Valentine’s Day, 1929.

(There's more to Valentine's Day then Hallmark cards and chocolate, it's also the anniversary of some pretty interesting events, including a massacre which some say was the beginning of the end for Al Capone. I wrote this about five years ago and posted it somewhere online. I can't remember where. But what the heck, it doesn't hurt to fix it up a little and post it again. Better a little historical fiction then mushy gushy VD stuff.)


I was damn cold and Jimmy was eager to get back to his new broad, Edna. He knew she would be waiting in his favorite outfit, wearing his favorite perfume. He also knew she was cooking up a real good lunch... with his favorite side dish. But first business had to be done. He and the boys were waiting in the garage for George to show. There was a big shipment of giggle water coming in at a real good price, then going out again at an even better price. A lot of dough was going to change hands, and Jimmy was there to make sure things went down the right way, or else Bugs would be none to happy. The boss was running late though. Always a bad sign, and Jimmy was on edge. 

"Where the hell is Bugs? I want get down to the joint on the square. There's a pretty moll named Betty that I'd like to get a look at," said one of the boys.

All of a sudden there was a knock on the door. "Open up! Police!"

"Ah, what the bulls doing here."

"Someone musta forgot to tell them about the fix," someone laughed.

"Well I guess we have to deal with the crashers," said Jimmy as he got up and opened the door.

Outside were two uniforms. One of them had his gun raised. They backed Jimmy into the building.

"What a day to get pinched. Listen fellows I got a tomato waiting for me downtown. Why don't you swing by tomorrow bout the same time and we'll pick up where we left off."

"Don't razz me. We heard from a birdie that yous got a shipment today."

"Who's the snitch?" Jimmy said smiling.

"That's nuff you. Everybody get up and face the wall."

Boy, was Edna gonna be mad when she found out what happened, thought Jimmy. Looked like there was no way the bulls were letting them go. Jimmy and the rest of the boys got up grumbling. They walked over to the back of the garage waiting for the cuffs. 

"I want to see you're hands up."

The boys put they're hands in the air and waited. Jimmy was going over what he was going to say to Edna in his head when he heard a familiar sound. It sounded an awful lot like a chopper 'bout ready to go off.

"Ol' Capone's gonna love us," he heard whispered behind him.

Now ain't that something, was his last thought.

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

Reach for the brass ring...

We generally use that phrase to mean go for the goal, or strive for success. But did you know it originated with carousels? Riders on brass ring carousels can reach up once a rotation to grab a ring from a ring holder (like this dragon). If they are lucky it will be the brass ring for a free ride.

There were once thousands of carousels in the U.S.  but now that number down to only hundreds nationwide. Only a handful of those are brass ring carousels and one of them is in Missoula, Montana. While visiting my nephew there recently, we got a great chance to get a behind the scenes looks. We were disappointed to find out that they were closed, but the staff saw my nephew peering through the window and let us in anyway. The were doing repairs to the carousel animals and in the process of carving news ones. It was very cool for a 9 year old to see. 

They showed us their designs and how the build the hollow wooden box to card the main bodies of the creatures. If they weren't hollow they would be far too heavy to be on a carousel. Then they hand paint them. It can take quite awhile to finish one. Some of the new carousel animals are replacements for the Missoula carousel, others get shipped to various places around the country.

We also got a chance to wander around the carousel itself and get a better look at all the animals and the inner workings. 

Here's my nephew in front of his favorite.

If you are ever in Missoula, definitely check out the carousel (except on Tuesdays). It is a treasure.

Why I'm against SOPA/PIPA

This may be a little behind the ball as it now looks like both SOPA and PIPA, the internet copyright protection bills hanging out in the Senate and House, are dead in the water. With all the outrage over this legislation the past few months have had a chance to read numerous arguments against them. Here's a good one published recently by Forbes. Most revolve around the infringement of free speech, and essentially boil down to an understanding that any website, like Google, Twitter, Wikipedia, etc., could be effectively shut down if they are perceived to have any connection, i.e. links, to unauthorized copyrighted materials. The major fears are the loss of access to information, and the possibility that if a site simply contained content that someone didn't like it could be shut down under the context of copyright infringement. And while these are incredibly valid arguments that I agree with fully, one piece has been majorly missing from my reading (though I did come across this blog piece will writing).


The websites that are on the potential chopping block are ones that provide platforms and distribution for millions of creative people worldwide. Plenty of these people are sharing their mostly uncopyrighted, generally unoffensive, hardly contentious talents and getting some recognition. In fact, there is whole alternative to copyrighting set up to foster this group of people, the Creative Commons, whose "vision is nothing less than realizing the full potential of the Internet — universal access to research and education, full participation in culture — to drive a new era of development, growth, and productivity." What will happen to this culture and community of extrordinarily creative people out there, when access to platforms and distribution is limited to those with massive amounts of money, a record deal, or a hollywood agent? (I can't imagine a major label allowing one of their artist to put a "cc" on their work.) What will our lives be like without knowing the voices, ideas, creations of all those people who would be unheard if not for their access to websites like YouTube?


While this might be a bit overstated and dramatic, it's worth remembering that before the revelation of today's internet, these people where relegated to the local underground waiting to be discovered by a hollywood agent. And I realize that in the miasma of an overwhelming amount of content many of these people are still waiting to be discovered, at least it is there, available to us when ever we might happen to stumble upon it. They are waiting to be discovered by us, not by the former gate keepers who are still grasping at the power they once had.

Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! Etc.

Keeping Wall Street Occupied... and More!

I just discovered this video via social networking. I think this guy is brilliant, but I don't think he's grasped the entire scope of his idea.

For those of you who can't or don't want to watch the video, he is suggesting that people take the return envelopes that come in the junk-mail credit card offers and send them back to the banks... minus the credit card applications. He says this is an opportunity to both keep Wall Street occupied and open a dialogue with big banks (he sends notes asking the clerks who open the envelopes to join unions, I suggest "Helping you help us"), with the happy side effect of running up the banks' postage tabs with the USPS. The banks pay for postage on every envelope sent back to them. The deal they have worked out is .25 per, but the heavier the envelope, the more they pay. The big payoff of this action however, he says, is that the more of these the bank gets the more they'll have to spend time figuring out how to deal with it, and the less time they'll have to screw people.

But I see far more benefits.

In recent years, the USPS has been struggling, losing a massive amount of revenue and falling extremely behind on its bills. There are a number of reasons for these troubles, which include decisions that made the post office less competitive with private carriers. To try to save the USPS, one of our last truly public services, postage rates continue to be raised and the president has decided to cut back its services even further. But what it really needs is more revenue.

I look at this action as a tax on the big banks. The government isn't likely to start making them pay taxes any time soon, but we the people can take matters into our own hands. Look at this action of sending mail on the banks' bill like making them pay a tax (or give back some of that bailout money). Better yet, this tax doesn't have to go through government channels where more than half of it is likely end up funding a war overseas. This money goes straight to a public service.

And here's where it gets even better: JOB CREATION!

The rich, which definitely includes the big banks, say they need lots of breaks because they are job creators. Well, we can make them follow through on that statement. When the USPS starts getting more funding, they can reinstate its weekend hours and more people to fill those hours. But those aren't the only jobs this action can potentially create. The gentleman of this video suggest putting heavier items like wood shims and roof shingles in the envelopes to make them heavier.* Adding these things is probably enough to create a need for more postal inspectors. (Get your job applications ready.) These envelopes are probably going to seem pretty suspicious and need to go through additional screening. Fortunately, because of the banks, they will likely have the extra revenue to cover the extra staff they'll probably need to do that. My hopes are not up for the banks themselves hiring more clerks to deal with the increase in incoming mail. But who knows, maybe with enough of these credit envelopes mailed back, they'll have no choice.

So instead of filling up your recycle bin with those credit card offers, send them back! They wouldn't have given you the return envelope if they didn't want to you to return it.

*Plastic could also be added, but avoid any thing dangerous, like things that are sharp and likely to poke through the envelopes. We want to help the USPS workers, not hurt them. Also, it's probably a bad idea to mail anything that comes across as threatening.

Economic thoughts

An extremely low median wage, the mounting costs of higher education, and the destruction of the middle class are all part of why the American Dream is dead. For a majority of people working hard is not a guarantee of upward mobility let alone raising a family in the modest, comfortable surroundings that inhabited so much of the postwar 1950's landscape of optimism.  And if you still think that pulling yourself up by the bootstrap - that great Hortaio Algers myth - is still possible: it never was. The only way to get ahead in the US is through the help of others with influence, and if you are not already wealthy, chances are you're not getting that help any time soon. The other option is white collar crime. 

Several years ago,  I wrote an email to someone in reaction to their complaining about the homeless to explain how this system works: "you cannot just leave the poor to themselves, expecting them to die off because of their condition (not being able to afford healthcare, living in violence, poor diets, living in low rent districts surrounded by the highest levels of pollution and toxins), saving the elite from the burden of having to deal with the situation, because as long as there is a culture of 'more' there will always be people with less. And as long as we are part of that culture of 'more,' expecting larger profit margins every year and aspiring to the level of the elite, we are complicit in the poverty of those at the bottom." In the midst of the Occupy Wall Street movement I think it is even more relevant to consider. 

Barbara Ehrenreich talks cogently about the homeless in her article "How Homelessness Became an Occupy Wall Street Issue." She says, "to be homeless in America is to live like a fugitive. The destitute are our own native-born “illegals,” facing prohibitions on the most basic activities of survival. They are not supposed to soil public space with their urine, their feces, or their exhausted bodies. Nor are they supposed to spoil the landscape with their unusual wardrobe choices or body odors. They are, in fact, supposed to die, and preferably to do so without leaving a corpse for the dwindling public sector to transport, process, and burn."

This is something that ought to scare us all. Because as the rich in this country strive for even more riches, they drive more of us into this state. As Ehrenreich says, "It’s where we’re all eventually headed -- the 99%, or at least the 70%, of us, every debt-loaded college grad, out-of-work school teacher, and impoverished senior -- unless this revolution succeeds." And a revolution, as I see it, means overthrowing our system that promotes wealth of 1% at the cost of impoverishing the rest of us. It also means no longer sympathizing with and rationalizing the behavior of the extremely wealthy because we aspire to one day be like them if we work hard enough, because we won't (check out "Don’t EVEN Get Me Started, Mythical Bootstraps College Student").

To quote, but not name a friend, "Leave the millionaires of the private sector alone, most of them worked hard to get where they are (this is NOT France in 1789!) and deserve their rewards. " I ask do their rewards include screwing the rest of us? And does that mean the rest of us haven't worked as hard (I think of those working two or three jobs -- if they are available -- at minimum wage)? Maybe we should all just go eat some cake and drink champagne.

Notes from my journal.

Last month I went to check out what I thought was a financial literacy workshop for women who work in the anganwaris, India's government sponsored childcare centers. Financial literacy can be an important tool in developing a sustainable lifestyle, and I was interested to see how the organizers went about providing that tool. When I arrived at the conference hall full of working women, fanning themselves in the heat while a few fans on the ceiling stirred the heavy, humid air. What I found was the "Seminar on Investor Awareness," co-sponsored by the National Stock Exchange of India, and a roomful of rightly skeptical women. Here's my thoughts at the time:

As the world crumbles under the ashes of the stock exchanges, here I sit in a seminar for financial literacy, which is basically "learn to invest your hard earned wages in the stock market for future financial security." Sure, they say, securities are risky, but the almighty market has other options to help you on the path to financial success. Give and the market will give back. The secret is learning which investment is right for you. A rather illusive lesson it seems to me. 

The question on the power point projected on the wall says "Do we save? Or do we invest?" The women all laugh out loud. "We don't get paid enough to save... or invest." Everything these women and their families earn goes to the basic necessities of everyday living. 

The speaker replies, "look at the broader picture." She goes on, if you have extra money (lol) you save it for your children's education, marriages, etc. But when you simply save, inflation (a big problem in India) keeps those savings from growing with any significance. Investing, she says, give far bigger returns. "We need to ensure more returns than the rate of inflation." Also, investments will continue to give returns post retirement.  

For these women the speaker suggests buying gold. She says they already buy gold in the form of jewelry. But jewelers can reduce the value of the gold by skimming. Buy gold in units she says and it will take care of your future. 

In the midst of all this the power goes out, bringing both the power point slide show and the whirring of the fans to a complete halt. Yet the speaker goes on giving her speech, while the room grows hotter and sweat starts to drip from the brows of the audience. The people on stage are slightly sparred by the bringing of cold water.

I did not stay long after this, deciding not to deal with the intemperate environment. But in spite of, or maybe because of the heat the irony of the situation was not lost on me. What odder juxtaposition of events could there be: talking of money and investing in gold, while a basic utility is not functioning. My companion turned to me as we left and said if that had been a roomful of actual investors with money no one would even think of putting them in those conditions.

On it like a sonnet..

I wrote this in response to a friends Facebook status update, but I think it's kinda fun, so I'm posting it here too.


For this poetic form, it knows no bounds,
when put to use to reach your soul.
It can chase the moment like the hounds
with these words smelt for the goal.

When you do first grab the pen
and scribble this rhyme to advocate,
whether to describe a goose or a wren,
you'll comprehend at any rate.

In it's very simple scheme
of sing song and harmony,
the very best do but glean
how this art gives bountifully.

If you always remember the sonnet,
you cannot help but to always be on it.