Those Ole Summer Days

Yesterday was a tough day on the farm, though I could hardly say it was a typical one. See where I come from folks are honest, but you can't say that about all the folks that I've been happening to meet over the last couple days. This Saturday particularly rankles me. I'd been picking the blackberries over at Grampa's farm. We didn't want any of 'em to spoil-well that was Grampa's excuse, he's always been a bashful one about taking breaks from the chores, but we all knew he was hankering for a Saturday break from the chores, and boy wouldn't anybody be looking for Gradma's blackberry pies. My goolashes were still damp from the day before so I just wrapped some potato sacks around my boots and off we went. You can be sure as Lou Gehrig showing up that those dogs weren't gonna miss it either. Well we rambled through the patches, I caught Grandpa sneaking some here and there, but by and by those buckets sure got filled up good with the juices oozing out and berries all mussing up my clean parched shirt, careful as I was not to mess my hands all over 'em.
Well we were all delighted as heck that we'd have some pies for the city visitor, one of them all the way from Dallas, that it took a couple hours for me to realize that there wudn't any hounds brushing up against my legs. 'Specially Blue, he loves to help. Well I swear it wasn't one more minute after I started missing Blue that I heard some barking out on the outskirts near the creek. Grampa's been a crotchety fellow always and just said it's probably them finding a coon or whatnot, but I snuck over there and finally curiosity got the best of Grampa so we trekked on over there and found the huddle of dogs and they were sure awful careful with whatever it was they were looking over. They parted a way for us and what did we see but a little black puppy, a bit confused but calm as a cucumbur. Now this wasn't just any puppy: right as soon as I spied that yellow ribbon around his neck I knew just who's it was. Old Deacon Wrevright had just passed on the other day, and shame as that was, in the hussle of things after his death someone let that puppy of his out to wander around. We knew it was his 'cause old Wrevright never let that pup out without wearing a "Support Our Troops" ribbon around his neck. Well, we bundled it up and thought that, you know, this is the best time to go in. "We've got enough berries for Grandma's pies and this pup probably could use some food. " Walking back was a breeze 'cause of our excitement from a trifecta of factors: all our overflowing berries, the new pup, and last of all but certainly not least, our Dallas visitor. Duylinh was the name.
We washed up the puppy real good 'cause we knew just what to do with it: little Billy Holliday had just broken his leg and couldn't play baseball this summer. Instead, he needed a playmate and this puppy would do the trick.
About an hour later Grandma had the pies in the oven, so I sure rushed out to pump the water from the wells , finish the cornbread and set the table for the company. Finally this black car pulls up and out come this strange woman, whose eyes we sure couldn't see through her sunglasses. She didn't say so much except to introduce herself as Duylinh Nguyen, and briefly explained that she had wrecked her car and quit her job at Vonage so she needed something else to do. Well, everyone's got their affairs and I sure don't judge so we got all excited and served up the plates. She didn't eat a thing and only drank this funny "EVIAN water" that she'd take out of this queer handbag. Didn't seem right but we knew she wouldn't hold up to the temptation of the pie as Grandma came out of the kitchen with them, glowing with excitement and pride. Well, she didn't touch that at either. Instead with her bottle water she took out something she called Sourz Starbust and explained that that was the only sweet thing she ate. She wouldn't share. Well by this time Grandma was on the verge of tears but she's a graceful lady and held her composure admirably.
Wanting to change the topic, I went out to the barn to get this puppy. Now there's this old latch on the barn door, and gosh it hasn't been oiled in years. So I always struggle and struggle and by the time I get this barnyard door opened it's already made a heck of a lot of noise. Needless to say, the dogs have ample warning and stand in the entrance all frenzied up the time I can get it unlatched. So naturally I expected the pup to do the same. No pup. "Silly thing's probably playing in the hay" I assume. Not in the hay. I turn on the light but I don't see him. I clap on the wall but I don't hear him. This is queer so I figure Granpa's probably bundled him all up. I walk in and I say "anyone know where that pup is?" and Duylinh nonchalantly tells this story about getting here and she had a Louis Vatton bag (I think I spelled that right but it sure was a new word for me) and somehow this pup tore it all up. "So naturally," she says, "I had it taken to the pound."
"Well gosh we gotta get it back" I says and so I ring up the operator and tell her to get me the number of the pound, and by this time Billy Holliday's alread there 'cause he sure heard the news somehow. He's just sitting there waiting for the puppy whil Duylinh's just sitting there rolling here eyes and the pound man says "sorry sir, this puppy's done been euthanized. "
Well as Billy Holliday's bawling I see a slight smile appear on the corner of Duylinh's mouth. I just lose it and politely ask her to leave and I haven't seen her since.
Now I still think people are mostly good these days, but some people I've meet like Duylinh Nguyen sure shake that faith, but only till I look out and see the Grandmas and the Grandpas and the Billy Hollidays and Rev Wrevrights of the world. Then I see something called friendship and communities, and I see some values that people like Duylinh can never appreciate and I don't feel angry at her-I feel sorry for her.

The Biggest Scam in History

The Biggest Scam in History
Originally uploaded by gopherpl.

Oh and one other thing: that Commanding Heights documentary periodically cut to Milton Freidman or Von Hayek winning the Nobel Prize, as if that were some sort of honor. Well I actually attended the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm last December. It was random luck that I went: out of the few thousand international students at Uppsala University, four were randomly picked to go. I got one of the tickets, making it the first time I've ever won something in a drawing. So a Danish girl, Japanese girl, Australian guy and I all put on our Sunday best and headed out to the Stockholm concert hall. We got our seats in the bleachers just above where the King and royal family would be sitting. Approximately eight to ten prizes are handed out, right? Well I figured with my impeccable dressing and several of the papers I had just written, papers that had received a B+ or even better, that I had a chance to win at least one prize.
Not a goddamm thing. Not only did I not win a single thing, all of the people who did win were conveniently seated right next to the king, and did not look the least bit surprised when they did win. I'm not that big of a conspiracy nut so I'm not willing to go so far as to say that a mysterious board of people rigs the winners beforehand, but it sure seemed that way. I swear that everytime Karl XVI Gustaf gave one of the prizes out, he winked at the winner as if to say "let's just let this be our little secret." Sleaziest thing I've ever seen, yet Commanding Heights just parades it around as if that prize confers some legitimacy upon Freidman and Von Hayek.

A too tidy show

Events here are happening according to expectation. I had been doing some dirt shovelling and complaining, but Ruth and I agreed that dirt shovelling is an inevitable eventuality when going to the Valley. Pepper the puppy has curbed his appetite for eating poop, and thus far has not caught parvo again. Across from the barbwired fence in our yard lie some rusty cars and a stacked pile of old bricks that have cylindrical holes through them, running lengthwise. A stray kitten got stuck in one of the bricks for about 24 hours. Only its head was poking out of one end, but he was successfully chiseled out. The rest of the animals are doing ok.
In my other time I've been wasting time on the internet and making fun of Swedish word combinations (the word for future is "front time" and the word for straw is "suck pipe").
I've also been watching the PBS documentary "Commanding Heights" on Surya's recommendation. I thought it was effective in mapping out the trends of the past thirty years, but I think it glorified the Chicago school "free market" approach of economics while only giving token mention to its side effects. The documentary periodically gave mention to, for instance, the rising gap between rich and poor in Pinochet's time or the collapse of several industrial towns when Margaret Thatcher closed the mines, but the setup started to become a predictable 1) layout of bureaucratically inefficent government, and 2) here come the wonder boys from Chicago to eliminate protections, liberalise the markets, save the country and free the people.
I think the original descriptions of those stagnating countries were accurate, but the documentary mostly ignored the fact that in many countries, the predictions of the opponents of Milton Friedman and Frederich (sp?) Von Hayek's theories did come true: with many protections eliminated, the economy would grow, but social welfare services would fall through, the rich would get richer but everyone else would stay in the same place, increasing the gap between the wealthy and everyone else in the country. During the United States' economic boom of the 1980s, only 70,000 people came out of poverty, compared to the 7 million who rose out of it in the boom of the 90s. The most annoying case of this neglect came when Milton Freidman predicts that free markets will lead to free societies. Then comes the story of Pinochet bombing and overthrowing the Marxist President of Chile, instituting free market policy at Freidman's suggestion, and then being booted out of power himself nearly twenty years later. The anecdote ends tidily with Friedman gravely intoning that indeed, because Chile had put in free markets and taken away protections, the country did indeed have a free society eventually. What he didn't mention that Pinochet's demise has been attributed in part to frustration on the part of the Chilean people, after government policies, put in at Freidman's urging, did lead to a decay of the pension system, increasing income disparites between the top income brackets and the rest of the population, and a general failure of Chile's economic growth to translate into socioeconomic improvement for most of the population.
In its defense, the documentary should not have focused equal time on the competing economic approaches, as the free market policies put in by Reagan, Thatcher, etc... were the dominant historical trend of the time period covered, and also because the documentary was actually the adaptation of the book Commanding Heights, which seems to have been promoting its own argument.

Rest in peace, freedom fries

It seemed like just yesteday:

DEEP-FRIED:

By now many blog aficionadoes will be familiar with the death of "freedom fries", but it's still worth memorializing. As a symbolic, almost literary device, it's hard to imagine something that could capture the arc of Bush/DeLay-era Capitol Hill more perfectly than this stunt. Back when the House cafeterias changed their menus in March 2003, House Republicans enjoyed near-total power and diplayed an arrogance to match. But a few years later, look at what's happened: The war that the French opposed has turned out to be a disaster. The initial proponent of the menu switch, North Carolina Republican Walter Jones, has since said Iraq was invaded "with no justification," and displays faces of U.S. soldiers killed in action outside his office. Meanwhile, the official enabler of the name-change, Ohio Republican Bob Ney, has since been revealed as a compatriot of Jack Abramoff and as a result may face indictment and possibly worse. Though very different tales, both the Abramoff scandal and the execution of the Iraq war are travesties of unchecked power--and the sort of hubris that led anyone to believe "freedom fries" was a funny joke in the first place. Mark the date, historians.

P.S.: A reader helpfully notes a desert-island-like location yet to be touched by history!

--Michael Crowley

via The New Republic