Saturday, November 17, 2012

RWC and Wildfire

Once upon a time a group of musicians while enroute to Chicago sparked up a big old hog leg of what passed for weed back then. Wildfire came on the radio. Van full of smoke and grown men signing wildfire at the top of their lungs we didn't see the highway patrolman who apparently had been chasing a few miles.pulling over we calmly rolled down the windows, smoke billowing out and as the police approached to ask for I.D. His first words were sir can you please turn that shit down. We had forgotten to turn down wildfire. It got worse quickly.






Friday, November 16, 2012

Dear Paula, ...A message from the Universe

The Top 10 things about time and space, Paula, that most people seem to forget...

10. You chose to be here and you knew what you were doing.

9. There are no "tests" and you're not being judged.

8. Everyone's doing their best, with what they know.

7. You already have whatever you're looking for.

6. You are of the Divine, pure God, and so is everyone else.

5. Religion needs spirituality; spirituality does not need religion.

4. You're naturally inclined to succeed - at everything you do.

3. You happen to life, life does not happen to you.

2. Order, healing, and love belie every moment of chaos, pain, and fear.

1. Following your heart is the best way to help others.

The truth shall set you free,
    The Universe

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Elections Reflections

Yesterday,  Mitt Romney and Kid Rock (what the fuck is up with that?) rallying 20 minutes north up I-75, in West Chester, Ohio.

At the same time, the same day,  20 minutes south down I-75,  Barack Obama and Stevie Wonder, (thereby winning the cooler than contest) are wooing voters in downtown Cincinnati.  

Today, I hear tell of Laurence Fishburne sightings down at election headquarters getting out the vote.  It's as if Horton has heard the Who's yelling from Ohio.

It's two days before the presidential elections and I am reporting to you from beautiful Cincinnati, Ohio, in what turns out to be "ground zero" in this years political race.  Two of our counties, Hamilton and Butler, have been identified as the swing areas that could decide who wins the election of 2012.

As well it should be.

Hamilton County and Butler County are separated by just 10 miles down the I-75 corridor.  Cincinnati is located in Hamilton County, but the northern suburbs are located in Butler County, known as Mason/West Chester, Ohio.  It is absolutely striking how two places, so close to each other in miles, could be so different in political mind sets.

When the 1960's finally rolled around to Southern Ohio, sometime late in the 1970's, Cincinnati residents fled north from the city as it became more progressive (a big word for any part of Ohio), along with the urban blight that accompanied the changing economy of that decade.

Cincinnati has always been a contrast of black and white, always polarized, and frankly, somewhat confused by the recent influx of other ethnicities.  Our lines had always been very clear, up until the last few decades or so.

You have to understand that Cincinnati, while the gateway to the south, is also, usually, a decade behind the rest of the world.  Just ask Mark Twain. Up until the last 20 years, the regions idea of ethnic food was 16,000 Chinese restaurants.  Sushi didn't arrive until the mid-eighties.

If Cincinnati is ten years behind, that would make its northern sibling, Mason/West Chester, at least 20 years behind. It remains solidly republican, conservative, and homogenous, which is my nice way of saying very, very white.

These are the children of the generation that jumped up the social latter during the great manufacturing years, when Ohio ruled the world in steel production and automotive superiority.  This is where the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, a crazy mix of conservative rebellion and alcoholic melt down, comes to us from.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama chose to save the auto industry, thus saving the bread and butter of thousands and thousands of Ohio workers.  At the same time, conservative voters tend to have short memories, except when thinking fondly of the 1950's, and will forever yearn to bring the sensibilities and social structures of those day back.  Down south, in the Queen City, we seem to have acknowledged, finally, that times move on, and the only constant in life is change.

Suddenly, we are like the ugly girl that came back from summer vacation transformed and finds herself to be the belle of the ball.  Never have I been courted so intimately for my vote.  Ohio is the perfect breeding ground for indecision, and that makes us hot.

For me, November 6th, election day in the United States, can't get here quick enough.  I'll check back in with you later.


Thursday, October 4, 2012

My Favorite Uncle Bill

By my favorite Aunt Binnie: 
Everybody loved William. He was a man of great loving kindness, integrity, and generosity of heart. His life was dedicated to being a loving support for all those he encountered, not only in his family but every human being. He was the most successful man any of us ever knew. A light has gone out for us all. 
 
William K. Williams was born in Childress, Texas on July 30, 1925, and came to live with his mother’s family in Hypoluxo, Florida, in 1930. He worked charter boats out of the Boynton inlet, and at seventeen was in Germany, liberating prisoners from concentration camps, mines and chicken coops. His feet were frozen in the snow, which affected the rest of his life. He came back determined to contribute to a world where such things could never happen again. 


He earned a Bachelor’s degree from Drew Theological Seminary, and a Master’s from the University of Miami, and became a Methodist minister. He was the first head of the Florida Council on Human Relations under Leroy Collins, who called him in as a mediator when there were lynchings and cross-burnings in Florida towns, and he circuit-rode the state building an organization that would bring better understanding between the races.


He later became Asst. Director of the Illinois Council on Human Relations, headquartered in Chicago and being sent in to exploding communities from Chicago to Cairo, training State Police in humane riot control, mediating in race relations and enforcing human rights laws. The Governor of Illinois sent him to investigate complaints by students against the University of Illinois, and the President of the University of Illinois asked him to come on his staff to implement the suggestions he made. Through the ‘60s he was the University’s expert on race relations and student activism, responsible for the Urbana campus, the Chicago Circle, and the Medical School campus.


When he and his wife decided to move back to Florida to build a boat and he tried to resign, Black student protestors submitted a demand to the University that “William K. Williams be retained in a high executive capacity to deal primarily with Black people.” The faculty senate also voted to ask him to stay. Mr. and Mrs. Williams decided to stay and build the boat there on a Midwest farm, and the University created the office of Ombudsman for him. 


Five years later, with a navigable hull completed and quieter campuses, Mr. and Mrs. Williams and their children went down the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers to the Gulf, and eventually built a coastal trading business around the west coast of Florida and the Bahama out islands, taking goods to families with a lot of children and no money, trading for handmade and natural goods that the Williams sold at docks around the Florida coast, including Bradenton. They were shipwrecked and wiped out in 1984, and after a year back in the Keys to start over they came and settled in Bradenton.

Saturday, June 2, 2012

Middle Managers, The Real Proletariots

When I was thirteen, Tam Tam and I got our first official jobs at the Baskin and Robbins in our neighborhood. It wasn't my first job, that would be the babysitting and snow shoveling I had been doing since I was nine. Looking back on it, who the hell hires a nine year old to babysit anyway? It must have been a very innocent time, or, more likely, nine year olds were the only people willing to work for fifty cents an hour.

Thirty years later, with no break in employment, just changes in employers, I consider myself an authority on bosses and suck ups. Some of my best stories involve them. If anyone ever asks you to become a middle manager, you should consider it an insult. If you don't, well, then you're perfect for the job.

The middle manager is a special breed, and the worst of all bosses. They are both boss and suck up, the latter being a prerequisite for the former. Companies love to take fairly dim witted personalities and make them into middle managers because of their never ending ability to say "yes" to everything. Middle managers have no idea that this is what's happening, but don't try to tell them because they'll make you their new project.

The average middle manager never manages work, only people. They consider breaking spirits and working out their baggage from childhood as part of the job. If they could manage work, they wouldn't be middle, they would be top, which most middle managers never become. When a suck up accidentally makes it to the upper echelon of management, it is generally a disaster. I'm pretty sure this is why most managers are "at will" employee's. Since most of them never make it to the top, they are the most bitter of bosses.....and dammit, you're all gonna pay!

As soon as a new middle manager says "we need to be good soldiers" you know it can only go downhill from there. This translates into "jump off this roof for me because I told you to", never mind the fact that the fall will kill you. They fixate on one employee after the other because it's the only way they can look productive because they really don't know how to do anything else. Middle managers are the true proletariats in our society. Just tell them that they're smarter than everyone else and give them an office where they can play some nice music and they're good to go.

Some suck ups never become middle managers. These are the ones that enable middle managers to feel good about how important they are, and are rewarded with salaries that far outreach their usefulness. The suck ups ruin others by gossip and innuendo, thereby providing the middle manager with a steady stream of scape goats. This allows the middle manager an ally in their stupidity. Non manager suck ups tend to be just smart enough to be dangerous to anyone the works closely with them.

Don't get me wrong, I have met brilliant managers, and I can always tell who they are because they don't fit into this description. But these are few and far between and never stick around long. Companies generally recognize these individuals and promote them out of middle management quickly. If you have been a middle manager for three years or more, it's probably all you'll ever be. The Peter Principle, which says that some people get promoted based on their inertia as opposed to their usefulness, was created in regard to middle managers.

I am creating an entire new label category for bosses and suck ups, because I've known so many of them. Most of them don't like me anymore than I like them, and when they delude themselves into believing that they're the ones that will finally "tame the shrew", it always results in great stories and never ending hilarity.

Feel free to leave comments about your favorite idiot bosses and suck ups, of which I'm sure you've known many. If nothing else, you'll know you're not alone.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Fascinating Rhythm

fascinating rhythm 
of the fickle missy lady
with all the wiles 
and random piles 
of an adolescent's room decor
pink and overstuffed
with self important puffery
and enough effulgence
to give indulgence
a Baroquish splendor plume
while she manufactures
attractions yet anew
with words she presses
along with dresses
on her giant loom
what does it spell
who does it mean
and in between you smell
the waft of cloudy notion
and the fog of certain doom

~Gary McGurk

Monday, January 9, 2012

The Church of Your Self is Steam


"I never loved another person the way I loved myself."
~Mae West

Watching people is one of the few things that can hold my attention for more than 36 seconds. Sometimes I forget that I am not invisible and they can see me too. Eye-contact is not part of my people watching, totally ruins the show.

Having watched my favorite story, "The Peep Show", for years now, I've begun to notice the reruns. It's the same storyline, over-and-over, the human struggle for self-esteem.

What worries people the most is how they are perceived by others, the benchmark for normal. What their friends think. What their co-workers think. What their neighbors think. This is the stuff that fills the bottom of our luggage.

Do you want to be normal or do you want to be happy? Imagine if you really knew your true essence, the steam that runs your soul. You would have so much time on your hands to think of other things. Is that a bad thing?

Organized religion has no bedside manner and is therefore of no help. All this "if you do this, that will happen...it you don't do this..." etc., scaring the crap out of me. That's just so much negativity and it wears a person down.

So, I'm considering starting my own church and it's called "The Church of Your Self is Steam". All of my sermon's will consist of me looking at you and saying "You are good, you are beautiful, and you are worthy of happiness just the way you are". If you attend long enough, you will start to believe me, and then you won't need to attend at all. Religion should be like good therapy.

Try to remember: Your self is steam, with no boundaries. Steam can not be molded, and that's what makes you who you genuinely are. If you allow other's to dictate your worth, your steam will turn to water. Once your essence turns to water, someones gonna freeze you into shaped ice. That'll make you a frozen dog at someone else's salvation, and nobody wants that.

So there you have it.