Not all bad news...really

 It looks like over 4,000 unionized frontline workers who have been keeping people supplied with food and other necessities at the risk of their own health and lives won a huge victory this week, assuming the agreement is ratified by members. As reported in WV MetroNews, Local 400 of the United Food and Commercial Workers union reached a tentative agreement last week that includes:

-Health care funding that experts say will fully fund our health care for the life of the contract

-Real raises for EVERYONE

-Premiums for ALL department heads

-No increase to prescription drug costs maximums + a new diabetes program to reduce drug costs

-New hours eligibility measurement period doesn’t start until after ratification

-All raises retroactive to November 1, 2020

All this despite a horrible economic and political climate. UFCW workers voted to authorize a strike--and Kroger threatened to hire strikebreakers, but fortunately that seems to have been averted.

That's kind of a sentimental thing for me. I did what I could to support WV's Kroger workers in a 2003 strike (I foolishly thought things were tough then). At the time, WV's labor movement was stronger than it is now and its legislature wasn't controlled by people who  hate unions. Kroger actually closed its stores until a deal was negotiated. It turned out well. 

I hope this one does too. It looks good now anyhow.

Solidarity forever!

Of snuff and stuff

The Spousal Unit diligently scans those parts of the Charleston paper wherein readers call in to vent their views on various issues. These can range from the ridiculous to the sublime and everywhere in between. Some of the best ones wind up on the refrigerator door.

Here's one from yesterday's paper:

It's never really right to leave your filthy snuff spit for the janitor. I don't care who you are. Deal with it yourself or don't do it. It's filthy.

So there, snuff spitters.

LAID TO REST. West Virginia native and world renowned musician Hazel Dickens was laid to rest yesterday in Mercer County. Here's an item about her life from NPR.

IT'S ABOUT MONEY, NOT IDEOLOGY. Dean Baker suggests that the key to understanding the Ryan budget plan is to look at who gets what.

MILITARY SPENDING. Here's an interesting take from surprising sources.

WORKING WEST VIRGINIA. The state's labor force participation rates, generally amongst the lowest in the country, got even lower during the Great Recession. Also, public employees in the state make less than private sector workers when you control for age and education level.

CONSPIRACY THEORIES may reveal a lot about people who believe them.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Things are tough all over

Random animal picture.

This news item caught my eye today:

Retired Massey Energy Co. chief Don Blankenship's total compensation fell 48 percent in 2010 as he tried to right the struggling company following the nation's deadliest coal mine explosion in decades, an Associated Press analysis of a regulatory filing shows.

Blankenship earned just over $9 million in total compensation last year, compared with $17.3 million in 2009.

Maybe we should take up a collection. I'll get right on that. As soon as I finish organizing my nonexistent tie collection.

A NO GO. Eighty four percent of Americans oppose Republican House Budget Chair Paul Ryan's proposal to kill Medicare and gut Medicaid and other programs to pay for more tax breaks for the rich in the name of deficit reduction. More on that here.

A NEW TWIST ON THE WARRIOR POSE. Wounded soldiers from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are turning to yoga as part of their rehabilitation.

WORKING FOR A LIVING. Here's a look at the state of West Virginia's workforce from the WV Center on Budget and Policy.

WANT TO LIVE LONGER? these things might help.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A fiend out of hell

The theme at Goat Rope these days is Beowulf, although you will also find links and comments about current events. If you like this kind of thing, please click on earlier posts.

I've been blogging on this subject for a while now but am just getting around to the cool parts, i.e. the monsters. You may recall there are three in all, Grendel, a kind of humanoid man eating giant; his unnamed mother, who was if anything nastier than her son; and a dragon. Grendel first appears after Hrothgar, king of the Spear Danes, builds Heorot, his grand mead hall. All that nightly carousing by drunken proto-Vikings gets on Grendel's last nerve.

Things were going just fine for Hrothgar and his drunken buddies, but trouble was waiting in the wings. Here's a passage from Seamus Heaney's translation:

So times were pleasant for the people there
until finally one, a fiend out of hell,
began to work his evil in the world.
Grendel was the name of this grim demon
haunting the marches, marauding round the heath
and the desolate fens; he had dwelt for a time
in misery among the banished monsters,
Cain's clan, whom the creator had outlawed
and condemned as outcasts. For the killing of Abel
the Eternal Lord had exacted a price:
Cain got no good from committing that murder
because the Almighty made him anathema
and out of the curse of his exile there sprang ogres and elves and evil phantoms
and the giants too who strove with God
time and again until He gave them their reward.

The Anglo-Saxons had a real thing about the story of Cain, and found in it an explanation and origin for all kinds of nasty creatures that inhabit northern European folklore. More on that tomorrow.

REJECTING THE FRAME. Economist Dean Baker takes on one of his favorite targets here.

AMERICAN WORKERS. Does American business need them any more?

HEALTH CARE REFORM. What will the US Supreme Court do when it lands in the docket?

OH GOOD. Meat eating machines and furniture are here.

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN on walking.

BACK TO MONSTERS. Here's an interesting if lengthy New Yorker profile of filmmaker, author and monster fan Guillermo del Toro.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

THE CYCLOPS, CONSIDERED AS CHEESEMAKER

The Odyssey series continues, along with links and comments about current events. We're just now at the part where he meets the cyclops.

Speaking of which, sometimes El Cabrero's Spousal Unit reminds me of a cyclops. I'm not saying that she's a one-eyed giant cannibalistic monster, necessarily. Let's just say they have common interests. He's got goats (and sheep) and is a cheese maker.

When Odysseus and his men visit the cyclops Polyphemus cave, he is still out with his herd. It sounds a bit like Goat Rope Farm, only on a much larger scale. As Odysseus puts it,

'So we explored his den, gazing wide-eyed at it all,
the large flack racks loaded with drying cheeses,
the folds crowded with young lambs and kids...
And all his vessels, pails and hammered buckets
he used for milking, where brimming full with whey.'

We get a glimpse of the giant at work:

Back he came from the pasture, late in the day,
herding his flocks home...
Then down he squatted to milk his sheep and bleating goats,
each in order, and put a suckling underneath each dam.
And half of the fresh white mile he curdled quickly,
set it aside in wicker racks to press for cheese,
the other half let stand in pails and buckets,
ready at hand to wash his supper down...

It sounds kinda like home to me...

But I digress. As mentioned earlier, a major theme in Homer's epics is that of xenia, the sacred guest host relationship. Odyseus and his men get off on a bad foot, entering his cave without asking or being invited. They build a fire and started chowing down on the cheese before he even gets home. Didn't these guys ever hear of Miss Manners?

Polyphemus doesn't like surprises:

'Strangers!' he thundered out, 'now who are you?
Where did you sail from, over the running sea-lanes?
Out on a raiding spree or roving the waves like pirates,
sea-wolves raiding at will, who risk their lives
to plunder other men?'

Based on their past behavior, that's pretty much exactly what Odysseus and his men are. It's just about supper time...

More tomorrow.

NOT SO GOOD. A Rutgers University scorecard on the state of American workers found some disturbing--but not surprising--trends.

REDISCOVERING AN OLD FRIEND. AP reports that more Americans are using public libraries in hard economic times. I can't imagine how people could do without them in the best of times. At any given moment, El Cabrero is abusing the borrowing privileges of about four different library systems.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, here is an item on books that changed history.

STILL MORE on CEO pay.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED