Blogging time

I started this as a test. In preparing my firm's website I came across a host of articles on marketing one's business, including the use of blogs. So, on a whim, I set up this site. I don't know that it is something I will keep up for ages to come, but every now and again it serves as a form of catharsis.

I come across other blogs by regular folk and I wonder just how in the hell do these people find time to do a damn thing other than blogging? It's stunning. Am I spending too much time sleeping, working, and hanging out with my family? (To which the wife would respond yes, probaby not, and no way.) That's valuable time I could otherwise muse to a computer screen, after all.

I need to get my priorities straight ...

You don't tug on Superman's cape

Or spit in the wind. Or pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger.

The evening started off with a bit of Carly Simon. Yes, I am vain, but I damn well know she never wrote a song about me. Then it segued over to Carol King, for reasons that had as much to do with hair as her songwriting and singing. Tapestry-era hair. And that led to Wikipedia, the collective wisdom of the masses. I was stunned at the songs that King had written. The woman's a genius and then some.

The talk shifted to the mellow zone of the 70s music scene, which led to James Taylor, which somehow led me to Jim Croce.

Every time I listen to Jim Croce I go back and forth from laughing to reaching for a Kleenex. And it hit me - the guy died long before he reached my current age. What a loss.

I admit to some jealousy. Quite a bit. Look at what Jim Croce did by the time he passed too soon. Then I recall that he left a little boy who never knew his dad. Back to the Kleenex.

Not that it's a choice or trade off, but I'll settle for my lower key life, without the fame, thankful rather than for glory, for the time I've got with my child. I look forward to teaching the boy to sing along with Bad Bad Leroy Brown, laughing along, and someday I'll tell him why I'll be crying a little bit too as we sing loud and proud.

Put things in perspective

I support the labor movement, loudly, fervently, frequently. I may get a few odd looks, make a few enemies, have the occasional shouting match, but that's about as bad as it gets.

Last night I had the chance to very briefly meet Gerardo Cajamarca. He lives in the U.S. He's originally from Colombia. Colombia, for a trade unionist, is pure and unadulterated hell. He lives here because he fears for his life in Colombia for speaking and doing the things I take for granted.

Were someone to hold a gun to my mother's head and threaten to kill her, would I speak out? Were someone to tear apart my home, would I waffle in my support for organized labor? Were I in that man's shoes, would I demonstrate even half the courage he has shown - and continue to speak out so loudly against injustice? I have my doubts.

It is the Gerardos of the world who truly are heroes.

It's progress, maybe, but was it a good thing?

When last I lived in Coral Gables many moons ago, there was this restaurant that was a relic from a Southern past. The name is escaping me, but it was reasonably-priced, and the food was incredible. Good Southern food. It was a sit-down place, but you grabbed a tray, went through a buffet line, and ordered as you went. You got to the cashier, paid, and then - the creepy part - you'd have a person take your tray for you to your table with a glass of water.

Why creepy? The "tray men" - they were not waiters - were all older black men, each and every one, bedecked in a red coat, white shirt, black bow tie. There were a lot of "sirs" involved. The clientele was rarely black. The issue of race was in your face to all with eyes to see.

There was always this internal debate - do I take my own tray, defying the expectations of one and all, or do I have the older black man do something I am perfectly capable of doing on my own, in conformity with the herd?

The herd instinct prevailed. I always went with the tray man. Customarily one tipped a buck. A buck and change were one to feel generous. And these guys hustled with those trays, I tell you. I could not be as pleasant to the world at large as consistently as they were, not at a buck a tray.

The other day I was walking by whatever new luxury goods store is on the Mile to take the place of that diner, and I recalled that discomfort. Was I perpetuating a miserable and racist legacy when I went there? I sure did not get a kick out of having an older black man wait on me obsequiously. It weirded me out. (The food and price trumped the weirdness, though. Greens and mac and cheese and okra with tomatoes. Oh, yeah ...) Or was I simply enjoying some pretty solid food and making too much out of a simple thing? No one made these guys work there. At least there was no overt coercion. The place was jumping, the tips not reported to Uncle Sam, and I imagine on a good day the gig could be relatively lucrative for a few hours' work.

I don't know. I don't have an answer. I don't think I ever will.

But what struck me the other day as I went by that soul-less luxury goods store, with maybe a handful of employees at best, catering to the affluent, I felt a sincere sadness. What happened to those tray men? They sure as hell are not wanted by some store selling couches or chairs that cost an arm and a leg. They were not going to be out there selling bonds or retraining at the community college for the economy of tomorrow. Their hustle and muscle in this mechanized age would be of little utility, and none was a young man even then.

I'd love to know now what they really, truly thought of that job, and what it meant when that work went away. Racial issues be damned, they had a job, and my discomfort at the legacy of segregation probably meant a hell of a lot less to them than that buck in the end. And while I bet there were a lot of folks who look at the Mile and think "progress" - the only color issues there now involve the color green, the almighty greenback dollar - I do wonder for those tray men - was it a good thing, this "progress"?

I don't know, and I don't think I ever will.

I Kant get this stupid thought out of my mind

"Act only in such a way that you can will that the maxim of your action should become a universal law." Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative. Apparently, as a Google search revealed, I've been mistaken for the better part of the past two decades, since I've cited it as "alway will that the maxim of your actions shall become a universal imperative," but close. I'm sure it sounds better in the original Klingon in either event.

What should spark this? An incident last week, when my wife called me for the umpteenth time "judgmental." Damn right I'm judgmental. It's hardwired into my DNA. But I have to say, coming from the wife, that criticism stings perhaps less than one might think.

Ages ago she and I took one of those libertarian political tests, where you answer a series of questions on economic and political issues, and you get rated based on where you stand - libertarian, protectionist, anarcho-syndicalist, soul-crushing totalitarian, etc., etc. What made this one particularly amusing was that the test's creator posted where he/she/it/they thought certain historical characters would fall. Over there in the soul-crushing totalitarian zone was Stalin, over yonder in the free markets / enslaved minds was Pinochet, and you had a host of other famous people scattered about the scales based on their perceived views on economic and political regulation. Among them was Gandhi. And then, way out there, in the left field bleachers, way past the world's most famous bespectacled Indian, was my wife.

The woman out-Gandhi'd Gandhi, for Christ's sake. How cool is that? Her tolerance and compassion would make Jesus - at least that Jesus who went hauling ass through the temple a-wailin' the crap out of the money lenders - blush.

So, when this woman calls me "judgmental" - well, hell yeah. Pass me the gavel and a black robe while you're at it. Of course I'm judgmental in comparison with her. EVERYONE's judgmental compared to her.

And a few days later it hit me. That damn Kant - I'm warped for life thanks to him. My guiding principle is the categorical imperative. It's cerebral, logical, a bit distancing, and nice - as a theory. Indeed, it insists on judgment and in a sense on being judgmental, I submit. My wife? She does indeed live by the principle of doing unto others as she would have done unto her. That's a lot more emotional, not necessarily logical, embracing, and nice - as a way to go about your life. It introduces an element of subjectivity - putting yourself in another's shoes to see the world as would that person - that certainly does not require one to carry a mental gavel.

I'll stick to my world view. I'd never ask her to change hers. I appreciate that she's made me revisit and think about an aspect of my world view that I have not pondered in a while. And, I admit, she's made me think about being a little more hesitant to reach for that mental gavel.

Solidarity

I am a misanthrope. I like the idea of humanity. It's just that humans keep letting me down. Team work is not my strong point. In fantasy land I'd be the self-reliant frontiersman of the American myth.

Tied in closely with that misanthropy is my cynicism. I want to hope for the best from folks, but I expect that the base, low, and ignoble usually prevail.

I detest haggling. I particularly detest haggling for haggling's sake. If the price is $10 for an item, I presume the seller wants $10 and ask myself if that's what I am willing to spend. I have little interest in making a pitch for $8, hoping to settle for $9. Heck, my first new car was a Saturn. No haggling. I made a half-hearted effort to at least get floor mats with the deal, to no avail. I liked that - the transaction was rather forthright, all in all.

Given my misanthropic, individualist, cynical, anti-haggling biases, it makes perfect sense that I work with labor unions and am a true believer in the labor movement, doesn't it? Well, I do. I can and do reconcile my seemingly inconsistent beliefs, but that's a whole other posting and then some. The anecdote may work better than the philosophical musing or exposition.

This past Saturday I had the chance to attend a breakfast event sponsored by the South Florida AFL-CIO that epitomized why I believe so wholeheartedly in organized labor.

Anyone who has spent any length of time in South Florida with eyes and ears open observing the surreality of this place knows that "melting pot" is as far from the truth as one can get.

Class conflict? We've got Fisher Island - I don't know that my yearly income gets me fare for the ferry there - and we've got Miami, among the poorest cities in the nation.

Color? Ask the folks of Overtown and Liberty City about opportunities for African-Americans here. I am painting with a bit of a broad brush here, but far too many folks of Cuban descent - themselves brown folks, not white, if you were to ask anyone from up north - have a strong anti-black racist streak. I pick on them a bit because they are the dominant group. The non-hispanic whites that run most of the rest of the country for the most part ran like hell for Broward and points farther north rather than live among folks who, while of a darker skin tone, merely wanted to live the American dream free from Castro's hateful regime.

And that ties into culture. Don't dare lump a Puerto Rican in with the Cubans or the Dominicans, and if you want to see fireworks on the cheap, call any one of them a Mexican. Among folks that I would have labeled "black" at one point in my life, I've learned that former Jamaicans, Haitians, and Mississippians are as varied as any bloc of individuals can be. Even your so-called white folks run the gamut from former New Yorkers who are Jewish to the Pentacostalist bubbas of the Panhandle to bemused former Midwesterners of the agnostic persuasion.

Color, class, culture, conflict - we've got them in abundance.

Unless you are at a South Florida AFL-CIO shindig. There in one room on a sunny and pleasant Saturday morning were bus drivers, longshoremen, teachers, UPS drivers, school system mechanics, firefighters - I could go on, but there were folks from all walks of life, from GEDs to PhDs and all points in between. Black, white, brown - folks of all colors. Men and women. Native born and newly-arrived. And all there for a common goal - to make South Florida a better place for working people and their families.

The labor movement here is the only community that I have witnessed firsthand that transcends those boundaries of color, class, and culture that so divide our everyday lives in South Florida. I come away from meetings like Saturday's seeing our diversity working in harmony for a change, and that misanthropy, that cynicism, that sense of isolation that comes from seeing one's self as an individual in isolation rather than in community, all recede a bit. Hope takes their place.

I prefer that feeling, frankly.

At what price "cool"?

The other day I was biking home from work. I came to a red light. Three high school kids crossed the sidewalk in front of me. All three at some point in time all but gawked at me, and they kept looking back after they crossed the street. The look was clearly not one that I'd have received had I been in a Mercedes or a Maserati. No, it was more in the "does that dude on the bike come from Mars?" vein.

I feel pretty confident I know why. I was in full bike commuter regalia - rain jacket with vents open, bike helmet, front and tail lights a-blinking, panniers, right pant leg rolled up, the whole nine yards. In Holland this would make me normal, in Chicago not unusual, but here in Miami this is the functional equivalent of maybe growing a third eye in your forehead - something you just don't see everyday, if at all ...

Miami is hyper-America. Take the worst elements of shallow American consumer culture and boost them with some steroids. You've got an idea of Miami at its worst. (Disclaimer - I like living here. The positive stuff is for another day, another time, another blog entry.) In my neighborhood particularly, you see high-end conspicuous consumption. By having neither a Mercedes nor a SUV, never mind by being a one car family, my wife and I are the Coral Gables equivalent of the Beverly Hillbillies.

So, by being a sensible bike commuter, I pretty much epitomized the antithesis of what passes here for "cool."

But I have to ask, at what price comes being "cool" here, at least when it comes to whether and what one drives? We live within a stone's through of the Everglades and yet people drive SUVs to go six blocks to the 7-11 to get their sorry ass a Big Gulp. Humanity walked from Africa across the Bering Strait to Patagonia, and yet here in the most advanced society humanity has yet devised, most folks can't even envision a half mile walk to get a soda pop.

I have yet to figure out why in the world anyone in the Gables needs a Range Rover. Are there packs of rogue wallabies over by the golf course? And then there are Hummers. People here drive Hummers. Seriously, folks - do you expect to fend off IEDs on the way to Publix to get groceries? Do you fear the possibility that the Taliban of Dadeland Mall are going to seize your women folk and put them in a burqa?

Buying a vehicle that costs tens of thousands of dollars; that simply sits and occupies space 99% of its existence (ask yourself - what portion of a vehicle's existence 24/7/365 is spent with a person behind the wheel?); that costs hundreds of dollars a year to fuel up and insure; that destroys the very air we breath, the soil that feeds us, the water we drink; that requires the maintenance of an insanely expensive military state simply to secure its fuel; that indirectly, through that fuel, finances the world's most repressive states; that indirectly, through that fuel, finances the world's worst terrorists (as Bill Maher put it, when you drive alone, you drive with Osama ...); that gobbles up inordinate amounts of government resources to maintain roads that gobble up an insane amount of space; that is a menace to pedestrians and those who themselves don't drive; and that contributes to urban sprawl and a lack of human connections, is just not all that cool when you think about it.

And when I think of costs, when I think of the age of those kids and the lengths to which this imperial beast will go to protect "our" oil - how did it get under their sand anyway? - I wonder if their lives will be a future cost as well.

I'll settle for not being cool. It's healthier for my self, my sanity, my community, and my planet.