Virginia Slims

I read and loved Dennis Lehane's The Given Day (I can't find a link to the paperback, but I got it a Costco.) I recommend it to you all. The book is about a Boston cop that is forced to go undercover to monitor subversives while finding himself drawn to the power of his own Boston police union. I loved this passage which we all might recognize in some way, but it made me think of Ash in particular:

Mondays and Wednesdays brought another meeting of the Roxbury Letts followed by a boozy gathering at the Sowbelly Saloon. He spent his nights with them and his mornings with a curl-up-and-cry-for-your-momma hangover, nothing about the Letts being frivolous, including their drinking. Bunch of Sergeis and Borises and Josefs, with the occasional Peter or Pytor thrown in, the Letts raged through the night with vodka and slogans and wooden buckets of warm beer. Slamming the steins on scarred tables and quoting Marx, quoting Engels, quoting Lenin and Emma Goldman and screeching about the rights of the working man, all he while treating the barmaid like shit.

Read it.

Meanwhile, Rome Continued to Burn

I've been a weence obsessed with the Polanski thing and have been letting more important things slip. Fortunately, my ol' running buddy Lex has been paying attention to the anti- and anti-anti-ACORN/SEIU fracas. Yeoman's work.

Let me ask this, though. While yes, yes, yes, we all need to come to the aid of SEIU, didn't SEIU not just a few short years ago basically tell the AFL-CIO to shove it up their ass? And by "it" I mean labor solidarity. Is there no penalty for this? Isn't this one of new labor's problems, all of our supposed allies kick us where it counts and when we pick ourselves up we ask if there is anything else we might do for them.

For example, to answer Rachel Maddow's question, no, I don't think that prominent Democrats are going to do anything to publicly counter the attacks on SEIU and/or anyone who works for the underprivileged in our society. That hasn't really been the Democrats' schitck since 1992. Remeber, we're the third-way party. The "third-way" being finding ways to cave to corporate/conservative interests whenever possible. This is what we do now.

And Yet, I Imagine They'd Disagree with My Interpretation of Their Argument

Just so we're clear, Oregon Right to Life very much believes that a government bureaucrat should stand between you and your doctor when it comes to important medical decisions.

Yes, Register Guard, Yes!

What this town needs is more paeans to the Lane County working-class life of the '50s and '60s written by multi-millionaires.

I remember when Eugene was known as the timber capital of the world; it seemed as though log trucks were on Sixth and Seventh avenues all the time. How things change.

In my youth, not many kids went to college after high school. They would get a job working at a sawmill, in the woods or at a plywood plant starting at maybe 15 to 20 cents per hour less than a journeyman’s wages — just like their dads, brothers, granddads or neighbors. They could support a family, own their own home, buy a camper and help send their kids to college.

Starting out at the mills meant working swing shift from 4 p.m. to midnight, or the graveyard shift from midnight until 8 a.m. A millworker’s wife might work in the summers at a cannery in Eugene or Junction City, and maybe she’d pick crops for the local farmers.

Life was good.

Oh, life was good, Avon. A man could give up whatever hope he had of living a comfortable life by dedicating himself to forty years of back-breaking labor. He could look forward to becoming a journeyman after some years and get raises of maybe 15 to 20 cents more than he earned when he started. He could look forward to years of not sleeping with his wife in bed at night. If he was real lucky, maybe his mill would be purchased by another outfit and he could go out on strike to fend of cuts to his pay. If he prayed real hard, maybe his kids could see their names on the tree at the mall at Christmas time.

Oh, and the ladies! What luxury they had spending their summers working in a cannery or maybe picking crops for a local farmer. I don't have to tell you, Avon, that there is nothing a woman loves more than performing physical labor in the hot sun. And you forgot the kids! The halcyon days picking blueberries for 10 cents a flat out in Leaburg. The hours spent at the string bean vines instead of the ol' swimming hole.

Yes, it was nothing but non-stop upward mobility for Lane County's working classes. Too bad the relentless consumption of our forests, the very consumption that kept those jobs plentiful and low-wage, lead to the day when trees were too small to be run though your mills. Too bad mill owners spent decades taking profits and giving them to the Republican party, instead of investing in new equipment. Too bad free trade meant that our raw logs went to China to be processed, while cheaper Canadian timber drove you out of the lumber markets here. all those damned hippies ruined it with the socialism and environmentalism.

Good times, indeed.