darkness visable

Monday Morning

I’m sitting here. It’s still Monday morning, just barely, I’ve done sixty-five push-ups, one hundred and five crunch’s, and like, twenty barbell curls. I’ve meditated a half hour, checked email; nothing in the in-box. I hovered over the website that is supposed to be publishing my short story. It’s not up yet. I got on craigslist and checked out used cars, actually Corvette’s which is the best thing in the world to do if you are out of work. Then I watched porn, engaged in porn? What ever. I think this is the second best thing to do when you are out of work and totally broke. It’s better than drinking. I used to drink when I was out of work and it might be said that I was out of work because of the way I drank. Drinking and work or drinking and being out of work became a cycle. It took me a long time to notice that I hate laying brick. Although for the longest time I didn’t know I had a beef with brick. The suddenly I came to the realization that the best part of being a bricklayer wasn’t laying brick and concrete blocks, it wasn’t laying stone or glass block, it has nothing to do with the perceived artistry of hand labor. What I like about bricklaying is that you are out of work a lot. I love the idea of having a job without actually working. It’s not like I got paid for being out of work or that I’d ever made any fat money from the trade, but I got to the place where I could live as a bricklayer working maybe nine or ten months a year. I always loved snow days in school, and the idea carried over to bricklaying. We can’t work in the rain, or when it freezes, which back East, pretty much meant from October to April. Then too there are strikes, lock-outs, recessions, and other so called acts of god. For a burgeoning alcoholic this is the kind of job to have. The trick, if it’s a trick, is to balance spending to unemployment. In the eighties I could live alone, pay rent and stay drunk on unemployment. Back then I had a truck, a motorcycle, and got laid regular. I was living a working class dream. Know thy self, baby.

George Bush has relieved me of any pretext of employment or safety net, I sit here after my busy morning, with the wonder of a new day. I’ve got friends, employed friends, who do more things in one day than I do in an out of work month. The old timers, old bricklayers that is, used to say, “It’s hard to know when to quit when you’re doing nothing.” It’s hard to know when I’ve started too. I sit in this working man palace, a king of all I survey, the control of the kingdom at my fingertips. And this computing thing on my lap. Most likely the laptop is radiating something cancerous to my gonads but what do I care, I’ve spawned. Besides that, I’m positive that there is a micro-chip in the computer on my lap that sends a frequency to my pecker making my most prized possession shrivel like salting a snail. (I’m sure of it. If you don’t believe me, come and check for yourself.)

So I’ve chained myself to this thing in the hopes that something great will materialize. I keep the key close by. I stare out of the windows and welcome the cool sunlight as it animates my empire. Up on Fillmore all manner of motored vehicles run through the stop signs, I marvel and am disappointed that more accidents don’t happen here. Grove Street is a-growl with half full tour busses vomiting diesel fumes plodding up to Alamo Square where world travelers take pictures of old houses. “Which house is the Full House house?” I tell them in all honestly that I don’t know. I don’t tell them that I haven’t had a tv since ’94 because American tourists, already a bit jumpy with self inflicted culture shock, have wild opinions about the humans living here, the orgy loving, butt fucking, dope smoking, godless, degenerate, naked, weirdo’s living on an active earthquake fault. My people. I figure, why give the americans more ammo? I might show them a brick planter box I built but when you start down that trail you again set yourself up as a nut.

There is a guy who works less than me but has a nasty little dog he walks in Alamo Square. He talks to every goddamn tourist every goddamn day and as he talks his dog snarls and nips on the end of it’s leash. He’s the lurking San Francisco ‘character,’ with a dog. And it’s sort of fucked that he’s set himself up as the spokesman for everything San Franciscan. Of course I hate him and his rotten little dog. I should hate him because he’s a fraud but I might hate him because he’s found a niche which brings him attention. People actually listen to this nut, they take pictures of him and his mutt that are now in photo albums in Japan, and Iceland and Argentina, and god only knows where else. I don’t know how long they retain his council but I’ve seen plenty of them in nodding assent. Go figure.

I’ve been working on my shtick. I have been prancing around my apartment lately almost buck naked save the oversized rosary and the Jolly Rodger waving from a two foot long flagpole protruding out of my ass, though slightly more uncomfortable then wearing the rosary I’m getting the hang of clenching the flagpole for extended periods. Pretty soon I’ll be able to shag my hairy ass up the hill without the thing slipping out. What with all of the out of work competition these days it’s becoming ever more difficult to have a working personality.

One Punch Knockout

Here is what I thought I heard the poet say; “Knocked a guy out in one punch.”

Nice.

I thought the poet said, “It isn’t easy to knock a man out with one punch unless it’s in a movie.” So, I’m feeling low because the best I’ve ever done is to knock a few down. But they got back up. Later I found that I was mistaken, the poet, like me, just knocked them down. No small thing but not a knock-out.

Knocking a person down, or simply hitting them with intent is the walking embodiment of madness. A conversation. Opposing points of view. An errant stroke of your friends girl’s butt. Crossed wires. Momentary loss of language. Suddenly it’s fist city where the mail arrives in an explosive roar like some idiot firing an RPG.

Rocky the Hodcarrier knocked out the toughest guy in Stockton; hit him in the face with a chain. I don’t recall why he thought it necessary to knock a man out with a length of chain. That story might have been a guide to positive social behavior. I didn’t consider questioning the why part of the story being young and enthralled by the muscle and blood.

Mad fear tears people up; fear and working knowledge of battle. Crazy fear makes normally steady guys random and temporarily dangerous. The set up can be any or a combination of these things or something I’ve missed; love, isolation, misplaced emotion, ignorance, misunderstood compassion, winning, losing, the other and one another . Crazy fear passes like a rain storm. But in the midst of the downpour we slug it out. As it passes we blow clotted snot from our nose then pass from the scene.

Try fighting with a girl.

Women’s rules are different. They don’t punch; instead you are disemboweled with a butter knife. Or worse. I’ve never understood fighting without punching. I notice more and more well bred men employ the tactic of clubbing the opponent with words, but that is a dangerous gambit on their part that could painfully loop back on them when confronting a man with nothing to lose. Bruised feelings hurt the fighter worse than a fist in the nose and almost always invite retaliation. Fighting with words, girl fighting, is a sneaky way to conduct business. Quite honestly, and I am well aware that few things count as rules in fighting, I don’t think girl fighting is fair. Girl fighting isn’t about pounding the shit out of the opponent; it’s about touching coup. Humiliation on the half shell.

I found it important to make amends to a former girlfriend. If you don’t know it’s an AA thing. I felt the need to make things right with her. Possibly buried in a shallow grave was the thought that it might grease the skids to sexual congress. You know, clean things up, clear the air, then add the perfumy tang of sex. The amends process didn’t go quite as planned. Ann, we’ll call her Ann, regarded me as one might a sidewinder. I started, “Ann,” I said, “I done you wrong...”

“You’re goddamn right you did me wrong you sonofabitch. I fucking hate your fucking guts; the shit you put me through. Don’t even think about coming back for your shit. I took a hammer to the camera. Said you wouldn’t show those pictures to your friends; my ass ...” Turning the volume way down I drift into the calm center of a fist fight with Bob Senf. A sirocco of flying fists blot out the waning moon and the single streetlamp perched high on a creosote pole. I’m hitting and being hit and hugging Bob tighter than any girl I’ve ever loved. Catching a looping hook finds me legless with the feeling of being swallowed into the weedy grass and dirt covered patch of ground our ravenous drunken band occupy. Down and in supplication I’ve created shell that only marginally protects me from the hailstorm of punches. I’ve fought this fight many times.

Meanwhile Ann enumerates the myriad sins I’ve overlooked as I endeavor to atone for my recognizable sins.

My mouth again tastes of phantom blood, a link in the chain of recall that selects the distinct and profound bouquet of cut grass, pine, new laid asphalt, stale wine and cigarettes after a punch in the nose. Before the knockdown there is a profound joy in landing an uppercut to Bob Senf’s belly that upon every visit to this memory makes him wince.

Like a freight train punching through a heat mirage crossing the desert floor, Ann rolls on without slowing, she’s possessed of powerful combustion and insane torque. She rides tracks of shimmering mercury, her passing congers tormented dust-devils.

Fist fight with the guys; admire your bloodied knuckles, check for punctures, loose teeth, and broken bones. All’s as it should be, go ahead now, step from the drunken dizzy night with dignity. After all you know this.

Anger Management

A man dressed in casual business attire strides beneath the shading tree, past the café, along the sun dappled sidewalk; sport coat unbuttoned, white shirt opened at the collar, tie loosened, a well worn pack is strapped to his back. The sun arcs away from downtown toward the Pacific; his path traces the sun. Assume this man is on his way home from work. Not an outrageous assumption. His attitude, hard to read; bouncy, determined walk, eyes set to the horizon, presume sunlight the cause of his furrowed brow. Distracted, predisposed, spacey, possibly content, or not, basically he is undistinguished except; clutched in his left hand is a bouquet of red roses, his right hand grips a Louisville Slugger.

A man, the bat, and roses. A perfect one-panel cartoon.

Can we enjoy this image without complications; can we avoid fucking this up?

Impossible.

Humans need captions. Need to finish the story.

So give him a partner; a tallish, willowy blonde, red lacquered nails, silver bangles jingle from her wrist. Dress her in a dark business suit, white silk blouse, strappy fashionable heels, give her one small tattoo, a rose, on her left ankle. She and the man with the bat stride together in lock step, like two square jawed workers in a Soviet propaganda poster. No answers just a Hollywood cliché.

Do over. The partner is petite, athletic, brunette, tan, punctured by a diamond nose stud, her pony tail sways back and forth as she strolls along side him shod in weathered athletic shoes. She carries a used fielders glove by the strap. All the blanks are filled, happy now?

One more time. The man with a ball bat and roses walks with another tall, slim, man, possessed of incredibly white teeth, graying at the temples, European cut charcoal suit, tie tight to the throat, matching silk handkerchief folded neat in the breast pocket. The older man is brimming success and sly experience. Helloooo. Bat and flowers?

Fuck it. You are the guy walking down the street, if people sit in front of the café, they’re part of your story. Include them or not. You are the mystery, the ball bat and roses simply props. You’re in charge, reveal the story as seduction, like a fan dancer in a smoke filled room. Make them beg for it. Lets see some dollars on the stage.

Unfortunately, under today’s feathers is a plucked chicken – you’ve been laid off.

The Starling eyed security dude hovers, regarding your departure with scant mercy. Personal effects do not fill your backpack. Shoulder the pack, scan the room one last time. There resting in the corner behind the door is your ball-bat. The security guard arches his eyebrows then rears back as you snatch up the bat. Give him a sinister, knowing grin then slap the bat to your palm. It’s nice to see fear spark in his scavenger eyes. Of course you don’t go for him – the job sucked.

Your bat. You are terribly fond of this bat; got you laid after the company softball game. Hit a triple over the head of the petite brunette from Human Resources, her ponytail poking from that arch above the adjustment band. She has the graceful strong legs of a high-jumper. Shift stance, hit to right field, hit at her – challenge her with your bat. After sunset, after everyone has left the athletic fields you and this sleek brunette have frenzied sex in the front seat of her Honda, not easy considering you haven’t time to remove your game shorts. No matter, she is lithe and determined. In the heat of Anaconda contortions you regard her leather ball glove on the back seat; smooth, well oiled, pleasingly small.

Layoff day, discretion dictates against calling the cute right field brunette for a sympathetic quickie, though it crossed your mind. You’re kinda pissed that though she’s in HR she didn’t transmit a warning. Now imagine calling your wife and the angry clatter of silver bangles slamming the phone into its cradle.

Layoff’s sting radiates like a spider bite. Don’t call the wife, her psychic powers will anticipate your fall. She suspected the ball park tryst without evidence. You know how she gets, how she clocked you with the stoneware vase that time you came home, a little drunk, a little giddy; intercepted in your mad dash for the cleansing sanctuary of the shower. She smelled the cologne. That man’s cologne. It wasn’t that big a deal and only happened once but her fearsome attack left you stunned, bleeding, and slightly afraid.

Good thing. You can’t possibly be blamed for the layoff. Fucking economy. Though not an indiscretion, consequences are likely. Finally, standing before your apartment door, visualize your wife’s piss-off meter and contemplate where biting failure and lost income rank.

Roses are calculated as Harm Reduction. Be wary of the thorns. Stuff them stemwise under your arm as you fumble with the key and lock. Hold tight to the Hickory bat, name it Anger Management.

My Bike's Bigger than Yours

The seed for bikes as cargo transport planted upon seeing cargo bike photos from China in the early 1980’s sprouted in 1992 when my daughter was born. As an excuse for both of us to get outside I installed a child seat on the rack of the mountain bike. My first cargo, talked to trees and birds and everything along the trail. She proved more fun than a sack of potatoes. When she out grew the seat Ezra got a scooter then a bike of her own.

I revisited road bikes; long days in the saddle, centuries. In time my riding partners either went racing, took on grown up jobs, or moved away. Work intruded. Although I never let go of the handlebars, I changed course. I set up a bike for around town; fenders, rack, basket, fatish tires.

A bricklayer by trade, my tool kit is housed in a serious canvas bag: big brick trowel, chisels, tuck pointers, jointers, sundry trowels, measuring tape, brick hammer, most everything wrought in steel, awkward and hard edged. All told, including the two levels, I’m carrying about fifty pounds plus my fifteen pound backpack. There was a problem. Strapped to the rack my tools flexed the commuter frame in a wholly unsettling manner; wobbling up and down San Francisco streets I considered frame failure and survival.

Momentum magazine hinted then featured a radical idea blowing across the Atlantic; utility bikes, Dutch box bike or bakfiets, versions of the old Schwinn cycle trucks and the rear load xtracycle and it’s descendants; Big Dummy, Ute, Transport and the Yuba Mundo. As far as the over loaded commuter bike was concerned, I’d had enough.

Intrigued, I tested a cycle truck, nice, but only rated for fifty pounds, though the guys at the shop claimed to have carted one of their own in the front load platform. I checked out the Bullet real cool but pricy, I researched the xtracycle but I didn’t have a proper base frame. Then I read about the Yuba Mundo’s four hundred pound capacity, reasonable price, and the fact that it would fit in my small garage crammed with, yes, another bike, a car, and masonry tools. I bought the demo bike sitting in front of Roaring Mouse. I towed my commuter bike home from Roaring Mouse with the Yuba eliciting double takes and grins. The next day after delivering four, nine foot long pine scaffold plank weighing around 160 pounds to the Hayes Valley Farm, I noted that the bike could carry things impossible for my car.

Yuba lifts, my tool kit, a shovel, hoe, levels, a grinder, fifty feet of extension cord, brick tongs maybe a mortar board and stand, backpack and my spirit over this city’s hills. Not bad for a bike. “How much does it weigh,” a CAT 3 racer friend recently asked. “I don’t know,” I laughed, “but it’s fun to ride.”

Random thoughts on Holiday Giving and Taking

I’m listening to a story on KQED’s Forum, about the homeless school age children living in San Francisco. The story is sad. Poignant. And pitiful. Not the people caught in the mess of homelessness but the liberal view that we need more services and we need to take people in or give them from our own slim cupboard. Those calling in were, from what I can tell, the middle class bleeding hearts. One woman wanted to pay the rent on the featured woman’s SRO hotel. Great. Then what happens after the month? The woman who paid the freight is short funds and the woman and her kids in the SRO are again searching for a benefactor.

There were no representatives from Pacific Heights calling in.

During Vietnam people from all walks of life were drafted. The wealthy were able to shelter their offspring from the horror of war but not entirely. And there were just enough of a cross section of the economy and society getting harmed that in spite of entrenched communist domino theory dogma and military industrial complex economic profitability the war was shut down.

The engines of our two wars are being fueled for the most part by the underprivileged and evangelical and because of that the wars have continued unnoticed for over ten years. The seeds for the end of Vietnam came not from Congress but from the ground swell of the diverse social-economic population being mangled in the machinery of war. No one listens to when the poor cry to one another.

When the wealthy are being given bonus’s for being wealthy and the poor are being given pity for being poor we are strapped in and have set in motion a merry go round where neither side will ever meet. Vietnam became more like bumper cars. But in the intervening years the powers that be have devised ways to separate us, to create the merry go round and to eliminate the bumper car. I stood in the long unemployment lines in the cold during the Nixon oil embargo recession. Over the years during the worsening recessions the systems of separation have been streamlined. Today there are more people out of work but you would be hard pressed to actually see the unemployed standing in line. Those out of work have no forum for conversation besides “Social Media” to discuss the rotten state of our economic system. The computer has become the perfect tool for the state and corporate interests to disenfranchise the disaffected with little disruption.

We have more people in peril, economic and military, without actually seeing them, without hearing their voices, without acknowledging their existence. Oh sure there are well meaning stories on public television and radio, but the supposed dynamic generators of economic power are not feeling a pinch. Their children, for the most part are not dying in far away volunteer wars and they are not, in any sustained way relieving the stress of those in dire need by creating jobs.

Gigantic corporate and inherited wealth are the sacred cows of our society but from this vantage place they appear buggerish and rude. After all, one might conclude that they must have screwed a lot of people to gain so much.

It’s been proven time and time again that those of wealth will not voluntarily give up their good fortune. Congress’s lobbying for corporate interests have encouraged offshore jobs and import cheap labor, and with the sharp anti-labor knife have developed no strike contracts for the labor union eunuch meanwhile promising negotiated benefits that they’ll renege . So if they’re not creating jobs in the millions as we are lead to believe is the entrepreneurial mandate, if they feel no social connection to the family sleeping in Alamo Square and the shelters then I presume they leave us no choice – we take it. I mean, all workers understand that if they don’t perform, there are consequences. What’s good for the goose...

Grover Norquist is right, forget taxes.

My idea is simple. We take half. Not a reign of terror; we don’t line them up against the wall like the Romanoff’s, god forbid. And we don’t take everything. We take half.

If a Pacific Heights family of five can’t live on a half a billion dollars I’m sure we can make space for them in the Saint Anthony food line. The billions collected from Pacific Heights, Presidio Heights, Presidio Terrace and the other enclaves not just here but around the state would put our public schools on firm footing, wipe out city and state debt, and put people to work on public works projects creating jobs that may indeed keep families off the park benches, bridges from collapsing, and insuring stable long term financial stability for millions of California humans. The wealthy still deserve a seat at the table, therefore we include those of wealth in this one time redistribution plan. We’ll include them all right. As George Bush said, “it’s your money.” Time for the rich to give it back. Take half.

Why we're here

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

 

W

hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

— John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

 

Cover Letter

Acme Consolidated Widgets

102 Uranus St.

San Francisco, CA.

 

 

Dear Mr. Prospective Employer,

My name is Mike and to tell you the truth I’m too old to be going through this shit. No really. In construction (I’m told, like a fading starlet, not to reveal my age or how long I’ve been working.) the job finding process goes like this: Application ; “Ya hiring?”

Interview; “Bring your tools?”

Negotiation; “Yeah.”

References; “Who ya work for?”

“The Karuts.”

Reference check: “East bay Krauts or west bay Krauts?”

“Milo, west bay.”

Provisional hire; “Jump up on the scaffold and go to work,”

I’ve finally got the message; I find myself in a new time and era – you win.

I’ll be good and try not to think on the past or the ridiculousness of the convoluted corporate evolved process. I promise. This time if you give me a job all you have to do is say jump and I’m jumping. Of course you understand that I probably won’t jump as high as your younger prospects but what is the point? Are we going for distance too? And if that’s the case all you have to do is tell me, I’ll lose a little weight and get some good shoes and hell, I’ll do my best. Really. So just gimme a chance and you can see how responsive an older member of your highly competitive workforce can be.

And Mr. Prospective Employer, if being a good worker bee in your corporate grindhouse means snitching on others or character assassination or just plain lying about what the others say about you and your cost cutting, profit raising, labor gouging measures I’m up to it. You know there was a time back in the bad old days when I had a Union behind me (remember unions?) when I wouldn’t take shit from any boss. Well those days are far behind me; I swear to that. I’ve seen the err of my ways and I’m sure I’ll be the sniveling spineless wretch of a hungry worker that you’ve been looking for. I know which side my bread is buttered on. My new mantra goes like this; a poor person never gave me a job. Say amen. So I’m hitching my wagon to you, if you’ll take me, and brother I don’t care which way we go just as long as it is away from this mess here. Yeah, after the divorce and bankruptcy and loss of health insurance and tapped out unemployment and my kid hating me and the landlord tacking the eviction notices and me tearing them up and breaking down on the one-oh-one and the electric shut off and disconnected phone and holes in all three pair of shoes and torn knees in my pants from begging for work and year round dinner popcorn, and waking with the fear and fear and fear nonstop for long enough to develop a tic. Did I say that I haven’t been laid in a year? Well I guess you could say I think I’m your ideal candidate.

Look forward to working with you soon, references upon request (although some of these guys have died over this past two years their widow’s will mostly vouch for me). 

Sincerely,

Mike Murray

 

 

Struggling with Faith 300

Faith 300

In 1969 Don McTavish qualifies for the Permatex 300. I imagine he's nervous but happy; designed for racing Don has faith in his abilities. Confident and humble he might not express his faith in his ability to control a race car those terms, he’d most likely say, “I’m running pretty good right now.” Don pilots his white number 5, 1969 Mercury Comet with  four hundred twenty seven cubic inches under the hood he's got gobs of power - strong motor. The car is fast. On the track, the car hums, no actually it roars like something angry at the world; he is in the belly of the beast. On purpose. His unexpressed faith is that with a few breaks he has a chance to win and if he wins he gets to kiss the Trophy Girl and the Trophy Girl is blonde and busty and her hair is in a lacquered beehive and she is wearing pumps and a satiny poofy dress. And as the race progresses the Trophy Girl is having a few drinks to take the edge off because everyone expects a Trophy Girl to sleep with the promoter, which some of them do but she hasn’t yet. She doesn’t want to be that kind of girl.

Don is queer for racing for he loves sitting in race cars more than steering Trophy Girls. This racing queer rips along; he is a strange alien existing in the toxic atmosphere of leaded exhaust and deafening sonic roar of unmuffled big block engines. He’s cuddly comfortable in big greasy noise with his racing fellows. The pace laps are constricted; tight. The flag drops the engines open throat roar, and there seems no place to go just yet. The track is crowded; tight, the field is something like fifty cars. Eight laps into it and things have opened a bit, he’s okay; car feels great, plenty of throttle left for the straights and for later when the real racing starts.

Ninth lap, something happens, they are so close, so very, very close, the guy behind him unable to avoid, bumps Don. He’s way up on the outside of the track, not the best place to be. Now they are flying, around one hundred and sixty miles per hour; a bump into the guardrail. The guardrail collapses. And now he meets the butt end of the concrete wall going full speed into the third turn. The car explodes. The big roaring engine is flung one hundred feet; a mindless lump of steel and grease. He’s spun at a forty-five degree angle in the lane, then sixty, then ninety degrees his tires explode ignited by heat and friction. This is just the beginning. The car has a mind of it’s own; Don a traveler in nightmare. The devastation terrible beyond all others and just like that, there is nothing in front of Don. No. There is nothing. The front clip is gone, the fenders, engine. The firewall has disappeared and everything attached to it; gas, break, and clutch peddle; gone. The wreck yanked the steering wheel right out of his hands and tossed it into the metalic maelstrom, the front of roll cage has disappeared. The car, less substantial than a Roman chariot spews pieces and fluids in a sweeping arc like a lawn sprinkler, the crippled wreck turns revealing Don buckled in, scrunched in the corner of the seat, shoulder harness across his chest, hands useless at his side. He’s spinning, spinning, spinning, without means of control in a world turned horror. Salvation is in the hands of the gods and his faith. And as he spins in a cloud of tire, blown engine, and radiator smoke a dark and sinister force blasts through the cloud, eddying the smoke around the shape of the racecar around the churning tire wells, and you can see the thing as it unfolds yet you dassent avert your gaze as the dark car and Don McTavish are drawn into magnetic cataclysm. And as Don’s white car spins to face its opponent there is the crashing explosion that turns known objects into shards of metal and rubber and glass and other sharp edged, toxic, industrial waste, a small white sack that used to be Don McTavish; human, somehow still attached, is dragged along with the disintegrating, tumbling ruin, Hector behind Achilles chariot. Ahab strapped to his quest. Faith alone does not save men.

Bricks

Brick crushed his chest. Over time, an entire pallet of brick lay on him. Some were thoughtfully, willfully, placed, others dumped in a rough heap from a rock pocked, rusty, wheelbarrow. After a while, gravity, desperation and lack of air. He’s bug-eyed and blue from exhalation.

The brick load started slowly; one common brick = one beef, an argument, then another, it goes like that. Then the Normans, a little larger, a little more weight. Later jumbo bricks with “divorce” and “custody battle” and “financial settlement” and “visitation” imprinted and fired in the raw clay till the brick became dark and hard and they too were loaded on the pallet. He can’t deny the weight now but he’s pinned and unable to offload. To the untrained eye the brick seem dumped on the palette in a heap but from his unique vantage he knows there’s order to the brick stack. Now, lately, there’s more heft to the load. More bricks stamped, “layoff,” “repossession,” “parking fine,” and “overdrawn,” “late fee,” all adding to the impersonal collateral damage. His flattened lungs scream silently for air while the noise in his head roars like the ferocious hot brick kiln furnace. Today the weight of clay is too much to bear. Plus, this morning, he’d drunk five cups of coffee for breakfast— maybe that’s what set him off.

He’ll fix everything— grab his board and paddle out through the breakers, past the fog bank, into the shipping lanes, head west to find the East, to China, find the spot where the sun boils into the ocean. And in the process pull off the magic trick of finding a true vanishing point. He’ll disappear from earth without a trace, oh sure, a sailor aboard a freighter from Tasmania may spot the battered surfboard out in the endless churning Pacific, the sailor may wonder how this red, blue and green Hawaiian flowered thing got so far from shore but this will be the only query, there are many things unexplained in the ocean.

He pulls his oxidized Ford truck, off Highway 1. He notes the little character adding dents on the fenders and hood trying to remember how the truck looked when he drove it off the dealer’s lot. Parked on this lonely stretch of beach he welcomes the ticking, cooling engine, the sound of ocean, and the mist gray sky. He doesn’t take his keys out of the ignition, no need for keyed things again. He squirms into his wetsuit, pulls his longboard from the back, and trudges hangdog and splashing into the water. He doesn’t look back to shore but wades in the cold, green water. When it reaches his waist he drops the surfboard in the water, lies down on the board and begins paddling into the threatening breaking surf.

Emerging from his fight through the breakers into the relative calm of deep water, he begins to feel warm. Breathing deeply he straddles his board like a strange wet cowboy. No rush, he figures he can paddle, take a break, paddle some more and do this for of hours. There is no time clock on his quest for oblivion.

Just then, just when his mind settles to his task, a titanium, colored 1959 Desoto drops from the sky and hovers inches above the water, the controls are manned by a navigator covered absolute in shiny black latex, the surfer can’t make out a face or mouth, the pilot is without definition. Immediately the mystery Desoto ranks as savagely ominous as a Great White shark— and, of course, he panics. Who wouldn’t? In a blurred flurry of arms and legs and splashing he turns his longboard. Undone by primal hysteria he’s terrestrial again flailing for shore. He flings himself to the dubious safety of a swell coming in. In his mad dash terror, he takes off too soon, the wave has peaked and is curling in on him, the board noses in under the wave and he pearls — becoming a speck of irritant in the maw of the sea — he’s sucked into power of the wave and driven to the sea bottom, the board now launches skyward, drunken crazy, like an early Soviet rocket. Tumbling under the wave the surfer is exquisitely free from gravity. Like a demented wild-eyed sea bird he breaks the surface, gasping for oxygen from the foggy sky. Above, the scene the spaceship hovers peacefully. The surfer takes stock of this juxtaposition — sky and sea and hovering car. His small purchase of reality has nothing solid for reference except for the vehicle.

The spaceship is the spitting image of the long finned ‘59 Desoto. A Desoto with a little customizing, the four headlamps seem inspired from the pages of Playboy magazine— lovely up turned cones with centered bumps that resemble Hershey Kisses. So the rocket’s had a double boob job and the wheel wells and undercarriage are smoothed over, clad in space age sheet metal charred from heat and friction during space travel. The Desoto hovers but doesn’t push and scatter the water the way a helicopter would, if it makes any sound it’s not audible over the surf.

Nervously glancing over his shoulder he paddles out again, the waves are good. The surfer senses the Desoto at rest but what does he know about space travelers and their intentions? In a few minutes, he’s paddled out past the breakers and is bobbing on his board waiting for another set of waves to come in.

A flat but echoing voice emanates from the Desoto, its electronic tenor reminds him strangely of New York Jew, “Sonny boy, I see you’re new at this— you won’t catch a cold if you don’t come in a bit and paddle with some oomph.”

Amazed, the surfer looks up, “ You speak Eng…There’s surf on Mars?”

“Think about playing the Catskills? And sonny, when the swell picks up your tushy and you start sliding down, dig with both arms.”

Grumbling to his board, “Shithead Martian.” The surfer is a beginner— the last take off didn’t go too well— the alien might be on to something. He begins to paddle, collecting the on coming swell, the tail of the board rises, he digs with both arms as the wave crests, the board dips down into the green water then as by divine intervention the nose comes up, he’s got the wave, though he slips a bit he gets to his feet and rides the wave most-way to the shore where he does a falling dismount in the water. An eerie cheer that seems to come from inside the rocket echoes his own triumphant, involuntary whooping.

No longer fearful of the Desoto or its pilot, the surfer paddles again through the white water, through the breaking swells, out into safe deep water, straddling the board and breathing hard, he’s buoyant atop the unmatched ancient energy of the sea. Out here he catches his breath, out here he can catch his breath. He’s become the mythical urban trucker who’s forgot to close the tailgate; slowly his load of brick is dropping off into the Pacific.

The space ship glides in close and the surfer beholds the spectacular—a perfect single drop of emerald seawater glistening beneath the singed belly pan of the Desoto.

“Wa…why are you here? Don’t have to rush off and destroy civilization or some other damn thing?” The surfers voice is strangely calm he’s making conversation not accusations. “Don’t mean no disrespect but there’s no people or politics … aint’ nothing important goin on out here.”

The Desoto sits motionless as if painted to the sky, the voice booms, “I just spent three hundred of your years getting here. I’m in no rush.” The Desoto dips a bit. “Who’s to say what’s important?”

“ Yeah but you don’t really belong here now do you?” Waves break over the nose of the board and he runs fingers through his wet hair for no aesthetic reason.

“ Sonny I could say the same for you, dressed in neoprene and sitting on a Styrofoam and fiberglass board in the ocean. Am I mistaken or are you in the wrong element? Gills I don’t see.”

“Okay, okay. You’ve got a point but this is fun — when it works. Strange fun like horror movies or sex, which can kinda be the same thing sometimes. You hip to sex? ”

“Intercourse for procreation or fun?”

The surfers face beams, “Fun.”

“Oy, sonny boy, the girls of Zoltar… stories I could tell…”

“ That’s what surfing’s like — scared and excited sex. But... You already know this don’t you?”

“It’s a big universe…”

A swell gathers and rises and pushes to shore. “I’m going for this one …”

“Paddle, Paddle, Paddle. You got it now— Dig, Dig, Dig. Ride earthling like there’s no tomorrow,” You never know.

He catches the wave, ascends to a fighters crouch, feels the sea churning beneath his board and feels — exalted — the remainder of his load has capsized without regret. Now there’s nothing but this moment, and in this moment he’s on the right side of things, life balances, in this moment— this one small piece of time — there is perfection. Overcome he slips and falls backward in the surf. Unburdened lungs inhale salted air. He catches a few more waves. Finally he glides through the frothing white water to shore. He’s grinning. He’s aware of the surf’s sibilance, a squawking gull, sparkling grains of mica in the sand — his head chatter’s dissipated like the burned off morning fog. The sand massages the surfer’s feet as he ambles to his truck— surfboard tucked under his arm like schoolbooks —lightened. Today’s great weight, gone. Sunlight shimmers off the keys still suspended in the ignition, reminding him of today’s lapsed mission.

Looking west, the sun has dipped, diffused light from our star shimmers jewel like from countless waves, a flock of pelicans glides over the water, everything in his vision is open and clear and limitless. In the fold of horizon, the Desoto has vanished.

Things My Daughter Taught Me

I’ll admit my chilly little secret. I love riding my bicycle in the winter. As a transplant from the north eastern Rust Belt and a veteran of “lake effect” big snow, the thrill of winter roads without snow and ice has never worn off.

I resumed riding with regularity in 1994 as a way to get my then, year and half old daughter, Ezra, into the air and out in the world. Our first ride with the rack mounted child seat occurred late that fall. After bundling Ezra up in her warmest clothes and buckling her helmet, without pinching her neck in the clasp, we rode out to Golden Gate Park through the Panhandle decked in autumn tones. We stopped at the Pagoda at Stowe Lake to eat goldfish crackers and drink juice. On cue, raindrops began ticking down against the jade colored tile roof of the pagoda.

The sun was setting. We were not prepared. No raingear for Ezra. No light for the bike. Worry consumed me on our ride home; the enveloping dark, the volume of rain, the cold. Ezra, I thought, is going to be scarred by this and would rather be with her mother. Anxiety hit me faster then the rain; I’ve ruined her cycling experience - forever. I imagined my face on a not-wanted poster, “Worst Dad Ever.” As a rational counter point to my perceived failure as a human, cyclist, and father, Ezra transcended my petty worries, “Dad, can I have-a-gum?”

Somehow we made it home alive. Along the way Ezra noticed something of the other cyclists. Debarking from her kid seat she asked, “Dad you have a dingy bell?”

“No.” Ezra looks puzzled.

“You have a blinky light?”

“No.”

Oddly, Ezra’s face assumes a strange resemblance to my old high school Vice Principal, “Dad. Get a blinky light… And a dingy bell.”

Sheepishly. “Yes dear.”

Eventually Ezzie out grew her kiddy seat. Her first bike tires were about as big as a five-cent pieces. We practiced riding bikes at Crissy Field. And as things go, her bike too, received a dingy bell, and a blinky light. Ezra out grew her first bike; we purchased another, then another.

Our first ride resonates still; it instilled in me a few ideas that I keep to this day. First, despite the rain and cold we had a great time. I was thrilled as she pointed out dogs and birds and other bikes along the way. Second, she was right about the bell and light. I can extrapolate and say, that when I eliminate extraneous loose ends my time on the bike goes better; lights, bell, helmet (my preference), good tires, working brakes. My city bike also sports fenders and an incredibly fashionable basket.

I’ll ride this winter, happy in the stinging cold wind and the profound near silence of the bike, strobbing bright, on the dark morning streets.

Oh I’ve been looking at my last few entry’s and I have to admit I appear a little angry. I hope the word curmudgeon isn’t on the tip of your tongue. Don’t paint me with that brush; I’m too young and too pretty to be an angry old man. Am I in denial?

The Simple Green for our times, denial, the all purpose cleaner; The economy isn’t so bad; look at Wall Street. Things will get better in the new year. We’re all in this together. Compromise is the ticket. I won’t rock the boat; I shall become the next millionaire. And last but not least, I’m just going through a ‘dry spell.’

So I’m not a curmudgeon, I’m a hopeful young man just going through a bit of a social/economic dip. And in this minor swale I’m learning. I’m a product of excess and by falling behind in consumerism I’ve angered god. I now as penance for my dwindling income I’ve proved that I don’t deserve health care and unemployment and a steady income or new socks. Hell if you were on the right side of god you’d be healthy and if you’re not, eschew muni and walk up them hills. About work and money; my ex-fatherinlaw used to advise, “Get a job ya bum ya.” And in getting back to basics, I’m learning to damn/darn my most holy socks.

Joyfully, I’m getting into our twenty-first century zeitgeist. I’m enjoying my apartment watching DVD’s and eating popcorn five nights a week. Who needs to look for work when there is Facething waiting to ambush and smother the productive impulse in it’s fuzzy, warm embrace. “Oh look at all the fun my countless friends have had over the holiday….” As product of the twentieth century I can’t in good conscience do Netflix when the Film Yard is six blocks away. Crazy as this sounds, I buy local and walk to the shop. I may never finish my ablutions if I keep on like this but I’m skeptical about a two ton SUV for twenty pounds of groceries; I ride my bike and carry the produce in the basket. I buy books from Green Apple (I’ll give up restaurants rather than books). Local eliminates stores based either in ether or in hell. If I don’t buy from stores connected to a satellite the less I have to buy. Sort of a win/win thing for a grumpy guy. If I were grumpy. I’m not grumpy. My frown is upside down. Oh my goodness, my giggle pin has worked loose at the prospect of a Happy New Year. Curmudgeon my ass.

How's that working for ya?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/23/business/23prichard.html

Prichard, Alabama. Failed town, gutted pensions.

Here is the deal. The bosses, those who hire and fire and make the big money, are more familiar with contracts than workers. The bosses agree to and sign work and pension agreements. They know full well what they are signing, even if they don’t intend to fulfill their end of the contract. The bosses want your labor.

Another part of the deal is this; the bosses get your labor first. Afterward the worker is paid. Benefits are paid months later. Now, who is taking the risk? But labor is always portrayed as the bully, the thugs, the union bosses. When businesses fail because of mismanagement, or municipalities renege for the same reason, you can't take back your labor. Under the guise of suspicion, a worker is seems, needs her good faith enforced under the hammer of dismissal; she can be fired. There is no equal lever to hold the corporate and municipal bosses to their bargain, the workers only recourse is to withhold labor by striking in mass or, not as effective, to quit alone. Sometimes, maybe more than we want to believe, the bosses sign these contracts knowing that they will not honor it. As a union bricklayer I remember many pay and benefit “give backs” starting from Reagan’s era of anti- labor, anti-unionism. The first I recall was the San Francisco Bricklayers returned one dollar an hour that had been signed for less than a year earlier; we gave our wages and benefits to the contractors. The contractors maintained their profit margins. A vindictive labor force could have struck, this was breach of contract. But we were fed the line from our union that helping the contractors was helping ourselves. The mason contractors don’t view things the same way. The refrain from brick contractors is, “Anyone can be a bricklayer…” Though we’ve made some of these men rich, we’re expendable.

2010 would seem the perfect time to organize a disgruntled and demoralized workforce. But a lot of our work has been off shored or automated out of existence. And the Reagan Babies, who have come into the workforce since the eighties, with the non stop drum roll of market economics and anti-laborism, were raised essentially non-union. Reagan/Bush/Chaney era distortions of labor leaders is similar to Nazi era characterizations of Jews. Labor has become the other, and by extension; enemy. As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” No matter what color your collar everyone who works for a paycheck is labor; a fact that high tech Americans tend to forget. Yahoo laid off seven thousand individuals last week.

Labor strikes are reckoned by conservatives as treasonable, media doesn’t dispel this. And American workers look on the general strikes in France and Greece with longing and bemused horror. When push comes to shove, we know too well who has the upper hand; we can be disappeared from the workforce as quietly as the stroke of a pen.

The gloves are off, anti-worker sentiment in the form of obfuscation on the health care debate, the continued push to privatize Social Security, the Citizens United gift to corporations, and the unrepentant anti-government, anti-regulation mythology rains down on workers unabated. And the Supreme Court is five-four in the corporate pocket. Meanwhile, workers pension funds which through mutual funds buoyed wall street and the bubble economy, are going broke. Real people, working people who have already given their labor are hurting bad.

Sarah Palin might say in her chirpy nasty voice, "How's that workin for ya?"