Tag: #Union

  • ODDS and ENDS: UNION!, American Folklore, and Ice Cream

    (Casey Jones you better watch your speed!)

    Oh, shit! The actors joined the strike! Yup, SAG-AFTRA is on the picket line with the WGA, and now no one gets pretty new movies and shows this Fall! I hope you’re happy Studios! Both sides will make their case over the next few weeks, seeing who can build up the bigger public support, and then the real negotiations will begin. The truth of the matter is that the delivery of entertainment has changed. The traditional way for studios to earn income (movie theatres, cable, and ad tv) has declined and streaming hasn’t closed the gap, though that’s how everyone wants to get their entertainment. But I will also point out there are only five media corporations in the US, and it’s been that way for a very long time, so if they aren’t making money, that’s on them. It’s not like there is a ton competition out in the market. Media is an oligopoly so they are in control for how it all works. The studios could solve this tomorrow; stop paying your C-Suite hundreds of millions of dollars. Sorry, but CEO’s can only have two mansions, one Learjet, and one yacht from here on out. We all will have to make sacrifices to survive.

    And when was the last time you thought about American Folklore? Like, Casey Jones, Paul Bunyan, and John Henry. They don’t teach that stuff in school anymore. I asked my daughter about it, and she has no idea what I was talking about. I can’t prove this, but I have this weird feeling that schools were teaching American Folklore as a form of propaganda, to get us kids to believe that there was a mythology to American development and enguiniety, instead of teaching us that our past was a whole lot more about exploitation and exclusion. I can’t prove it, but these people who pushed the Folklore might have been the same people that killed teaching us kids the metric system.

    Ice cream really is the best. Doesn’t matter the season, ice cream is perfect.

  • Labor Day is Political Now?

    I found it odd over the past couple of days that Labor Day, a day set up to celebrate the US labor movement and unions, seems to have been co-opted by Conservative and Republicans, a very anti-union group, to assail people who are out of work. I saw many postings that were to the effect of, “If you aren’t working, you don’t get the celebrate.”

    I mean, I’m surprised but not surprised at this development. I mean, it’s just Labor Day, and normally a nice end to Summer Vacation. But on the other hand, why wouldn’t people try to make this divisive? It’s an old Conservative/Republican thing to blame poor people for not being wealthy. I have heard the trope all my life from people saying, “Just go get a job,” as if that will solve everything. Usually the people yelling that are college educated, and make way over minimum wage.

    I remember my grandfathers, both who worked through the Depression. One was college educated and management, and the other had a high school education, worked at a factory, and was a member of a union. Both of them respected work, and the fact that a person had a job, no matter what that job was, was to honored. “Always respect a man with a job,” they both would say. And, being that both of them started working during The Depression, they also respected that sometimes people get knocked down through no fault of their own. And they also taught me that kicking someone when they’re down is never heroic.

    I guess what I felt was the loss of decency. There are people out there that don’t want to work and take advantage of the system, but there are more people out there that want a job, to be responsible and take care of their families. The fact that people of one political persuasion don’t have the decency to see and understand that is disappointing. Depressing actually.

  • Who Visits Gettysburg, and Why?

    This weekend, we went down to VA to pick up our kid who had been visiting friends for a week. The drive back to NYC would take us through the hellscape that is the I-95 corridor from DC to NYC. It can take anywhere from 5to 8 hours just to get home. So, we thought we’d go a new route; Virginia to Maryland, to Pennsylvania, to New Jersey and then NYC. Waze said it would take seven hours, which was then same amount of time if we took the direct I-95 path.

    Anyway, the halfway point was sort of close to Gettysburg. As I am a pretty huge Civil War buff, and a big Lincoln Fan, we decided that a stop at the National Military Park and Battlefield would be a good idea.

    But this isn’t going to be about the battlefield or the park. This is about the people who come and visit Gettysburg, and why.

    When I encountered people, it was at the Visitor Center, which had a good introduction to the park, and the bathrooms. The first observation I made was that the people visiting are overwhelmingly white, myself included. The other thing I noticed was a lot of former and current military, and I knew this by the veteran caps and t-shirts that they were wearing. And then there were lots of conservative people, and I mean lots of them. I can say this with confidence due to the t-shirts, and bumper stickers that said, “Don’t Tread on Me,” “Blue Lives Matter,” and “Trump.”  And also, lots of guys sporting AR-15 buttons and pins. That’s not to say that there weren’t other people out there, because there were. I would describe this group as people who weren’t in other two groups, but still white.

    The people I did talk to were all nice, and very friendly. We brought the dog with us, and throw in a kid, and I came across as pretty non-threating. What I got from people is that they wanted to see Gettysburg to honor and respect the history. Also, the thought that “things were simpler then,” came up often, which I found fascinating as a civil war seems to me to be a very complicated thing.

    For me, I’m just happy that Americans want to experience our history. The reasoning behind it is never the same for each person, and that’s okay. Some are there for the fighting and the war, others are there to see where our new birth of freedom began.