Ridin’ the Rails

Daniel was traveling tonight on a plane, which was nothing extraordinary since Daniel traveled a lot, going to and fro in the air so frequently that one could safely say that Daniel had no permanent address. Yes, indeed, no permanent address at all. In fact, this once tried and true description of one’s station in life, where one actually resided, on a permanent basis, was becoming obsolete among a certain subset of the population.

Daniel, who insisted on using it/that pronouns, was in fact one of them, the Neo Zen folks, ages roughly 15-25, who had started living on airplanes. There were hundreds or thousands of them in the skies at any moment, crisscrossing the nation or even the globe. Sometimes, they would intentionally converge at some airport’s private lounges to have freakout events, as they called them, leaving the place utterly destroyed, tabs unpaid, all the liquor bottles drained and everyone back on board on different flights heading to parts unknown.

You could tell these Neo Zen travelers by the tiny airplane wings tattooed behind their left ears. Not that you needed that marker to identify them per se, as they were pretty noticeable once you knew what to look for: young and brash with spiky dyed hair, large 1970’s plastic glasses frames, faces buried in their phone screens without a care in the world and completely unconcerned about displaying any social graces. They belched and farted, reached across people sitting next to them, chewed with their mouths open and laughed loudly and obnoxiously when they saw a funny video on their TikTok feeds.

Daniel was one of the early adapters and someone that many of the other Neo Zen flyers looked up to. “Daniel’s here!”, someone would say excitedly as the sliding doors to the lounge opened and it walked in, phone up to it’s face, swigging from a bottle of Jack Daniels before finally looking up and surveying the room.

This group of airborne ruffians, the plane gang, as Time magazine had called them, had developed a spurious method of using crypto funds to buy airline tickets. They didn’t have to be your own crypto funds at all, they could be anyone’s. Any member of the group, once they learned the method, could buy an endless supply of airfares and pretty much live constantly in the skies and in the airports without any permanent address whatsoever.

Whenever any of the Neo Zens actually did occasionally pass through the sliding exit doors of an airport and get into a car to go visit family for a few days or whatever, they were said to have “landed”. When the rest of the group learned that one of them had “landed”, they would roll their eyes and grimace in empathy with the poor kid who had to stop traveling for a few seemingly interminable days and be subjected to the melliferous odor and stale and suffocating mannerisms of their family home. The friends and acquaintances would, with genuine worry, wish that their landed companion would be OK and would soon return safely to their traveling ways. Having one of the group away in landed mode was painful for all.

In fact, once one of the Neo Zens had returned from being landed, there would surely be a big party on their first flight back, and there was nothing anybody could do about it; not captain or crew or passengers or even the FAA or the TSA. Homeland Security? Give me a break. Nobody could touch these aerial ruffians. They were about as worried of being put on the no-fly list as you would be frightened if an ant crossed your toe.

The threat of prosecution or any kind of impedance to their activities was totally insignificant. They had the means to create new identities, new passports, wipe clean their status as if that destruction of the Sky Lounge in Dallas never happened. Daniel themselves had done it numerous times. They had amazing disguises to jam up facial recognition cameras. If they wanted to get on a certain flight, there was nobody that could stop them.

 Daniel themselves had just come back from being landed for an entire week, pulling up to the St. Louis airport in a big-ass Lincoln Navigator. He got out without acknowledging the driver at all, and entered through the sliding glass doors into the ticketing area, breathing a sigh of relief. Daniel had contracted some kind of intestinal virus and decided to go home and get medical treatment. It was that bad. If it hadn’t been potentially life-threatening, they would have powered through it with endless drink and drugs until it eventually went away, or they just didn’t feel it anymore.

The week at the family home in a little shabby chic shotgun shack on the banks of the Mississippi had not gone well. Daniel had no intention of reconciliation with Ma nor bro and sis (Bro had been Sis, and Sis had been Bro, but in the intervening years since Daniel went aloft permanently, their genders had been exchanged). The family, on the other hand, clinging to traditional notions of love and connection amongst kinfolks, especially the nuclear family, were somewhat frustrated and exasperated in their efforts to get Daniel to acknowledge any kind of bond whatsoever. In Daniel’s heart, there was nothing at all that resembled that sentiment.

So, it was with lot of sadness, and relief, a lot of deep breathing, that Daniel’s time at home came to an end at they called for a car on their phone. Ma had been exasperated by Daniel’s complete and total attention to their little screen and inattention to anything else, that she was a mess, with feelings of loss, anger, frustration, and ultimately letting go. By the end of the week, intestinal issue resolved, she was ready for them to get the fuck out of the house and stay out, if that’s how it was going to be.

Daniel had booked a flight to Panama City and all their closest friends had rerouted in order to get to St. Louis in time to be on the same flight. It was an early evening departure, Daniel’s favorite time of debauchery. They occupied three entire rows in the middle of the airplane and as they taxied toward takeoff, Daniel dropped a little red pill in each of their fellow Neo Zen’s gin and tonic. “This is going to be so lit!” they shouted and all the Neo Zens screamed in delight as the wheels lifted off of the tarmac.

Bus Stop

Standing there in the early morning chill, the same group as every day, looking out toward the eastern sky as the sun slowly crept a little bit higher over the horizon, they waited for the bus to arrive, the #99 route. Some looked into their devices in defeated attempts at stimulation. Others kicked at the ice and watched the steam from everyone’s breath push into a common cloud before dissipating quickly. No one spoke, as was customary. They’d shared that common morning bus stop experience with each other for only a few months as it were; certainly not long enough to break the ice metaphorically with risky words of introduction. They could just kick at the real ice on the sidewalk, silently, each one on their own, the need for connection not galvanizing enough to chip away at the barriers between them. 

The bus came exactly on time, as it always did. The soft voice of the recording coming through the speakers implanted around the bus shelter gently imparted the message: “Number 99 approaching. Number 99 approaching.” The doors slid open silently and the commuters shuffled aboard in single file, a solitary beep registering each individual’s presence through a code scan. There were no bus drivers anymore, of course. Only a few of the elderly souls on the bus even remembered a time when there were actual people driving the bus, everyone else having only heard strange tales of a time when humans operated vehicles.

Not that everyone looked back on such times with warm nostalgic remembrance. Mr. McMahon, for one, seated at the front of the new model cyberbus was thankful everyday for many things, including the smooth ride along the route.  Just thinking back to the old times physically pained him, as well as psychically. He had suffered organ damage due to the quick acceleration and sudden hard braking habitually done by the bus drivers of the past. They would usually ratchet it up to 40 or 45 miles per hour leaving one bus stop before quickly braking to a stop upon reaching the next one, causing poor Mr. McMahon and others to feel like internally, things were shifting, and not in a good way.

He did miss talking to the bus drivers, however. In days gone by, he had liked to sit in the front and talk with the driver. Now, that was impossible. He and Richard, his old driver on this route, would talk about the baseball scores or other sports news. They would sometimes discuss their family situation, things like that. It was nice to have that interaction. He was also considerate of the other passengers on the bus who were not chatting with the driver. Mr. McMahon felt that they enjoyed listening in on the conversation, that it was comforting to them somehow; just the sound of human voices discussing nothing of any real significant importance.

On the #99 Cyberbus, there was no talking. The sound coming out of the speakers was very low. Cartoon music and puerile dialogue in high-pitched voices was the mandatory soundtrack for the passengers on the bus, while the LED strips overhead switched between various primary colors. The experience of riding the cyberbus felt like a cross between being at a nightclub and a daycare.

Mr. McMahon was on his way to work at the discount supermarket. For even though he was well into his eighth decade of life, he still enjoyed working and there were no other alternatives for him anyway. The rest of his family was already deceased, and he had no known relatives to go live with. The senior care facilities had all been closed down by the health care companies. Social security funds had been absorbed into defense spending. So, what was left to do but keep working. Riding the cyberbus to work was relaxing for Mr McMahon. While everyone else mostly stared down into their device screens, he gazed off into the distance, reminiscing or ruminating about some ideas and theories that he’d carried around inside his head for many decades, still trying to work out the particulars.

Mr. McMahon greeted everyone as he walked into the break room to put his uniform on and clock in. He always had a kind word for everyone else. Perhaps, him being so elderly and genuine, no one viewed him as a threat or a weirdo, or as anything other than what he was: a gentle, elderly man; a bit melancholy at times, perhaps, but, for the most part, always up and at ‘em and ready to chat with anyone.

He proceeded out onto the shop floor to work his shift. He would clock out in the early afternoon and then, before boarding the Cyberbus #99 to return to his apartment, he usually liked to get a small cup of coffee and sit and gaze out the window for a while, remembering people from his past, family and friends. Random poems formed in his head, composed of a lines he heard in the store today mixed with something his father had said to him seventy years before. It was funny how it all worked out, how the lines seemed to go together so well; like his brain had been waiting for just the right words to complete the phrase that sat in his head for seventy years. He smiled and put on his coat as he saw the bus approaching.

Secret Sauna

The world’s largest candy store has looked over the flat prairie lands near Jordan, Minnesota for over a century now. It’s an immense building, or a series of buildings connected by cheaply constructed passageways that were put into place every time that the business needed to expand due to the increasing volume of candy seekers coming along Route 169, quite intent on filling up bags full of whatever traditional or exotic candy they fancied.

When it was built back in the 1890’s, it was just a shack. Pretty much everything on the prairie was a shack back then, most likely. Settlers to Minnesota had very impolitely pushed the native residents off of their land and driven them away so that they themselves could occupy it, plant corn and wheat and potatoes, build Lutheran churches and open up hardware stores, groceries and bakeries. Nobody back then was necessarily thinking of a giant store just for selling candy, but they did sell penny candies at the dry goods store. I guess that’s how it started.

At the center of the World’s Largest Candy Store near Jordan, Minnesota, there lies a secret passageway that can be accessed by removing the rug in front of the gummie worm wall and opening the hatch, which reveals a rickety staircase leading down into a hot and dusty basement. It might have been a root cellar at one time, providing the right temperature and humidity for storing all of the potatoes they were growing on the land there. Also, perhaps, bins of turnips and rutabagas; the Swedish turnip they called it, so starchy and bland, yet so tasty and nutritious if cooked the right way.

Whatever its provenance, it was no root cellar anymore, not since Lars Ingebretsen’s granny had died at 95 years old, leaving her last bushel of potatoes down in that cellar. Rumor has it that they were still sitting there to this day, still dry and ready to be eaten. But there was no way of knowing the veracity of this rumor unless you were a bona fide member of the Secret Swedish Sauna Society (SSSS) that now owned the candy store and used the hidden underground bunker for their club activities.

The candy store was just a front and if you looked closely at the employees, so friendly and cheerful, you would see the strange similarities in their skin tones and subtle smirks that they shared with each other throughout the day when a customer would say something that was somehow significant only to them. Look closer still and one could glimpse a small salamander tattoo behind all of their left ears, the sign of bona fide membership in the SSSS, secretly sunken below the World’s Largest Candy Store.

If you were somehow fortunate or perhaps unfortunate enough to one day descend those stairs, you might be slightly surprised to not see any saunas. It was indeed hot enough down there already without the saunas, and the SSSS had gone through a bit of mission creep over the last half a century, leaving behind the ritual of sitting and sweating in a small steamy shack, just as Lars Ingebretsen himself had left behind has Grandma’s sweet sentiments for the Swedish turnip!

Lars had led the seamless segue into Swedish saunas and built his little community of friends, siblings and their offspring, who subsequently grew up in a sweetly special but sweaty community of shared governance, no one certainly sure who’s kids were whose and no one really caring. Now it was Lars’s own grandson, at least he suspected it was his, this young boy who, in fact, used they/them pronouns, so maybe not a boy really; this young person named Sent, or Scent (no one was quite sure of the spelling) had somehow seamlessly shifted the secret society to a new venture altogether, something significantly successful.

Sent was raised in the candy-store sauna basement society (don’t call it a cult; anyone is free to leave anytime as long as they don’t spill the beans). Lars had left the care of Sent to whomever was able and willing to do it, completely indifferent to the development of children, in fact. Like many leaders, Lars was led astray by his power, as the number of acolytes increased and the sales figure of the candy store skyrocketed, his head grew too big to fit in the tiny sauna that he favored, the one under the staircase. Lars would spend hours steaming inside going over the sales figures on his ipad and investing money in various initiatives that were to his liking. Others were none the wiser to the goings-on inside Lars’s tiny electric sauna, his head pressed up against the ceiling.

Sent soon caught on and decided to act, to take the reins and turn the horses in a different direction. After spending most of their childhood sampling all of the various candies in the giant store, when Sent hit puberty, they got really serious. Some SSSS members thought Sent would grow up to be a fat dullard due to the candy addiction, but this was not the case. Sent also was really good at computers. Really good. As grandpa Lars was getting more and more eccentric and unreliable, Sent staged a steam-powered sauna-style coup that changed the SSSS forever. The candy store also changed and finally embraced the fascinating trendy appeal of Asian candies and sweets.

Once Sent/Scent took over, the saunas were dismantled and repurposed as computer stations with a nice built-in heating feature, good for the cool, damp basement. Lars was exiled to the original farmer shack out behind the candy store, his power of attorney assigned to his only living sibling, Aunt Glo over in Gaylord. Sent got the 5G hookup into the basement, installed solar power on the candy store and started growing organic vegetables out on the farm. All of the SSSS members were given coding lessons and before long, the hacking operation commenced.

Using a little known feature in the Orange Watch, the SSSS (which now stood for Surreptitious and Seditious Supercomputing Scholars) hacked into manure mogul Marco Suckerbarf’s giant financial empire and turned it all to dust. There was soon nothing left and all the monopoly  of manure mulching machinery was auctioned off for pennies on the dollar. Suckerbarf went insane and spent his days livestreaming conspiratorial rants that nobody watched.

After that successful strike on the superstrata, the SSSS went to work on it’s next target, hacking into the self-driving computers of the hordes of Momadon delivery vans that were clogging up all of the streets and roads, delivering dogfood to the substrata. Once they gained control of the GPS piloting system, the SSSS caused all of the vans to self-drive themselves into ditches where they were rendered immobile and eventually rusted and rotted away like old farm machinery.

Sent/Scent and the secret warriors of the SSSS were lauded as heroes by the smart and sensitive sub-section of society, a small sample size, granted. They were, however, reviled by the law-enforcement knuckle-dragging defenders of the empire (an even smaller sample size). The candy store eventually discontinued candy sales and went into pet food, to make up for the loss people felt at first when they couldn’t get it delivered to their home anymore by Momadon. The SSSS came through with a new business model, bicycle delivery of fresh organic pet-food, at reasonable prices and with special discounts for loyalty club members. Indeed, this turnips to candy, saunas to supercomputers to petfood saga is a hidden, below the surface tale that only a few cognoscenti are even aware of. So lackadaisical we are in our awareness, the earth shifts and we don’t even realize it, which usually can prove costly. Sometimes, though, the shift can imperceptibly bring some joy to young and old alike as we while out our days out here on the prairie.

Lawn Care

Because of all the rain, horseweed was a real menace in that summer of ‘77. It grew as high as the second story windows of most homes in our comfortable and usually well-trimmed suburban housing development. For all of the adults and children in the neighborhood, nearly all white and middle class, each summer had usually taken on a similar, familiar tenor; the rhythm of the days and nights, the typical sounds of the birds and insects, the daily yapping of the common little doggies begging to be let back into the house and the excited and happy cries of all the children as they played on the lawns till sundown, their joy replaced by aggravation and turmoil as they tried to swat away the swarms of mosquitoes on their way back to their comfy homes for the evening, mom and dad leafing through magazines or doing the crossword in the dim lighting of the family room, windows open and ceiling fans slowly whirring silently. Bob usually spent his days in a chaise lounge out by his pool, laying there in shorts and a t-shirt, Bob Seger playing on his portable cassette deck.

His wife Carol had gone up to New England for a couple months to take care of her ailing mother. The kids were all grown and out of the house. So, Bob took advantage of his alone time, so to speak, to just sit by the pool, only getting up from his chair to grill a hamburger at lunch time. He stopped shaving in the morning and then stopped brushing his teeth as well. He slept in the same shorts and t-shirt that he wore all day sitting by the pool. He was alone and he liked it that way. By mid-June, because of all the rain and Bob’s disinterest in any mowing or lawn care, the neighbors couldn’t even see him sitting by his pool, the grass and weeds having grown so high that they lost their view, only the sound of the song Night Moves emanating out from a tinny speaker through all the foliage and beyond the yard.

The horseweed stocks were so tall and thick that small children would have been able to climb them. Chickenweed stretched out and smothered the chain link fence. Duckweed vines grew up and around the horseweed stalks while catweed heads spread their seed pods shooting off in all directions. Foxweed grew out of every crack in the walkway and paved patio around the pool and the wormweed climbed up high up every light post and telephone pole, wrapping them in a shimmery semi-verdant glow. Insects and moths of all types crawled, flew and flitted throughout the weed jungle of the yard as Bob sat there contentedly. He didn’t read. He wasn’t smoking or drinking. For the most part, he just sat there. He must be sad, everyone thought, or have an active imagination, some people said, giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Carol came back from New England one Friday morning and unloaded her luggage from the station wagon. She thought that her husband would come out and help her but he didn’t seem to be about. The house was a mess. Half eaten cans of baked beans filled the kitchen. As she looked out the window above the sink, she was shocked that her backyard had been replaced by a foreign landscape. She thought she glimpsed her husband lying by the pool, amongst the tallest weeds she had ever seen.

Carol didn’t know whether to be angry or concerned, or afraid. The travel was disorienting enough, but then to arrive home and find a mess of this proportion was extremely disconcerting. She started to have a go at cleaning up the kitchen but, after about thirty seconds, she gave up and threw some sticky cans back in the sink. She went to the bathroom to wash her hands, and saw more grime and noticed a disgusting smell emanating from the hand towel. She could see that the shower had not been used in some time. Gingerly, she stepped out of the bathroom, down the hall and toward the back door.

She grabbed the door handle and pulled it open. She slowly stepped out onto the walkway as the insects swarmed back and forth among the horseweed and the dogweed and the catweed.

“Bob!” she called out, not wanting to walk any further out into the backyard jungle. Who knows what kind of poisonous creatures lied in wait for her, she thought. As she contemplated whether to advance further or retreat into the house, her husband came walking down the path toward her. “Hi honey. I’m glad you made it back ok.” He gave her a kiss on the cheek and she reeled back from the smell of his breath.

“How was your trip?” he asked and looked at her smiling. When he took in her horrified expression, it reminded him of how he must look. “Oh, the beard. Yeah. I’m going to shave. Don’t worry.” Carol, put a hand up to her mouth and surveyed the yard with the same look of incomprehension. Bob turned and looked over his shoulder. “Oh yeah, the yard too. Kind of messy. Right?” He strode past her to the refrigerator and grabbed a can of RC Cola. He opened it and took a chug, suppressed a belch, and motioned toward the bedroom with his chin.

“Tell you what. Why don’t you go unpack and relax a bit and I’ll get everything straightened up.” Without waiting for an answer, he took another gulp, this time not bothering to suppress the belch. He wiped his mouth and headed out to the garage where he, without hesitation, started the lawnmower and steered it toward the front yard. Carol wheeled her suitcase upstairs into the bedroom and closed the door. She unzipped the luggage and opened it, but then sat on the bed and then laid down to stare at the ceiling and try to process what she was witnessing, and why. What was happening to her husband, she asked herself? She soon fell asleep, a deep slumber not occasioned by exhaustion as much as by the brain’s unwillingness to comprehend something so strange and potentially threatening.

She awoke to the voice of her husband beckoning her to open her eyes. It was late afternoon, she could tell by the sky looking out her window. She swallowed, trying to get the bad state out of her mouth, and turned her head to see her husband standing there, looking very clean and handsome. “Wow, honey. You were asleep for quite a while. You must be hungry, I figure. So why don’t we go out to eat at McGlynn’s. It’s Friday after all. I’ll give you a bit to get ready.” He bent down and gave her a kiss on the cheek and went back out of the bedroom.

Carol raised herself up and looked around. She gazed out the window overlooking the back yard and saw that it was looking neat and clean. There were no weeds, the grass was cut and the pool was shimmering in the late afternoon sun. She shook her head, disbelievingly, and scampered downstairs to the kitchen, where everything had been cleaned and put away. There was no trace of any mess whatsoever. She looked at Bob, who sat at the kitchen table reading the newspaper. He looked up at her and smiled. “Ready to go?”, he asked.

All of Our Campaigns Have Failed

I don’t consider myself an activist by any means. However, I have been ‘active’ in quite a few causes over the years, because I care about anything and everything that affects our own lives, the lives of others and the lives of everything on the planet. I have always thought that, as informed and conscientious citizens, it is our duty to get involved in something and work towards making a change for the better. My mother tells me that I went to anti-war demonstrations when I was a toddler, so I guess that would have been my introduction to letting your voice be heard – although I am loathe to go to demonstrations these days. I guess I have grown to prefer doing and making things to act out your values rather than chanting in the street.

My first conscientious participation in political events was when I was in college in Rochester, NY. They held anti-apartheid demonstrations in the streets of downtown. I remember the slogans – “Gay/Straight/Black/White, Same Struggle, Same Fight” and “Victory to SWAPO/ANC….” Oh well,  I guess I forget the end of that one. I didn’t know who SWAPO was at the time anyway. Soon after that, Nelson Mandela was freed from prison and apartheid folded through global economic pressure. South Africa was free, or so it seemed at the time.

I moved from Rochester to Minneapolis. Soon after arrival, my friend Chris convinced me to learn Spanish. We started taking classes and soon I got involved in some other international issues centered in Latin America, such as ending the embargo of Cuba, and supporting free and democratic elections in post-war El Salvador. I even got to travel to both countries and made a video documentary about the electoral process in the tiny Central American nation of El Salvador. I also made a video about Breaking the Blockade of Cuba, having traveled there with the non-profit activist group, Pastors for Peace. I also began to curate and host film screenings at non-profit cinemas around town. We would show Cuban films and have discussions about the Cuban revolution and the US embargo.

Pretty soon, while still traveling back and forth to Cuba, I became aware of other international issues and began to curate and host more film and discussion events. My friend Mustafa, a Jordanian living in Minneapolis at the time, told me a lot about the Palestinian situation and the Israeli occupation. Even though he was an ethnic Jordanian and the Palestinians had assassinated his uncle during the civil war, Mustafa was still very pro-Palestinian and in favor of their right to self-determination. So, we started showing documentary films and hosting discussions, and we even brought a dance group from the West Bank to come to perform in the Twin Cities.

Mustafa and I got involved in other “issues” as well. Mumia Abu Jamal was a journalist on death row for supposedly killing a police officer in Philadelphia. We went to demonstrations, put up posters, and even got arrested for spray-painting “Free Mumia” on the boarded up windows of an abandoned house. We were also marching in the streets and demanding freedom for another person of color in jail for the murder of law enforcement- Leonard Peltier. We marched in the streets and shouted “Free Peltier” and spraypainted his name on buildings and signs.

All during this time, along with the activist experiences mentioned previously, I was pursuing my career as a youth media educator. This was my “political work”, founding and managing a non-profit agency dedicated to giving teens a media education and production workshop experience, mainly as an out-of-school time program. This work stemmed from my undergraduate degree being in film and video production, and my desire to do grassroots community-level work. Also, a stronger source for the genesis of this practice was the media literacy education movement. The main tenets of this initiative being that young people had to be taught to be critical media consumers, able to dissect, unpack and critically analyze all media as a “construct” made by someone with a purpose in creating that work. Part of that education was also teaching youth how to make their own media, which we certainly did. We started two or three different youth-produced cable access TV shows. The main program, Our Turn, was a monthly teen magazine style show that aired for about ten years, making it perhaps the longest running teen produced program in the country.

The other part of this praxis was the critical media viewing piece. A lot of this work was being done in schools, led by a wonderful, pioneering group of passionate teachers and educators in Minnesota, around the country and around the world. We thought that the work was crucial, for if youth didn’t learn to recognize, critically analyze and deconstruct media content, they would be at risk of being vulnerable to misrepresentations, propaganda and what came to eventually become called “fake news”.

Also, key for me in this work, was countering the objectification of women in the media. Of course, sex sells and the silly men in charge of producing content for the mainstream media made sure that there was a healthy dose of women in submissive, alluring, inviting poses infused throughout most programming and advertising. And then when music videos really took off, the roles women got in those productions as scantily clad sexy background dancers took it even a step further.

I did this youth media work for over 25 years from about 1993-2020, working with thousands of students and co-producing hundreds of projects. Most of the participants were American Indian, African-American and immigrant youth from Asia and Africa. The media production learning experience was also eventually wrapped within a broader positive youth development model that included academic success (high school graduation), cultural connections, civic engagement opportunities, career and college readiness, asset-building and other less programmatically specific youthwork initiatives.

I would add that another major social issue that had my attention during this time was the environmental movement. Way back in college, I had even worked for Greenpeace for a while as a canvasser. We tried to raise money and talked to people about the whales, the acid rain, pesticides and pollution in general. The Greenpeace staffer that guided all of us young canvassers was named Bruce and he called me Long Tall Sally Jesse Raphael.

A lot of favorable memories can be recalled when I think of all of these experiences, I think that we did a lot of amazing work and left a pretty good legacy of trying to contribute to a little bit of social progress in this society. However, as we move into the Year 2025 in a couple of weeks, these are very unprecedented times, It seems that way, anyway. This reflection on past experiences has led me to ask myself: What is the consequence of all this experience? What happened as a result of the campaigns that I greatly cared about and was either tangentially or centrally a part of?

  1. Cuba: Still embargoed; an economic disaster; huge scarcity of food and electricity; mass emigration out of the country
  2. El Salvador: Turned into a gang-controlled nation ruled through murder, rape and extortion
  3. Palestine: wiped off the map by Israeli genocide and USA funded ethnic cleansing
  4. South Africa: “free” and ruled by wealthy corrupt Black capitalist class
  5. Mumia Abu Jamal: still in prison on death row
  6. Leonard Peltier: still serving life in prison
  7. Media Literacy movement: cultural environment polluted more than ever with fake news and misinformation
  8. Youth Empowerment: Guns and drugs now kill more kids than any other cause
  9. Anti-war movement: still war all the time
  10. American Indian youth: still facing the same immense obstacles
  11. Environmental Movement: hanging on by a thread
  12. Feminism: copped out and bought in to raunch culture as somehow empowering

All of Our Campaigns Have Failed

Hidden

Wonderment has the capacity to lead one astray or towards discovery. Of these two options, discovery seems preferable, but it doesn’t always work out in a rewarding way. If you follow the side hallway and go through the unmarked door, you might find there is a janitor’s closet with a large, perpetually moist, ropey mop propped against the wall beside a yellow mop bucket with the typical one inch of brackish water lying undisturbed in the dark stillness. Others may stay focused, exploring the spaces and pathways explicitly designed for public usage.

Why stray? Here’s where you come into the building from the street or, more frequently, from the parking garage. Here’s where you go towards the places of commerce where you are able to purchase things, consume food and drink, be moderately entranced by the subtle turns in the shades of light or the dim throbbing of the music, semi-recognizable hits from long ago. Or, for whatever reason, you might be enticed to wonder what’s down that hallway or what’s in the basement? Where does this door lead to? Especially if you are an employee at this commercial center, earning meager wages and passing the time with easy mindless tasks given by managers who think you’re stupid and want you to stay that way. Theft is always on their minds, or, more specifically, the prevention of such from their underlings.

But, the fear that I may be hiding out in the broom closet taking a nap might not be at the top of their list of worries. Or, the fact that I may be exploring the room behind the store room simply because this room is off limits and not where we are supposed to go. What other reason could there be to explore these staid, boring spaces if not for the fact that we’re not supposed to go there? And also because I’m always looking for a place to hide, to go to sleep, take a nap. Sitting on the floor next to the smelly mop in the dark is just a fine place for me. Some places I have taken naps at work or, as I remember it anyway, are in my janitor’s office at DuPont, on the shuttle bus, in the back of the warehouse at Angerstein’s, on top of the cooler at Sav-a-Cent, and possibly even in the cooler.

These hiding and napping places were important refuges for my youthhood years, emerging from them as if I hadn’t been gone, as if I hadn’t fallen asleep, as if I didn’t feel the need or the right to escape and go off and hide and close my eyes. Hey, I was practicing self-care before it was labeled a concept. I never got caught either. Too stealthy. At school, even. I found the unused classroom that was unlocked, hiding among the stacks of unused desks or climbing over the half-built cinder block wall to access the little hangout spot we had created. Just me and the boys. 

Alleyway

What was the name of that bar at the corner of Clinton and Goodman? Was it a foofy joint or a dive bar? And what’s the difference? The comfort of the seating, the quality of the decor of course; and the prices of the drinks no doubt. I guess it’s about whatever environment one feels most comfortable in. I’ve always been someone who meanders back and forth and can be comfortable in either setting. If you have a sense of belonging to carry with you then that certainly helps, although the patrons of each establishment will most likely decide for themselves whether you’re one of them or not. My ideal business plan is to have a central kitchen and pantry with a dive bar on one side and a foofy joint on the other side, serving the same food and drinks to each clientele at vastly different prices, with just a modicum of variation in the presentation to make each side authentic and valid and comfortable to those who choose to come in.

The breakfast sandwich in the dive bar will be real basic: bacon egg and cheese on a bagel, something like that. And we’ll serve the same thing out the other side, just put a sprig of fresh parsley and a dollop of Harissa on it and charge three times more. Everybody’s happy. We’ll do the same thing with the drinks, of course. We’ll do our best to keep our little arrangement secret. Folks going in the fancy place on Clinton Avenue would never step foot onto Goodman Street, so they’ll have no idea that there is another side to their story so to speak. We want everybody to be comfortable and that’s what everyone wants for themselves anyway: to be comfortable. So we have alignment in our goals and objectives. Only those few out of the rabble, the ones that can be both fancy and lowbrow, they will catch on and learn to come into either side whenever it suits their fancy. Me and the staff will be back in the kitchen and pantry located on the alley with a rooftop garden and apiary, a freshwater spring down below, rain barrels with tubes leading directly down to the kitchen and bar.

The alley is a safe place. It’s comfortable; ideal for people too shy to live on the street. If your house or apartment building is on the street, as most of them are, then your front door and windows, even anything you may have outside in the yard, God forbid, are out there for all to see! One might feel so uncomfortably exposed living like that. But in the alley, you can do all sorts of things undercover, as you live behind everyone else and not too many people care to come down the alley. Larry didn’t live on the alley, but he spent all his time back there fixing old cars and playing his squeaky harmonica, dressed in his smelly oil-stained mechanics jumpsuit, his unwashed hair and crooked glasses perched above his partially shaven face, his dog Mongrel laying down comfortably in the gravel, the mangiest dog you’ve ever seen. Larry was happy there and so was I. I liked to take photographs of old door knobs and the strange angles of the power cables framed against the bright blue sky of springtime as the thunder clouds moved in from the west and the wind picked up and blew the dust down the alley.

Boyhood

Confidently, we spilled out through the tree line onto the mown grass that abutted the cornfield. There must have been four or five of us, I can’t recall, free from adult oversight, at least temporarily. We looked around and surveyed the uniform rows of corn with the same enthusiasm as a band of marauding raiders entering a defenseless village. There was no one could stop us from exerting our will: peeing on the corn stalks, snatching the ears and ripping them away to throw at one another, felling the stalks and trampling them underneath our Keds with the white tube socks partially covering our pasty mosquito bite-covered legs, the cut off Wrangler shorts hanging down mid-thigh, Philadelphia Phillies or Def Leppard t-shirts a little sweaty from the romp through the woods. The sun high, shone upon us and we shone upon the world and upon each other.

No one could stop us. That was important. We could interrupt this carefully planned corn growing operation at our own pleasure, the hidden seed of all men and boys: to do and make as we wish or, if not possible, then to undo and unmake; or, again if not within reach, then to attach ourselves to some stronger figure who seems to have a force or a strength inviting enough to our needs. If Doug told us to stop destroying the corn, then we would. If he said break more, than we would. If a man came around the corner and chased us, then we would run back into the woods, inspired and sure of our abilities to run and jump, climb if necessary.

No one came and no direction from Doug was given. Perhaps this place is haunted. We ascribe the absence of evident rules and authority to supernatural forces. Perhaps it’s an old, abandoned farmhouse inhabited by ghosts that grow and eat the corn every summer; a chance of being punished by Spirits if we trespassed further, a haunting not in anyone’s plans or desires. We wound down our pillaging, our boyish destruction, wanton energy and inchoate manifestations, retreating back through the forest, shaking sticks and throwing rocks; me somewhat vigilant for any signs of pursuit from Spirits or living beings, guilty feelings regarding our transgressions, a blended brew of doubt and confidence, fear and wonder in Boyhood.

Caution

A cautionary tale is a story that you should learn from, a message embedded in a story, but I don’t know if there are indeed tales that prevented anyone from doing something harmful, stupid, foolish or grossly unthought out as it were. I mean, you’re going to do what you’re going to do, right? Even taking into consideration the proven results attested to in the collective lived experience of others in similar positions previously.

I mean, a really strong cautionary tale might sway you a little bit, maybe, for a second or two, before you slip off of the ledge and break your neck like countless fools before you. You see, that’s what I thought while I was working as a cub reporter in Pittsburgh back in the early 1960’s. I covered the waterfront, so to speak. That was my beat, the north end along the river, the mostly Italian and Polish neighborhoods around the old Heinz ketchup factory. I was digging up dirt on a guy who was making a killing selling phony life insurance to all the new immigrants coming in; families from the old country.

 The guy’s name was Del Pizzo. He worked the Italian families. He had a partner, a Roma woman named Carmelina Wilenski, who worked the Polish neighborhood. They were in cahoots together, selling phony life insurance policies, as I said. They figured that the newly arrived immigrants were worried about their children if something were to happen to them at their dangerous workplaces. Because the only work available to them, you know, was in factories and mines, in sewers, places like that. So, if something should happen, and they were to perish, how would the kids eat? The wife widowed, forced out into the street.

So, Del Pizzo and Carmelina, they came up with a name, Restful Comfort Life Insurance Company, and collected the monthly premiums from each policy holder, whose numbers were growing larger every week. They’d meet at Del Pizzo’s family restaurant on Sunday afternoons while everyone else was at church, and they’d divvy up the money while eating baskets of fried zucchini and drinking Lambrusco. They never intended to pay on anybody’s policy.

I got wind of this scheme through a guy I know who was a cook at the restaurant, breading and frying up the zucchini, who overheard them talking one day and let me know about it because we were old friends, and he knows I’m a reporter. But then he says to me, “I know that it would be great for your career to write up this story, but I’m going to ask you not to do it. Don’t mess with Johnny Del Pizzo. You’ll end up in the bottom of a pickle barrel floating down the Allegheny River just like everyone else that’s ever crossed him. Don’t do it!” he warned me. “I regret even telling you about it, but do me a favor and just let it go. Let’s forget about it and we’ll go to the ballgame next week.”

But, you know, I didn’t do that. I couldn’t. It was too big of a story. I thought about the big boost to my career that would occur by me following through on this and publishing a scoop of this magnitude. So, I started hanging out at the restaurant myself, trying to dig up dirt on Johnny and the Polish dame while getting fat on lots of fried zucchini. Well, sure enough, Johnny gets tipped off that I’m lurking around asking questions.

One day, as I’m walking over the bridge by the ketchup factory, I swear that I could tell some guys were tailing me. They were small, though; not big guys by any means, so it didn’t register at first that they might be Johnny’s thugs, or hitmen, anything like that. In fact, they looked like a couple of accountants, thin and frail, pale-skinned with wire-framed glasses, and a woman was with them too.

As I looked over my shoulder, I saw that she sported a hideous looking hat and wore pants instead of a dress, which I thought was strange. Regardless, I continued on my way over the bridge, but I never made it to the other side. Soon enough, I had a handkerchief soaked in chloroform over my face. I passed out, and apparently was immediately shoved into a pickle barrel. The top was nailed shut right there on the bridge and the barrel was tossed off the side and now I’m floating down the Allegheny River in a pickle barrel just like my pal warned me would happen.

Maybe someone will find me and open up this barrel before it’s too late.

Due Date

A stillness settled over the morning as the relentless night winds somewhat reluctantly subsided. The third shift nurses at the maternity hospital were gathered outside before the end of their shift, smoking cigarettes and feeling the first feather-like touches of the rising sun on their faces. There were only three of them, the staffing levels having been depleted once the private equity fund had been allowed to purchase the hospital and all of the other ones around it as well.

The three nurses stood smoking, facing eastward, Jim, Susan and Heavenly. They contemplated their own futures, in the short term as well as the vast, hazy and somewhat menacing expanse of the rest of their lives. They were relatively young, Jim and Susan at least, being born in Minnesota during the late 1990’s. Heavenly was a bit older, mid 40’s, born in Sierra Leone but living in Nigeria most of her life before emigrating to the Midwest. Susan carried a baby monitor with her and she turned up the volume to make sure that they weren’t missing anything as she lit up another smoke. They all knew that their own jobs would someday soon most likely come to an end as the new subsidiary company Xtremely Good Birthing Solutions replaced them all with computers and robots.

The company had run a trial down at a rural legacy hospital in a remote rural part of northern Alabama and only two infants had died. So, although there was some kinks to get worked out eventually, the company considered it enough of a success to make plans for a regional launch some time in the near future. The sales team, which outnumbered the medical staff 5:1, was still working out the details of the sponsorships and partner agreements. Emfamil, Pedialite, Similac were all 100% committed to the project. Amazon and Meta were negotiating for higher margins and the investors were pressuring for a deal to get done soon so that they could be up and running and charging the providers for contact-less births before the beginning of the summer.

The uninterrupted low hum on the Fisher Price walkie-talkie that Nurse Susan carried in her pocket indicated that all of the newborns and their moms were still asleep. The nurses had lowered all of the shades and closed the blinds tight before stepping outside, so that no one would be awoken by the rising sun. Jim thought about what he would have for breakfast when he arrived home. His husband, also named Jim, always got up and got their daughter ready for school while preparing a nice meal for when Nurse Jim got home from work, and Teacher Jim left for work, dropping off their daughter at their school along the way.

Nurse Heavenly had a big family to take care of when she got home, including her elderly mother, so, for her, going home was like going to another job. She sometimes accepted the thought of automation at the maternity hospital as perhaps that would give her a chance to rest. She could just sit at a desk and watch the babies being born, much like the grocery store employees who stand around the self-checkout lanes, their new responsibilities being no more than entering a code into the touchscreen when an error occurred.

Susan didn’t give a fuck about what came next. She was going to go home, maybe stop and buy a frozen burrito and some more smokes at the gas station before heading home and watching TV til she fell asleep on the couch. She liked working at the hospital.