Working overtime

The weather gods have been really busy around here lately. I mean, jeez, going from tornado to flood to snowstorm in barely over a weekend is pretty impressive. I have a feeling extreme weather events are going to be on the menu from here on out, even in the land of climate change denial.

THE STATE OF THE STATES...could use a little work.

OCCUPY this.

MY LATEST RANT is here. Topic: prison overcrowding. Somebody has to feed the right wing trolls that lurk around the Gazette website.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

In praise of muscle memory

A chance conversation with a fellow student after karate class last night prompted me to muse once again on good old muscle memory. A karate dojo is at least in part a place where you go to develop muscle memory. Martial artists train so they don't have to think

People have all kinds of "progressive" theories of learning, but when it comes to something you are really going to use--or something on which your life or the lives of others might depend--the smart money is on drill and repetition rather than thinking. If we really did have to stop at every point and consciously deliberate over next steps, not much would get done. And a lot of it would get done badly.

Drill is a way of making something a habit. And habit is what Aristotle, "master of those who know" according to Dante, famously described in his Ethics as "second nature."

Keyboarding is a case in point. El Cabrero is ancient enough to remember when typewriters ruled the world. When I was in high school, before the personal computer revolution, I took a typing class. This was something a bit unusual for a boy to do. Thank God I did it. I'm no speed demon, but my fingers know which way to go. I can't imagine what life would have been like with the hunt and peck method. And that's just one example.

More to come.

OCCUPYING OUR MINDS. Here's NPR on the unlikely impact of an unforeseen protest movement.

AND THE WINNER IS....Here are the "insect awards" from Wired Science.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Diversity of bad ideas

Overwhelmingly but with some exceptions, participants in the Occupy movement have adopted, often explicitly, nonviolence as a method of action. However, in some places there are those who argue for "a diversity of tactics," which basically seems to consist of throwing things at cops.

Presumably such people believe that this is the best way to win over the hearts and minds of the 99 percent they claim to represent.

Sorry, but the most charitable thing I can say about that approach is that it is, in one of the Spousal Unit's favorite phrases, "dumber than dog ****." I say that not only as someone who works for a Quaker organization that promotes nonviolence, but also as a gun owning Gandhi-allergic Scotch Irish hillbilly with a black belt.

This has nothing to do with any belief on my part regarding the moral arc of the universe, the evidence for which is underwhelming to me most days. It comes down to this: as much as some seem to like throwing stuff as a method of change, the rulers generally have way more stuff to throw. And they can throw it harder. Second, most people are not all that turned on by the sight of people throwing stuff.

It seems to me but simple prudence to avoid giving one's opponent the excuse and/or ability to crush and/or totally discredit and isolate you unless there is a compelling reason to do so and I don't imagine that happens very often.

As a friend of mine once said about ultra "left" groups that engage in provocative action, "If they're not getting paid by the other side, they're getting ripped off."

IT'S MONDAY so it's gotta be Krugman bashing austerity.

HISTORY IS MESSY, so the Tennessee Tea Party wants to clean it up--by keeping slavery and such unsavory matters of American history out of the textbooks.

WHAT IS 24 MILLION GENERATIONS? If we were playing Jeopardy, that would be the number required for mouse sized mammals to evolve to elephant proportions assuming natural selection was favorable.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Has the worm turned?

Image by way of wikipedia.


I have lived most of my life in a time of widening economic inequality and have been making noise about it for a long time now. For years, it seemed like people were just getting used to it. As one of Dostoevsky's characters put it (I think it was in Crime and Punishment), "Man gets used to anything--the scoundrel."

But lately it seems like that may not be the case. More and more people are talking about it. It's front and center in political debates these days. Something weird must be up when predatory capitalism becomes an issue in the Republican presidential primary.

I think for all its quirks, the Occupy Wall Street movement deserves a lot of credit for surfacing the issue and getting it out there. The whole 99 percent/1 percent thing has become a bit of a meme, a term invented by Richard Dawkins to describe an idea or phrase that catches on.

It's still too soon to tell whether this is a sea change or a flash in the pan. But a turning worm would be nice.

THE MONEY/HAPPINESS THING discussed here.

NEED A DOSE OF ZEN? Click here.

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN on politics.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The writing on the wall

I saw a bit of graffiti today that had a Zenlike quality. It just said "Life takes time."

CLOSER TO MIDNIGHT. That would be the doomsday clock.

OCCUPATIONS. Naomi Klein discusses the future of the Occupy movement here.

TO SEE THE WORLD IN A GRAIN OF SAND. Or, to be more exact, to see the amazing biodiversity in a single scoop of sea sand.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: UNIMAGINABLE

Back in paradise, again

El Cabrero is back in WV for the first full day in a few. I had been in Philadelphia for a training for trainers on nonviolent action. Many of the people who attended were co-workers with the American Friends Service Committee around the country who had been involved to one degree or another with the Occupy movement.

It so happened that on the night after our first training, police evicted the Philly encampment, which added a certain something to the experience. I came home to find that police were going to evict Occupy Huntington WV last night.

I've always had mixed feelings about the movement. Personally, I value mobility and unpredictability so much that I would have trouble distinguishing between occupying a place and being incarcerated in it. I guess my hillbilly genes predispose me to raiding rather than occupying. The martial artist in me cannot fathom a movement without goals or specific points of focus for action; it's like swinging wildly at an opponent rather than striking vital points when openings occur.

Still, the occupiers of the world really changed the national conversation and drew attention to issues of corporate power and inequality in a way that nothing else has for a while and nobody can take that away from them.

The big question is: what's next? As winter moves on and police move in, will occupiers fade away? Will the more prosaic skills of organizing, education and action seem appealing in comparison with encamping? Who knows? It already went farther that I ever thought it would and it might have a few more surprises to come.

In any case, the struggle will continue.

TWO MORE TAKES ON THE MOVEMENT. Here's the New Yorker on the history and possible future of the movment. And here's a more critical take on it from Philly itself.

OH GOOD. Here's the latest in fun and games from former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Hard travelin'

El Cabrero is about to hit the road for a few days, so posts will be irregular for the next stretch. The good news is that this should be an interesting road trip that involves attending a nonviolence training for trainers intended for people working with the Occupy movement. I've had my share of training and being trained, but never this exact thing before.

The bad news is that air travel from and to my beloved state of West Virginia is a bit of a pain in the tuchis. On Tuesday, for example, I have to get up at 3:00 a.m. to catch a 5:30 flight. Not that I'm complaining or anything.

Meanwhile, here are a few items that caught my eye...

THESE DAYS MODERATION IS RADICAL, according to E.J. Dionne.

TAXING IDEAS. Here's Paul Krugman's latest op-ed on (real) deficit reduction.

THE NEXT CONGRESSIONAL MESS is discussed here.

AN OCCUPATION THAT NEEDS OCCUPYING: the field of economics.

AND THAT CRACKDOWN ON OCCUPY SITES...click here for more.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Loud silence

Compared to happenings in other places, the Occupy movement in West Virginia so far has been pretty tame. Not that I'm complaining. In case you missed it, here's a news story plus two videos from Occupy UC Davis. The first video shows sitting protesters being pepper sprayed point blank a by campus police officer.

The second video is even more dramatic. It features the silent protest of UC Davis chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi as she walked by students after defending the spraying. As a friend of mine put it in an email, this would be an example of "nonviolence done right."

UNLIKELY MESSENGER DEPARTMENT. Here's an item from Business Week, a periodical not generally known for its Marxist leanings, about how inequality hurts the economy.

MORE ON "creative protest" here.

A WOMAN'S PLACE is in the union. Another friend who sent me this link observed that "Among the most progressive union leaders I have worked with over the years, the women, by in large, have held out a great deal of hope for the future."

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Perfect. Not.

Today, as I was driving my car in the rain, fiddling with my iPhone, working a crossword puzzle, repairing a chain saw and playing my guitar (not really--I can't repair chain saws), a friend sent me a sadly funny series of text messages.

The first one read thus:

I just got asked if I read [Ayn] Rand.

The second read thus:

They went on to say they pick up the audio books at the library.

The third one read thus:

I said, "You do see the irony in that, right?"

(Rand didn't believe in public libraries...or pretty much public anything.)

According to my friend, the Randite in question "didn't even understand when I pointed it out." He went on to say "There is a huge disconnect in this world." Amen to that.

"OCCUPYING OUR DEMOCRACY." Here's Robert Reich on the first amendment rights of corporations and the lack thereof for some people.

MORE ON THAT here.

CLIMATE CHANGE AND WEIRD WEATHER discussed here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Moving towards motion

The one undeniable achievement of the Occupy movement is the fact that it has changed the national conversation and drawn major attention to economic inequality and the growing power of organized wealth.

All along, though, a nagging question has bothered me. It's kind of the same one that bothered me when US troops were sent to Afghanistan: what's the exit strategy? At what point does one declare victory? When and how do we move on to the next phase of the struggle? It's like the old joke of the dog that chased the car; what does it do when it gets it? Here are some thoughts about this from some people who helped start the movement.

This possible move towards mobility doesn't necessarily mean giving up all encampments, but it might entail recognition that one does not gain points just by camping out. It might be good to move at some point towards a more mobile phase, where different places are targeted for nonviolent action depending on unfolding events. Time could also be spent building stronger alliances between the upstart movement and older social justice institutions.

My reservations about static occupation are not intended as a criticism; it may be largely a matter of temperament. I value mobility above almost anything else so the idea of being tied to one spot makes me feel claustrophobic. Plus, as a person of Scotch Irish descent, I have a hereditary disposition to prefer raiding to occupying.

In any case, the challenge now is how to keep the movement fresh and let it evolve in new and exciting directions.

This is what happens when boxer dogs watch The Godfather

Sometime this past summer, when the Spousal Unit was away, I watched the Godfather movies. Apparently Edith, our boxer, was paying attention. As said Spousal Unit put it in her Facebook page yesterday,

Dogs don't get that playing Godfather isn't for everyone. (ok so it's not a horse head but stepping out of the shower to this was pretty shocking).

However, it probably had less to do with mob vendettas than with the abundance of "gifts" that hunters leave in the woods this time of year, of which this deer leg is but one example.

OCCUPYING THE HOMELESS. Here's a look at the developing and sometimes bumpy relationship between the Occupy protests and homeless people around the country.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN? Here's a look at progressive victories in this week's elections and what they may mean going forward.

SHELLACKING ON THE RIGHT. Here's E.J. Dionne on the same.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Better than Christmas

Arpad, shown here with booty from a past hunting season, is a firm believer in the generosity of the universe.

It's getting to be the favorite season of Arpad, Great Pyrenees and chief of security at Goat Rope Farm. From his perspective, it's way better than Christmas.

Instead of just one Santa Claus, the woods this time of year are full of gift bearers armed with hunting rifles, shotguns, and bows who seem to come for the express purpose of leaving offerings for the lucky canine.

At this time of year (and through the winter) he is apt to disappear on foraging runs and emerge from the woods with any number of hides, bones, or internal organs of dead deer.

I noticed the official opening of his blessed season this weekend when he showed up with a dirty snout and no interest in his regular food. I can hardly wait to see what he drags home next.

STIGLITZ ON THE GLOBAL PROTESTS. Here's a Nobel laureate on the protest movements that have swept the world this year.

Sneak preview:

...unfettered markets lead to economic and political crises. Markets work the way they should only when they operate within a framework of appropriate government regulations; and that framework can be erected only in a democracy that reflects the general interest – not the interests of the 1%. The best government that money can buy is no longer good enough.

MAD MEN AND NOSTALGIA discussed here.

THIS IS THE BRAIN on cooperation.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

To start off the week

Here's some disturbing news about the state of the economy: most of today's unemployed aren't eligible for unemployment insurance anymore. And before anybody opens a can of libertarian dreck, here's a reality check: there are four unemployed Americans for every one new job.

OCCUPATIONS. Here's Bill Moyers on the Occupy movement.

THE NEWEST GENERATION GAP is economic.

THAT "WAR ON COAL," assuming it exists, isn't going too well, hissy fits of the industry and its lackeys to the contrary.

URGENT SPERM WHALE UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Just a thought

I'd like to be wrong about this, but the congressional "super committee" in charge of slashing the deficit seems to be composed of a mixture of bullies and appeasers in equal numbers. This means they are likely to spare the wealthy (the 1 percenters in the parlance of our times) and tax dodging corporations from any increased taxes while slashing the programs that help sustain the other 99 percent.

If that is the case, I think it would be a very good thing if the Occupy movement took up the cause and started kicking up some national dust, with a little help from unions and other friends. To paraphrase Che Guevara, "create two, three, many Oaklands!" (Nonviolently, of course.)

ONE NATION, DIVIDED. Here's Jim Hightower on the 99/1 thing.

VETERANS OCCUPY. This story is a day or so old but worth a look. Around the country, quite a few veterans are stepping up their involvement in the Occupy movement in the wake of the injuring of Iraq war vet Scott Olsen by police in Oakland, which helped spark that city's general strike.

THE R WORD. Here's another one on the future of the Occupy movement.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Regarding marriage and the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Here come the Magyars! A painting of Prince Arpad and his followers crossing the Carpathians by way of wikipedia.

For several years, I've been making my way, a little at a time, through the unabridged version of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I'm not sure why, exactly, but it might have something to do with the ability of the author to turn a phrase. They knew a thing or two about that in the 18th century.

I've gotten through most of it and only have a scant 500-600 pages to go. Some parts are a slow slog, but my interest picks up here and there.

Recently, I've stumbled upon a section directly relevant to my marriage. Some years a go, I committed matrimony, as my late father used to say, with a female of Hungarian extraction. A Magyar if you will.

A few days back, I got to Gibbon's discussion of the migration of the Hungarians into Europe and took great delight in reading them aloud to the Spousal Unit. Here are a few sample passages that I rushed to share:

When the black swarm of Hungarians first hung over Europe, about nine hundred years after the Christian era, they were mistaken by fear and superstition for the Gog and Magog of the Scriptures, the signs and forerunners of the end of the world.

and

Except the merit and fame of military prowess, all that is valued by mankind appeared vile and contemptible to these barbarians, whose native fierceness was stimulated by the consciousness of numbers and freedom....Their simplicity has been praised; yet they abstained only from the luxury they had never known: whatever they saw they coveted; their desires were insatiate, and their sole industry was the hand of violence and rapine.

and

...mercy they rarely asked, and more rarely bestowed: both sexes were accused as equally inaccessible to pity; and their appetite for raw flesh might countenance the popular tale that they drank the blood and feasted on the hearts of the slain.

I thought she would be pleased by this affirmation of her heritage and my efforts of cultural competence, but it didn't seem to work.

I guess you just can't be nice to some people.

THE STATE OF THE YOUNG. Here's an interesting report on how young Americans are doing.

OBSERVATIONS TO OCCUPIERS. Here's a well known linguist talking to young activists.

A CERTAIN DISGRACEFUL CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE is meeting to see how much damage it can inflict on the American people...if we let it.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Silly is the new serious

I have always had a distaste for the strident, which can be an occupational hazard (no pun intended) among people who work for social justice. That's why I find the levity in recent Occupy Wall Street protests refreshing, one example of which involves people parading around dressed as zombies. As this article, titled "Gandhi Meets Monty Python" suggests, there's a lot of that kind of humor going on these days all over the place.

Regular readers of Goat Rope will perhaps recall similar silly actions with a point in West Virginia. A few years back, when the then governor was messing with Medicaid, several of us held a bake sale for Medicaid that made around $100 bucks. That was silly enough, but then we got a big check printed and arranged a ceremony, with media in attendance of course, in which we presented the proceeds of the sale to the state treasurer's office.

This summer, on the anniversary of the Bush tax cuts, we held a Bake Sale for the Really Rich, complete with street theater. The state AFLCIO liked the idea and held hot dog sales around the state on the anniversary of the creation of Social Security. Dogs were sold at 1935 prices to raise federal revenue in order to spare the very wealthy from having to pay their fair share. After that, another event was held in which the hot dog proceeds were delivered to the Bureau of the Public Debt in Parkersburg.

You can't be silly all the time, alas, but it is good to break things up and act in unpredictable ways.

JOBS, BRIDGES AND BOMBS discussed here.

IS THE CONVERSATION CHANGING? Maybe.

THE SEVEN BILLION THING discussed here.

PET LOVING AND MEAT EATING pondered here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Scaring dogs with decorations

This year's buildup to Halloween featured a first in my experience: dogs fooled by seasonal decorations.

It happened one evening during the routine dog walk, in which boxer Edith and Great Pyrenees Arpad are usually joined by mut Smiley from down the road. As we were making our way to the end of the road and back for the usual two mile stroll, Edith and Smiley stopped in their tracks, hackles raised, and they growled across the field.

It took a while to figure out what they were growling at, but it turned out to be something on the order of scarecrows. I wasn't surprised that Edith would freak about some new sight--she has been known to bark and growl for 20 minutes at an ironing board--but Smiley is more street smart.

Eventually they got over it. But it occurred to me that many of the things we are afraid of in life turn out to be pretty much the same when all is said and done.

Happy Halloween!

YET ANOTHER TAKE on the Occupy movement here. Oh yeah and here too.

WANNA EAT SOME BUGS? Some people are proposing insects as a cheap food source. I am less than enthused about the idea, but I figure we've all done it at some point unconsciously. I did deliberately try eating one spiced grasshopper in Mexico however.

SPEAKING OF BUGS, AND IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING, yes, bugs are scared of fish.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Angels and memory

I just finished making my way through Dante's Divine Comedy for the umpteenth time. Every time I read it I come across something I'd missed before. This time I was struck and mildly amused by the discussions between the Pilgrim and his beloved Beatrice in Paradise.

When she's not chewing the poet out, she sometimes sounds like the host of Mr. Wizard's 14th Century Science World as she discusses the fine points of late medieval cosmology. At other times she enters upon long theological digressions and the occasional rant.

I particularly enjoyed her detailed discussion of angelology in Canto 29. According to her, and she was in a position to know in the context of the poem, angels possess will and intellect but--contrary to popular opinion on earth--they have no memory and no need of it because they are always gazing at the mind of God:

From the first moment these beings found their bliss
within God's face in which all is revealed,
they never turned their eyes away from It;

hence, no new object interrupts their sight
and hence, they have no need of memory
since they do not possess divided thought.

So there you have it. She didn't discuss the whole how many on the head of a pin thing however.

AT THE OTHER END OF THE GREAT CHAIN OF BEING, Massey officials may face more criminal charges in the wake of the Upper Big Branch mine disaster which killed 29 miners in April 2010.

OCCUPATIONS. The future of the Occupy Wall Street movement is considered here.

SUPERSTITIOUS? It may help.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Too bad...

...about autumn views in West Virginia. My seasonal good deed for the day was rescuing a torporous snake on the road today after the sun began to go down. I can't be sure but I think it was a copperhead.

El Cabrero is about to hit the road for a bit so posts may be irregular. Here are a few items that occupied my attention:

LEONARD PITTS ON THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT here.

10 WAYS TO SUPPORT IT here.

POLITICS ON THE BRAIN discussed here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Social media: rethinking the limits

About a year ago, popular New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell published an article in that magazine about the limits of social media like Facebook and Twitter in movements for social change.

I was pretty impressed with his argument at the time. If memory serves, he talked about how weak ties such as those from an online community could help in accomplishing some things, these would not be enough when push came to shove. The US Civil Rights movement, for example, relied on strong ties based on trust and commitment.

Then came the events of the "Arab spring" earlier this year and the success of the Occupy Wall Street movement in which social media played a major role. It might be time to rethink Gladwell's argument. Obviously, it's not a case of either/or but social media has turned out to be more of a game changer that I would have expected.

Here's a little anecdote about the impact of social media from the Occupy efforts in Charleston, WV. Yesterday, a wet and miserable day for occupying anything, an official connected with the city apparently came by the Occupy site and told people they'd need to take down their tarps and signs.

Word got out via Facebook right away. People jumped in, made calls, contacted the media, etc. In the end, a compromise was achieved. That's not exactly a case of turning back the tanks but it was interesting.

FRAMING THE OCCUPATION. Here are some suggestions from George Lakoff on messaging for the movement.

THE END OF THE WORLD, AGAIN. Oct. 21 is the latest predicted date for the end of the world. Here's a look a predicted apocalypses of the past. There seems to be a common theme...something about not happening.

OCCUPYING THOUGHTS. Here's the latest edition of the Rev. Jim Lewis' Notes from Under the Fig Tree.

URGENT ZOMBIE WASP UPDATE here. And it's really creepy. This would make one hell of a gross out horror movie if it happened to people.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED