Category: Intemperance

a tale of two camps

Here’s an interesting juxtaposition: from Minnesota Public Radio, the 55th anniversary of the burning of Swede Hollow:

Some people thought of it as a sort of stopping off place on their way to greater prosperity, but for a lot of people it was the place where they lived. So, you paid five dollars a year for a right to live in that Swede Hollow. Early immigrants who came there, settled there. Some of them worked at the Hamm’s brewery just above, some worked in construction in St. Paul. There’s some indication that some of those Swede Hollow people helped build James J. Hill’s House.

And from the New York Times, a photo essay about an immigrant camp perched on the bluffs above Union City, New Jersey:

“I was shocked that people could live like this so close to a great city like New York,” she said. “I wondered: How did they live? What were their days like?”

What’s the difference between these two shanty towns? Besides half a continent, half a century, and a few shades of skin color, not a thing. Swede Hollow (and the Irish camp nearby, Connemara Patch; Minneapolis had the Bohemian Flats on the west bank of the Mississippi) have taken on a gauzy layer of nostalgia, and upstanding people can proudly trace their immigrant roots to such hardscrabble settlements. But the similarities are much greater than the differences.

The piece on Union City’s camp notes that it has “been there for decades”; much as we would like to imagine that shanty towns are a new development of our current economic distress, they’re a much more systemic phenomenon. Where there’s a need for cheap labor–whether to build a railroad monopolist’s mansion by the cathedral, or to clean a hedge fund manager’s Manhattan apartment–there will be off-the-grid, casual camps for people who can’t afford more than discarded tarps and tar paper. The powers-that-be regard them with a wink and a nod, at least until they become more inconvenient than the laborers they house are worth.

Stop kicking people when they’re down

Barbara Ehrenreich, as always, hits the nail on the head in her observations on the tenth anniversary of Nickel and Dimed:

So what is the solution to the poverty of so many of America’s working people? Ten years ago, when Nickel and Dimed first came out, I often responded with the standard liberal wish list — a higher minimum wage, universal health care, affordable housing, good schools, reliable public transportation, and all the other things we, uniquely among the developed nations, have neglected to do.

Today, the answer seems both more modest and more challenging: if we want to reduce poverty, we have to stop doing the things that make people poor and keep them that way. Stop underpaying people for the jobs they do. Stop treating working people as potential criminals and let them have the right to organize for better wages and working conditions.

Our most recent round of political ineptitude (both nationally and in Minnesota) is leading us down a path of meanness, in both senses: both stingy and malicious. Ehrenreich has also observed that “America’s substitute for decent wages has been easy credit,” but of course that all dried up a couple of years ago.

What to do about the immiseration of the working class (I suppose I’m sounding like an old Marxist again …) has not been on the priority list of either party for many years. Indeed, the policies that both parties agree on tend to maximize rather than minimize the immiseration.

I for one am glad that Ehrenreich’s books (Bright-Sided and Bait and Switch are worthy companions to Nickel and Dimed) are still out there, but I’m very sorry that they’re even more timely than ever.

The pith o’ sense, an’ pride o’ worth, are higher rank than a’ that.

While I certainly wish the young Windsor couple all the happiness in the world, I do think any royal pomp deserves a Robert Burns poem in response.

A Man’s a Man for A’ That

by Robert Burns

Is there for honesty poverty
That hings his head, an’ a’ that;
The coward slave – we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a’ that!
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
Our toils obscure an’ a’ that,
The rank is but the guinea’s stamp,
The man’s the gowd for a’ that.

What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, an’ a’ that?
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
A man’s a man for a’ that.
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
Their tinsel show, an’ a’ that,
The honest man, tho’ e’er sae poor,
Is king o’ men for a’ that.

Ye see yon birkie ca’d a lord,
Wha struts, an’ stares, an’ a’ that;
Tho’ hundreds worship at his word,
He’s but a coof for a’ that.
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
His ribband, star, an’ a’ that,
The man o’ independent mind
He looks an’ laughs at a’ that.

A price can mak a belted knight,
A marquise, duke, an’ a’ that;
But an honest man’s aboon his might,
Gude faith, he maunna fa’ that!
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
Their dignities an’ a’ that,
The pith o’ sense, an’ pride o’ worth,
Are higher rank than a’ that.

Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a’ that,)
That Sense and Worth, o’er a’ the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an’ a’ that.
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
That man to man, the world o’er,
Shall brithers be for a’ that.

I’m hungry. I’m bored.

Groupon sounds kind of like a whiny nine-year-old on Spring Break during a snowstorm.

I’ve been encouraging the boys to earn their “living room survival merit badge” (because they’ve expressed great interest in the wilderness survival merit badge, but so far aren’t showing quite the fortitude they’ll need to be turned loose in the woods overnight with a pocketknife, a tarp, and a pocket full of crackers). I worry that the smart-phone powered Groupon Now is going to make my Scout leader job a little tougher.

The New Nihilism

In any democratic political system, but especially in one with divided powers, no compromise means no governance.

The Republicans’ Radical Nihilism

I didn’t write it

The new book about Obama, that is. This “O”, not that one (which I also didn’t write, though both are pseudonymous/anonymous in nature; I haven’t actually read either, and am unlikely to do so). I say this not because anyone has asked, of course, but because I find the Simon & Schuster instructions about not disclosing that one didn’t write it a little annoying:

You may be asked to comment on whether or not you are the author. If so, it would be great if you refrained from commenting, in solidarity with the principle that a book should be judged on its content and not on the perceived ideology of its author.

I’m all for solidarity–it is, after all, part of my “perceived ideology”–but solidarity with Simon & Schuster isn’t quite what I have in mind. It would be kind of neat if there were a global “I am not Spartacus!” moment on this topic. Vive la Revolución!

Right on, Mr. Sullivan!

She can only win in a hugely polarized country. She has as little support outside the Republican base as she has a cult following within it. And she has decided that this occasion for introspection is actually an opportunity to double down.

Andrew Sullivan

Thinking sociologically about the Tucson shooting

The attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords, and the murder of six people at Giffords’ “Congress on Your Corner” event on Saturday, has weighed heavily on me all weekend. This is partially a very personal response: the little girl who was murdered was only two weeks younger than my sons, and sounds very much like the boys’ classmates: smart, inquisitive, and full of life. And a “Congress on Your Corner” is exactly the sort of event I’d take my Cub Scouts to; anything that makes government close and personal is a good way to introduce kids to politics.

I’ve also been mulling over the shooting, and the responses to it, from a sociological perspective. There will be, in the coming weeks, much psychologizing of Jared Lee Loughner, the young man who likely committed this crime: a portrait of a troubled mind, possibly clinically so, will emerge, and the psychological answer–”He did it because he’s crazy”–will become the accepted wisdom. That’s a tautology, of course: he did something crazy because he’s crazy, and the craziness of his actions are proof of his craziness. It’s a pat, though comforting, explanation, in part because it gets the rest of us off the hook: we would never do something like that because we’re not crazy, and there’s nothing we can do to prevent crazy people from doing crazy things.

It’s also not a terribly useful explanation; there isn’t much we can do with it. So I’d like to offer, dredged up from decades-old memories of my last immersion in the sociological imagination, some other thoughts that might actually be helpful. Whether sociological explanations could prevent a tragedy like this from being repeated is certainly questionable; but the standard pop-psych explanations don’t have much of a track record, either.

The social integration theory

First, cribbing a bit from both Emile Durkheim and Albert Camus: the question isn’t, “Why do people do crazy things?” The question is, “Why don’t more people do crazy things?” And the answer, I suggest, is our level of social integration.

We behave ourselves most of the time according to the norms and mores of the groups to which we belong. If we are well-integrated into a social group, we care about what others think of our actions; and we’ll curb our urges to act crazily if we fear that the people in our group will disapprove. I’m not at all surprised that Jared Loughner hasn’t been found on the member lists of any Tea Party group; I’d be very surprised to learn that he was active in any groups at all: I would predict that his ties to school, family, neighbors, and other social groups were very weak indeed. Without the brakes applied by group membership, Loughner was able to follow his urges to their logical and tragic extreme.

There’s a chicken-and-egg problem here, of course, with Loughner’s potential mental illness: was he crazy because he was unaffiliated, or unaffiliated because he was crazy? I’d suggest that it’s a vicious cycle, with one condition feeding the other; had he been better connected to other people, maybe he would have received help for his condition, or maybe the symptoms wouldn’t have presented themselves so horribly.

The sociologist’s suggestion for using this insight? Reach out. Integrate the unaffiliated. Let people know that they’re connected. Even a smile from a stranger or a kind word from an acquaintance is enough to apply some gentle persuasion to stay within the norms.

The social permission theory

Much of the analysis after the fact has focused on the violent political rhetoric of the last several years: Sarah Palin’s target map, Sharron Angle’s “Second Amendment remedies”, Michele Bachmann’s “armed and dangerous” suggestion, scores of gun and revolution signs at Tea Party events. And the people who have been responsible for this rhetoric have predictably bristled: they weren’t giving orders, they say, they were simply using metaphors. While some have tested the line between “colorful” rhetoric and incitement to violence, none have actually crossed it.

While I don’t think Jared Loughner was taking direct orders from the Tea Party in committing his crime, I do think that he was acting within the context of the overheated vitriol of the last couple years. All of the talk of guns and nooses, the misprisions of Jefferson’s “Tree of Liberty” words, have created a space in which to think about doing violence to political leaders is permissible. Even before it happened, we could imagine Loughner’s acts: indeed, it almost wasn’t even a surprise after the summer of discontent leading up to the health care vote, and the acts of vandalism that followed that vote (including vandalism directed at Giffords). The rhetoric didn’t make a crime like Saturday’s inevitable, but it certainly made it thinkable.

The blame for the effects of this sort of violent rhetoric is pretty widely dispersed. First, of course, are the people who spew it: many of them (Palin, Bachmann) ought to know better, and need to be held to account for stoking the embers of fear and anger for political gain. Also to blame are the moderates in the GOP–Steele, Boehner–who should have been imploring the fringe to tone down the rhetoric, and should have been making a reasonable case for their party’s positions instead of allowing the fringe to set the tenor of debate; and if the fringe doesn’t tone down the violent rhetoric, then they need to be shunned. The adults in the room, too, are culpable for letting the immature language go on far too long: if the news stations weren’t broadcasting the Tea Party signs, if the Sunday show talking heads were reminding us that we are a nation ruled by ballots and not bullets, if the President were giving occasional civics lessons about how democracy works, perhaps we wouldn’t have such a fetid political culture.

There will always be moral monsters who justify political violence. It would be nice if we could simply ignore them. Unfortunately, though, we can’t; the anger, fear, and manipulative lies need to be addressed. Political violence needs to be made unthinkable again: the permission to solve political disagreements with a gun must be rescinded.

Thanks, but no thanks, Williams-Sonoma …


photo by ohdearbarb

Dear Williams-Sonoma,

Hey, thanks for the e-mail thanking me for my “interest,” but I am not, in fact, interested in your Whoopie Pie Pans. At least, not “interested” in the way that would lead me ever to buy one.

My thesaurus points to “concern” as a synonym for “interest,” and maybe that’s closer, though I suppose my concerns about the Whoopie Pie Pan doesn’t really rise to that level. “Horror,” too, is a bit strong, as is “revulsion,” “disgust,” and even “aversion.”

“Puzzlement,” maybe. “Bemusement,” certainly. Basically, I had to look at your catalog’s entry for Whoopie Pie Pans because four generations of my family have been making these tasty treats for close to a century without benefit of such a device; I had to see what we’d been missing.

And to be honest, I don’t think we were missing much. It appears that the Whoopie Pie Pan is like a shallow cupcake pan. I suppose that it would make a dozen perfectly uniform whoopie pie lids, and in some kitchens that might be important. But my cupcake pan also makes muffins, and has even made miniature pot pies, whereas the Whoopie Pie Pan appears to make just whoopie pie lids, which is somewhat limiting. In my small kitchen, things need either to do one crucial task, or many important tasks, to earn their keep, and this fails on both accounts.

Uniformity of whoopie pie lids has never been a big problem for me. My whoopie pie lids come out generally round, but sometimes eliptical, and the sizes vary within a reasonable range. Part of the fun of assembling whoopie pies is trying to match lids; the fit doesn’t have to be perfect, especially if you’re generous with the filling–I’ll overlook a lot of mismatching if ample Marshmallow Fluff comes along with the oddness. The reviews on your page suggest that this isn’t a sentiment shared by all; and that’s fine: different strokes, man.

I suppose that what does trouble me, though, is that I’m getting this e-mail after I ordered some (probably over-priced but certainly cool) Star Wars pancake molds. The boys were dead set against Star Wars in all its variations until this Halloween, when they suddenly discovered Darth Vader and Obi Wan Kenobi; you can only imagine how much this pained me, since I turned eight the year the first Star Wars movie came out and it was a life-changing event. (I say this as if you already know this about me, but since you knew that I looked at the Whoopie Pie Pan, I assume you’ve ascertained quite a few things about me already through your nefarious data mining.) They’ve also been dead set against pancakes until just a week ago, when they had chocolate chip pancakes at a friend’s house–apparently pancakes with things in them are acceptable. So what better way to celebrate this sudden broadening of their worlds than chocolate chip pancakes shaped like Darth Vader and Yoda?

Anyway. I didn’t ask you to keep an eye on what else I viewed on your catalog site, nor did you ask me if it was OK, but I’m a web developer myself so I know how these things work. And if it really concerned me, I know how to block your prying eyes; if it really, REALLY concerned me, I would have bought the pancake molds in a store with cash while wearing Groucho Marx glasses. Which would have been cheaper after shipping, even with the added cost of Groucho Marx glasses.

But it is just a tiny bit creepy. I sure wasn’t expecting that e-mail.

So, good luck with your uniformly-shaped whoopie pie lids from your Whoopie Pie Pan. I’m going to stick with my ungreased cookie sheet, just like Great-Aunt Edna, and my oddly-shaped and variously-sized cookies. Sort of Charlie Brown Christmas tree cookies, if we’re going to get seasonal about it. Because Charlie Brown taught us that things made with love (and Crisco) are perfect just the way they are.

yours,
Michael

PS: I’m not sure what recipe you’re using for your whoopie pies; there are a bunch of variations on this treat that has made its way from the Amish to Northern New England and now apparently to bistros in Manhattan and London. In the spirit of the holidays, I’ll offer up mine, a long-kept family secret that has served us well over the years.

Down the Ballot: choosing those other candidates


photo by Chris Coleman (iceman9294)

I both love and loathe democracy. Love it, because, as Churchill pointed out, its the worst possible system of government except for all of the others. And loathe it, because it’s hard work.

Choosing the top-of-the-ballot candidates isn’t hard: the airwaves and blogosphere are flooded with noise about the Minnesota governor’s race, and even the relatively safe DFL 5th district seat has generated some headlines because some Tea Party extremists don’t like Muslims. And the local state representatives are easy for me: I think of my state representative as the father of kids I know from after-school, park, and Cub Scouts activities, and I’ve seen my state senator enough times in the neighborhood that she’s familiar to me; I can’t say the same for either of their challengers.

But other elected positions–Water and Soil Conservation, School Board, and Three Rivers Parks–are hard ones to learn about. There’s not much information out there about the candidates, but these are potentially risky spots to overlook. Our beloved Michele Bachmann, for example, got her start in Stillwater school politics: these positions can be the springboard for scary candidates to bounce their way higher up the political ladder without the scrutiny that would stop them earlier in the process.

In trying to figure out who should get my vote tomorrow in some of these races, I’ve been relying on whatever endorsements I can find, on the assumption that an organization won’t endorse someone who might besmirch their name. And an endorsement from someone with whom I disagree can be as useful as an endorsement from a someone with whom I tend to be in consort.

In the latter category, a right-wing rant against Amber Collett, running for the Hennepin County Soil and Water board, clinched my vote: she has experience with Transit for Livable Communities and the TapMPLS water program, so she gets my nod.

For the other Soil and Water seat, I couldn’t find nearly as much information. Stephanie Zvan endorses David Rickert, though not resoundingly (she notes only that he has more experience than the others who are running). But she’s picked most of the top-of-the-ballot names I plan to vote for, so I’m reasonably sure that Rickert isn’t a nutcase, so I’ll probably vote for him. (Faint praise, no?)

The Three Rivers Park seat is a tougher one for me. The incumbent, Mark Haggerty, made some news last spring when he opposed the park district’s plan to stop selling bottled water:

I don’t like government and I don’t like being told what to do. I don’t think we should stop selling plastic bottled water until we have an alternative.

Putting aside for a moment the wisdom of the bottle ban (and I do think it’s wise: there are lots of reasons that bottled water is a bad idea): “I don’t like government”? WTF?

If you “don’t like government,” what are you doing in government? This attitude puts me in mind of Thomas Frank’s The Wrecking Crew, in which anti-government ideologues make their arguments against good government into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Add to that the fact that Mr. Haggerty’s campaign domain redirects to his law firm’s web site, and this has all the hallmarks of someone who’s against the whole idea of public parks running for a spot on the public park board.

And yet he has the endorsement of the AFL-CIO, many of the other board members, and DFL Rep. Sandra Peterson, playing havoc with my candidate-selection strategies. His opponent, Joan Peters, has no endorsements and no web presence; she’s a board member of the Conservation Corps, which is a point in her favor for me, but I haven’t found much else about her. What to do?

I think in this case I’m going with Joan Peters: there’s just barely enough information about her to convince me that she’s not a crackpot, and there are just enough indicators that Haggerty’s approach to the philosophy of the county parks isn’t entirely consistent with mine. I could, of course, be wrong on both counts and live to regret my choice; if so, I’ll just add it to the bitter lessons taught by the worst system of government except for all the rest.

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