For My Connecticut Readers

By way of email from my friend Sarah:

I learned today that voting "NO" on Number 1 (against the Constitutional Convention) is crucial for Labor in CT. If the Convention passes, it will be possible for CT to repeal its Davis-Bacon law, which calls for prevailing wage on Government-funded construction jobs. Without prevailing wage, all tradesmen and tradeswomen in CT will suffer.

The more information we have, the better we lead our government.

Thanks again,

Sarah

I can attest from experience that non-prevailing wage constructions jobs, at least in the private sector, are just rotten. Back in New Mexico I worked for a private contractor who paid me $7 an hour. I'm not ashamed to admit it. However, I am ashamed for my former employer. If he can't pay his workers a living wage, he has no business in business.

Sure, I took the job, so you could say it's my free will, but perhaps you don't understand that I'm not complaining. I was inexperienced and wanted to learn about construction. The problem is, my veteran co-workers didn't make much more than me. One guy had been roofing for 20 years. His wage? $10 an hour.

On top of that, we were treated more like liabilities than the invaluable asset we were. Getting any respect from our boss was out of the question. He wasn't a bad man; his method is par for the course. We're talking about a systemic trend that rewards less sweat with more money, and more sweat with a smack in the face.

No wonder people are lazy. No wonder the economy is "in trouble". Those at the root of society--the ones who grow your food and build your shelters--are among the lower castes. Yet without them, we would all be without our most basic human needs.

Thank a broke homeless person today for keeping your ass alive. It's okay, you can feel a little guilty.

The Bible Kids Part 1

So I'm sitting on the steps of Center Church waiting for my free bag lunch to pull up in a van. That van comes around every Saturday and Sunday afternoon. Suddenly, three guys appear and start milling about, walking up to my fellow beggars, offering flyers.

"Can I give one of these to you?" says one.

"Sure, I'll take one," I say, taking the flyer. I skim the backside of it.

Missionaries. Christian ones.

"Any particular denomination?" I ask.

The man hesitates for a moment, shrugs, says, "Born again."

"OK," I say.

We both pause and stare at each other for another moment.

"Do," he stammers, "you know who Jesus Christ is?"

"Yeah, he died for my sins."

"That's right."

I nod.

"Have you ever considered what he has to offer you?" he asks. By now the other two guys have sauntered up and surrounded me with gentle eyes. I don't mind. I take a quick visual survey of all three of these guys, take a breath, sit up straight, smile, and say:

"Well, what's your pitch?"

They chuckled and gave me the usual pitch. You know the one: Have you accepted Jesus into your heart, he died on the cross for your sins, salvation is yours if you follow God's commandments, here, have another flyer, a different one this time, can we talk to you about Jesus, Jesus changed my life, he's going to change yours too, awe shucks I'm so happy about Jesus and I really mean it.

Cool part about these guys is they knew their stuff. If I said something about being a seeker and answering any door that knocks, they rattled off a Bible quote, with citations, something about seeking and Jesus saying, Behold, I stand at the door and knock.

I am impressed enough at that quick citation. A few more of these quick scholarly responses and I am convinced I could have an interesting conversation with these missionaries. Two of the three are well versed and aged enough in their studies to be able to take me on in conversation maturely and without triteness.

Only one of them is your stereotypical starry-eyed ruby-cheeked spewer of stale sayings who, I'm sure, Jesus would have left to his fishing: Uh, thanks kid, I would love for you to put away your nets once and for all and help Me to convince men to follow Me and thus become yourself a fisher of men like Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew here, but, uh, you're just so good at fishing for fish. God needs you there, just plain old fishin'. That's a good boy. Bye bye, now!
I don't mean to poke fun at the poor chap, but he's just so cheesy I don't really believe him. As a non-Christian, I pray for the guy's faith.

The three of them took me to a Subway, bought me a sandwich (that's right, a sandwich, after I had gotten my free hors d'oeuvre-size PB&J sandwich, five or six potato chips, and a couple of swigs of a juice that is blue, all in a deceptively large brown paper bag from the previously mentioned van), and conversed with me for an hour. The cheesy kid slid me a very pretty Bible with silver-edged pages. As he slid it across the table, I looked up at him to confirm that it was a gift, and he gave me a cheesy look of kindness. I thanked him from the cheesiest part of my heart. I ate the Italian combo with Swiss cheese and downloaded my Coke.

(Part II will relate the Bible study session I had with these same guys about three weeks later.)

M'aidez.

Hey, it's May Day. So gather 'round the phallus and weave the ribbons 'round it. I'm talking about the May Pole. They had one on the town green today in the midst of the May Day festivities. All the little kids and some women each grabbed the end of a ribbon and took directions from the guy wearing a crown of forsythia in his hair. I love forsythia. It's the first bright thing I saw this spring. A whole bush full of those little yellow flowers. This guy, the one wearing the halo of forsythia, smelled like pot. I liked him.

"Everybody grab a ribbon! Okay, now pair up. You, you. You, you. Okay, if you're facing this way," he announced, pointing, "you are Sun. If you're facing the other way, you are Moon."

Things didn't go exactly to spec, because of all the little kids, but by everybody weaving in and out, "saying hello to the Maypole", and walking in circles, the phallus got wrapped up. I interpreted the ribbons to be the enveloping force that is female.

Ten feet away, a couple hundred people were forming a gigantic peace sign. A plane overhead was circling, taking pictures of the peace sign. Whoever was organizing the sign was shouting, "Everybody look to the sky!" There was something protruding from the bottom of the plane. I almost choked up as a morbid image came into my mind. What if a bomb dropped out of that plane? The protruding shape was obviously a camera or something.

Through all this, a musician was singing "Freedom!" onstage.

I picked up a dozen different flyers and pamphlets, including:

"Protest Bush, U.S. Out of Iraq Now! Wednesday May 23rd, 9 am, Williams Street and Mohegan Avenue, New London"

A flyer promoting a $45 dinner featuring Anthony Arnove, author of Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal

"The Economics of Capital Punishment" by the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty

A 19-page story called Ending a War: Inventing a Movement: May Day 1971 by L.A. Kauffman

"Building a Mass Movement to Confront the Climate Crisis, Thursday May 10th, 7:30 pm, Marcus White Living Room, Central Connecticut State University, 1615 Stanley Street, New Britain

"A Friendly Note from Your Muslim Neighbor..."

"Where Your Income Tax Money Really Goes", an extensively notated tract with a pie chart showing that 51% of the U.S. Federal Budget 2008 Fiscal Year is spent on current and past military bills, released by the War Resistors League

A flyer promoting a talk by Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times Correspondent Chris Hedges, who wrote a book called American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.

A booklet featuring all of the participating organizations and individuals for the 2007 New Haven International Workers' Day events

Howard Zinn, the noted historian and icon of the political Left, spoke on the Green as well. I showed up just as he was ending his speech with something about a vision of "freedom and respect for all people, everywhere." I'm just reporting the facts here, people.

I spoke to someone who evangelized at me about voting. It was more accusatory and oratorical than any Jehovah's Witness I've ever met. I smiled and told her that voting is a form of prayer, that America is a religion, and that I'm an atheist in that respect. She lectured some more. I said nice to meet you and smiled. She smiled, we shook hands, I left. Phew!

Zinn spoke again at 6:30 pm at Center Church, at the same time as the International Workers' Day parade was touring through the streets, chanting in Spanish, "The people! United! Will never be defeated!"

Have a good month. Come back tomorrow.

The Urban Pedestrian

If I had a blog called The Urban Pedestrian, it would be a daily account of my walks through downtown New Haven and surrounding areas. I would talk about the buildings, the streets, the people in the streets, construction projects that are underway, and so on. I would report on what it's like to be a pedestrian in the attempt to "raise awareness" about the "issue" of being a pedestrian. I would complain a lot about the traffic signals and how they are awkwardly timed so that it is actually safer to jaywalk than to cross at the intersection. I would bitch and moan about motorists who never use their turn signals, and relate tales of how I yelled, "Nice turn signal!" as the car swerved blithely on by. Uplifting stories of Good Samaritanism would be included, as would sardonic tales of the street people asking for money.

Today, for example, I ran into a street lady with whom I am quite familiar. I don't know her name. It was a beautiful day out, in the 70s I believe, and she said, "Do you know me?" I said I did, and asked how she was doing. "I'm depressed. I've been walking around all day, crying like an asshole." I could see the tears in her eyes. I don't know nor do I care whether she was just running for Best Actress or what. I just said, "I'm sorry, sweetheart, I would give you some money, but I am fresh out." I gave her a hug instead. She kept on walking and panhandling in the gorgeous weather.

Now that's kind of sardonic, yes? Sad, but nice weather. Good combination. Then I would move onto how I ran into my buddy Gary from the old soup kitchens I used to attend, and how I spotted him today wearing a suit at a bus stop. He was coming back from a job interview at a temp agency to (hopefully) replace his job as a stock "boy" in a grocery store. His explosion of sandy white hair and handlebar goatee, juxtaposed with the old pinstriped suit, made him look a lot like Samuel Clemens, or Mark Twain depending on who you ask. Gary was reading a fantasy novel. He's always reading a fantasy novel. He opened the one he was holding and read me a passage from the introduction, which was basically a how-to guide to writing fantasy. Moral of the passage: you have to have a theology (pagan or Christian, pagans are better because "they have more fun"), a Hero, a Quest, and a "Magic Thingamajiggy" (Holy Grail, the One Ring, the Special Jewel). That's as far as we got. Gary's bus arrived.

That's The Urban Pedestrian. Lowbrow and blue collar and street. Then there's The Upscale Pedestrian.

The Upscale Pedestrian would be a blog about how to live the good life without having to buy a car or even a bicycle. It would include information about how to use the transit system in an efficient manner, reviews of nice restaurants and museums you can walk to, a guide to planning your days around a pedestrian-oriented way of life, and other material. It would break down the cost of being a pedestrian and weigh it against the cost of owning a car, and then compare the intrinsic benefits of each way of life. I would attempt to prove that you can muster any type of non-motorist lifestyle you want, whether you are young or old, rich or humble, single or married, with kids or without.

So why don't I start those blogs? Because I have too many ideas. That's why I have this multi-purpose blog, this trash compactor. I realize there is little to connect this blog to itself. There seems to be no pattern, other than the fact that it is written by myself. So I'll just stick to this one for now. My goal is to tell self-contained stories that do not require you to follow a thread or series. On the other hand, a lot of my life does connect; a lot of the stories do find relationships with each other. So if you are a reader of this blog, please just read as much or as little as you like. If you start to see a pattern, then you have your larger narrative. Reading and writing are therefore a symbiotic relationship. As a reader, you have just as many choices to make as does the writer. So we're kind of exactly alike. You're confused, I'm confused, let's all share our lives with each other.