Return to the Jug Handle

Tuesday I finally followed in the footsteps of that woman in the jug handle, that activist I described in a previous post. I stood in public by the side of a busy road with a political message and make a general spectacle of myself.

This was not typical behavior for me. I am generally an introvert. My personality type is probably closest to that of the conciliator; I want everyone to get along. I don't think I have made many enemies in the first forty years of my life (unless they are quietly seething). I have come to believe that this is a sort of flaw, brought about perhaps because my personality was too bland or unreadable. If people really know where you stand, then certainly your stance will be counter to what others believe, and you will make enemies. This, I believe, is a good thing. You must take your stand and make the inevitable enemies that result.

Anyway, enough tedious personal analysis. I've been meaning to go back to the jug handle, to stand there myself, for some time now, probably since I first saw that woman in 2002. But especially since I've started this blog, I have felt a need to go there and in a tiny way to counter the latest round of growing war hysteria in this country.

Finally, on Monday, after reading about yet more bellicose rhetoric coming from our government towards Iran (Mullen: 'We are stretched, but the Iranians shouldn't think we don't have any excess combat capability! Our Air Force and Navy are largely unused!'; Hillary: 'I would obliterate Iran!!!'; Bush: 'The Iranians are killing our boys! I can't show you any proof, you'll just have to trust me!'; etc. etc. etc.), I decided I had to get off my ass, and more than my internet ass. I had to get out in public.

So that night I went to Staples and bought some posterboard and some markers and made the following sign:

I thought hard about what message would appeal to the broadest audience. Early ideas, such as:

Iran is not a threat to US! No war with Iran!

seemed a little too abstract. Appealing directly to personal economic concerns seemed most effective, and most likely to resonate with all political persuasions. Then, I threw in a pitch for my favorite source of news on the internet, antiwar.com.


The forecast for the next day was for heavy rain. I decided this would work to my favor, since I thought most people would be more sympathetic to me, and would be more apt to believe my sincerity about the message I was conveying, if I was getting rained on. I encased the poster in plastic.

I wasn't sure what reaction to expect from motorists. I didn't think I would get support, but I was planning to receive abuse and belligerence.

I drove to the spot during my lunch hour. I approached the jug handle in a chill steady rain:

And then I stood there a bit:


I paced back and forth slowly, showing the message to the alternating lines of stopped cars. (Somebody I knew drove by and provided some shots from the cars' view. )


Here's a protester-viewpoint shot:



I stood there for 45 minutes, at times in a downpour, and got soaked. It's a busy intersection and cars would bunch up at least 10 a minute, so I estimate I showed the message to about 500 stopped cars.

And what was the reaction? Basically, utter silence and avoidance of eye contact from nearly ALL motorists!

About 20% of people were talking on cell phones and were totally oblivious to their surroundings.

About 10% of people seemed to actually read the sign, then quickly looked away from me.

A handful gave me inscrutable half-smiles or smirks.

One guy looked really pissed, like he wanted to kick my ass, but didn't say or do anything.

And ONE older guy, who represented my one moment of hope, actually smiled and nodded his head in agreement!

This is probably the reaction most anti-war protesters receive, but it was very informative to see it for myself. It appears there is no will in this country to counter the government's murderous and deranged plans.

I then went back to white-collar cubicle land and spent the next five hours with water-logged feet:

I'm not complaining. I'm glad I did it. You all should give it a try during your next lunch hour. It's not hard to do.

But even if you do, you should realize this next war is inevitable now. It probably became so when Pelosi took impeachment "off the table." There are now no formal fetters on Bush/Cheney's evil will.

God help the Iranians who are going to be bombed (possibly with nuclear weapons).

God help the US soldiers and sailors who are going to receive the brunt of the counterattack.

God help us all, the 99% of US citizens who are not ultra-rich and who will feel the economic and psychological effects of this wicked action for decades to come.

But especially the Iranians. No matter what the media wants you to believe, you must never forget that they are human beings too.

Bush’s Pretzel Incident

[Blogger’s note: Ordinarily I have tremendous sympathy for recovering alcoholics and people struggling with addictions in general. However, I have no such generous feelings towards Bush. His enthusiastic support for such horrors as aggressive war and torture put him, in my estimation, beyond the realm of ordinary human to human sympathy, and I have no problem whatsoever mocking him and heaping ridicule upon him and his drinking problems.]

Do you remember the incident with Bush and the pretzel? In the dark days following 9/11, Bush allegedly was watching football by himself in the White House residence when he swallowed a pretzel too quickly. This somehow resulted in him sort of choking – but not really choking – and then somehow fainting. Since he was allegedly alone at the time, this could have been a catastrophe (can you imagine, the President dying by choking in private on a pretzel?) Thankfully, Jeebus was watchin’ over him extra hard that day, and he woke up and sheepishly told the secret service guards what had happened.

I had forgotten about this strange incident until yesterday, when I read an internet article that used this picture to illustrate Bush:

How did he get that bruise? I wondered. Was it a recent occurrence? After minimal searching I found the article that was the source for the original picture:

Bush faints at White House, recovers quickly

I read that story six years ago and I remember thinking, just a little bit, that maybe he had “fallen off the wagon.” But, a mere four months after 9/11, I still was in a state of shock, and still had some small amount of respect for the president, so I took Bush’s version of events as the truth, and put aside those ungenerous thoughts of him lapsing back into alcoholism.

However, last night when I read the story, I must say, I was laughing my ass off! Oh, come on! For God’s sakes! It’s preposterous:

******

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the president had been checked by his physician, Dr. Richard Tubb, Monday and his vital signs were normal. Bush had never before had a fainting spell, Fleischer said after checking with the president.

"I hit the deck," Bush said in recounting for reporters how, alone in a room with his dogs, he had passed out while watching a football game on television. "Woke up and there was Barney and Spot showing a lot of concern."

The president looked a bit tired but otherwise fit when he stopped to assure reporters that he was doing well. Bush shared few details about the episode.

"I didn't realize what happened before I looked at the mirror and my glasses cut the side of my face," the president said, pointing to an abrasion on his upper left cheek. "I had good blood pressure last night. Good blood pressure this morning."

Tubb said in a telephone interview Sunday that Bush quickly recovered from the episode, apparently brought on by swallowing a pretzel awkwardly which triggered a temporary decrease in heart rate. He said the president had been feeling under the weather over the weekend.

******

“A temporary decrease in heart rate” my ass! He “looked a bit tired.” He “had been feeling under the weather.” Har har har! Any rational person has to admit that the most probable explanation his bruise was that he drank himself silly to the point that he passed out and smashed his face on a coffee table! [A slightly more comical -- though unsupported-by-the-facts -- theory might be that Laura got really mad at him and threw a frying pan at his face, after which she was awkwardly wrestled to the ground by secret servicemen; we can’t discount that explanation.] 

Oh yeah, and I’ve had that same sort of tired and ill feeling myself, but I call it a hangover!

Really now. The poor dear, all by his lonesome watching a football game to try to relieve the unbearable weight of being commander in chief and protecting America from all the terrorists. And he chokes on a pretzel. So unfair.

Or an utter incompetent, in WAY over his head, reverting back to alcoholism in a big way?!

You decide.

I tried to imagine what sort of person I was six years ago that I would possibly think the official story credible in any way. I must have been far too child-like and trusting.

I take it as a positive sign, a sign of maturation, that I am properly laughing at this incident now. Also, as a sign that I have perhaps moved beyond the fear that 9/11 induced in all of us. Honestly, at this point I am more afraid of the harm that Bush and Cheney are doing to this country than I am of any potential terrorist attack. And that seems like a sort of progress.

Heroic Effort in Artists

When I was young, when I heard the term, ‘heroic,’ I would normally think of a man (yes, a man, not a woman I hate to say it) encountering a great physical force, either the physical force of other people, or the brute force of nature or circumstance. Usually the hero would overcome the opposing force, but occasionally he would not, and instead perish at the hands of the opposing force; I believe this latter small sampling of heroic failures are thrown in there just so that the danger the surviving heroes face appear that much more potent.

I believe that for most boys raised in this country, the hero type is traditionally that of a male warrior. In perhaps the last hundred years or so, to that type were added two closely related types:

- The male sports hero
- The male political hero (Lincoln,Washington, FDR, JFK)

Again, all males struggling in great contests with others.

I try to teach my children other images of the hero, heroes engaged in struggle in other noble fields, such as the arts. These artists usually struggle against themselves – not in the cliché way of, ‘Oh, yer biggest enemy is yer own self!’ – but against the part of themselves that is stifling the manifestation of the infinite that the good artist conceives and desperately tries to get out. (Because, yes, there is a part of the soul of every great artist that tries to stifle him or her, and to prevent him from fruiting.)

Here are a few of the heroic artist stories I have told my children:

Giotto and the Perfect Circle – One day Pope Benedict IX decided he didn’t have enough portraits of himself, and that he should commission the portrait to end all, the one portrait done by the finest artist of Italy. So he sent some of his men out to find this artist. They were instructed to travel all across the land and from each artist they encountered they would request a drawing to show the artist's skill. When they returned the pope would examine all the drawings and judge who was the finest artist in Italy, and who was worthy of painting his portrait.

When the messenger arrived at Giotto’s studio (Giotto di Bondone, 1267-1337, generally considered the first of the great Italian Renaissance painters), he couldn’t be bothered with such silliness of having to prove how great an artist and draftsman he was. Finally, to get the papal messengers off his back (and who hasn't had trouble getting papal messengers off their backs!), he did the following:

****
Giotto took a sheet of paper and a brush dipped in red, closed his arm to his side, and with a twist of his hand drew such a perfect circle that it was a marvel to see. 

Then, with a smile, he said to the courtier: "There's your drawing."


As if he were being ridiculed, the courtier replied: "Is this the only drawing I'm to have?"


"It's more than enough," answered Giotto. "Send it along and you'll see whether it's understood or not."

****

Now here’s a man to admire. He is not impressed or cowed by mighty and powerful men of his day, but instead he is so confident of his own abilities that he can seemingly thumb his noses at the mighty, with impunity.

How Picasso Paid His Restaurant Bills – At the height of his powers, Picasso’s skill and renown was so great that he could do the following: He would go out to a restaurant with a large group of friends and retainers and they would all eat and drink all night. When it came time to pay the bill, Picasso would take the bill, flip it over, and scratch out a quick drawing. He would then give the drawing as payment for the night’s festivities, and the restaurant owner would accept it! The owner would know that the value of one simple drawing from the master’s hand would easily exceed the cost of one night’s food and drink for Picasso’s party.

Can you imagine being so good at something (and mind you, something so peaceable and humane as the visual arts) that a couple minutes of your effort in that field is equal to several days of another person’s ordinary work?

Richie Havens Opens Woodstock – Richie Havens was originally scheduled to go on fifth at Woodstock, but due to scheduling difficulties and general chaos he was thrown on the stage first. He played for hours, so long that he ran out of songs.  But the crowd was wild for him and demanded that he come back over and over again. Finally, totally out of material, we improvised a version of the song “Motherless Child” where he repeated the word “freedom” over and over. This became one of the great moments of one of the great concerts of music history. Here’s a clip:

If you watch this, you’re probably not aware that this was mostly improvised, that Havens was channeling the muse, utterly; and what a place to be touched by the muse, in front of a crowd of hundreds of thousands!

Can you imagine such a moment occurring in today’s carefully choreographed and staged concerts? More importantly, can you imagine any musician today just surrendering to the muse in front of a crowd of hundreds, let alone hundreds of thousands? To do so requires an incredible faith in the power of the muse to direct your human hands and voice to create great art. I suspect several musicians of the present day of having this faith, but I haven’t seen or heard of it actually being displayed to the same degree as Havens did.

I first told my kids this story several months back, and happily I was able to see Havens live in concert for the first time this past weekend! He’s in his late 60s but he still puts on a great show, with a lot more energy and passion than you see in many people a third his age. I consider him a personal role model and I hope that I can continue to feel the same passion for music when I’m his age. He is truly a great soul.

Martin Luther King and the Shure Engineers

I was moved by this story:

http://www.infowars.com/?p=1303&cp=4

Where we have Jesse Jackson describing King’s last moments:

****
“I was coming across the parking lot and he said ‘Jesse - you don’t have on a tie’. I said the prerequisite for eating was an appetite, not a tie! He said I was crazy and laughed.

“Then he looked at the guy who was with me, (the musician) Ben Branch, and he said ‘Ben be sure to play my favorite song tonight - Precious Lord’. And then the bullet hit him in the neck and he was killed instantly.”
****

For some reason it made me think of another story I had read some time back, about a suicidal woman who killed three engineers from Shure, the microphone company, while they were on their lunch break:

Three Killed In Woman's Suicide Attempt

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SKOKIE (AP) ― A woman who told authorities she "wanted to end it all" was charged with first-degree murder and aggravated battery after she allegedly caused a high-speed crash that killed three Chicago men out on their lunch break.

Bond was denied Friday for Jeannette Sliwinski, 23, of Morton Grove, who allegedly told investigators that she had been in a fight with her mother before the crash and wanted to take her own life.

Police said Sliwinski was driving at least 70 mph and had run three red lights when her car rammed a car carrying the men at an intersection in this northern Chicago suburb early Thursday afternoon.

The victims were identified as Michael Dahlquist, 39, John Glick, 35, and Douglas Meis, 29, all of Chicago. The three men worked together at Shure Inc., a Niles-based audio equipment manufacturer, and they also were musicians, playing in several rock bands.
****

Concerning the King story: I didn’t remember the details of the assassination, I probably knew them once but forgot them. That he was only 39 years old! For God’s sakes he was younger than me! And that his last moment was one of utter humanity. He jokes with a buddy that the buddy looks like he is too much of a slob to go into a restaurant. How many of us have made similar quips? Then he turns to the musician and tells him what song he wants to hear. He is lining up his simple human pleasures, first he’s going to eat, then he’s going to listen to his favorite song. This makes him happy.

But it shows that he’s human, that he doesn’t display his revolutionary side all the time. I imagine that he realizes that the revolutionary business is just what he does most, but not all, of the time. He, too, needs to take time off from being the great historic figure, and to just relax and indulge himself, in both simple pleasures, and perhaps in excesses. In this he shows himself to be a real person, not a sanitized god figure.

And then, after finishing his simple thought about what song he wants to hear while he eats, he is struck down.

The second story I first heard about some months ago when the woman went to trial, and it really affected me, because I knew I could have been one of those guys, if my number had come up. I, too, am an engineer, I, too, am a musician, I, too, go out with my engineer buddies to some crappy food court for lunch. On the way to our stupid lunch we talk about silly trivial things, while inside each of us is processing the same simple thoughts like, ‘What shall I eat for lunch? Let’s see, Burlington Mall food court… my choices are Indian, that Japanese place, the crepe [is that “crayp,” or is it “crepp”?] place, the Cajun…‘

And then they find themselves stopped at the wrong intersection, because they left work ten seconds too soon or twenty seconds too late, and they end up dead.

In both cases, the ends came quickly and unexpectedly and pointlessly. And yet what preceded the ends was so different. I do not mean to offend the families of the poor Shure engineers in any way; I did not know any of these people. But these men didn’t make a real mark on the world until they met their unfortunate ends. [And even then, their story appears mostly in the “offbeat news” or “odd news” sections of the internet news roundups; the incredible lack of respect for human life that this editorial stance reveals is the topic for another day.]

Given the mutual similarity in my background and theirs, I feel I cannot but project my thoughts and feelings onto them. I am imagine they were probably like me, smart, read enough to know something about how the world really works, pissed off, but SILENT, never revealing any divergence from the plan of your masters, the elites. And then after 20 years of quiet, salary-drawing, you get crushed on the way to the Food Court by a suicidal Polish model. And then you’re the subject of the offbeat news.

And how did King live the same years of his adulthood, up until he was middle-aged? He stood up and he told the elites, ‘I’m a man! I am not afraid of you! You are evil! I am on the side of right!’’ And they arrested him over and over again. Then they tried to buy his silence by giving him the Peace Prize. ‘Oh, King, can’t you just coast from now on? We’ll be sure you get lucrative speaking contracts from now till the day you die!’

King says to that, ‘Screw that! I’m not done yet! Now I’m gonna really scare you! I’m going to lead a strike of GARBAGEMEN, white and black, who are trying to get a decent wage! What I did for the black people, I am now going to do for the poor people everywhere!’ That’s what really scared the elites, and they killed him for it.

Both moments of death were identical and equally pointless, and yet the times that led up to them were so different. Again, I am projecting, but if I were in the car with my buddies I believe I couldn’t help but feel, once I realized what was happening, a sense of regret, that, had I known it would end so stupidly and prematurely, I would have done more, and spoke out more. King tried to speak out throughout his life.

Of course, one could argue that by making the choices he did King accelerated his own demise. This is probably true. But none of us know the time of our ends. King could have chosen a quiet life of a pastor tending his own congregation, and not making a big noise about the injustice he saw. But then how do we know that he wasn’t destined to be hit by a bus at age 40 anyway? 

We must all live life as fully as we can, and as bravely as we can, always. Only in that way can we avoid regret when our time is up.

Unnecessary Dark Nights of the Soul

Friday night I had a mini personal crisis brought on by a bathroom scale.  Not because it showed a weight gain either.

The scale -- and yes, I'm going to name names here -- is a TAYLOR "Body Fat Analyzer and Scale," and it gives the impression of being quite modern and advanced, with its digital display and numerous body-fat-analysis-related buttons. It took me some time to figure out how to get it to do a simple weighing. If you stand on it nothing happens, except a few dots cross the digital display slowly.  The is what we software developers call the "thinking" display; it's to convey the idea that the machine is pondering the solution to your problem. After about five seconds of "thinking" the machine displays your weight, down to THE NEAREST TENTH OF A POUND!  (This detail is important later in the story.)

The reason it took me so long to figure out how to weigh myself on the scale was because I would get off of it far sooner than the five seconds required for it to figure out my weight, as all my experience had been with manual scales that give you a reading after a second. 

Oh, one more thing I want to mention about the five second pause, and here I am revealing one of the dark secrets of the software industry:  Sometimes, to give the appearance of greater value in a piece of software or an electronic device, a fake pause is programmed into it while it is doing its reckoning.  For example, if you ask the machine a complicated question and it figures out the answer in a tenth of a second and then displays that answer, you might not believe that it did enough "work" for the amount of money you paid for it. So, after the computer has found the answer after a tenth of a second, the programmer makes the machine wait a few extra seconds, to give the appearance to the user that they are getting their money's worth from the machine. I have no proof that the Taylor was engaged in one of these fake pauses, but I wouldn't put it past the designers of that fine product.  But this is a long and tedious digression...

The last time I weighed myself was about four weeks ago.  The Taylor chugged for the required five seconds then popped up the answer:  206.3 (pounds, not kilos; and for all my two readers out there trying to decide whether this means I'm a fat ass, I'm not going to state my height, so you just don't know, I might be a svelte 6' 8").  

Since that time I haven't change my consumption patterns (unhealthy) or my exercise regimen (typing). So when I decided to weigh myself last night I expected that I would hold steady, which would have been a victory, or gained a few pounds. But the scale showed . . . 

193.6

Maybe most people in the same situation would have said, "Woo hoo!" and enjoyed the moment.  I am not like that, and I instantly catastrophized.  No one loses 13 pounds in 4 weeks doing nothing.  I don't believe I have hypochondriac tendencies, and I usually give health problems a few weeks to ferment to see whether they'll just take care of themselves.  But even I knew that sudden weight loss was not a symptom to ignore.

I looked at my body and it looked just as pudgy as always, so I was puzzled where the weight went. I tried to imagine what grave illness could cause me to lose weight without showing it.  Very unadvisedly, I went to Webmd.com at 11:00 at night (note: never go to a health web site at night, or if you've had a few drinks, or both).  I typed in "sudden weight loss" and the first article that came up was "The Top 6 Symptoms That You Simply Can't Ignore!!!!," and of course number 1 was "Sudden Weight Loss."  I read a few of the horrible conditions that could cause this, then I got off the computer.

I went to bed and lay there thinking all sorts of horrid thoughts about my imminent demise, about how it would affect my loved ones, what they would do without me, etc. etc. etc. I eventually fell asleep.

When I woke up the next morning I had forgotten about the catastrophe, but after a minute it all came back to me. I went to the bathroom scale to see whether I was still dying.  I stood on the scale for 5 seconds, and then it read:

203.4!

Yup, either I regained ten pounds overnight, or the scale, the one that claimed to be accurate to the nearest tenth of a pound, was WAY FUCKING WRONG!  I of course blamed the scale.  

I started cursing the Chinese, since everything in the modern American world is made by them, but when I flipped over the scale I saw (after 14-step instructions describing how to use the body fat analysis functions):

Taylor Precision Proudcts, L.P.

2220 Entrada Del Sol

Las Cruces, New Mexico 88001

www.taylorusa.com

MADE TO OUR EXACT SPECIFICATIONS IN CHINA

So I can't blame the Chinese, they were just following the instructions of good old American engineers.

Moral: Never let any piece of electronics send you into a dark night of the soul. Only let a human do that to you.

The Very Brave Woman in the Jug Handle

We often think of men with rifles running into the face of the enemy as our exemplar of what it means to be "brave." But how many of those tough guys would be as courageous as the woman in the following story?

In Lexington, the Birthplace of the American Revolution, at the intersection of Route 4/225 and Hartwell Ave, there is a jug handle. I don't know if this is called the same thing everywhere in the country; I didn't learn the term till I moved to Boston. It's what locals call the traffic construction where there's not enough room in the middle of the road for a special, left-turn-only lane, so the right lane suddenly splits out to the right, curves out, then back in to cross the original road exactly perpendicularly. Sorry if you knew that already.

The jug handle at 4/225 led to a bunch of office parks, decrepit white collar hell holes, an MIT defense-related lab, and finally, the Hanscom Air Force Base. Every day on the way to work I would have to sit at that jug handle for 2 to 8 minutes.

The curve of the jug handle surrounds a chunk of useless land, a little patch of foul, smoked grass. That's where the very brave woman stood. It was 2003, and 9/11 was still quite fresh in peoples' mind. She appeared one day in the jug handle. She looked to be about 28 years of age, blonde, quite lovely, and perhaps Eastern European, Polish maybe.

She would stand at the side of the road on most days and held up signs that were really quite simple in conception, but devastating in effect: All she did was put up the headlines that she found that day concerning the Israel/Palestine conflict, e.g.

IDF Bulldozers Demolish Gaza House, Two Children Killed

Maybe she also included some web sites to visit to read more, and maybe she had some handouts. That was all.

And oh how the people would hate her! Ordinary, boring-looking white collar dudes on their way to their white collar, boring jobs would shout such foul invectives at her, as if, by her mere presence at the side of the road, she was worthy of receiving all the hatreds and frustrations these poor pathetic white men had stored up.

And the beauty of it was, this lovely young blonde woman, would, in response to the foul invective, just raise her eyebrows and shake her head and say (via her eyes), 'Oh, my poor friend, don't you see? Of course, you see. That's why you're sad.'

I remember being at work, and the conversation once turned to that blonde woman, and one of the company founders referred to her as that 'crazy lady,' and everyone laughed. I said, 'I think she's brave,' and everyone laughed again, a little suspicious of me, and I didn't press it.

So that's how the average, modern, educated American reacts to a citizen exercising their right to free speech: That Crazy Lady!

Now that is bravery, to stand there and exercise your right of free speech, and to accept the slings and arrows of all the so-called normal people.

Someday I hope to stand in that woman's steps in that jug handle on the side of 4/225.