Regarding that upon which even kings must sit

Franklin loved to pretend to adoring Parisians that he was a backwoods sage. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

El Cabrero has been thumbing through Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac lately in search of bloggable nuggets. The ever busy Franklin began publishing it as a young man in 1733 and kept it up for around 25 years.

Even when he ceased writing for it in 1758, his career as a revolutionary was still a good way off. However, you can find some healthy skepticism about monarchy and the pride of the powerful in the Almanac.

Here are some samples, beginning with my favorite:

The greatest monarch on the proudest throne
is oblig'd to sit upon his own arse.

In the 1930s, the late great Woody Guthrie reminded us that some will rob us with a six gun and some with a fountain pen and in the 1980s Bob Dylan sang that "steal a little and they throw you in jail/steal a lot and they make you king." Poor Richard got there first:

Robbers must exalted be,
Small ones on the Gallow-Tree,
While greater ones ascend to thrones,
But what is that to thee or me?

And here are some more:

In rivers and bad Governments
The lightest things swim at the top.

Many princes sin with David
but few repent with him.

You may give a man an Office
but you cannot give him discretion.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF BUDGET BATTLE. President Obama's proposed budget represents a dramatic break with the Reagan legacy (it's about time). Here's Krugman's take.

OUCH. The latest unemployment numbers are worse than many expected.

CLEAN COAL? Not so much.

THE HUMANITIES are up against it in the wake of the recession.

URGENT BOUNCING PSYCHEDELIC FISH UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Talking poetry at the Head Start center

For about eight years, I taught pre-GED classes in Head Start centers in southern West Virginia. Most of those who attended were mothers of young children in the program, although it was open to anyone who was interested. Some were on public assistance and most if not all were living in or near poverty.

In a bit of a strange turn, I found that I enjoyed teaching math although I was pretty bad at it. In fact, it was only in my second year of teaching that I finally figured out how to do ratio and proportion problems: cross multiply and divide.

(I think the students thought I was playing dumb to make them look good but that was not the case.)

And while I've done a lot of writing, I found that subject much harder to teach. At least math at that level had rules, whereas it always seemed to me that writing had infinite possibilities.

One thing I did make an effort to do was not just stick to the GED study books but to bring in at least some major works of literature for students to read and discuss. As noted in earlier posts this week, I believe that the humanities can be especially important for disadvantaged people.

Among the things we'd read aloud and discuss were poetry by Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, and William Blake, stories by Poe (I once even tortured them with Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown") and works like the Declaration of Independence and speeches by Lincoln.

Of all the things I brought in, selections from Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience seemed to have the deepest impact. Some would cry over the chimney sweeper poems or make the political connections from "London." One very young mother in a tough situation seemed to find in "The Sick Rose" an inspiration for a proto-feminist awakening.

Something really powerful happens when people who haven't had the opportunity get a chance to read, reflect, think and talk about ideas. I would argue that it's even profoundly political in the broad sense.

THE AGE OF PONZI. Here's Krugman's latest.

BAILOUT MESS. In this piece, David Sirota argues that we've been had and suggests things to do about it.

CAPITALISM ON THE BRAIN. Here's an item about how unregulated capitalism short circuits the moral sense. My favorite part is a quote by the great primatologist Frans B.M. de Waal: "You need to indoctrinate empathy out of people in order to arrive at extreme capitalist positions."

A PEACE OFFENSIVE, if it happens, might look like this.

IN THE EVENT THAT YOU WERE WONDERING ABOUT THE TUSKS OF BEAKED WHALES, click here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

How I read my way through the last economic depression

The theme at Goat Rope lately is hard times and how to get through them. The series began a week ago Monday. If you feel so inclined, please click on earlier posts. You'll also find links and comments about current events.

As I mentioned before, the 1980s hit West Virginia really hard, with massive layoffs and high unemployment. And the cavalry was not on the way. I remember it as a time of poverty as I scrambled to provide for two young children.

When hard times hit, of course you have to try to get yourself out of them. I looked for more and better work and scrambled to finish a degree. But you also have to stay alive in the meantime, physically and otherwise.

For me, reading was a kind of salvation. For some reason, I stumbled upon The Story of Civilization, a massive 11 volume popularized version of world history by Will and Ariel Durant. It was far from academic history and contained any number of howlers that would drive sticklers up the wall. But it was engagingly written and was a constant companion for many months during work breaks, sleepless nights and stolen moments.

The Durants would include discussions of literary classics in their rambles through history and I made a list and went back and read as many as I could.

All of which is to say that I made it through the Reagan era with the help of Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Plato, Herodotus, Thucydides, Shakespeare, and the like.

As poor as I was and as hopeless as the times seemed, I still remember the awe I felt on finishing Plato's Republic, the Oresteia of Aeschylus, and several of Shakespeare's tragedies and histories that I'd missed. That experience took me out, however briefly, from the grind and gave me a chance to think and reflect--and not to feel like a hunted animal.

There are some things you do that seem to take the life force out of you and leave you less than you were before, like zoning out in front of a television or playing video games during all your free time. But there are other kinds of things that seem to build you up. It could be a course of study, some physical discipline or learning an art or skill. These take effort and discipline but they can richly reward the time and trouble.

In my case, it helped me both to endure and eventually escape dire poverty--and left me with the will to do something about it when I had the chance.

R.I.P. the Bush administration's "ownership society."

WHAT A DIFFERENCE UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE MAKES. In another op-ed, economist Dean Baker points out that if General Motors was a Canadian company, it wouldn't be in need of a bailout.

HERE WE GO AGAIN. Welfare rolls are increasing for the first time since it was "reformed" in 1996.

MORE BAD WV NEWS. Century Aluminum in Ravenswood may close.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Getting through

The theme lately at Goat Rope is hard times and how to get through them. The last two posts were about poverty and the role of education, broadly conceived, in helping people escape it. Yesterday's post was about a program that provides economically disadvantaged people with college level classes in the humanities.

As fate would have it, the humanities helped me get though the economic depression that hit West Virginia in the 1980s. It was baaaad. I was working at a low wage job and picking up any extra work on the side and trying to provide for two young children. At times, it seemed like there was no way out.

As mentioned in the last two posts, being in poverty sometimes feels like being a hunted animal. The writer Earl Shorris called it, accurately in my opinion, a "surround of force."

It would have been nice if we had an administration at the time that cared about working class and poor people, but that wasn't on the menu. There was no social movement waiting in the wings to come to the rescue.

One thing you have to do in a situation like that is just Get Through Time while you're waiting for conditions to change or opportunities to occur. And there are some ways of getting through time that can make you stronger and other ways that make you weaker.

One thing that saved me was starting an ambitious reading program of my own on work breaks and lunch hours and other stolen moments. It didn't put any extra cash in my pocket at the time but it enriched me and gave me a chance to think and reflect when I couldn't do much else. And over time, it was an investment well worth the effort.

About which more tomorrow.

REGARDING LINKS AND COMMENTS ABOUT CURRENT EVENTS. Today there ain't none.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Time to reflect

Socrates, courtesy of wikipedia.

Yesterday's post was about a description of poverty developed by the writer Earl Shorris. He called it a "surround of force," which keeps poor people on the defensive, dealing with one crisis after another with little or no opportunity to reflect.

That's pretty much what it was like for me.

Shorris also developed a novel approach to dealing with the problem that seemed to work for many of the people who had the chance to try it. It involved, of all things, studying the humanities and reading and talking about the classics. As he put it,

The humanities are a foundation for getting along in the world, for thinking, for learning to reflect on the world instead of just reacting to whatever force is turned against you. I think the humanities are one of the ways to become political...

Shorris makes his case in two books, New American Blues: A Journey Through Poverty to Democracy and Riches for the Poor: The Clemente Course in the Humanities.

No doubt there are politically (self) righteous advocates for the poor who have never been there who think this was a silly or useless approach. I will waste no words refuting them except to say that when one is in a miserable situation, there is really nothing so rare and welcome as the chance to think and reflect. Oh yeah, and this: nothing is too good for the working class, bub.

It's no substitute for other ways of fighting poverty but I think it has merits.

Shorris developed what came to be the Bard College Clemente Course in the Humanities. According to their website, the program

grew out of the disturbing fact that in our society many low-income residents have limited access to college education and no opportunity to study the humanities. The Clemente Course provides college level instruction in the humanities, with the award of college credits, to economically and educationally disadvantaged individuals at no cost and in an accessible and welcoming community setting. Participants study four disciplines: literature, art history, moral philosophy, and American history. Like their more affluent contemporaries, students explore great works of fiction, poetry, drama, painting, sculpture, architecture, and philosophy, while learning also about the events and ideals that define America as a nation. The course also offers instruction in writing and critical thinking, while the seminar style of the classes and dialectical investigation encourage an appreciation for reasoned dialogue.

One person who went through the program described its effects:

This class has given me something that I thought was lost forever, and that is the will power to reach my dreams.

I never had the chance to participate in or observe the course, but I found my own way toward that conclusion by both living in and working with people who live in poverty. More on that tomorrow.

DEFICITS, DEFICITS, WE GOT DEFICITS. Here's Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz on some of them.

OWN TO RENT. Here's some interesting news on the housing crisis.

SEE YOU IN COURT. Mountain State Justice, a public interest law firm, plans to sue the WV Medicaid program over changes to the plan which may limit services to children.

THE COMET MAY HAVE BEEN FRAMED. Some scientists are now blaming volcanic eruptions for the extinction of dinosaurs.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED