I Lie About Bricks

[from 12/29/10]

This will be almost my worst column ever. Isn’t it good to know that now? That’s how I feel. Get it over with.

I have multiple excuses. There’s a world-wide recession going on. The Earth just turned on its axis. I’m writing this on Christmas Eve, and I’m being pummeled by Christmas music.

Worse, through all of that, I’m working at Real Change today. Real Change vendors live on their daily earnings so we can’t close the office two days in a row. Reality sucks. So I have to be here making sure the papers are available.

Worse than worse, through all that, Anitra “Ooo -- Let’s Keep This Pretty Brick Forever” Freeman and I have landed a new apartment together, and have been having to move out of our old studios. Thus, my life is now an endless repetition of putting Anitra bricks in milk crates, putting milk crates on shopping carts, and lugging shopping carts the 4 blocks uphill to the new digs. When I am not working at Real Change. Or writing. this. next. word. Anitra keeps thousands of painted bricks. I’m not lying one bit. Or did I just? Ha, ha! Yes.

With all that going on, I’m supposed to make some fun while drawing out one or two cogent comments reflecting upon politics, the environment, society, the condition of modern personhood, family values, and/or homelessness, without having a permanently debilitating emotional breakdown.

OK. Well. Let’s see. How about politics? What do you think of the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell? How long have I been whinging on about that? Isn’t it great that I’ll stop now? That’s cogent. Note to Congress: Don’t any of you dare come around asking for a pat on the back for it. You all took too long.

Great. We’re making progress. Now, what can I say about the environment?

This reminds me of a true story. When I was 13 I had something they called “social studies” in what they called “Junior High School” at the time. I was put on a panel of students to make a group presentation to the class on the issue of nuclear fallout from nuclear weapons testing. My specific assignment in the group was to report on the dangers of Strontium-90 in the environment to people. I studied my topic to death.

My entire prepared presentation on Strontium-90: “Strontium-90 is a radioactive isotope of Strontium which has chemical properties similar to Calcium which is why the body absorbs much of it into bones where it is liable to cause bone cancer and leukemia.”

Then the teacher said, “Yes, go on. What happens then?”

“You die.”

That story is all I can think of to say about the environment at this time. Take it as allegorical in applying it to present conditions.

Speaking of present conditions, in human society news, I’m being told Lady Gaga is a guy. No way! Stop messing with me.

I don’t even know what “the condition of modern personhood” means, and past-Wes wrote it less than an hour ago. Past-Wes is always making trouble for me. I think he does drugs. Modern personhood indeed. What, like people have evolved just because we have computers?

Family values. Well, let’s see, a Seattle P-I story last week announced that “more than 21,000 homeless students go to school in Washington state,” an increase of 5% over the previous year. That can’t be good for the perpetuation of family values. Would somebody get on that right away? Thanks.

I just talked about homelessness and family values at the same time, so I get to tick both off the list! We’re done, except for a gratuitous exercise.

Exercise for the reader

Load up a shopping cart with two hundred pounds of bricks, or two hundred pounds of marshmallows, or a ten stone bag of cats. Push it uphill four blocks. Imagine you were homeless and that was all the belongings you had. Pretty realistic exercise, actually.

Nuclear Families Explode

Time for another installment in our epic History of the Poor! Today's chapter concerns homelessness and the breakdown of the nuclear family.

Periodically, I read other people's opinions. Usually, it's by accident. My eyes are open, writing is in front of them, and I read it, mistaking it for a recipe for soda crackers. Suddenly I am shocked to find myself immersed in an alien world-view. The other day someone stuck a lament for the nuclear family in front of me.

It went like this: "In my day the nuclear family was strong. Mothers stayed home and took care of the kids. Dads put food on the table. They instilled their children with values, and the children always had a home. We didn't have youth homelessness in those days, because kids weren't estranged from their parents."

According to this lament, the nuclear family was the normal family until Roosevelt and the New Deal began destroying it.

Well, I got news for all these lamentators. Even the term "nuclear family" only dates to just after WW II. It's true there have been nuclear families since prehistoric times, here and there, but they have not been the norm.

Prior to WW II there were "families." Lets review, then, the history of families.

The word "family" comes from the Latin familia. It's the same word that "familiar" comes from, as in black cats and all. It meant servant or assistant. "You can undress in front of Grovulus; he's just one of our familiars." Since Rome was patriarchal, the wife and children were familiars to the ruling patriarch, who could therefore sit around in his skivvies all day long. So the family consisted of the patriarch, his wife, their children, their children's children, and whoever else he owned.

Variations, some matriarchal, of this scheme are called extended families. The extended family, not the nuclear family, is the norm among those cultures that have low rates of homelessness. If you want to blame homelessness on a breakdown of families, you have to lament the replacement of the extended family by the nuclear family, rather than the breakdown of the nuclear family. By the time the nuclear family has replaced the extended family social disintegration is inevitable, because the nuclear family sucks.

I'll explain that below. But first, why do people think the nuclear family is the norm? The reason is corporatism. The rise of corporate power and the establishment of legal rights for corporations, overwhelming the rights of human individuals, led to the geographical breakup of extended families. Employees faced choices such as lose work or relocate to the new plant. Mergers and corporate restructures that served only stock holders and management added to the problem. There might not be a new plant to relocate to; somebody still has to move out to find work in another county or another state.

At first these pressures were minor and rare. But they increased steadily, so much so that the breakup of extended families has become a part of our tradition.

Recent US Census data on internal migration shows that one out of every five people living in the United States over the age of one year lived in a different state one year before. Another one out of five lived in the same state, but a different county. With that kind of mobility there's no hope of reinventing extended families anytime soon.

We think nuclear families are the norm because corporations promote them. They don't want us nostalgic for extended families. They like us mobile and fluid. So corporations have used images of nuclear families in the majority of their advertising since Sears Catalogs. The propaganda has worked.

As for nuclear families sucking? Well, it took corporations, a massive civil war, a couple of massive depressions, a Dust Bowl, and two world wars to shatter the extended family. Whereas nuclear families collapse every day from their own inadequacy.

You can't expect a husband and wife team to handle that much stress alone.

Clicker Heaven

I'm like a little boy with a brand new red wagon and a wagon-load of fat puppies! I could play forever with www.usa.gov, my new toy.

It's the U.S. Government's Official Web Portal, and all you need is that address, a connection, a clicker and a click-displaying device (computer) and you have the entire mad, mad, world of government at the finger-tips of your choice. Just now I was in the site index, and I had an urge to go to "F". From "F", I went to Family Issues. I wondered what my government knew about Family Issues.

WELL, my government knows a LOT about Family Issues! It knows how to adopt children, how bad college drinking is, and how to Be Food Safe during Easter and Passover meals. It knows about "Girlpower!" (harnessing girls 9 to 13.) It knows how many mothers there are in Mississippi. If you are a female "of child-bearing age" in Mississippi, i.e. 15-44, odds are 68 to 32 you are a mother! It's only 56 to 44 anywhere else! Ladies, if you don't want to get pregnant don't go to Mississippi!

My government knows that every year 4 million American women have babies, and 425,000 of them are 15-19. Did you know that the most popular day to have a baby is Tuesday? Your government has found that out with your tax penny, and it's generously sharing that information on its big Family Issues page. It's more fun than I ought to have.

My destination was, of course, the Family Planning and Birth Control link, because I wanted to learn how abstinence could help all my Real Change friends stop popping babies out every other Tuesday. But I got distracted by the Fun Stuff for Kids link. You have all got to see this if you haven't already. Just go straight to www.kids.gov/k_funstuff.htm. It is so awesome! Maybe everybody SHOULD have kids, so all this stuff could get full use!

There's the Barney Cam, which has the "Miss Beazley's Christmas" video. There's Art Zone from the National Gallery of Art, which has cool interactive art you can do online, there's a Garfield Comics Creator, there's an Our Day with the Coast Guard Coloring Book you can print out, or just read for fun, ...

Discipline, discipline! I must stick to the task at hand. No more babies, no more babies. I remind myself of all the emails with the baby pictures, the long video of the cute incident in the park, being dragged aside to see the new screen saver with kid number one, or was it number two? Do they have numbers or names? I've forgotten. Must dam off the baby flood! Even though the Coast Guard might have an exciting career waiting for each and every one of them, provided he or she has coastal water-based talents.

Finally I clicked on Family Planning and Birth Control and COOL BEANS! Pretty pictures of all-different colored condoms! I clicked below the condoms on the Teen Sexual Health link because I know that if we can stop teens from having kids that'll be 10.6% of the way to solving the problem. From there I clicked on the START HERE link, because where else would I?

That got me what I wanted. My government, speaking roundabout through the Nemours Foundation, which was founded by a rich man, Alfred duPont, in 1936, says 15 out of 100 couples that use condoms will have a pregnancy in a year. Which is known to be true, if you use the condoms incorrectly.

Whereas, 0 out of 100 couples that use abstinence will have a pregnancy in a year. Which is also known to be true, if you use the abstinence perfectly. If you use the abstinence incorrectly, no one can say what will happen.

My problem was solved. I knew I could count on my government to tell me how to lie most effectively.

[Picture: Only listen to government approved doctors!]

Nonconsensual Induced Retching Is Wrong

This probably won't be one of my cheerful columns, because the last few days I have been preoccupied with varieties of violence. It just seems like everywhere I look someone is engaging in some sort of violence. Sometimes it's physical and obvious like the wars in the middle and not so middle easts. Or you've got stupid mailbox bombing violence. Other times it's psychological and social violence right around here.

The funniest example of the latter appeared in Saturday's Times in the, erk, Dilly Dally Alley.

Come to think of it, right there, calling the comics pages the Dilly Dally Alley -- there's some psychosocial violence in that, isn't there? When did that start? What were they thinking? It's like those silly names some restaurants give to menu items so you can't order anything without sounding stupid. "We'd like one Dilly Willy Burger and two Dally Pally Patty Melty Welties. Oh, and Alley-Size those please." Inducing retching is a form of violence that doesn't get all the attention it deserves.

OK, but that wasn't what annoyed me Saturday. What annoyed me Saturday was the "guest" strip, Lola.

As best as I can tell, Lola is meant to be an endearingly crotchety woman of advanced years, who goes around saying endearingly crotchety things that are meant to be amusing. I don't know, I don't usually read it, but Saturday's strip caught my attention because of the appearance of a homeless stereotype, a bench-sitting bearded knit-cap-wearing shopping-cart-near-by guy, "Carl."

Lovable Lola establishes her inherent goodness at once by asking Carl if he is ready to go to church. Carl says, "Can't -- I've got a hangover," thereby rounding out the constellation of the stereotype and providing that hook that every good strip needs, making us want to read more.

In the next panel, Lola sets up the gag by saying, "You're becoming like family, Carl..." The figures are inked over to encourage the reader to hurry on to the zinger. And there it is in the last panel: Lola turns her back to Carl, and says, "I know, because sometimes I feel like smacking you."

Ha, ha! She meant THAT kind of family. She meant the kind of family where she is the one in power and she gets to hit the other members of the family and get away with it. Isn't that hilarious?

No, it isn't. It also isn't hilarious to suggest that an appropriate way to draw an alcoholic homeless man into mainstream community is to threaten him with violence if he doesn't go to your church with you.

An even subtler kind of violence has been becoming popular in, of all places, Seattle's social service workers and those connected with them. Some of the people who are in favor of proposed changes to the Noel House mission are resorting to a rhetoric that includes specifically attacking the idea of a homeless community.

Ordinarily, attacking an idea is not what I would call an act of violence.

But the idea under attack in this case is the idea that the people who are most affected by the proposed changes form a people at all. By destroying this idea, supporters of the Noel House changes would forever deny the homeless women who live at Noel House or any other homeless any right ever to speak on their own behalf.

If there is no community then there is no voice. If there is no voice, then you might as well have clipped tongues. Stealing people's voice is always an act of violence.