ... doesn't my Hummer look good." Well, I am being obnoxious. That said, the city is palpably more shallow. That the electronic revolution happened here is, we assume, natural. But where for many decades the genius of the place was to be found in the irrelevance of the business cycle, San Francisco is now the temple of the business cycle.

And the odor is gone. It seems like everywhere else, only cooler. It seems like what I like to call spaceship tourism ... a real place where a spaceship has landed to suck out the organics and leave behind a mall.

I think I will leave it there. It was a good birthday ... I enjoy wandering alone and speculating more than almost anything else. Tomorrow's maelstrom in the job which I have left aside for four days is amply worth the reflection of wandering and wondering. I do still have that pit-of-the-stomach feeling that things are really bad out there. My fate, to be decided, will be whether it ends up sweet for me. I hope so, and I dedicate myself to making it so. And that is what I learned from this birthday.

[Postscript ... I have had the NCAA final between North Carolina and Michigan State in the background, but the Tarheels are creaming the boys in green; it's boring. Only investment I have is that it is the last time we see the monstrously gorgeous Tyler Hansbrough in college. Never thought I would miss the archly egomaniacal Billy Packer, but his replacement, Mr. Kellogg I think, is the worst of sports color men ... loud but uninformative, repetitive and obvious.]

Photos by Arod, all taken today ... the top is on Columbus in North Beach, San Francisco; second it the Palace of Fine Arts; bottom is from the interior of the Cafe Abir.

When does 1848 come round again?

... untune one string,
And, hark! what discord follows; each new thing meets
In mere oppugnancy
-- Ulysses in Troilus and Cressida

We'll get to 1848 shortly via cuff links. I complained a couple of posts ago that I went searching for cuff links amongst my vast collection of tschotschkes, and none appeared. So my good friend Roy, retired Cal Berkeley librarian, brought five fabulous pairs to breakfast on Saturday ... and now I am amply supplied. I love things, and I love things imbued with meaning and past. So wearing Roy's cuff links will be a double delight ... not only am I upping the wardrobe, but I am also in constant touch with a good friend. So it is object as utility and as memory. I like that.

Roy also brought along last week's copy of the New York Times Review of Books and pointed out the article on a new book about 1848, the year that revolutions swept Europe. The Book is 1848: Year of Revolution, by Mike Rapport.

1848 was a year in which great historical utility failed in the face of a memory claimed by reaction.

The ancien regime had morphed through war into a hardened post-Napoleonic conservatism. There were 3 decades of cynicism (Metternich) and idiocy (Louis Napoleon) and weakness (Frederick William IV), and the contradictions in modernizing Europe hardened until only an earthquake would move them. The arth moved, and then it closed back over the revolutionaries. It is not too much to say that the horrors of the next century were founded in those moments.

I also recently read Alistair Horne's essay "France Turns the Other Cheek, July 1870: The needless war with Prussia" in Robert Cowley's What If: Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have been, a collection of essays that speculate on how the reversal of single moments in history might have vast effects. Horne's point is that Louis Napoleon took Bismarck's famous bait in the Ems Telegram, and the subsequent Franco-Prussian War of 1870 led to France's humiliation and Germany's unification under Prussian militaristic auspices and, most significantly, an enduring conflict that took two world wars to squelch. Unresolved contradictions live to bite back. Conservatives think only of the moment ... or the last moment ... and their own most narrow self-interest. So, like an earthquake, they live to build up tectonic stress until a slaughter rolls around to blow them away.

Do we see it happening now? As in 1848, conservatives do not merely not have perspective, they are doing everything in their power to obfuscate the better to freeze the moment and stop change in its tracks. 1848 was a missed opportunity ... but there was probably no way that the opportunity could not be missed because the forces just weren't there. Today the forces are there ... we could enter a new era. But conservatives are looking around for a new Louis Napoleon, someone upon whom they might hang their illusions for another couple of decades until they get crushed by the earthquake they are creating.

So the crise du jour is the AIG bonuses. Sure it is obscene, and certainly Frank Rich got it right again when he warned that this could be an early Katrina for Obama. But that is a small item in a big butcher's bill. We have to move on. We have to get past petty fights over whether carbon limits are a new tax. We have to burst into the future. And everything conspires to undermine great historical utility in the face of a false memory claimed by reaction.

Remember what Marx said of 1848 ... the first time tragedy, the second time farce. Tragedy, think Reagan, Bush 1, Bush 2 even. Farce ... think Limbaugh, Coulter, Joe the bloody plumber. None of them are Bismarck. Doubly chilling.

Meanwhile, I have totally cool cuff links, and another great historical read down the road.

Check out my Twitter feed: arodsf

Photo by Arod of a corner liquor store window and adjacent building on Fillmore near Haight in San Francisco

Jeepers ... get over it, dude

That last post is so gloomy that I gotta do this ... 5 things that make me happy every day.

1. A fine cocktail to end the day handmade by my excellent friend R

2. The sight of beautiful men

3. The sound of birds singing in the morning as I walk the dog

4. Contemplating history

5. Laughing

And of course, photography ... Photos by Arod from around town

There ... no more gloom.

Unnerved

Can't seem to get to writing as much as I want ... so I used an old trick of writing in my head as I walked the dog. It was raining today, so we did our long Fisherman's Wharf/North Beach Walk. That's where the pics are from.

Perhaps I do not feel like writing because of all the writing I do for work ... lame excuse. I have always written for work. As I noted in the immediately preceding post, the economic crisis is simmering at MRU (the major research university where I spin silken tales for a small but sufficient pile of dinars). We know there will be layoffs, and it just gnaws at the soul. I am reasonably secure that I am safe ... but safe today is not safe tomorrow. And safe means constantly ratcheting up the workload. I have long relied upon my own infinite capacity to work ... I am taking a break as I write here on Sunday afternoon between a couple cleanup jobs that will clear some space for big projects tomorrow.

The infinite capacity for work. I don't believe in it ... I would prefer the European approach of 32 hours, long dinners, time for the café. But that is not reality in these here United States, and the economic crisis can only possibly lead to even further intensification of work. Don't get me wrong ... I love my job, and the constantly evolving challenges require genuine ingenuity and commitment.

But what happens if I lose out next year, or the year after ... what happens to me. Multiply that gut-fear by tens of millions and you have the present conjuncture.


So when in doubt, shop. Well, not so much for me ... except for the ceaseless shopping for books. I went to Macys, I bought pants and shirts and socks and shoes and a new belt. I feel best about the belt. The idea is that the intensification of work requires an intensification of fashion. If I going to be carrying bigger projects to greater powers, I should look the part of where I want to go. I dress like a schlump ... a clean, respectable schlump, but a schlump.

And so there I was last night, rummaging through the second drawer in my dresser, which is dedicated to sundry baubles and accoutrements of a life that has been by parts hippie, gay guy, leather dude, uniform collector, Renaissance Faire goer. I was looking for cuff links. I found 15 pairs of abandoned sunglasses ... mostly aviator things that I would use to add that special soupçon of class to a well-turned out uniform. I had the good sense to pile them up and consign them to the Community Thrift store. I also found something like a dozen earrings ... I have never worn earrings. They're going as well. I now have a bowl of badges ... over a dozen. I always had the badges, but now I will have them out for display and perusal and mirth.

What I did not find is cuff links. So I will have to wear the cool new shirt tomorrow with the cuffs turned up ... I do that all the time anyway ... I have never been able to work or type or even walk around without rolling up my cuffs. But what with the new clothes, the new glasses ... did I mention I have new super-slick MyKita-frame, German bifocals ... I thought I would go for the whole look. Oh well.


The glasses have been good overall ... it is really cool to be able to read stuff without fumbling around for reading glasses ... and I like the style. But I have to watch it. I have had two little accidents that I blame on them. I actually walked into a door because I was looking down and thought I had another six inches. Ooops. And yesterday, I tapped the bumper of a car in a parking lot as I turned into a parking spot. Very unnerving. I looked at the other bumper and there was not even a mark ... I mean it was a brush-by at 2 mph. But I never do that. I am a very careful driver. It really got under my skin. I had been shopping all day, and I am genuine shopaphobic, so I short-circuited and headed home.

The only cure is a good long walk ... nearly 3 hours of which half an hour was spent at Caffè Puccini at a sidewalk table, awning-protected from the threatening drizzle.

This is two gloomy posts in a row, and separated by two weeks. I have a half-written thing on Charlemagne, and I have just finished the deliciously written Justinian's Flea, which looks at Justinian and the terrible plague that decimated the world in the latter half of his reign. More to write on that. So I promise ... at least I promise myself ... to write more and not allow myself to be so cheaply unnerved.



Photos by Arod, all taken today at Fisherman's Wharf or North Beach.

Glum or Gloomy

Feeling glum ... and gloomy. They're not the same. Glum is low bore self-pity; gloomy is clear-eyed watching the storms gather. Sometimes there are no storms. This time there are.

Over the weekend, there was a memo from work which brought home the economic crisis ... that is to say, the depression. It was a minor memo, and the content is not something I choose to disclose ... this blog is not about the particulars of my work even if I can muse about the nature of work in the electronic era from time to time. But the memo was so short, so firm, and indicated just how deep the cuts are going to be. I wonder who is on the block; I am reliably informed it is not me, but what if that does not last? How many people with seemingly firm jobs glumly, gloomily confront a future where everything solid could melt into poverty in one horrible morning meeting?

In the meanwhile, with Americans slowly groking how shallow is the pool and how deep is the doodoo, the 'publicans have opted for a nihilism so thin and so dark and so obvious that one is left to wonder. But wonder not ... of such things are the darkest periods in human history made. They are dancing with the devil, and they know, and they like it. Bobby Jindal be damned ... he is their clown, their marionette dancing to orders from bozos, and thereby a bozo himself.

But I am far away from what started me thinking about this post. It was the memo ... and it was my glum recent quandary when faced with two laundry bags that no longer fit into my life. I found I could not throw them out. They are folded, ungeometrically, on a stool in my bedroom that collects sundry objects pining for a place of their own. They came into my life with a fetching but cheap wicker basket that I use for dirty clothes ... but they are useless and they don't fit the basket so I want to get rid of them. I can't do it. I hate throwing things out.

How much better off would we be if we hated throwing things out as a society. We have become so inured to the obscenity of discarding things still filled with utility that we have backed ourselves into a global cataclysm. Next time you get out, watch as the busboys clear tables and imagine how much food is discarded in the restaurants of America every day. Okay, that is cranky ... but it is true.

That memo mentioned above portends, without predicting, people being discarded. I do not blame my immediate bosses ... they are marching to orders from the real deciders who are marching to orders generated by the collapse of our illusions. But our response to a crisis is to dispose of people when a society which worked together would respond to a crisis. Curious that it is the nihilists of the 'publican bent who are Christians and eschew so virulently the notion that Marx derived from Christianity Christian "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." Witness this, o christians:

32. And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.
33. And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all.
34. Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold,
35. And laid them down at the apostles' feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need. [Acts 4:32-35; my emphasis]

I suppose I am rambling.

So as I was waiting yesterday for dinner, I grabbed a book off the shelf at random, as I often do, and read a passage to RL, my sainted roommate, cook, and bartender. It was Istvan Mészáros' 1970 Marx's Theory of Alienation. This was a book that made a big splash among the leftists and radicals who were my companions in that era. I picked a random quote, something that I underlined more than three decades ago,

Alienation is therefore characterized by the universal extension of "saleability" (i.e. the transformation of everything into commodity); by the conversion of human beings into "things" so that they could appear as commodities on the market on the market (in other words : the "reification" of human relations); and by the fragmentation of the social body into "isolated individuals" ... who pursued their own, particularistic aims "in servitude to egotistic need", making a virtue out of their selfishness in their cult of privacy.)

You know ... that may be Marx, and I may be an atheistic ex-post-Marxist ... but if you read that as a quote from the Bible to a bunch of christers, they would believe it was the words of Jesus.

Whatever else, it does come close to the glum soul of our gloomy crisis.

Photos by Arod from the countryside around Winchester, Ontario, 2007