This should be easier than it is

Only one hypothesis explains all we know: he did it and can't remember it.

He had a blackout. There is considerable evidence this is likely from his heavy drinking youth. He did it and can't remember it. She even said he was very drunk.

Okay, what if this is wrong? What happens? We don't promote an innocent, qualified judge and he goes back to his great job on the 2nd highest court in the land. He got screwed.

What happens if this is right and we confirm him? We give a lifetime job to a man who lied to Congress, who committed sexually aggressive acts in his youth, and whose temper is visible. WE GOT SCREWED.

What is the worst outcome between these two?

Q.E.D. Vote no.

My sickening feeling, it will be yes.

A possible savior. Mark Judge. Not about the aggression but about the drinking. If the FBI asks him.

Crossing my fingers

New Headline:

Donald Trump begins backing down after he’s caught trying to rig FBI investigation into Brett Kavanaugh

The fix is on

What a sham. The WH has listed whom the FBI can interview ... and drinking partners not included, they can't even establish the lie about drinking! This is such horseshit that hopefully it will backfire and a few Republicans will vote No. What crap. I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Here we go

The WH is managing, or trying to manage, the FBI investigation to a limiting degree"

The White House has provided the bureau with a list of witnesses they can interview, 

Read the story 

So it could end up worse than before! Which doesn't matter if a few Republicans are not ideologues and see the issue here. Or if his lying about drinking is enough. Or if his temper is enough. To vote No!

Pascal's Wager

Pascal presented this to justify his belief in God but I've used it for many difficult decisions. Here's how it would work with Ford and Kavanaugh.

Look at the consequences if each is telling the truth or lying.

1. Ford true, K lying.
2. Ford lying, K true.

1a. A yes vote, a sexual abuser makes the Supreme Court.
1b. A no vote, justice.

2a. A yes vote, justice.
2b. A no vote, K goes back to 2nd highest court in land.

So it comes down to,, which is worst, A sex abuser on Court or K loses promotion and goes back to old job? Clearly an abuser on the Court! So you vote to prevent the worst possibility, which is No.

What will FBI learn?

Unless Mark Judge remembers, they won't confirm the assault. He probably blacked out. They will establish, easily, that Judge K lied about his drinking habits. They may find confirmation he exposed himself, it must have been a big deal then. They may find confirmation of aggression or aggressive horseplay against women.

Minimum, lying about drinking. Is this enough? Not in criminal case. But in job interview, it should be except for ideologues. And there are many. So it's still up for grabs.

Key witnesses, Judge's ex girlfriend. Judge K's drinking partners.

New accusations will emerge but not be investigated.

Possibility: Judge K, afraid of damage to his reputation, withdraws to save family from this witch hunt. Another angry speech.

Social progress at the end? Little. Major consequence? Activating women.

(But remember, conservative women were in tears in sympathy with the judge.)

The key

Those who knew Brett Kavanaugh during his youth have described his hard-drinking habits — but he portrayed himself differently during his Senate hearing

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh made claims about his drinking habits during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday that do not match up with accounts from people who knew him in high school and college.

... 

 "I thought today, he evaded questions and he kept trying to turn the question around to 'but I studied really hard,'" Brookes said. "Well you know what? I studied hard too. I went to [Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania]. I did very well at Yale. I also drank to excess many nights with Brett Kavanaugh. The two things are not mutually exclusive."

Read more. 

You don't have to be an alcoholic, i.e. have an addictive disease, to be a heavy drinker, a mean drunk, someone who has blackouts. Kavanaugh was a mean drunk in school. Many witnesses. He still drinks. Odds are pretty good he will have had mean drunk episodes since school, and odds are good there are witnesses to these. They should speak up. But alcohol problems are notoriously hidden and swept under the rug and excused for otherwise good, even great, people.

This should be a no brainer. It's a job interview, for gods sake. But ideology is the fuel here. Ugly and sad results.

Hearings

Only one explanation that accounts for all data: he did it while incredibly drunk and blacked it out. He was a mean drunk in high school and college but presumably got it together as an adult. Anyone who has been to an AA meeting has met good sober / evil drunk dichotomy in confessions and stories of folks owning up to their drinking. More reason for a more thorough investigation. Judge K got very uncomfortable with questions about drinking. Dems wasted time talking about anything else. To me, a former hard drinker, he's a textbook blackout drinker. He truly doesn't believe he did it. But he did, drunk. That's the only explanation that makes sense to me of everything I saw today.

He also will get on the court UNLESS the swing Republicans have some personal knowledge of how booze works. We'll see.

Too nice

In my previous post I tried to give Judge K the benefit of the doubt. A mistake. His Fox interview was so clearly a sham and a lie about his drinking history, against abundant evidence of heavy and even uncontrollable drinking, that he must be called a liar. This is what the Democrats should focus on in their questioning.

This entire farce is shameful. I miss the moral outrage of Wayne Morse, who never would have let shit like this transpire without considerable vocal objections.

Everybody tells their truth

OK, what if no one is "lying" in  the Supreme Court melodrama. This makes sense to me: Prof Ford is telling the truth about what happened to her. Judge K is telling his truth in denying it because HE CAN'T REMEMBER IT. We have from a variety of sources that he was a very, very heavy drinker, even for the environment at the time. A former college roommate says he'd come in so drunk he was incomprehensible, that he was reserved when sober and aggressive and mean when drunk. So he likely blacked out his behavior, it seems to me. He can't remember doing it, probably can't even imagine doing it. I had black outs in my drinking days and did things --fortunately not serious -- I would never do sober. It happens to heavy drinkers.

In the testimony, Democrats have to zero in on his younger drinking habits. Did he quit or go to treatment? Clearly he drank until he was out of control, a variety of sources reveal this. His personality changed, which is not unusual with drunks.

Everyone is telling "their truth." But hers is more rooted to a real world of facts than his. But in these times, do facts even matter?

Her revealing letter

Note she made first contact BEFORE Judge K was nominated! Hopefully, so he wouldn't be.

September 22, 2018

Dear Senator Grassley:

There has been a lot of back and forth between your staff and my counsel, and I appreciate the chance to communicate with you directly. I kindly ask you to use your best discretion regarding this letter.

When I first learned that Brett Kavanaugh was on the short-list of nominees to fill a Supreme Court vacancy, prior to the President’s selection among a list among a list of what seemed to me as similarly-qualified candidates, I contacted my Congressperson’s office in an attempt to provide information that could be useful to you and the President when making this selection from among a list of candidates. The decision to first report the assault to my Congresswoman, Rep. Anga Eschoo, was a very difficult one, but I felt it was something a citizen couldn’t NOT do. I felt agony yet urgency and a civic duty to let it be known, in a confidential manner, prior to the nominee being selected. While it was difficult, I was able to share my information with two contacts during the period between the short list announcement and Mr. Kavanaugh’s selection.

Mr. Kavanaugh’s actions, while many years ago, were serious and have had lasting impact on my life. I thought that knowledge of his actions could be useful for you and those in charge of choosing among various candidates. My original intent was first and foremost to be a helpful citizen—in a confidential way that would minimize collateral damage to all friends and family involved.

I then took the step of sending a confidential letter to one of my senators, Ranking Member Feinstein, and I understand that you have a copy of that letter. I’m certainly prepared to repeat the facts in that letter and provide further facts under oath at a hearing. I would welcome opportunity to meet with you and other senators directly, person to person, to tell you what occurred. I will answer any questions you have. I hope that we can find such a setting and that you will understand that I have one motivation in coming forward—to tell the truth about what Mr. Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge did to me. My sincere desire is to be helpful to persons making the decision.

In addition to talking with you and other senators directly, I have asked my lawyer to continue discussions with your staff about the conditions you have proposed. As I am not a lawyer or a Senator, I am relying on them and you to ensure that the committee will agree to conditions that allow me to testify in a fair setting that won’t disrupt families and become a media tv show. While the nationwide outpouring of love has been heartwarming, I am spending considerable time managing death threats, avoiding people following me on freeways, and disconcerting media intrusion, including swarms of vans at my home and unauthorized persons entering my classroom and medical settings where I work. I have received an inordinate number of requests to appear on major TV shows to elucidate further information, to which I have not responded. My goal is to return soon to my workplace, once it is deemed safe for me and importantly, my students. Currently my family has physically relocated and have divided up separately on many nights with tremendous help of friends on the broader community. Through gracious persons here and across the country, we have been able to afford hiring security. While I am frightened, please know, my fear will not hold me back from testifying and you will be provided with answers to all of your questions. I ask for fair and respectful treatment. 

Kind regards,

Christine Blasey

If I were Judge K ...

... and innocent of charges of sexual misconduct, I would be screaming for an FBI investigation to clear my name. That he is not doing this, and his supporters are not doing this, make me wonder if they have something to hide.

So far it looks like there are four accusers now. Anything less than ten, and he'll get confirmed. Bad joke.

I believe the women more than I believe him, for the reason above, but I still think the system is corrupt enough to confirm him.

I met a 90+ plus year old woman who stopped voting. Why? "I don't want to encourage them." I see what she means. Neither party is working the high moral ground to find the truth. A farce, a fiasco, a tragedy, an embarrassment to the country.

Doc Watson

Russian classic

Classic

The late John Basham ...

... an old friend, sang the best cover of this I ever heard.

Classic and cover

Jill Lepore's new history

Just began this fat book but thus far, well, I would say it's extraordinary: timely and needed, beautifully written, inclusive and revealing. Remarkable book if it continues this way.

More about the book.

Teens who get it

From The Washington Post:

Cheryl O’Connor hadn’t planned on telling her teenage daughters about that night during high school, decades ago.But then Christine Blasey Ford told her about a house party in the early 1980s, alleging that Brett Kavanaugh had drunkenly attempted to sexually assault her.

“I had a situation like this happen to me,” O’Connor told her 16-year-old daughter, Brynn, as they sat together in their Bethesda kitchen this week. She had also been a student at an all-girls prep school in the 80s when she had been at a party picking up her belongings and the door unexpectedly locked behind her.

Subscribe to the Post Most newsletter: Today’s most popular stories on The Washington Post 

“I didn’t think it was a crime,” Cheryl O’Connor said. “We weren’t taught that.”

Unlike her mother, Brynn has been taught that attempted sexual assault between teens is a crime. The 16-year-old has learned about affirmative consent in her health class at Walt Whitman High. But as with many teens coming of age during the #MeToo era, there’s a gap between what she is being taught and her rising awareness, and what still happens around her.

She’s been to parties in the the D.C. suburbs. Parents still turn a blind eye to booze. The lines still become blurred. “This is just as much of a problem now as when my mom was in high school,” Brynn said.

But she and other teens wish the adults commenting on Kavanaugh and Ford would take the problem as seriously as they do.

Interviews with teenagers from across the country this week reveal frustrations with high school experiences being dismissed by politicians and others as a phase, a time when young boys can make belligerent, even harmful mistakes and overcome them. What Ford says happened to her could still happen to a 15-year-old girl at a party today, high schoolers say. Of women who say they have been raped, more than 40 percent experienced their first rape before age 18, according to survey findings from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention.

Yet teens have listened as some of Kavanaugh’s defenders have said the attempted assault, if it happened, took place “under the blurring influence of alcohol and adolescent hormones.” The 1980s were a different time, they said. Teenage boys will, of course, be teenage boys.

“Is the character you’re judged on the man you’ve been for 30 years, or the boy you were at 17?” wrote author and professor Tom Nichols.

Maybe the adults have moved on and learned from high school, but today’s teenagers still have to live it.

“I don’t know anyone who’s a girl my age who hasn’t been sexually harassed. That’s our reality, and I feel like politicians are completely ignoring it,” said Tori Siegel, a 17-year-old from Portland, Ore. “Excusing the behavior of Brett Kavanaugh is going to teach young boys that they can get away with things. Excusing this behavior just says that they can still be successful.”

“People have been saying ‘oh, it was like 30 years ago, why should that have any relation to what’s going on now?’” said Josephine O’Brien, a 15-year-old from Manhattan. “But it’s something that directly affects our lives every day.”

Anjali Berdia, 18, went to the same all-girls high school as Ford, Holton-Arms in Bethesda. When she heard the news about the allegations, she texted one of her friends from Georgetown Prep, the same all-boys high school Kavanaugh attended. “We were both just like, it must be crazy to be in the DMV now,” she said.

Anjali, who is now studying at the University of Pennsylvania, said she never encountered a situation quite like Ford’s.

“But I do 100 percent think that this type of thing could happen at a party in Montgomery County this Friday,” she said. The prep school social circle has a pervasive “hookup culture,” she says, “and in many ways I think hookup culture perpetuates rape culture.”

The single-gender nature of many prep schools puts added pressure on parties over the weekends, because it’s the only time guys and girls get to hang out, Anjali said. “It becomes this mash of hormones, sweat and alcohol in some Montgomery County basement.”

When she thinks about Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing, she thinks about her own generation and “everyone who’s watching and being like, ‘that’s okay.”

“Maybe he didn’t mean it and maybe he was a kid,” Anjali said of Kavanaugh. “But saying it’s okay means some other girl is going to be sexually assaulted in a basement because that’s okay as long as he turns out to be a successful adult. “

For most high school students, the Kavanaugh news only comes up in the occasional push notification. Supreme Court confirmation hearings take a back seat to biology homework, college applications, soccer practice and Homecoming plans.

But for some teens, even those far from D.C., the story has struck deep.

In Boise, Idaho, on Sunday night, three 15-year-old girls with the Idaho Coalition Against Sexual & Domestic Violence sat down to write an open letter to Ford.

“We are fifteen year old girls,” the letter from Charlotte, Layla and Jessica was titled. “We are with you, Christine Blasey Ford, PhD.”

On pink Post-it notes, the girls brainstormed phrases that would get across how they felt: “Fun for boys should never include trauma for girls.” “We understand you.” “We are angry.”

“That’s not what having fun is about, ”said Jessica, who like her friends requested that her last name not be used because of safety concerns.

In Palo Alto, Calif., Daniel Klein noticed that Kavanaugh was the same age as him at the time of the alleged incident -- 17. But what stood out most to Daniel was that Kavanaugh allegedly wasn’t alone -- he had a friend nearby, watching. “At no point in the story does it sound like his friend intervened,” Klein said.

It made him think of some of the competitive groups among his classmates, “the guy’s guys” who are “known as being the cool ones and the ones the girls would go after.” “In some way it’s that you’re trying to prove that you’re part of the group,” Daniel said. “It kind of builds into this game of trying to outwin each other.”

But Daniel is keenly aware of these pressures. He’s taken a literature class on toxic masculinity. He’s listened to lectures on consent and the difference between “yes, but,” and “yes, please.” “We know what is not right and what is not acceptable,” he said.

That overused phrase, “boys will be boys,” frustrates high school students like Daniel and Luke Chinman, 15, of Pittsburgh.

“Whatever age a person is, it’s never okay to sexually assault or harass someone,” Luke said. “They should not get any free passes for doing any of these terrible things to other people. They need to know this and everyone else needs to know this.”

Perhaps the teenagers that know this best are the ones who have been through it.

One 17-year-old thought about that day, during a school event her sophomore year, when a close friend that “everybody liked” pulled her into a darkened room, attempted to remove her underwear and coerced her into performing oral sex.

“I didn’t know what was happening,” said the teen, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she still doesn’t want people to know what happened. “I fought back in the moment but not as hard as I could have, because I feared social and personal retaliation.”

When Beverly Dempsey, 18, heard Ford’s story, she thought of her own experience with sexual assault, in the fifth grade while living in Egypt for her parents’ work with the State Department. Beverly, who recently graduated from Walt Whitman High School, thought about all the parties she didn’t go to because she feared that she would be stuck alone in a room with a guy she didn’t know.

She saw the way in which people dismissed Ford’s story, questioning its accuracy. “What if I speak out and that’s the reaction I get?” Beverly said.

“I think every teenager goes through a phase,” Beverly said, but there’s a major difference “between getting drunk and partying and sexually assaulting a woman.”

“If he had been in a drunken accident and left someone crippled,” she added, “he would have to take responsibility for his actions. Why is this any different?”

Sydney.Trent@washpost.com

Bends my mind

THE WEIGHT OF MY FATHER'S SOUL

  by Charles Deemer

(originally published in Oregon Magazine)
 

        If I didn't know better, I would have concluded that
I'd just watched my father's soul leave his body. Of
course, this possibility did not occur to me at the
time; Dad was still about thirty seconds from falling
dead. At the moment, on this fall day in New Jersey,
where outside the leaves were brilliantly colored in
their own ritual journey toward death, Dad was still
standing on the scale in the kitchen.
        "Chick, you've gained some weight," his cousin Gubby
said.
        Then the scale suddenly registered zero. 

Read it. 

Another lost opportunity

This entire Supreme Court fiasco is another lost opportunity for a significant teachable moment about our cultural history of sexism. If men would just own up to it and move forward from there. But the boys club is entrenched and refuses to believe we men have been educated to be sexists.

Give me a break

Judge K has a documented youthful history of excessive drinking to an extraordinary degree. He's even bragged about it. This is rather typical of certain male groups at that age. He threw up. He had blackouts. Given this, how can he say with certainty what the hell he did while drunk? He can't. Yet he vehemently denies Ford's accusations with a certainty that I find very troubling. He should reply by owning up to his youth but insisting such action is not in his character. "Although I can't remember everything ..." etc. For me, his certainty suggests something other than innocence.

He has everything to gain by lying. She has nothing to gain by lying and, in fact, quite the opposite. Her life has become hell.

Alas, if she doesn't testify, even under unfair conditions, her sacrifice may be for naught. Or maybe she will drive women to the polls.

Perks overseas

From a theater program in Brazil:

ABOUT RODRIGO PORTELLA (director)

Natural of Três Rios, in the interior of the State of Rio, the author and director Rodrigo Portella directed 19 pieces. In Rio, he studied theater at UNIRIO and published the  trilogy of the Cárcere. In his native city, he founded the Cia Cortejo. He made about 200 presentations of  Before the Rain  all over the country with the project Palco Giratório. Currently, he is researching the experiences of Charles Deemer and Hiperdrama in the Theater, through a FAPERJ scholarship, under the guidance of Moacyr Chaves. He is general director of "Off Rio - Multifestival of Theater of Three Rivers", that in 2018 arrives at its sixth edition. (my emphasis, translation by Google)

A disciple? Whatever, I dig it.

Zen lit

There's a Zen saying, Poetry is not the words on paper but the mode of thought in the mind of the poet.

I dreamed the new short story last night. Does that mean I don't have to write it?

The plot thickens

The following is a statement by Fatima Goss Graves, President and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC):

“We fully support Dr. Blasey Ford’s decision to not testify on Monday. Why would anyone choose to go before the Senate Judiciary Committee and submit to partisan and hostile questions prior to an independent investigation? Dr. Blasey Ford has courageously shared her story, but she rightly objects to the rushed and arbitrary deadlines that have defined this hearing and a process that dismisses the gravity of sexual assault. We have all watched the devastating video from Anita Hill’s testimony in 1991. The Senate must do the right thing this time.”

My imagination won't shut up

Jesus, it's hard to wean myself from writing! Thinking about the Supreme Court situation gave birth to an intriguing story idea, similar situation, set in high school 60th reunion party, working title She Said, He Said ... a short story, not a novel, so maybe it is doable without having a nervous breakdown, which is what I feared my recent novel was going to cause. I just can't NOT get story ideas! Writer's block has never made any sense to me.

Letter to Christine Blasey Ford from friends: ‘We have your back’

PALO ALTO — A growing group of “Peninsula moms” is circulating a “Dear Christine” letter to the woman at the center of explosive allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, saying “we have your back.”

The letter to Christine Blsasey Ford, drafted by some of her closest friends whose children have attended Palo Alto public schools together, promises to help her with whatever is needed as she faces an onslaught of publicity and scrutiny and decides whether to appear next week before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“We will bake you cookies, bring over dinner, lend a hand with your kids, help with your pets, protest in front of City Hall, sign petitions, run for office,” according to the letter, which started its email and Facebook journey Tuesday.

Ever since Blasey Ford, a psychology professor at Palo Alto University, went public in the Washington Post on Sunday accusing Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her during a high school party, media have parked out front hoping for an interview. She and her husband and two teenage sons have left the house and are staying elsewhere for now. A friend picked up the family dog Sunday afternoon.

Read more. 

The only way for this to become a teachable moment, and not a he said, she said predictable political dance, is for U.S. Senators to admit, and bring up, the prevalent sexism in the culture and emphasize how slow progress has been to eradicate it in a meaningful way. Hard to believe this can happen.

Why I believe Christine B Ford

1. She talked about the attempted rape on several occasions years ago, before this confirmation hearing.
2. She passed a lie detector test.
3. She tried hard to remain anonymous.
4. I'm a man. I live in a sexist culture. I know how men are when they get together. For over a year I went to an all male college, Cal Tech (then), and I served 3 yrs in an all male Army. I also drank a lot during this period. I know how it can get.
5. K's denials have motivations that makes sense to me; he has everything to lose and, in fact, he may not even remember, since he had black outs and drank excessively, according to witnesses. He also said, perhaps tellingly, "What happened at Georgetown Prep, stays in Georgetown Prep."
6. For me, given the sexist culture, this is a no brainer. Boys are EDUCATED to treat women this way and a few don't have the character to know the lines that shouldn't be crossed.

This is a slam dunk case, as far as I'm concerned. Alas, I doubt if it matters, K will be confirmed to join the other Major Sexist on the court.

The tragedy of Trump's election continues.

Karaoke Tonite!

I survived the Warsaw ghetto. Here are the lessons I’d like to pass on Stanisław Aronson

Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel stated this summer that “when the generation that survived the war is no longer here, we’ll find out whether we have learned from history”. As a Polish Jew born in 1925, who survived the Warsaw ghetto, lost my family in the Holocaust, served in a special operations unit of the Polish underground, the Home Army, and fought in the Warsaw uprising of 1944, I know what it means to be at the sharp end of European history – and I fear that the battle to draw the right lessons from that time is in danger of being lost.

Read the article. 

Rock bottom

How low can a man's character get? President Bone Spur apparently hasn't hit rock bottom yet. His latest hallucination and cruelty claim the thousands of deaths from the hurricane in Puerto Rico are a conspiracy by Democrats to make him look bad. This man doesn't have a bone of empathy in his body. And still supporters stay with him. 

Still in Act One

Ponder this

The universe doesn't make mistakes.

Old school

Once upon a time if you sent someone something, they would acknowledge receiving it and perhaps even say thank you. But times have changed.

What's next?

Good question. What is my next project? Reading for pleasure is a possibility. Never got much during my career, reading was usually research. How to fill my time if I actually retire from writing?

CJ, a novel

I think/hope this is the long-form fiction on which I finally retire, writing less demanding and shorter pieces hereafter. This one took a lot out of me. It is, of course, the marriage of two previous novels about CJ, Sodom, Gomorrah & Jones and Last Rights.

CJ, a novel

Obama v Trump

Andrea Mitchell‏Verified account @mitchellreports

.@realDonaldTrump says economy heading south when he took office going in the wrong direction: Facts: Jobs grew from Nov 2012 to Nov 2016 at 1.88 % a year during @BarackObama 2nd term Jobs grew from November 2016 to today by 1.57 % since @realDonaldTrump elected Do the math

Rhythm & routine

Each beginning of a month begins a new sequence of income and bills, so I like to see everything in order sooner rather than later, and in this regard we have a great start to September. Moreover, the heat spell is gone and we have some very nice weather with much needed rain ahead, which I look forward to (for a change). It's First Friday in Milwaukie but we may not have energy to check it out. Have to see. Also overdue for a trip to a local farm to get SOME REAL TOMATOES, something I don't find in the local markets.

I think I've finished the final step in the long new book process. Feeling damn good about it, too. Of course, that's one of those "majority of one" insights ha ha.

Bends the mind

My all-time favorite harmonica solo. Since high school, still number one. The tone is amazing.

Little Walter

Doesn't get any better than this.

Mulligan

The battle within the administration

An extraordinary confession and opinion piece.

But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.

That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.

Read it. 

Downhill

Rest of week looking good. 

Tomorrow

... better! Today something of a drag of a day, what with both of us with hospital stuff to do. Harriet's visit good, mine a waste of time. Eager for tomorrow, book order arrives, get novel in the mail and try to stir the pot on the issue. Peeing into the wind, probably. 

Hospital day

Always a drag. Always feel like I drive too much for too little.

Small world

Harriet just met a neighbor here in our apartment complex, said her last name, and the neighbor asked if she knew Charles Deemer. She rented an apartment in NW when I managed it, back in the 80s during my run in the local sun, and vividly remembers how cool it was to see my play on public television, her manager writing for TV! Ha ha. We agreed the 80s were Portland at its best, downhill since then. She said her mother would never visit her because the neighborhood looked too dangerous but once it got gentrified, she loved the area. Oh well.

Make something!

A video from Mark Marchus, filmmaker, writer, philosopher, inventor, who at 85 makes more than men and women a fraction of his age.  His website First Sound Press features radical non-fiction and his website Meet the Revolutionary YouPack features an invention so timely that this very morning NPR had a feature story about a problem this mobile toilet would alleviate. 

A good morning

Woke up feeling unusually peppy. Too tired yesterday for a bagel run, I made it today -- but Sketch was too tired to ride shotgun. It's about a half hour round trip, and he was just getting up when I returned. Did the morning dog ritual and now I wait for coffee to finish brewing.

Maybe one reason I feel so good is that yesterday I did a leisurely reading of LAST RIGHTS, trying to pretend I didn't write it. (It's only 136 pages.) Very satisfying. I am proud of it. However, if a reader doesn't want to think, just wants entertainment, well, I understand this is not the right book because the characters discuss some serious issues, inviting the reader's silent opinion.

My September project is putting the two CJ novels together as a single work, "CJ." Requires a bit of tweaking in LAST RIGHTS to eliminate redundant stuff, but stuff important if you haven't read the first volume.

What to do today?

The legacy of the Wobblies

For Labor Day. Also see 1934: Blood and Roses.

I wrote, produced and performed this with General Strike, a labor musical group, at the First Unitarian Church in Portland over 20 years ago. General Strike is still singing, on Wednesday in fact at a farmers market, and I hope to catch their performance. Talk about true believers!