ACTING

Photo credit: Chicago Daily News negatives collection, DN-0003451. Courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society, by way of the Library of Congress.

Welcome to Eugene Debs Week at Goat Rope. If this is your first visit, please click on yesterday's post. Brief recap: a few years back, I got the chance to portray the character of labor and socialist leader Eugene V. Debs for a history program of WV's Humanities Council.

When asked why I wanted to portray the character of Eugene Debs, I had two ready replies.

First, I didn’t have enough hair to be anyone else.

Second, the part of Booker T. Washington was already taken.

But seriously, we have a problem of historical amnesia in this country, particularly with the history of the labor movement and other marginalized groups. This is even true in West Virginia where so many great labor struggles have taken place.

Most people these days have never heard anyone say the kinds of things Debs said and have little awareness of the titanic struggles of workers for decent wages and conditions. It was that struggle itself that radicalized Debs.

Also, I began doing the character in the midst of the buildup to the Iraq war and the Bush crackdown on civil liberties. That in itself gave some of the issues a contemporary flavor. Debs was sentenced to 10 years in prison for opposing U.S. involvement in WWI, which led him to comment that it was a dangerous thing to use your constitutional right to free speech at a time when your country was making the world safe for democracy. It seemed like the time.

There were rules to the humanities program presentations. First, the character would speak for a time about his or her life and work and then take questions from the audience in character. After that, time permitting, the performer could step out of character and take questions.

It was another rule that the character spoke from a time frame in which he lived. That means, for example, that you couldn’t ask Lincoln what he thought of Roosevelt. Or Debs what he thought of Bush, although that would have been pretty easy…

More tomorrow.

WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? War, that is.

SWARM. What's the difference, if any, between us and a bunch of insects? Click here.

SICK DAYS. A new campaign is shaping up in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia around the need for paid sick leave for workers.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

READING DOSTOEVSKY IN WEST VIRGINIA

Caption: This man could be several characters of Dostoevsky's. Here he portrays the debauched Fyodor Karamazov.

It took several months and at times I didn't think I'd get there but I finally finished The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky's last major novel. I'm not sure what prompted me to return to this megatherium of a book about a cosmically messed up family after about 15 years since my last assault.

Maybe it had to do with wanting to revisit Ivan Karamazov's prose poem of the Grand Inquisitor (Goat Roped here) or his question about the price of utopia (Goat Roped here).

(I discovered that both of those could be read as brief stand alone islands in a sea of 913 pages of small print. Dude could have used more paragraphs too.)

Maybe it was wanting to visit again the saintly elder Father Zossima, the gentle Alyosha, the "fallen" Grushenka, the hell raising Dmitri or the tightly wrapped Katrina.

Or it could have just been a self-punishment thing.

In fact, one thing you get from reading just about any work of Dostoevsky is that people are a lot more complicated than calculating rational choice machines (see his Notes from the Underground). That might be one take home message.

Another might be the theme that seems to run through his work that everyone is connected to and responsible for everyone else, as in this scene where after the death of his mentor, the holy Father Zossima, Alyosha throws himself on the ground, kissing the earth and "drenching it with his tears"

It was as though the threads from all those innumerable worlds of God met all at once in his soul, and it was trembling all over 'as it came in contact with other worlds.' He wanted to forgive everyone and for everything, and to beg forgiveness--oh! not for himself, but for all men, for all and for everything, 'and others are begging for me,' it echoed in his soul again....

Or later:

Oh, my dear children, my dear friends, do not be afraid of life! How good life is when you do something that is good and just!

Speaking of which...

SICK DAYS. Campaigns are starting to ramp up in several states around the issue of paid sick leave. Here's some information from the Economic Policy Institute about the scope of the problem and who suffers the most:

On average, 57% of private-industry workers in the United States have access to paid sick leave. That means that 43% of all private-industry workers have no paid sick days. When workers get sick, they are either forced to go to work or stay home without pay and risk losing their job. What this number masks, however, is how vastly unequal access to sick leave is depending on workers’ wages. Workers at the bottom of the wage scale, those making less than $7.38 an hour, are five times less likely to have sick days than workers at the top of the scale, those making greater than $29.47 an hour.

The report concludes:

In recent months, legislation has been introduced that would level the playing field and provide much needed paid leave for workers who are sick. Such legislation—as exists in other advanced economies—would not only give workers an important benefit, but could provide valuable incentives for increased productivity in the workforce through worker loyalty, decreased turnover, and a decline in sick employees showing up to work and infecting others.

It is time for the United States to join the rest of the developed world and guarantee paid leave for its workforce.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED