Tuesday, October 27, 2020

WE CAN'T BREATHE

 

See the source image 

People can’t breathe | NC Policy Watch

 

People of Color can't breathe.

Native Americans can't breathe.

Immigrant children can't breathe.

Those on Social Security/Medicare can't breathe.

Those in poverty can't breathe.

Main Street can't breathe.

Women can't breathe.

Endangered species can't breathe.

Rivers can't breathe.

The fish in the sea can't breathe.

The environment can't breathe.

Students and schools can't breathe.

Our hospitals can't breathe.

C-19 patients can't breathe.

Those seeking refuge from tyrants and oppression can't breathe. 

Scientists can't breathe.

Truth can't breathe.

LGBQT can't breathe.

Love, compassion, and empathy can't breathe.

Happiness and hope can't breathe.

The American Dream can't breathe.

Earth can't breathe.

The Trump administration has it's knee on the throat of all that we once valued. Do we, as a nation, still care? Is it now just all about the money? Are we so broken that we no longer care?


PLEASE VOTE AND REMOVE THE KNEE SO WE CAN ALL BREATHE ONCE MORE!


 


Sunday, May 31, 2020

You’re Damn Right I’m Angry May 30, 2020 / John Pavlovitz


Saturday, May 9, 2020

I have to post this!

No America, It’s Not Gonna Be Okay

Saturday, March 21, 2020

It's what we came for, just ...

It's what we came for, just not the way we imagined.


Image result for hippies
Britannica.com
Dear Boomers and anyone wondering what went wrong.

We have seen so much: rabbit-ear TV, Bandstand, the birth of Rock 'n Roll, the Iron Curtain, the election of Kennedy, Russian shoe banging, Berlin Wall, Cuban Missile Crisis, Cold War, JFK, RFK, MLK assassinations, civil rights movement/protests, Vietnam/protests, a man on the moon, the space race, the arms race, the Beatles, muscle cars, fast forward to 911, wars in the Middle East, new planets discovered, the Internet, and now Covid-19.

Clearly, this is the shortlist. And in those experiences, we saw hope. The New Age, Aquarius, the Harmonic Convergence, rallies for peace and human rights. We were the Boomer Brigade and we were going to change the world, out with the old, in with the new and dispelling darkness along the way.

Then STUFF happened. Yup, all kinds of stuff. Incomes were good. Job security was good and there was plenty of credit available and we liked it. We bought lots of stuff, went out a lot, began to travel and enjoyed the newest throwaway gadgets, longed for the newest catalogs, charged up a storm and ignored (by many) the cries of Silent Spring. Not all, mind you, but most. We were coming into our social, political, and economic power and we were convinced that new technology would solve all of our problems.

It didn't. New technology created as many problems as it solved. We were killing Mother but we falsely believed that it would all right, it'll get fixed. It wasn't. And, as the Great Recession stipped many of their things, we came to realize that something went awfully wrong. We did not seem to usher in an age of peace and love, but rather a time of 1984 non-thinking, dumbed-down, non-empathetic, Big Brother is watching you, scorched Earth extinction ridden planet.

We became stressed out, made fortunes for the health care industry, and began to blame everyone and anything but us for our woes and sorrows. We failed in our mission, hell, we forgot our mission.

And here we are, being taken out by something some scientists claim isn't even living and stocking up on toilet paper.

Okay, that was the no so good news. But take heart my fellow Boomers, we are, in fact, close to mission accomplished! Yes, instead of taking the easy road, as usual, we took the hard road. I guess we all learn more this way. We thought the system could be fixed from within. We were, basically, wrong, at least the way we were doing it. And along comes Covid 19, which resulted from our dumb actions and spread because of our dumb president. We did not imagine that we would bring in the Light on a Dark Horse. But we have and this little dead thing has done more to change the world in months and we did in many years. I hate to say, but perhaps this was the plan all along. Many of you will remember bemoaning that we had no guidebook--it was lost or we just forgot to bring it. But if we saw this in the guide, I wonder what we would have done. Sure, we may have prevented the pandemic but things would have continued along the dead-end road we were on. This would surely have been a failure.

I think we may pull this. The lives we have and are losing are not in vain. The world will not be the same along this path and that's what we wanted, it's just not the way we imagined it. When it's all said and done, we'll gather our souls around those Light balls we created in 1987 and have a grand congratulatory Soul Fest. After that, we can then finally move on as awakened beings, awakened gods in search of new adventures in this infinite sea of consciousness.

Image result for peace sign

Tuesday, February 11, 2020

From a Coal Miner's Daughter


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miningartifacts.org

Bette Bono is an All Things That Matter Press author who wrote the novel, The Better Angels. She told me about an essay her father had written about coal mining in the 40s and thought it would be worth sharing.

"Here is my dad's essay. He was probably 18 or 19 when he wrote it. The V-12 program got him out of the mine, gave him an engineering degree (going to Northwestern full time for 2 1/2 years) and a chance for a long and healthy life. He also met my mom at Northwestern. They were married at age 20 in 1946. After his term in the navy was up, he went to work for Underwriters Laboratories and became quite an expert on fire protection engineering. The Society of Fire Protection Engineers has an award named after him. Quite a journey for a kid that grew up in a "company town."

The Coal Mine Question*
by Jack Bono
[*Probably written in late 1943 or 1944. In April 1943, 500,000 miners went on strike.]
It has always been my contention that before anyone can pass judgement on anything, he should have a little knowledge of the situation. It is because of this lack of knowledge that the men who mine the coal of the nation have become the point of much undeserved criticism. People who have never cast eyes on a coal mine have denounced the miners and spoken of them slurringly. In their estimation, the miner holds the position of one step lower than the rodent class in social standing. It is this feeling which the miner has been forced to combat down through the years. Having had a little experience in the coal fields of western Pennsylvania, I am attempting to show a few facts which may have bearing on your future opinions of that gloryless hero, the coal miner.
Examination of the weekly wage scale of the miner proved that he earned an average of $45.00. Now I will show what the majority of the outraged patriots of the country do not know. In order to do this, I will bring to view a few details on the actual mining of the coal. The miner’s place of work is usually 20 feet in length or width and 8 feet high. He loads the coal out in blocks called “cuts” which must be blown out by the use of dynamite. A machine must come into his place and cut a swath six inches high along the bottom of the cut of coal. Three holes, one on either side and one in the center of the cut, must be drilled by the miner; three holes, demanding the constant shoving of an auger against the coal, sapping the strength of the miner, making the final turns an agony of strained muscles. In each side hole were inserted five sticks of powder and in the center hole, six sticks were inserted. The end sticks of powder in each hole contained a cap with extended wires. These wires were attached to the cord which carried an electric current and set off the explosion. After the coal detached itself from the side and roof, falling the six inches cut by the machine, the slate on top of the coal had to be shot down. This demanded five small holes each containing a half stick of powder but also demanding five caps. Since a miner needs to load at least three cuts of coal to earn $45.00 and each stick of powder and cap cost 4 ½ cents and 6 ½ cents respectively the cost amounted to $4.05 on powder and caps alone. Another expenditure was the average of $1.00 weekly taken out for the checkweightman who calculated the weight of each car of coal loaded by the miner. The expense of tools including files, shovels, picks, axes, and other necessities amounted to $2.00 per week. The total occupational deduction, exclusive of the regular deductions suffered by other occupations, amounts to $7.00, leaving the miner’s wage at $38.00. Surely, no one can say that $38.00 is a fair wage for such a worker today.
Another stumbling block in the progress of equality for the miner is the time element. I am reminded of the Kentucky miner who said, a few years back “I would be happy if I could but once see the sun.” Conditions have improved since then but the miner still spends ten hours [a day] of his time in the mine. The man trip which carries a miner to his section took at least one hour and fifteen minutes of travel as an average for the mine at which I had the misfortune to work. Then followed a walk to his particular place of work in the section, a possible wait for the machine to cut his place, time lost while waiting for the shotfire to shoot down his coal, a delay while posts were set and finally loading the coal. Out of all the labor done by him, only the amount of coal loaded determine his wage. The rest of the time was wasted. Was it then too much to ask for “portal to portal” or travel time pay?
In conclusion I might add that no occupation involving the number of men in the coal mining industry is as dangerous to the health and life of a miner. The draft board of our locality emitted the following statistics: Out of all the men rejected for military service, 21% were rejected because of severe asthma and an additional 13 1/3 % were affected by some lung conditions. I scoff at their bewilderment at these figures because I know that it is an impossibility to work in a place of such poor ventilation, with the air polluted with coal dust and rock dust which was used to prevent dampness, and not be affected by this condition. Knowing the dangers of a coal mine, I was not surprised to find the mortality rate to be ¾% or the injury rate to be an amazing 26%. There is a definite term for an injured person. He is defined as a person able to collect compensation insurance which demanded that he be unable to work for a minimum of eight days. It isn’t amazing; just sad.
The miners have received a 16% wage increase but this does not compensate for their hardships. They are human beings and do not have to be subjected to the suffering of the present. The sooner the people of the United States realize that within their very limits they have a class of people deserving the pity, sympathy, understanding, and mainly the help of all. Any person interested in establishing a condition of social equality should realize that he must exert the greatest effort toward aiding the class of people most needy of that aid. The coal miners of the nation and their families certainly fall in that class.

Monday, February 3, 2020

No, everything will not be okay!

 Image result for fall of rome

There are those who think that our troubles with Trump and the Senate will work itself out and everything will be okay.
Sorry, this is not true. Everything will not be okay.

It is not okay, it is not all right, for the following things to happen:

   It is not okay for a president to bribe a foreign nation.
   It is not okay to have a trial with any witnesses or evidence.
   It is not okay to pay Senators to vote your way.
   It is not okay to lie to the American public.
  
Recent events have revealed many disturbing truths. Bigotry, racism, xenophobia, ignorance and even stupidity are deeply rooted in America. It is not the majority that is this way, it's the active and committed. This is dangerous. This was at the root of the fall of Rome. In the book The Fire Before the Storm, Mike Duncan says:

"Through the centuries, Rome's model of cooperative and participatory government remained remarkably durable and unmatched in the history of the ancient world.
In 146 BC, Rome finally emerged as the strongest power in the Mediterranean. But the very success of the Republic proved to be its undoing. The republican system was unable to cope with the vast empire Rome now ruled: rising economic inequality disrupted traditional ways of life, endemic social and ethnic prejudice led to clashes over citizenship and voting rights, and rampant corruption and ruthless ambition sparked violent political clashes that cracked the once indestructible foundations of the Republic.
Chronicling the years 146-78 BC, The Storm Before the Storm dives headlong into the first generation to face this treacherous new political environment. Abandoning the ancient principles of their forbearers, men like Marius, Sulla, and the Gracchi brothers set dangerous new precedents that would start the Republic on the road to destruction and provide a stark warning about what can happen to a civilization that has lost its way."

Empires do not last forever. In fact, the duration of empires has decreased. The empires of the ancient world, Egypt, Persia, Rome, etc. lasted for several thousand years. Contrast that with Nazi Germany, Japan, the USSR. Dictators come and go quickly. Do not be under any illusion that the American Empire, and yes, we have one, will buck current trends.

Sitting on your ass and thinking it will all work out is delusional.