Tag Archives: history

In honor of Labor Day and not getting screwed by the man

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Lately, when I've had idle ranting thoughts, I've really wanted to post about “kids today,” and how they don't know nuthin'. Like I know people in the real world, not just the scary internets world, who shit on unions and the word feminist.

Here's what the whippersnappers don't know. Life is fucking hard and the people with the money and the power and the means to fuck you up can and will. Not only is there no free lunch, but keep an eye on the other hand if you see a hand out.

I grew up in the 60s and 70s. In my lifetime, a lot of women didn't own shit like cars and houses. My mom, educated, working, a widow with five kids, had stories about banks looking for co-signers on her mortgage and car payments, because the lady folk needed a hand and couldn't be expected to maintain good credit.

Just barely beyond the span of my life, in 1963 when Congress mandated equal pay for women, it was A-OK to pay a chick less, you know, just because. Up until the '80s, airlines fired female flight attendants who got married.

Civil rights happened, because for some reason African Americans thought they should be treated like all other Americans with jobs, decent pay, fair working conditions, voting without dogs growling at you, regular stuff. People died trying for a better deal.

We didn't eat grapes as a kid, and in our church we prayed for grape pickers not far from where I live now. Turns out it's better, but it isn't good. To this day, the fight goes on to regulate common sense and decency. Should farms really have to be told to provide adequate shade and water to workers in triple-digit heat?

So, I sit here in a house with my name on the paperwork. My crockpot dinner is largely from the local farmers' market. I sit in complacent comfort knowing I make a decent wage, my job treats me fair, my house is livable, I have health care and probably will have a couple of bucks in retirement. I get to use birth control. I'm educated.

When all of that comes together, here's what I know. Other people fought like hell for all of that to be possible for me today. None of that came together by the grace of those people born better off than me and mine. No one gave anyone their rights on a silver platter.

Someone fought for every right and privilege. Collectively, they fought more strongly. It's a continuum, and when we forget to stay organized, vote our own interests, speak out, fight, we'll have failed everything our predecessors sought to make better.

Phone writing

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I have been unbelievablely not writing. Part lazy, sheer, ugly bone lazy. Part ennui or something like it. Any thought to write has dribbled into lack of action then nothing.

But, I was reading Tony’s Blog Emporium. He’s writing more or trying and so should I. He’s like a champion role model, only of the comedic variety.

Meanwhile, WordPress.org released software for the old Droid telephone I be using. So there’s that.

On the creative brightside, I haven’t totally given up or killed my soul. After taking 36 million pictures or so on our last trip I felt crafty inspired. Awhile back on an impulse buying whim, M. had thrown a giant frame with a mat full of windows suitable for throwing up a collage of memories into our shopping cart. It has haunted me.

Haunting became the right word, when I finally felt resolve to do something with it. Back in the way, way east (or the east that white cartographers decided was east) there’s a nifty little tradition based in Taoism. Because ancestral spirits like to keep an eye on things, and venerating the dead is an important pasttime, you’re likely to find some great old family pictures on a Chinese family’s wall. I don’t know from burnt offerings or lighting joss sticks next to a homemade altar heavy with tangerines and whatnot, but I like cool photos. M.’s mom has great ones. I’ve taken a few pictures of her pictures.

Stepping back, one thing M. and I have in common is families that have clocked some years each generation. I think his grandfather on his mom’s side would have been about 10 years younger than my mom’s dad. This grandfather is the adventurer who headed off of China’s Hainan Islands and found his fortune in Malaysia.

We each grew up with images from early last century, sepia and gray-toned history. Like my grandfather’s wide-brimmed hat and gaiters, a young doughboy headed out to fight the Kaiser’s army.

That and our tremendous egos and equally tremendous cache of photos of each other and ourselves and ourselves together provide the nugget and the expansion if the craft project. A collage of us and of family.

When all is settled, I’ll probably figure out a web version or maybe just post something here with the rejects. A little bit of honoring the ancestors and a little bit of self worship.