Author: frankisemptiness

September 6th, 2020

Years ago, my parents had a formal dining room in their house. That meant the room was never used. It was more of a shrine than anything else. Besides a large, heavy table in the center of the room, there were numerous black and white photos scattered about. These framed pictures were of various relatives, most of them long dead. Many of the photos were from weddings, or from other significant life events. I could recognize some of the faces in the frames. I did not feel like I knew any of the people well. Some of them I didn’t know at all.

I remember asking my father once about the people in the pictures. I asked him if he had ever written down anything about their lives. He shrugged and said, “No”.

I remember my parents meticulously putting together a family tree on a large sheet of paper. I was quite young then. The family tree did not mean much to me at the time, because it was just a list of names connected by carefully drawn lines. I knew very few of the people, and I still don’t.

Both the photo collection and the family tree were useless to me. I can find the faces and names of my ancestors, but very few histories. These men and women are, and always will be, strangers to me, and that is a shame.

The life stories of these individuals are of interest to me, because I want to understand who they were, so that I can understand who I am. Patterns of behavior persist through the generations. These patterns affect me, they affect my children, and they will affect my grandchildren. But I don’t know enough to see these trends. I can’t see the connections.

Maybe I just haven’t lived long enough. Age is no guarantee of wisdom, but a person can learn a few things if they pay attention.

My father’s mother lived well into her nineties. She had wisdom. Her mind was sharp until the end of her life, and she had seen enough to recognize the patterns. She was able to discern what was important in life and what was not. I could go to her for advice, and know that it was based on her observation and experience. She understood.

I am only in my sixties. I see events unfolding in the family in ways that are similar to what happened years ago, but I don’t know why the cycles are repeating. Is it all hereditary? Is it genetic? Is it environmental?

I would like to understand. Maybe I will, or maybe I won’t . Perhaps it doesn’t even matter.

Maybe it just is.

August 31st, 2020

“In the Blood of Eden
We have done everything we can
In the Blood of Eden
So we end as we began
With the man in the woman
And the woman in the man
It was all for the union
Ohhh The union of
The woman
The woman and the man”

from “Blood of Eden” by Peter Gabriel/Regina Spektor

 

We had trouble finding the clinic. Karin and I had never been there before. We were meeting a few people. Two of them arrived when we did. They were a young couple. The girl was about seventeen months pregnant, and she was going to the clinic with her fiance. The young man’s mother and sister showed up too.

The clinic was hard to find because it was just an office tucked away in a bank building. Seeing that it was a Sunday evening, the bank’s parking lot was almost empty. We only figured out that the clinic was there after we saw a small sign that said, “My First Peekaboo”.

“My First Peekaboo” provides ultrasound images for pregnant women and their families. It is a chance to learn the baby’s gender. Up to eight people, including the mother-to-be, are allowed in the clinic to see the pictures of the baby. We went inside the office and spoke to the ultrasound technician, who was also the secretary. Actually, the tech was the only person there. I paid the entrance fee, and the lady ushered us all into a darkened room nearby.

The room had a number of fake electric candles flickering in the dim light. I felt like I was at a seance. There was a bed on one end of the room. The young woman lied down on it. There were a few chairs and a sofa. The tech sat next to the ultrasound machine. The wall opposite from the bed was basically one enormous projection screen. That is where we would all look to see the baby’s image. The young woman’s fiance sat in a chair next to the bed and directly faced the screen.

The tech had a prepared spiel. She got the machine going and said,

“Heart rate for the baby is 134 beats per minutes. That’s perfect.”

Then the Peekaboo lady asked us, “How many of you think it’s going to be a girl?”

There were a few voices saying, “Yes”, in the shadows.

“Anybody think it’s a boy?”

Silence.

I didn’t know what to think, so I said nothing.

The young couple had decided, long ago, that they were having a daughter. I don’t know how they came to this conclusion, but they were certain that a girl was on the way. In fact, they had already decided on the girl’s name, and they had given little or no thought to what they call a son.

The lady projected the image of the baby on to the screen. It was silver-grey in color. My eyes were drawn to the pulse of the beating heart. It fascinated me.

The tech spoke again. “Okay, there we are. It’s a little boy! If you look closely, you can see his boy…uh, parts, on the screen.”

I couldn’t really tell. I looked away from the screen at the young woman. I couldn’t tell at the time, but she was quietly crying. Her man was staring fixedly at the screen, dumbfounded. He looked like he had been slapped.

I heard the girl say to him sweetly, “It’s all you fault.”

The tech chimed in, “Well, that’s true. The male determines the gender of the child.”

Ouch.

I turned back to the image. The tech had displayed a picture of the baby that was colored  a dull gold. It was difficult to make out the features of the child, but I couldn’t look away from the moving, living figure on the screen. I was amazed by what I saw.

I thought to myself, “For now we see through a glass darkly”. (1 Corinthians 13:12)

Who was this child? What a wonder he was!

The tech printed up some photos for the young woman. The show was over. We all left.

Later, I talked to the young woman.

“You know, your baby is beautiful. He’s a miracle.”

She asked me, “What do you mean? Why?”

“I don’t know. Seeing him was like watching God at work.”

She shrugged.

I told her, “You can start the shopping now.”

The young woman smiled ruefully and rolled her eyes. “They don’t have anything for boys.”

I sighed. “Oh. I guess no unicorns or mermaids?”

“Nope.”

Later, Karin came to me and said that the girl had spoken to her.

I asked Karin, “What did she say?”

“She said that I can start making baby clothes with dinosaurs.”

 

 

 

 

 

August 28th, 2020

“Evil isn’t the real threat to the world. Stupid is just as destructive as Evil, maybe more so, and it’s a hell of a lot more common. What we really need is a crusade against Stupid. That might actually make a difference.”
― Jim Butcher, “Vignette”

“There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.”
― Frank Zappa

“[In the Universe it may be that] Primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare. Some would say it has yet to occur on Earth.”
― Stephen W. Hawking

I have been following the news reports about the shootings in Kenosha with great interest. I don’t live in Kenosha, but I have spent a lot of time there, probably more than I wanted. Kenosha is only a half hour drive from our house so, like it or not, it’s in our neighborhood. Kenosha isn’t necessarily a place to avoid. It has its good points, and its bad, just like anywhere else. It’s just that I am very familiar with some of the areas that have been highlighted on the news recently. The violence that has erupted during the last few days has made me think about a lot of things.

I think mostly about stupidity, and about those people whose actions seem to exemplify it.

I won’t write anything about the Kenosha cop who wounded Jacob Blake. I am not a cop. I have never been a cop. I have no desire to ever be a cop. So, I am not going to judge the guy who pumped seven rounds into the back of Jacob Blake. I will let the the Wisconsin Department of Justice work on that issue. Good luck to them.

However, one person I think about is Kyle Rittenhouse. Good God, where do I even start?

Here is a seventeen-year-old from Illinois with a loaded semi-automatic weapon going across state lines to do something in Wisconsin. He sure as hell did something here. He killed two people and wounded another.

It can be argued (and it will be argued in court) that Mr. Rittenhouse was exercising his 2nd Amendment rights, and shot three people in self-defense. After all, a guy attacked him with a skateboard, and before that, with a plastic bag. At least, that is what I have read in the news. So, these vicious assaults apparently required Mr. Rittenhouse to blow two people away.

Really?

Yeah, really.

Why were there no adults involved with any of this? Where were Kyle’s parents? It appears that the only adult interested in Mr. Rittenhouse was the cop from Kenosha who handed Kyle a bottled water and told him how much the police appreciated his presence.

Christ.

Mr. Rittenhouse should not have been wandering the streets in Kenosha that night. He should have been at home with his mom.

Now, he’s screwed. Totally screwed. Wisconsin is trying him for first degree murder. That’s ugly. Even if he beats that rap, what will he do? Kyle is marked for life, just like Cain in Old Testament. Mr. Rittenhouse, at age seventeen, will always be known as the guy who killed two men during a hot August night in Kenosha. Always.

I have never been a police officer, so I will refrain from commenting about the cops here. However, I have been a 17-year-old white boy from a racist neighborhood. I know from my experience that my parents would have kicked my ass from here to Michigan if I had tried to do the shit that Kyle did. Somebody would have stopped me. Somebody would have cared.

Mr. Rittenhouse had no adult supervision.

What he did was dumb.

He will pay for that.

 

 

 

August 26th, 2020

The two of us were driving this afternoon in my 2005 Ford Focus. I had bought it from Stefan. He had completely rebuilt it from a salvage vehicle. It has a kick ass turbo, but no air conditioning. The car is blue with orange wheel rims. If nothing else, that makes it easy to find in a parking lot. We had the windows wide open as we drove through Grant Park near Lake Michigan. The breeze was blowing the young woman’s hair into her face. She kept pushing it back.

We talked about Kenosha. The young woman has a lot of experience in that town. Because she has experience there, so do I. Both she and I have had extensive interaction with Kenosha law enforcement, which makes recent events cut close to the bone.

I told her, “You know that this shit going on in Kenosha isn’t just showing up in the national news. I read the news online from sources outside the U.S. You know what the lead stories are in the BBC and Al Jazeera? The shooting by the cops in the Kenosha. Kenosha is now known planet-wide.”

She looked at me and replied, “Well, that makes the place’s rep even worse. You know what they say about Kenosha, right?”

“Uh, no.”

“They say: ‘Go there on vacation, leave on probation’. That’s about right.”

We talked some more about the police in Kenosha.

I made the comment, “I guess there really is such a thing as a white privilege.”

She smiled grimly and laughed, “Damn straight.”

Then she asked me, “Do you know how many times I slipped off the handcuffs in Kenosha?”

I paused and said, “I probably don’t need to know.”

She was on a roll, and said, “Twice.”

She looked ahead for a moment and then she asked me,

“What do you think would have happened if I was a black guy and had done that?”

I had no ready answer.

She did. “Probably seven bullets in the back.”

And a city burns.

Kenosha isn’t a bad place. It simply suffers from the same economic problems that other Rustbelt cities do. Kenosha used to be a manufacturing powerhouse. American Motors had a huge plant there. When I was young, AMC built muscle cars in Kenosha, and the company employed throngs of people. Now AMC is gone, and so is a lot of other industry. However, the people remain, and they long for the good jobs that were there.

Kenosha, like other cities on Lake Michigan, is hollowed out. The area right next to the water is beautiful, and it is prosperous. Go a few blocks to the west, go inland, and things change quickly. Poverty becomes apparent. It is only several miles further west, near the freeway (I-94), that business picks up again. The old part of Kenosha struggles. I know this because the young woman riding in my Focus lived there while on probation.

There are places in Kenosha that I really like. My wife and I enjoyed going for breakfast at The Daily Dose Café. It was/is this microscopic coffee shop that served awesome focaccia. Kenosha used to have a heavy Italian influence, and it still shows up at times, especially in the food. The waitresses at the restaurant often wore Daily Dose t-shirts that said on the back: “Yes! I would like a double espresso vodka Valium latte!”

Indeed.

I also loved going to Frank’s Diner. That is a place near the lake that has specialized in soulful breakfasts since the 1920’s. It is built inside of an old railway car. They only take cash there. The employees are friendly and helpful in a slightly obnoxious sort of way. I had one guy come up to our table and say to me, “You need more coffee!” He brooked no contradiction, and filled my cup.

Ah, but my mind wanders. I shouldn’t reminisce while a city burns.

It is hard to read or watch the news, and to recognize buildings that have been damaged or destroyed. It is not that property has more value than human lives. It is just that I know these places.

Hans called me later today. He just finished a 18 hour shift, pumping concrete in eastern Texas. He sounded very tired, and he was just waiting for the hurricane to arrive.

We talked about work. We also talked about Kenosha.

When I spoke with Hans, I mentioned that punk kid from Illinois who decided it was a good idea to to go to Kenosha and fire up a couple guys. I was a bit irate.

Hans took a drag off his cigarette and said, “Well, Dad, if you look at the video of the shooting, those guys attacked him. He fired in self-defense.”

I replied, “That fucker shouldn’t have been there at all.”

Hans paused, “Well, yeah, that probably wasn’t a good idea. But he still fired in self-defense. I mean, he’s still going to get charged, but it wasn’t really murder.”

“Two guys are dead.”

“I know that, Dad.”

Hans thought for a moment and said, “I support police who are not criminals, and I support protesters who don’t loot and burn.”

It got quiet on the phone for a bit.

I told Hans, “I agree.”

Meanwhile, Kenosha burns.

What do you do when you see both sides?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

August 23, 2020

“Like vanishing dew,
a passing apparition
or the sudden flash
of lightning — already gone —
thus should one regard one’s self.”
― Ikkyu, Japanese Zen Master, 1394-1481

“Nothing endures but change.”
― Heraclitus, Greek philosopher

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

(Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, NIV)”

Every spiritual tradition that is worth its salt has struggled with the notion of impermanence. In a way, the transient nature of the world is obvious to every human being. Things are constantly changing. Something new arrives, and something old passes away. Everything is a state of flux. The universe is dynamic by its very nature. Nothing is static.

However, many of us try to deny this fact.

If some random person asked me, “Do you know that all things must pass away?”, I might agree, but I would probably add, “except for myself and the things that I love.”

Change implies a death of some sort. It also means a new sort of life.

The scary part is that any new sort of life might not include me. 

There is the rub.

 

Yesterday we emptied out the Zen Center. We put everything into storage. It made total sense to do so. Our Zen group (sangha) has not met together in that space for meditation practice since before the pandemic struck. We did Zoom meetings, but that was all. We were paying rent for a place that we never used. So, we gathered up, as best we could, our accumulated belongings. Some people brought pick up trucks and trailers. Some of us just brought our strong arms and backs.

Be advised that the Great Lake Zen Center is not a large organization. Buddhism, especially Zen, is not particularly popular in the local Milwaukee area. It’s a rather esoteric activity/philosophy. I was impressed that so many people actually showed up to move all of our crap. Much of it had already been boxed by willing volunteers, but there was still a lot of stuff to be transported to a storage facility.

Yesterday morning was very warm and humid. That made it a bit difficult to move large, heavy objects. We had a number of large, heavy objects. It is noteworthy that the age of the Zen Center members tends to skew old. I am sixty-two years of age. I was one of the youngest and most physically able of the movers at yesterday’s event. I’m not complaining. I am simply stating that we did not have many young people to do the heavy lifting. I did a lot of the heavy lifting. I’m glad that I was there and able to do so.

After the end of two hours (more or less), I was coated with sweat and I felt exhausted. I had been wearing a mask during this whole process. We had already completed the lion’s share of the work, so I felt okay about leaving. There was another load of stuff to transport, but it was made up of the residual things that people usually have at the end of every move. The folks remaining there told me that they could handle it.

I left.

Did we do wrong by abandoning the site? No. I don’t think so.

The location of our meditation center was in central West Allis. I grew up in West Allis (an old industrial suburb of Milwaukee). It was basically a ghetto fifty years ago, and that hasn’t really changed since then. We were never in a place that might attract a budding Buddhist. I don’t think we ever attracted anybody in that space. Maybe if we had also operated a liquor store and/or a gun shop, we might have introduced a few new people to the dharma, but certainly not in the place as it was.

I was loading some furniture into one of the trailers when a local resident asked me,

“Hey, are you guys finally giving up and moving?”

I answered out of breath, “Yeah.”

The man looked a bit ragged, and he was a smoking a cigar at a rather early hour. He had that “low life hustler” vibe to him. I’d seen that before. Actually, he didn’t really look much different than I did. It was just a matter of degrees.

The man carefully scoped out our belongings on the curb, and asked,

“Do you want those lamps you got there? I could take care of those.”

“Yeah, we want them.”

The man looked a bit hurt. He said,

“Things are rough here. The real estate guy on the corner, he just folded. Lots of places going out of business. It’s bad.”

I nodded. I felt for him all of a sudden. He walked away puffing on his cigar.

He was right: “It’s bad.”

Where will the Zen Center relocate to? Will it relocate at all? Or, are we done?

Things change. It’s all transient.

Nothing is permanent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

August 19th, 2020

Abraz:
Bullshit. Who sent you here, boy? Did that chickenshit asshole Rafael send you, boy?

Chance the Gardener:
No. Mr. Thomas Franklin told me I must leave the old man’s house. He’s dead, you know.

Abraz:
Dead, my ass. You tell that asshole, if he got somethin’ to tell me, to get his ass down here himself! You got that, boy?

Chance:
If I see Rafael, I will relay your message.

Dialogue from Being There, a 1979 comedy starring Peter Sellers. Sellers played the part of Chance; a simple, illiterate gardener who suddenly becomes involved in DC power politics. Sellers said that he based his performance on the films of Stan Laurel.

 

The doorbell rang on Monday afternoon. Our doorbell never rings. Well, I exaggerate. It doesn’t ring very often. It doesn’t ring unless somebody forgot their house key, or the overworked UPS guy drop kicked a fragile box on to the doorstep, or maybe the cops showed up for some odd reason. The cops have come to visit us repeatedly in the past. The police are usually good about ringing the doorbell, rather than just kicking the door in. I have to give them credit for that.

In any case, I was hanging around the house, all alone. I went to the door quickly. Our two dogs are cowards, but they do love to bark. They will make a racket until I greet the potential intruder. Once I arrive at the door, the dogs run and hide.

I opened the front door. Standing there in the hot afternoon sun, was a strapping lad, at least a head taller than me, well built, at the very cusp of adulthood. I asked him,

“Uh yeah, so what do you want?”

The teenager gave me a his pre-rehearsed spiel about raising money for the Oak Creek High School football team. There was a lot of blah, blah, blah. Eventually he finished and took a well-deserved breath.

I was curious, so I asked him the obvious question: “You play football?”

He smiled slightly and said, “Linebacker. I’m one of those guys that gets hit a lot.”

“What year are you?”

He replied, “I’m a senior.”

I dug out my wallet. Oddly enough, I had $20 hiding in there. I handed it to him.

He thanked me, and he tried to hand me a game schedule.

I told him, “Don’t bother, man. I’m not going to any of that shit.”

The young man stiffened noticeably.

I asked him, “Do you have time to talk?”

He gave me an eye roll, and said, “Well, yeah, a little bit.”

Then I asked him, “So, what’s your name?”

He replied, “Chance.”

“You mean like the word ‘chance’?”

“Yeah.”

“You mean like C-H-A-N-C-E?”

“Yeah.” Another eye roll.

For some reason my mind suddenly went a lot of different places at once. The synapses in my brain misfired like the spark plugs in an old Civic with a bad timing belt. I thought about Chance the Gardener from the movie Being There. I also remembered the film from the 1990’s, The Music of Chance. I watched that with my late brother, Marc, many years ago. Even now, I find that movie to be profoundly disturbing. But I digress.

I asked him, “Do you like football?”

He nodded, “Yeah.”

“What do you want to do after high school?”

“I plan on joining the Marines.”

It was then that I looked up and saw his cap with the Marine emblem on the front. I had at first thought that he was wearing a MAGA hat. I can deal with a Marine cap a lot better than something from MAGA. I respect Marines.

Against my better judgment, I asked the young man, “Why do you want to join the Marines?”

He smiled, “I want to do something for my country, and I will get money for college when I am done.”

I stared at him. “You know, I was in the Army for a long time.”

Chance got interested. “Really.”

“Yeah. I was an officer. I went to West Point.”

“Wow. Really? I heard that’s a good school!”

I sighed and slouched. “It was. It was also a mind fuck.”

Chance looked at me with concern. “Oh.”

I went on, “Hey, my oldest son, he joined the Army too. He fought in Iraq. That did him no good.”

Chance got serious. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

I told him, “Well, there are costs involved in signing up for the military.”

“Like what?”

“My son, Hans, killed people. As in plural. As in up close and personal.”

Awkward silence.

I asked Chance, “Look around. Do you see a lot of American flags hanging in this neighborhood?”

He got worried. “I didn’t really look.”

“Look NOW.”

He did.

“So, do you see a lot of flags up and down the street?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Do you see one hanging at my house?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

There was the slightest beginning of an eye roll, but then Chance said, “I don’t know.”

I told him, “I don’t have a flag here because I’ve already been a patriot. I did my bit. My son did more than I did. I don’t need to prove anything.”

“Okay.”

“Chance, do what you need to do. I am just asking you to think before you sign up. Can you do that?”

“I’ll think about it.”

I sighed and I paused. I said to him, “Hey, I’ve wasted enough of your time. I’m glad that you took the time to listen to me. You were patient with an old man. With the COVID, I don’t know if we should shake hands or not.”

He replied quickly, “I’ll shake your hand.”

We did.

Then he said, “Thanks for your service, Sir.”

I flinched. The word ‘sir’ stung somehow. I told him,

“I haven’t been a ‘sir’ for a long time.”

He nodded.

I went back into the house.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

August 16th, 2020

“Six-foot distance and wearing masks are pagan rituals of satanic worshipers,” Heidi Anderson said. “My kids are Christian. They are not subject to wearing masks.”

Heidi Anderson made these comments at an Elmbrook School District board meeting in Brookfield, Wisconsin on August 12th, 2020.

Good Lord…where does it all end?

There’s even more to this lady’s rant. Did she stop with just accusing mask-wearers of being vile devil-worshipers? Noooooooooooo… she went on to badger Dr. Mushar Hassan, a member of the school board and an internal medicine specialist at Ascension Brookfield Hospital. Ms. Anderson pointed out that Dr. Hassan was a leader in the Muslim community, and then she let it rip:

“Okay!” Anderson said. “Well, listen. My kids are Christian. They are not subject to wearing face coverings. Christian children should not be forced to wear face coverings, any more than children who are Islamic or Muslim should be forced, as you put it, be subject to the American style of sexualization of children and have to be wearing less clothing than you’re comfortable having your children wearing.”

In the same emotional vein, Anderson then discussed her family’s war record before working her way back to the mask issue. “My family has for generations fought for freedom all the way back to the Civil War. I have relatives who have fought and died and paid the ultimate price to ensure that their children and grandchildren and generations to come could live in a free, representative republic that guaranteed life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These draconian measures, for a disease that has very low morbidity, which is much less likely to happen to our kids than their getting in a car accident and dying or their grandparents falling in the nursing home, is draconian, socialist tactics and overreach. You are employed by the people of Brookfield and Elm Grove. You are elected to serve. The Elmbrook School Administration works at our pleasure. You do not work for Madison or any other unelected entity.”

Her voice almost breaking with emotion, Anderson continued, “Our government is of the people, by the people, and for the people. This is one country. One nation under God. And we look to God for these answers when we can’t figure it out. And I would suggest that you all do that. There’s a wonderful prayer He taught us to pray. It’s called the Lord’s prayer, and you can find it in your Bible.”

Note: The last three paragraphs are all taken from an article posted by the “Wisconsin Muslim Journal”.

You know, a person like Ms. Anderson makes me embarrassed to say that I am a Christian. The fact is that her words bear no resemblance to Christianity as I understand it. However, there are certainly secular people who will read her comments and conclude that all Christians are bigoted fools. I resent that. Ms. Anderson, who loudly claims to be a follower of Jesus, has inadvertently done some reverse evangelizing. If somebody confronts me with this woman’s words, the best I can do is say, “We’re not all like that.”

Brookfield is only a few miles from where I live. It is a affluent community. People there are generally well educated. Very Republican. Conservative. My friends who live in Brookfield are thoughtful, kind, and generous. We sometimes disagree about politics, but I am proud and grateful to know these people.

Then there is this lady at the board meeting…

You know, I have my own deep, unreasoning prejudices. If somebody had shown me Ms. Anderson’s words, and then asked me to guess where she lived, I probably would have replied that she was from Alabama or Mississippi or eastern Kentucky. To my mind, her words scream “hillbilly”. But, she’s not! The woman is from here!

Now, I really feel embarrassed.

 

 

 

 

August 15th, 2020

Our son, Stefan, came to our house one day after working a long shift at a job site. He complained bitterly about the mandatory overtime that he was getting. Stefan is part of the Iron Workers Union. He erects buildings and other structures. He is often up on a lift, 100 feet in the air, trying to weld steel beams together. Stefan’s activities on the job are generally difficult and dangerous, and he is often exhausted by the end of his work day, He is well compensated for his efforts, but he doesn’t want or need the overtime pay. After working outside for eight to ten hours, Stefan just wants to go home.

We talked for a while about the his work, and I mentioned all the people who are currently unemployed. Stefan shook his head and said,

“There are jobs out there. People just need to get up, go out, and find them.”

The July unemployment rate in the U.S. is 10.2%. That translates to about 16.3 million people without jobs.

I talked with our other son, Hans, on the phone a few days ago. He pumps concrete for a living down in Texas. He also gets massive amounts of mandatory overtime. Last week he worked 24 hours straight. That is an extreme case, but it is not unusual for Hans to be at a job site for twelve to sixteen hours at a crack. It is not unusual for Hans to rack up 70 to 80 hours of paid time in the course of a week. For him, this sort of thing is normal.

Hans complained to me about all the overtime that he was getting. Then he mentioned another line of work that he could try.

“Yeah, Dad, I could get myself a tow truck and become a repo guy. That would be easier work, and I could make some decent money doing it.”

“Really?”

Hans replied, “Oh yeah, those guys are busy right now. There is a repo truck in this neighborhood most every day.”

“Sounds like people are hurting.”

“Yeah, a lot of the apartments are empty around here too. People can’t afford the rent.”

So, is the economy booming or is it trashed?

It’s hard to tell. From the vantage point of our two sons, the economy is kicking ass. From the perspective of those folks getting their vehicles repossessed, it’s not good at all.

Are there jobs out there? Apparently so, but they are not necessarily jobs that match the skills of the people who are currently unemployed. Whole segments of the national economy have collapsed (airlines, hospitality, restaurants and bars), while others are red hot (health care, construction, some manufacturing). Can a person who worked as a cook in a restaurant immediately transition to a job operating a crane? Will a laid off airline pilot drive a forklift? It’s not like the people who lost their jobs in the pandemic can find new ones within the same industry. Some industries are basically gone, or they are on life support. Some people will find new employment quickly. Some will have to take the time to be trained in new skills. Some will never work again.

I remember, back in 1986, when I got out of the Army. I had certain capabilities as an Army officer. I could manage people. I was qualified to fly helicopters. I knew a foreign language. It still took me five months to find a decent job. I know how it feels not to have the specific skills that an employer wants. I know how it feels to possess the needed skills, but then be unable to to explain to an HR person that I actually have them. Changing career paths is never easy. It’s extremely stressful, and it takes time.

Now we have 16.3 million people all trying to do that at once.

I’m glad that I am retired.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

August 9th, 2020

There was a demonstration on Friday in front of the Strauss Brands facility in Franklin, Wisconsin. The event was organized by Voces de la Frontera. I participated. I wasn’t a big part of the protest, but I showed up.

Strauss Brands processes meat products, in particular veal and lamb. A large number of the company’s employees are Latinx. Thirty-one of them were recently fired. Why?

I will let Voces de la Frontera answer that:

“As Wisconsin struggled through the most difficult days of the pandemic, Strauss Brands in Franklin forced its workers to continue working in its meat packing plants without safe distancing, failed to provide hazard pay and protective equipment, gave inadequate and arbitrary paid sick days for workers infected with COVID-19, and failed to inform workers of possible exposure.

When workers sought the help of Voces in filing a complaint with OSHA and the health department, they were fired, and subjected to racist treatment from Strauss’ HR director.”

Strauss’ official reason for firing these thirty-one employees was that the company had  received Social Security No Match letters from the Social Security Administration (SSA) concerning these workers. These letters are typically sent to an employer to alert them to the fact that the SSN that the employee is using does not match the records of the SSA. However, this type of letter is not evidence that the employee lacks proper immigration status. These letters are not sufficient grounds to fire a worker. The letters from the SSA certainly are not, by themselves, enough to get rid of workers who have been at Strauss for ten to twenty years. Even if these letters from the SSA were reasonable grounds for dismissing these people, it seems a bit odd that Strauss did not notice, or show any concern about, discrepancies regarding social security numbers in the years prior to the pandemic. SSN’s that don’t match should have shown up on the workers’ W-2 forms each and every year. Suddenly, these mismatched social security numbers are a big deal.

I worked in a corporate environment for decades. I know from experience that, if a company really wants to get rid of an employee, it will find a way to do so. The reason for firing the worker may have nothing to do with the real problem. The fact is that, with time and patience, any employer can make somebody go away.

What is impressive with the action by Strauss is that they managed to kick out thirty-one workers simultaneously. By eliminating that many workers at once, the HR director made things look very suspicious. The whole affair stinks of retaliation.

The demonstration itself was a well-organized event. Well, it was as well-organized as a street rally can be. Voces had made arrangements with the Franklin Police Department, and the cops were there to keep things safe. Voces really does a good job coordinating with local law enforcement. Voces had several marshals on hand to keep protesters out of the way of traffic, and to maintain social distancing. There was a low level of chaos. A certain amount of confusion is inherent in any kind of demonstration. At Strauss it was kept to a minimum.

I don’t know how many people actually showed up. I’m going to guess between fifty and one hundred. We walked from the nearby Sports Complex parking lot to the Strauss building. People carried signs and banners, all the usual accouterments of a protest march. Most everyone wore masks, and we tried to keep six feet apart. Demonstrating during a pandemic is kind of awkward.

We were greeted upon our arrival at Strauss by a woman at a table covered with job applications. I’m not sure who the lady was, possibly the HR director. She had a broad smile on her face. I laughed. I appreciate dark humor. Other people in our group were enraged. They started yelling,

“Shame on Strauss! Shame on you!”

After a while, the woman walked away from us. She left her table full of papers where it was. As time went on, the job applications were caught by the breeze and started to blow away.

We all formed a picket line and walked back and forth in front of the Strauss building. A few folks from Voces tried to get the crowd wound up. They started chanting:

“What do we want?!”

Answer: “Justice!”

“When do we want it?!”

Answer: “Now!”

The rabblerousers alternated between English and Spanish:

“¿Qué es lo que queremos?!”

“Justicia!”

“¿Cuándo lo queremos?!”

“AHORA!”

That sort of thing went on and on as we walked. I’m not a big fan of people shouting slogans. However, a noisy protest gets news coverage, and this one sure did. I’m not certain which members of the media were there, but I saw plenty of TV cameras and microphones. The whole point of a demonstration is to get somebody’s attention. Protests don’t often change hearts and minds, but they make people conscious of an issue. This demonstration made people aware, at least for a moment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

August 6th, 2020

“Don’t you know it is better for one person to die for the people than for the whole nation to be destroyed?”, the high priest Caiaphas – John 11:50

“Add to this the memory of that shadowy companion who is always with us, like an inverted guardian angel, silent, invisible, almost incredible -and yet unquestionably there and ready to assert itself at the touch of a button; and one must concede that the future of civilization does not look very bright.” – Kenneth Clark, historian

“But (Leo) Szilard did not stop. When in 1945 the European war had been won, and he realized that the bomb was now about to be ready to made and used on the Japanese, Szilard marshaled protest everywhere he could. He wrote memorandum after memorandum. One memorandum to President Roosevelt only failed because Roosevelt died during the very days that Szilard was transmitting it to him. Always Szilard wanted the bomb to be tested openly before the Japanese and an international audience, so that the Japanese would know its power and surrender before people died.

As you know, Szilard failed…” – Jacob Bronowski, polymath and historian

What is there to say?

Today is the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, and do we care? 140,000 people were killed during the actual bombing, and from the effects of radiation. All of that death and suffering from the use of one atomic weapon.

The shadow of Hiroshima is still with us. It hovers in the back of our mind, barely at the edge of consciousness.  We are preoccupied with other crises: the pandemic, climate change, racial violence and unrest, a crippled economy. We don’t think about the threat of nuclear war. Too many other issues vie for our attention. The threat remains.

I am too young to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis. However, I do remember serving as a U.S. Army officer in West Germany in the early 80’s. I remember waking up each morning wondering if I would die in a war with the Soviets. I remember that gnawing fear, that angst. That feeling never completely goes away.

I could review the arguments for and against the attack on Hiroshima, but to what end? It all boils down to the end justifies the means. A nation that had no problem with firebombing Tokyo, Hamburg, and Dresden probably had no conscience left. Dropping a nuke is only a small step beyond burning 100,000 people to death with incendiaries. We worry about North Korea having nukes, and we panic about Iran building one. We have thousands of them, all ready to annihilate life on this planet.

I end this with another quote from Jacob Bronowski. He was speaking about the Holocaust, and about nuclear warfare.

“I owe it as a scientist to my friend Leo Szilard, I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died at Auschwitz, to stand here by the pond (at Auschwitz) as a survivor and a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push button order and the human act. We have to touch people.”