Currently Reading Short Story Masterpieces By Robert Penn Warren, Albert Erskine see related

November Reign

On February 1, 1960 Ezell A. Blair Jr. (now known as Jibreel Khazan), David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, and Franklin McCain sat down at lunch counter in Greensboro, NC. They lowered the staff into the White Sea and commanded the waters to part. New Prophets, decendants of Isaiah, picked up the mantle and called our country forth to repent from the sins of our past and our present. But the powers that be were smart. They learned how to commodify the counterculture and the revolution became more interested in the color of band-aids or South Carolina's flag than with the material and political power structure.

Our generation was given a world where the struggle for justice and liberty comes in the form of choosing a better deodarant and we wrote songs about our suburban discontent. A generation without a Malcom X. A generation without  Robert Kennedy. A generation where the voices of reasonable human beings are only given marginal space so that they appear, well marginal. A generation who has to hear the nostalgic pain of professors who remember when they expected something good to come from Washington DC. And we turned MLK into a ghetto street and studied black history every February, because we thought the struggle began and ended in the 60's. We were told to be thankful that we drank water from the same water fountain, that all the real fights had been fought, and we were to sit in the historical box seat and watch.

And out of no where, just like it must have been in 1960, the death grip of the powers-that-be falters just a bit, and without anyone suspecting or predicting it, the story picks back up. And what a climax it promises to be. What began in Birmingham, and Greensboro, and the Washington Mall,  we now have a chance to continue, perhaps finish. We have the opportunity to be a part of one of the greatest stories of oppression and the long struggle for justice that history has told. And of course, if Barack Hussein Obama wins the presidential election in November, his victory will remain strongly a symbolic victory. We will continue to use the prison system as a weapon against the unemployed black men our economy produces. The ghettos won't disappear. Schools will continue to gatekeep the racial class demarcations of our society and police will still violate the bill of rights and black bodies, but for the first time in our country's history, teachers will take the chin of little black kids, look into their deep brown eyes and say with full conviction that they too could grow up and become the President of the United States of America if they want and they won't feel that gnawing, sickening feeling that you feel in your stomach when you lie to a child. And isn't that something of what the American experience is all about, to be able to dream about being the king, while surrounded by a peasant's life.

It's time to extend that privelege to a community whose blood doesn't trace back to Europe.

Obama 08

...you can't stop what's coming...

Currently Reading The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future - and What It Will Take to Win It Back By Jeff Faux see related

The Shoemaker

I fall to the floor in a bird’s nest of blankets and body parts, gasping as the cold air penetrates my nightly cocoon of warmth. Eye’s half shut, I begin the layering process: thermal pants, right leg, then left, t-shirt and sleeves to keep my arms warm, two pairs of socks. I pause noticing the way they bulge around my ankles atop the thermal pants making a mental note that socks should go on first next time. I slide into my worn pair of dark denims torn from a bike accident a few days previous and a hoodie with the front pockets hanging limp. Sliding my hand beneath the bed I pull out the old pair of dress shoes I’ve had since high school and put them on. The outer shell consists of my heavy coat, the scarf my wife crocheted for me in college, and two pairs of gloves. Staring out the frosted window with resolve, I challenge the city; this winter will not best me. Opening the front door the blast from outside pricks the exposed part of my cheeks in defiance. One foot out the door and I plant into a puddle of melted snow and sidewalk salt. The water seeps in from the holes I have worn in the sides and soles of my shoes. By the time I reach the Berks stop where I catch the El downtown my feet are blue from the cold while my upper body and crotch are covered in a shimmering layer of beaded sweat. God, I need a new pair of shoes.         

            Now I’m leaning up against the display case of a shoe store on Chestnut Street. My forehead pressed flat against the glass as I’m eyeballing the shoe selection. In the glare of the reflection I think I see small brown hands of Indonesian kids, blistered and burned from hours of punching eye-holes in the brown and black leather. I can just make out hundreds of thousands of shoes made for no-one flowing down conveyor belts, shipped around the world on our ever decreasing supply of fossil fuel, the rainforest cut down to grow feed for cows perfunctorily slaughtered to harvest the leather which piles up like big brown piles of fashionable shit. In the glare there’s a whole society convinced and contorted to find meaning in their lives through purchased goods, chasing after a satisfaction that never comes, manipulated by mediated images, psychologically strung along with no end in sight, a whole society built around the virtuous apex of the cheap consumer good. I see all that sitting before me, separated by glass, illuminated by iridescent bulbs.

As an American who’s subsequently read a couple of books (or at least seen the movies), I realize that I am complicit in an economy that is leading us into a nightmarish future, an apocalypse of environmental degradation and societal inequality, of which global warming is only the most politically expedient issue. The linear model of continual growth belies a finite planet with a closed system of resources. Our modern industry, which relies on one way process of extraction – manufacturing – consumption – and finally disposal, is unsustainable and will eventually have to change or fail. Currently we measure the success or failure of this economy by its ability to defy reality, to infinitely grow infinitely faster. That means finding ways to extract – manufacture – consume and dispose of things quicker and cheaper and the planet is starting to give way under the constant pressure of this process. I carry this with me every time I make a purchase.

Of course, it’s not all bad, but my level of cynicism rises and falls like the tide, flowing with the phases of the moon or depending on how much sleep I’ve gotten that week. On more sunny days, I see the economy as the greatest expression of human cooperation. At times, when I squint my eyes and crook my neck just right, I see the division of labor as the crowning trait of our species, as each of us focus on what we do best we work together for an even greater common good. But as I had exhausted the use of my shoes of which I had grown to love on that particular day, I was prone to my more cynical self. The result of which was the undertaking of a quest to find a pair of shoes I could purchase with a clean conscience, shoes which would eventually bring me more satisfaction and functional use than anything I would have purchased that day.

Without trying to recreate a mythical golden age of the past, I do want to point out that it wasn’t that long ago when “economy” wasn’t a synonym for “ecocide”, when the destruction of the planet was out of the realm of human imagination because it was out of the realm of human possibility. 200 years ago a pair of shoes meant none of this. You would walk the mile or two it took to get to the cobbler where you would negotiate a price that represented a fair exchange for both parties. The shoe would be crafted to your own unique foot shape and size using the minimal amount of material (because the waste came out of the cobbler’s own pocket) and the minimal amount of energy (because the energy was coming out his own reservoir of human-energy). The only exploitation was the occasional “boxing” of the young apprentice’s ears. But to draw a dichotomy of economies, in which the “good” artisan economy was replaced by the “bad” industrial economy is a gross over-simplification. There has never been a clean break between the economy of the past and the one of the present. There has only been a gradual layering of one upon the other, like asphalt poured over old cobblestones which continue to poke out on neglected streets. That economy never disappeared but was incorporated and integrated into the new, slowly mutating into the unsustainable monster we have today. Some cities, more than others, still have a small artisan economy that survives in the shadows and dark corners of the skyscrapers which have grown around it. Philadelphia is one of these cities. If someone wanted to have a pair of shoes made by a cobbler here all they’d have to do is ride their horse drawn carriage (or alternative transportation source) to Dom’s Shoe Service at 8^th and Arch, the last cobbler of Philadelphia.

I stopped by one afternoon to see about getting a pair of shoes made. I was surprised by the gaudy neon lights of red and green which cover the front windows. The Chinatown arch towered nearby, filling the scene with a carnivalesqe air. An older Italian woman sat behind the counter of the check cashing booth inside serving customer’s lottery ticket and money order needs. A looming African-American man stood silently behind a shower of sparks as he ground a pair of metal heels down on one of the 70’s era machines that filled the back of the room. Giuseppe the cobbler (he kept the name “Dom’s” after the previous owner, Dominique) pounded away at the heel of a shoe. A flamboyant young man waited patiently for the repairs on his shoes to be finished. Giuseppe handed the shoes over with minimal words, “Three dollars.” His accent is thick, the vowels coming from high in his throat. The young man thanked him a bit too much and a smirk flirted at the edge of Giuseppe’s mouth.  Before acknowledging me, he pulled cigarette from his pocket and took a deep drag, exhaling without removing it from his lips. “Can I help you?”

I explained my situation. I want a pair of dress boots that I can wear all year round, dressy enough that I can wear them with my suit to the few weddings I have to attend each year but casual enough that they don’t stand out when I’m wearing the jeans I had on. Not to be picky, but I also want them tall enough to keep the snow out on the occasion that one of those Nor’easters blows in covering the sidewalks in white powder. “You want me to make you a pair of shoes?” he asks surprised. He looks down at me and suppresses a chuckle, “I can’t make a pair of boots for less than $750,” he says. I imagine that usually is wear those conversations end. I was a little shocked by the price. It begged the question, “How come I can go over to Target and pick up a pair for $50?” He pushed some of his awkwardly long gray hair behind his ears and cocked a big black bushy eyebrow, “They have little kids working for them that they don’t have to pay,” he responded with only a small hint of envy. I needed a few days to think this over.

$750 is much more than the market value of a pair of shoes. Paying over market value for something is, according to economists, “irrational”. To those instilled with the protestant ethic it is “bad stewardship”, perhaps even sinful. But a Consumer Reports survey reports that the average North American woman, who is an inheritor of those values, owns 19 pairs of shoes. She buys, on average, four new pairs a year and one quarter of those shoes, one pair per year, will only be worn once before being abandoned to the dark corners a closet that never seems to have enough room. And while I am willing to spend more money for products which attempt to re-introduce the real cost of an item back into its price tag, such as Fair Trade or Organic certified products, in this case I didn’t even have to spend more than anyone else. If I spread my shoe budget over a few years it looks like I’m just about at average. $750 for a pair of shoes which will undoubtedly last me another decade is a bargain in comparison.

All the rationalizing aside, when I dropped three months of savings for work to begin, it hurt. Of course, I was purchasing much more than a pair of shoes. The list of intangibles that were included with this kind of transaction only became apparent after the money exchanged hands. For one thing, the way Giuseppe’s cynical smile disappeared into wonderment at the opportunity to work his craft. To get away from the monotony of repairs and have the opportunity to, as Tolkein, a devout Catholic called it, “sub-create”, brought him joy and meaning. We all feel that to some degree, that spark of the divine, when making something from nothing.

He also let me sit in one Saturday as he worked on the midsoles. The methodical silence was only interrupted by the occasional tip prefaced with, “not that many people know about this but…” I was a pilgrim who had climbed the mountain to sit at the feet of a master. I was the audience of an esoteric knowledge of a privileged order. He explained the benefits of leather over plastic in shoe components, how mass-produced shoes were inferior in so many ways. He explained how Italian kids aren’t allowed to wear tennis shoes because it is bad for their joints and how rubber cement is the secret ingredient unknown to most cobblers, and so on and so forth. I choose to believe it all regardless of the factuality, for if opposable thumbs and the use tools are what distinguish us from the other primates, watching Giuseppe cut the leather with the shank of sharpened iron he used as a knife, I felt I may be watching one of the few remaining human beings existing in our society.

Three weeks after work began, my shoes were complete. I was nervous when I went to pick them up. I felt similar to when I had to show up to pick up my prom date in High School. I was relieved to see they were exactly what I had described, simple black dress boots that, in all honesty, looked exactly like they would have if I would have just driven over to Target and dropped the $50 a new pair of shoes would have cost me. I held them up delicately, looked them over trying to find some mistake, some nuance of error which would demonstrate their human origin. I could find none. Had I not seen them in their various stages of construction I don’t know if I would have believed that they were handmade. Maybe I’ve just been trained that commodities need a brand, that shoes looked inefficient without some mark to tell me where they came from, but I asked him to sign them for me. He scribbled along my insole, “Custume made by Giuseppe”. His English is, as he put it, “not so good.”

When I tried them on I was surprised at their discomfort. I had forgotten what it was like to break in a pair of shoes. But after a weak of wear, the leather softened and my blisters started to heal. The shoes which were an extension and expression of Giuseppe began to take shape through my use. I took over in the creation of an object which will never quite be finished. The technical aspect was finished, but the shoes will continue to be made into my shoes as I do the only part I’m qualified to do, walk.

As I construed more and more creative ways to bring up my shoes in conversation over the next few weeks, the response was always the same. My friends would always sigh remorsefully, “You know, it is a dying art.” I argued with them. It’s not a “dying” art. The Industrial Revolution and its most grotesque manifestation, Globalization, has already dealt the death blow. Those who survived the onslaught of Global Fordism, like Giuseppe, aren’t in any danger of going out of business at this point. Instead, there seems to be a growing consumer base which is awakening, as from a bad dream. A consumer base who recognizes that the price tag doesn’t tell us the true cost, who continues to invest in products which are sustainably manufactured and promote a just, localized economy. There has been a realization of some of the suggestions of the “other” economists, such as E. F. Schumacher, who protested 20 years ago, that “small is beautiful.” And as we continue to butt up against the environmental limitations of the world we live in, our economic values will be forced to change. It gives me hope that if I ever have a kid, his or her opportunities to create, to make something from nothing, won’t be limited to typing on a keyboard behind the glaring light of a flat screen monitor.

Currently Reading Profit Over People: Neoliberalism & Global Order By Noam Chomsky, Robert W. McChesney see related

A driver's license for the getaway car

Currently Reading Diary: A Novel By Chuck Palahniuk see related

The Deer Hunter

After you’ve been away from a place for a while, you start to confuse what life is really like there with the streotypes and your adamant defense against their inaccuracies. Texas is like that for me. I wish I could make people feel what its like there without relying on the preconceived imagination. It’s the kind of place where you can drive for eight hours without passing through a city that warrants a dot on a national map, where an insurance man from Dallas can lease 650 acres of dirt and limestone just to shoot dear twice a year, where you work out of your virtual office in NYC through an internet satellite feed in your aluminum trailer that serves as your campsite, where you communicate between deer stands with your Blackberry. I said “it’s the kind of place”, as if there were others like it that fit into a similar genus and species, but there’s not. It’s just Texas.

I saw this because I went hunting there over thanksgiving break for the first time. Well, technically, I went last year as well, but spent the entire time in the local ER after cutting my eye open on the scope’s recoil during target practice. This was the first time I went when I actually got to shoot at anything besides an aluminum can. The man who was hosting us on his deer lease had seen a really large dark buck that he wanted my dad to shoot. He had prayed to God for the strength to not shoot it so that his pastor, my dad, would have the opportunity. God had answered. That’s a lot of pressure if you’re my dad.

On the first afternoon, my dad went into the stand where our host had promised the buck would be. Sure enough, as my dad crawled through the hatch, he saw the buck foraging on the edge of the brush. By the time he was set up to take a shot, it had disappeared. Our host’s description did not exaggerate the size or color of this buck.

Quickly my dad sent a message to our host with his blackberry.

“I saw him, but was unable to get a shot off” *send*

Within the minute he got a response, but from an unknown number.

“Who is this?”

“Who is this?” *send*

“I’m serious, I need to know who this is.”

“Jim Hennesy, why?” *send*

“Who are you going to kill? I’m freaking out here.”

My dad had mistakenly sent his message to some poor teenage girl’s cell phone, and I imagine the five minutes that it took to clear things up must have been the most adrenaline filled five minutes of her life.

The next morning, we rose half an hour before sunrise to make sure we were in place when the deer started feeding. Our host’s alarm echoed through the aluminum walls, but he didn’t show. He has diabetes, so my dad, slightly panicked banged on his door. “Jimmy! You ok?”. Unintelligible grumbling ensued. “Wha- Who…” He stumbled out of the door.

“I had a rough night last night, ya’ll.” And he looked it.

“My blood sugar started dropping in the middle of the night so I stumbled out to the fridge to grab a Dr. Pepper. I drank the whole thing down, but it had this funny gritty taste. Stumbling back to my bed I slept the rest of the night through. When I woke up there was this here bottle of steak marinade sitting in the sink, completely empty.”

I did shoot a deer that afternoon. It was a clean shot right through the heart. It died instantly and painlessly. It took me three shots though as the first two missed clean. I figure a deer that let’s you shoot at it three times has it coming.

My dad offered to smear the blood of my first deer on my face and shoulders, the way his grandfather did to him. I declined, feeling rites of passage like that have probably lost their meaning at 26, and it would be harder to explain to my urban yankee vegetarian friends. One of them asked me how it felt, shooting a deer. The best I could come up with was that it felt like losing your virginity, where it feels good mostly because you know that you’ll never have to worry about what the first one will feel like again.

Currently Reading The Heart of Islam: Enduring Values for Humanity By Seyyed Hossein Nasr see related

suffer the children

I took a summer job as a maintenance guy at playground in the neighborhood. I'm still working there and its November thanks to some sort of glitch in the city's excessively glitchy computers. The playground bears the name of three children of Irish-American immigrants who died fighting a war on the continent their parents tried to escape.

I spend most of my time there picking up plastic water bottles and the leftover tobacco from freshly carved blunts, or painting over vandalism, the kind of scribbled hatred that makes thirteen-year-olds feel strong.

 One night I was there taking the trash to the corner while some playground all-stars were having a spontaneous dunk competition on our less-than-10 ft. goal. When they were finished, they slowly scattered in a smattering of random insults and plans for when they would meet again. One of the young men, while chatting over his shoulder, pulled down his mesh shorts, and began to piss on the side of the court. "Excuse me..." I called out, "I have a key to the bathroom." While being sure to take the time to fully relieve himself he responded. "Man, this is North Philadelphia. Know where you're at."

 And I tell you that story so that you know were I'm at.

 A couple of weeks ago, an artist who lives in the community finalized a project she had been working on for months. It is a larger-than-life sculpture that proudly displays the nickname of the playground, "Pop's", surrounded by giant flowers, and disproportionately larger hummingbirds. The brilliant flowers, of all colors, so long as it starts with "bright", are made from used laundry detergent bottles, the leaves and hummingbirds, from corrugated plastic signs that used to declare what type of cloned corn seed was used what particular field. Everything except the paint was reclaimed from the vast amounts of waste that is buried or burned every day.

 While this might all sound a bit kitsch, the piece was never meant to hang from the walls of a gallery. It will never be shown in any art periodicals. In fact, the only people who will ever really see it, are the kids who threaten to tear it down, or the occasional couple whose domestic dispute spills out into the playground yard. But if those kid's threats are ever realized, and the giants birds do come down, they will descend like the holy dove, and everyone should listen to hear if a voice declares who the true sons and daughters of God are, because I have a feeling they play there all the time.