A little bit of Americana: There is no such thing as a boring life.

To me, socialism is an optimistic philosophy.  That doesn’t mean that all socialists are all optimists or good people. Actually, given my experience of all the groups that claim to be socialist, I hope to all ends that they never achieve state power; we’ll all be in deep shit.

But I believe in the socialist ideal as I believe in humanity. We are collective creatures, we need the comfort and economic security that human society offers us and we have come this far through collective efforts not through those whose goal in life is individual gain.

I consider myself an alcoholic as I have never been able to quit the drink except for a brief period, the ten years from 1988 to 1998. I started off trying to quit cocaine but ended up realizing that it was alcohol that was my main problem. So I quit all of them , cigarettes too. I just have a drink now and then, more often then.  My dad used to make me laugh because he got caught bribing orderlies to sneak him in a bottle of scotch at the old folks home he was staying at when my mum had a stroke and couldn’t take care of him any more.

“You’re an alcoholic like me” I said to him when they sent me to his room to get him to behave. “If I never drink for the rest of my life I will still be an alcoholic because it is my drug of choice.”  I told him.

He was stunned, I could see by the look on his face.  “I’m not an alcoholic” he said with gusto, “I can knock it on the head whenever I want”. To “knock something on the head” means to quit it.

I will take some literary license here as I don’t like to cuss in writing but, “For fuck’s sake dad”I said, “You’re 93. You drove the car through the front door.”.

I am a social drinker as this is part of my culture growing up in England. But I go to one pub these days.  I don’t drink at home particularly, after all, what is the point, no one else there drinks. For me, it is the human contact, the social nature of a drink that I am addicted to.

I had such a wonderful time in my local pub tonight. It is a very mixed crowd, some workers, some small business types and people from various backgrounds and ethnic groups. In short, it is a wonderful cross section of US society. What’s missing is the poorest among us and the youth in many ways, so it’s not everything, but it is a real piece of Americana.

I saw an older man there tonight who I haven’t seen for a while. He looked gaunt and a little tired and he’s lost some weight. He used to come in more often but I haven’t seen him recently. I walked over to him to say hi.

“How’s things going?”I asked him.

“Not good” he replied.

“What do you mean?”I responded.

“Well, my wife died and I miss her.”. he said.

I gave my condolences and asked him if he was from the area.

“I’m originally from Missour-uh.” He says

I have a friend form Missour-uh and that’s exactly how he says it but most people I’ve met say Missouri so I asked him why he says Missour-uh.

He told me his people came from the Shenendoah Valley in West Virginia and they travelled to Missour-uh in covered wagons. From what I can gather, these two pronunciations go back four hundred years. His wife died earlier this month and he was having a hard time dealing with it, they had been married 57 years. He felt a bit guilty about it saying that he tried to save her but he couldn’t.

He said he was 86 (maybe 82, I can’t remember) but he was having a hard time without her. I could imagine it. Sometimes I think about these things. I am in my sixties and coward that I am I always think that I hope my wife goes first because it would be so difficult to be in this house without her presence; it was bad enough when my dog died.  His wife was artistic and painted in oil. He was an accountant but he wasn’t alone he said, “I have two cats and a parrot in the house.”.

I told him how I believe we are collective creatures and he agreed. Human beings need the comfort of others and our community. I used to live in what is called here in the US the “ghetto” or the “hood”.  There were lots of problems, shootings, drugs, unemployment etc.  One time some white folks got lost on and left the freeway trying to find directions to where they were going. They ended up in my neighborhood where I was the only white man and made a bee-line for me I could see it; they were terrified. People always think that in these conditions there's no community but they're wrong. It's this community that helps us survive.

I told them where to go but little did they know that my neighborhood was a real community. I was safe there, my wife was safe there so was my son because we were part of it.  We were victims like all of us there of urban blight and the problems facing all residents of the inner city but we had a good friendly community there.

This old fella agreed that human beings needed each other but society has become so alienating, so greedy that we are disconnected not “like I was growing up” he said. “We have so little time and are so engulfed in trying to survive we don’t have time for each other anymore” he added. I agreed.

But this is how the ruling class likes it. We are all individuals; they like to preach. Well, we are.  But we are individuals within the community of humans. We are not whole outside of the community but capitalist society, one based on selfishness and a ruthless “winner take all” philosophy cannot abide collective living.  We might gang up on them. 

As I talked to this 80 year old I thought how interesting he would be to teenagers and the young folks we see day in and day out with their faces glued to a cell phone screen or the TV and how much life they would breathe in to him. Young people are lovely to be around. It reminded me of that John Prine song, “Hello in There”, and how we can walk by someone in their eighties and not for one minute think about the wealth of history and life that is in them.

I am not used to writing like this and was a bit apprehensive about it but WTF. This is political stuff. It is about regaining our humanity and the wonderful collective spirit that makes us special and what has enabled us to survive for so long.

A society that cannot respect and offer a secure, fruitful and comfortable life to its aged is not a civilized society.

This, existence of ours my friends is not civilization.

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Surviving a house fire and grateful for firefighters

Roscoe, our hero

Note: I've been up all night so this is a bit rushed but a personal account of a rather unpleasant experience.

Our little Jack Russell wouldn't stop barking this morning around 1 am. He hears people walk by sometimes and we had gone to bed late so we didn't pay too much attention to it.  I can't hear so well these days anyway but my wife thought she heard some sort of crackling noise and opened the hallway door to the living and dining room.

"There's a fire, there's a fire" she screamed.

I assumed she meant down the street so I got up and walked to the hallway door but as I peered in to the dining room I saw that the side of the house was ablaze along with the three huge shrubs that border it.

For a fleeting moment it entered my head to rush out the back and get a hold of the garden hose or the extinguisher that was in the laundry room but I could see that the blaze was advancing rapidly; this was serious. 

What met us as we walked in to the living room

The dogs were beginning to panic and headed toward the back in to the den.  But the back door was locked and even if we left it would be difficult to get out in to the street.  We called the dogs but they wouldn't come; they just stood at the back door.  The glass was beginning to melt or break out and the smoke was making it more difficult to breath so we rushed back and grabbed the dogs and headed for the door.  My wife called 911 as we headed out.

The flames were reaching over the roof by now and as I looked at it I felt sure that our home was going to burn to the ground.  But the fire department arrived and managed to subdue the fire, it didn't burn the house to the ground but our home is unliveable at this point and we have yet to figure out exactly what we have lost.

This is the third time in my life I have had personal connections to firefighters in the course of their work.  Once was when a tanker truck turned over and I was on the trouble truck working the midnight shift for my employer, the East Bay Municipal Utility District.  The firefighters were dousing this ticking time bomb with foam and flame retardant.  Before I left they were sending for a welder to cut in to the thing it was hard to believe but there are welders that can do that apparently.

I worked alongside them during the Oakland fire that destroyed some 4000 homes back in the early nineties, fireighters died during that catastrophe. I worked alongside them on other occasions when vehicles hit fire hydrants or during emergencies.  Imagine where we would be if such a service was left to market forces.  It is fashionable to attack firefighters and blame them for the economic crisis.  Right wing toadies often make remarks about them sitting around all day doing nothing etc. etc. These same people bootlick the likes of Rush Limbaugh and wasters like Donald Trump.  But firefighters provide a great public service and when they go out they more often than not risk their lives for our safety.  As we ran out they came to run in.

After they subdued the fire they walked us through our burnt out home, showed us what had been done and advised us on what we should be doing in the immediate term to set things in to motion.  They didn't ask us what our price range  was or what options we had, which plan would we like. They made sure they didn't leave until we had somewhere to go and felt totally comfortable with it.  They would stay with us if need be. I never dreamed we would be vitims of a house fire; it's a bit overwhelming.

When I was still active in my Union, I wrote two letters that the membership passed to the firefighter locals in NYC whose members responded to the attacks on the twin towers; we also sent a donation.  Next time you here these toadies attack firefighters, come to their defence; they are dedicated workers that provide a crucial public service; like the USPS, they are very efficient if you don't judge efficiency by how much profit the coupon clipeprs make.

I am grateful to the San Leandro fire department for their help last night. A friend from London who sent me an e mail pointed out that firefighters over there are facing the same attacks under the guise of austerity in hard times and the need for "shared sacrifice". An attack on public sector workers like the attacks on all workers is an atack on our communities and our well being. They bailed out bankers at our expense we don't need to cut services.

My neighbors also came out and stood with us as we watched this unpleasant event and, like the firefighters, you don't know how good neighbors really are until something like this happens.  The collective human spirit is a hard thing to supress.

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