Bread, molasses, and beans were the staple diet of most mill workers. "When we eat meat it seems like a holiday, especially for the children," testified one weaver before the March 1912 congressional investigation of the Lawrence strike.
. . .
Whatever its future, the I.W.W. has accomplished one tremendously big thing, a thing that sweeps away all twaddle over red flags and violence and sabotage, and that is the individual awakening of "illiterates" and "scum" to an original, personal conception of society and the realization of the dignity and rights of their part in it. They have learned more than class consciousness; they have learned consciousness of Self . . . .
This was a fitting interpretation of the spirit of the striking mill girls who carried picket signs which read:
At different times in my existence I've been mostly passive or mostly phrenetic (okay, ok, the speller is telling me that is archaic and that should be spelling it frenetic - geez, archaic!) but this site has been been mostly my sorta lay-back be-myself spot - no pretensions..... no looking over my shoulder. I like the site. Lonely as it may sometimes be. I'm not completely back yet, but I intend to be here a little more - looking over some of the earlier posts, it is in the direction that I tend to be. I mostly tend, not so much trend. I just enjoyed, softly and without commotion, turning 68 years old and have decided not attend the 50th reunion of my high school graduation. I think I'd rather spend the funds available to visit my mother's kid sister in Oregon again! See you soon and maybe often.
I haven't posted yet and already there are another dozen in my mind that I regret cannot fit within the arbitrary list of thirteen movies: Harold and Maude; Benny & Joon; Cookie's Fortune; Gun Shy; Tea with Mussolini; Waking Ned Devine; Brassed Off; Moonstruck; etc., etc.
An aside: if you haven't visited Ned Beatty's web site, I recommend that you check it out. I guess I better add his latest movie, Sweet Land to my list for the year.
An end-of-year tradition has become the making of lists. I have one – top of the head (and of the moment - I might possibly be leaving something out - as memory is tricky), but about turning points in my life.This end-of-year tradition is good enough timing for me even if most end-of-year lists attempt to define the closing year (or decade etc.) or somehow to place a particular focus on certain events in the past year.These lists tend to be “best” lists, though more and more there seems to be a trend toward “favorites” or most this or that lists. The number of things listed is arbitrary - ten wasn't enough - I settled for 12 but even that wasn't quite enough.
My list is both more simple and more complex and has nothing in particular to do with the past year or decade, etc.Perhaps the passing of my life but not really as intend to live through additional decades.My list is about influences or “turning points.”My list is one of writings, events, music that caused a profound change in my outlook, my actions, my habits.Mostly I am (as yet) unable to articulate the changes beyond the simple realization that the items on the list changed the direction of my life.
As an example, as a boy well into puberty (I don’t remember my age), I once stumbled across a little bookstore in Odessa, Texas that was all within a single room of a house.I liked to read (had learned to read “The Little Red Hen” before first grade).I remember that I was on my way to a school event and was early with time to spare and I stayed in the bookstore looking at the books. One book – I have no idea what the title was or who wrote it – caught my attention and as I read about boys and masturbation I suddenly knew that my own world was a world inhabited by others who also had similar experiences and concerns.It changed my life utterly – knowing that I wasn’t some weirdness on the flotsam of humanity.But enough. Dear readers (if such I have) here is the very personal list of the most life-changing events during my 60+ odd years:
1.Some book (title and author unknown) read in a little bookstore in Odessa, Texas (see above).
2.Something of Value, a movie directed by Richard Brooks
3.Report to Greco and Zorba the Greek, books by Nikos Kazantzakis
4.The History of Western Philosophy, a book by Bertrand Russell
5.Jules et Jim, a movie directed by François Truffaut (starring Jeanne Moreau, Oskar Werner, and Henri Serre)
6.This is It and Other Essays, a book by Alan Watts
7.The Lost Son and Other Poems, a collection of poetry by Theodore Rothke
8.Thus Spake Zarathustra, a book by Friedrich Nietzsche
9.Siddartha and Demian, books by Hermann Hesse
10.The poetry of Yevgeny Yevtushenko
11.The poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay
12.The Searchers, a movie directed by John Ford
I could have also included the 1969 "People's Park" March in Berkeley or the late '60's Veterans Peace March in San Francisco with a handful of veterans of the Spanish American War. Something about those will need to wait for possible future postings. Also, this is not a list of favorites - I would include many different movies, books and poems. Any such lists must also be separate posts.
I don't much read the Washington Post web site anymore but there do continue to be bits of reporting and writing worth the time. Nancy Trejos has a book review of From Every End of This Earth by Steven Roberts that has caused me to add the book to my "want to buy" list.
But the true sacrifice is made for the children. I've learned this from my own experience as the U.S.-born child of a Colombian father and Ecuadorian mother. My parents arrived in New York City with no college degrees and unable to speak English. But they found jobs -- my father served food to patients at a Manhattan hospital, my mother cleaned Park Avenue apartments by day and midtown offices by night -- and managed to save enough money to buy a house in Queens and send me to Georgetown University.
Roberts focuses much of the book on children like me -- Generation Next. "Being a child of immigrants can be a complicated way to grow up," he writes. "Generation Next is often pulled between the past and the future, between celebrating their own tradition and creating their own identity."
Postscript:
I may be on a roll - here's another book to add to my list of "must read" books: Just Like Us.
There are few books that can juggle both the human emotion and struggle against the controversial political backdrop that is America as well as Helen Thorpe’s “Just Like Us.” An accomplished journalist, Thorpe not only engaged in relationships with the stars of the book for 5 years, but uncovered the true face behind the issue of immigration. As the wife of Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, she treaded carefully and reported on the issue and its players throughout the years with skill.
Shall we liken Christmas to the web in a loom? There are many weavers, who work into the pattern the experience of their lives. When one generation goes, another comes to take up the weft where it has been dropped. The pattern changes as the mind changes, yet never begins quite anew. At first, we are not sure that we discern the pattern, but at last we see that, unknown to the weavers themselves, something has taken shape before our eyes, and that they have made something very beautiful, something which compels our understanding.
Yeh, we had a little snow in Houston yesterday reminding me of a snowstorm on February 4, 1956 in Plainview, Texas. Not because of any resemblance between the storms, but because of the rarity of the event. We seldom get snow in Houston, at least on the ground for longer than a nanosecond. The February 1956 snowstorm in Plainview set a record for for most snowfall in Texas for a 24-hour period. We had 24 inches over the course of a full day and night - for you finger-counters, that is an inch of snow an hour. We lived in a two-story house just to the north of Plainview in Seth Ward and on the back (north) side of the house we had a snowdrift that completely blocked view of the house.
Well, checking on the Internet I find that the record has been broken by a March 2009 snowfall in Follett, Texas (in the Panhandle).
Heavy snow accompanied by strong winds and blizzard conditions, occurred between the mornings of March 27 and March 28, 2009 across the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles. The most snowfall recorded in the Texas Panhandle occurred in Follett, Texas where a record-setting 25.0 inches of snow fell between 8 a.m. March 27 and 8 a.m. March 28. This surpasses the previous record 24-hour snowfall for the state of Texas which was 24.0 inches and occurred in Plainview, Texas on February 4, 1956.
I've no idea what the 24-hour record in Houston might be.
You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism. Erma Bombeck
There's at least one thing that Republicans do much better than Democrats, and that's marketing their initiatives. It doesn't matter how regressive the idea, Republicans manage to frame it in a way that if you oppose it you look like you're either degenerate, or at the very least, un-American. For example, instead of accurately calling themselves "The Order of Religious Bigots Dedicated to Shoving Our Version of God Down America's Throat," they market their insanity as "The Moral Majority," and instead of being honest and calling themselves "The Public Vagina Brigade," they call themselves "The Right to Life" proponents (even though they're willing to let that very same life starve to death after it's born). Conservatives get a lot of milage out of their creativity in this area, and progressives would do well to follow suit.
First, let me say that I do not automatically rejoice at the news that some human error has caused a dose of public embarrassment upon one of the moral leaders in our society - in this case, Cardinal O’Hara High School President William J. McCusker in Springfield, PA. Any past pomposity or public sneering at lesser souls raises the meter to "automatic rejoicing." I know no such thing in this unfortunate case. Second, let me also admit that a hope always arises in my mind (perhaps in my heart) that there is a lesson of compassion learned for others mixed within the bitter dregs of the resulting humiliation and possible loss of paid position.
SPRINGFIELD — Cardinal O’Hara High School President William J. McCusker said he is “deeply distraught, embarrassed and ashamed” of his recent arrest for suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol.
I've just finished reading the book and expect to do a review shortly. Clue to review: it's a terrific collection of poems covering the geography of much of my own earlier peripatetic nosings about.
If you'll be in the Seattle area, I see online that Peter will be reading from his book on Thursday, May 28 at 7:30 p.m. at Open Books, 2414 N 45th St., Seattle.
I salute our brothers and sisters in uniform and will light a special candle tomorrow for those who lost their lives while serving in the armed forces of the United States of America. This is doubtless not different from what most American will be thinking tomorrow. I take a certain pride, as an American veteran, that we recognize those who put themselves at risk for all of us.
