Aunt Jemima, N.K. Jemisin, and Black Lives Matter

I:  The Mad Copyist Strikes Again!

It all started with another one of those stupid printouts.  Some alt-right conservative at work left it on that same empty desk, and I totally ignored that little voice in my head that said Don't do it, you'll be sorry! and read the damned thing.

And I was sorry, because it was all about Aunt Jemima.  The black woman on the pancake box.  It was headed  "Yep, Black Lives Matter,"  and it told the story of the real woman who portrayed Jemima:  a lady named Nancy Green.  Supposedly, she was given a lifetime contract to portray Aunt Jemima, was a big hit at the World Expo in Chicago, made lots of money travelling the country, used her fame as a platform to advocate for social justice and equality, and finally died at age 89, a millionaire.

Beneath this celebration of her life is a scathing critique of the decision by Quaker Oats to retire the Aunt Jemima mascot.  And underneath that is a picture of Nancy Green, laughing and happy, holding up a plateful of pancakes.

Yeah...No.

According to both Snopes and Wikipedia, two men named Chris Rutt and Charles Underwood bought a flour mill.  But there was no shortage of flour in the area, so they experimented with different mixes of ingredients and came up with a self-rising pancake flour.  At first they tried to market the flour in bags labelled with just that name, but according to legend, Mr. Rutt went out to see a vaudeville show, and he saw a minstrel act (white people made up in blackface, dressed as black slaves) featuring a man garbed up as a plump "mammy" slave singing a song called "Old Aunt Jemima."  Rutt appropriated this name and picture of the minstrel-show character and renamed the pancake mix for Aunt Jemima.

Nancy comes into the picture when the two friends ran out of money and sold the Jemima brand to another company.  The new company, Davis Milling, improved the flavor of the mix by by switching a few ingredients and adding powdered milk, so that all you had to do was add water to get great-tasting batter.

To get the word out about this great product, Davis sought out a "mammy" type black woman to act as a living mascot.  Nancy Green, born a slave and still working as a domestic for the family who had once been her masters, was recommended for the job by her employer, Judge Walker.  She made her debut as Aunt Jemima at the 1893 World's Columbian Expo in Chicago, flipping pancakes, singing songs, and telling stories about her old life "on the plantation."  (All made up--her origins were on a much more modest farm.)  She was the very icon of the idealized antebellum south, and was so popular that security guards had to be called in to keep the crowds moving along.  (That picture, by the way?  It's a fake.  Not only is it not Nancy Green at the World Expo, it's not even a black woman;  it's a self-portrait of a white female artist in blackface and traditional slave garb, titled "Aunt Jemima:  I Sang Because They Paid Me."  The picture is also cropped--the artist's original has Aunt Jemima chained to a table laden with pancakes!)

So, to be clear:  Two white men invented something new, slapped a black slave cook's picture on it, and then sold it to another white man, who hired a black woman to portray that slave cook.  That's wince-making all by itself, but it gets worse.

Myths And Moneymakers

Davis, and later Quaker Oats, invented an entire mythology for Jemima:  born a slave on a plantation owned by a kind master, she not only invented the pancake recipe, but also used her delicious product as a distraction to keep Union soldiers from harming her master!  She also had a husband, "Uncle Moss," and two "pickaninny" children, "Wade" and "Diana."  You could cut out paper dolls of the family on early boxes of the mix; later there were rag dolls you could send away for.  There were also promotional products such as a shopping-reminder board with Jemima's likeness on it, with pegs next to such grocery needs as flour, eggs, vegetables, meat, etc., and little wooden markers to hang on a peg if you were out of that item; the top of the board carried the caption "Gots To Get."

But The Truth Is...

There's no indication that Green ever became a millionaire from her time as Aunt Jemima;  in fact, she was still working as a domestic servant right before she died in an auto accident (a driver lost control and veered up onto the sidewalk, striking Green and killing her).  That lifetime contract was bogus, too --she was supposed to go on a tour of Europe, but Green refused to travel over the ocean to another land.  That would have been grounds for firing her, and the fact that she later lists her occupation not as "cook" but as "housekeeper" seems to indicate that she did lose her Aunt Jemima status.

She did earn enough to contribute to her church (Olivet Baptist) and to other charities, but that is more an indicator of devotion than of wealth.  Whether she spoke up about the social evils of her time is hazy;  I doubt she used the Aunt Jemima platform to do that, as it would be out of character for the image Davis was presenting:  the cheerful, humble, devoted house slave, so eager to serve up a big stack of cakes at the drop of a kerchief.

So, you see, the original writer of this post was an idiot.  The co-worker who chose to share this inaccurate tripe with the rest of us was an even bigger one.

II:  The City Awakens, The Racists Howl...

I do love N.K. Jemisin's work.  I've spoken of her short story,  "The City Born Great,"  and I'm talking about it again because she expanded it into a novel!!!!  It's called The City We Became, and I was so excited to see the notification on Amazon that I immediately went and ordered it from my local bookstore (I only order online if I can't get an item from a brick-and-mortar store).

But as I was waiting for my book to arrive, I got curious;  so I had a really quick look at the reviews.

Yikes.

There were a lot of reviews for this book, and there are always a few grumblers in the stack of any collection of opinions;  but I was amazed at the low-rated review titles:  "A Disgrace." "This Is Racist Garbage." "Good Premise, But Excessive Focus On Race, Gender, Etc. Gets In The Way."  By far, the biggest complaint in these reviews is the amount of setup time Jemisin uses to tell us about the main characters' ethnicity and culture, as well as their gender and sexuality.

How's This For A Statistic?

White people in NYC make up only 42.7% of the population.  The percentage drops to 32.1% if you remove the white people who have some Latino or Hispanic in their ancestry.  Black people make up 24.3%, while Latino/Hispanic folks make up 29.1 percent, and Native Americans comprise 0.4 % of New York's population.  (These stats come from the US Census Bureau, 2019 estimates.)

Now, think of any movie or book with NYC as the setting.  How often are any of the leading heroes any race other than white?  I'm not talking about "best friends" or cab drivers or store clerks;  I mean the actual heroes.

Not many, huh?

And when the hero(ine) is some other race or culture, more often than not, he or she is portrayed in a stereotypical role:  The single black mother.  The lonely private eye.  The teen trying to break out of the urban core.  The last positive portrayal of a black man in a blockbuster movie that I have seen was Agent J in "Men In Black," and even then, the young man starts out as a cop chasing a bad guy, and later on he is used as comic relief (when the alien is giving birth)!

With the percentages I cited, there ought to be, statistically,  more people of color as stockbrokers, scientists, professors, accountants, architects, and lots of other professions besides "cop" or "server" or "cab driver" in New York.  And in fact, there are.  But you would never know it from reading your average book or seeing your average movie.

So Jemisin's tactic of coming right out and telling you that the gay art gallery director is a Native American of the Lenape tribe is actually very appropriate.  In fact, she turns the stereotypes completely upside-down:  The only cab driver you meet in the novel is a white woman, and the monster fought by the heroes is called the Woman In White (because that's how she manifests to those she tries to entrap)!

So Why The Anger?

*Sigh.*  I cannot even pretend to know what is in these folks' minds.  All I have is an educated guess, which is that "white people have always had center stage, so that's the way it's supposed to be."  Which is, of course, untrue.  But I suppose it's scary to think that you are losing your majority status...and even scarier to think that the way you have treated others is about to round the corner behind you and bite you right in the ass.  And scared people are dangerous, as Yoda pointed out in The Phantom Menace:  "Fear leads to anger.  Anger leads to hate.  Hate...leads to suffering."

III:  Why Black Lives Must Matter

I was talking to one of my bosses about people appropriating the culture of Native Americans;  his amused response was,  "What culture?"  That really floored me, because even as a kid I had studied various Native cultural expressions:  jewelry, money (yep, some tribes had beads that were used as a means of exchange), clothing, agriculture, government, intertribal sign language...it was all so complex and fascinating, and here's this white guy sweeping that all away with two words!

The thing is, you hear the same, or similar, about black culture.  It either doesn't exist at all, or it's portrayed as inferior to the cultural accomplishments of white people.  Never mind that nearly all of the music we listen to has its origin in black culture.  Rock and roll is a direct descendant of jazz and rhythm and blues, and the first writers and performers of rock were black--Chubby Checker, Fats Domino, and Little Richard are the ones who immediately come to mind, but they aren't the only ones.  And before anybody says "country and western,"  need I remind you of how much rock, soul, and even hip-hop have influenced the form?  There are country versions of soul songs all over the place (I Can Love You Like That;  If Loving You Is Wrong (I Don't Want To Be Right), to name just two), and country songs that use hip-hop beats and even spoken rhymes (This Is How We Roll, for one;  Chillin' On A Dirt Road, for another).  We have appropriated black music since time out of mind.  And yet, when Lil Nas X did a cool number called Old Town Road, it wasn't "country" enough for the Billboard Country chart!  I mean, seriously?!

But there is a worse thing than devaluating a group's culture, and that is devaluating their very lives.

For Me, It Started With...

...Rodney King.

Maybe because I was too young to have lived through the Civil Rights marches, so I hadn't seen the police dogs and fire hoses and police brutality of that time.

But everybody knew about Rodney King, because some brave soul had a camcorder and got the bad stuff on film.  Oh, the older Civil Rights stuff had been filmed by "official" news folk, and it was important;  but this was just an ordinary citizen who shot the footage and then shared it.  It marked the beginning of the "citizen watchdogs" who have used cameras and cell phones to bear witness to the evil that hides in the shadows.

And it turns out that much of that evil is done by the very people who are supposed to be our protectors.  My childhood was full of the image of Officer Friendly, the kind policeman who would guide you home if you were lost, or help get your cat out of a tree.  But this was not the image that black people saw;  instead, it was the cop who stopped them if their car was new (because how could a black person afford a car like that?  He had to be a thief/pimp/drug pusher!), called them "boy" (because criminals don't deserve to be called "Mister"), and beat them up and ran them in on the flimsiest of charges (He sassed at me!  That's disrespect!  And squirmed...that's resisting arrest!).

Added to that scary image is one I didn't know about until recently:  the trigger-happy cop.

A Different World

Cops live in a totally different world than most of us do.

For a police officer, the people s/he meets come in two flavors:  Good and Bad.  What defines either of these flavors depends on his background and his training.

For many decades now, black people have been portrayed as poor, dirty, lazy, ignorant, dope-addicted, raping, thieving, murdering...criminals.  The reason their neighborhoods are run-down is that they don't care about revitalizing them;  their schools are inferior because the parents don't want to get involved.  Never mind the underhanded banking practices that prevented blacks from getting start-up business loans or mortgage/improvement loan approvals.  Never mind "white flight,"  where white people moved their families to the suburbs so their children didn't have to go to school with black children.  Never mind the food deserts, where full-service grocery stores are far away and the nearest food is processed crap from a convenience store on the corner.  Never mind that the most a black urban-core inhabitant ever sees of his municipal tax money is the police cars that show up to arrest a man or woman for the three joints in their pocket, or the (possibly) unlicensed firearm, or just because they had a bad attitude.  The garbage trucks show up on a hit-or-miss basis, the potholes get larger every year, the murders remain unsolved...but there are always plenty of cops.  And chances are, those cops are going to be white, with the mindset of Us and Them, Good and Bad.

And when you have the attitude that darker skin equals Bad, that's when the fear/anger/hate sets in.

Statistics That Made Me Blink...And Then Cry

According to Statistica.com,  there were 999 fatal shootings of civilians by police in 2020.  Of those killed, 226 were black.  Do the math, and you see that there the ratio is 1:4.42 (rounded to the second decimal place), so slightly fewer than 25% of police kills were of blacks.

But blacks make up only 12.1% of the population of the United States--13% if we add in the multi-racial blacks.  That means that black people were killed by police about twice as often as whites or other ethnicities.

And why?  Because they were criminals?  Tell that to Breonna Taylor.  Police in Louisville used a no-knock warrant at her home because they thought she was part of a drug ring.  When the cops showed up at the house after midnight, both Breonna and her boyfriend asked who was there, but got no answer.  When the officers used a battering ram to bust in the door, the boyfriend, now up and headed for the door, fired his (legally-registered) gun at what he thought was a home invader;  Breonna--unarmed--was shot as she accompanied him.  She had no criminal record and only circumstantial ties to the ex-boyfriend who was the real target (and who was found at another location).

Or how about Tamir Rice?  12 years old, and armed only with a fake gun.  Only problem was, the toy didn't have that orange tip on it that tells everyone it's a fake.  After this kid was seen aiming the toy gun at people, someone called 911 about it.  The caller told the dispatcher that it looked like a kid and the gun was probably a fake, but the dispatcher failed to relay that info to the two officers sent to the site.  When they arrived at the scene, the cops yelled at Tamir to show his hands; instead, he reached back as if to draw his fake gun, and one cop shot him in the torso.  Witnesses say the cop car hadn't even come to a full stop before the boy was shot.  What's more, when Tamir's 14-year-old sister tried to get to her brother minutes after the shooting, she was cuffed and thrown to the ground by the officers (and she wasn't armed with anything!).

Yeah, But...

Okay, this is where people start second-guessing.

Breonna was hooked up with a drug dealer (at one time), so of course she was under suspicion.

Tamir didn't have that orange tip on the fake gun, and he didn't obey the officers, so of course he was going to get shot.

Michael Brown shouldn't have been walking in the street.

George Floyd shouldn't have been passing a counterfeit twenty...

...And on and on it goes.  There's always an excuse for a cop killing a black person.

But what I want to know is, which of the incidents I just named was worth a civilian dying from a cop's bullet (or knee to the neck)?  When the hell did so many cops start thinking it was okay to be Dirty Harry?

When did we lose sight of the fact that everyone is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law?

When did the phrase "To protect and serve" not apply to an entire race of people?

Because it doesn't, you know.  Somehow, the idea that black people commit more crimes has seeped into the public consciousness and sprouted like mildew, and the result is that the police think that black people are more dangerous than white people.  Neither of these things is true, and if people would actually look at the statistics, they would see that.  But the stats remain hidden, and the myth holds sway.

And that's why we need organizations like Black Lives Matter:  because for a long time now, they haven't.  When a black person killed by the cops is belittled, criminalized, brushed off...when that happens, people watching these tragic events get to shrug and pretend that the human being who lost his or her life wasn't important.  They weren't sons, or wives, or daughters, or loved by others--they were only criminals...

Epilogue:  The Color Of Karma Is Black

I'd like to end this with a poem.  I wrote it after getting fed up with the dehumanization of black people shot by police:

Blue pulls the trigger,

Black takes the blame:

--He ran--

--She resisted--

--He reached--

--And they were criminals anyway.

But a life cut short

Never gets the chance

To repent,

To atone,

To change and grow.

Blue sows the wind,

Reaps the hurricane:

And the Color of Karma is Black.

- Lisa Gulick

Sept. 2020

This blogger has been keeping tabs on unarmed black victims of police brutality, whether with a gun or without.  Check it out here;  it's incredibly sobering:

https://www.reneeater.com/on-monuments-blog/tag/list+of+unarmed+black+people+killed+by+police

Notes From A (Social) Distance

The Continuing Crisis

It's been seven months since the first quarantines were imposed for COVID-19, and not only have things gotten worse, the Orange Alert in the White House has done little about it.  In fact, he has lied about how bad the virus really is, calling it a hoax;  withheld supplies and funding from hard-hit states, saying (erroneously) that it wasn't the federal government's job to buy them protective equipment and ventilators;  ignored his medical experts and pooh-poohed their conclusions;  advised the use of dangerous drugs and home remedies as treatment for COVID;  and finally, as late as this month, responded to a question about the high death toll (165,000) as of this writing) by saying,  "It is what it is."  How this man has remained in office for four years mystifies me more than ever.

Meanwhile, people are out of work and running out of money, whether they had any savings or not.  Many are behind on bills and on the brink of eviction, and with unemployment at record highs - we haven't seen it this bad since the Great Depression - it doesn't look like things will get better very soon.

And still, Congress is dragging its feet on whether to pass a new help package, because - no surprise - the GOP believes that giving poor unemployed people more money will make them lazy and unwilling to work once things do improve.

But they were perfectly willing to bail out the airline and cruise industries, to the tune of billions of dollars;  and of course the military budget is as bloated as ever...but poor people?  Why, they should stop being such layabouts and take responsibility for themselves!

Needless to say, all this sucks.  But we Americans are tough, and the fact that so many of us are pulling together on our own to try to improve our lot gives me real hope for the future....

Who Is That Masked Person?...Why, It's All Of Us!

Since it's very hard to get a COVID test unless you're suspected of having it, one of the easiest ways to keep from inadvertently spreading the virus to others is to wear a mask.  It doesn't even have to be a surgical one;  so long as it's three layers of cloth, it will keep your possibly pathogenic emissions to yourself.

Which is why many businesses, along with all doctor's and dentist's offices, have begun requiring that you wear one while you are inside.

Recently, my county, lacking science-based leadership from our state's Republican governor, set up its own mask mandate.  County-wide, you were required to wear a mask inside any restaurant, store, or medical facility.  At first, it was only for a month...but when our curve flattened by half, they extended the mandate for another month.

Mind you, this met with resistance from the Trumpster crowd, as well as the cranky people who swear up and down that it's all media hype. 

The masks are too hot, they say, or hard to breathe through, or it's a pain to carry one everywhere...excuses abound.  And yes, all these things are true.  But doing the right thing even when it's hard and inconvenient is part of being an adult!  And when it's something that will help your whole community, refusing to take this simple precaution is downright criminal.  (One of these alt-right wags at my workplace joked that he shouldn't have to wear a mask because he was diagnosed with CS...and don't ask what it is, because medical conditions are personal!  The initials turned out to mean "Common Sense."  Sorry, no:  common sense is when you listen to the scientists and doctors and then do what they tell you.)

One of our neighboring counties decided to follow our example.  Unfortunately, their population is even more cranky than ours:  they're actually suing the county health department for "infringement of rights."  I don't know about anyone else, but it seems to me that another person's "rights" end where my health and safety begin.  I mean, it's against the law to urinate or defecate in a public place.  Why?  Because human waste is a health hazard to other humans!  And why take the chance when there are public toilets you can use?  Same with masks--most places will give you a disposable one for free if you don't have one or left yours on the kitchen counter at home!

So c'mon, folks...wear the mask.  Either that, or call ahead and get your groceries, fast-food meal, or hardware brought out to your car.  Which brings us to....

The Curbside Culture

Businesses have been remarkably adaptive during this unhappy time;  one of the ways they've coped with COVID has been to offer curbside service.  This has been done with restaurant food, groceries, veterinary supplies, clothing, and even hardware!  Our store offers this option, particularly to elderly folks who need stuff but don't feel comfortable going among other people (masked or not).  Under special circumstances, we'll even deliver.  In fact, we've stayed open through the entire quarantine period, since farmers still have to feed their livestock, plumbers still have to patch up leaky pipes, and electricians still have to rewire stuff.  One happy result of our dedication is that more people have discovered that we're a pretty damn good local business, and so we've had the opportunity to actually expand our reach beyond our normal clientele!

Another local business, a small restaurant run by a friend of mine, had to close during quarantine...but she knuckled down and made arrangements with the city government to designate a couple of her front parking spaces as "pick-up" points, since her place didn't have its own parking lot.  Having done that, she was able to offer not only curbside service, but also actual delivery to homes, although she had to charge a rather high fee for the latter service.  Her loyal customers, however, paid gladly, and when the curbside business grew faster than the deliveries, they were okay with curbside only (delivery could still be arranged if the customer was in self-quarantine).

In some cases, curbside pickup has become so popular that I won't be at all surprised if it continues long after we're all vaccinated and herd-immune, because it's so convenient!

Wash.  Your.  Hands!!!

Here's a little secret:

Janitors know what you do in the bathroom...and what you don't do.

Especially when a restroom has power-flush toilets and auto-dispensers for paper towels.

So if you go into the restroom, and after a few silent minutes you come out again,  we know that you a) did not flush the toilet and b) didn't wash your hands...all because of the sounds you didn't make!  And lest you think that's creepy, be aware that those power-flushes and dispenser motors are pretty loud;  I can hear ours from a couple of aisles away.  If I'm in the area and fail to hear the important sounds of flushing, water running, and towels dispensing, I will drop whatever I was doing, grab my cleaning supplies, and give that restroom a thorough going-over once the customer has left...whether I was just in there five minutes ago or the next cleaning round is due.

Why?  Because unflushed toilets and unwashed hands are also carriers of COVID!

(Flushing a toilet with the lid up also spreads the virus, BTW...we already knew that particulates fly upward into the air every time a toilet is flushed.  That doesn't mean you shouldn't flush--just close the lid first.) 

For some weird reason, pandemic or no pandemic, there is a large segment of our population who feel they don't need to wash their hands, or that all they need do is wet their hands briefly and shake-dry them.  

But make no mistake:  if you have been using the toilet for any reason, you need to wash your hands.  With soap.  Scrubbing thoroughly for 20 seconds.  Drying hands completely before leaving the room, and do feel free to use the towel to grab the door handle.  Because even without COVID, your unwashed hands can spread disease to whatever--and whomever--you touch!  Even if it didn't, the idea of shaking your hand after you've spent a hot minute holding on to a part of your anatomy that normally gets all hot and sweaty under your clothes...ew.  Seriously, dude...if you took off your shoes and rubbed your feet, then tried to shake my hand, I'd feel exactly the same way.  And ladies...you just spent a hot minute wiping that region.  So for heaven's sake, everybody...wash your hands before leaving the restroom!

Keeping Our Distance...

The third point of the COVID-prevention triangle is commonly called social distancing.  This means that you keep six feet apart from other people whenever possible, in order to reduce the possibility of either unknowingly spreading the virus or of catching it from someone else (since it's mainly spread by airborne particles).

It's astonishing how fast the "six feet apart" rule has become the new normal;  stores have marks on the floor in their check-out lanes to help you comply, and for the most part (except for the Trumpy Grumpies) everyone does.  Even on my town's narrow sidewalks, people veer to either side to pass each other--it's like a choreographed dance move!

Churches--at least mine--have also instituted social distancing and limited occupancy in the sanctuary, as well as requiring masks.  When the weather cooperates, we hold services outside, under a big tree;  you bring your own lawn chair or blanket and sit six feet apart.  Whenever there's Communion, the distributors are masked and gloved, and for the first time ever, we're using those disposable plastic individual cups rather than the heavy glass ones.

This is a Lutheran church, mind you--if you ask how many Lutherans it takes to change a light bulb, the answer is,  "None, because Lutherans never change!"  To which I would add that to a Lutheran, the only proper definition of the word "change" is a noun that describes the loose coinage she might find in her car's cup holders.  But we're not stupid;  we respect the medical field, and if taking these measures is the only way we can offer Word and Sacrament safely to our people, we'll do it.  (We're sure God approves.)

Now that the restaurants have reopened, owners and managers have had to compensate for social distancing by spreading out their seating, limiting the number of customers who can be inside, or both.  Some places have taken a cue from medical facilities by taking your temperature with one of those head-zapping thermometers before you're allowed to enter.  All to try to keep us a little safer while still allowing us to have a good time.

Social distancing has even made it into country music;  a guy named Luke Combs wrote a song called "Six Feet Apart" about how we're living through the pandemic, and as far as I can tell, he's not being sarcastic or mean--just looking forward to the day when we can just hug each other, squeeze an entire family into one corner booth, and play in front of real crowds (and be part of those crowds).

Speed that day, Luke.  From your mouth to God's ears....

They're People, Not Statistics!

People have said some dumb things to me during this outbreak.  I've already repeated a few of them.  But the all-time dumbest, most heartless thing anyone's ever said about COVID was,  "The virus is no big deal;  it's got a 99.4% survival rate."

Now, follow me here.  When experts throw out this number, they do not mean that each person has a 99.4% chance of surviving the virus;  that percentage refers to the population.  In other words, 99.4% of the people infected with COVID will survive.

That does sound good...but if the entire population of the USA catches the virus--331 million and change by 2020 UN estimates--that 0.6% who die amounts to...yikes.  How about 1,986,000 dead?  That's a lot.  That's the population of my town times 85,000.  It's roughly the combined populations of San Diego and Sacramento.  It would clear out both the Dakotas like pathogenic Round-Up, with enough left to pretty much decimate Wyoming!

But let's be real.  These are people.  They're mothers and fathers, children and grandchildren, friends and neighbors, spouses and partners.  Those who die will be teachers, engineers, cashiers, doctors, nurses, cooks, fire fighters, EMTs..."the people in your neighborhood," as that happy little Sesame Street song goes.  Those people, and many others like them, will go away and never return, if COVID is allowed to run amok as it has up to now.

Wake Up!

It is time to use whatever medium of communication best suits you to contact your lawmakers--local, state, and federal--and tell them to get back to those legislative chambers and start solving this mess.  You might have different ideas about what to do, or how to do it...but doing nothing will help no one at all.  I think the pathway is pretty clear:  mass testing and contact tracing, funding for vaccine research (with a guarantee of free distribution to the public--the virus won't go away if we're not all vaccinated), monetary relief for families hit hardest by shutdowns and lost employment, and relief for small businesses (not big corporations and super-wealthy individuals).

Like I said, you might not agree.  Still, we have to talk about it, and then take action.

But we'd better do it fast...before we lose the Dakotas.

Dismantling Straw Men

Falsehood flies, and truth limps along after. - Jonathan Swift

This just in...or is that flushed?

One of my more conservative coworkers left the following printout on an adjoining table for any passerby to read:

"I never cared if you were 'gay' until you started shoving it down my throat.

I never cared what color you were, until you started blaming my race for your problems.

I never cared about your political affiliation until you started to condemn me for mine.

I never cared where you were born in the USA until you wanted to erase my history and blamed my                     ancestors for your problems.

I never cared if you were well-off or poor until you said you were discriminated against when I was                     promoted because I worked hard.

I never cared if your beliefs were different from mine, until you said my beliefs were wrong.

Now, I care.  My patience and tolerance are almost gone.  I am not alone in feeling this way.  There are millions who do...

AND WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH."

Nota bene (please note)...

It's pretty obvious that the original author of this screed is:  a Republican, probably of the substrain conservatis norquisti;  either a white Southerner or at least a sympathizer;  a very conservative Protestant Christian, perhaps Southern Baptist;  and...clueless.

I say "clueless" because every single line of this post after the word "until" is a "straw man"--an extreme distortion of a position taken by another person.  This distortion is then misrepresented as the normal argument.  It's a mutation, in fact, and the straw men in the above document would be ridiculed if they were read by people who really know about the issues named.

But this is the Internet, remember?  Anything and everything can be put out there like so much raw sewage;  and chances are, it will gain not only serious attention, but unquestioning belief.

So here I stand, sword in hand, to take arms against these straw men and reduce them, line by line, to cattle fodder...

I never cared if you were 'gay' until you started shoving it down my throat.

I actually have several dogs in this fight, in the form of friends and a relative who are either homosexual or trans-gendered.  Some might think that disqualifies me from even speaking to this issue, but I think it gives me a better perspective on what "non-cis" folks might actually want.

In a nutshell, they just want to be treated like any other member of society.

When the writer refers to gay people "shoving it down [his] throat", does he refer to their desire to be married?  Or the desire to adopt children as couples?  How about not having to hide their sexual orientation in order to get a job or a home, or to serve in the military?  These have all been uphill battles for the LGBTQ community for a very long time now, and whatever your religion, the law of this land should not allow any law-abiding non-cis to be treated like a second-class citizen.

Maybe what upsets the writer is that the non-cis community is being represented more favorably in the entertainment industry, with more non-cis people and couples having larger roles and even being able to express their love on-screen.  If this is so, well--look at how much hetero smooching, necking, and home-run sex are all over the airwaves and movie screens!  If non-cis people are normal, and they live among us, why should they hide how much they love their wife, husband, or partner?  And if a TV show or movie is trying to show "real life," it must also show that kind of "real life" as well.  If not, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander:  we should just go back to the days of the Hayes Code, when even hetero marrieds were not allowed to lie in the same double bed and the word "pregnant" was never said out loud.

Of course, it might be that the writer had to detour around the route of his city's annual Gay Pride Parade, and he's just angry because it made him late for work.  If that's the case, I have no rebuttal.

I never cared what color you were, until you started blaming my race for your problems.

News flash:  White people are being blamed for the problems of African-Americans...because we caused those problems!

It wasn't Africans who brought other Africans over the ocean to be slaves to white people.  That started with the Dutch, and the fad spread to the English and Spanish.  As it says in the book of Hosea,  "They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind."  In other words, the evil done at first will create far greater evil down the road.

One of the greater evils was the erroneous idea that dark skin was a sign of inferiority, or even of subhumanity, so it was okay to enslave them.  Certain Protestant denominations even put a Divine imprimatur on the keeping of African slaves by misinterpreting the Bible story of Ham looking on his drunken father's nakedness, and his father's subsequent curse on him, to say that at that point Ham turned black!  That made the real curse--that Ham would become a servant to his brothers--an easy justification for the enslaving of black people.  And of course, there was a lot of the "slaves, obey your masters" Bible verses used to cow the slaves  (though the slaves never got to hear what followed, which was an exhortation to masters to treat their slaves well and not threaten them, since the slaveowner has the same Master in Heaven as the slave does, and He (Christ) does not show favoritism).

The end of the Civil War, and the passage of Amendments 13 (freeing the black slaves), 14 (granting them citizenship), and 15 (granting them the right to vote), ought to have made things better for black people;  however, a lot of sneaky white people engaged in some nasty double-dealing to prevent blacks from moving up in society.  Black people might be free citizens, but they should remain segregated from white people (Plessy v. Ferguson - also known as the "separate but equal" decision as regarded schools).  Sure, they can vote...but they have to pay a poll tax or pass a literacy test in order to do so.  And then there was the Ku Klux Klan, which terrorized any "ornery" blacks and sympathetic whites living in their areas by burning crosses on lawns and beating or killing anyone who didn't "keep their place."  

Change to these practices came slowly;  the landmark decision Brown v. Board of Education, which overturned Plessy by saying that "separate" schools were "unequal" by definition, met with so much opposition that some black children attempting to go to a white school had to be escorted there by members of the military, and Alabama governor George Wallace tried to block the doors to a university to keep black students from enrolling!

Unfortunately, the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960's have not improved things much in the long run.  That's because if people really want to treat others badly, a law will not keep them from doing it.  It takes vigilance from all people of good will to both prevent the evildoers from triumphing, and also to remedy the evils already done.

Which brings us to recent days, in particular the George Floyd case and the subsequent demonstrations.

The way Floyd died was horrible.  Getting your neck knelt on, with your hands cuffed behind your back?  For trying to pass a phony twenty?!  I saw the video--the one with the narrator exhorting the kneeling officer to let Floyd have some air, that he was bleeding--and it made me sick.  Here it was, right on camera:  police brutality.  How was anyone surprised that the video went viral all over the world, rousing allies from every corner of the globe?

And why was anyone surprised that both people of color and allies took to the streets with signs that commemorated not only George Floyd, but also many other black people who have suffered and died at the hands of white officers?

"Oh, but they're committing vandalism and looting, and anyway Floyd was a criminal."  If you look at the vids of people protesting, you see more violence from the responding police units than you do from the protesters themselves.  If there is vandalism and looting, why aren't the cops trying to stop the crime, rather than stop the entire protest?  As for Floyd's criminal record...passing funny money is not a capital crime.  (In fact, in my town it would hardly be a police matter, because we would use an authentication marker, know it for a bad twenty, tell the person it's counterfeit and they can't use it, and keep the bad bill to give to the cops.  It's easy to end up with a counterfeit bill in your wallet and not know it, especially if you do any work where you get paid in cash--a phony can change hands several times among people before it ever ends up at a bank or store.)  

The marchers are right:  there must be changes in the way policing is done.  Until that happens, may God give strength to the peaceful protesters.

Here is a link to a story that I originally read in the Kansas City Star.  The particulars (which happened in 2007) still horrify me to this day;  I never found out whether Sofia Salva won her lawsuit, but I hope she did:

https://www.kltv.com/story/6028665/officers-suspended-in-case-of-woman-who-miscarried/

I never cared about your political affiliation until you started to condemn me for mine.

This statement made me blink, because as the old Billy Joel song goes,  "We didn't start the fire."

Once there was a man named Newt Gingrich, a Republican who was so famous for his meanness that his political action committee, GOPAC, produced a memo full of juicy "negative" words that you could use to describe your Democratic opponents, and lovely "positive" words to use to describe yourself.  It wasn't the first time a Republican politician had ever been mean to his opponents, but it has to mark the beginning of the present group meanness of the GOP.

Molly Ivins, whom I truly miss, had a few words to say about Newt:

https://products.kitsapsun.com/archive/1998/11-12/0028_molly_ivins__the_passing_of_a_sic.html

Democrats, by comparison, will at least put lipstick on their insults;  we tell you how awful your policies are, but we generally don't insult your husband or kids in doing so...

Ooooh, I get it.  This writer is a Trump supporter, and he's upset because we don't like Trump...who, by the way, is meaner, less informed, and more inept at governing than Newt will ever be!  We see that with every tweet, every call to "Fox and Friends," and every live interview.

So, okay, fair enough:  I am condemning your politics.  But maybe you should step back and take a good look at who you're following before you get mad.

I never cared where you were born in the USA until you wanted to erase my history and blamed my  ancestors for your problems.

It took me a few minutes to parse out exactly what was being referenced here, but I finally got it:  "Those dratted Northern Aggressors are trying to say the Confederacy didn't fight courageously for their beliefs, and all the smart, brave generals who led them don't deserve to have their sainted memories honored with statues, and now we can't even use the Stars and Bars as part of our state flags!

"And who cares if they owned slaves?  It's not like the present generation of blacks are affected by it!"

 Okay, I'm being a bit harsh.  But all the claptrap about "states' rights" and "most southerners didn't even own slaves" and "but it's history!"  ignores two very important facts:  

1) The secession documents all declare their reason for leaving as Northern opposition to slavery.  It was also stated as such by the Confederate Vice President, and the right to own slaves was even written into the Confederate Constitution!

 

2) The South lost.  Losers don't get to honor generals with statues, or use an old rebel battle flag as a quartering in a state flag.  The fact that it has been done does not make it the right thing.

As to whether past slaveowners can be blamed for present problems in black communities, see above, under the complaint about white people getting blamed for black problems.

I never cared if you were well-off or poor until you said you were discriminated against when I was  promoted because I worked hard.

Jim Hightower had a funny quip about wealthy and/or privileged people who insisted they had worked hard for everything they had:  "Born on third and thinks he hit a triple."

I'm not saying this guy didn't work hard for what he received;  but saying that there is no discrimination in America's workplaces reveals real ignorance.

Women, for example, are paid about 83 cents for every dollar earned by men, in all trades.  This is white women, mind you;  women of color do even worse, while Asian women do slightly better.  But the gap is still there.

There are all kinds of excuses for this.  It's said that women don't work as many hours as men, or they choose jobs that pay less, or they do most of the care-giving at home, so of course they don't get as much!

Bullshit.

If you have a two-parent household, and both parents work, why shouldn't both parents be responsible for keeping the house, cooking, and child care?  Indeed, many modern families do just that...but that pay gap will still exist, because the woman's workplace will assume that she's the main care-giver at home and will give her fewer hours, or pass her over for a promotion because they think she won't be able to put in the time, and what if she gets pregnant?

This prejudice is magnified if the woman is raising the children alone, because if a child gets sick and can't go to school or child care, she will have to miss work to be with him.  Not only does she lose pay, but also credibility - she is considered undependable because she's choosing her child over her job.  But she can't go on welfare for more than five years, so she has to work, so she just has to take what pay the job will give her and pray they don't fire her for being absent or late too often.

Then there are the so-called "pink collar" jobs - teaching, nursing, secretarial.  These are all low-prestige, low-wage jobs, and it's just too bad that so many women choose to do that as a career, but sorry, they aren't worth that much...

And again, I call bullshit.

After many American factories upped stakes and headed for China and India and Bangladesh, many men were left without work.  They began to enter fields like nursing and bartending, which had become female-dominated jobs.  But when the men began doing the jobs, they became more prestigious, and therefore higher-paying.  But women who do those jobs are still paid less, as a rule...and it's nothing but stereotyping.

Oh, and it gets worse when we talk about minorities on the job...

A number of studies have been done, the first in the early 00's, in which resumes were sent out in response to newspaper ads for job openings.  The resumes were given either a "black" name like Jamal or LaKisha, or a "white" one like Greg or Emily.  Regardless of the quality of the resume itself - which might include school honors and a degree, or only a high-school diploma and a recent return to the work force - the white names tended to get more callbacks.  The original researchers admit that this is as far as they went; there were no face-to-face interviews, so there was no finding on whether a well-educated Jamal would get the job over an average Emily.  But for snap judgments based on perceived race, it doesn't look good for black employability, especially since the same study has been repeated, with in-person applicants thrown in for good measure, and the results are pretty much the same!

So the author might have gotten his promotion because he worked hard...but being named David instead of De'Kwan probably didn't hurt, either.

I never cared if your beliefs were different from mine, until you said my beliefs were wrong.

This country isn't supposed to be a "Christian" country.  It's not supposed to be partial to any religion.  Yet there are still lots of Christians in the USA who think that if there are more Muslims or Hindus or even neo-pagans in the neighborhood, the country will fall to pieces.  I believe that's because they've never actually talked to anyone who follows these religions.

Well, I have.  And I can say with the authority of experience that the only religion I've ever encountered that habitually tells people of other faiths that their beliefs are wrong...is Christianity.  None of the Muslims I know have ever tried to convert me to Islam, or even expected me to live the way they do;  ditto for Hindus, Jews, Buddhists, or any others.  But Christians do it all the time, most often to other Christians!

So, sir or ma'am, if someone's telling you your beliefs are wrong...ignore your critics.  Faith is personal, and unprovable.

Just don't ignore facts in order to support your beliefs.  That's just crazy.

Now, I care.  My patience and tolerance are almost gone.  I am not alone in feeling this way.  There are millions who do...

AND WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH.

Okay, I get it.  You're pissed off because of all the things you wrote above, which are apparently piling up and appearing every time you turn on the news or go outside.

But you might consider how it feels:

...to get made fun of when you're a gay or trans-gendered teen;

...to be the grieving black mother of a son killed by a trigger-happy cop;

...to be a Democrat who gets called "traitor" or "un-American" by the other party;

...to get yelled at for wanting the battle flag of a failed rebellion taken down;

...to be a woman or minority who can't even get a job at the same pay scale as you;

...or to be a Muslim in a country that thinks your faith makes you a terrorist.

If your patience and tolerance are near depletion, do you really think theirs is in any better shape?

Nerdy Bits: Revelations From A Native Geek

I was nerdy when nerdy wasn't cool...

When I was a kid, the word "nerd" was an insult.  And I heard that insult a lot.

Actually, there were several synonymous epithets that I heard as well:  Teacher's pet.  Brown-noser.  Bookworm.  Geek.  But they all, along with "nerd," meant the same thing--loser.

A nerd was a person that got laughed at, tripped in the hall, tormented, shut out from normal kid society.  If there was more than one nerd in a school, they tended to group together in an anxious cluster--sort of like a herd of cattle just before a severe storm.  And there was always a storm coming, no matter where a nerd went to school.

My, how things change!

With the advent of home computers, the popularity of the Star Wars and Star Trek movies, and the growing importance of a college degree to a person's employability, nerdiness began to lose its stigma.  Movies like Police Academy and Revenge of the Nerds, which depicted how various groups of "losers" use their unique skill sets to prove themselves in a hostile environment, broke down more barriers (the sequel to ROTN even has one of the "hostiles" joining the Lambda frat after a harrowing shared experience).  When Al Gore helped fund the shift of the military Arpanet to the public sector (where it became the Internet), the change had truly come:  anybody could be a nerd...and if you mastered the simple skills required, you would be!

Now, that doesn't mean there weren't still "elite" nerds;  there were, and are.  Those are the ones who can write code from scratch, scrub the malware out of your operating system, and program your DVR so you record "Game of Thrones" instead of the PGA tournament (or vice-versa...thanks to Tiger Woods, golf became cool, too).  But the gaps between them and a garden-variety nerd like me aren't of quality, but of quantity.  It's all in how much know-how you have, and it's surprisingly easy to acquire more knowledge these days, thanks to the Internet!

In short, nerds aren't losers anymore.  They're just people with more knowledge.  And the very words "geek" and "nerd" have become compliments instead of put-downs.

Nerds 2:  The New Batch!

So yeah, it's cool to be a nerd now. 

Which is why I feel totally comfortable sharing some of my own nerdy coolness with you.  So here goes....

1)  The Music Scene

As a nerd in high school, I listened to Rush, Yes, Pink Floyd, and the Moody Blues while everyone else (depending on their clique) was into new wave, heavy metal, and country.  (There wasn't much jazz on any airwaves reachable by me, so I had to wait for college to hear Dave Brubeck and Miles Davis for the first time.)

Oh, I liked some of what was on the average AM stations;  it's just that I preferred stuff with some meat on its bones.  Complex musicianship, interesting lyrics, style mash-ups...give me a group that did one or more of those things, and I was happy.  Groups like that have staying power, as well;  there is a whole new generation of young people who hear Emerson, Lake and Palmer for the first time and wonder why the radio doesn't play bands like that anymore.  Heck, I recently had the unique pleasure of introducing a young piano major to the Beatles' "A Day In The Life."  When the song was over, he said he was sorry it wasn't longer!  And when music hits you like that, you listen to every song you hear afterwards with an ear to finding something that matches that first time.

Yes, you're right.  It is like a drug.  But it's a healthy addiction.

Okay, here comes the nerdy bit:  Just what was it about that music that made me so happy that to this day my best memories of my school days all have a soundtrack from "Fragile" or "The Wall" or "Moving Pictures"?

I think it boils down to one thing:  I wasn't ruled by a peer group.  I had no "flock" of like-feathered birds.  I could count on one hand the number of nerds in my entire school, and not one of them was in my year.  And although I knew them in passing, none of them shared the same interests, with me or with each other.  This absence of peer input on which items were "cool" meant that I could examine everything I saw and heard without bias, and from there choose what I liked, just because I liked it.

It also helped that I came from a diverse musical family--Mom loved country and 50's rock'n'roll, and Dad liked 40's big bands and crooners.  He was also interested in world music--he had tapes of traditional Mexican dance music and Bavarian yodels (no, I am not kidding!), and both my parents played guitar and sang.  Somewhere out there are reel-to-reel tapes of us kids singing Christmas songs and hymns along with my parents' accompaniment.

So with that kind of input, it's no surprise that my taste in music would also be unique and diverse.  

Here is a sample.  Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIFBpn7_uBQ

2)  Art Imitates Dreams...

I saw my first Rene Magritte paintings in one of my grade-school reading books.  It was a "fact" article on Surrealism, and along with Magritte's "Time Transfixed" and "The Castle of the Pyrenees,"  there was also a picture of Salvador Dali's "Persistence of Memory" and Yves Tanguy's "Fear."  Of the three, Magritte had the most profound effect, with his photographic realism mixed with impossible juxtapositions of people, landscapes, and things (such as the floating rock in "Pyrenees").  His light was also friendlier, as a rule;  in a Magritte painting, the sun was usually shining and the sky a cloud-studded blue.  If it was overcast, you could see the clouds.  Dali and Tanguy's paintings, by contrast, had an eerie, grayish-yellow cast, and the horizon was always fading off into darkness.  It looked, in fact, like bad weather moving in.  That lighting, plus the way both painters were always impaling things onto pointy sticks, put me off.  So I became a permanent Magritte fan.

Here is one of my favorite Magrittes.  It's called "The Banquet."  (There are actually several versions of this painting, but I like this one best.)

There has been a kind of resurgence of that branch of Surrealism in the person of Canadian painter Rob Gonsalves, who sadly passed away in 2017.  He was only 58 years old.  His Surrealism involves a lot of things slowly morphing into other things, as well as worlds seen through the eyes of children and small spaces that become huge (room changing to sky) or vice-versa.

Here's a Gonsalves that I like--it's called "Written Worlds."  As a bibliophile, I appreciate his vision!

3)  Movies Off The Beaten Track

The two quintessential nerd movies are Star Wars and Star Trek.  The rivalry between the two has become something of a legend.

Myself, I like both series, but there are many other nerdy films to enjoy.  Here are just a few...

The Lathe of Heaven - I mentioned this one before in my post on Ursula K. Le Guin.  Produced on a shoestring budget for PBS, it still holds up after almost 40 years.  If you can find a DVD of it, lucky you.  Whatever you do, don't mistake it for the 2002 remake, which is higher-budget but unworthy of its title.

WarGames - This is actually another nerd fave because of its depiction of hacker culture.  Much, much later, a Canadian outfit did a sequel, WarGames:  The Dead Code.  Both worth seeing, though I consider Matthew Broderick's performance in the original rather wince-making in places.

The Thirteenth Floor - This one gets compared to The Matrix a lot, but that's mainly because of them being released within months of each other.  Thirteenth is actually much older;  it's based on a story called  "Simulacron 3,"  which was written in the 1970's.  Also, the plots are nothing alike, though they both take place inside computer networks.

The Time Machine - The original George Pal production, mind you.  Some of the most innovative special effects for its time, and that machine is still a beauty.  There was an ep of The Big Bang Theory in which Sheldon and his friends bought that original prop (it gave poor Sheldon nightmares).

Silent Running - This one gets dissed a lot for an explosion supposedly "heard" in space, but when I first saw the film, I considered it more a felt concussion - if you're on a ship, and another part of the ship gets blown up, you'd feel it even if you didn't hear it.  Probably one of the major players in the eco-warning genre - the bio-habitats on the Valley Forge held the last of Earth's flora, which was considered to be unneeded by everyone else.  When the main character dies, leaving the robots to care for all that plant life under artificial sunlight, and the ship to sail out of the solar system, I always hoped that long after the closing credits, humanity would realize that they missed seeing flowers and trees and would go and find the ship.  Of course, knowing what we know now, we realize we can't afford to lose all that plant life...but I digress.

Soylent Green - Too many people, too little food, and we've destroyed the ecosystem to where we're reduced to (spoiler alert!) eating our dead, in the form of protein chips called Soylent Green.  There is also some interesting social commentary on how the wealthy can still get "real" food, but for the most part, the only thing people remember about this movie is Charlton Heston screaming "Soylent Green is made out of people!"

Exam - A thriller that takes place all in one room.  People compete for a job opening by taking an exam.  There are rules they must follow...but when they turn their papers over to begin, the papers are blank!  WTF?!  The entire rest of the movie is about solving the mystery of the exam, plus revealing the good, the bad, and the ugly in each applicant.  There are a lot of red herrings in this film, but be patient;  the payoff is worth it.

Snowpiercer - You could call this a parable of poverty and privilege, set on board a train that circles the entire world once a year, in a permanent winter created by a short-sighted solution to global warming.  The poor people in the back car of the train are planning a revolution to get to the engine and control the train and its resources...but not only are there dark surprises in store, the whole point of running the train may be moot.  The further you move forward in the train, the more wealth and privilege you see;  and the end is something of a cliffhanger.

No, I'm not done, BUT...

There's lots more I could share with you, but I'm afraid this post is getting over-long.  Perhaps I can return to the subject at a later time.  On the other hand, there's more than enough here to get you started in the wacky world of nerd-dom, and from what I've given you, you can find plenty more.

So welcome, young Padawan.  Have fun!

Smokers, Chewers, And Vapers: Here's Why We "Nons" Hate Your Habit

This Really Happened To Me.

I used to work at a fast-food joint where we had a breakfast buffet on weekends.  One Saturday, a lady informed me that she had told another customer to put out his cigarette because she had seen that we didn't allow smoking in our establishment.  But her next comment revealed where her true sympathies lay:  "You won't let us smoke, but your buffet has enough fat to give a heart attack to over 50 people."

Um, Excuse Me, But...

I managed to hold my tongue, since I really did not want to lose my job.  But if I could go back and do it all again, I might have taken the chance, just to be able to say,  "Well, ma'am, that may be so--but people can't get heart disease from the smell of fried food."

Because second-hand smoke can give you cancer.  Which is why in many places, smoking is forbidden inside public buildings, restaurants, and clubs.

This has created something of a backlash.  People refuse to frequent a bar or a restaurant where they can't light up, or they follow the rules but make snarky remarks about "harassment" and "political correctness," or they sneak into the restroom to catch a few puffs, thinking nobody will find out (doesn't work;  that smell is so obvious that everyone passing by knows what's going on).

But mostly, they complain and want to know why they can't smoke anywhere they like.

And as chewing tobacco and e-cigs are growing in popularity, businesses are beginning to forbid those as well--"No Tobacco Use" is a sign I'm seeing more and more, and "No Vaping" or "No E-Cigs" started being added to that list almost as soon as doctors began reporting on vaping deaths.

Of course, the grumbling by users has increased accordingly;  they're the only ones it's hurting, right?  So nobody should be able to tell them they can't chew or vape, right?

Well...yes, we should.  And here's why.

Park Your Butts!

Part of my job is to sweep fallen/windblown debris off our parking lot and access sidewalk.

Guess what I sweep up the most?  Old receipts?  Fast-food wrappers?  Dirty diapers?  (Yep, I get a few of those; people can be such yahoos sometimes...)

Of course not.  By far, I sweep up more cigarette butts than I do any other trash.  And not just the butts;  I also get the cellophane from packets, the foil inner wrappings, and the empty packets themselves.  Not to mention the stogie ends and the plastic filters from Swisher Sweets.

Now, here's the not-so-funny punch line:  We have--not one, but two cigarette catchers right near our front door!  Plus a trash can--a big 55-gallon model--in which customers could easily throw their non-flammable cigarette leavings!

Why they don't make use of these conveniences, I have no idea.  And before you make excuses for these litterbugs, like saying, "Well, maybe the wind blew all that junk into the lot"...well, all I can say is, I've watched the people get out of their cars with their lit ciggies in hand, and as they get close to the door with its no-smoking icon, they simply fling the burning end sideways, trusting that it will simply go out on its own!  Same goes with opening a new pack:  the clear plastic comes off and gets flung aside.

These days, I'm not shy about calling out a careless customer for such actions.  Especially if our county is under a burn ban, which means nearly all the time.  If it's windy and the humidity is anything less than 100%, a tossed lit cigarette can cause a wildfire.  And while companies have changed the design of cigarettes so they are less likely to cause a fire if left burning, it's still a crap shoot, because even though that flung butt may not ignite the wet grass, it still might ignite that big round bale of dry hay, or, if the wind is gusting enough, a shed or a barn.  Honestly, why take the chance when there is a perfectly-suitable disposal option just a few feet away?

Ptooey!

Okay, I don't know about you, but I am getting mortally tired of spit.

You would think that with a pandemic in full swing, people would lay off the chaw and the Snus, especially since one way COVID-19 is spread is through liquid secretions from infected persons...but no.  Expectoration, alas, is still everywhere.  People still spit on sidewalks and even on floors and shelves, as well as into trash cans, urinals, and--I shit you not--drinking fountains!  Can I get a good, loud "EEEWWWW"???

And that doesn't even count the actual used wads and Snus packets that are also deposited, directly from people's mouths, in all the places I find the spit!

Besides being nasty and unsanitary, this is just plain rude,folks.  If you can't refrain from your chewing habit for the half-hour you plan to spend in a store, or the hour you'll be spending in a restaurant, then your addiction is out of control.

Oh, and BTW...that cup or bottle you think is fine for spitting into?  Even grosser than the free-range spitting.  Because if you set that open container down, and it spills...sweetie, just leave your Copenhagen can in your car, okay?

At least think of the danger to the front-line people who have to clean up after you.

Ah, Sweet Smell Of...

I understand that e-cigarettes were first created as an aid for those trying to quit smoking, not as a "clean" substitute for regular cigarettes...but here we are.

An electronic cigarette, or "e-cig," uses a rechargeable battery to heat up liquid to create vapor, which you then inhale through a little mouthpiece on one end.  It's kind of like a little hookah, but without water, and the liquid comes either in a bottle from which you resupply your e-cig, or a disposable cartridge that you insert--depending on the brand.

The way they were first advertised, it would be a wonderful thing.  No more worries about second-hand smoke pollution.  The "cigarette" was reusable, so no more litter.  And the liquid came in nice scents, so no more complaints from the "non" sitting near you.  Terrific, right?

Sure.  Except this technology was so new, it hadn't been regulated yet.  Even kids could buy the things at first, and since e-cigs still had nicotine in them--and in some cases, more nicotine than a traditional cigarette--we now had children getting addicted to the stuff.  Then somebody invented a tiny e-cig called a JUUL, which looked a lot like a computer flash drive and had little disposable pods instead of being refilled from a bottle, and the problem exploded.  Parents began putting pressure on governments, and finally, state and federal laws were passed that placed e-cigs under the same regulations as regular cigarettes.  This meant that you had to be 21 to buy any vaping supplies.  And stores, restaurants and bars began to outlaw vaping inside their establishments.

Companies tried to get sneaky;  their newest trick has been to sell liquids and pods with no nicotine at all in them, so they would technically be okay for any age.  Nice...except there are still no regulations for the quality and compositions of these products!  Analyses have shown that the liquids contain heavy metals and chemicals that can actually damage a person's lungs, sometimes in a matter of days...and sometimes fatally.  If a federally-illegal drug like THC--the active ingredient in marijuana--is present in the pod, it can be even worse.

And as if that weren't enough, the e-cig can explode, causing injury.  Face burn, anyone?

Oh, and hey...I'm now starting to find spent e-cig pods among the litter I sweep up.  Just what we need--more trash.  *Sigh.*

The Problem Here...

...isn't actually your habit.

It's how you use it around others. 

Thoughtless littering, blowing smoke or vape into our faces when we ask that you not smoke in our vicinity, spitting everywhere (either with or without the "solids")...really, folks, these are not the actions of mature adults.  It's what little mean kids do when told they should be polite and considerate of others.

Smoking and chewing tobacco have both been proven beyond doubt to cause cancer (lung cancer for smoking, mouth and throat cancer for chewing).  Vaping is even worse in that a bad batch can destroy your lungs and kill you in days.

This isn't "political correctness,"  or the "nanny state"--it's people who decided they were tired of the mess and the fire and health hazards and the lack of consideration.  Those people bucked the tobacco companies' ad campaigns and lit a different kind of fire under the feet of those who represent them.  And for once, the reps listened.  We are slowly moving toward a culture in which nicotine may no longer be considered an acceptable social pastime.

And that would be a good thing.

Stay Tuned...

I'm predicting that it won't be too long before I have to write a sequel...a few months after my state legalizes recreational marijuana.  But maybe not.  Maybe we'll lean more toward pot chocolates and Alice B. Tolklas brownies.  We'll see.

Short Stories, Part 2

...Aaannd...We're Back!

I promised to highlight some of my favorite short stories this time around;  sorry it took so long to get around to it, but what with a root canal, sine-curve weather (as in, crazy stupid cold, then mid-50's, then repeat), and waves of insanity out of D.C., I've been slightly distracted.  But here I am at last;  so, if you're as ready to lose yourself in a good story as I am, then read on!

(Oh, and by the way...these stories are not in any particular order of preference or genre--I'm just writing them down as I think of them.  Enjoy.)

Our Fair City (Robert Heinlein) -  What do you get when you combine a corrupt mayor and his pet police force, an idealistic op-ed journalist, an elderly parking-lot attendant, and a sapient, mischievous urban whirlwind?  An amazing fantasy by the amazing Robert Heinlein, that's what.  And that's all I can say without spoiling the story, other than read it for yourself!

Sredni Vashtar (Saki) -  "Saki" was the pen name of H.H. Munro, and you may remember him as the author of "The Open Window."  But this tale of a boy under the thumb of a domineering relative, and his curious escape therefrom, is my favorite.

The Big Flash (Norman Spinrad) -  It's hard to believe this story was written in 1969, because the author could have been talking about 80's heavy metal and Reaganesque Cold War maneuvers, plus the whole M-TV revolution.  I still find this a scary story.

Battleground (Stephen King) -  I hate bad guys who get away with shit, don't you?  Well, so does King, apparently;  because not only does the bad guy in this story get his just deserts, he gets it in a really cool way.  I wouldn't mind congratulating that "Number 1 Idea Gal" myself.  I have often wondered what happened after the story's end....

Anything by NK Jemisin -  I can't say enough good things about this lady's short fiction.  Her anthology is called How Long 'til Black Future Month?, and there's not a dull story in it.  "The City Born Great" was nominated for a Hugo, and after reading it, I could only think,  "Wow, did she get robbed."  But just pick any of them--"L'Alchimista," "Cloud Dragon Skies," "The You Train"...heck, just buy the anthology and keep a talented author in business, okay?

Or The Grasses Grow (Avram Davidson) -  Another story where karma bites the bad guys in the cojones, this one by an author who never got enough credit for his work while he was alive.  It's one of those short stories that you read at open-mic night, and when you're done, you get silence...until the audience realizes that the story's over.

Blossom And Fruit (Stephen Vincent Benet) - Remember "The Devil And Daniel Webster"?  How about "The Sobbin' Women" (hint: there's a song with that title in the musical made from this story)?  Or "By The Waters of Babylon" (often seen under the title "The Place of the Gods,"  because reprint editors can't leave well enough alone)?

Well, this story is by the same author, but it's a much quieter tale: a man reflects on his life, wondering about the nature of love.  My description is deceptively dull, but once you start reading, you won't be able to stop until the end.

Time Considered As a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones (Samuel R. Delany) -  Okay, this is a long one, I admit.  But it's action-packed, well-rounded, and a ton of fun.  The protagonist's description of stolen goods as "things that are not mine" gives you an idea of Delany's mastery of writing...but just a taste.  Read the rest of the story for more.

The Mindworm (Cyril Kornbluth) -  You don't see the ending coming until it smashes right through your brain!  But when you're finished, you can't help thinking,  "Oh, so that's how you write it as SF."

Harrison Bergeron (Kurt Vonnegut) -  Equality gone mad:  not only is everyone equal, but everyone is forced to be average--or at least as much as can possibly be accomplished by lead weights, weird glasses, and earpieces that produce loud, distracting noises.

I'd have to say that the moral of the story is, if everything is reduced to the lowest common denominator, that denominator will only sink.  But you may feel differently.

"East Wind, West Wind" (Frank M. Robinson) -  This one scared the shit out of me when I first read it.  It still does, because we are just like the uncaring people who insist on their creature comforts even as the world goes to hell on a greased rail.  The story was written about 1971; it feels more like 2019.

The Initiation (Barry Longyear) -  A short-short story.  'Nuff said.  Read it.

The New One (Fredric Brown) -  Another master wordsmith.  Great description, deadly peril, a captive in a desperate struggle for his soul...and a nice dose of WW II patriotism, liberally sprinkled with humor.

Stubborn (Stephen Goldin) -  Another short-short story, told as a morality tale for kids...and if I were them, I'd listen!

The Rocket (Ray Bradbury) -  A classic author who could write just about anything.  And this story, so happy and gentle and magical...I still cry at the end of it.  If you have ever dreamed of having or doing something impossible, you will, too.

The Advent On Channel Twelve (Cyril Kornbluth) -  The best SF story disguised as an anti-television rant ever written.  Or maybe it's the best anti-TV rant disguised as a SF story....

...And That's Just A Few!

I've read probably thousands of other short stories in my lifetime, and I'm not even close to finished.  But hopefully, this list will help you get started...and the next time you're in a library and you see a book subtitled "Stories,"  or another titled "The Best [pick a genre] Stories of [pick a year],"  perhaps you'll try it out.  You never know what gems you'll find.

Short Stories, Part I

I Blame My School...

I love short stories.

Recently, I tried to define why, and I concluded that my grade school was to blame.

That was the place, after all, that loaned me textbooks titled Rainbows, and Kaleidoscope, and Serendipity, which, along with lessons in pronunciation and vocabulary, also contained all sorts of wonderful short stories.  There were short poems, too, and the end of each unit featured a chapter from a longer book;  some of these were "meh," but others inspired me to seek out the original.

But oh, those stories!  Whenever I would get my reading book for the year, I would start reading.  The lesson parts were boring, so I would always skip that stuff and go right for the short stories.  I was usually done with my reading book before anybody else in class, but I never minded going back and re-reading the assigned story for the day.

Here are some of the stories I remember from those old readers.  I don't remember all the titles, or even all the authors, but the stories themselves are still vivid after all these years:

The Talking Wire (author unknown) - A boy goes to stay with an older relative, who is a telegraph operator for the railroad.  The old man demonstrates the Morse code for the station where he works (FS, for Fir Spring), and explains that if that signal ever comes over the receiver, it means someone on the wire is trying to get the operator's attention for something important.  The man leaves to do something, and the boy sits and listens to all the clicks and clacks coming over the wire, and suddenly the FS signal comes through, again and again!  The boy runs for his...uncle? Grandpa?...and convinces him that he really did  hear the signal, and when the old man goes in and answers, it turns out that something has happened to the track ahead, and an approaching train must be stopped.  The old man sets up a signal, the train stops, the boy gets kudos and the promise of real lessons in Morse starting the next day.  Hurray...but I always wondered why it couldn't have been a girl doing that.  A lot of these stories are like that.

The Fun They Had (Isaac Asimov) - This one's a classic.  In a future where each child has his own computerized "teacher," a boy finds an actual, physical book in his attic and brings it to a girl's house, where they puzzle over words that stand still, classrooms with lots of kids (the book is about school as we would understand it), and human teachers (everybody knows that a human isn't knowledgeable enough to teach each child at his or her optimal level)!

Here's one I don't remember author or title for:  A boy sets off on a "magical journey,"  in which he encounters danger, has adventures, and finally returns home...but the pictures for the story reveal that he is walking through an ordinary town, seeing an old tree, stopping for ice cream, etc.  The magic is all in his mind!  I read this story and came away with the sense that the author knew me, because I spent half my childhood overlaying imaginary landscapes and adventures over my ordinary environment!  (Just as an example:  our water tower had a red top.  Naturally it became a volcano.  And because of the way my mind worked, it was a pet volcano that would never erupt so as to hurt anyone!)

Evan's Corner (author unknown) -  A boy in the inner city, who lives in a small apartment with a large family, can't have his own room.  So he chooses a corner of the living room and tells everyone, "This is my corner."  Everybody respects this.  Evan decorates his corner with a plant (the corner is by a window), some pictures, books, etc. ...but once he gets his corner just the way he likes it, Evan still feels that something is missing.  The missing thing is other people to share the corner.  A nice lesson, but I remember feeling sad at the poverty of that family (the pictures showed them as black).

Another one without any identifiers:  A boy (again, a black kid) wants a guitar.  He tries making his own by nailing a slat onto a shallow wooden box, then stretching rubber bands over it.  The results, as you can guess, are terrible--one of the illustrations shows the boy playing his homemade contraption, with one of his older siblings wincing at the noise!  The boy is advised to earn money and save it for a real guitar (pic of kid writing "GUITAR MONEY" on the label of an empty tin can).  The boy succeeds in his quest, of course; the final illustration shows him playing his instrument on his porch steps.

This Was Just A Sample.

If you ever get your hands on any of these books, look for the stories I just recapped, and see if I'm not right about how awesome they were.  Next post, I'll list some of the stories I've read since then!