Lovely lovely trip to Montana for the Old Boys Rugby Reunion. We flew into Missoula and then took a long scenic drive over to Butte where we met up with 15 or so old ruggers. Always a delight to see the men I went into battle with for so many years. Weather was a amazing and I always get nostalgic for the west when I visit. The space. The views. The natural beauty of heavily forested mountains reaching up into the blue and white sky. I would return here if my mom hadn’t settled in Ohio.
Alas, family is family and that’s that.
We had an excellent dinner at a beautiful basement restaurant called ‘Saffron’. Amazing bar with all the original stone from the foundation. Mark and I had a lovely curry and Brittany and Sally had kale salads. Then we wandered next door to meet the rest of the crew for drinks and bullshit — I spent $26 on jukebox music. Worth it.
On the drive back to Missoula, we detoured through Anaconda to get a few extra miles of spectacular scenery in our lives.
As these things go. The jobs report out last week blew away analysts expectations— so the stock market reaction was to drop by 5% or so. Hourly earnings also rose. So WTF? Well, in the mixed up world of US brand of capitalism, the people that own all the companies prefer a workforce that has enough money to buy their goods and services, but not enough financial stability to have actual choices. If unemployment remains low, then workers can renegotiate for better wages and even leave one job for another forcing their previous employer to go through the cost and hassle of recruitment and hiring and training a replacement. Billionaire owners only see lower profits for themselves if wages increase and unemployment remains too low. When unemployment is high, owners can exploit that to drive down wages and maximize profits.
Hence, what appears to be good news for the country results in a drop in stock prices. This is the US – vs – THEM mentality that divides us. Rather, than a ‘let’s all work together to create a great company and great products and services mentality and then share the spoils’, the owners prefer to sow acrimony and keep 100% of the profits for themselves a few top lieutenants.
These two forces naturally oppose one another and although the 98% who are working for wages should have the larger influence in a democracy, the fact is that the top 2% control the politics and thus pull all the levers.
I am reading a book about Napoleon and this concept was well entrenched in his time too — just as it is has been for countless generations. Napoleon used the army to quash down mine workers striking for better wages and working conditions and disallowed collective bargaining. Again, by Napolean’s time, this was already standard practice — appeasing the monied class at the expense of the working class.
And the world goes around.
This article details the reality that in spite of our vast wealth, the US still lags behind nearly every other developed nation in maternal mortality rates. We have excellent health care in the US — we just do not offer it to the poor. We save that good shit for the people with money. Once the poor babies are born, we then continue the mistreatment by not ensuring equal access to adequate early nutrition or pre-school educational opportunities and a host of other ways a young child born into poverty is immediately handicapped against the rest of society. We are not interested in the poor by and large.
Finally, an excellent article about two corrupt corporations who have been poisoning the world for decades. In the 1950’s Dupont corporation started manufacturing Teflon which used forever chemicals PFOA and PFOS. 3M also used these chemicals in a variety of applications including scotchgard and firefighting foam. By the 1980’s, both companies knew from their own research that these chemicals never broke down and had serious impacts on humans and animal health and the environment.
After years of massive profits and litigation, both companies finally settled for a tiny fraction of their profits and the cost of clean-up without admission of guilt. Criminals.
Joe Biden is now seriously at risk in the election as he continues to double-down on pleasing old white voters on status quo issues like border security and Israel. Joe’s unwillingness to contain Israel’s bloodletting in Gaza has a great many young voters vowing not to vote for him. And now with his recent border executive order, he is alienating even more people with this populist bullshit.
From high above the earth, looking out window of the plane through the clouds to the green fields and forests below — it’s easy to forget that our mother is dying. Vital signs are now so discouraging that there is no longer a delusion of hope. Species of plants and animals are dying at alarming rates. A precursor to the fate of humans in coming years.
In coming decades, animals and humans will start to die in higher and higher numbers from weather related events, disease, fire, drownings etc. All due to climate change and our general disregard for what toxins and poisons we allow to be spewed into the air and our rivers, lakes, and oceans. If you project forward 40 or 50 years, you can attempt to visualize what sort of wasteland the planet will have become.
The increasingly violent storms with no end in sight. Rising ocean levels. Record power outages as our grids breakdown under the strain of endless days of 120+ degree heat waves and the storms knock down trees that take out power lines. Birds flus are threatening even now to break down barriers into humans — perhaps going airborne for immediate and easy transmission. So that’s our future. Good luck kids. We will not be around to say ‘I told you so’.
The trajectory on my flight back from Boston came in right over Somerset where my home is in Ohio. I only recognized where we were because of the huge dinosaur that sits in a field hard off the I-70 exit by Buckeye Lake. It’s interesting seeing your hometown from the air. It provides perspective about space and distance.
Wednesday of last week I went to an Italian restaurant called Skyline which is located just outside the tall chain-link fence that surrounds BDL airport near Hartford, CT. I sat next to Paul, who was next to another Paul. A couple of good ole-boys. Paul was a contractor — a one-man remodeling operation. Paul was an auto mechanic.
We met as strangers and left as friends. Not just friends, but best friends. Best friends for life even, although we traded no contact information. But I know where to find them most evenings after work.
The two Paul’s, I learned, are recent acquaintances, on their way to becoming besties at the look of it. Paul the auto mechanic just returned to the area after moving to east side of the state for a while. His father has a big auto shop where he re-builds classic muscle cars and people often come by to watch him work and see the cars. The shop is called The Violation Cafe, which Paul freely admits is ominous, but he assured us women are often present, welcome, and well respected. His father even put in a women’s only porta potty.
We watched baseball on one screen and basketball on the other and chit-chatted about motorcycles, muscle cars, sports and other groovy things. WNBA was on and when we openly wondered what the ‘L’ was for in the team NYL, someone ventured from down the bar it was the New York Lesbians. Turns out the correct answer was Liberty. Liberty. New York Liberty.
A real blue collar night and well enjoyed. I slip easily between that vernacular and vibe and my work persona — having spent so many years in both environments.
The two Pauls took a bet on the upcoming NHL championship series. They sparred over the bet for some time, which started at one buying all the others drinks and meals for a week ‘or so’ (too extravagant and risky), and then went down to a beer of choice (not exciting enough) and wound up on a steak and lobster dinner. Paul took Edmonton and Paul is backing Florida. He doesn’t like Florida, Paul explained, just that they have The best hockey team right now. He was emphatic, although ambiguous, about his disregard for Florida.
Once the details of the big bet were finalized and shaken on, they made the bartender (Angela) write it down and stick the paper under the cash drawer in the register. I suppose that somehow made it seem more legit? Anyway, she played along in the humoring way of a mother with two young children. She was a pro and very practiced at handling rowdy drinking men watching sports on TV. She was a big-boned and big-boobed gal with dark hair and knew her way around behind the bar. All business but with a smile and jovial manner.
Paul #1 was a big thick lad, tall and strong. Not at all fat, but just big all over. He looked like he could definitely haul around 2 x 6’s all day. Paul #2 was thin with black hair and thick black beard and spoke very slowly with a slight slur that seemed permanent rather than from drink. Or perhaps the drink has resulted in a permanent slurring effect.
On my other side, also sitting at the bar, was an older barfly with the look of an insurance salesman. He was uninteresting so I mostly ignored him in favor of chatting with the two Pauls.
There are people whose words appear as poetry. As if every word comes out exactly where it’s meant to be, with the right predecessors and successors and excellent word economy. Paul #2 was not this kind of man. He spoke as if he were raised by wolves, but I suppose he was just a product of the American education system. If Miss evans had gotten ahold of him, he would have seriously improved his grammar and vernacular or he would’ve been throttled on the classroom floor.
Paul had no poetry in him, although I suspect he had a deft touch with a wrench and could make an engine tremble with anticipation to have such a professional diagnosing its ailments.
Storytelling is in our DNA from as far back as recorded history goes. We had spoken word, written word, poetry, songs, art of various forms, novels, fiction, fact-based narratives, etc……
In the stories are our truth and our history. And always, there has been someone there trying to control the narrative. To shape that story to reflect something other than the truth. Our history includes racism and genocide, massive social injustices, environmental injustices, police brutality, and greedy men starting wars for their own egos and pocketbooks. But the history of these events is hardly ever as portrayed. History must be carefully re-constructed after those profiting from the lies are long gone.
I am reminded of Isabel Wilkerson’s brilliant book ‘Caste’ and ‘The 1492 Project’. We are only now starting to scratch at the depth and veracity of our truthful history.
My little dog has met Mr. Skunk. And she now knows the skunk’s superpower. So we spent some time under the water hose with a bottle of orange juice. I will need to re-bathe her later with more juice but I had to get to work. I saw her rolling in the grass trying to get the oils off her face so I suspected she had gotten skunked even before she got close enough to smell.
I got as much as I could off but now the house will smell a bit for a while. It’s not as bad I it could have been.
Humbly Submitted, Robert Myres, Flanker, Portneuf Valley Rugby Football Club (ret.)
“the problem, of course, isn’t the Democratic System, it’s the living parts which make up the Democratic System the next person you pass on the street, multiply him or her by 3 or 4 or 40 million and you will know immediately why things remain non-functional for most of us.
I wish I had a cure for the chess pieces we call Humanity… we’ve undergone any number of political cures and we all remain foolish enough to hope that the one on the way NOW will cure almost everything.
fellow citizens, the problem never was the Democratic System, the problem is you
The Martini Tales 
