Here’s what I thought the other day. We, as in humankind, have accepted rule by tyrants for a very long time. In the knowable ancient past, going back about six thousand years or maybe more (my date memory got left behind in the Seventies) living under a tyrant often meant survival rather than slaughter. Life was brutal and you really just had to pick your poison, so to speak. And those tyrants often did pick their poison, it being a dangerous job with a phenomenal murder rate, so being an underling might well have meant a longer life span. And then if by bad luck you were a slave … not much for it but to slave away. But sometime during the Greek heyday, if my memory serves, a strange development took place, and a war was fought not for a leader, but for an idea. That idea was, roughly speaking, democracy.
[That was a terrible summation of the most interesting contents of The Ancient World, a podcast that I have been slowly working my way through. Impossible to remember all that has transpired, but a general picture has unfolded, and now I have made it to the second series, which is about the discovery of the information that was the basis of the first series. I think it is worth going back to the beginning, as it builds on itself. And not to insult the podcast, but it is great for insomnia and has a very peaceful tone as it takes you through murder and mayhem and Pharaohs and Emperors like Caligula, a real family man.]
Democracy has been taking hold for the last two millennia, with its concomitant idea of the equality of man, but is far from a truly working practice even where it is practiced, as we stumble along in this kleptocracy of a democracy. And we still live in a society divided by class to a large extent. The thing I was particularly struck by, as we in Canada elect a Trudeau while our southern pals contemplate electing a Clinton and a Bush tries to become the Republican nominee, was that we now still seem to want to live under tyrants, we just try to pick them ourselves. And we still look to dynasties. We changed the way the leaders were chosen, but we still seem to want to have individual leaders of vast territories and huge populations. One man, or woman, to rule over tens, or in the case of the U.S., hundreds of millions of diverse people. Wanting the job should be a disqualification for it in the first place, but wanting someone to take the job is likewise ludicrous. The job itself must go.
Perhaps we need something more like jury duty, where governing would be a civic duty, not a platform for demagoguery. And where the process would be more important than the personalities and their promises to deliver a future that can of course never arrive. Enough with dynasties and Great Leaders … cardboard signs and waving placards … it is time for a paradigm shift.
OT i know, but i found this at a local gravel pit today and wanted to show it off. i am not in what is considered the zone for finding these.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Superior_agate
Beautiful!
Last weekend we emptied the boat, and now we are off to take down the mast and get ready to haul her out. Looks like we have hit an interruption in income, but no buyer’s remorse on the boat. We can always just live in the boat and hippie van if worst were to come to worst!
And I have to describe my invention: slice a banana or two into nice quarter-inch slices, dust carefully with corn starch, as if they were scallops, and then fry in butter. Wait till they are slightly browned to flip and then coat lightly with brown sugar as the other side fries. Eat with cream … no wonder the weight slide has gotten better – up a few crucial pounds.
Good morning. Being a bit achy and grumpy – not sure why but it will pass.
And a blustery good morning to you all. Managed to get over 5000 steps yesterday, going for what I would have to describe as a stubborn walk. Fighting myself and winning half the battles.
breaking headline news. Paul Ryan elected Speaker of House. everything is awesome. see here…
http://www.ci.janesville.wi.us/Home/Components/News/News/3596/29
That really is good news that they are finally closing that plant. I hate to imagine who has been benefiting from keeping it mothballed.
I have been meaning to ask DP if you live in a neighbourhood with a name … as in do you have a community association of some sort? When we first moved here the neighbourhood was a fair disaster, especially to the east (and we live on the western edge) to the extent the city considered making us a red light district when that was fashionable politics. But through the stellar efforts of basically one couple a community association was grown that has had a tremendous impact, from flowers on the street to having the ear of the city and moving out the hookers and the worst bar just by insisting on getting proper policing that was consistent to this community, where we had a liaison officer with an office on the main street. Now it is full of cool little businesses and the property values have leapt up. We used to have (literally) a house two doors down that was sublet to a guy who had weekly poker parties that involved cops (pretty sure) and hookers, one of whom once knocked on my door asking if I had any shoes she could have, and who then hid in the next door neighbour’s hedge, still shoeless, smoking a butt. And then there was the drug house on the corner with “Ice” who lived there and the gang that reminded me of Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock, who tried to tell us one evening that “they owned the hood”, only to find to their dismay that only Wendy and I (two 40ish women who just happened to be black belts) engaged them as the men hung back on the lawn, one of whom was a police officer from just down the street. But now we are awash in babies and reno’s and honestly I think those two, Cheryl and Vance who just basically started improving the neighbourhood and demanding respect – they noticed that if there was a murder nearby it was reported as happening in Hintonburg, but if something good happened it happened in the Westend or Westboro and began a letter campaign to the papers whenever it happened, and they also got the city councillors and mayor to walk through the neighbourhood when we were on that red light list, and see who actually lived here, not just the depressing main strip that they drove through, and where our famous cardiologist Keon was arrested soliciting an underage hooker at 8 in the morning, but all the side streets and legitimate businesses and schools – those two changed the face of this area.
It is a very positive story and goes against the backdrop of a declining economy, making it quite remarkable.
And hence my question about whether your neighbourhood has an identity and if so, could it be polished up? Are there meetings?
And good morning.
Oh, and at least Ryan won’t be president …
Going to play with plugins for a moment, so if it loads funny, my apologies. But there was a comment type plugin that got updated, and I still hope to get back to being able to just drag photos off one’s desktop into the comments.
And sorry to have missed yesterday … trying to pull myself up by my bootstraps and yesterday was a bit of a tough one but I got my 5000 steps in. It is funny to think of pain as a habit my body has gotten into, but I think it is partially true and am really trying to let it go away, and walking seems to help mentally. But I think my leg might need a break (haha) today.
will the picture post?
no. darn.
How about now?
arghhh
And now it is doing that weird changing of the emoticons … oh well, back to old, not so great, normal for the mo …
A: there is just not enough community spirit where i live to overcome the sense of hopelessness and despair. our neighborhood is called the 4th ward, and that designation has a negative connotation overall. this is the original working class neighborhood, very historic, some beautiful (residential – Victorian era) architecture and i find it it shameful that this city has so little respect for its history. there has never been any sort of self sustaining momentum despite some community activism in this neighborhood over the years. the closing of GM here has had a profound impact, and it may take a generation or more for Janesville to recover. i do not think that our neighborhood has much of a chance unless the city as a whole recovers first.
i do not believe that government has no role in economics. that is why i come down so hard on Paul Ryan. his hometown is an economic basket case, and yet the third person down from the President in the USA is in no way held accountable for life at home for the average Joe. of course, being born incredibly wealthy, and marrying even more money, perhaps Mr. Ryan can afford patience, as free and unfettered markets eventually, at least theoretically will self correct conditions here. i do however believe that the bigger disgrace is that the media in this country is so thoroughly captured that my story, and the story of this very typical mid-western city may never be told.
but i have to get ready to go to work. 2nd shift. 3 hots and a cot. actually, pretty awesome all things considered. got pretty close to homeless. ttyl.
Yes it is wonderful that you are employed. A huge relief.
And good morning all.
And a Happy Hallowe’en! It is a thing on our street and what a nice evening for it. House haunted, tonnes of kids, neighbours drinking and eating … street closed to traffic due to neighbour down the street who figured out who to call at city hall … a weird and charming civic evening.
Back to standard time … that is the second time that daylight savings has taken me by surprise. Time to end that scourge!
And good morning … whatever time it is.
i worked “overtime” yesterday, and it looks like i will be working most Saturdays. it is cheaper for companies to either hire temps, or part time (30 hrs or less/wk), thus not having to offer benefits, or instead make the full timers with benefits work overtime. another awesome feature of the recovering economy. ahem.
some notes so far… i am not much older than the average employee at this company – average age is 40 per Human Resources. these types of jobs (entry level manufacturing) once predominantly went to kids fresh out of high school. i am not at all an exception in being a person that had made a lot more money in the past. so there is a certain resoluteness or acceptance or some kind of a nondescript attitude? … the people i work with are far more cooperative than competitive, and seem to share a certain kind of “we are all in this together” attitude. (in stark contrast to my past high tech rat race career in telecom) also the management for the most part seems to accept that no one is making much money, so they aren’t trying to squeeze out maximum production, unlike many other companies around here. so all in all, a good first week back in the legit job world.
well i hope that what has become a sort of personal diary is interesting. it does help me at some emotional level to get my thoughts down anyway.
hope you are doing OK 44. same to anyone lurking in the shadows.
we are going to have a few nice days of weather here, and it should be heading your way Xty. hope you get to enjoy it.
let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die.
Boy is daylight saving a nightmare for those of us with sleep issues! Good early morning, therefore.
What a peach of a day! But I am about to dig two more ticks out of poor old Mouse, making a total of 5 so far. Pretty sure we know where she got them, which is kind of bumming me out because it might be down by the river near some of my favourite walks. We did walk into a little pond area where maybe there was a microcosm of them on Saturday … Although as I type I was forgetting we went to a place we rarely go on Sunday, called Conroy Pit … maybe that was the culprit. Luckily we are not in a Lyme disease area, and I have gotten grossly proficient at popping them out, but nonetheless it ain’t my favourite chore! They have disgusting bristly heads, which are actually their whole bodies and legs, really, as the rest is just a sack of blood. Ugh.
At least DP you are on the other side of the fence now and getting the overtime that was preventing you from getting a job before … but what a f*(&%ed up situation. Is there a waiting period for benefits? Does it cover things like the dentist?
And another good morning. Sad to say I have picked up an infection in my internal sprinkler system, if you catch my drift, a likely side effect of the strange injection that is meant to be strengthening my bones by weakening my immune system (not really a fair statement as the drug is apparently very effective and somehow prevents bone loss by inhibiting what I think I recall was your RANKL but will have to reinvestigate). But I noticed something going wrong and started antibiotics last night – at least it explains the creeping exhaustion. I had decided I was maybe just pushing the walking, but no.
Oh and tiny triumphs in the you don’t know what you have ’till it’s gone category, I was able to put on my jeans yesterday without holding on to anything! I can stand on the erstwhile broken leg for just long enough, and now that I know that I was coming down with an infection I can happily state that my leg is much less painful in the last week or so. I keep losing the cane, and honestly you just forget what you were once able to do, and when I walked up the basement stairs the other day without devices and there is no railing, I was quite ecstatic. Switching to physio every other week.
And Mouse seems tick free, I am sure you are all glad to hear.
But why oh why can’t one just go to a lab and pay five bucks to have them test your pee instead of having to go to the doctor first? The lab could just send the results to the doctor who could then prescribe if necessary. Same for strep. Save everybody the song and dance. Or the drug store itself could do the testing. Just daft. But I took the moment to mention a little bump on the back of my right leg that seemed to have changed shape a bit and there was a med student in the same year as our pumpkin doing a rotation with my doctor and she burnt (or froze) it off there and then. It was kind of cool – actually really cold – and apparently it will now just fall off. So one silly worry off the list.
A string of good mornings continues. A last gasp of beautiful fall weather – hallowe’en put away dry which can be an issue, and energy returning to the shell of an Xty. And today we are going to actually pull the boat out. Large hay tarp bought and much theorizing about tarpage but the time has come for theory to meet reality as the docks are coming out on Saturday and it is going to rain. But last out first in is our theory and we cling to the vague thought that we might tow the boat to Florida and sail to the Bahamas for a month this winter. Might be a pipe dream but you never know and we want to keep our options open. So boat on trailer near the gate so we can escape if we pull it off.
And you all know I do like to keep the bowl of that pipe of pipe’s dreams full …
And I am looking forward to the next instalment of the working man’s blues. And t0 find out about the cot …
back if only for a moment. having car troubles again, or still, depending on degree of optimism/denial. GM has screwed this town every which way but loose, and me personally with a little extra pizzazz, by refusing to recall the lemon i bought, only car ever bought new, with too many bugs to list, from day one. (what about that “lemon law”? – yeah sure neolibs) so back to one car, and more repair bills. (google Chevy Aveo) i wonder if i will ever get back on my feet.
yes Xty, after 90 days i will get benefits. this company is low pay, but offers dental and vision. i will have to pay about $150/month. that is exceptional here in Janesville, believe it or not. so no complaints there.
when i have more time, i can describe conditions a bit more in detail. going forward, if i can keep ahead of the automation, and the economy does not get even worse, i should be able to stay employed. i have an advantage that many around here do not – college degree AND technical background.
nice weather here for one more day. 2nd shift might be OK after all. i can get out during daylight on warm El Niño inspired fall days – if even to limp to the auto repair shop.
glad to see you are getting a leg up on the boat. 🙂
these articles are pretty good. the comments even better.
there is no real difference between the R’s and D’s. we have been played for years. and i’ve been saying that for years. catch up with me people please, before i go mad. (first article is biased)
enjoy… or not.
http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/sad-truth-our-politics-its-basically-turned-competition-among-oligarchs-own
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/11/mussolini-style-corporatism-aka-fascism-on-the-rise-in-the-us.html
Sigh …
But good morning. Good warm morning. My lovely neighbour pal across the way yesterday shovelled and bagged all the leaves that fill the street in front of our house and get crushed by parked cars, frequently his, while I raked the lawn. He filled 3 bags and I filled 5 (mine were lighter), and we were pretty sure we had missed the yard pickup, because they had come by early to take the green bins of larvae (compost) and thought they took them together. So stacked the bags by the house because the forecast called for rain. Went to sailing club, and with the help of the guy who knows everything and his truck we pulled out the boat, and then the two of us managed to get the mast down and the boat is now in the sailing club yard awaiting tarping and pressure washing. But the whole point of the story is that when we got home all the bags of leaves were gone. I can only assume primo neighbour saw the truck coming and hustled them all back to the curb. But a miracle of vanishing leaf bags has occurred, and I guess they take them with the cardboard not the compost. Which makes no sense because yard waste and compost should both be picked up together one would think being sold to that weird company the city pays extra to when they don’t have enough compost and yard waste. Or maybe there is so much at this time of year they send extra trucks. But whatever the reason, yeah neighbour!
Sorry to hear the lemon is still squeezing you, DP. That company has been a real millstone.
http://www.wisconsinacademy.org/magazine/goes-janesville
http://itvs.org/films/as-goes-janesville
That was weird. My comment didn’t post normally, and I was able to go back and as the wheel of disaster spun was able to take a screen shot of my post, which then did indeed vanish into the ether. But nothing can stop me from drivelling on about my existence!
the woman talking to Scott Walker in the video above is Diane Hendricks, the third richest person in Wisconsin. they are discussing how to ensure that Wisconsin becomes and remains a “red” state. yup, that is what matters most to the billionaire class. with friends like the Koch bro’s and Hendricks, shouldn’t be too difficult to do. Godspeed Scott you mfing hypocrite. and see ya tomorrow at mass.
there is no political discourse anymore about Janesville’s plight here in Wisconsin. there has been no recovery. it will be revealing as the 2016 elections approach if the feebly smoldering economic crater called Janesville is still being ignored – considering that the new Speaker of the House is a lifelong resident, and of old money here.
sing it again Bob. this site certainly has a few bugs.
Ah, billionaires. They still have to poop. And really, as my nice neighbour and I were discussing yesterday, pooping in a golden toilet is no different and doesn’t make it better. But money seems to make people insatiable. And astonishingly selfish.
Yes there are bugs. I have tried a ludicrous combination of plug-ins and all I can say is that for free stuff it is awesome. And while I have occasionally dared to mess with code, I am way above my pay scale (currently very low so this is easy). Apparently my next step to try to get the pictures back to drag and drop involves changing “permissions” at our host site but the web warns about security vulnerability. But I am going to give it a go when I get up my nerve. Had to go through password recovery rigmarole first, but that bridge has been crossed.
The payoff for keeping a state red or blue is so enormous. I think in Canada about half the economy is government (or was when I paid closer attention to the trees but tended to miss the forest) and when you imagine all the contracts that involves from the petty booking of convention hotels and ordering office supplies to the massive dam buildings and ship building contracts, etc., it is shocking. We have a neighbour who works for a major telco and his stories of keeping the government happy and the ways they get strung along is nuts. And it is so easy for those in government to tender contracts with no limit on applicants of course because that would look bad and we have limits on sole sourcing which creates the opposite problem, a whole host of s*&#flies, and they are surrounded at all times by lobbyists with hidden agendas. It doesn’t take much corruption to get the ball rolling and kickbacks can be subtle. Even just getting invited to the right parties.
And good morning.
agreed Xty. the ideology of the far right is for the “low information voters”, not for personal consumption by the political class or their wealthy donors. for them it’s money talks, bullshit walks. and so it goes, the Forward state dabbles in red, and is open for business, but only if your business is big enough to matter where it counts.
4 44…
we still have a few leaves left here. have not yet had a hard freeze.
That is a pretty scene. We are currently having what the interwebz described as freezing mist, but it looks like a very cool fog. Basically leafless, but a few diehards. It hasn’t been deep cold, but there was ice in the park when I walked Mouse yesterday morning.
And damn all politicians! We are drowning in announcements from the new government and flipping channels last night heard a news anchor on the CBC (which is a weird adjunct of government here) actually introduce a segment with a jaded statement like “yet another announcement by a new Liberal minister ….” What did people expect? It is boondoggle and payback season. And the incoming nitwit promised to spend us into a deficit … a deficit debt situation that his father started and from which we have never recovered. Nobody understands that digging a ditch and filling it in doesn’t actually help the economy, it just gets your buddy’s ditch digging firm a contract. Like the defence of the 100,000 dollar metal tree that that money would “stay” in the neighbourhood. But they took it from the neighbours … we would have spent it but distributed amongst many local businesses, not just the one chosen by experts. Arghhh.
And good morning. Sorry for yesterday but I am just at a low ebb.
And good afternoon.