THE WORKING POOR

baja rock



Yesterday I brought Jr's birdfeeder home. I asked Harry, who is living in Jr's house, if he's using the birdfeeder that stood on a post outside the big window by the dining table. He said he'd taken it up and it was lying on the ground next to the house so he wouldn't have to mow around it. He said, Sure, go get it. He also had a bag of bird seed he'd never opened, which he sent along with the birdfeeder. To my eye, it looks like something ancient Japanese, simple lines, wooden little house so old it has lichen growing on the roof. The seed goes in a space between two clear plexiglas panels that show how much seed is in the reservoir. It has a squirrel guard under it too. I tried to put it far enough from trees and rhododendron to inhibit a squirrel, though I doubt it will. It doesn't matter. It keeps the ground around it covered with seed and birds pecking around in last year's fallen leaves. I put it about 4 feet from Tapo's headstone so she can dream birds. Caterpillar doesn't go outside much and doesn't hunt birds at all anymore. With only one indoor cat, it's ok to lure birds back.



In the mail today was a copy of Barbara Ehrenreich's 2001 book, Nickel and Dimed: On (not) getting by in America. I'd read about it when it was new and made a mental note I wanted to read it some day. Found it at amazon for very little and started it today. Can't stop. I've been looking for a book I can't stop reading. I need that kind of book to jump start my reading. I've been putting my focus on computer and movies and the stack of books I want to read grows taller. But not one of them pulls me into it, which I need now to get back on reading track. I find that computer thinking / watching movies thinking makes reading such a slow thing to do that when I pick up a book, it feels like walking through mud, it's so slow. Slow is where I want my mind to be. Sitting still reading feels like doing nothing, while the computer and movies, tv and radio too, give a feeling of involvement. Though when I get caught up in the fast machines is when I want to slow down in the head and read.



Barbara Ehrenreich's book involves her stepping outside her role as herself, New York writer, columnist, and pretending she's recently divorced, on her own, needs a job and a place to live, as someone without skills. In the beginning she's found restaurant jobs and motel bed changing jobs. What she's finding from the very start is the people who work for 6 and 7 dollars an hour, minimum wage, can't live on what they make and their work takes into no account their humanity. She cleaned rooms in motels. She worked with the other women and men doing whatever work she was involved in. She found the application for a Wal-mart job the most demeaning of all. They're the masters. Their employees make so little they qualify for medicare and the US government ("taxpayer") pays for the healthcare of underpaid Wal-mart employees, while the Waltons wallow in billions apiece in an underground bunker guarded above by snipers in towers. Arkansas. This is Ayn Rand's fantasy come true. The American Dream. Ehrenreich didn't tell the Wal-mart part---she'd take it for granted the reader already knows about that. It was yesterday's news yesterday.



I've wondered if we humans will take to moving underground as aboveground becomes more inhospitable stripped of its minerals, trees and water, the ground infertile after decades of oil-based fertilizer, global warming, and other horrors that accompany these. Trends often started with the rich and "trickled down" over time. In the time of Astors in New York the rich tended to be fat. Showed wealth. They could afford to eat. Now the rich are trim and the working people are fat. The rich play tennis, golf and perform other fitness conscious exercises, have personal trainers, while the working people watch tv. Trim with 6-pac abs is status. Shows you don't work for a living. As Ayn Rand imagined, the rich are moving underground with razor wire enclosures around the access hole and an army of guards with high tech like on tv. If the rich are trickling underground in the present time, a trend may follow. You're nothing if you live above ground. You're just a peasant working in fields and factories. I was picturing the move underground a mass move done in a hurry of necessity. It's looking like it will take several decades, maybe centuries. Instead of outer space conquests, I'm seeing back to donkeys, cotton gowns and sandals as the most practical way to be. Maybe not.



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PACKERS OWN STEELERS

caterpillar

Yesterday, Sunday, I watched the complete SuperBowl game between Pittsburgh and Green Bay, commercials and all. I was one of 6 redneck boys sitting around 2 pizzas, some beer and so forth. It worked out that 3 pulled for one team and 3 pulled for the other. I went into it thinking the Steelers would probably win, but pulled for Green Bay. Why? I liked the colors, green and yellow, Alleghany Trojan colors. I really didn't care which of them won the game, but a good game is an enjoyment to watch, whatever it is. Sports is the perfect activity for television. Sports are about nothing but winning, like politics. Only difference, politics pretends to be about something. Television goes so fast, it doesn't have a span of attention that allows thought, but in reaction. Sports is all fast-moving eye candy devoid of meaning but for what you see.

I only knew 2 of the guys there, had never even seen the other 3 that I can recall. Comments hopping around the place. Near the end when Green Bay intercepted a pass, the 2 other guys pulling for Green Bay jumped to their feet, YEAH. I've an idea they'd have been a lot louder had it not been for somebody there old enough to be grandparent to any of them, me. Sometimes I'd look at the picture of a grandparent sitting among these guys in their mid 20s. They didn't quite know what to make of me, and I had the same problem knowing what to make of them. The only thing I knew about where they were coming from was several generation gaps I've paid little attention to. Yet we all got along reasonably. Focused on the game, we had it in common, so generation gaps didn't have any affect on our communication, only made for minor discomfort not knowing that that you don't have to watch your language in front of this old turd. I felt like they were a bit inhibited, getting together so they can jump and holler and let the inner little boy have a chance to play. Bud Lite.

It was a tense game. Green Bay established the lead and held onto it. Pittsburgh came on in the 2nd half, but not quite enough. I've never been used to anyone listening to anything I have to say all through my life. I talk too slow for minds without attention spans to follow. You just about have to remember from one word to the next consciously. There was a moment when I said something and everybody in the room listened. Blew my mind. It was the end of the first half and everybody talking about Green Bay so far ahead Pittsburgh didn't have much of a chance. I said, "Like Steven Seagal says, Things have a way of changing real fast." It was saying "Steven Seagal" that got their attention. We've all seen games where the team behind drives ahead and wins in the second half. Every play was tight. The Green Bay quarterback got MVP. All of us thought that a little odd. My reason for thinking it odd was they said it was for 3 touchdown passes. About every play, he threw a pass. At least a hundred passes and 3 connected for td. I was surprised to see his arm hold up like it did. It was a throwing game on both sides. Consistently good plays, even the ones that failed.

Part of the thrill of the game is the long anticipated SuperBowl commercials, the unveiling of the most expensive commercials debuting that day. I used to wonder why commercials didn't use more humor, when the comic ones always received the most attention, like the Budweiser frogs and the old gal who said, Where's the beef? These commercials last night were just about all humorous. And about all of them were done in YouTube spontaneous moments, some of them the FAIL moments so popular on YouTube, like the kid on a skateboard, like the kid who tried to jump a skateboard from the roof of one building to another and missed. Those are called fails. The ads had a kind of dark edge about their humor that made them all the funnier, like the newborn baby that accidentally gets tossed face-first onto a pane of glass, sticks a moment and slides down the glass on its face. It was a rubber doll, but it still represented a baby, and very well. There was a car ad that was the equivalent of a half minute acid trip. The commercials had all of us laughing out loud.

It was like looking at YouTube every time they showed a run of commercials. Some of them didn't even seem like commercials. Mad Ave has learned that YouTube is everybody's favorite activity on a computer, besides pornography, the public television no-no. When television frees up to pornography, the SuperBowl ads will be the most popular ever. Like last night everybody in the room was waiting for the woman singing at half time to expose a boob like Janet Jackson. All agreed that was no accident. The ads also featured large numbers of people in them. The one that struck my Art button was the little boy of maybe 3 in a Darth Vader outfit going around the house opening his hands at objects attempting to do something magic. He was in the driveway in front of dad's new VW. He opened his hands at the front of the car and dad inside the house looking through a window clicked the clicker starting the car. Couldn't see the boy's face for the mask, but his surprise was visible.

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LETTERS

jeff michael of big country bluegrass



Today I've been uploading videos from the Big Country Bluegrass show onto YouTube. I've been searching for the SPBGMA, bluegrass, awards today and can't find them posted anywhere I've looked. Big Country is up for 10 awards. The one I, personally, would like to see is Jeff Michael for male vocal. There are an awful lot of good singers in bluegrass, and Jeff has recently entered the arena of the big dogs with #1 hits. He's been with the band most of it's 20+ years, singing and playing fiddle. I actually don't care what awards they receive, as long as they get at least one. They deserve at least that. I'd like to see them bring home several. Depends entirely on the judges. Judging is a subjective activity that wants to be objective using several judges, but never quite makes it. I won't argue with the system of judging music at fiddlers conventions or music award shows, because it's designed to make the judging objective as possible, given that what we have to go by, individual listeners, is subjective.



All last week I felt preoccupied by one thing and another, never got anything uploaded from Big Country Bluegrass or Skeeter & the Skidmarks. The last few days have been spent at the computer uploading music that I think is music as good as music gets. I know it's a tech revolution and thousands, millions of people are putting videos up on YouTube of music and everything else. I tend to see it an archive everybody with a computer has access to. Don't know if they'll last a year into the future, 10 years, 50 years. None of that matters. Doesn't matter if it only lasts a short time. YouTube is a living entity people are tapping into round the clock, round the world. A month or more ago I heard on radio news YouTube gets 11 million uploads a day. I like being able to archive mountain music in this way for anybody on earth who wants to see it. Mountain music is too good not to be represented among all the musics of the world. It has made "publishing" truly democratic. Anybody with a video camera of any sort can put anything on there, as long as it's decent. And that's no issue, really.



I like having a forum to get mountain music out in the open for people who want to hear it to have the chance. The music store and the radio show satisfied that longing, now putting videos on YouTube satisfies it. I wanted to be a dj in my teens. I thought it would be cool to play the latest rock & roll over the radio. I didn't do it, because I didn't know how. Didn't have resources to go somewhere and live for a spell of time going to dj school. Wasn't sure that was the world I really wanted to be in. Never got it done. So I've djed to myself over the years, buying all my music, listening only to what I like. The radio show came up because I believed it needed doing and knew I could do it. I regarded mountain music in this time in my life with the same enthusiasm I had for rock & roll in my teens. I'm the one having a ball putting these music shows up on YouTube, and none of it is about me. I attempt with every video to make it unselfconscious, no fingers pointing at me for exceptional cinematography, just the band and the music. The only fingers pointing at me would be about dreadful camera work. I don't care about either one. I like the point and shoot method, moving snapshots, a picture taken by somebody some place some time.



Like the blog, a record of somebody some place some time. I was about to say who doesn't matter, but it does. Who is part of it. Who is the living part. The rest is place and time. It just happens in my case it's me. In another case, it's someone else, someplace else and different time, though time and place could be the same and the who would make them very different. I like the democracy of the blog as much as I like the democracy of YouTube. Anyone can do it. You don't need to know how to spell right or anything. Whatever. I chose the form that suits me best, daily open letters with photographs. All the way along, I've been told by friends my real art form is the letter. The blog is a daily series of letters. Every day I write a letter to whoever is reading it. It doesn't matter who, where, when is reading it. Doesn't matter if no one reads it. Yet it does matter that a few people are reading it. I'm surprised anyone is reading with all this prose to deal with. It's for people like myself who read.



It's an interesting challenge attempting to write something worth reading every day. That was the initial intent, to write something every day worth reading. I don't know if all of the writings are, but that is my purpose, something worth reading. Only readers can determine if they're worth reading. I do my best at my end writing something worth writing. I figure if it's worth writing, it might be worth reading. My letters are my own thoughts to my readers, whoever they are, whoever happens upon them. Whoever is reading it is the one the letter is written to. I love that aspect of it. Hi. This is for you. :D



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HERO THE MOVIE

The weather goes on being steadily cold. Never a letup. The mud has dried enough that it's not slushy mudpit any more. The ruts are deep, but they don't sling mud. The ice has largely melted off the surface of Brown Road, though seems like it's still ice half an inch below the surface. Friday night I skipped driving to Woodlawn for the music at the Front Porch. The forecast was for ice rain, the temp at 31 and 32. On setting out I saw it was going to be one of those nights so black it absorbs the headlights so I can't see anything and makes oncoming headlights so bright I have to look away. It's especially disorienting between Woodlawn and this side of Galax where the cars are the thickest and I'm driving among extremely bright lights and can't see anything my lights are supposed to be shining on. Virginia doesn't keep their yellow lines and white lines on the highways very fresh, so I can seldom see them when the sky is so dark.

In Sparta, I made the decision, went to grocery store for some items, went home and called Scott at Front Porch to say I wouldn't be making it. Came home and went straight to bed. Got up in early afternoon today wanting only more sleep. Sleeping off a week of being on the run, though not objectionably. Every time I go to town, I stop at Selma's for some coffee in the morning, mocha in the afternoon. I and several others are happy to have her here. You can find Selma now on facebook at Backwoods Bean. Feeling like I didn't want to do anything but sleep some more, though wanting to be up some so I can sleep some tonight.

I put on a movie, HERO with Jet Li, Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, Zhang Ziyi, people who are big stars in Asian films. This is one of the great ones by Zhang Yimou, the director. It was made a few years after reuniting Hong Kong with mainland China. Art is waking up in China. Novels and poetry of high quality writing have been coming out of China over the last 20 or so years, recently more and more. Shanghai seems to be the art center of the new China. I've googled contemporary art museums there to see what the artists of the present are doing in China. What I see is they're coming on fast. The 21st Century is on the verge of becoming China's century. The Chinese have the potential to make 21st century art as dynamic as 20th century art has been. Liu Xiaobo received the Nobel Peace prize this year in prison. They wouldn't let him out. When Martin Luther King Jr won it, his government at home wasn't at all tickled about it, either.

The talk about the Hero in videos about the movie afterward, like Quentin Tarantino in an interview with Jet Li, and short videos on the making of the film, interviewing Zhang Yimou, and actors, calling it an action movie. Tarantino was surprised to see Zhang Yimou take on the action genre. It seems to me out of place to call this an action movie. Surely it is, because it has sword fights and million-arrow assaults, they're even the theme. Yet, where action is concerned, it's so beautiful it's something more like modern dance, like the long sword fight between two women dressed in flowing red gowns in a landscape of trees with red leaves for awhile and golden leaves for awhile, the leaves flying in the air. One of the women named Snow, the other, Flying Snow. They fly into the air, sail over the ground, in attempts to kill each other. The way it was filmed was more like it was dream reality instead of awake reality.

The time Flying Snow and Noname (Jet Li) stood on the roof of the calligraphy school fighting off the arrows of the Qin army with swords, flying around, swirling red cloth, hitting the arrows out of the air with their swords. And there was the time the two of them had a sword fight to the death, she in flowing pale blue silk twirling in the air, turning, slicing the air with her sword, giving her adversary some serious resistance. They all move like martial artists, though Jet Li may be the only one of them who is adept at the martial arts. The others learned their parts from a martial arts choreographer. Jet Li loved being in it so much he said he cried when he read the script. It was the movie he'd been hoping for. I can't contest that it was an action movie. It just didn't feel like it.

There was a bigger story going on, the unification of Our Land (China), 6 provinces that were continually at war. The emperor of Qin united them by conquering all of them. He was unpopular, a target for assassins. Jet Li was an assassin set on killing the emperor. By the time he was given the opportunity, he had come to understand the emperor's thinking and was with him. Another assassin, Broken Sword, had a swordfight with the emperor earlier in the story in a maze of yellow-green drapes of sheer silk hanging from overhead. They moved in the breeze as the men had their swordfight in that flowing dreamscape. There again, the assassin realized he was in agreement with the emperor and decided against killing him. The story had emotional depth and every scene was breathtakingly beautiful. Maybe this is the 4th time I've seen it. Every time, it has the freshness of the first time. I become so involved in the beauty of the whole production, I miss that it's an action movie. I think of it among the most beautiful movies of my life.