(no subject)
not sure what brought forth this memory, the day, chomsky's 'crisis and hope, theirs and ours' on democracy now ...
To have a door slammed full force in your face is a hard-to-forget experience. My encounter with this gesture happened when I had a door-to-door political organizing/fundraising summer job (which altogether provided an illuminating inspection tour of central illinois usa) -- I was supposed to get signatures on petitions related to progressive legislation this state-wide organization was pushing, and solicit donations to support lobbying on behalf of these proposed bills. Mostly the six or so of us who would daily careen in an old station wagon to Pena or Peoria and get dropped in some designated neighborhood with a map. Mostly we would canvas on the issue of high utility rates--an issue with broad appeal. But we were invited to branch out to other issues if things seemed to be going well: there was a universal health care bill I liked but was perilous to canvas with because it would elicit long terrible stories that would be inhumane to interrupt. Another was some kind of tax reform bill--I think it was the first time I tried describing this proposal in the field--in an old upper middle class neighborhood of Decatur rife with Illinois Power execs--and the woman at the door let me talk for a while, and then announced that she was a tax preparer and changes in tax law made her job really hard and wham! there's the closed door, in my face. (... that moment plus some stories of co-workers from that summer were the source of the left-hand hammer notes at the end of Black History Minute ...)
Last night attended Big Daddy Sun and the Outer Planets reunion with partner's niece-of-choice... not a fan of red herring reunions, the history they celebrate tends to airbrush out everything I cared about at the time, positive and negative ... except there was Urban, a salty southside crooner, former scholar and odd appreciator of odd people, which I guess included me (I can't recall a single conversation with him that didn't happen on the street) ... and what do you know? sincere rockabilly has analgesic properties, plus Urban's baritone beguines ... but the event really was learning more about my niece -- interactions between her and me have a touch of struggle and a process of mutual acknowledgment of our separate intense histories converging on CH -- and finding out she was once a rocker & the layer of buddhism that seems so heavy is actually rather recent and sort of an improvisation, not an imposition, and maybe a means of dealing with past pain; it was a fluke that they ended up at a silent retreat, which they were violating anyway by whispering to each other and having to be scolded by a monk ... I don't know if the people in my life & loves of who I love realize how beautiful I think they are. Maybe a selfish thought when so many are in trouble, but there it is.
To have a door slammed full force in your face is a hard-to-forget experience. My encounter with this gesture happened when I had a door-to-door political organizing/fundraising summer job (which altogether provided an illuminating inspection tour of central illinois usa) -- I was supposed to get signatures on petitions related to progressive legislation this state-wide organization was pushing, and solicit donations to support lobbying on behalf of these proposed bills. Mostly the six or so of us who would daily careen in an old station wagon to Pena or Peoria and get dropped in some designated neighborhood with a map. Mostly we would canvas on the issue of high utility rates--an issue with broad appeal. But we were invited to branch out to other issues if things seemed to be going well: there was a universal health care bill I liked but was perilous to canvas with because it would elicit long terrible stories that would be inhumane to interrupt. Another was some kind of tax reform bill--I think it was the first time I tried describing this proposal in the field--in an old upper middle class neighborhood of Decatur rife with Illinois Power execs--and the woman at the door let me talk for a while, and then announced that she was a tax preparer and changes in tax law made her job really hard and wham! there's the closed door, in my face. (... that moment plus some stories of co-workers from that summer were the source of the left-hand hammer notes at the end of Black History Minute ...)
Last night attended Big Daddy Sun and the Outer Planets reunion with partner's niece-of-choice... not a fan of red herring reunions, the history they celebrate tends to airbrush out everything I cared about at the time, positive and negative ... except there was Urban, a salty southside crooner, former scholar and odd appreciator of odd people, which I guess included me (I can't recall a single conversation with him that didn't happen on the street) ... and what do you know? sincere rockabilly has analgesic properties, plus Urban's baritone beguines ... but the event really was learning more about my niece -- interactions between her and me have a touch of struggle and a process of mutual acknowledgment of our separate intense histories converging on CH -- and finding out she was once a rocker & the layer of buddhism that seems so heavy is actually rather recent and sort of an improvisation, not an imposition, and maybe a means of dealing with past pain; it was a fluke that they ended up at a silent retreat, which they were violating anyway by whispering to each other and having to be scolded by a monk ... I don't know if the people in my life & loves of who I love realize how beautiful I think they are. Maybe a selfish thought when so many are in trouble, but there it is.