They belly full but they hungry

In the memorable words of Bob Marley, the duplicitous behavior of Fox and main stream news has branded the national/international financial protests as the work of mobs. Although there has not been any "mob" behavior until things erupted in Oakland, the word has been used both to slander and mislead those who would try to understand what is going on.

I think I've mentioned the report of the Christian Science Monitor on European protesters and now has called them the "new lost generation." What is it to be "lost" when you are found within a movement that intends to change things? Well, part of it is disillusionment, especially with reporting that seemingly would rather obfuscate than focus. Youth is undoubtedly the driving force behind what is going on, and thus "generation gaps" are obvious.

When a movement does not play by the rules which the power structure would seek to impose, there are bound to be problems, and ultimately violence, as has happened in Oakland. When a movement seeks to shut down a major container port there are will be "fireworks;" if the "powers that be" will not "come to the table," be intelligent and responsive with demands for change police build up and militarization seems inevitable. How fair will be the reporting on this latest "development" in Oakland, what will President Obama say about it?

News Networks

News is omnipresent and unsatisfying. It demands our attention but leaves us unfulfilled, dominated by a redundancy of limits which utterly defies the complex world we live in. How can the many news sources be so narrow in content, so unsatisfying to people of even minimum curiosity? This goes not only for Fox, but for NPR/MRP/WPR as well as PBS and the affiliates. Does this explain why so many people are finding their news sources on the Internet, or are there problems there too?

The other aspect I find difficult is what I call the cute-zee deliveries, the attempt to make things palatable via personalization (what the Spanish used to call personalizmo), humor and (as mentioned above) redundancy. Beating things to death is not intelligent, "dumbing down"

for the sake of ratings or advertisers just isn't justified in my view.

Hobby horses are another problem, indulged in even by the likes of Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales on "Democracy Now." Certainly it is justified at times to give more time to something that is being completely forgotten elsewhere; but when there is unnecessary redundancy in this one has to wonder about what is being left out because of it.

Because what is being left out is immense, and extremely instructive.

Fun

Much of life today seems to be "putting the cart in front of the horse." For example, expecting a fun time or a happy feeling when the elements of such feelings may be absent. It seems that every time you turn around one of these words is used in a kind of wishful thinking way. Does this have anything to do with being satiated by the things which are supposed to bring us satisfactions but do not?

My memory of early life includes a lot of satisfaction, but few if any accolades for the results that you got if things worked to provide it. Sports, parties & dinners, hobbies and pastimes all combined to provide satisfying times, even through we had much fewer personal resources at our disposal to finance things. Now-a-days everyone from the Dalai Lama to TV and radio commentators and advertisers seems to Hawking happiness or fun ... something is amiss.

I became interested in the derivation of "fun" the other day, and discovered that it is from a mixed bag of descriptors, including the one of making fun of ... It seems that there is something very forced about fun expectation, perhaps the same goes for happiness. Perhaps we had better go back to the activities which might provide one or other, or both. Otherwise we may get waylaid with a cart in the wrong place.

"The Fire This Time"

Harry Edwards' (architect of the black power salute at the Olympics a decade ago) rousing talk over alternative radio suggests that James Baldwin's "Fire Next Time" has been updated by events, and that the "fires" we are living with are growing, becoming potentially less controllable, dangerously precipitious. His examples are many, and I won't repeat any of them here.

Troy Davis's execution by "lethal injection" last week in Georgia was still another example of the fires raging in our Nation, and elsewhere. On death row for many years, Tory's time ran out: his appeals, the almost complete reversal of the evidence for his sentence, and ultimately the refusal of the Supreme Court to review the case, meant that he had to die.

We are thus reminded of the stupidity of death sentences, as we are by the African-American minister who presided at Troy's memorial service who reminded us that "we are all on death row." The needs of others are forgotten most often because of our self preoccupations, our forgetfullness, our very survival in d e n i a l of reality. "I am Troy Davis."

Wall Street Protests

There is a word which describes the huge disparity between the so-called 99 per cent and the 1 per cent, and that slips from my 80 year old mind at the moment. Like so many words it has dropped from our vocabulary because it is so much a part of the endemic nature of things that it nearly has no meaning (something like dis ingenious, described in earlier BLOG). Thus the "main stream media" is having a little difficulty putting "a handle" on what is happening around Wall Street (and now throughout the Nation).

In the late fifties, my former wife and I were hitchhiking through the Midlands in England. It was mid afternoon, I was starting to wonder where we would stay that night, and then were picked up by a lorry (truck) driver, Alf Lornley from Leeds. He was on his way home and suggested after a brief conversation that we accompany him, that we could stay with he and his wife and children. We were so pleased that we just accepted and off we went.

For the next two or three days I rode with him in his truck and made coal deliveries. One afternoon we visited a tiny place (two rooms, the aged woman lived in the kitchen and kept warm by the little coal stove), which he described as common for aging people, living on next to nothing. He often gave some of these people small amounts of coal to supplement what they could afford, and he and his wife lived in very modest circumstances to say the least.

How would the one percent understand the situation in this all brick, post industrial city in England, and how would they emphasize and create programs to correct it? What will the rapidly deteriorating conditions for the ninety-nine per cent of Americans be understood and changed by those who insist that "trickle down economics" will change things? The protests go on, as they swell up and proliferate.

Practical Goods

When we sold produce at the Powderhorn Market year ago our next market stall was occupied by a fascinating peddler named Wendy Ward. I'm not sure what she called what she was doing then, but now-a-days it is a shop in St. Paul, Minnesota called Practical Goods What distinguished this lady's stock from others was the innate quality of it, whatever it was, and that continues until this day.

What I want to do more with this BLOG is share positive, especially alternative culture figures, businesses, causes, whatever seems to fit. We have hit the wall in our culture at present, typified by the demonstrations against "Wall Street" and the dominating 1% of the economic elite ... and their minions. What is becoming more and more evident is that we will need a higher and higher concentration and proliferation of alternatives to "business as usual."

Wendy's shop, philosophy and work are instructive of this, and I suggest you support what she does. She is at 1581 Randolph Ave. (just east of Snelling), her phone number is (651-690-1122, her hours are long and convenient (11 to 6 daily), and she is on a bus line. I'm going to quote a couple of things from her broadside: "Who should shop at Practical Goods?" " - People with lots more taste than money" & "People who like our planet and work to keep it nice" - & "People who wear clothes, use dishes, affirm the kind ship of all human cultures and might dislike living in a world that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Mc-Wal-Cola."

If you are not fortunate enough to have a Wendy Ward & her Practical Goods in your region try and support business like hers, even if you have to create something like this yourself. Thanks.

Intermittant Communications

A friend asked why blogs were not being written by me. When I answered "gremlins" her eye brows raised a bit. Having grown up in a time when this word was used fairly often, sometimes for questionable purposes (?), it comes back at times when the"hard luck and troubles" seem more evident than usual. What is it? Superstitions, perhaps. But when a string of misfortunes keep coming on it is hard not to take this personally, and even give names to it.

I would hope that this "string" is at an end, or at least occurs less often and with fewer "punishments." This is not a good time to have things which cost additional money and time prevail, would you agree? & yet they have and have continued up until this weekend. Something that I have intended to write for at least two months will be written next, and my hope is that whatever those "forces" out there that have been occurring will back off, perhaps even disappear for a time. It bring up my superstitious nature to even mention that they will not occur again.

Look up the word yourself, see what you think. I asked a fellow who works next door this morning whether his father ever used the word. "Oh yes," was his answer, and nothing else needed to have been said.