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Mini Road Trip.......

Heading out on The BigBluePlasticMotorcycle for points North. Going to see Bryan Lee play the Blues at some Gin Joint tonight.

The weather looks to be perfect for a ride and all is well in GrumpyUnks world this morning.

Be back tomorrow night. See ya then.

Gratuitous Picture for a Wednesday Morning-


I know you're not supposed to pick up Hitch Hikers but............

OK, Now the Question is- Incompetence or Deliberate?

Priorities!!!

The Video below only shows part of the problem with the delays in the Gulf Cleanup.

It's Way Worse than just dicking around and ignorance.

Of course, Teleprompter Jesus thinks delays in containing the oil are ok if it ensures that the Unions are getting their cut of the action.

"The Americans, overwhelmed by the catastrophic consequences of the BP spill, finally relented and took the Dutch up on their offer -- but only partly. Because the U.S. didn't want Dutch ships working the Gulf, the U.S. airlifted the Dutch equipment to the Gulf and then retrofitted it to U.S. vessels. And rather than have experienced Dutch crews immediately operate the oil-skimming equipment, to appease labour unions the U.S. postponed the clean-up operation to allow U.S. crews to be trained."

Same thing with the berms that Governor Jindal was asking for within the first 10 days.

"A catastrophe that could have been averted is now playing out. With oil increasingly reaching the Gulf coast, the emergency construction of sand berns to minimize the damage is imperative. Again, the U.S. government priority is on U.S. jobs, with the Dutch asked to train American workers rather than to build the berms."

Read the entire article. The absurd EPA rules, rules which could be temporarily rescinded during this emergency, are to blame, too.

I guess it's more important to keep some union guys working than to try to keep the coast from being destroyed.
That's what you get when you have a bunch of Community Organizers running things.

A pox on all of these fuck ups.

Hat tip again to Ace

Whoa!!!!
Just saw this video over at Ace of Spades Seriously harshing on President Teleprompter.

Oil Spill Timeline from RightChange on Vimeo.

Gratuitous Picture for a Tuesday Evening-

If you haven't seen it yet, be sure to check out the great video interviews that Bryon Powell at iRunFar did with most of the top finishers. They are uncut, fresh off the finish, and have some great insights.

Link here.

Congrats to everyone who ran, crewed, and volunteered. I sure enjoyed watching from afar!

- sd

I'm rereading the book now for a course. I had reservations about it the first time I read it; this time, at first, I fought with myself. "I must love this tract because I am a feminist" battled it out with "This book is crap."





Friedan's sources don't hold up.





She cherry picks; if she finds a study whose conclusion she likes she cites it; she ignores research that doesn't support her. What would she make of current studies that suggest that some differences between males and females are hardwired?





She lambastes what she doesn't like about Freud; she cites what she does like about Freud, for example, his thoughts about homosexuals (275). Friedan: "homosexuality is spreading like a murky smog over the American scene" because of "parasitical mother-love." "Homosexuals often lack the maturity to finish school and make sustained professional commitments" (276).





Friedan's childhood was unhappy not because she grew up under the thumb of oppressive patriarch, but because her mother was an "insatiably greedy," unpleasant shrew who relentlessly belittled her father.





She fictionalized her life on many levels, from name changes (Bettye to Betty; Friedman to Friedan) to hiding her Stalinism that was so doctrinaire that she opposed joining the war against Nazi Germany as long as Stalin opposed it.





Friedan's constant belittling of women is grating. Women who fall in love are fluff heads. Women who build their lives around home and children are embarrassments. Women who clean their own homes are worthless fools. Pretty, blue-eyed blondes come in for real trash talk. Friedan never sees the irony in her demand that a real feminist is someone who hires a nanny and a housekeeper to do the lowly work of making a home. A real feminist is doing "important" things like those glorious comrades who marched with Castro (36).





You realize, in reading this book, why history's pendulum had to cough up reactions like Madonna and Martha Stewart.





Of course there are the disturbing allegations that Friedan's husband beat her, and that she beat him.





Friedan insists on the complete plasticity of gender identity. That conceit has had very tragic applications, as in the case of David Reimer. Maybe I need to read this book a third time to come to value its gifts and forgive its flaws.





"The Feminine Mystique" is proof of the need for Godwin's Law. Friedan repeatedly and emphatically compares the status of American housewives to the status of Nazi concentration camp inmates (305-09). Way to trivialize the Holocaust, Betty, and to muddy the waters for those who wish to discuss misogyny with any intelligence or integrity.



I've long wondered at mainstream American feminism's many failures: its inability to appeal to more women, its failure to step up to the plate regarding Islamic gender apartheid and sex trafficking. Friedan's book was foundational. It is replete with ideological cracks.





Friedan quotes a study by University of New Hampshire sociologist Arnold W. Green that depicts Poles as animalistic brutes.







Green's focus is not Poles; Poles exist to serve as contrast to a more important population.



"The Middle Class Male Child and Neurosis" appeared in the American Sociological Review, XI:1 (February 1946) 31-41.





Though Poles beat their children savagely, the children don't become neurotic the way that American middle class children do, Green wrote, because there is no love bond between Polish parent and child.





Green describes a "Polish colony," a mill town in Massachusetts.





"Norms governing courtship and marriage do not apply within this Polish colony. This is also true of parent child relationships … their expectations of their American-born children's conduct reflect an alien peasant system of values. An outstanding feature of peasant family life, in contradistinction to that of modern, middle-class family organization, is the stress placed upon rules and work functions rather than personal sentiment … these rules of conduct and this parental authority are out of place in this American industrial slum."





Parents "are met with the anger and ridicule of their children. These "peasant" parents exercised "vengeful, irrational" parental authority.





"Love is alien to peasant mores"



"Parents apply the fist and the whip rather indiscriminately. The sound of blows, screams, howls, vexations, wails of torment, and hatred are so commonplace along the rows of dilapidated millhouses that the passersby pay them scant attention."



"The open woods and fields are close at hand and the children roam far. The homes are not clean, nor do they contain furniture of any value…children develop openly malicious contempt for their parents as stupid … their training is very similar to that received in many primitive tribes."





Green introduces no Polish informants. He provides no transcripts of interviews. He produces no data to support his assertions of Poles as dirty primitives who don't know what love is. He offers no solution, no suggestions for intervention. He didn't have to. Again, this was published in a scholarly journal.





Friedan liked what Green had to say, so she quoted it unquestioningly and approvingly in "The Feminine Mystique." A woman identified as a liberator and groundbreaker couldn't see the dehumanizing classism and elitism that jumps out at this reader in both Friedan's citation of Green and in Green's original article. Both Friedan, and Green, might as well have been writing about zoo animals.

As the Oscar Grant / Johannes Mehserle murder trial nears and end and fears that former BART Police Officer Johannes Mehserle increase, the fears that a riot, or series of riots, will happen in Oakland, Los Angeles, and other cities and towns in California increase, and for good reason. There are clear and visible signs that individuals and groups will take some kind of action that could include violence and property damage, and nowhere is this more apparent than around Lake Merritt in Oakland.   There, property damage has already happened.

This video blogger received a tip from a YouTube viewer:

Not sure if you're aware, but there is graffiti in red spray paint throughout the running/walking path in Lake Merritt regarding Oscar Grant and Johannes Mesherle, just thought you may want to possibly cover it, and the peoples reactions while viewing it.

Take Care

On Sunday, I did just that. My vlogging (video-blogging) journey started with a message painted in red spray paint at the AC Transit bus shelter at the intersection of Perkins Avenue and Grand Avenue in Oakland's Adams Point District. The message read "Mehserle must die too!" and seemed to imply there was at least one more graffiti tag like it around somewhere. So, I went for a walk.

At first, as I arrived at Bellevue and Grand closer to Lake Merritt, there was no other graffitt tag message. So I continued along the walking and running path through Lakeside park until I arrived at what's locally called "The Columns," the structure on the northeastern shore of the Lake that serves an an informal meeting and viewing place between Grand Avenue and Lakeshore Avenue.

There, starting at the end of The Columns on the Grand Avenue side, was the first of three messages. It read "Mehserle must die." The other two are located in what I call the center court area, and at the opposite end of The Columns on the Lakeshore Avenue side.

But it graffiti tagging didn't stop there; it continued around the path next to the Lakeshore on the Lakeshore Avenue side of the water. The majority of the messages, which varied in tone from bad to awful, were next to the benches along the path.

In all I counted 11 messages, all in the video. A sure and clear sign that someone already took action to send a warning of what they either intend to do or wish someone else would do if the Oscar Grant trial ends with Mehserle going free.

The problem is Mehserle just may walk free.

The reason is the charge is murder, not manslaughter. The prosecution in the case has to prove that Johannes Mehserle intended to kill Oscar Grant last year. This is an issue I talked about with Oakland City Attorney John Russo just weeks ago. While not saying outright that Mehserle would "walk," Russo explained that it was going to be difficult to get a murder conviction.

If Johannes Mehserle is set free, Oakland's not going to be the safest place to be on the day of the verdict.

Stay tuned.

Monday Motorcycle Report..........

Today turned out to be a good day to take "TheBigBluePlasticMotorcycle" out for a ride.

It's cooled down here quite a bit today. Temps in the mid to high 80's and a pretty solid cloud cover made it comfortable out there.

So off we went.
I'm back into looking for an old tractor for around here again so I went off to points South and East to scope out a couple that were advertised on Craigslist.

Wasn't really impressed to much by the couple I looked at. Ran across a couple of others by chance that may be ok.
Gonna have to be cheap though to match my resources.

We'll see. I can still bide my time and save money for now. Something will show up.

I looked at a couple that would be perfect, but they were just out of my price range. Probably worth what they were asking for them but just more than I have right now.
Oh well.That's how it goes.

I had a great day out on the bike anyway and that's gotta be worth something!

I will be going North on Wednesday morning to Angola, Indiana to see Bryan Lee play the Blues at some Bar up that-a- way. Should be a good time.
Got nobody to go along with me so far, but that's ok too. I do pretty well on my own. Especially on road trips.

Gratuitous Picture for a Monday Evening-
Remember this

Ten years ago I broadcast the following essay via WFIU in Bloomington, Indiana:







Have you seen the new Hollywood blockbuster, U-571? A bunch of macho American submarine sailors change the course of World War Two by stealing a Nazi code machine. The filmmakers assured us that this is a true story!





Well, not quite. It was Polish intellectuals, and a gay British mathematician, who did the key work on breaking Enigma, the Nazi code.





Sure, U-571 is only a movie. It's just that unfortunate stereotypes guarantee that "Polish Intellectual" and "gay war hero" are oxymorons, the punchlines of jokes.





Hollywood could have played the hero in the war on stereotypes had it depicted - accurately - the Brilliant Polish scholars, and the heroic British homosexual whose work on Enigma greatly facilitated victory for the right side.





It's not just in Hollywood, unfortunately, that these contributions have been slighted. In real life, after the war, Churchill and Roosevelt delivered Poland, their worthy ally, into the hands of Joseph Stalin, a man responsible for more civilian deaths than Hitler.





And what became of Alan Turing, the gay British mathematician who also worked on Enigma? He was arrested, and offered a chance of prison or forced hormone injections to "cure" his homosexuality. He died an apparent suicide. Unfortunately, U-571 is part of a Hollywood trend that diminishes the role of all the diverse peoples whose combined effort defeated the Nazi menace.







At the time that I broadcast the above essay, I was participating in internet discussion lists devoted to Polish topics. I posted the text of this essay on one such list. I received a poignant private email in reply.





The sender of the e-mail was gay. This person talked about how rough it was to be both Polish and gay. To have to live with negative stereotypes of Poles … and of homosexuals.





The person begged me not to reveal his/her identity. I never have. I haven't forgotten this person, either.





I don't know why Poland, post-1989, allowed homophobia to take a prominent place in its public life. It is always a sorry spectacle when formerly oppressed people, Poles, and African Americans also, adopt prejudice and oppression towards others. When Lech Kaczynski and other prominent Poles were killed recently in a plane crash, many websites, knowing only this of Poland and Kaczynski – that he was a homophobe – carried the headline, "Homophobe Dies."





I'm a Christian. People ask me how I can be gay-friendly. I discuss that here.

Frank Shamrock (Frank Alisio Juarez III) announced he's retiring from American mixed martial arts (MMA) fighting at at Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Werdum Saturday at HP Pavilion.

Frank Shamrock is the four-time defending, undefeated MMA champion and a 7th degree black belt in something called "Submission Fighting," which is a type of wrestling sport.

Shamrock's four time title defense included some memorably brutal battles, like the one against Igor Zinoviev in 1998 that ended in a knockout. It was called the most violent slam in Ultimate Fighting Championship history. (Warning, the video is violent.)



Shamrock stopped UFC fighting in 1999 after what's considered to be the one of the greatest fights in UFC history against Tito Ortiz. After that fight, Frank Shamrock was considered the greatest ultimate fighter in history.

After a brief stint as an actor, Shamrock returned to fighting in 2001 and had a number of memorable bouts through 2009, when he was defeated by TKO by Nick Diaz.

Shamrock lives in San Jose

Frank Shamrock lives in San Jose, California with his wife Amy and daughter Nicolette. His official website is at FrankShamrock.com.

USA vs Ghana World Cup 2010: Oakland watches Gyan's Golden Goal: USA loses 2-1 in OT

And so another nail-biting FIFA World Cup Soccer game ends for the USA, this time the wrong way. The USA lost 2-1 in overtime as this blogger returned to the Era Art Bar on Grand and Broadway in Downtown Oakland, CA for the anticipated single elimination Saturday match. But in the process, Soccer's importance to Americans grew by fantastic proportions, and in no place was this more evident than Oakland, California.

The USA loss was a sad end to a great run by a USA team that wasn't really picked to go far in World Cup competition. But the hustling team paced by USA Soccer star Landon Donovan tied England 1-1 to start match play, then tied Slovenia 2-2 in a controversial match that the USA really won 3-2 but for a mistakenly discounted goal by FIFA referee Koman Coulibaly. Finally the USA won a match, beating Algeria 1-0. All that set up today's exciting overtime win.

The Era Art Bar was packed

Ghana fans were all over Era

If you arrived at the Era Art Bar at 11 AM and with the idea of getting a seat, you were out of luck; the place was packed.

Kevin Best, the bar's owner, said he was going to open the loft section and that was a good idea if only to have a place to go where one could have some space. But for those who love being in the crowd as things are happening, downstairs at Era Art Bar was the place to be.

The room was surprisingly a bit less "pro USA" than I expected and that reflects not just Oakland's diverse immigrant population, but Americans who simply wanted Ghana to win for various reasons. Some, like my friends Rosa Cabrera and Qaid Aqeel, were torn between USA and Ghana because of their Latino and African heritage, but as Qaid said "It's like James Brown said 'Living in America.'"

Others were clearly for either Ghana or the USA. In the case of Kevin Best, he wanted the USA to win "so this crowd would come back next week." For a time, it looked like he might get his wish.

Michael Hunt celebrates in the air

Ghana took the lead 1-0 to end the first half of match play. But the USA tied 1-1 it in the second half on Landon Donovan's free kick, sending the Era Art Bar crowd into a frenzy. Even the normally stoic Michael Hunt, former aide to Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, got excited, jumping up over the crowd to celebrate.

But by bar regular Rob Pape's detailed analysis, the USA was not playing well enough to win. To say that Pepe, wearing a "USA SOCCER" jersey, was disappointed in USA team manager Bob Bradley is an understatement, and that was at halftime. Pepe said "I'm having trouble watching it, Zennie. Cause I think Bob Bradley put the wrong lineup in. He should have started Adu, at least for Clark. He probably should have started Gomez for Finley. Or at least Buttle for Finley."

Rob Pape offers Soccer wisdom

Rob Pape said that in the last two game we (the USA) started their best lineups and controlled the center of the field. That was not the case today.

The Oakland Era crowd was surprisingly informed about the game of Soccer. But given the popularity of even pick-up games along Lake Merritt, I should expect what I witnessed: Oakland's a Soccer town. Oaklanders know the game.

The USA team lost but won

USA hopes sank on Asamoah Gyan's golden goal in the third minute of extra time, putting them ahead 2-1. This time, there was no miracle goal at the last minute. No loud celebration. But there was the feeling that Ghana deserved to win and that the USA team made America, and Oakland, very proud. It's too bad we have to wait another four years for The World Cup. But as Rob Pape said "Soccer's like life. It doesn't always go your way."

No kiddling.

Mexican Clown Car............
This is like something out of the circus.

Watch what bails from this van full of illegals after it gets into an accident.



I lost count at about 22.
Still think you ought to boycott Arizona?



It's like there was a plan or something.

Gratuitous Picture for a Saturday Evening-



Hat Tip - Theo Spark

Jeff Beck, Indy, 6-21-10.........
Went to see Jeff Beck the other night up in Indy. My good friend and motorcycle buddy, DrJ secured tickets awhile back told me in no uncertain terms that, "I WAS going".

It wasn't like it's a problem or anything to go see Jeff Beck. It was something that I hadn't ever done in the past.

Holy shit. I KNEW he was a great guitarist.
I didn't know just how great he was.

He may have the best technique of ANY guitar player I have ever seen.
I don't say that lightly. Other than Jimi Hendrix, I've seen just about all of the great guitarists out there in the last 35 years or so.

I've never seen anyone do what he does. He is just unbelievable.

The band members with him, Bass, Drums and Keyboards were all exceptional in their own right and everyone got a chance to stretch a bit and showcase their talents.
Lots of spontaneous interplay between them all and a lot of smiles while doing it.

I'd smile too, if I could make music like that.

I really should emphasize just how good the band was. You can read a bit about them at the link.
It's not often that you see a band where EVERYONE is so damn good.

There was a bit of a glitch though. DrJ wasn't able to go so I took the youngest son, DogBoy. I'm very glad he got to see that show. DogBoy plays drums and I'm pretty sure that seeing Narada Michael Walden pound the living shit out of the drums was a good motivator for him to practice. Read his bio, he's got a lot of other things going for him than just being an ass-kick drummer.

Very diverse song selection too. I damn near cried by the time he finished this song.


Check out how he manipulates the Whammy Bar and the volume knob while playing this. Also note about 1:15 into this, how he hits those harmonics, way up at the top of the neck. I didn't even know there were harmonics up there. He did this routinely in other songs just running through solos.
Crazy. Never saw anything like it.

Here's a Beatles cover they did-


Just an all around good show. If you get a chance to see him? Don't miss it.

Gratuitous Picture for a Saturday Evening-

Stinkeye............

Or Pinkeye. Call it what you want, I got it and it sucks. Can't work because of it and I'm not real happy about that.

Not sure where I picked this shit up, as I have been away from the ER for the last 5 days. I already have drops as I get this crap from some little snot nosed, crumb-snatcher about every year so I should be good tomorrow. Hopefully.

I'd rather be at work today though. It's currently 90 degrees in the shade w/ humidity at 75-80%.
To hot for me in that sun.

Yes, I'd rather be at work if I can't even enjoy an unscheduled day off.
Even riding the BigBluePlasticMotorcycle is pretty uncomfortable on a day like this.

Bah. YerUnk will have to find something to do in the garage. It's in the shade and I have a fan out there at least.

I'm not used to sitting around inside all day. Already did laundry, dishes, cleaned up the kitchen and floors. Sure as hell ain't dusting too. Gotta leave something for the wife to do when she returns from her sisters tomorrow.

Screw it. I may go ride the bike anyway.

Update! In the comments, Mayberry, who lives way the hell down on the Gulf Coast of Texas, mentioned that the heat index around his way was 105.
I checked the local conditions here and the index is 110! That's just friggin' nuts. He's an easy 1000 miles South of here. It's supposed to be hot and humid where he lives. It's NOT supposed to be hotter in Indiana than it is in Corpus Christi!

That's just wrong.

Gratuitous Picture for a Saturday-

* Readers, too, had Polish immigrant parents, both Catholic and Jewish, who maintained silence about their pasts.





* Peasant life was much harder than is commonly acknowledged.





* Immigration was much tougher than is commonly acknowledged.





* Poles, as well as Russians, might oppress their fellow Poles.





Adam Walaszek's article, "'How Could It All Appear so Rosy?': Re-Emigrants from the United States in Poland, 1891 – 1924" addresses all of these points.





Walaszek used peasant and worker memoirs and letters to show that many Polish immigrants wanted and planned, not to stay in America, but to return to Poland. Those who did return were often shocked.





* They had gotten used to American wealth and were horrified by the poverty of Polish villages and the hardship of peasant life.





* They had gotten used to American democracy and were stunned by the power exercised by Polish priests and village politics.





* They had cherished dreams that, once Poland was freed from foreign domination, Poland would become a "democratic, affluent, peasants' Poland." Instead, they returned to discover that Poles had changed "a czarist truncheon for a Polish one."





Snips from Walaszek's not-to-be-missed article:





"I only wished to [return to Poland.] I cried and cried for my mother for a year. I was homesick and I could not find a place for myself. At night I always dreamed that I would die. I was extremely homesick."





Immigration was jarring. Poles "jumped from feudalism to capitalism within the space of one month"





Upon return to Poland, some wrote,





"I was wondering if the twentieth century, with all its miracles, has arrived here, or whether the time had stopped somewhere around the caveman era"





"Even in our family houses the walls have rotted away and warped where the supportive beams sank below the level of the ground and the whole house was slowly bending down."





"I disliked the old customs of our people, I disliked the huge bare feet of our girls, elderly women, children and men ... It seemed to me somehow archaic, slave-like, and simply primitive and unaesthetical. I was surprised and indignant on seeing that people do not bathe in villages, they do not know what a bath is, whereas most country cottages are joined directly to barns and pigsties. I will not believe it if anyone tells me that a peasant wearing coarse trousers, a shirt, a russet coat and a sheepskin hat or a peasant woman with red bare legs wearing a bawdy, pleated Gypsy-like skirt, a shapeless blouse and some head scarf, look nice and human like."





"I was shown a blind beggar with an intelligent face leaning against the wall of the Old Theater [in Krakow's Szczepanski Square.] An old woman dressed in rags was walking along. Rags which Poles in Passaic, New York, or Chicago would throw into the garbage cans would be like royal outfits for this poor woman."





Returning migrants were treated with suspicion and outright hostility. Priests denounced them from pulpits, to the point of demanding of non-immigrant wives that they not allow returning immigrant husbands into the home. Returning immigrants' businesses were sabotaged.





One returning immigrant wrote





"[My own people] pulled me to pieces. It was entirely different in NY. The people here are so dumb and mean. They look upon the Polish Americans as if they were criminals."





A priest preached in church that the returning immigrants should have been shot. The Polish American newspaper, "Ameryka Echo," was burned by a priest.





How this all relates to stereotypes of Poles, and Polish-Jewish relations. Humans – not just Poles, not just Jews, but humans – often judge and feel contempt for workers, peasants, dirty people, the poor. It's an old joke – when people claim to have been reincarnated from some past life, in their past life they often claim to have been Cleopatra, or some other prominent, royal personage. It's less attractive to claim to have been what most humans have been: anonymous, poor, dirty, oppressed, overworked, and short-lived.





Simple hatred of the poor and the unfortunate for their sin of poverty and misfortune is the oldest, most universal, and most crushing hatred.





We could learn to appreciate and honor the strengths and gifts of peasants. We haven't yet done so.





We can't come to terms with the brute Polak stereotype until we come to terms with our own classism, our own conviction that someone with dirt under her nails is a lesser human than we.





So often scholars get away with arguing that Poles expressed hostility to Jews because Poles' essence is anti-Semitic. If they even try to be more intellectually developed than that – and they often don't make even that effort, even in the most elite and academically sanctioned prose, condemning Poles with a racism that would be taboo were it applied to any other ethnic group – they'll claim that it is Poles' Catholicism that makes them anti-Semitic.





This is balderdash. There is ample scholarship on the inescapable political realities of colonized, invaded, deprived, peasant societies. In Walaszek's article, one reads of Polish peasants expressing a hostility to their own kin from America – if and when these Polish peasants feared that those kin would upset a very fragile, post-war, post-colonization status quo of village economics, land ownership, religious belief, and divisions of power.





Those who demonize Poles insist on viewing them from the perspective of 20th and 21st century Americans, with their wealth, democracy, and unlimited opportunities. From that perspective, the behaviors described above appear to be the mere malice and backwardness of one group of essentially debased people, Poles.





George Foster, an American anthropologist, developed the concept of "limited good" as a way of understanding ALL societies, especially peasant societies, where chronic scarcity is a fact of life. Foster wanted to understand such societies on their own terms. He rejected applying American values to peasant society. Application of "limited good" would illuminate the tensions of Polish peasant life that Walaszek details, above.





With the tool of limited good, these behaviors become understandable as an expression of universal human tendencies.





I can't think of a single prominent scholar of Polish-Jewish relations who makes any sustained use of Foster in discussions of Polish-Jewish relations. Perhaps this is so because it serves these scholars' ends to depict Poles, as is acceptable, in the academy, in the mainstream press, and in popular culture, as possessed of a nasty and intractable Polish essence, "Polish anti-Semitism."





George Foster and Limited Good



Adam Walaszek

"How Could It All Appear So Rosy?"

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Friday Morning and I have a Hot Date........
With the lawn mower.

Spent the better part of the morning yesterday replacing the drive belt on the thing. It ate it but after 3-4 years of hard service I have no complaint.

Had a hell of a time getting the new one on and I still can't figure out why. It had flipped the belt off once in the past and it was really quite easy to get back on. Don't know what I was doing wrong but all of a sudden - Bingo! It went right back on, easy as pie.

Whatever it was it's fixed now and I will likely spend the better part of the day trying to knock down the growth around here.

Hot humid weather makes everything grow well.

I don't mind cutting grass, but I do mind the time and expense it involves.
Much rather have the entire place fenced and cross fenced and have some livestock-critters keeping the growth down for me.

And then I could eat 'em later.
I dream of proper fencing at night.

Gratuitous Picture for a Friday Morning-
SMILE!!!

Did You Hear the One About the Democrat Senator Who Conspired with the Soviets???????????????????

No? Not real surprising I suppose.
Well it's not like I haven't mentioned it before or anything.

Here's a nice little article from the American Spectator about Teddy Kennedy and his collaboration with the God Damned Commie Bastards in Russia.

If that fat Sonofabitch had a last name of Smith or Jones he'd have ended up in Leavenworth. But Hell No, he was a friggin' Kennedy and he rode a long ways on his dead brothers legacies.

I'm not a fan of either Bobby or Jack, but I have to give props to them for their choice in who to be unfaithful to their wives with.
Seriously, if you're gonna screw around on your wife? Go top shelf at least.


Some guys just didn't understand that, "Top Shelf" concept.






Yeah, Marilyn Monroe for JFK............








Bubba? What a letdown.
Still makes me laugh.

The Apple iPhone 4

Apple's long awaited iPhone 4 is out today, and a long line formed near Apple's Flagship Stores in New York and San Francisco, and around America and the World. The iPhone, an innovative cell phone that's changed the way such devices are developed, has a number of new features that have created a lot of excitement. But the Apple IPhone 4 also has bugs with its antenna and other features that have marred it's debut.

The most exciting new feature on the iPhone 4 is the ability to created and edit high-definition video, which you can then upload to YouTube. This makes the iPhone the first smart phone designed for video-blogging use and can change the face of media. On Wednesday night ABC News Nightline featured an impressive segment that was shot entirely using the iPhone 4.

The other cool feature is video phone calling: the ability to talk to a person and see their face as they talk. It's a wild feature that calls into question how concerns about how teen "sexting" will morph into a concern about what this space will call "sexviding" or the act of one making a video phone call just to send a sexy video of themselves to the other person. (More on that later.)

But beyond launching a new teen social trend (and the prediction here is that "sexviding" will be that trend), the iPhone 4 also has a few problems. The most noted one is the issue of the antenna.

The tech blog Gizmodo notes that the iPhone 4 loses reception when you hold it by the antenna band, which happens to be the way you normally hold the phone. Gizmodo presented this YouTube video by Fame Foundry which shows the problem:



The antenna band is wrapped around the sides of the phone, so when you hold it, you're bound to touch the band, and cause the AT&T (man I hate AT&T) reception bars to decrease to nil, meaning no reception. You have to hold the iPhone 4 by the glass, which is a weird way to handle the product, to get reception.

Gizmodo asked users to confirm the problem by making their own video and that's what has happened. Thus, the Apple iPhone 4 is such that you can't use it effectively by holding it. It seems Apple could have installed a retractable antenna, rather than one that part of the phone's casing. Illogical. (As a note, Gizmodo has various fixes for iPhone users, the most effective one being scotch tape.)

The other problem most noted is with a "yellow spot problem" on the screen that Apple reports will go away within a day "or so."  The reason given is apparently that Apple was so busy rushing the iPhone to delivery that a kind of bonding agent was not given enough time to evaporate.

Stay tuned.

It could be said that the USA's win over Algeria in this morning's World Cup Soccer match caused the Toronto Earthquake. Indeed, you would be excused if you thought that the Toronto Earthquake happened because of USA Soccer Star Landon Donovan's monsterous goal. While Donovan's goal didn't start an earthquake, it did send America into hysterics, and that was certainly evident in Oakland, California.

Pure Joy in Oakland

The Era Art Bar on Grand Avenue and Broadway was the crowded scene, with people cheering for the USA and for Algeria. In fact, there was a health contingent of Algerian fans lined along one wall of The Era Art Bar. It was a friendly place to be, though, as people stood and sat with eyes glued to the TV sets at the bar.

The game went back and forth, and it looked like the USA and Algeria would both be eliminated as neither scored a goal for most the contest. Plus, again, the USA had a goal taken away from them for an offsides call that wasn't, causing many to remember the USA Slovenia match. (FIFA really needs to install Instant Replay!)

But then at 90 minutes stoppage time, the energy in the room changed as the USA came charging down the field toward the Algeria goal. You could feel the room swell with excitement. Then, after one kick attempt failed, Landon Donovan swooped in to slam the ball home! USA scored and won 1 - 0.

The room erupted with cheers of USA! USA! USA! That goal and the USA win was a great way to start a Wednesday. The USA advances to the field of sixteen. But can't we just win one outright without it being a nail-biter?

Stay tuned!

Duncan Larkin does a great interview with Western States defending champion Hal Koerner at Competitor.com. Hal talks about how potential snow on the course changes things up, where he sees the competition, possibly taking some time off States to pursue his love of trail running at other races. Interview here.

For those not following Bryon Powell's great interviews, be sure to check his Q&A with Nikki Kimball, Devon Crosby-Helms, Meghan Arbogast, Joelle Vaught, Hal Koerner, Geoff Roes, and Tony Krupicka. Don't forget to enter his contest to predict the winners!

Good stuff, Hal! Best of luck this Saturday...

- SD

"Get me a Hunky; I need a donkey."









According to my dad, Anthony Goska, that's what the coalmine bosses called out in Throop, Pennsylvania, early in the twentieth century when they needed some work done. They were seeking "strong backs," Bohunks, Poles, Hungarians, and Slovaks.





True story:





I really love one of my students. She's smart and she cares and I'm confident that, if she got the right degree and the right job, she could use her brains and heart to make the world a better place.





There's no guarantee she'll get there. Her parents have bequeathed nothing to her but hard times. She's done pink collar work, just to scrape by.





She came to me one day and told me she was leaving university. In one of her teacher-education classes, the professor was talking about poverty as if it were only experienced by "people of color." My student raised her hand. Said, "There are poor white people in this country, too." Professor said, "Their poverty doesn't count because they are white." Quote unquote.





When my student heard that, she had an epiphany. She realized that the ivory tower world she had hocked so much to be part of was, in its allowance of dominance by unquestioned Politcal Correctness, bullshit.





"Stay," I begged, pleaded, commanded, struggling to find a strategy that would get her to stay. "This academic world needs minds, hearts, like yours, needs a sense of outrage like yours. Stay." I hope and pray that she does.













I interviewed my dad on tape twenty years ago. Rereading the transcript breaks my heart, and not just cause he's gone. I'm a Jersey girl; lemme let Springsteen do the talking: "The first kick I took was when I hit the ground. You end up like a dog that's been beat too much. Till you spend half your life just covering up."





What was God thinking? What were you thinking, God? A child, didn't even speak English, constantly beat, and beating, and never able to get his head above drowning tides: peasant status, Poland's colonization, mass migrations, racism, The Industrial Revolution, world war, displacement, deracination.





Not just my father. Millions of others like him. Bohunks: Eastern European, Christian, peasant immigrants who came to the US between 1880 and 1929 to mine coal, and forge steel, and get blown up, and their skin stripped off, and chopped to pieces by industrial fans: industrial accidents that killed many young. Then they came of age, and they were shipped off to places like the Western Front and Omaha Beach.





Why isn't their story told in the Ivory Tower?





Poor, enserfed, whites. Can't have that. I could tell so many stories. Ask me sometime. I could go on all day. Just one more: in a class, on a university campus, professor says, "Well, yes, there was racism against the [1880-1929] immigrants, because they were dark-skinned, and this is a white supremacist country."





Believe that? Can I sell you a bridge, or a war, or a hate? Or a lie, disguised as your own history?





But our silencing and erasure is not the fault of academic limousine liberals. It's our fault. That's right. It's OUR fault.





Have we made our voices heard? No. Have we bought copies of "Out of This Furnace" or "Laughing in the Jungle" or "The Poems of Anton Piotrowski"? No. And demanded that they be placed on syllabi? No. We have not.





Have any of you even READ "The Poems of Anton Piotrowski"? Links below. Buy. Read. Learn. Get back to me.





My dad's interview is brutal. Most of it I wouldn't even share. It's all just too harsh. Below are some of the milder excerpts.





DVG: Why did the Poles come to America?





AG: Because the czars burned our books.





DVG: What was everyday life like in Poland?





AG: Well, all it was, was grubbing. Grub. You know what I mean? They was no really, nothing. And it kept getting worse.





DVG: Do you have any idea of what sort of expectations your parents had before they came to America?





AG: Just the work. Better than there. Terrible under the czar. Everybody wanted a piece of Poland. They had no chance whatsoever. My folks were just peasants. That's the situation.





DVG: And what did the people who recruited immigrants say? Did they say you could have a better life here?





AG: Well, it couldn't be any worse.





DVG: So, did your parents ever talk to you about Poland?





AG: Hey – I heard them talking all the time about Poland.





DVG: What did they say?





AG: The reason they got outta there, they were slaves, you know?





DVG: Did they pass on any Polish culture? How about holidays? Did you do any traditional things on holidays?





AG: Ya sat around. Ya didn't work. On Sundays, and on Christmas. And that's when you dressed up.





DVG: Come on, give me some details.





AG: The Russians were really hammering at them. They went to sleep hungry a lotta nights. My mother said to me once, "I don't wanna tell you anything about there, because I never had a good moment there. I came here to make a life. Because there was nothing there. Where we lived, we were under the Russian rule, all the time, and we were starving."





DVG: Did she write to her relatives in Poland?





AG: My mother couldn't write. Couldn't read.





DVG: So, she didn't get letters from Poland. How about when Germany invaded in 1939?





AG: Oh, hey, they were all sick. She had a few sisters there, but she never, ya know – got to talk to them, because they were poor, poor [No phones, no letters]. And the only information they got when Mrs. Sykowski went over there and came back, before the war and told them how bad it was over there. My mother said to me, "There's nothing you can do about it. And it's too late for me now to worry about them." She said, "They wouldn't know me and I wouldn't know them."





DVG: Why did you call Throop [his coal mining town in Pennsylvania] "Skunk Hollow"?





AG: The public sewers emptied out – you know your grandma's house? Remember the cemetery? The Lithuanian cemetery? You remember the coal dump? The slag dump? Well, right there, from the colliery, they pumped the water out, and it became a black stream. Now the city sewers were put in for the affluent people, and they let it come out right by that cemetery. The last house by grandma. [I remember a pervasive sulfur odor from the perpetually glowing slag heap.]





The Brown Road section that they called has the road that was a brown clay. So they called it Brown Road. Then, down in Smoke Town, they called that Smoke Town because it seemed that when [the mist or fog would rise], people would say, "Smoke." And the kids called it Smoke Town.





You'd be surprised to see how many people want to go back to Skunk Hollow. It was the nicest – everybody knew everybody. And nobody squealed on anybody.





[Indeed, he remembered so many names from Throop: Szymankiewicz, Sykowski, Kormas, Sirotnik, Cieciorka, Gedvilas, Wencko, Legemza, Maknowski, Klimuszko, Minczewski.]





DVG: How about Polish culture in Throop? You had all these immigrants from Poland living there.





AG: We really had no culture. The Polish, the Slovak, the Hungarian. Cause all the schools were based around the English, Scotch, and Welsh. And most of them predominantly Protestant. So we had none. The teachers, were all English, Irish, Scotch, and Welsh. They had no use for Polaks. All the teachers like I told you, were Scotch, English, Irish, and Welsh. And they had no use for the Hunkies except that they had a job. But they – they didn't care whether you learned or not. I didn't like school at all. But, when I went down to Jefferson school, Mrs. Legemza, who's Slovak, had more tolerance. Whereas the one's down to Brown-Columbus school were strictly all English, Scotch, and Welsh.





They hated the Hunkies because when they went to some of the taverns in Throop, most of them were run by Polish, Hungarian, and that. Irish, Scotch and English got their stuffings kicked out of them because they used to know the English language they got away with things with the police. If my folks wouldda had money for college I wouldda buckled down. [One teacher, who was Polish, did mistreat Polish children. My father resented this, and guessed that this Polish teacher mistreated Polish children in order to "fit in" with the other teachers.] I know we were good people, the Polaks. Why does he have to do what the Irish teachers were doin' on some of the foreign kids?





DG: Your name used to be Gąska. They changed it in school?





AG: They changed it to make it easier for themselves. There was no things about illegality. The Scotch, English, Irish, Welsh did everything they wanted. They were the teacher and they made it easier for themselves.





DVG: What was it like in the coal mines? [He worked in the minds as a boy.]





AG: The coal companies wanted the donkeys. That's what they called us. "Strong backs." Nobody in the world should work in the coal mines. You had to wear winter underwear down the mines. It was cold, and once you start perspiring, if you didn't have that heavy underwear, you would freeze, you would get sick. At least that way the perspiration was kept warm. You're coming out and you stink. You blow your nose three or four times it would come black like them shoes. What else you want to know? It was hard work. And when I first went down I was working in high coal, then I got a job it was four foot coal, and then would be three foot coal. You know how high three foot is, right? [I've heard that coal shafts could be as low as eighteen inches.]





Then you gotta be on your belly, like this, that's why they used to have them kneepads. Four foot wasn't bad. You could kneel down and really throw it far. And then if you had to throw it too far you could still bend over and really whip it sideways – but that makes it tough, because now your whole body is hanging on your waist. And then with the extra coal … in other words, then, as far as I'm, in my opinion, there should never have been any coal mines, but you had 'em. That God should have never made them.





They had no benefits like you have over here. And if you didn't work, you didn't get paid. No benefits. No nothing. No holidays. When a holiday came, the mines were closed. Cause, ya know, years – today they have some benefits. Ya know. But that's today. Don't forget. Going back then, they had no benefits. You worked or you didn't get paid. You didn't get paid by the hour. You got paid by what you produced. And, then, like, uh, sometime the company, uh, would, uh, not pay 'em. They say, "Wait a minute. We give you twenty-ten cars." "You didn't clean out the rock. You only get paid for the coal." That's the way it goes.





We were three-handed. And we were what they call robbing the coal. You know. You're not robbin it. But that was the expression they used. In other words, you were, remember I told you they did pillars? You know, say, as big as this room – a pillar – to keep the thing from coming down. Now what we did, we went all the way in to where they quit, and we'd start taking the coal up there. From the front. And that's what the call stealing the coal. Till we came to the end of where they had the mines. Eventually we close and then that's why they had a lot of caves. Because there were no pillars there and the props rotted.





They had the expression in the coal mines "Lazy Irish." They're always – the Irish were always lazy. They didn't wanna work. And they were heavy drinkers. And that, more, you should realize, in history, if you study that, they were always bein cheated. So, as a result, they were always drinking, and that became hereditary. But the good workers were the Polish, Slovak, Magyars. They wouldn't shovel as hard as you, or nothing. If you start a fight? There you get fired. They knew, because the Irish could speak English, you didn't stand a chance. Expression was always, "Drunken Irish."





A lot of people got hurt and killed. Well, most of them, if they had a cave-in, that's most of them. But then sometimes, when they were ramming, the dynamite. And someone mighta took a drill and created a spark … right in the face. But most of them … cave-ins. And the company was always tryin a save money, cause to get props cost them a lot of money. That's why people got hurt, killed.





DVG: How about black lung?





AG: Oh, loads of people. And they didn't get any help till, oh, God, way late. Way late. They here like thirty years before they started giving them all kind of respirators. You know? And then, a lot of 'em, wouldn't wear 'em. Because it's tough breathing and doing heavy work. So, that was a sad part, too. You know yourself. If you start running, right? Put a respirator on ya? Wouldn't be good running, would it? That's what happened. In the beginning, there was no benefits. People would pick mushrooms [and forage in the forest for food]. You know something, people would help people. There was no welfare then. People would help people. They were very cooperative with each other.





DVG: There were gangs.





AG: In my time, everybody fought. And the Polaks from Dickson used to fight us Polaks from Skunk Hollow. And then we used to fight the other guys that had some money in Throop. We'd always be fighting. It was a way of life in them days. They'd chase us up; we'd chase them back to the river. A couple guys get their heads split. And a couple of guys lost their eyes.





[If a child got beat by other children, his parents might beat him for losing a fight.]





AG: His dad came over and "What the hell are you crying for? Get up and [kick] get the hell home!" He didn't want to know nothing. That's the way people were then. And, as my father taught me, all of us, the three boys before Bernie came. "Don't you dare come home crying unless you got that guy going home crying!" After the third time that I got a lacing with that barber strap, I made somebody else cry. And, like, uh, Mr. Malcolm. He almost killed his two sons. They got their fannies paddled. It was a way of life. Cause, when the men came over there, they had the same situation, you know? In other words, the Protestants and the Irish, whenever, you know, they seen some Hunky coming home staggering, they'd pick on him. Beat him up. [So Hunky parents taught their kids to be tough, to survive a tough world.]





My mother was a scrapper, too. And she'd stand up. I'm sure you'd do the same. She didn't care how big somebody was. They ain't gonna tell her to shut up. They ain't gonna tell her.





[My dad learned to take beatings, and to beat, in school. He served time. He was about ten years old when this happened. He was trying to protect his little brother.]





AG: A woman worked for the county. Miecz [his little brother] got in some kinda trouble. And, I said to her, "You goddamn bum, get out of here. You leave my brother alone! Who the hell do you think you are? Bitch!" My mother and father didn't know. They never learned anything in English. So, I told her, "You try taking him outta there, and I'll bust your head." Mrs. Rinsler. That was her name.





She said, "Now I got you, and you're going to jail."





I said, "So, what's the big deal?"





He was sent to St. Michael's Industrial School for Boys.





AG: It was beautiful. The nuns took care of us. We called them sisters. There was no such thing as nuns in that day. You know, they were known as sisters. And I stayed there for a year. That's the nicest place I ever been. I enjoyed it there. There was swimming. Sister Cecilia, we called her the cowboy, cause she was bowlegged. She walked like a cowboy. We got what they call bendovers. Bend down, touch your toes, and fwt! [hits hands] A stick about that thickness. Sister Cecilia give me a whop right in the nose.













Bohunks are silenced and invisible in American culture. We do that to ourselves. And some of the others who do that to us are, sad to say, upper class Poles, who wish we did not exist. The most notorious expression of this snobbery occurred in 1987. Nobel Prize winning poet Czeslaw Milosz, in the New York Times, denounced "the incredible cultural crudeness of Polish Americans … It's probable that some civilizations do not shape people so they have enough resilience to be able to stand on their own two feet outside their ghetto." Stanislaus Blejwas, a Polish-American himself, responded, asking, "Why a poet, an individual concerned with human values," resorts to" "intolerant prejudice unique to intellectuals, the contemptuous condemnation of the masses."





I used to run into Milosz regularly when I was getting my MA at UC Berkeley. I always had to resist the temptation to walk up to him, hug him, shout, "How ya doin, Chet? Wanna go polka wid me? And eat some kielbasa?" And then start a rousing rendition of "In heaven there is no beer." And encourage him to sing along. I fantasized this many times.





Really, what I should have said to Chet was this: my grandmother was trod upon by those in power. But they never crushed her. She could not read - but she came to America for books. My father mined coal, and I'm getting a PhD. And I have not met better people in the Ivory Tower than I met working as a nurse's aid or a landscaper or a carpenter to fund my degree.





Milosz' contempt is not unique. Serfs, peasants, in Poland were notoriously ill-treated by upper class Poles. Norman Davies' "God's Playground" quotes one protest against a Poland that was "heaven for the nobility, paradise for Jews, and hell for serfs." Poland suffered, Krzysztof Opalinski surmised, because God was punishing the evil nobility for their mistreatment of serfs:





God does not punish Poland for nothing,

but chiefly for the harsh oppression visited on the serfs,

which is worse than slavery: as if the peasant

were not your neighbor, nor even a person.

My heart sinks, and I shudder to reflect

On that oppression, which outweighs pagan bondage.

For God's sake, have you Poles lost your minds completely?

Your whole welfare, your supply of food, the wealth you amass

All derives from your serfs. It is their hands which feed you,

and still you treat them with such cruelty





In Poland, another commentator wrote, was where "The cattle live like people, and the common people like cattle."





"Out of this Furnace"





"Laughing in the Jungle"





"The Poems of Anton Piotrowski"





"Anthracite Coal Region's Slavic Community"





Robbing Coal