Went to a Quaker meeting today. Got to thinking on my way over there and I realized that I have never felt the slightest spiritual nudge from any church service I have ever been to. I've gone to Catholic funerals, Baptist, Presbyterian, E.U.B., Lutheran, and Episcopalian services (and probably some others I've forgotten).
The closest I've ever come to a spiritual feeling was from the Hug O' Peace at a Christmas Episcopal service at one of the oldest continuously operating Episcopal churches in America (or so I was told) in Annapolis.
The Quaker meeting I sometimes attend normally has it's meetings on the college campus in a spare room. They are moving to the religious study house on campus. On the fifth Sunday of the months that have five Sundays, they have the meeting in an available room at a retirement and assisted living facility, Kendal that is connected with the Quakers. I've asked why not have all the meetings there, since there are always older folks at those meetings, but never at the regular meetings. I've wondered why we just don't see if we can have all our meetings at that place, but no one seems to want to do it. Scared of old people I guess. Not very Christian, I would think. Perhaps there is a reason.
Well, I knew (as did we all) that it was coming sooner rather than later, but still it is kind of a shock. I remember when my family and I went to Washington, D.C. as a family just after I graduated from high school.
What luck to be there at that time. I remember watching the very end of the filibuster on, if I remember correctly the Voting Rights Act, with Kennedy (and incredibly young Kennedy, and the last one left alive of that generation of political activists) presiding over the Senate. I think that the way it worked was that you ended up presiding at some point. My Mom said that he was the prettiest politician she'd ever seen, and that she would vote for him just 'cause he looked so good.
We were there the night the filibuster was finally broken, and got to see Humphrey, and other democratic senators outside announcing it.
We got in to a lot of places because my Dad had grown up with our then Congressman, Delbert L. Latta. As reactionary an asshole as one can imagine. His son, also as reactionary an asshole as one can imagine inherited his seat.
As crazy as Kennedy's personal life was he was a great liberal in all the good sense of the term.
Off to the groomer today. The regular groomer had injured herself and so she left a couple of sort of newbies to do the job. We had badly neglected our chow and she had to be shaved down it took over two hours. And I helped.
Someone is going to pay!
Ming after the grooming with parts of her that had been shed on the floor before the grooming.
Obama is not bending to the will of the Blue Dogs. Obama is not doing what the Blue Dogs want to get their votes.
Obama is the alpha Blue Dog. He runs the show. He is not some cypher, some not too bright short bus president that can be lead around by a smart and corrupt vice president, or chief of staff.
From the very beginning with the appointment of the head Blue Dog in the House as his chief of staff and the choice of the homophobe preacher to deliver the invocation he made his position clear. We just didn't listen.
OK, he did lie all the way through the election process, but once the election was over he took off his disguise.
Oh yeah, and Earnest Borgnine is one year younger than Kirk Douglas.
Not having as much invested in the black guy as many, I'm not as unable to point the finger where the real blame lies as are others. Although I've said it before and I'll say it again: I really didn't believe that I would be voting for a continuation of the Clinton presidency in slightly (and by the way that is only slightly) darker hues, with no sex involved.
Apparently the democrats are even dumber than the French Aristocrats of pre-revolution fame who "learned nothing and forgot nothing." The democrats apparently learn nothing and forget everything.
I listened to the "smart" (scare quotations) people who told me that Rahm was conservative, but he knew the way infighting was done in Washington and would get Obama's programs through for us.
Ooopsie. Unless Obama's program was to give a lot of money to the very wealthiest people and to the people who have been completely wrong for the last several decades (and I'm not sure it wasn't) he hasn't really accomplished a lot.
Keynes said that in the middle of a depression if you buried money in bottles and paid people to dig them up, it would be better than nothing. Although he added there were much better ways of doing things. Apparently Obama only learned the first part of that admonition.
Has there ever been an American president who didn't love him some colonial wars? I mean once we'd managed to kill off most of our own indigenous people?
Meanwhile, no health care reform for the rest of us. The amazing election machine overwhelmed because the Obas didn't expect, what? They didn't expect that the insurance industry would fight to their last dying breath to keep their obscene profits. They forgot what Mencken said about underestimating the American public? Then they cave.
Jesus H. Christ. How come I live in East Dirt Bag, Ohio and I know all these things and the people who get big bucks don't?
So a friend of ours has been diagnosed with cancer. She needs more tests and then the surgery. Unfortunately because of some bad choices a couple of years ago she does not currently have either a job or health insurance. Because of the cancer she can't get either a job or health insurance. Nor is she currently eligible for any kind of public assistance.
Her bad choices have been corrected, although I would think that would not matter. However, from a long discussion on the Zanesville Times Recorder yesterday, it appears that you must be both ill and moral enough to deserve treatment for a lot of the people in the discussion thread. If you are not really a good moral person, then apparently you must very rich. Because being rich is the equivalent of being moral. I guess you don't have to be both. Or maybe being rich means that you are moral decent and deserving.
At any rate she went to the doctor twice and told them her situation and they said no problem, as long as you are applying for assistance. So she gave them her first $100.00 (which she cannot afford) and then they changed their mind. She got to see the doctor, but then the office manager would not schedule the tests necessary to continue and do real treatment.
Let's be clear, she has known that she has had this cancer for a few months. She can get no help and she can get no treatment. Essentially, she is dying in the wealthiest and most advanced country in the history of the world, because we choose not to provide her with care.
And outside our congressman's office in my town people (poor and middle class people) protest the danger of government health care. What deluded fools.
I am in the process of responding to thisin our local paper. A protest outside of our local congress critter's office. No mention of the number, and the title Patriots Protest, is vile.
Even in this town there are a number of people who are on the side of health care reform as one can see in the comments. Even the guy I share office space with, who is a republican, is in favor of health care reform.
Still the number of people who are opposed to health care reform are amazing. The guy who signs all his stuff "Semper Fi." Is opposed, although he can get his stuff through the government through the VA amazes me.
"He earned it," they say. Except if he was drafted then he had not choice in the matter, so should people who were drafted get fewer benefits than those who volunteered? Or under those criteria, then children would not have the right to health care.
Or others who say that people in Canada and England don't like their health care system. Then fall silent when it is pointed out that these people have been ruled by conservative governments off and on for years and never tried to get rid of their socialized system.
Or those who argue that we don't want bureaucrats between us and our doctors, completely ignoring that that is what the insurance industry is and that the insurance industry has an economic reason to deny care.
It is whack a mole, except that these moles are just not very bright.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Well well.Why do you think the judge put the guy in jail. Do you think that it is possible that the judge has decided that too many important people may be implicated by a witness who is too cooperative? Hmmmmmmmmm?
OK, this will get me going apparently the former president was so cracked that he thought we had to go to war in Iraq to prevent Gog and Magog from invading Isreal.
Having a difficult time this morning. I am not permitted onto the companies web cites to pay my bills. Companies that I have had my double secret codes etc. for years.
Second, I am watching and reading the news and it is coming over me (actually came over me some time ago) that once again I voted for a loser. Now this particular loser did win the election, but since then he has done everything he can to be the second coming of Bill Clinton. I expected something a little more from the black guy. I guess I shouild not be surprised. I would expect problems with an intern to come up any time now.
So I'm going a little crazy about Brecht and Weill. Stop me before I buy again.
The little woman is just getting over another bout with a fever spike as a result of the flu of a couple of weeks ago. I would be more worried if several friends in Columbus hadn't said that their flu followed the same course.
So this stuff is really disturbing. Reminiscent of the "white collar riot" that stopped the recount in Florida in 2000. More disturbing it is, for those of us who have studied history, reminiscent of the Nazis in Wiemar Germany.
I had actually first seen it when it was put on by the Antioch Theater department back before I went to law school when I worked at Antioch, during the InfamousPayless Paydays. That is how everyone who worked there at the time has always refereed to them.Possibly the first time that Antioch completely ran out of money and was unable to make the payroll. This was back in the late 70s. And long before the school shut down last year.
The people who "ran" the "University" (and scare quotes are absolutely correct for both ran and university) had run it into the ground. The university's trust fund which was not supposed to be able to be touched was being used as security on various loans. The interest on the loans were by this time taking 100% or perhaps a little more of the interest being earned by the trust. This was because the Antioch located in Yellow Springs, Ohio was a college not a university. The university was a bunch of store fronts all around the United States that the were to be an alternative educational system for the poor and minorities. They were started in the late 60s. They were to provide some very esoteric education: Marxist analysis of the causes of the student's poverty and various creative educational options.
Unfortunately, the Marxist analysis wasn't applied to the situation at hand. There was nothing wrong with the concept of trying to set this kind of thing up. But the timing was particularly bad. Those quite radical ideas were being repudiated by Nixon's and then Reagan's American.
The problem was that there was not enough money to bank roll it in Antioch's coffers. That in itself would not have been a problem, if the people who were running the whole thing would have had the sense to see what was happening. That is if they had the inclination or the ability to read a balance sheet.
For the most part the poor and minorities preferred to go to local community colleges and to get an education that would help them to get a job, rather than to Antioch to learn about the exploitation of the poor by the ruling class (something they knew first hand) and about the best way to analyse this through dialectical materialism.
The store fronts lost tons of money. The college in Antioch made a little money, but most of that money was spent on the store fronts (a lot of maintenance was not performed at the Yellow Springs campus because of that). In addition a few years before that there had been a disastrous student strike at the Yellow Springs campus and about two-thirds of the student body withdrew en-mass and never returned. There was no attempt to fix this either.
So the "University" board and president and all the other people with great titles and prestige continued to have these meetings and continued to run a nationwide university with campuses, well gee just everywhere (of course each of these campuses was a couple of rooms with about 30 to 50 students each).
And the pile of money kept getting smaller and smaller until:
Along with the others I went to work at my job as administrative assistant to the assistant dean of students (we got good titles instead of good money). All of us (secretaries, professors, maintenance workers, etc.), well we came to work to pick up our paychecks and there were no paychecks. No money don't you know.
What happened next was probably unique. The Yellow Springs campus had a coherence, community, and a solidarity that I think probably does not exist any where else (not there any more since it doesn't exist now, but that is another story).
The college made a deal with the state and we were allowed to collect unemployment benefits as long as we worked for Antioch. We could collect them and look for work, or we could continue to work at Antioch and not look for other work and still collect. Almost everyone stayed and worked at what amounted to no more than half pay to permit the school to get back on it's feet and that year's class to graduate.
Well anyway to get back to The Threepenny Opera. The drama class needed to put on a play to finish up their year. They did it I learned later for under $250.00 and on an out door stage. It was wonderful. (I guess Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland weren't always wrong.)
The play, of course deals with corruption, murder, theft, prostitution and a completely (purposely) silly tacked on happy ending. Perfect to the time.
Anyway I was reintroduced to the play by way of the movie Cradle Will Rock which was about the play The Cradle Will Rock (a wonderful movie about the only time in American history that soldiers closed up a play). That play was written by Marc Blitzstein who was a character in the movie. His character in the movie had two muses. One was his deceased wife and the other was Bertol Brecht (not dead at the time of the movie). Brecht of course wrote Threepenny Opera along with Kurt Weill. About two decades after the incidents in the movie Blitzstein adapted Threepenny Opera for the off Broadway stage (and from that adaption Bobby Daren got his hit). The movie and both plays just fascinate me, and that is how I got around to obsessing on Threepenny Opera and now have two cast recordings and a book.
Oh what happened at Antioch? Well, Mr. Mead of Mead Paper who was a graduate, stepped in and forced major changes in the way the place was run in exchange for bailing the place out. The administration was forced to get rid of all most all of the "university" except those making money. He paid the piper and they danced to his tune. Then later there were more attempts to cut workers, cut salary, a strike, and further proof that those who have the money and run things don't really ever learn. They think that it is all just money changing hands, that we did it just for the money and who knows maybe we did. Certainly I did, I left for law school and what I thought would be more money and a better job.
The point of both plays (Threepenny Opera and The Cradle Will Rock) is that we are all prostitutes, and we usually get screwed by the rich and powerful (even if they aren't as rich and powerful as they think they are, it only matters if they are richer and more powerful than the rest of us).
And oh yeah, those happy endings are always unbelievable and just tacked on.
