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

Be not too eager to deal out death

I've recently re-read the Lord of the Rings cycle and this time around I've made notes on parts that seem relevant to working for social justice. Here's installment #2.

During the recent unlamented session of the WV legislature, there was a public hearing on bringing back the death penalty to the state, which hasn't had one since the early 1960s. I was one of the people who testified against it. All through my mind when I was on the stand, a passage from LOTR went through my mind.

When discussing the creature Gollum, Frodo the hobbit casually states that the creature deserves to die. Gandalf replies,

Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

I didn't go there since I figured quoting from a fictional wizard wouldn't exactly help my case. Instead, I focused on examples of fallible judgements. But I think Gandalf probably said it best.

THIS IS JUST GREAT, HE WROTE, IRONICALLY. GE, after making over $14 billion in profits and paying ZERO dollars in US income tax, is asking workers to make concessions.

THAT'S NOT ALL. GE isn't the only corporation to pay no taxes at a time when public services are being slashed.

GANDHI. A new biography will bust some bubbles. I'll stick to FDR and Walter Reuther.

IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING, the most common modern psychosis is the persecution complex. Or that's what they want you to believe anyway, just to lull you into a false sense of security so they can really get you.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Hwaet!

The theme at Goat Rope these days is Beowulf, although you'll also find links and comments about current events below. The title of this post comes from the first word of the poem in old Anglo-Saxon (although the a and e were joined together in the original). The word means something like Listen, or Behold, or Hear this! Seamus Heaney's translation renders it as So.

It's a way of saying, "The show is about to start." And it is quite a show. Heaney calls the poem "a work of the greatest imaginative vitality, a masterpiece where the structuring of the tale is as elaborate as the beautiful contrivances of its language."

If I had to say what it was about, aside from the whole monster and dragon killing thing, I'd have to say it was about aging and how those glory days that Bruce Springsteen sang about pass you by. In the beginning of the poem, Beowulf is a young man eager to gain fame and a name for himself by killing the monster that haunts the hall of the Spear Dane king Hrothgar. He goes home to Geatland and eventually becomes king, ruling justly for 50 years.

In his old age, when a dragon threatens his realm, he determines to fight it alone, as if it see if he's still got it in him:

"I risked my life
often when I was young. Now I am old,
but as king of the people I shall pursue this fight
for the glory of winning, if the evil one will only
abandon his earth-fort and face me in the open."

He reminds me a bit of Tennyson's Ulysses, who decides in old age to hit the whale road again:

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

He does pretty good, but it doesn't turn out too well for the king, the kingdom or the dragon.

BIG NEWS. It looks like Alpha Natural Resources is about to buy Massey Energy, which continues to dispute MSHA's version of the Upper Big Branch mine disaster. For more, click here. It will be interesting to see what changes--and what doesn't.

SEVEN SOCIAL SINS. Here's an op-ed from the Gazette by Perry Mann on some problems as identified by Gandhi.

DODGING THE ISSUE. Most high school science teachers avoid taking a strong stand on teaching evolution in biology classes.

MEDITATION ON THE BRAIN here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED