about drifting empathy

One morning I cut down a nuisance sapling and pulled a couple of tall, ugly weeds in the alley. Then a guy came by, pulled out a piece of cardboard from between the trash cans, and made himself at home where the weeds had been. Looked like he needed an hour or so to regain some of his senses. I didn't mind much—a lot of people walk by there on Saturdays to go to the farmer's market, but they can just ignore him, which they did. But after he collected the remains of his shattered psyche and metabolized enough of the sunshine pounding in his veins to get on his feet and move on, he left the box there.

 

Such a tiny thing, I'm ashamed I gave it any thought.

dialog from Kojak, "Tears for All Who Loved Her"

Kojak: You know, in a way, I admire her. A little kid, out of the sewers by her fingernails. No father, a lush for a mother.

Crocker: Why did you walk away from her?

Kojak: (Laughs) You know, I remember seeing a picture once. About this guy, came out of the streets, made it big. When he was a kid, used to have holes in his soles. So now he's got 200 pairs of shoes, he's rich. But he'd still cut a guy's heart out for a pair of shoes. That's why.


Note: 20 November 1977

(or posts) "Career Opportunities" by The Clash

Career Opportunities
 -by The Clash

The offered me the office, offered me the shop
They said I'd better take anything they'd got
Do you wanna make tea at the BBC?
Do you wanna be, do you really wanna be a cop?

Career opportunities are the ones that never knock
Every job they offer you is to keep you out the dock
Career opportunity, the ones that never knock

I hate the army and I hate the R.A.F.
I don't wanna go fighting in the tropical heat
I hate the civil service rules
And I won't open letter bombs for you

Career opportunities are the ones that never knock
Every job they offer you is to keep you out the dock
Career opportunity, the ones that never knock

Bus driver; ambulance man; ticket inspector

They're gonna have to introduce conscription
They're gonna have to take away my prescription
If they wanna get me making toys
If they wanna get me, well, I got no choice

Careers
Careers
Careers

Ain't never gonna knock

Our Lady

With seven hollow vibrations, Our Lady of Sorrows' bell sank into the still-salty street and patched grass yards. I crossed into the big lot, passed the gym and Big Lots, then pulled the door. After grabbing a box each of sandwich and freezer bags--four dollars for both--and waiting the requisite two minutes in line, my turn. The young cashier, a girl no more than 17, here working at Family Dollar, rang me up, taking a five and exact change to cover the $4.36. Hands me my change, then speaks,

Thanks for putting the money in my hand. A lot of people just throw it on the counter.

That's how the big shots do.

She comes around and recollects a bunch of mops for sale by the door. Says,

Even though my hand be right here, she adds.

She returns to the register. The next has already lined up behind me.

Thank you.

Have a good night, I hear, pushing back into the big lot.

Concrete sinks beneath me. Cool air lends the hush.

about "The One: The Life and Music of James Brown" by RJ Smith

Through the ups and downs, James Brown commanded an audience. RJ Smith depicts this singular artist's flight out of poverty on the heels of Little Richard, his celebrity-identity bridging the civil rights movement and beyond, and his persistent stumble through the late-stage hard times.

Brown was born, barely, into extreme poverty, and grew up motherless, at the mercy of a hardscrabble father. His affinity for music and singing and his seemingly innate start quality got him followers and fellow musicians from early on. During the first half of his career, James Brown busted ass, working musicians into the tightest band alive, and wielding that band as his own, personal instrument. Year-round, he left it all on the stage.

For different, complicated reasons, some black celebrities' identities are tied to the politics of America's larger black community. Brown's did, but he was wildly inconsistent, veering from black power advocate to Nixon-endorsing spokesman. Brown was mixed up and he was his own man--a complicated soul who gave himself to the public.

Inexplicably--almost--after Brown turned 50 years old, he found himself with money problems, then, after more than half a lifetime working hard and sober, Brown started using PCP. Trouble chased him the rest of his life. Brown died in 2006, still troubled, still a star.


Note: In an afterword, RJ Smith reveals the small gang of thieves most responsible for Brown's financial ruin.

Something on The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

I previously wrote on two short Carson McCullers stories that depict love as a lost cause. Her most cited and celebrated work, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, zooms in on the lost. Loneliness reverberates through these pages as we  follow a modest cast of characters who harbor passions that stir and agitate them. Each character is doomed by their ill-fit connection to this world, seemingly unable to relate to it and to others. Isolated, they turn their thoughts and feelings over and over again in their minds before finding an outlet in a polite deaf-mute whose soft smile and modest nods of approval disguise his own pain.

Stealing moments alone with the deaf-mute, each character imagines they've finally found someone in the world who understands them without realizing that that someone actually does not. It may be the sole blessing in their miserable lives that they don't realize this, but even that delicate respite is stolen when the deaf-mute commits suicide. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter moves ploddingly at times but the characters are well drawn and the sorrowful tones resonate without deafening us to the sounds of tiny bubbles bursting.

All or nothing when talking values and money

In this week's editorial, David Brooks either misses the point or hopes to talk around it.

He argues that the Occupy protest movement targets the wrong type of inequality. To make his argument, Brooks organizes inequality into two varieties conveniently named Blue and Red. According to Brooks, Blue inequality--the target of the Occupy movement--consists of the wealth gap between the elite business/finance sector and everyone else. Red inequality consists of the opportunity and values gap between college graduates and those who never make it to college.

The differences between college grads and non-college grads, Brooks says, are "inequalities of family structure, child rearing patterns and educational attainment". Besides making the sweeping generalization that college graduates are better at raising children and run better homes, Brooks makes the common mistake of separating values and economics and then emphasizing one at the expense of the other. The poor need stable, good paying jobs to support a family the way Brooks wants them to. Liberals tend to overemphasize the economics of poverty, while Conservatives focus on values.

Towards his conclusion, Brooks writes that Blue inequality is "not nearly as big a problem as the 40 percent of children who are born out of wedlock. It’s not nearly as big a problem as the nation’s stagnant human capital, its stagnant social mobility and the disorganized social fabric for the bottom 50 percent." With jobs being outsourced or eliminated due to downsizing, and with workers' wages stagnant while CEO pay skyrockets, Brooks is naive to think that if only the poor married before having children, their conditions would improve and opportunity would follow.

A riot

The rioting in Britain that started over the weekend escalated to a problem when it spilled out of the poor neighborhoods and grew into a crisis when Cameron et al. had to cut vacations short to board a plane home. The Media is asking, Why so angry and violent? Their answers include:

• The fatal shooting by police of a 29-year-old local resident
• Unemployment
• Austerity measures
• Insensitive policing
• Opportunism / bad parenting / lack of values

The interesting story here is not the language we use to describe the poor man's depravity; it's the descriptions we are given of the depravity of the elite: When the poor and marginalized capitalize on opportunities to the detriment of society, they are called immoral, vile, despicable criminals bereft of values and they are jailed. When investors and bankers capitalize on opportunities to the detriment of society, they are called irresponsible and then get bailed out.

Popcorn

Statistic-oriented articles about population surface fairly often but in the lead up to this summer's release of the 2010 census data we find more articles like this CBS piece "Minorities make up majority of U.S. babies". This story emphasizes a statistic showing most people over 65 are white but minorities are having the most kids and makeup the majority of the population under age two. According to the article, this demographic shift begs us to worry for our future.

First quoted is Laura Speer of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, an organization aiming to help disadvantaged children. She says,

It's clear the younger generation is very demographically different from the elderly, something to keep in mind as politics plays out on how programs for the elderly get supported ... It's critical that children are able to grow to compete internationally and keep state economies rolling.

Although the article writer focuses on race, the stakes here are very much rooted in class and economic concerns, as Speer alludes to so deftly. But race makes for a more attractive story angle. The rise of black single mothers is another focal point for the article.

The final word goes to Tony Perkins, president of the conservative interest group Family Research Council who "emphasized the economic impact of the decline of traditional families, noting that single-parent families are often the most dependent on government assistance." In his words:

The decline of the traditional family will have to correct itself if we are to continue as a society ... We don't need another dose of big government, but a new Hippocratic oath of "do no harm" that doesn't interfere with family formation or seek to redefine family.

That quote is loaded. To be non-traditional--often the result of personal irresponsibility, it seems--is to be poor and a threat to society's existence. The article offers no alternative political point of view.