100409

The hubris reflected in IBM's new slogan "let's build a better world" is simply staggering. The world has wisdom that we mortals know not of. The idea that she needs _our_ help is preposterous. What she needs is for us to back off, stop messing with her finely tuned systems. The problem is _not_ that our world isn't smart enough; the problem is that we overwhelm it with our short-sighted selfishness. What we need is a brand new set of rules as to what's okay and what's not. Methinks we will have those new rules forced upon us any day; in truth they finally are being, out of sheer desperation now.

*Food*

Most of my adult life I spent in food-service and grocery. Here's a partial list of experiences:

1. The first real job I had (more than selling greeting cards in our apartment complex), when I was 15 or 16, was as a cook and clerk at an empanada place in Tampa. They liked me in part because I speak Spanish. I learned the basics of cooking (for large groups) and the basics of what being a shopkeeper is about. (I remember writing this on the chalkboard the day I left: Sin amor en el sueño, nunca se puede realizará, a Grateful Dead quote, without love in the dream it will never come true. Hippie!)

2. On my first trip to the west coast, I got two jobs that completely paid my way (though I must admit my life was a whole lot simpler back then). The first was as a dishwasher at a place called the Continental Garden on Shattuck in Berkeley. Breakfast/lunch place with lines around the corner on weekends. The owner, Roman, was a hard-ass Swiss guy who taught me the rest of what I needed to know about working with a small group in tight quarters.

3. Next, I got one of the best jobs I ever had, as a cocktail waiter at Yoshi's, the main jazz club serving San Francisco/Oakland/Berkeley. Great job: I had to serve drinks for the first ten minutes of every set; then I got to sit back and enjoy the show. Saw some of the best jazz I've ever seen there.

4. Back in NYC, a good friend got me a job as a bus boy at a fancy hotel in Manhattan, just above a famous restaurant called Bellini's. The famous drink, a Bellini, is named for it. From money I earned at this job, I paid my way for an exchange-type trip to Nepal.

5. I worked for a short time at one of the first fancy breweries to open in Manhattan. I think it was called Zip City. They hired me because I had been a home-brewer. It was fancy and I hated working there. At this job, I first realized I did not have the temperament to be a waiter.

6. I worked for a couple of years at what was then the only health-food store in the East Village, Prana Foods. I worked with a bunch of radicals and it was here that I found my essential radical self, neo-Luddite, antiestablishment, anti-city. I also began my life as a baker, which persisted for many years.

[I realize the dates are somewhat confused in my memory.]

7. I worked for a short time as a bar-back at a meat market on 23rd Street called Live Bait. I was still a kid, and so wasn't prepared for the untamed lasciviousness of the place. One night as I was re-stocking beer, one of the drunk ladies at the bar called me over; she said, "I was just wondering, can you tell me, what does your dick look like?" I had friend call in to say I would not be returning not long after that.

8. I got a job as a chef at the Lookout Inn in Brooklin, Maine. My girlfriend and I were working on putting up a cabin, and we were fanatical vegans, so it's a miracale I even showed up for this gig. It worked, but at the time, I hated cooking meat. It was a fancy restaurant, so I had to prepare fancy things like filet mignon, grilled duck, and had to bake baguettes for every meal.

9. The first job I got on the west-coast, on my second trip west, was at a place called the 24-Carrot Cafe, another breakfast place. I had just come from Maine, where my girlfriend and I were die-hard vegans. I immediately found Seattle to be very vegan friendly. I ended up quitting after less than two weeks because I couldn't stand cooking meat anymore, but the owner had hired me simply because I was a New Yorker.

10. Then I got a job at a teahouse called the Teahouse Kuanyin. I did a respectable job there, in part because I knew all about tea from living in Taiwan. I never once made it on time though; I blame that on the fact that I had to take two buses to get there--and mass transit in Seattle is awful. Here I also met a woman whom I was to fall deeply in love with after I saw her in my first class at Seattle Central Community College.

11. Not long after that, I got a job as a shopkeeper at Puget Consumers Co-op, the largest food co-op in the country, a real coup for a new comer. It was in West Seattle, so again it took two lengthy bus rides to get there; I did finally buy a lemon of a truck soon after. I had to quit this job because of a lower-back injury. I see now that this was the beginning of MS in my life; it is more common than not for MS'ers to have a history of lower back trouble.

12. The final food-world job I had was at the Alberta Co-op in Portland. They always treated me with respect, and this was after my diagnosis, so it was a real risk taking me on. I could never even begin to do the shopkeeping part of that job now. They also let me be their graphic designer, which I enjoyed. I tried to steer them in the right direction, toward eco friendly designs, recycled paper, soy ink, etc. (it is possible to create designs with, for example, one color jobs in which ink doesn't cover much of the paper) but on visits to the store before I left Oregon, was greatly disappointed that they reverted to their old amateurish, non eco friendly, chintzy graphics material. I tried.

*Japan*

While I was busy being a degenerate in Hong Kong (sleeping late, smoking hash, eating black-market Indian food twice a day, etc.), I happened to meet a photographer who agreed to make me a set of head-shots, which I planned to use on my soon-to-be trip to Japan. Little did I know my main source of income in Japan was to be all-request busking (I had yet to meet my mentor in this area, an Australian fellow named Jerry that befriended me in Tokyo). While I didn't do much, what little modeling I did in Tokyo was for me highly memorable:

1. Best of all was the time I got to be on Japanese television. In the far east (Hong Kong included), they often need white people for non-speaking TV roles. The deal was that for a day of "work," you got like $40, cash, and got a good lunch. I know guys (in Tokyo and HK) who survived solely on this TV-extra work; lunch was obviously an important part of the deal. In the show I appeared in, I played an anonymous white jogger.

2. Once, an agency I had just started working for called me in for a special opportunity: the owner of the agency was to accompany me herself to an interview for a special photo shoot; I think it might have been for a perfume. The gist of it was that we ended up, the three of us, myself, my agent, and the rep looking for "talent," sitting in a small office with all eyes (all four) on me as I tried to look as "mean" and "evil" as I could. Needless to say, I didn't get the job.

3. The final straw in my Japanese modeling life, the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back, was the day I showed up to try out for a men's deodorant commercial. The lot of the other white guys there was more abhorrent to me than nearly any other I'd met; they were completely ignorant to every aspect of the Japanese world around them--worse yet, they were proud of that ignorance. I decided before the day was through a) that I would do as bad a job as I possibly could so that I could be certain they wouldn't call me back, and b) that I would never again mix with model types in Japan. And I never did.

*Quotations*

After one has abandoned a belief in god, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption.

--Wallace Stevens

and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

--ee cummings

Electronic aids, particularly domestic computers, will help the inner migration, the opting out of reality. Reality is no longer going to be the stuff out there, but the stuff inside your head. It's going to be commercial and nasty at the same time.

--JG Ballard

All the problems we face in the United States today can be traced to an unenlightened immigration policy on the part of the American Indian.

--Pat Paulsen

America was indebted to immigration for her settlement and prosperity. That part of America which had encouraged them most had advanced most rapidly in population, agriculture and the arts.

--James Madison

I came to the conclusion that while there may be an immigration problem, it isn't really a serious problem. The really serious problem is assimilation.

--Samuel P Huntington

No matter what other nations may say about the United States, immigration is still the sincerest form of flattery.

--Clayton Cramer

To name oneself is the first act of both the poet and the revolutionary. When we take away the right to an individual name, we symbolically take away the right to be an individual. Immigration officials did this to refugees; husbands routinely do it to wives.

--Erica Jong

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrations and revolutionists.

--FDR

DULLARD, n. A member of the reigning dynasty in letters and life. The Dullards came in with Adam, and being both numerous and sturdy have overrun the habitable world. The secret of their power is their insensibility to blows; tickle them with a bludgeon and they laugh with a platitude. The Dullards came originally from Boeotia, whence they were driven by stress of starvation, their dullness having blighted the crops. For some centuries they infested Philistia, and many of them are called Philistines to this day. In the turbulent times of the Crusades they withdrew thence and gradually overspread all Europe, occupying most of the high places in politics, art, literature, science and theology. Since a detachment of Dullards came over with the Pilgrims in the _Mayflower_ and made a favorable report of the country, their increase by birth, immigration, and conversion has been rapid and steady. According to the most trustworthy statistics the number of adult Dullards in the United States is but little short of thirty millions, including the statisticians. The intellectual centre of the race is somewhere about Peoria, Illinois, but the New England Dullard is the most shockingly moral.

--Ambrose Pierce

*Climate*

By Dr Cecelia Tacoli for the BBC:

"Search the internet for "migration" and "climate change" and you will find repeated warnings of a crisis in the making; of hundreds of millions of people on the move, of countries straining to cope with the pressure on their borders, and of national security under threat. But these fears are based on many misconceptions about the duration, destination and composition of migrant flows. There is a real risk that alarmism will divert attention from real problems, resulting in policies that fail to protect the most vulnerable people. The longer it takes people to realise this, the bigger the true problems will become.

"Firstly, the numbers of people likely to be moving have been exaggerated. Secondly, the notion commonly expressed in rich countries--that large numbers of poor people from across the planet will attempt to migrate there permanently--is clearly wrong. Yes, hundreds of millions of people live in places that are highly vulnerable to climate change. They face extreme weather conditions such as droughts and floods, or they live in low-lying coastal areas that are threatened by rising sea levels. Their lives and livelihoods are threatened in new and significant ways. But this does not mean they will all migrate.

"The poorest and most vulnerable people will often find it impossible to move, as they lack the necessary funds and social support. Those who can migrate will be more likely to make short-term, short-distance movements than permanent long-term ones. Overall, long-distance international migration will be the least likely option. What can we learn from the past? In northern Mali, the drought of 1983-5 affected local migration patterns, with an increase in temporary and short-distance movement and a decrease in long-term, intercontinental movement. Similarly, recent research in Burkina Faso suggests that a decrease in rainfall increases temporary rural-rural migration.

"On the other hand, migration to urban centres and to other nations, which entails higher costs, is more likely to take place after normal rainfall periods. It is influenced by migrants' education, the existence of social networks and access to transport and road networks. In all cases, migrants make substantial contributions to the livelihoods of their relatives and communities, by sending money, information and goods back home. A surprisingly large proportion of the income of rural people in Africa, Asia and Latin America comes from non-farm activities, and much of it as migrants' remittances. With climate change making farming more difficult, the need for these resources will increase.

"Unfortunately, most governments and international agencies tend to see migration as a problem that needs to be controlled instead of a key part of the solution. In doing so, they are missing opportunities to develop policies that can increase people's resilience to climate change. Policymakers must radically alter their views of migration, and see it as a vital adaptation to climate change rather than as an unwanted consequence or a failure to adapt.

"This means that poorer nations need to prepare for climate change at home by building up infrastructure and basic services in small towns located in rural areas that could become destination hubs for local migrants. Options include policies that promote access to non-farm jobs in small rural towns and a more decentralised distribution of economic opportunities. To do so, they should first of all focus on increasing the capacity of local governments and institutions in small towns to support local economic development, provide basic services and regulate equitable access to natural resources.

"Richer countries, meanwhile, need to stop panicking about a mass influx of migrants that is unlikely to happen and instead focus on helping the poorer countries to face climate change. As the richer countries have emitted most of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change, they have a duty to address the problem. This means providing poorer nations with financial support to help them adapt to climate change, which can either reduce the need for migration or enable it to proceed in a way that is sound and sustainable. It also means taking drastic domestic action to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases that are causing climate change in the first place.

"People are talking about migration as if it were something new, but people have always used their mobility as a means to protect themselves and escape from poverty. The problem is not that people want to move, but that many of the most vulnerable people do not have the resources or livelihood options that will enable them to do so in a way that maintains their security. Ironically, the failure to recognise the role of voluntary migration in adapting to climate change contributes to crisis-driven movements that inevitably increase the vulnerability of those forced to leave their homes and assets as they flee conflict and disaster. It is worth remembering that supporting migrants can ultimately help reduce the numbers of refugees."

Peace love and ATOM jazz