Motormanmark.com

When President Obama was sworn in, we invited several friends to watch with us at our apartment.

 

At one point, they played the Star Spangled Banner on the TV, and one of us stood to attention right there in the middle of the living room, her hand on her heart.

 

It took me by surprise.  I’d forgotten people do that.  I think Archie Bunker used to do that.  My dad, who was a veteran, did it, too.  People do it at pro sports games.  Oh, yeah, and we did it in school all those years ago. 

 

I now remember a basketball game at the Garden in the 1980’s when I didn’t stand and people started throwing things at me.  I can’t remember why I didn’t stand.  

 

Arthur Miller used to tell a story where he, as a boy, nudged in to take a look at a man who had been killed on the street.  His grandfather pulled him away by the collar, sternly instructing, “Stay away from crowds.”

 

Now, I had an instant to decide: Do I leap to my feet, letting my friend remind me of my allegiance to a country I could now be especially proud of, now with the election of my political saviour?

 

Certainly, the Ethicist would have me stand, if not for love of country, then for support of my guest.

 

I did not.

 

And I wonder why I feel anxiety over it.  I do in my heart reject patriotism as the “last refuge of a scoundrel” and “the hatred of every country but your own” and all that, and I do believe we should all spontaneously declare ourselves world citizens and work together to demolish the national boundaries that perpetrate war and poverty and starvation and pollution on our planet.

 

Then again, I do love my country, as I do all the abstract conceptions of my society beyond the people I actually interact with.  I love my world, of course, my city…, I love my continent.

 

North America rocks!

 

Before the Obama speech, I would have thought my instinct not to stand for the song had to do with not wanting to live in a society where people had to do something like that.  If you don’t, people get to throw things at you.  That’s surely not “…the la-and of the freeeeeeee!”

 

That theory could be tested.  If no one could see me—if, at the Garden, I had been sitting in the rear row and so felt no pressure to stand, would I?  No.  But then, if no one could see anyone, who would stand?  The whole point is to stand so that everyone can see you and you can see everyone else standing.  It’s not about standing.  It’s about everyone observing everyone standing.  It is about agreeing to be unified. 

 

And the pressure to conform is inherent.

 

To stand is to make a statement only you know the meaning of, and to stand is just as much to make others feel you support their statements.

 

I think it’s safe to say I do not support what many are saying when they are standing for the national anthem.  

 

In my Media, PA hometown, patriotism was a big deal.  Every July 4th we’d have a town-wide celebration that was extravagant– a large parade with fire companies from all over.  Kids’d decorate their bikes.  Later in the day, the fire companies would compete to put out car fires they’d set behind the court house, and then there’d be fireworks in the park.  It was a blast. 

 

I loved my family first.   Then, I came to love my town.  And Batman.  As I grew up and became more aware of my country and church, I learned to truly love them, too.   That was a simpler time, though, when things were so easy to understand.  As we grow up, we must make the intellectual effort to continue to grow and leave behind the security of having things easy to understand.  To neglect that development as so many do is cowardly.

 

In the sixth grade, perhaps for the first time becoming aware of my world, I refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.  The teacher sent me to the principal, and I told him I was mad at our country for the way it was killing all those people in Vietnam.  He was a nice guy.  He sent me back without a reprimand.

 

Even though I hopefully believe our country stands for something particularly good, now, patriotism is an exercise as devoid of meaning as saying “Bless you,” when someone sneezes.  I practice it, to a point, fondly, sentimentally.

 

I do not love my country any more than I love my world or my state or my city.  I love my country, but that doesn’t mean anything.  It doesn’t mean my country is always or even usually right or more worthy of existing than the rest of the countries of the world.

 

If I try to search for meaning on Independence Day, I find it in a Memorial Day or Veterans Day-type honor of the sacrifices made by the soldiers who have died or fought or currently fight for my sake, which is a worthy subject for reflection on any day of the year, but not the real purpose of July 4th. 

 

The 4^th is celebrated in a way that boasts of the country’s “glory.”

 

To tell ourselves there is something glorious or even ideal about our nation is like dressing a chimp for dinner.  The results of human schemes have rarely been glorious.

 

Our country’s merits are relative, depending on who you are.  Many people have lived amazingly bountiful lives as a result of the USA, (a narcissistic goal, beyond a point.)  But to a child right now starving to death in the Central African Republic, the USA ain’t squat–and to the living parent of an Iraqi, Vietnamese, or Lebanese youngster who will, in the words of Neil Young, “never grow up, never go to school, never fall in love, never learn to be cool…,” thanks to a US cluster bomb, the USA is evil incarnate.  It isn’t hard to understand that.

 

We may be, at best, arguably better than other nations that have achieved our same level of human rights.  Maybe we even led the world to some good things.  As a remembrance of the better parts of our history, July 4th, then, has a place.

 

…Although, you could argue it is more productive to practice a remembrance of one’s mistakes, rather than one’s successes so as not to repeat them (just as, for example, our Iraq misadventure correlated so closely to the idiocy we practiced in Vietnam for lack of a halfway-decent national historical awareness.)  Not that anyone would want to be frying hot dogs while reflecting on the genocide of Native Americans, slavery, child labor, jim crow and lynchings, the 4 million civilians slaughtered in the Vietnam War…. 

 

On Independence Day, our citizens practice the superstitious religious exercise of identifying good away from evil.  We see this clearly when lapel pins become an election issue and people throw stadium trash at Motormanmark, the anthem loafer.  The Buddhist concept of opposites coexisting tells us that, in creating a national identity worthy of idolatry, we are just as well creating some opposite identity, just as unrealistic.

 

The very worst that humans have dreamt up politically, from Nazism to Stalinism, has been organically human, not infected with evil, but rather fear, laziness, and stupidity.

 

So, it is only right, I may argue, that we celebrate our country’s bravery, hard work, and intellectual industry—not to boast or to brag, but to inspire our children to look for those best qualities as they learn what it means to be a good citizen of their country and of their world.

 

Happy Independence Day, USA! 

 

Michael Jackson was iconic, yes, but not because of his success.  Not because of his pop sensibility.  MJ was iconic because he acted out the Black tragedy, USA.  He was a Black kid who went beyond all that Negro gratitudinal success—the kind of success that had Hattie McDaniels weeping at the Oscars—the kind that had Sammy Davis Jr licking Richard Dicking Nixon’s hand.  Michael Jackson did it all.  He was able to be how we felt—and even more: just who we wanted to be.  He wasn’t Black.  He was everyone.  As if.  As if a Black kid could be everyone and still be a Black kid.  But not that his change of skin color, et al, was not as much an act as it was an impulse.

 

I just heard cool Quincy Jones sentimentalized about his “little brother.”  What the hell’d he ever do for Michael Jackson other than use MJ to build his own reputation??  Quincy Jones wasn’t spit before Thriller.   If he gave a whit about MJ, he would’ve said, way back in 1980: “What the hell’re you doing to your skin???”

 

If Oprah had a touch of true Christian charity, when MJ told her in the interview he had vitiligo and that’s why he’s coloring his skin, she would’ve said, “ Well then why aren’t you painting the White spots Black rather than the Black spots White?!”  She didn’t get into it.  If you remember that famous interview, she just let it all slide.  She should NOT have.  She should have slammed him with it.

 

Don’t even let me start talking about Dianna Ross.

 

For nearly thirty years now he has been twisting, the hanged man, a public spectacle, a fool, alone. 

 

He was never real.  He was a show, put on by a rotten crumb of a father who didn’t give a d*mn for any one of his kids, really.  …Who, to give Joe Jackson the benefit of the doubt, was probably screwed up too much by the rotten, racist US society he was born into, so much that he couldn’t hope to be a loving dad. 

 

But there was sexual deviancy in Michael, too.  Not just the emblematic self-loathing Negro.  But a man who despised innocence so much that he just had to ruin it.  Joe Jackson.

 

A child molester hates his victim so much because he hates his own weakness as a child when he, too, was victimized.

 

Michael Jackson was hateful, and now he is dead.

 

Joe Jackson still lives.

 

Joe Jackson lives in the phoniness of every slick show that, in its pretense to glory, avoids the opportunity to live the danger of the real, the insecure existence of the honest, the self-effacing sincere. 

 

Let’s be honest about Michael Jackson: There was never anything glorious about MJ;  There was nothing about his success that transcended the frame of ever-cheap pop culture.

 

And those very problems are ours, and there’s how he’s an icon.

On the occasion of the deadly crash of two Washington D.C. Metro trains, which obviously happened on a curve as photos of the crash clearly show, I republish this investigative piece about the routine killings of humans by New York City Subway trains.  As the media ponders the great “mystery” of this crash, you can wonder why a simple rule is not imposed: that the operator of a train maintain a speed only fast enough to control what is plain to see in front of the train, just as a person does in an automobile.

 

DEAD MAN’S CURVE AND THE KILLING OF MARVIN FRANKLIN

By Mark Crane  Motormanmark.com

 

A sample of notes on subway killings that I took while reviewing incident reports down in Brooklyn sitting up on the top floor of Metropolitan Transportation Authority-New York City Transit (MTA-NYCT)’s corporate tower:

 

• June 23, 2007 – 63 year-old passenger, Judy Desilva is killed as a northbound D train enters 155 St. station.  The train operator reports as he entered “on a right hand curve” he observed the victim attempting to climb up from the roadbed, but could not stop his train in time.

• March 8, 2006 - A train operator on an inbound 7 train entering the 103^rd St./East Elmhurst station reports: “Entering 103 St. station around a curve, I noticed an object that appeared like a person and I immediately placed my train into emergency.”  “Emergency” is full train-activated braking.  The unidentified victim was killed.

• December 18, 2005 - A track worker walking the tracks discovers a body of a passenger under the third rail, south of Fordham Road on the D-line.  After investigation, remains from the passenger are found on the undercarriages of six trains, each which in succession have run over the victim, not one train operator able to notice the body.  The incident report states: “The area is very dark,” and “The only reason he spotted the body was that he smelt an odor of burnt flesh.”

I would say policies that involve life and death should have responsible oversight.  However, I’ve found the truth is, after these types of killings, policy is questioned only internally.  And almost always, subway killings are ignored by the media and investigated by the police with no more scrutiny than is afforded a common burglary.

 

On April 29, 2007, Track Worker Marvin Franklin was killed by a subway train that was moving within the posted speed limit.  Due to the speed the train was traveling, the train operator did not–and could not–see Mr. Franklin in time to keep from hitting him and a coworker, (who survived,) even though the workers–both wearing reflective safety vests– were occupying the track before the train appeared. 

 

Since this was the second track killing of an employee in less than a week, workers were outraged, and in the intense media glare that followed, MTA-NYCT, breaking with the usual routine of drying-compound scattering and paper shuffling, pledged to conduct an inquiry.  By the end of July the six employees MTA had dressed up as investigators concluded the killing had been caused merely by rule violations.

 

The Board concluded the train operator had a view of the roadway that was “inhibited” by the curve, and that, considering conditions such as sight lines and allowable speed in the area the train operator “…could not have avoided making contact with the employees.”  But this was not a revealing factor to this investigative board–it was only mentioned in the final report in an effort to acknowledge the train operator bore no responsibility.

 

Here, to determine the causes for a man’s killing by an MTA subway train, a board is assembled of only MTA employees, which in itself is absurd.  Then, in the text of the board’s report they do find their way to the cause–the fact that the train was going too fast for the train operator to stop when he came in view of the men, but not one board member recognizes the significance of this main causal factor.  It is never mentioned in the report again, as if the speed rating of the track is set by God, as remote from our control as the tides.  In fact, none of the board’s recommendations address excessive speed ratings for curved track, nor do they address or even discuss the poor view afforded by these 25+ year-old trains.

 

Instead, the board suggests myriad rule changes to increase oversight of workers’ attention to following the rules that keep them away from moving trains.

 

DEAD MAN’S CURVE

 

There exists in the subway a condition I call “dead-man’s curve,” as subway trains are routinely operated, within the rated speed limits set by MTA-NYCT, over curved areas of track that do not allow a train operator to see a pre-existing obstruction on the roadbed in time to stop the train.

 

Subway trains weigh 400 tons, and so they take a long time to stop once the brakes are applied.  If you are a train operator operating a train through one of these sections of track, you do not have the control necessary to avoid contact with whatever waits around the bend, whether it be a collapsed track worker, a passenger retrieving a dropped cellphone, or a terrorist-planted derailing device.

 

Take, for example, the express tracks on the Upper West Side’s #2 & 3 lines.  Those trains travel through 40 mph-rated curves–lightspeed to a train operator.  A passenger on the last car of that train knows as much as the train operator about what is just 25 feet ahead on the tracks.  And, at full brake, that train will put about three 70-foot-long cars over any obstruction before coming to a rest.

 

TUNNEL VISION

 

Evidently, the MTA’s theory of operation is that accidents are avoided by control of what gets on the roadway, not by expecting a train operator to maintain the control necessary to be able to avoid an accident. 

 

This is consistent with the fact that management neglects actual sight conditions in the operating cabs.  On the older subway trains, which amount to a full 61% of NYCT’s rolling stock, cab windshields are scratched and dirty.  Unlike the 1921 Dodge, the first automobile to have a windshield-washing feature, there is no convenient way to clean the hard-to-reach windshields of these trains.

 

Windshields stay dirty (MTA Subway crews are not even provided squeegees;) wipers are poor and only cover about 70% of the glass, even though above-ground operation amounts to 40% of the average run. (The windshield wipers on the “redbird” trains that were scrapped only five years ago had a comical rocker arm that required operators to manually swipe the windshield with a free hand, though subway operation is already two-handed–one of them on the brake handle, the other locked on the dead-man power controller.) 

 

Further, modern boy scouts carry stronger flashlights than the headlights on these trains, and poor cab designs leave reflections from the train interior beaming off the inside of the windshields. 

 

Here is a cellphone pic a train operator sent me showing the notorious cab door window reflection that train operators must endure, glowing off the inside of the windshield as a train enters a station with a curved platform.  This pic was recorded off the same train class as the train that killed Track Worker Franklin.

 

 

 

 

Even on a straightaway, it is a challenge for a Train Operator to see the roadbed clearly for just 40 feet, let alone the distance one might see from, say, a car or a truck windshield.  And on their way along structures above ground, these trains have no visors or sun-blindness protection.

 

 

Each of these conditions could easily be retrofit-corrected, and, in fact, each were corrected in the design of the newer trains MTA purchased ten years ago, but they’ve not lifted a finger to begin adjustments to the remaining and majority 30 year-old fleet they keep committed to.

 

Either the MTA brass has a romantic fantasy that train movement is an act of nature or they just don’t give a damn about the hapless and often anonymous victims that end up blood-on-the-tracks.

 

 

 

DRYING COMPOUND ON THE TRACKS

 

In flagrant violation of the law, MTA has refused to produce the majority of the records I’ve requested through the state’s Freedom of Information Law (FOIL.)

 

Still, they did provide enough records for me to determine that four people are killed by being struck by NYC subway trains each month.   MTA claims 42% of these killings are suicides, but refuses to show records to represent how such a determination was made.  Even if the cases MTA claims to be suicides are suicides, and even if no suicides would have been avoided by correcting the issues I raise, that still would leave an average of 2 ½ killings a month that are not suicides—that might be prevented by simple, inexpensive policy and equipment alterations.

 

I have written to a wide array of public officials, each who might choose to accept some responsibility to address these issues, from the secretary of the federal Department of Transportation to Mayor Bloomberg to City Council President Christine Quinn to MTA CEO, Eliot Sander, and MTA-NYCT’s own President, Howard Roberts, and I have been ignored by each of them.

 

The fact is, there is no one responsible to oversee MTA’s response to track killings.  There is no agency who accepts responsibility to even take a complaint that MTA subways are routinely slaughtering homeless people and transit workers without taking appropriate avoidance measures.

 

State officials are aware of this lack of oversight, and in 2007 they approved a Track Safety Bill (S4580/A8945 ), legislation that provides oversight by a 3-member panel made up of one MTA rep, one Albany rep, and one union rep.  The panel, which applies only to worker safety, however, is assigned no responsibility for which it can be held accountable, as it operates only discretionarily and serves really just to quiet the one voice that might complain about subway killings–the Transport Worker’s Union, Local 100.  By including one of the union’s vice presidents–a train operator who can be assumed to know as much about forensic accident investigation as any other average Joe–and paying his expenses, the board puts a loving arm around its union buddies.  This panel also wields a double-whammy of chilling power against an employee seeking to report conditions the MTA or Local 100 would prefer stay under wraps. 

 

You see, the union does not have a dog in the fight against subway killings.  The union is there to protect members against discipline, not to promote public safety.  For every subway worker killed by a subway train, there are 125 subway users killed, and for every person killed by a train, there are a hefty number of possible cases of disciplinary action against active union members who could be blamed for failing rules in a way that contributed to the killing (ie: flaggers, the train operator, signal operators, etc….)  MTA wields a notoriously punitive management, which, according to Local 100 President Roger Toussaint, had 15,000 outstanding disciplinary cases in 2005 among a worker pool of 33,000.

 

A good example of the effete nature of union participation in oversight occurred during the investigation into the death of Marvin Franklin.  When that 6-member board piled into the train operator’s cab, they noted only that the windshield was “clean,” not noting the large reflection that is standard in that train’s class and exists on the same windshield.  They concluded the headlights “were on,” but made no measurement of their strength.  The union rep who was the only non-MTA executive on the board–that same train operator I mentioned before–did not make a peep. 

 

You may remember wide reporting of the board’s findings, slamming blame on supervision, but leaving Local 100 members virtually unscathed.

 

Take a look at the report.  You can download a pdf file of it HERE.  It carefully aims its investigation to a very limited area: the work site.  The board is not assigned to investigate the matter as a subway killing, but as a work site killing.  All recommendations have to do with work sites.  Conditions this killing shared with those four deaths a-month I mentioned earlier are carefully excised from consideration at the board’s conception.  In fact, MTA has never conducted an inquiry into a killing of a subway user of the type of the two they conducted into the deaths of the two track workers.  Considering the documents I viewed, it seems MTA merely fills out a few forms and turns the page.

 

 

 

MY CONCLUSIONS

 

In response to my FOIL request, MTA-NYCT generated a list of all track killings between January 2002 through October 2007, with notes for each–a list of 301 killings (you download a pdf of this list HERE.)  They then let me inspect a stack of carefully selected documents–mostly incident reports–from an apparently random selection of 23 track killings (while their Deputy FOIL Officer sat beside me, watching over my shoulder trying to read the notes I was taking.)  In addition, I had access to the detailed investigations of two train killings of track workers occurring in the same week in April, 2007, Mr. Franklin’s killing being one of those.   I combined these with the 23 case files to make a unit of 25 cases to survey.  MTA response to my FOIL requests took so many months and provided such a small proportion of the requested documents that a comprehensive survey of subway killings leading to today was impossible.  Still, the documents provided me with enough information to indicate a survey with a free reign of documents would be likely to produce the following conclusions: 

 

1.  Subway killings occur at a much higher rate on sharply curved areas of track, even though such areas of track make up only a minute percentage of system lay.  By my best estimation, curved areas adjacent to passenger platforms only account for about 25% of subway stations, and, obviously, a much smaller percentage of system lay (train tracks need to get to where they’re going, so they generally are laid as flat and straight as possible.)

 

In my survey, 48% of the killings occurred on areas of track where the train operator’s view of the road is limited by a curve.  As would be expected, when killings MTA designates to be suicides are excluded, the part of the sample occurring in such areas goes up to 60%.

 

Curved track is speed rated throughout the system with the purpose of minimizing train vibration and mechanical damage to the equipment, but clearly no effort has been made to limit speeds to allow the train operator to anticipate track condition.  In curved areas of particularly high speed, no apparent efforts have been made to limit access of personnel or trespassers.

 

Though every year passengers are killed by pitching their heads out over the tracks, looking in the wrong direction for approaching trains, high-speed-rated and/or curved platforms feature no protections for passengers straying too close to the platform edge.

 

Though MTA-NYCT has agreed to retrieve fallen items from the tracks for passengers, it provides no such notice, as it easily could, in-station, on the wall over the tracks or, better yet, between the running rails.  Every year, passengers are killed retrieving their property in-station.   

 

2.  Subway killings are much more likely when the train involved is one of the older variety with the conditions I have described that limit/obscure/distract from a train operator’s view of the road ahead.

 

In my survey, 88% of the killings were caused by the older trains, though they only account for 61% of the active fleet.

 

Most train operators assert the older trains generally have better or, at best, equivalent braking ability when compared with the newer trains.  In fact, in rainy/snowy weather, the newer trains have serious, MTA-acknowledged braking problems that the older trains just never experience.  Understanding this would lead one to expect more killings to result from operation of the newer trains, not the older trains.

 

I wonder whether a New York City accident on a par to the D.C. smash-up will be necessary before MTA New York City Transit wakes up and changes its reckless policies.  

Fellow New Yorkers:

 

According to the Brookings institute, it is only a matter of time before some terror group gets its hands on a portable nuclear bomb.  There seems to be absolutely no inclination towards developing a world government or even a worldwide control of weapons and violence, so there is no reason to believe we are not advancing swiftly towards the event of the first nuclear act of terror. 

 

It was eight years between attacks on the WTC, and it has this year been eight years since 9/11.

 

Dick Cheney knows this.  That’s why he keeps saying Obama is making us less safe (a mantra he groaned virtually every time the Bushies were criticized or lost a court battle over documents, torture, or detainee treatment)–because when it does happen, he wants to act like it was because he didn’t get his stupid way, rather than an inevitable development in a world that respects the international trade of weapons of war–and, I must add, in a world so tilted with inequities and so lacking in centralized control that desperate actors abound.

 

Such kooks, of course, also abound here in the US, and, a scary new item by Frank Rich‘ll have you looking over your shoulder.

 

Certainly, among the top most appealing targets of terrorists is our home, New York City.

 

Still, here in NYC, the citizenry is completely unprepared for the possibility of such an attack.  Yes, the police and military have planned their top-secret responses, we well know.  But, what would you do if a bomb went off right now?

 

What should you do? 

 

You do not have a clue.  No one has told you.  Maybe you’d try turning on the TV or radio, if they worked, for instruction.   Maybe you’d try to flee the area.

 

Odds are, there won’t be any subway service. Under the very unlikely scenario that the electricity and signals continue to operate, MTA New York City Transit has instructed its staff to evacuate.  They are not trained for hazardous duty.

 

And, remembering 9/11, we all know not to count on telephone service. 

 

And the roads are instantly jammed. 

 

So, let’s say you are lucky enough to hop in a taxi the second the bomb goes off, and the guy is calm enough that he’s still taking fares…  where do you tell him to go?

 

You want to head northwest, probably.  Odds are, the bomb we are talking about is downtown, right?  That’s my guess.  So, picture a mushroom cloud over lower Manhattan.  That’s just a hop and skip from 95 South in Jersey.  That highway’s not going to be a good escape route unless you want to be the first to breathe the radioactive fallout. 

 

Always try to know the weather.  High pressure means that everything should stay concentrated around here for a while–so if you don’t get out in some covered conveyance fast, take cover.

 

(There was a case in London about a hundred years ago where mass asphyxiations took place due to people heating their homes with coal and a high pressure system keeping the carbon monoxide on the ground.)

 

Low pressure means the fallout should be moving along in a direction you do not want to be headed, so you need to be more choosey about which direction you flee.

 

Still, if you don’t get out fast, take cover.  Something deep underground, like a spacious basement.  A subway tunnel might be good, assuming the part that was bombed collapsed and you’re not getting a breeze of the poisonous air circulating throughout the system.

 

(Hiding underground can reduce radiation by a factor of 10, but, in case of a biological attack, it’s actually more dangerous–vapors will fall to the lowest part of a house or building.)

 

If you are unlucky enough to be in Brooklyn, you take a stab at the Verrazano Bridge, if they haven’t closed it down–which they might–they don’t let us know their plans. If you get over that bridge to Staten Island, odds are the fallout will not be dropping in a southwest direction so you will hopefully be safe.  If no Verrazano,  you can only hope to beat at least a few of the several million people in Queens to get in line on the Long Island Expressway, putting some space between you and Wall Street quickly as you head through your broad borough.  Local roads on Long Island could yield extra, valuable miles between you and ground zero. 

 

Draw up an escape map, just in case.

 

If there’s a swift northern movement of air, you might even get on the eastern shore or even the Rockaways and hunker down in a basement until you can get rescued.  Depending on weather and the area of the hit, those areas might have only small exposure.

  

Queensites should try to get over a bridge, as it would probably be better to be on the mainland where you can really hope to escape radiation exposure.  Still, it is a matter of a short time before the bridges to the Bronx are just jam-packed to hell, and it would be a good deal to be among the first looking for a rescue ferry from the far end of Long Island, which, depending on air currents, could escape exposure.  There’s a Naval base next to Montauk Point.

 

But clearly the Bronx is the best place to be.  If you are in the Bronx, you are going  to head straight for 87 or the Saw Mill or Broadway on the local route through Yonkers–not 95–that’ll be the path of the fallout, as the jet stream and prevailing winds move that way.  You want to get up next to the Hudson River and take the first moving path over–the Tappan Zee, the Bear Mountain Bridge, the Beacon-Newburgh Bridge. Beyond Beacon, you’re probably far north enough to take the accelerator off the floor.  The second you are over the river, head west, as that’ll get you out of the path Mother Nature will be carrying the deadly cloud.

 

Using Hiroshima as a guide, which may or may not be a good idea (I’m just a blogger,) a Wall Street detonation would, for all intents and purposes, destroy Manhattan below 14^th Street.  Outside of that, your worries are radiation exposure and the effects crowding and panic may have on your survival.

 

At Christopher Street station, there’s a Path tube that could be walked through.  Then there are tubes going to Jersey from Penn Station and one up around 46th Street that goes to Jersey from Grand Central.  If you have a very dependable flashlight (there are NO emergency lights down there,) and some reflective clothing, that might be your best plan.  Just don’t step near the deadly 3rd rail, and make sure you have somewhere to step clear should they succeed in moving a train through.

 

It’s too realistic–I can clearly imagine the TV coverage of people walking up out of the tube! Very scary.

 

Northern Manhattan is the same escape plan as the Bronx, unless the GWB is productive.  If that’s not happening, you must make it over the Henry Hudson Bridge at the top of the West Side Highway or over the Broadway Bridge as Broadway leaves Inwood.

 

Timing is everything, so do not spend a moment thinking about possessions, family photos, the computer hard drive.  I heard a guy on WNYC talking up a “go bag” full of special treats to help you survive an emergency. Okay, if it’s by the door.  Otherwise, don’t waste the time to fetch it.  Some cash for the taxi.  That’s all you need. 

 

Well, except… get a bottle of potassium iodide pills to keep in a special place.  That will keep you and your kids’ thyroids from absorbing deadly iodine.

 

Oh, how about sun screen?? Is that an effective protection against radiation? You slather yourself with it??  Not knowing about such things, I cannot say.

 

Have a plan for your family.  If you are separated, you will each escape as fast as possible, and meet in New Paltz.  The kids will meet you here, or they’ll leave a note that they got a ride out of the area, which they will know to do–never to turn down a chance to escape so as to wait for you.  Everyone should know Uncle Sid’s house in Dover, Delaware is the place to telephone if you can’t reach one another.

 

If you don’t have a car, if you don’t catch a ride, your plans will be different.  It would be great if you had some good bicycles.  Now that I think of it, a bicycle would probably be your best bet!  Well, then again, you’re exposed to the poisonous air more than in a car, but it takes, let’s say 15 minutes, before the fallout starts coming down.  (You’ll have more time further out — ie: maybe, an hour or more out on Long Island.)

 

Yes.  A bike might be best.  Zoom!  Between jammed traffic through the Lincoln Tunnel, would be a dream–that’s if they haven’t closed it down or restricted it to foot traffic.

 

I mean, nobody talks about this, so what if we find the authorities have been planning all along to severely control access to the bridges and tunnels… and even the highways to make sure movement is smooth and orderly??  Who knows.

 

I’m just a blogger.

 

So, failing the Lincoln Tunnel, I hope you can pedal fast, upstate. 

 

No bike, and you will find yourself like all those folks footing it after the blackout a few years back.  The walk over the George Washington Bridge might work, but now the question becomes will you be smarter to take cover from the fallout than escape in a radiation snow.  You can’t outrun a radiation fallout anymore than you can a snowfall.

 

New York City has many thousands of good spots for hiding out deep underground where the government can send rescuers eventually.  So, wherever you are, make sure you are aware of a nearby spot with a large underground.  As soon as you get there, fill many bathtubs, sinks, and or garbage bags with fresh water, as it will be undrinkable in just a short time. 

 

Let your family know this is a possibility.  Have the kids know all the possibilities of people they can contact to come pick them up from wherever they’ve been rescued to.

 

Assuming you’ve escaped a radiological attack, decontamination is the next most urgent step. Getting rid of outer clothing and rapid washing of skin and hair can remove 95% of contamination. If you can, a bleach solution (1 part bleach with 9 parts water, applied with cloth,) will also remove some radiological contaminants (or gross biological decontaminants, too.)

 

Avoid further contamination by using a wet rag over the face and mouth (this is about as effective as the store-bought paper masks one buys for painting etc.)

 

As for weapons, it’s my belief that people are good, especially in a crisis situation. And I won’t say “New Yorkers” or “Americans” or some other garbage like you hear in the self-congratulatory pap smeared around the media after a 9/11-type event. No. People everywhere are like that. Every person who was loved by a mother and father for the first five years of their life is like that in my opinion.

 

What’d I leave out?  You email me whatever I overlooked and I’ll edit it into this piece, which I’ll republish.   I’ve published this before and, as promised, I incorporated reader’s comments here. Many thanks to the helpful comments of “EZC” and Morgan, et al.

 

We all have to get this plan together between ourselves, as the authorities obviously don’t think we need to be prepared.

 

Ummm… not that we will be attacked.  I am an optimist who is very hopeful we will, the world’s people, avoid such a tragedy, that we will find our way, somehow to a better world.  But I think we, in NYC, need to at least mentally prepare how we will react in case this happens.

 

Peace!

Which scientist said something to the effect that having nothing to do was the best way to stumble onto a stroke of genius?

 

Lately, I have been struggling over just what I should be doing with my mind.

 

Once you acquire the right cellphone and learn how to deal with a memory card, thanks to the internet, there is no end to all the healthy items you can be feeding your brain.  

 

I find there are not enough empty moments in my day to listen to all the interesting podcasts and newspaper articles I’d gathered in the time it took me to drink a cup of coffee just after arriving home from work the day before, crashed in the computer chair.

 

There was a time–before children–when I’d turn on the TV.  It would pretty much stay on through dinner–Jeopardy, I recall.  This would be followed by sports.  Basketball.  Back when Pitino was coaching the Knicks, I nearly never missed a game.  Hours and hours of TV, until late at night when the West Coast games finished their overtimes.

 

And when there were no sports, there were movies, sitcoms (Friends, Seinfeld,) and suspenseful dramas (LA Law, ER!)

 

Then, there came children, and the cable TV was just too expensive anyway (one of the few discretionary items in the budget,) and, besides, somewhere in there I had this great big realization about how dumb it is to continue to watch sports after you’ve already seen just about anything happen that can possibly happen (Louis Orr’s last second 3-point play, Doug Fluti’s Hail-Mary pass, Chocolate Thunder destroying a backboard, a Dwight Gooden no-hitter, a genius McEnroe volley…,)  so the cable was cut.

 

And that left me with loads of free time, right??

 

Heeeell, no.

 

It was as if all those extra hours were sucked into some great space vacuum somewhere.  I don’t know where the time has gone.  When, before, I could’ve spent a full hour of coffee klatch describing the highlights of the sports I’d witnessed the night before, now, I can recount very little of my free time–certainly no resting, no idle moments–just kids running around, me screaming a bit, the nighttime story time ritual, early to bed and to rise, as children demand.  No more of them Late Late Show roll out of bed just before noontime mornings.  No, sir.  Wouldn’t know what that was if it bit me on the nose.

 

But all that’s old news.  It comes again to my mind, though, because I have recently been gauging another trade off.

 

We spend so much time being occupied nowadays in  the gadget culture, that I have been wondering how great is the loss of all that empty time.  The time where you are standing there waiting for the elevator door to open, and your mind is sifting over what you said this morning to your lover, or you are trying to remember a scene from your childhood, or you are inspecting the elevator inspection card to make sure it has been updated in the last year.

 

That empty time, I fear, is as important to my creative mind as the dreamy moments of my night’s sleep.  And lately I’ve been gobbling it up with New Yorker political commentary and the Times Well blog and just loads of rich, intelligent, and entertaining yammering.

 

Is it not vital to compose oneself?

 

Just leave me alone and let me think about it a bit.

I haven’t even left for vacation (as promised) yet, but I just had to express this outrage:

The California Supreme Court just voted 6 to 1 to uphold the state’s ban on same-sex marriages.  The judge who wrote for the majority cited that same sex couples have civil unions and that only the label is different—sort of a separate-but-equal argument.  The Times had a good analogy—like telling Blacks the back of the bus arrives at the bus stop at the same time as the front.   This is the same court that ruled 4 to 3 last May that same sex couples have the same rights to marry as those of the opposite sex, so it is not that they are so ignorant as to fail to understand the basic physiological reality of the attraction between same sex people, or the inapplicability of religious superstition to our nation’s laws.  They are merely cowards who are afraid of being voted out of office (their posts are vulnerable to recall.)

What a poor state of affairs that in our country the majority can beat up on a minority at the ballot box.  What else are courts for if not to step in to check the power of the majority to violate our grounding principles??   

Something to hold you over while Motormanmark.com is on vacation:

 

Filed under the hardest-learned lessons:

 

As a child adventuring in the woodsy tracts that followed the railroad tracks in my Pennsylvania hometown, I was yearly assaulted by intense skin infestations of poison ivy.  It was absolute hell at the worst times.  In the fall, when it would finally stop, I’d be left with bruises all over my body.

 

So, trust me, I know where you’re coming from.

 

My well-meaning parents encouraged me to scrub the new patches with Fels Naptha laundry soap and very hot water, which now I know was the exact thing to do to most efficiently make the problem much, much worse.

 

So, now you’ve got it, and you want to lose it before it starts taking over all your skin, your hands, your face, yes, even your sexual organs (don’t ask.)

 

Despite being a camper and hiker, I am no longer even irritated by poison ivy.  You won’t be, either, if you simply remain faithful to the following prescription:

 

Immediately, get the itchy skin under some ice-cold water.  Wash it (and as much of the rest of your skin as you can endure to in the pain of the cold water) with the cold water and hand soap–NOT detergent. 

 

You want to get the poison ivy oils down the drain.  The cold water makes them congeal into solid chunks that the oil in the soap can herd along off your skin as you flush with the cold water.  The cold water also makes your pores close up, shutting out places other than the drain where the poison ivy oils might go.

 

Wash exposed clothing in cold water and laundry soap that is non-detergent.  (Detergent does not herd poison ivy oils, but rather breaks them into smaller, more insidious bits, that are much harder to completely flush away.)

 

As for the itching, do not scratch, but hold ice onto the itchy spot until the pain of the cold kills the itch (a great strategy for bug bites, too, incidentally–especially if you’re trying to relieve an itchy youngster.)

 

Do not put itch creams on or rub the poison ivy–it will only spread it.

 

Then, learn to identify poison ivy.  To be simple, stay away from any vine or bush that grows in sets of 3 leaves.  It starts as a bright green, dry plant, and grows into a dark green, oily looking thing.  It grows in patches, so if you notice it, you should expect to see it all around you.

 

If your dog is wagging his tail beside you, put him on notice that your best friendship is on hold until after you’ve fully doused him with the garden hose and gotten your hands on some soap.

 

Don’t burn it.  The fumes are deadly to lungs, and will infest the entire area with poison ivy oils.

 

To remove it, get some disposable impermeable gloves and Tyvek shoe coverings and overalls of the type they sell at hardware stores to remove asbestos or lead (if it’s grown high, you’ll need a face shield, too,) and use essentially the same types of procedures they use in dressing and undressing when they are about to deal with deadly materials. 

 

Even with gloves, try not to grasp the stalks–just cut close to the ground and place carefully in plastic bags. 

 

And warn the trash men.

 

Then spray the roots (which are as poisonous as the leaves) with something someone promises you will kill it for good. 

 

Next spring, keep a lookout for its return in the same spot, so you can nip it in the bud with the spray.

 

Have a great summer!

New Yorker staff writer, Jane Mayer, stated on this week’s edition of On the Media (see “Motormanmark’s Best Free Podcasts,”) that, there have been “persistent rumors” that the Guantanamo photographs the Obama administration seeks to suppress may contain images of cruelty to children and sexual abuse of women in addition to images of torture. 

The Obama administration argues that our troops will face the ire of foreign citizens should we release the images.  But the nobility of that concern must not confuse us as to its lack of applicability in the current context.  To save our troops anxiety and, perhaps, allow our military an easier time of buffaloing foreign political realities, (neither of which is a demonstrable supposition, but, rather, they are mild theories,) we must not support criminality, as concealing it surely does.

Being a Constitutional scholar, Obama knows this, and I believe he, having judged the court will order the release of the incriminating images anyway, is merely posturing for the right wing,  This would be in line with a variety of stances he has taken that offend liberals but end up having little practical benefit to the right.   In fact, it is political necessity, as, if one has a thorough understanding of modern US politics, and if it can be expected the photographs will be ordered released,  it would be politically foolish for Obama to fail to oppose it. 

That said, if the administration succeeds in quashing the photographs, a different scenario emerges, of an executive that  is not of the people, but rather which sees government’s role to be divorced from accountability to its citizenry.

In my recent Letter to the President, I worry that Obama may choose to take a Bushian evasion of accountability for the slaughter of civilians, and here is essentially the same concern.

Add to that Obama’s recent assertion he is opposed to prosecution of Bushies–see my recent article discussing the possibility Cheney tortured inmates to extract false confessions linking Iraq to 9/11–and GQ journalist Robert Draper’s recent revelations of religious White House memos indicating a Crusadish motivation to the Iraq invasion,

(Let’s not forget that just after September 11^th  Bush said:  ‘This is a new kind of — a new kind of evil.  And we understand.  And the American people are beginning to understand. This Crusade–this war on terrorism–is going to take a while.”   Two weeks later, after he repeated the term, the press began publishing stories questioning whether Bush wasn’t comparing US goals with the goals of past Christian “Crusades” in religious wars against the Muslims, and he was forced to retract,)

…and we have quite a snowball building, a snowball that demands prosecutorial investigation into the whole sordid Bush/Cheney fiasco–NOT by defense or Congress, which are each guilty as sin, but by an independent prosecutor.

Vengeance is not the motive.  The motive is to expose the truth to a jejune public, to write history in a way that it can be learned from, and, just as important, to see some small bit of justice done for all those Iraqis whose children were killed in our bloody invasion, and all those people, like Javaid Iqbal, who were pulled out of normal lives, denied any human rights, and then tortured by paid officers of the USA.

Or do not look back, and foolishly believe it will all just go away.

Motormanmark.com brings you this “missile missive” to our nation’s leader:

 

 

Dear President Obama,

 

I am a husband and father of four, a public employee, and a blogger here in the Bronx.  I supported your candidacy wholeheartedly from its earliest stages and worked in every way I could to see it through to success.

 

This Sunday, I listened to your National Security Advisor, General James Jones speaking on ABC’s This Week, as he addressed the recent US killings of Afghan civilians. 

 

“We have to be careful,” he stated.  “We don’t want to unnecessarily wound or kill innocent civilians.  At the same time we have to look at the other side of the coin is the Taliban is not using the same rules-they are using civilians as shields.”

 

The evocation of evil terrorists using civilians as shields as an excuse to kill those same civilians is Bushian and even less in line with US ideals as torture.  The decision to write off the life of some mother’s child should never be influenced by the intensity of the evil of the character who just drove through her village or who may still be there. 

 

As I am an optimist, I maintain my faith that you are a great man who is doing all he can to change the practice of governments killing civilians, but I find it outrageous to see a representative of your administration posing that a reasonable response to people we are pursuing shielding themselves by mingling with civilians (rather than maintaining separate encampments where they will surely be killed by our missiles) is to kill the civilians.

 

Your efforts to guide the nation back to “core values” is admirable, but, as we saw in the early Bush years, misapplied rhetoric, (like General Jones’s,) can inspire a corruption of values.  Rather than finding an easy way to run around a difficult question, members of your administration should take the time to address it honestly. 

 

These kinds of questions are the kinds of questions a good people should be asking ourselves: why should we be killing civilians?  

 

If our plan is not to kill civilians, the word “accidental” should not be neglected, and we should own up to our mistakes.  If plans went awry and we are learning from our mistakes, but we would rather not let the Taliban know our policy, refusing to answer the question for reasons of strategic secrecy would be a more principled approach than to give an unprincipled answer. 

 

If a calculation has been made, however, sacrificing peaceful men, women, and children for the greater good of humanity, then the details of this calculation, however dear to you who have made it, should be made public. 

 

Though they may inspire the less attentive citizen to support the administration, the General’s comments are antithetical to our core values.

 

I have the dearest hopes for your success.

 

 

Sincerely,

 

 

Mark Crane

 

(…I’ll let you know if I get a response.)

From Motormanmark.com’s digital memory (originally recorded onto a 5.25-inch floppy–when floppy was still an adjective.)

 

 

Seventeen years ago, when I was living in Seattle, watching Seinfeld weekly, homesick for NYC, I wrote this script—it kind of just spilled out of me one morning.  The funniest part of it to me was the Ouzo reference, as Ouzo is this Greek drink that tastes and looks unremarkable, but will get you drrrunk without you ever knowing it.

 

 

SEINFELD

 

“Jerry’s Scandals”

 

 

Monologue #1:

 

 

I go to sleep, and, you know, my hands are cold, my feet are cold.  I get under the comforter–down.  I’m happy. Ten minutes later, my feet are cooking. I stick them out from under the covers.  An hour later, I wake, sweat all down my back and legs. I throw off the comforter, wondering what I’ve still got a down comforter on the bed for–it’s spring, after all. Now, I’ve got just a sheet. I flap it a little to cool off.  Mmmm.  Comfy. Half-hour later, I wake.  The part of my arm from the top of the sheet up to the shoulder is frozen numb.  My limbs are wrapped around one another like taffy for warmth. My central nervous system is nearly in convulsions.

 

Does this happen to you? Is it normal? I don’t know, does it have something to do with the down or something.

 

The way I explain it is there’s this guy in my brain–the midnight shift, sure. Nothing to do on the midnight shift, right? So what’s he do? He roams around, fidgeting. Every ten minutes, he gets up and fools with the thermostat.

 

 

ACT ONE

 

JERRY’S BEDROOM 8 AM

 

WE FIND JERRY SLEEPING ON HIS SIDE, UPSIDE-DOWN IN HIS BED, ON TOP OF THE COVERS, AND HIS HEAD IS HANGING A LITTLE OVER THE FOOT. BESIDE HIM, GEORGE SLEEPS RIGHT SIDE-UP, THE COVERS PULLED TO HIS CHIN. CLOSE-IN ON JERRY’S FACE. THE PICTURE GOES SQUIGGLY AND THEN CLOUDY. A FUZZY PICTURE OF A MAN AT A DESK APPEARS, BUT THE SHOT IS HAND-HELD AND ROAMS AROUND. AS THE FOCUS CLEARS, IT BECOMES APPARENT THAT WE ARE VIEWING FROM JERRY’S PERSPECTIVE, AND THAT HE IS IN THE OVAL OFFICE. WE HEAR AN ECHOEY VOICE THAT SOUNDS LIKE PRESIDENT CLINTON’S. AS THE SCENE PROGRESSES, WE NEVER LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE PRESIDENT. JERRY WANDERS CURIOUSLY AROUND THE OFFICE AS HE AND THE PRESIDENT SPEAK. FROM TIME TO TIME, JERRY’S HANDS COME INTO THE FRAME AS HE USES THEM TO HELP HIS WORDS, OR MOVES THEM AS HE WALKS OR PICKS UP OBJECTS.

 

 

PRESIDENT

 

Jerry, I asked you here today, because, frankly, I need a little advice.

 

 

CAMERA PULLS AWAY, GAZING OVER THE TOP OF A SIDE TABLE. A MIRROR ON WALL COMES INTO VIEW. WE SEE JERRY LOOK AT HIMSELF, PATTING DOWN A LUMP OF HAIR.

 

 

JERRY

 

Oh, sure. I’m just a man, like you, Mr.  President, but I am most willing to share any–dare I call it “wisdom”–I can offer to help you on your honorable mission.

 

 

CAMERA GAZES TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ROOM, PASSING OVER THE PRESIDENT TOO QUICKLY FOR THE VIEWER TO MAKE OUT HIS FACE. JERRY CROSSES THE ROOM AND POKES A FINGER AT A PORCELAIN FIGURINE.

 

 

PRESIDENT

 

Look at this graph, Jerry.

 

JERRY

 

(PICKS UP FIGURINE, STUDIES IT MORE CLOSELY) Hm?

 

PRESIDENT

 

Jerry, are you looking?

 

 

JERRY LOOKS. WE SEE PRESIDENT, SEATED AT HIS DESK. HE HOLDS A GRAPH IN FRONT OF HIS FACE.

 

 

JERRY

 

Yeah, that’s something, Mr.  President.  What’s that a graph of?

 

 

THE CAMERA LOOKS BACK AT THE FIGURINE.  AS JERRY’S HANDS SET IT BACK ON THE TABLE, HIS THUMB KNOCKS AN ARM OFF THE LITTLE FIGURE. 

 

QUICKLY, THE CAMERA GLANCES BACK TO THE PRESIDENT, WHO IS STILL HOLDING UP THE GRAPH.

 

 

PRESIDENT

 

This graph projects the possible economic future of this country if we do not find a way to control this doggone deficit.

 

 

WE WATCH THE HANDS PUT THE FIGURINE BACK. JERRY DASHES TO THE REAR OF THE ROOM TO A WHITE-LEGGED CAT, ASLEEP ON A PILLOW, EMBROIDERED: “SOCKS. ” HE TOSSES THE CHINA ARM ON THE PILLOW AND SWINGS AROUND JUST AS THE PRESIDENT IS BENDING BACK TO PUT THE GRAPH BACK BEHIND HIS CHAIR. JERRY STROLLS TOWARD THE PRESIDENT, STRETCHING HIS ARMS OUT BEFORE HIM, INTERLOCKING HIS FINGERS AND CRACKING HIS KNUCKLES.

 

JERRY

 

The deficit, you say. (GAZES AT CEILING.  WANDERS TO PAINTING OF WASHINGTON ON WALL)Tut, tut. I am pleased to report, I can solve your problem in two words, sir. I think old George here was the first, in fact, to say those two words. You know what those two words are, Mr.  President–those two words that will turn the economy around for good?” Print money. “

 

PRESIDENT

 

Print money?

 

JERRY

 

Why, of course. It’s so simple, no one’s ever thought of it. How much do we owe? (LOOKS OUT WINDOW,BREATHES ON WINDOW PANE, DRAWS A HAPPY FACE)

 

PRESIDENT

 

It’s nearly three and a half trillion dollars, Jerry.

 

JERRY

 

Tell the mint it may take them a long time, but they’d better hop to it. We need three and a half trillion bucks printed, pronto. It’s for the public good, goshdarnit.

 

 

GLANCES OVER AT PRESIDENT, WHO HAS HIS BACK TO US AS HE GETS UP FROM CHAIR AND MOVES AROUND THE OTHER SIDE OF DESK. JERRY FOLLOWS, STOPPING AT PRESIDENT’S CHAIR.

 

 

PRESIDENT

 

(STRIDING TOWARD DOOR) Jerry, you’re a genius. I’m gonna do that right away. (PAUSES AT DOOR, REACHING DOWN TO CAT)Say, did I ever introduce you to Socks, our ca—-

 

 

JERRY’S GAZE FALLS ON DESKTOP. HIS HANDS CARESS THE INKBLOTTER,WHERE IN BRIGHT RED, “MEETING WITH JERRY TODAY!” HAS BEEN SCRAWLED.

 

 

PRESIDENT

 

A–a–ah!!!!!!!!

 

 

SHOT PANS UP FROM DESKTOP AND ROLLS RAPIDLY ACROSS ROOM, PASSING THE PORCELAIN FIGURINE’S ARM THAT THE PRESIDENT’S FINGERS HOLD OUT AT JERRY, AND RIGHT UP TO THE PRESIDENT’S SCREAMING FACE. IT IS KRAMER’S FACE IN THE PRESIDENT’S BODY AND UNDER HIS HAIR.

 

 

 

 

TRANSITION TO JERRY’S BEDROOM.  JERRY, STARTLED IN HIS SLEEP, ROLLS OVER ONTO HIS STOMACH, HIS HEAD STILL HANGING OVER FOOT OF BED. PAN TO GEORGE, ASLEEP WITH A SMILE ON HIS FACE.  SCREEN SQUIGGLES AND GETS CLOUDY. WE SEE CITY STREET FROM GEORGE’S PERSPECTIVE AS HE WALKS ALONG, IN SLOW MOTION. AN OLD LADY STOPS HIM.

 

 

LADY

 

(IN AN ECHOEY BROOKLYN ACCENT) Excuse me, young man.

 

GEORGE

 

(LOOKING DOWN ON HER) Yes, good afternoon. What is it, dear lady?

 

LADY

 

Do you know how to get to the Botanical Gardens?

 

GEORGE

 

Well, yes, in fact. I do. (HIS FINGER POINTS) First, you go down 79th to Broadway, where you can catch the C train. 

 

LADY

 

Uptown or downtown?

 

GEORGE

 

You take the C downtown to 59th Street, where you have a choice of staying on local, or catching the express–the A train–to Canal Street.   At Canal you’ll transfer to the D train.  You take the D train to Grand Army Plaza….

 

 

A SQUIGGLY, FUZZY SCREEN FUCUSSES AGAIN ON GEORGE’S SLEEPING, SMILING FACE. HE ROLLS ON HIS BACK, KNOCKING AN ARM AGAINST JERRY’S LEG. PAN TO JERRY’S FACE, EYES OPENING. FUZZY VIEW OF THE TAIL OF A LONG, THIN, ORANGE FISH.  IMAGE COMES INTO FOCUS AND WE WATCH JERRY’S REACTION TO HIS RECOGNITION OF THE FISH, WHICH LIES UNDER HIS BED.

 

 

JERRY

 

(SURPRISED, LOOKING UNDER BED) A fish.

 

GEORGE

 

(WAKING)Huh?

 

JERRY

 

A fish.  There’s a fish down here.

 

GEORGE

 

What’re you talking about?

 

JERRY

 

(JERKS UP AWAY FROM FISH)It jumped!

 

GEORGE

 

Huh?

 

JERRY

 

It’s still alive! (TURNS TO GEORGE, WHO APPEARS CONTENT IN THE BED) There is a live fish jumping under my bed!(PUZZLED) What are you doing?!!!

 

GEORGE

 

NOT GETTING IT) Wha–?!

 

JERRY

 

You are in my bed! What are you doing in my bed?!

 

GEORGE

 

(A LITTLE HOT UNDER THE COLLAR) Oh, come on.   You know I slept over.

 

JERRY

 

I do not!

 

GEORGE

 

(SNEERING) Well, then I guess somebody had a little too much Ouzo last night.

 

JERRY

 

(REMEMBERS) Oh, Ron Head’s party.  That woman brought

 A bottle of Ouzo to Ron Head’s housewarming party. 

 

GEORGE

 

(SHAKES HEAD, DISAPPOINTED) Josephine.  Poor Josephine had to leave Head’s party once you started yelling at her.

 

JERRY

 

Yelling! Why would I yell at her?

 

GEORGE

 

There.  Just like you’re doing now.  You wanted her to teach you how to dance.  She said she didn’t know any dances. You said she knew how to dance Greek. I told her I swear I never saw you like that. And not only that, but she is a real princess!  A real Greek princess. But, did Jerry care? No. You kept yelling, Dance! Dance! Dance! You insisted!

 

JERRY

 

(WITHOUT CONVICTION) I did not. I pleaded with her to dance. I did not actually tell her to.

 

GEORGE

 

Yes, you did. How conveniently you forget. You insulted a princess! It was embarrassing the way you chased her around the crowded party, with her begging you to leave her alone. Her swearing up and down that she didn’t know how to dance, but you insisting, “Dance!  Dance!”

 

JERRY

 

She shouldn’t have insisted I drink that…  that….

 

GEORGE

 

Ouzo.

 

JERRY

 

(HUMILIATED, HANDS CREEPING OVER HIS FACE) Ouzo.

 

GEORGE

 

But, she didn’t, Jerry, old pal. Remember. Thin-k.  “Have a taste,” I think, was her precise wording. And then, for the next two hours you tasted, because you said you couldn’t remember what it reminded you of.

 

 

JERRY PULLS HIS HANDS AWAY FROM HIS FACE. HIS TONGUE TASTES HIS LIPS.  HIS EYES POP OPEN WIDE.

 

 

JERRY

 

(AS IF HE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN ALL ALONG): Licorice. But, what are you doing sleeping in my bed?!

 

GEORGE

 

(TAKES A MOMENT TO STEP UPON THIS NEW TRAIN OF THOUGHT. SMILES. ) You really don’t remember, do you?

 

JERRY

 

 No!

 

GEORGE

 

I slept over!

 

JERRY

 

 I know! I can see that. What are you doing in my bed?!

 

GEORGE

 

(LAYS BACK, AS IF SUDDENLY UNDERSTANDING THE HARMLESSNESS OF JERRY’S QUESTION. ) Oh. Elaine’s got the couch. (HE LOOKS CLOSER AT JERRY)You really don’t remember a thing, do you?

 

JERRY

 

 I just can’t believe I let you sleep in my bed.

 

GEORGE

 

Yeah, well you did say it was too small. And you insisted on sleeping upside-down.

 

JERRY

 

 Of course.  When the bed is too small, one person’s supposed to sleep upside-down.

 

GEORGE

 

Where did you hear that?

 

JERRY

 

You don’t know that?

 

GEORGE

 

 I guess it makes sense. I just never heard it.

 

JERRY

 

Sure.

 

 

KRAMER STICKS A WET HEAD OUT OF THE BATHROOM DOORWAY.

 

 

KRAMER

 

 Hey, Jerry?  Do you have bath talc?

 

JERRY

 

 (THROWS HIS HANDS UP) Kramer! What is Kramer doing here?

 

KRAMER

 

I told you yesterday I’d need to borrow your bathroom. Mine’s getting a new ceiling today. (JERRY NODS, REMEMBERING)I would have asked you again on my way in, but you guys were asleep.

 

 

KRAMER SPOTS THE FISH AND STRIDES OVER, A TOWEL WRAPPED AROUND HIS WAIST. HE PICKS THE FISH UP AND DROPS IT INTO A SMALL FISHBOWL ATOP THE CHEST OF DRAWERS. JERRY LIFTS A CHINESE FOOD CARTON FROM THE CARPET.

 

 

JERRY

 

(SLAPPING FOREHEAD) Chinatown.

 

GEORGE

 

 (NODS)After the party you insisted we go to Chinatown. Wo Hop Restaurant. You said they had the best Moo Goo Gai Pan in town.

 

KRAMER

 

(FURIOUSLY SHAKING HIS HEAD) Noooo. Empire Schzechuan in the Village.

 

JERRY

 

Wo Hop.

 

KRAMER

 

Nooooo.  Empire.

 

JERRY

 

Wo Hop.

 

KRAMER

 

(LOOKS BUGEYED AT JERRY, TURNS TO GEORGE)How’d the party go last night at…  what’s his name? Face?

 

 

GEORGE AND JERRY LAUGH KNOWINGLY TO EACH OTHER.

 

KRAMER

 

What? What?

 

GEORGE

 

 His name is Head–Ron Head.

 

JERRY

 

George and I were laughing about the first time we met the guy.

 

KRAMER

 

It has something to do with his name, doesn’t it? Go on, tell me.

 

JERRY

 

Well, I can’t see that it’s still that funny.

 

GEORGE

 

(GENEROUSLY) Tell him, tell him.

 

KRAMER

 

What?!

 

JERRY

 

Well, we were in junior high.

 

GEORGE

 

P. S.  161.

 

JERRY

 

 Yeah, that’s right. (VOICE FADES, ECHOING)It was P. S.  161….

 

 

FADE TO SCHOOL CAFETERIA FULL OF LITTLE KIDS. IN THE FOREGROUND, JERRY AND GEORGE SIT, DRESSED IN TOO TIGHTLY FITTING KIDS’ CLOTHES. JERRY HAS A “HEE HAW” LUNCHBOX. HE IS BLOWING BUBBLES IN HIS MILK CARTON, SO THAT IT OVERFLOWS LIKE A VOLCANO.

 

 

GEORGE

 

Ew! You brought tuna fish?!

 

JERRY

 

 Sure. Why?

 

GEORGE

 

That’s gross.

 

JERRY

 

What?

 

GEORGE

 

Tuna fish. Man, your family must be out of food!

 

JERRY

 

Watch it. At least I don’t get salami so I’ll get all fat like you.

 

 

GEORGE LOOKS AT JERRY, REALLY PISSED. JERRY WATCHES GEORGE, GETS SCARED.

 

 

JERRY

 

(BLURTS)Syke!

 

GEORGE

 

Shut up.

 

JERRY

 

 You shut up. I was joking.

 

GEORGE

 

You were not.

 

JERRY

 

 I said, psyche.

 

GEORGE

 

You waited too long.

 

JERRY

 

 I did not.

 

 

THEY SIT THERE, ANGRY WITH EACH OTHER. GEORGE SPOTS RON HEAD [PLAYED BY A 13-YEAR OLD] COMING THEIR WAY. 

 

GEORGE

 

Hey, here comes Head.

 

JERRY

 

Huh?

 

GEORGE

 

Ron Head.

 

JERRY

 

 (EYES WIDE WITH THE POSSIBILITIES)His last name’s Head?

 

GEORGE

 

(BEAMING)Yeah.

 

JERRY

 

Are you sure?

 

 

GEORGE NODS. JERRY LEANS OVER AND THEY WHISPER TO EACH OTHER. RON HEAD WALKS BY.

 

 

GEORGE

 

Hey, Ron.

 

 RON

 

 Hi, George.

 

GEORGE

 

 Do you know Jerry Seinfeld?

 

 

RON SAYS HELLO TO JERRY AND SITS BETWEEN THEM.

 

 

GEORGE

 

So, Ron. How’d it go in Language Arts? I heard the test was hard.

 

 RON

 

It sure was. Compound sentences. You really got to know when to use a comma. That’s the tough part.

 

JERRY

 

 Yeah. It sounds like you really’ve got to use your head.

 

 

GEORGE AND JERRY HOLD BACK CRACKING UP. RON EATS HIS LUNCH, OBLIVIOUS.

 

 

 RON

 

But, I think I did all right.

 

GEORGE

 

Oh, well. That’s good. It ought to move you right to the head of the class.

 

JERRY

 

 I think you hit the nail right on the head there, Georgie.

 

 

RON STILL DOESN’T GET IT, BUT HE NOTICES GEORGE IS LAUGHING. RON LOOKS TO JERRY, WHO COVERS.

 

JERRY

 

Hey, Ron. Wasn’t that funny the way Gilligan got hypnotized into thinking he was Mrs. Howell last night?

 

 

RON NODS, OPENS CARTON OF MILK.

 

 

GEORGE

 

Yeah. That was funny. He was lucky that coconut fell on his head or he might still be hypnotized.

 

 

JERRY CRINGES. RON LOOKS SUSPICIOUSLY AT BOTH OF THEM.

 

 

 RON

 

What are you talking about? Oh, you guys are jerks.  You’re soooo intimidated by something just a bit out of the norm. What idiots. You can’t handle it that my name is a little odd. You guys are…  anal.

 

 

RON TAKES HIS LUNCH AND WALKS OFF IN A HUFF.

 

 

JERRY

 

 What’d you say Gilligan was hit in the head with a coconut for? I didn’t say he had amnesia. I said he was hypnotized!

 

GEORGE

 

Are you trying to say a coconut falling on his head has never brought Gilligan out of hypnosis?

 

JERRY

 

Never.

 

GEORGE

 

Well, you’re wrong.

 

JERRY

 

Am not.

 

GEORGE

 

 You’re wrong and that’s it.

 

JERRY

 

You’re nuts.

 

 

SCREEN GETS SQUIGGLY AND CLOUDY. TRANSITION TO JERRY’S BEDROOM.

 

 

JERRY

 

But, we grew up with Ron, and, over time, he couldn’t help but be friends with us. And, that’s why Ron Head invited us to his housewarming party last night.

 

GEORGE

 

You didn’t miss anything. How’d your night with Alice go?

 

KRAMER

 

(CORRECTS): Alicia. (THINKS FOR A MOMENT) It went fine. But… Can I ask you guys something?  You’ve both seen Alicia, right?  And have you ever noticed she looks a little like…  Elaine.

 

 

BOTH JERRY AND GEORGE EMPHATICALLY DENY IT.

 

 

GEORGE

 

(DECISIVELY)No way. Elaine is prettier.

 

JERRY

 

(LIFTS EYEBROWS, HINTING TO GEORGE TO CORRECT HIS STATEMENT) But, you wouldn’t say Elaine was prettier

than ALICIA, would you?

 

GEORGE

 

Did I say that? No.  I meant she’s prettier in her own zone of attractiveness. They are both completely different, and, of course, conversely Alicia is prettier in her zone. But, my point is that they are totally different looking.

 

JERRY

 

 Yes. I’d say Alicia looks nothing like Elaine.  Elaine, in fact, looks nothing like Alicia.

 

KRAMER

 

(NODS, STUDYING THEIR SINCERITY)I don’t know, because lately I’ve been seeing Elaine–or something that looks like Elaine–when I look at Alicia–

 

 

IN RAPID SUCCESSION:

 

GEORGE:No.

 

JERRY: Nah.

 

GEORGE:I wouldn’t let it bother me.

 

JERRY: Ignore it.

 

GEORGE:Think nothing of it.

 

JERRY: Forget it. 

 

 

KRAMER

 

(NODS, A LITTLE RELIEVED. EYES WANDER TO THE BUREAU) Where’d the fish come from?

 

JERRY

 

 That’s what we were talking about. We went to Chinatown last night.

 

GEORGE

 

He bought it right out of the window of the restaurant. He kept calling it ‘fishy. ‘

 

 

KRAMER SNICKERS. 

 

JERRY

 

(LIKE GEORGE IS NUTS)Fishy?

 

GEORGE

 

Yeah. You don’t remember? You kept calling to it, over and over: ‘Fishy, fishy, fishy. ‘In the taxicab all the way home: ‘Fishy, fishy, fishy. ‘

 

JERRY

 

 You’re crazy.

 

KRAMER

 

No, Jerry. I can back George up on this one. It was two or three in the morning. I heard you coming home.  I thought you had a flaming hot chickee boom-boom.  (SMILES, NUDGES JERRY. )I thought you were saying, Kissy, kissy, kissy!(SMILES, HIS EYEBROWS DANCING. )

 

JERRY

 

(LAMENTS)Ouzo….

 

KRAMER

 

(EYES POP OPEN. HE COOS, STARING INTO THE AIR) Ouzo….

 

 

END OF SCENE ONE.

 

 

Monologue #2:

 

You know those people whose apartments are full of thriving, lush, green houseplants? You know who they are? They are the same ones who–back in eighth grade–had the power to grow fish like weeds. You remember. Most of them would have aquariums crammed with all kinds of fish, and they’d be always in the pet shop scooping out more: zebra fish, angel fish, sword-tails, and–my personal favorite–the Siamese fighting fish.

 

The cooler cats of them, though, wouldn’t be caught dead in a pet shop, but to make that one, initial purchase. They’d keep one fish for the entire span of its life. Having no fellow fish to cramp its growth, that fish would grow and grow, eventually getting to the size of a flank steak. It would swish to one side of the tank, then, turn around and swish to the other side, pacing back and forth across that tank all day, just waiting to be fed.

 

Which brings up the reason my fish raising endeavors always failed: Fish will eat themselves to death. Fish get so hungry they commonly snack on one another’s body parts. Could you imagine being in a fish MacDonald’s:

 

Would you like an order of fries with your McSquid?

Hmmm…. Actually, I think I’ll just have a few bites of your gill.

 

Go right ahead… Don’t worry… I regenerate.

 

 

 

ACT TWO

 

 

JERRY’S LIVING ROOM. JERRY HAS ELAINE BUTTONHOLED ON THE SOFA. GEORGE STANDS OVER, FLIPPING THROUGH A MAGAZINE. 

 

 

JERRY

 

Now, I want you to be truthful with me. Do not spare my feelings. George says I was rude to Josephine.  Would you say I was rude to Josephine?

 

ELAINE

 

Rude? Jerry, you tried to force her to dance–you were contemptuous. You were loutish. I haven’t ever seen you so…  uncivilized.

 

GEORGE

 

Josephine’s a real princess, too, you know.

 

JERRY

 

 (IRRITATED)I know, I know. (TURNS, LOOKING HELPLESSLY TO ELAINE, THEN BACK TO GEORGE. THEY ARE SERIOUS. TURNS BACK TO ELAINE WITH AN IDEA. ) Okay. Let’s forget she’s a real princess. Let’s just say, this is New York where all people are somewhat on equal ground. Okay? Let’s say she’s not a princess. You tell me. Was I still rude?

 

ELAINE

 

Yes.

 

GEORGE

 

Oh, sure.

 

KRAMER

 

(ENTERS FROM BEDROOM, CARRYING FISHBOWL. TO JERRY):

 You’re sure it’s all right?

 

 

JERRY WAVES KRAMER OUT THE DOOR. KRAMER MEETS EYES WITH ELAINE, STARES, STUNNED FOR A MOMENT, THEN RUSHES OUT THE DOOR, SPOOKED. ELAINE IS PUZZLED. 

 

GEORGE

 

(CLAPPING HIS HANDS TOGETHER)Ready to get some breakfast? (ELAINE SAYS YES. JERRY SHAKES HIS HEAD, NO, STARING AT THE FLOOR. ) Wha? You’re not coming?

 

JERRY

 

 No. You guys go on. I’m going to stay home today.

 

GEORGE

 

Why? Come on. It’s a beautiful day. You’ll feel better.

 

ELAINE

 

I know. He’s embarrassed. Jerry can’t stand it, because he actually let his hair down a little last night.

 

JERRY

 

(HOLDING A LOCK OUT TO ELAINE)My hair doesn’t hang down.

 

GEORGE

 

 Ah, don’t worry about it. I get humiliated all the time. The important thing is to know how to get right back on your horse again.

 

ELAINE

 

That’s right. You need to get right back in the saddle.

 

GEORGE

 

The saddle!

 

JERRY

 

(EYEBROWS RAISED, THOUGHTFUL) I like the Western theme here, but….

 

ELAINE

 

You need to get right out into society again. It’s the coffee shop now, or the next entire month spent locked in here with the blinds drawn.

 

GEORGE

 

Coffee shop.

 

JERRY

 

No. I’m not in the mood.

 

ELAINE

 

Yeah, well you’d better get in the mood, bub. I didn’t complain last night when you got me all the way out to Long Island to some party for Ron Foot–

 

JERRY

 

His name’s Head.

 

ELAINE

 

(LAUGHING)Oh, yeah, that’s right–Head.

 

 

ELAINE CONTINUES LAUGHING. GEORGE AND JERRY WAIT IMPATIENTLY FOR HER TO STOP.

 

 

JERRY

 

All right, all right.

 

ELAINE

 

‘All right, all right’? You’re a comedian. His last name’s Head!

 

JERRY

 

 All right. But, you don’t have to get hysterical.

 

ELAINE

 

(TURNING GRIM)Oh, Jerry. If you think this is bad, you should’ve seen what happened at the party.

 

JERRY

 

I knew I shouldn’t have taken you. What did you do?

 

ELAINE

 

Well. I remember, I was with that guy–Ben–did you meet him?  He was on leave from a fishing vessel he worked on.

 

 

SCREEN FADES TO RON HEAD’S LIVING ROOM. BLURRY IMAGE OF ELAINE WITH A BEER STANDING AT THE FRINGES OF A COCKTAIL PARTY. SHE IS TALKING WITH A BURLY GUY.

 

 

ELAINE

 

 So, Ben. What’s your job on the boat?

 

 BEN

 

Guttin’. I can gut up to two thousand fish a day without sweatin’.

 

ELAINE

 

Boy. That must be hard work.

 

 BEN

 

S’all right. All I do is think of my next shore leave and the next lady who’s smell’ll hold me over throughout my next three months asea.

 

ELAINE

 

Smell?

 

 

BEN NODS, HIS EYES GLAZED OVER A BIT. HE SEEMS TO BE SMELLING THE AIR.

 

 

ELAINE

 

(LOUDLY)Uh, so Ben.

 

 

BEN SNAPS OUT OF IT.

 

 

ELAINE

 

Have you known Ron Head long?(NODDING TOWARD GUY [AN OLDER VERSION OF KID IN CAFETERIA] WHO IS COMING THEIR WAY. )

 

 BEN

 

Oh, yeah, sure. Which one’s he?

 

 

RON HEAD COMES OVER AND GETS BETWEEN ELAINE AND BEN.

 

 

 RON

 

(VERY NICE, FRIENDLY)Elaine, right?

 

ELAINE

 

 Right. You’re…  Ron.

 

 RON

 

I see you’ve met Ben, my brother’s friend. (GIVES A KNOWING SIDE GLANCE TO ELAINE)Ben, why don’t you go check out the widow’s walk on the third floor.

 

 

BEN’S EYES LIGHT UP. HE MOVES AWAY. RON AND ELAINE ARE

POSITIONED FOR CONVERSATION. BEN STOPS AND TURNS.

 

 

 BEN

 

 (LOUDLY ENOUGH TO DRAW THE HUSHED ATTENTION OF THE OTHERS AT THE PARTY)Say, Ron. Where’s the head?

 

 

ELAINE BURSTS OUT LAUGHING. NO ONE ELSE LAUGHS. SHE STIFLES HERSELF, TURNING RED IN THE GLARE OF ALL THOSE PRESENT. IN THE SILENCE THAT FOLLOWS, WE HEAR GEORGE AND JERRY’S VOICE IN THE BACKGROUND.

 

 

GEORGE

 

 For Godsakes, Jerry. She’s a princess!

 

JERRY

 

Dance! Dance, I say!

 

 

TRANSITION TO…

 

 

JERRY’S LIVING ROOM. THE BUZZER BUZZES. JERRY ANSWERS. IT’S PRINCESS JOSEPHINE. JERRY BUZZES HER IN AND RUNS TO THE SOFA, LOOKING TO HIS FRIENDS FOR AN ANSWER.

 

 

GEORGE

 

(SMILING)Is it Josie? You know, I really enjoyed her company.

 

ELAINE

 

I just hope she didn’t bring any Ouzo along this time, ’cause you-know-who is here.

 

JERRY

 

 Cut it out.

 

 

KRAMER COMES IN THE DOOR. HE GETS BUTTER FROM THE FRIDGE AND RETURNS, PASSING BY ELAINE. GIVES ELAINE A GOOD LOOK AND TURNS AWAY, SHIVERING. )

 

ELAINE

 

(PROTESTS)Kramer!

 

KRAMER IS GONE. JOSEPHINE COMES IN THROUGH THE OPEN DOOR. A LARGE, GREEK-LOOKING FRIEND OF HERS WAITS IN THE DOORWAY, EXPRESSIONLESS.

JERRY POSITIONS HIMSELF BETWEEN HER AND HIS FRIENDS, PREPARED FOR HIS COMEUPPANCE.

 

 

JERRY

 

 Hi, Josephine.

 

 

JOSEPHINE NODS IN RESPONSE, LOOKING SOMBER. SHE LOOKS AROUND JERRY TO GEORGE AND ELAINE. SHE WAVES, THEY WAVE.

 

 

JOSEPHINE

 

 I have something to say to you Jerry. (DRAWS A QUIVERING BREATH)Last night, you tried to force me todance.

 

JERRY

 

(HUMILIATED)Yes. And I wanted to say–

 

JOSEPHINE

 

I thought you to be an ignoramus the way you utterly refused to believe me. You drank up all the Ouzo, while hollering at me, ‘You know how to dance! You are Greek! Dance! Dance! Dance!’

 

 

THE PRINCESS BREAKS DOWN, SOBBING. ELAINE AND GEORGE LOOK UPON JERRY AS A BEAST. REAL, TRUE SORROW CROSSES JERRY’S FACE.

 

 

JOSEPHINE

 

 When I got home last night, I couldn’t stop crying. Here, I’ve come to America! I expected to blend in as just another New Yorker–not as a Greek princess—and I’ve received my first real lesson in life: I must never deny my heritage. Jerry Seinfeld, I ADMIT IT! YOU ARE RIGHT! I CAN DANCE!

 

 

THE PRINCESS TRIUMPHANTLY WHIPS OFF HER OVERCOAT, REVEALING A BELLY DANCING COSTUME. HER FRIEND WHIPS OUT A PORTABLE STEREO AND PUNCHES ON SOME GREEK MUSIC. SHE SNIFFS BACK TEARS OVER A BROADENING SMILE, AS SHE BEGINS TO BELLY DANCE. THE MORE SHE DANCES, THE FREER SHE BECOMES, PULLING HER HAIR LOOSE, THROWING BACK HER HEAD. 

 

ELAINE

 

Lively.

 

GEORGE

 

Sensuous.

 

KRAMER

 

 (APPEARING AT THE DOOR) Undulant.

 

JOSEPHINE

 

(AS SHE JIGGLES)It is called the Tsiphte Teli. I’ve known it since I was a girl.

 

 

THE DANCE CONCLUDES AND, AS ELAINE AND GEORGE THANK THE PRINCESS, KRAMER ASKS JERRY FOR TARRAGON. HE GOES THROUGH THE KITCHEN CABINETS AND EXITS WITH AN ARMLOAD OF SPICES.

 

 

JOSEPHINE

 

No, I must thank Jerry! He brought me back to life! In his aggressive, dominant American way, he forced me to recall my heritage. I will never stop dancing again. To celebrate, Theodore and I are going to Washington Square Park where I will dance for free to thank all Americans for the contribution of this one!

 

SHE DANCES OUT THE DOOR. THERE IS SILENCE IN THE ROOM AS THE THREE OF THEM SIT, THINKING. 

 

GEORGE

 

(TO ELAINE)Now, is it the A train that stops a block from Washington Square?

 

ELAINE

 

(NODDING, GETTING UP WITH GEORGE, THE TWO OF THEM HEADING FOR THE DOOR) No, we can take the C train, too. Either one stops there.

 

JERRY

 

Hey! I thought we were going to the coffee shop?

 

 

GEORGE OPENS THE DOOR. KRAMER APPEARS WITH A PLATE IN ONE HAND, A FORK IN THE OTHER. HE EXCHANGES COMMENTS WITH GEORGE, DISAPPOINTED TO FIND THAT THE PRINCESS HAS GONE. HE AVOIDS ELAINE’S GAZE. ELAINE WAITS IN THE DOORWAY, STANDING DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF HIM. 

 

ELAINE

 

 (STARING UP AT KRAMER, WHO STARES CALMLY AT THE CEILING) What’s the matter with him?

 

GEORGE

 

Can you keep a secret? (KRAMER TRIES TO PROTEST, BUT HEIS STILL UNWILLING TO BRING HIS HEAD DOWN.) Kramer thinks Alicia looks like you.

 

ELAINE

 

(GETTING IT RIGHT AWAY) Oh, I see. (KRAMER LOOKS DOWN AT HER. ) You know, Kramer. I’ve noticed all your girlfriends look a little like me. (ELAINE EXITS.)

 

 

JERRY GETS TO THE DOOR AND FACES KRAMER, WHO LOOKS BLANKLY BACK. JERRY CURIOUSLY GLANCES STRAIGHT DOWN ONTO KRAMER’S PLATE.

 

JERRY

 

Fishy!

 

 

END OF PART TWO.

 

 

 

Ending Monologue:

 

I want to know: who was the first human to get the craving for fish? I mean, can you imagine how that came about?

Honey, I’m home. And I brought a slippery aquatic vertebrate!

Oh, did you? Let me see. Hmm…, smells pretty bad.

I think we should eat him.

But he’s covered with sharp, hard scales, dear.

He’s good.

But he’s got those inky eyeballs and he’s all sticky.

Yum.

Look there’s an apple tree. Let’s eat.

No. I’m eatin this guy.

But, he’s a filmy mess.

Hmmm…  Filmy: fi…. Mess: ess…  fi-ess, fesss, fisss-sh.

 

But, we do eat them. In fact, we eat them raw.

 

Now, I can see eating fish sticks. They’re sticks! You can line them up on bread and put mayo and lettuce and tomato on them. They’re good. No bones, no smell, no stickiness, no eyeballs.

But the fish stick people know this. Don’t think they don’t. They sit up there in their ivory towers, plotting:

Hmmm…. Well, they’ll eat the sticks, but they won’t eat the slabs of fish. So, what d’you say we do?

Hey! What do you say we make fish patties?

(NODDING)Smiles all around the Fish Stick Corporation.

(CHEWS, STOPS SHORT.)

A-a-a- But, hold it, partner. Not so fast. What’s this bone here?

 

 

 

I actually sent the script to Castle Rock Entertainment, dreaming of Hollywood fame and fortune.  Long after it was returned rejected, the show did use the joke about sleeping head-to-toe, but phrased it funnier.  …That’s not to say they even read my script.  I’m sure they didn’t.  Just that creative ideas are not as original or as special as we’d like to believe, but rather very necessary steps forward in our cultural path.  I’d better shut up before I end up writing another blog.

 

 

If you haven’t read Frank Rich’s latest column and the highly cogent reader comments, including an addition by Ret. US Army Col. Andre Sauvageot,  the following intriguing possibility is raised with reference to recent US torture [I now understand Kieth Olbermann also has been raising this possibility since Friday:]

 

Throughout history, torture has been used almost exclusively NOT to obtain real intelligence, but to obtain FALSE intelligence–usually, confessions.  Why should we not expect the same motives from the Bush administration??

 

In Rich’s column, he sets out key dates to show the extended torture sessions that victimized the detainee, Abu Zubaydah (who was waterboarded at least 83 times,) corresponded with Bush administration desperate and futile efforts to find a link between Iraq and 9/11, the torture dates all falling during the build-up to the Iraq invasion.

 

Were Cheney and Bush, then, using torture to try to force Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (who was tortured 183 times during the same period,) to make up a link between Al Qaida and Sadaam??

 

Wouldn’t that make a hell of a lot more sense than a notion that Bush-Cheney actually believed–after their own staff who were doing the torturing told them they had reached the bottom of the well–and after the torture had been repeated scores of times–that there still were secrets to be gained from these inmates?

 

The stench of sulfur is suffocating.

 

Eric Holder– appoint a special prosecutor already!

 

by DoulaRina of DoulaRina.com

 

A doula is a professional labor assistant.  Doulas are experienced in childbirth and provide continuous physical, emotional, and informational support to the mother and her partner before, during, and just after childbirth.  In the prenatal period, a doula can help women gain information so that they can have the power to make knowledge-based decisions rather than fear-based decisions.

 

If you are a doula, there are a few  things you should do.

1. Take time to reflect on the work you do.  Think about the motivating factor that launched you into service.  Make sure you haven’t lost sight of your commitment.  If you think you have and you don’t have a mentor, reach out to the doula community (even online here) and communicate to someone who understands.

2. Take time to care for yourself and replenish your spirit.  Our energy can so easily be sapped if we don’t take care of our needs and we will not be able to serve others.  I know it’s a cliché already, but let me remind you that, when you’re on that airplane and the oxygen masks drop, you need to get yours on first before you help anyone else.

3. Attend a workshop or class that will help broaden your understanding of the things your clients may be facing.  You might not be able to get continuing education units or points with your organization, but you will likely grow professionally and personally.

4. Make your presence known in your community.  Better yet, step out of your comfort zone, and reach out to an underserved population, offering your services at a reduced rate.  I volunteer at a clinic in the South Bronx, teaching prenatal classes.  Most of the women end up wanting doulas so I match them with free doulas who are still seeking certification.

5.  Network with other doulas and see if you can do all of the above with a group.  Organize a class, party, outing or spa day.

 

If you are not a doula, thank a doula you know.  If you don’t know any doulas, you’re probably missing out- they tend to be fantastic people! 

If you are interested in becoming a doula, join me in New York for an ALACE doula training workshop taking place on July 24-26 or go here.  

 

 

If you are looking for a doula in the New York area, check out DoulaRina or the With Woman Doula Cooperativa.  For doulas in other areas, look at  DONA International or the Association of Labor and Childbirth Educators.

 

Happy International Doula Month!

Two news stories from last week made me feel as if I am living in Bizzaro-world:

1.    According to this story in the Independent, which has few details, over 1500 of our fellow world citizens–Indian farmers–committed mass suicide recently in the war-torn and severely impoverished Indian state of Chhattisgarh.  For 12 years, farmers have been committing suicide over their inability to repay loans of relatively small sums of money that are collected at usurious rates.  This story has not yet been commented on in the NY Times, and, in fact, most of the world’s news sources have treated it to little or no attention.  Surely, either the Independent has made a major news blunder or the story should be on the front page of every newspaper in the world.  Either way, it’s news.  I’d say this is further testament to the failure of mainstream journalism.  It’s like these people just don’t exist.

2.    Carried as a minor item in the Times “City Room” column, a study completed by a highly-respected economist, on behalf of the Restaurant Opportunity Center here in NYC, has demonstrated that in high-end NYC restaurants that hold the most coveted wait-staff positions, racial discrimination is boldly practiced.  Among many findings, the study demonstrated managers, when encountering applicants with non-Caucasian skin, become much more scrupulous, doubtful of credentials, and much less inclined to hire.  Non-White applicants with the same level of credentials as White applicants only got the job half as often as Whites, and they were less likely to get the interview in the first place.  Again, front-page material was hardly noticed by the mainstream media.  

Or maybe this is Bizzaro-world, and these stories belong buried or not covered at all, and Madonna’s effort to adopt is much more vital to our lives.

I really need to watch more tee-vee.

The principles behind the recent Swedish decision against the file-sharing site, thepiratebay.org, have no moral basis and have had no legal basis for 99.99% of the time laws have been written.  So, motormanmark.com offers this explanation of why good people are called “pirates,” dashing the absurd notion of “intellectual property.”

 

Pirateer of the Immaterial World

by Alger Q. Hiss

 

 

 The Depravity of My Soul

 

I am writing under a clever pseudonym because I am an enemy of the state, a shameless evildoer who selfishly disrupts the good order all decent people depend on.

 

If only I had been born in a previous century I’d have no avenue through which to spread my wickedness, long ago when there was no internet, there were no recordings or logos or brand names–before there came the temptation of these invisible, incorporeal–what shall I call them?  …things! –and with them came a new set of rules. 

 

Some of us are not obeying the rules.  As technology becomes more accessible, a criminal army is growing.  Used to be, the drug dealers were the ones making all the money.  People who were holed up in their basements copying vinyl LP’s onto little Radio Shack cassette tapes had to work pretty hard for a slim profit.  As a teenager, I enjoyed making Walkman-friendly taped compilations of my record collection.  I gave away a tape here or there, but I never thought about it as an income stream. 

 

The first time I really put my nose to the pirating grindstone was with VCR tapes.  It was Christmas time.  I was trying to find a copy of “The Homecoming”–you know, the Waltons movie where John Boy goes looking through a snowstorm for his Daddy in the back seat of a sleigh that belongs to whom?? 

 

Bootleggers.  

 

I wanted to show it to my kids, because I almost cry at various scenes (…well, actually, I’m nearly a blubbering idiot every time I see John Boy unwrap his Christmas gift.)  But “The Homecoming” was not available on VCR tape for some reason.

 

I eventually bought a copy on EBay for a load of money–in those days, rare VCR tapes could go for over a hundred dollars–and then I started bootlegging it over EBay.  I was initially inspired to place both feet squarely in this nefarious world because the out-of-print tape was so hard to get and was so outlandishly priced that, like the movie’s Robin-Hooding turkey thief, it was more the pleasure of providing Christmas cheer that inspired me than the small profit the $20 offering gleaned.  And the principle of intellectual property was not in the moral equation, not one little bit.

 

But I’ll get to that.

 

I also, at about the same time, liquidated my extensive CD collection.  Having obtained a French freeware CD-burning program at Koyotesoft.com, I found my computer could turn any CD into properly labeled MP3 computer files in a few minutes.  I sold my CD’s on Half.com for a tidy sum, and, just like a true outlaw, I spent that money.  I used the extra shelf space for books, which look a hell of a lot better if you ask me. 

 

Once I had run through my own CD collection, I turned to the public library’s, though I was at the same time growing more and more picky about what I would have the patience to burn. 

 

Getting more familiar with the MP3 format led me back onto the internet, where I found I could download songs for free off MySpace in less time than it took to burn something from a CD.  The free music on MySpace was usually of the amateur or struggling-professional type, but was comparable in quality to store-bought music.  That’s not hard to understand, considering that the cheapest music editing freeware can put together a more sophisticated recording console than, for example, the 4-track boards the Beatles used when they made their first legendary hits. 

 

These amateur MySpace tracks have character, too, of the type pop music producers routinely edit away.

 

And for the first time I came to wonder why music costs money at all.  Why don’t we all just trade recordings we like?  Why can’t the Ipod have one of those little beaming plastic window thingees to allow us to just zap an mp3 we like to a friend?  If not for intellectual property laws, art wouldn’t need to be centralized as it is; you wouldn’t have to have millions of people turning to the same peanut gallery of artists offered by the recording industry.  

 

Think about it: is it really so necessary that artists preserve the lottery-ticket route to wealth that the recording industry provides to a slim few?  I mean, there’d still be a good living to be made.  Springsteen’d be the act you’d just have to see when you were visiting Asbury Park (which could use the tourism.)  And Bruce wouldn’t have to hole himself up in a 400-acre compound, either.  He could live in a house on Ocean Avenue and stay a regular working-class guy.  And other artists would be heard this way, too.  Tuning the car radio, you might hear anything at all, not the same old droning goldies from month-to-month, year-to-year, generation-to-generation. 

 

Where Did Our Love Go, Desperado, Gimme Some Lovin’, California Girls, Sugar Sugar…,  only became crappy songs the hundredth or so time you heard them.

 

The question is even more basic: is there something truly great about great art?  Is Bruce Springsteen’s talent really so remarkable?  –Being as it is so derivative of Dylan, who was derivative of Woody Guthrie (who, as a true folk singer, would’ve been pleased for you to know he borrowed more than he created,) and isn’t it true that all art is derivative? 

 

In The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins says genes are “tokens,” meaning a gene survives not for the sake of its own physical self, but for the sake of what its DNA sequence represents.  A real simple example may be a trait, like brown eyes; the reason brown eyes reproduce is not because of the greatness of any one brown-irised eyeball or for the strength of the matter that composes its particular gene, but they reproduce because the brown iris as a concept works. 

 

And so, every artistic achievement is merely a token packet of constituent parts of information, competitively replicated ideas that have passed brain-to-brain.  Perhaps it is hubris to put our individual arrangements on much of a pedestal, a property pageant holding meager human expression (however intense) up like an idol.

 

Knowing nothing about such things, I cannot say.

 

As time went by, my perversions became more degenerate than just selling videos for what I saw was a virtuous purpose.  For extra holiday money, I bootlegged the following two items:

 

·        A recording that presents a variety of the working tracks that were produced in the creation of, perhaps, the finest of all the Beatles’ work, the song, “Strawberry Fields Forever.” The recording features narrated analysis by producer, George Martin, and reveals the extent to which the song was a product of George Martin’s creativity.  The Beatles never allowed this to be published.  I think it was speculatively recorded while Martin was digitalizing the master tapes for CD.

·        “Merry Monster Christmas.”  This record, for my money, is the best comedy recording ever made, and it has been completely neglected by the recording industry. 

 

[A postscript:  A guy who knew the original artist emailed me after seeing my EBay ad, and I encouraged him to get the great Len Maxwell to reissue "Merry Monster Christmas."  Mr. Maxwell died shortly after self-re-releasing the album for the first time since 1967 as a CD on EBay.]

 

Let’s see, from my recent jury duty experience I can tell you a drug sale that can throw you in prison for six months nets a person about $8 profit.  I was clearing about $15 on each Homecoming VCR/DVD recording or other bootlegged CD sale, and, as there was no national “War on Bootlegs,” I was safe from prosecution and waterboarding torture.

 

Then, my sister in-law picked a small box of Adobe Acrobat software from the trash at her job at Columbia University.  She gave me the entire box, which I could carry under an arm.  There were about 70 disks, each, I discovered, worth over $100 retail, about $60 on EBAY.  I am talking about $10 worth of paper and plastic here worth $4,200.  The sale of my previous idealistic holiday offerings seemed in comparison a grind, and never again did I waste my time bootlegging recordings.

 

Once the box of Adobe CD’s was liquidated, I started producing copies of them.  I guess you’d say this was my big jump down into the 7th layer of intellectual property theft.  It was soooo easy.  I merely had to drop the software and a blank 20-cent CD into my computer and click copy.  I would add a label in a foreign language, and I could sell it on EBAY for $40 as a foreign copy “identical in every way to the English version but for the label.” 

 

Not that anyone believed the foreign label ruse–it would just provide them with an excuse to save money on a ridiculously expensive purchase they really had no choice about making.  I mean, computer software isn’t something you can go browsing for, like a pair of shoes.  How many other pieces of software are there that can do what the Acrobat Writer can do? 

 

None, and not because computer programming is brain science, but because Adobe got its patents first and was the first to mobilize an effective promotion.

 

It is as if some strange nuclear bomb went off and we each sprouted a third leg and oddly-shaped foot, and some absolute genius immediately filed a patent for shoes to fit the new feet, and now we all have to wait around for his patent to expire while we pay through the nose for his crummy little loafers.

 

Like that.

 

The only problem with selling software was that, in those days, it was remotely possible I could be sued.  Being the father of four wonderful kids, and so somewhat of an overly-prudent fellow, I dropped out of the software bootlegging industry as soon as it got a little tiring.  I never made such easy money, and, as a result, I now have a hard time finding the motivation to sell anything if my profit is not an absolute bonanza.

 

Maybe that’s the entertainment industry’s problem.

 

 

What’s Mine Is (Still) Yours

  

Oddly, all along I’d let myriad references to file sharing networks float in one ear and out the other.  I knew that millions of people were using them for music, but still my brain stubbornly associated file sharing with computer-overliterate, graphic-novel-reading gamers.  I stumbled into the light while in search of one of the rare movie titles the New York Public Library does not have a copy of–you may remember it, a movie called “Mindwalk,” where three characters talk deeply for two hours, all very meaningful and enriching.  I wanted to watch it again because I was working on a children’s book that featured the beautiful French commune of Mont Saint Michel, and “Mindwalk” has a scene, I’d remembered, where the tide comes in and turns the place into an island. 

 

I did a little search for the flick online and found a blog that mentioned a copy of it could be had on a file sharing network at Slsknet.org.  I dutifully went straight there and found a download of an easy-to-use program that was free and required only a made-up screen name. 

 

“Mindwalk” could not be had (I eventually picked it off Google Videos,) but in the following few weeks I downloaded thousands of songs off this Slsknet.org.  Forever destroying my mind’s conception of music, I no longer libraried it.  I started keeping only the songs I really liked–not the filler you find on most CDs.   I kept my Beatles library and certain other perfect album constructions intact, but rooted through everything else. 

 

Then, I logged off.  Another surprise: once you fill up, you don’t need to go back to the well.  Music had always been a nag to me, my interests wandering into nearly every genre.  I needed to hook up with this or that recording.  I needed to hear the original “Billy” to see where Kathy Linden’s song came from.  I wanted to hear Woody perform with the Almanac Singers.  I’d always kept a scribbled list of music I wanted to hear in my wallet, so that I could keep my eye out at rummage sales or especially large record stores.

 

But now I was sated.  I was done gathering music, and it fit neatly on my hard drive.  Separated by style, I could then carry large batches of my tunes on little memory cards for my MP3 player–which is one of those Chinese things you get off EBay that don’t hook you into a pay-per-listen deal, but just acts as a player of MP3 files you load into the memory card.  I have deleted an enormous amount of music, much more than I have kept.

 

Idle hands over the keyboard being the devil’s workshop, though, there was one more click I was destined to mouse. 

 

Listening to an MP3 file of a public radio discussion of file sharing (see where your pledge money goes?) I learned of the subversive thepiratebay.org, and their success in foiling the Swedish government’s efforts to pull their plug.  (Despite the recent conviction of its founders, the site is still in full operation.)   I logged on and found a simple search window, thickly bedecked with bikini-clad ladies offering to date me. 

 

I’ve never felt so much love. 

 

With the help of Bittorrent freeware, thepiratebay.org, (or isohunt.com or mininova.org,) will let you download just about any popular movie, TV show, music, or software.   (College kids can also get textbooks for free there.)  For quicker downloads, you’ll also want the freeware at download.com, so you can choose to watch .avi or .mp4 files when they are available. With broadband, it takes about two hours to download a 2-hour movie, and it works great.  There is a coding system that foils anyone looking to spread a virus or worm. 

 

I don’t have a television cable (or any interest in wasting my life-moments watching commercials between things I view,) so I downloaded the BBC TV series, “The Office.” 

 

The absolute crazy thing is this: that and a few other foreign sitcoms is all I’ve downloaded.  I can’t think of anything else I want.  Sure, with young kids it’s hard to get out to the movies, but there are no movies so special I’d rather use up my hard drive space than just wait for the DVD to come to the library.

 

Too much of a good thing.

 

 

Idea Property

 

I sit down with my kids to watch the latest superhero movie–a copy of a library DVD I burned with the copying and shoehorning freeware, “DVD Shrink” (which needs the program Nero if you want to make a new DVD rather than just storing it on your hard drive–and, which won’t always get over DVD copyright protection, in which case you need to use it in tandem with DVDFab HD Decrypter.)  Anyhow, I am starting up this superhero movie for my kids and, just after the copyright warning comes up, there’s this overhead shot of a dark, rainy alley (I’m working from memory, here,) a grimy character in the shadows spreads out some titles amid an audio drumbeat and flashing car headlights–he has the crooked smile of the pusher man.  The youngster waves the baddie off and moves on.  A comparison is made to a pickpocket, a shoplifter, and (if my memory suits me,) a rapist.

 

My kids know I have been a bootlegger, and I am wondering if they are thinking of me.

 

“When you copy a DVD, you are stealing, plain and simple,” the voiceover asserts.  “Intellectual property is just like real property, no difference really.  Those are the facts, plain and simple.  Pirating DVD’s is stealing!”

 

My son’s eyes wander in my direction.  “Ahoy, Matey!” I scream.  “Shiver me timbers!  Stop me before I burn another one!  Aargh!”  My boy, a big fan of pirate flicks, falls over laughing and contributing his own silly piratese.

 

The thing is, though, that pickpocketry, shoplifting, and rape are self-apparently wrong.  We don’t need commercials to tell us not to do these things.  Why the big campaign for intellectual property?

 

Intellectual property is a bogus concept, that’s why.

 

Property has substance, but when I copy a DVD, I use materials owned by me entirely.  When the cops come to confiscate those Chinese Coach and Prada handbags from immigrant street peddlers, they are taking away property 100% of which the bootlegger paid good money for.

 

In the privacy of my own home, I log onto a file sharing network with my own computer to download files from another person who lives in, say… Lithuania.  The downloading  process occurs as I am surfing or opening emails–I tap only a few keystrokes, which will yield hundreds of files an hour.  But these words “download” and “files” are metaphors.  There are no files.  Nothing–absolutely nothing–comes “down” from anywhere into my computer.  When I turn my computer off, there are only the very same molecules and atoms that were there before the download. 

 

The illegality is located in a pattern of magnetic impulses now stored in the memory of my computer, a pattern which has been made legally exclusive by an arrangement between the government and some other (usually corporate) body.

 

Since there is nothing lost, common law theft is not the issue.  Legally, when you have a song, film, or idea and you willingly take the step to share it with the public, you have decided on your own not to keep that song, film, or idea private.  The Constitution must include a special clause even to allow laws to be passed to protect the right to copy these information sources for limited periods of time solely to “promote the progress of science and useful arts.”

 

When the recording or film industry take a thepiratebay.org to court, they are suing not for a violation of common law, but law written to protect copyright.  In the past 30 years of technological metamorphosis, our corporate congress has succeeded in transfiguring copyright law just as rapidly from its Constitutional bases.

 

Though the recording industry (RIAA) bullying threats of lawsuits against college students (who are, unlike me, making no money–just trading computer files for enjoyment,) came to an end with the “Cult of Ownership Society” Bush administration that inspired them, the RIAA would have kept them up if they hadn’t proved such a dismal failure when put to court tests.  The RIAA has taken one case through a trial, won the case through some shenanigans, then had the win thrown out on appeal.  They have not won one such lawsuit.  Not one.

 

The RIAA’s stance is still as aggressive as it can be with any hope of success, because its efforts are to defeat our very tradition, begun by the Constitution’s exclusive rights clause, which specifies “limited times” to copyrights, with no sense of such rights being bought and sold as bundled assets for decades to come. 

 

In those days of limited innovation and expensive printing processes, the goal of the clause was not to secure long-term ownership, but to allow some brief initial reward for the purpose of spurring creative expression and ingenuity.

 

About that one case the RIAA had seemed to win (before the decision was reversed on appeal:)

 

The Minnesota jury had awarded the recording industry $222,000–that was $9,250 per song–because the defendant, Jammie Thomas, shared 24 songs online.

 

But, what if she had been charged with all of the 1702 songs she allegedly downloaded?  And what if the jury had awarded the maximum $150,000 per violation?  Would the industry be due a quarter of a billion dollars??  Why the RIAA limited the suit to those 24 songs, if not to obscure the utter irrationality underlying the concept of intellectual theft, is beyond me. 

 

Now, multiply that quarter billion by the 60 million people the RIAA can document as copyrighted-file sharers in the US today, and you start to see how ridiculous it is to own property that does not really exist.  WHY DOESN’T THE RECORDING INDUSTRY WANT US TO KNOW THAT THEY ARE OWED 15 QUATRILLION DOLLARS?????

 

And what if I downloaded my MP3’s from another computer in my home?  Hmmm?  Off my son’s computer, say?  Is that theft?  What if it’s my roommate… who is my brother?  What if my son lives in Lithuania–or my brother is staying there for a few months?  Or maybe I feel in my heart that all Lithuanians are my brothers??

 

Sly and devious logic.

 

Intellectual property–a better term for which would be “idea property”–is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, promising to allow individuals to dominate what they create, what is a self-glorifyingly spiritual ideal, as if our physical reality can be left behind and we can accompany our ideas wherever they wander in the ether.  Just as much, though, the concept seeks to ubiquitously chill and control what I do with what has come into my eyes and ears, what has become my human experience.  The more media I engage, however passively, the more of an automaton I become–the more my experience is owned by another, the less of it that is mine to claim-the less there is to be claimed by future generations as their own. 

 

An artist should crow against this, and if it weren’t for their dreams of hitting the idea lottery, maybe more artists would.

 

The attempt to interfere with my control over what is already in my control offends and motivates me. 

 

Or as I heard the documentary filmmaker, Gordon Quinn, say in a recent interview while defining the “fair use” doctrine:  “Everyone has a right to participate in their own culture.”

 

Arguments in favor of intellectual property are most effectively made in discussing the expense invested in creating or promoting the work of art.  Surely, the copyright holder deserves the benefit, right?

 

For instance, those people on Canal Street selling Prada handbags.  They are stealing, because Prada spent millions popularizing those handbags to the extent that it is a waste of time to try to sell something to the ad-blitzed public that you rather designed yourself.

 

This is a clever end run around logic, as, in order to consider the argument in favor of intellectual property, it is necessary accept the premise of intellectual property. 

 

The money should not have been spent. 

 

There should be no circus of promotion and competition among works of art and ideas, as their value is not practical but in the eye of the beholder. Presuming this advertisement-free premise of non-competition takes all the teeth out of the idea of a guy copying and selling a DVD you made, because you expended the investment willingly, without expectation of exorbitant profit, and you released it willingly (or else, how did he get a copy?) and because of the nature of art and ideas his choice of your expression to try to sell over someone else’s honors you.

 

There is something inside me that says my creations are divinely original.  I will not argue whether they are or are not.   I only assert that it is a wrong step when that leads me to believe I am due some legal title to all proceeds to be made off my creation.

 

That’s all.

 

 

Big Rock Candy Mountain Redux

 

It is not that the world needs bootlegging, but that it needs to get past bootlegging.  Once all idea property has been bootlegged enough, there will be (if you like technological forecasts…,) a little $10 device you’ll be able to buy in your town’s Chinatown that’ll hold nearly all the books and music and movies that have ever been produced.  This device itself will be easily copied and so will render its vast tide of wonderful titles economically worthless, a process file sharing has already begun.

 

I am talking about the decentralization of art and culture, a democratic process that can be seen everywhere.

 

The book publishing industry as we know it is on the verge of collapse (so says me.)  With Print on demand (POD) publishers, like Lulu and iUniverse–which will print any book one-at-a-time, as they are ordered–an author is now free to market a new project at will.  Right now, I can send my digital manuscript off to a POD who will, for a fee as low as about $100, get the book an ISBN number and get it indexed on Amazon or other online retailers.  Then, I can promote it any way I want.  All people need to do is log on and they can buy a copy.  Around the world, search engines will bring people to search terms used in my book, so I can even still hope for some long-term financial rewards.  But, more importantly, local art sees a new life when I tell my friends, neighbors, co-workers about my book and they change their buying habits and learn to focus away from the mainstream.

 

As more and more amateur photographers and graphic artists post their digital images on websites like Fotolia.com, Bigstockphoto.com, and Dreamstime.com for small-fee open use, a meritocracy is afflicting this career that was once dominated by pros with expensive equipment and industry connections.  Images once very costly to acquire and print are sold for a dollar a download.  The person who uploads the image gets a quarter, which isn’t necessarily chump-change when you post thousands of your pictures.  The person downloading can choose exactly the images they are looking for through sophisticated search mechanisms, and then print them as a poster, display them as a computer desktop or even use them, royalty-free, for business purposes.  Maybe for once we’ll see what those Pollack paint scribbles and Warhol soup can images are really worth.

 

And, of course, YouTube has only just begun its contribution towards the democratic elbowing of the TV cow down the stockyard shuttle where it blunders more and more decisively toward the mindlessly riveting, to finally be (with any small belief in human decency) jolted to death, the victim of its own oversaturation.

 

Art should have never gone commercial.

 

In the meantime, decent people will follow the brawl over who gets the money from Tigger pajamas and Piglet mousepads in the tabloid business section.  Will it be Disney?  The daughter of the guy A.A.Milne gave Winnie-the-Pooh merchandising rights to in 1930?  The granddaughter of A.A.Milne–Christopher Robin’s daughter who lives in a nursing home with cerebral palsy?  This, more than 50 years after the author’s body first lay moldering in the grave. 

 

And let’s make this perfectly clear: your home movies do not belong entirely to you.  The song “Happy Birthday to You” belongs to Time-Warner.  Really.  Just try publishing a manuscript with the lyrics or a movie with the tune without forking over about $5000 and you’ll be sued faster than it takes you to say “Mildred Hill,” the lady who died 95 years ago after authoring the melody.  The trail of owners since her sister copyrighted it in the 30’s (Mildred never cashed-in,) reads like the Old Testament.  

 

And law-abiders will marvel at the talents of the Dutch trademark agency, Shieldmark, which successfully claimed the rights to the sound of the first 9 notes from Beethoven’s “Fur Elise,” while former Colorado Congresswoman Pat Schroeder, now the CEO of the Association of American Publishers, tries to find a way to make libraries charge for content.

 

You can be sure that degenerates like me, on the other hand, will be lurking here, letting our minds run free, trained on whatever little orderly sand castles we can muck up with a clean escape, patiently awaiting a New World organized around something more noble than property, as soon as humans figure this whole “life” thing out.

  

Motormanmark.com

Motormanmark.com brings you this interesting entry from a transit worker who wishes to remain anonymous.  He calls himself, “Platform Guy:”

 

Assigned to the platform interminably for failing to give undeserved respect to my superiors, forced to wear a bright orange platform outfit, I recently found myself observing very suspicious activity.

 

At a location I shall not disclose, I noticed two fellows hanging out on the subway platform who would not take advantage of their chance to catch a train.  One was dressed in a ridiculously fake beard and the other wore a ski cap pulled low–well out of season.  The ski cap tried to watch the beard’s actions furtively, almost like he was tailing him from one end of the platform to the other.  Beard ignored Ski Cap, but it was clear they were in league.

 

Then, at the last second, just as a particularly packed train was closing its doors, Beard thrust himself between a pair of closing doors, and then, clumsily, Ski Cap did the same in the next doorway of the same train car, bashing a few passengers on his way in with his thickly-attired body.

 

I adroitly put two and two together and understood them to be pickpockets.  One would make a scene, while the other would make his move.

 

Sure enough, 20 minutes later they were back again.  But this time, they had, as Judas Priest would say, another thing coming.  Platform Guy was on the case!

 

First of all, I got on my radio to Control Center and reported my suspicions.  Control, busy with silly things like train movements, did not even reply.  On my own then, I boldly followed the thieves around the crowded plat.

 

Another jam-packed car, and there, sure enough, they struck again, just at the last possible moment, forcing their way in the closing doors.

 

This time, however, Platform Guy lept up behind the one closest, caught the door, and right past the side of the guy’s ski cap, over the crowded mass of commuters, I yelled, “Watch out for pickpockets, people!  One of ‘em diverts your attention, while the other one picks your pocket!”

 

With grateful looks from the passengers and a confused scowl from the not-artful-enough dodger, I let the doors go, sure the two bandits would not dare return to “my” plat.

 

Not 10 minutes later, believe it or not, I noticed another guy, just loitering there in the crowd.  He was a clean-cut, younger guy, reading a paperback book at first–a college student, maybe.  Then, as the plat got busier, he began milling as people gathered to board, and then mixing with the detraining passengers, instead, and making his way to the back of the crowd.  He let a few trains go, then, out of nowhere appeared another guy who muttered something in his ear, then the two of them leapt onto a car, each  taking a different doorway.

 

Egads!

 

Of course, I repeated my anti-crime strategy and caught the doors.  “Watch yer pockets!” hollered I, foiling another dastardly deed.

 

I bragged to my wife that evening about my Batmanian heroics, and she said she was glad it was the weekend or she’d be scared of me returning to work the next day.

 

My first day back after the weekend, they sent me to the same plat, which I’m sure they would not have done had they an inkling I was doing much more than giving directions to lost Germans.

 

Like a sheepdog, I watched over my commuting charges with pride in the role I had forged for myself out of a job invented only to punish me with boredom.

 

Like he was punching a clock, just as rush hour burgeoned, who should come shuffling loosely down my platform but Ski Cap!?  Only, he had fiendishly converted himself to sunglasses and a head scarf.

 

Not for a second fooled, I was on this devil like white on vanilla ice.  I couldn’t arrest him.  I couldn’t follow him, but I’d be damned if I wouldn’t make it clear to him he would have no hope if he planned on working my plat.

 

And there was the college student, now.  Ski Cap took a car by himself, and I hollered, “Watch your pockets!” and then I found College and trailed him for a bit before noticing two more Latin dudes who were hanging out the same devious way! 

 

I did sidle beside them, to make it clear I was onto their secret plans, but fear began rising in my chest.  I was in over my head.  I needed what Baretta used to refer to as “backup.”  Clearly.

 

With luck, all three decided to back off, mosying into a scarcely populated car, to find, I supposed, another busy platform to work.

 

It was at this moment my brain began working again, and, like clockwork, Ski Cap reappeared, and, turning away from him, like I knew now what would happen, I turned to face a short, stocky guy that looked like he needed a cigar.  My eyes dropped because I anticipated what he was about to do, and he opened his wallet, and I looked at the gold shield and I laughed and, though he didn’t need to at this point, he explained that these men were not pickpockets.

 

So.  The answer to the question, “Are you safe on a crowded subway car?” is “Yes!  Quite so!”

 

–Platform Guy

Here is the full text of a sermon Martin Luther King delivered at the National Cathedral, Washington, D.C., on 31 March 1968, 41 years ago this week. April 4^th, 5 days later, they murdered him. I am always struck by how prescient and relevant his speeches are when I read them, and this one is particularly so in his vision for the future of our place as world citizens:

I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be here this morning, to have the opportunity of standing in this very great and significant pulpit. And I do want to express my deep personal appreciation to Dean Sayre and all of the cathedral clergy for extending the invitation.

It is always a rich and rewarding experience to take a brief break from our day-to-day demands and the struggle for freedom and human dignity and discuss the issues involved in that struggle with concerned friends of goodwill all over our nation. And certainly it is always a deep and meaningful experience to be in a worship service. And so for many reasons, I’m happy to be here today.

I would like to use as a subject from which to preach this morning: “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.” The text for the morning is found in the book of Revelation. There are two passages there that I would like to quote, in the sixteenth chapter of that book: “Behold I make all things new; former things are passed away.”

I am sure that most of you have read that arresting little story from the pen of Washington Irving entitled “Rip Van Winkle.” The one thing that we usually remember about the story is that Rip Van Winkle slept twenty years. But there is another point in that little story that is almost completely overlooked. It was the sign in the end, from which Rip went up in the mountain for his long sleep.

When Rip Van Winkle went up into the mountain, the sign had a picture of King George the Third of England. When he came down twenty years later the sign had a picture of George Washington, the first president of the United States. When Rip Van Winkle looked up at the picture of George Washington—and looking at the picture he was amazed—he was completely lost. He knew not who he was.

And this reveals to us that the most striking thing about the story of Rip Van Winkle is not merely that Rip slept twenty years, but that he slept through a revolution. While he was peacefully snoring up in the mountain a revolution was taking place that at points would change the course of history—and Rip knew nothing about it. He was asleep. Yes, he slept through a revolution. And one of the great liabilities of life is that all too many people find themselves living amid a great period of social change, and yet they fail to develop the new attitudes, the new mental responses, that the new situation demands. They end up sleeping through a revolution.

There can be no gainsaying of the fact that a great revolution is taking place in the world today. In a sense it is a triple revolution: that is, a technological revolution, with the impact of automation and cybernation; then there is a revolution in weaponry, with the emergence of atomic and nuclear weapons of warfare; then there is a human rights revolution, with the freedom explosion that is taking place all over the world. Yes, we do live in a period where changes are taking place. And there is still the voice crying through the vista of time saying, “Behold, I make all things new; former things are passed away.”

Now whenever anything new comes into history it brings with it new challenges and new opportunities. And I would like to deal with the challenges that we face today as a result of this triple revolution that is taking place in the world today.

First, we are challenged to develop a world perspective. No individual can live alone, no nation can live alone, and anyone who feels that he can live alone is sleeping through a revolution. The world in which we live is geographically one. The challenge that we face today is to make it one in terms of brotherhood.

Now it is true that the geographical oneness of this age has come into being to a large extent through modern man’s scientific ingenuity. Modern man through his scientific genius has been able to dwarf distance and place time in chains. And our jet planes have compressed into minutes distances that once took weeks and even months. All of this tells us that our world is a neighborhood.

Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this. We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured.

John Donne caught it years ago and placed it in graphic terms: “No man is an island entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” And he goes on toward the end to say, “Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind; therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” We must see this, believe this, and live by it if we are to remain awake through a great revolution.

Secondly, we are challenged to eradicate the last vestiges of racial injustice from our nation. I must say this morning that racial injustice is still the black man’s burden and the white man’s shame.

It is an unhappy truth that racism is a way of life for the vast majority of white Americans, spoken and unspoken, acknowledged and denied, subtle and sometimes not so subtle—the disease of racism permeates and poisons a whole body politic. And I can see nothing more urgent than for America to work passionately and unrelentingly—to get rid of the disease of racism.

Something positive must be done. Everyone must share in the guilt as individuals and as institutions. The government must certainly share the guilt; individuals must share the guilt; even the church must share the guilt.

We must face the sad fact that at eleven o’clock on Sunday morning when we stand to sing “In Christ there is no East or West,” we stand in the most segregated hour of America.

The hour has come for everybody, for all institutions of the public sector and the private sector to work to get rid of racism. And now if we are to do it we must honestly admit certain things and get rid of certain myths that have constantly been disseminated all over our nation.

One is the myth of time. It is the notion that only time can solve the problem of racial injustice. And there are those who often sincerely say to the Negro and his allies in the white community, “Why don’t you slow up? Stop pushing things so fast. Only time can solve the problem. And if you will just be nice and patient and continue to pray, in a hundred or two hundred years the problem will work itself out.”

There is an answer to that myth. It is that time is neutral. It can be used wither constructively or destructively. And I am sorry to say this morning that I am absolutely convinced that the forces of ill will in our nation, the extreme rightists of our nation—the people on the wrong side—have used time much more effectively than the forces of goodwill. And it may well be that we will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, “Wait on time.”

Somewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God. And without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. So we must help time and realize that the time is always ripe to do right.

Now there is another myth that still gets around: it is a kind of over reliance on the bootstrap philosophy. There are those who still feel that if the Negro is to rise out of poverty, if the Negro is to rise out of the slum conditions, if he is to rise out of discrimination and segregation, he must do it all by himself. And so they say the Negro must lift himself by his own bootstraps.

They never stop to realize that no other ethnic group has been a slave on American soil. The people who say this never stop to realize that the nation made the black man’s color a stigma. But beyond this they never stop to realize the debt that they owe a people who were kept in slavery two hundred and forty-four years.

In 1863 the Negro was told that he was free as a result of the Emancipation Proclamation being signed by Abraham Lincoln. But he was not given any land to make that freedom meaningful. It was something like keeping a person in prison for a number of years and suddenly discovering that that person is not guilty of the crime for which he was convicted. And you just go up to him and say, “Now you are free,” but you don’t give him any bus fare to get to town. You don’t give him any money to get some clothes to put on his back or to get on his feet again in life.

Every court of jurisprudence would rise up against this, and yet this is the very thing that our nation did to the black man. It simply said, “You’re free,” and it left him there penniless, illiterate, not knowing what to do. And the irony of it all is that at the same time the nation failed to do anything for the black man, though an act of Congress was giving away millions of acres of land in the West and the Midwest. Which meant that it was willing to undergird its white peasants from Europe with an economic floor.

But not only did it give the land, it built land-grant colleges to teach them how to farm. Not only that, it provided county agents to further their expertise in farming; not only that, as the years unfolded it provided low interest rates so that they could mechanize their farms. And to this day thousands of these very persons are receiving millions of dollars in federal subsidies every year not to farm. And these are so often the very people who tell Negroes that they must lift themselves by their own bootstraps. It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.

We must come to see that the roots of racism are very deep in our country, and there must be something positive and massive in order to get rid of all the effects of racism and the tragedies of racial injustice.

There is another thing closely related to racism that I would like to mention as another challenge. We are challenged to rid our nation and the world of poverty. Like a monstrous octopus, poverty spreads its nagging, prehensile tentacles into hamlets and villages all over our world. Two-thirds of the people of the world go to bed hungry tonight. They are ill-housed; they are ill-nourished; they are shabbily clad. I’ve seen it in Latin America; I’ve seen it in Africa; I’ve seen this poverty in Asia.

I remember some years ago Mrs. King and I journeyed to that great country known as India. And I never will forget the experience. It was a marvelous experience to meet and talk with the great leaders of India, to meet and talk with and to speak to thousands and thousands of people all over that vast country. These experiences will remain dear to me as long as the cords of memory shall lengthen.

But I say to you this morning, my friends, there were those depressing moments. How can one avoid being depressed when he sees with his own eyes evidences of millions of people going to bed hungry at night? How can one avoid being depressed when he sees with his own eyes God’s children sleeping on the sidewalks at night? In Bombay more than a million people sleep on the sidewalks every night. In Calcutta more than six hundred thousand sleep on the sidewalks every night. They have no beds to sleep in; they have no houses to go in. How can one avoid being depressed when he discovers that out of India’s population of more than five hundred million people, some four hundred and eighty million make an annual income of less than ninety dollars a year. And most of them have never seen a doctor or a dentist.

As I noticed these things, something within me cried out, “Can we in America stand idly by and not be concerned?” And an answer came: “Oh no!” Because the destiny of the United States is tied up with the destiny of India and every other nation. And I started thinking of the fact that we spend in America millions of dollars a day to store surplus food, and I said to myself, “I know where we can store that food free of charge—in the wrinkled stomachs of millions of God’s children all over the world who go to bed hungry at night.” And maybe we spend far too much of our national budget establishing military bases around the world rather than bases of genuine concern and understanding.

Not only do we see poverty abroad, I would remind you that in our own nation there are about forty million people who are poverty-stricken. I have seen them here and there. I have seen them in the ghettos of the North; I have seen them in the rural areas of the South; I have seen them in Appalachia. I have just been in the process of touring many areas of our country and I must confess that in some situations I have literally found myself crying.

I was in Marks, Mississippi, the other day, which is in Whitman County, the poorest county in the United States. I tell you, I saw hundreds of little black boys and black girls walking the streets with no shoes to wear. I saw their mothers and fathers trying to carry on a little Head Start program, but they had no money. The federal government hadn’t funded them, but they were trying to carry on. They raised a little money here and there; trying to get a little food to feed the children; trying to teach them a little something.

And I saw mothers and fathers who said to me not only were they unemployed, they didn’t get any kind of income—no old-age pension, no welfare check, no anything. I said, “How do you live?” And they say, “Well, we go around, go around to the neighbors and ask them for a little something. When the berry season comes, we pick berries. When the rabbit season comes, we hunt and catch a few rabbits. And that’s about it.”

And I was in Newark and Harlem just this week. And I walked into the homes of welfare mothers. I saw them in conditions—no, not with wall-to-wall carpet, but wall-to-wall rats and roaches. I stood in an apartment and this welfare mother said to me, “The landlord will not repair this place. I’ve been here two years and he hasn’t made a single repair.” She pointed out the walls with all the ceiling falling through. She showed me the holes where the rats came in. She said night after night we have to stay awake to keep the rats and roaches from getting to the children. I said, “How much do you pay for this apartment?” She said, “a hundred and twenty-five dollars.” I looked, and I thought, and said to myself, “It isn’t worth sixty dollars.” Poor people are forced to pay more for less. Living in conditions day in and day out where the whole area is constantly drained without being replenished. It becomes a kind of domestic colony. And the tragedy is, so often these forty million people are invisible because America is so affluent, so rich. Because our expressways carry us from the ghetto, we don’t see the poor.

Jesus told a parable one day, and he reminded us that a man went to hell because he didn’t see the poor. His name was Dives. He was a rich man. And there was a man by the name of Lazarus who was a poor man, but not only was he poor, he was sick. Sores were all over his body, and he was so weak that he could hardly move. But he managed to get to the gate of Dives every day, wanting just to have the crumbs that would fall from his table. And Dives did nothing about it. And the parable ends saying, “Dives went to hell, and there were a fixed gulf now between Lazarus and Dives.”

There is nothing in that parable that said Dives went to hell because he was rich. Jesus never made a universal indictment against all wealth. It is true that one day a rich young ruler came to him, and he advised him to sell all, but in that instance Jesus was prescribing individual surgery and not setting forth a universal diagnosis. And if you will look at that parable with all of its symbolism, you will remember that a conversation took place between heaven and hell, and on the other end of that long-distance call between heaven and hell was Abraham in heaven talking to Dives in hell.

Now Abraham was a very rich man. If you go back to the Old Testament, you see that he was the richest man of his day, so it was not a rich man in hell talking with a poor man in heaven; it was a little millionaire in hell talking with a multimillionaire in heaven. Dives didn’t go to hell because he was rich; Dives didn’t realize that his wealth was his opportunity. It was his opportunity to bridge the gulf that separated him from his brother Lazarus. Dives went to hell because he was passed by Lazarus every day and he never really saw him. He went to hell because he allowed his brother to become invisible. Dives went to hell because he maximized the minimum and minimized the maximum. Indeed, Dives went to hell because he sought to be a conscientious objector in the war against poverty.

And this can happen to America, the richest nation in the world—and nothing’s wrong with that—this is America’s opportunity to help bridge the gulf between the haves and the have-nots. The question is whether America will do it. There is nothing new about poverty. What is new is that we now have the techniques and the resources to get rid of poverty. The real question is whether we have the will.

In a few weeks some of us are coming to Washington to see if the will is still alive or if it is alive in this nation. We are coming to Washington in a Poor People’s Campaign. Yes, we are going to bring the tired, the poor, the huddled masses. We are going to bring those who have known long years of hurt and neglect. We are going to bring those who have come to feel that life is a long and desolate corridor with no exit signs. We are going to bring children and adults and old people, people who have never seen a doctor or a dentist in their lives.

We are not coming to engage in any histrionic gesture. We are not coming to tear up Washington. We are coming to demand that the government address itself to the problem of poverty. We read one day, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” But if a man doesn’t have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely exists.

We are coming to ask America to be true to the huge promissory note that it signed years ago. And we are coming to engage in dramatic nonviolent action, to call attention to the gulf between promise and fulfillment; to make the invisible visible.

Why do we do it this way? We do it this way because it is our experience that the nation doesn’t move around questions of genuine equality for the poor and for black people until it is confronted massively, dramatically in terms of direct action.

Great documents are here to tell us something should be done. We met here some years ago in the White House conference on civil rights. And we came out with the same recommendations that we will be demanding in our campaign here, but nothing has been done. The President’s commission on technology, automation and economic progress recommended these things some time ago. Nothing has been done. Even the urban coalition of mayors of most of the cities of our country and the leading businessmen have said these things should be done. Nothing has been done. The Kerner Commission came out with its report just a few days ago and then made specific recommendations. Nothing has been done.

And I submit that nothing will be done until people of goodwill put their bodies and their souls in motion. And it will be the kind of soul force brought into being as a result of this confrontation that I believe will make the difference.

Yes, it will be a Poor People’s Campaign. This is the question facing America. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. America has not met its obligations and its responsibilities to the poor.

One day we will have to stand before the God of history and we will talk in terms of things we’ve done. Yes, we will be able to say we built gargantuan bridges to span the seas, we built gigantic buildings to kiss the skies. Yes, we made our submarines to penetrate oceanic depths. We brought into being many other things with our scientific and technological power.

It seems that I can hear the God of history saying, “That was not enough! But I was hungry, and ye fed me not. I was naked, and ye clothed me not. I was devoid of a decent sanitary house to live in, and ye provided no shelter for me. And consequently, you cannot enter the kingdom of greatness. If ye do it unto the least of these, my brethren, ye do it unto me.” That’s the question facing America today.

I want to say one other challenge that we face is simply that we must find an alternative to war and bloodshed. Anyone who feels, and there are still a lot of people who feel that way, that war can solve the social problems facing mankind is sleeping through a great revolution. President Kennedy said on one occasion, “Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.” The world must hear this. I pray God that America will hear this before it is too late, because today we’re fighting a war.

I am convinced that it is one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world. Our involvement in the war in Vietnam has torn up the Geneva Accord. It has strengthened the military-industrial complex; it has strengthened the forces of reaction in our nation. It has put us against the self-determination of a vast majority of the Vietnamese people, and put us in the position of protecting a corrupt regime that is stacked against the poor.

It has played havoc with our domestic destinies. This day we are spending five hundred thousand dollars to kill every Vietcong soldier. Every time we kill one we spend about five hundred thousand dollars while we spend only fifty-three dollars a year for every person characterized as poverty-stricken in the so-called poverty program, which is not even a good skirmish against poverty.

Not only that, it has put us in a position of appearing to the world as an arrogant nation. And here we are ten thousand miles away from home fighting for the so-called freedom of the Vietnamese people when we have not even put our own house in order. And we force young black men and young white men to fight and kill in brutal solidarity. Yet when they come back home that can’t hardly live on the same block together.

The judgment of God is upon us today. And we could go right down the line and see that something must be done—and something must be done quickly. We have alienated ourselves from other nations so we end up morally and politically isolated in the world. There is not a single major ally of the United States of America that would dare send a troop to Vietnam, and so the only friends that we have now are a few client-nations like Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, and a few others.

This is where we are. “Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind,” and the best way to start is to put an end to war in Vietnam, because if it continues, we will inevitably come to the point of confronting China which could lead the whole world to nuclear annihilation.

It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence. And the alternative to disarmament, the alternative to a greater suspension of nuclear tests, the alternative to strengthening the United Nations and thereby disarming the whole world, may well be a civilization plunged into the abyss of annihilation, and our earthly habitat would be transformed into an inferno that even the mind of Dante could not imagine.

This is why I felt the need of raising my voice against that war and working wherever I can to arouse the conscience of our nation on it. I remember so well when I first took a stand against the war in Vietnam. The critics took me on and they had their say in the most negative and sometimes most vicious way.

One day a newsman came to me and said, “Dr. King, don’t you think you’re going to have to stop, now, opposing the war and move more in line with the administration’s policy? As I understand it, it has hurt the budget of your organization, and people who once respected you have lost respect for you. Don’t you feel that you’ve really got to change your position?” I looked at him and I had to say, “Sir, I’m sorry you don’t know me. I’m not a consensus leader. I do not determine what is right and wrong by looking at the budget of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. I’ve not taken a sort of Gallup Poll of the majority opinion.” Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus.

On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it right?

There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right. I believe today that there is a need for all people of goodwill to come with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “We ain’t goin’ study war no more.” This is the challenge facing modern man.

Let me close by saying that we have difficult days ahead in the struggle for justice and peace, but I will not yield to a politic of despair. I’m going to maintain hope as we come to Washington in this campaign. The cards are stacked against us. This time we will really confront a Goliath. God grant that we will be that David of truth set out against the Goliath of injustice, the Goliath of neglect, the Goliath of refusing to deal with the problems, and go on with the determination to make America the truly great America that it is called to be.

I say to you that our goal is freedom, and I believe we are going to get there because however much she strays away from it, the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be as a people, our destiny is tied up in the destiny of America.

Before the Pilgrim fathers landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before Jefferson etched across the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we were here. Before the beautiful words of the “Star Spangled Banner” were written, we were here.

For more than two centuries our forebearers labored here without wages. They made cotton king, and they built the homes of their masters in the midst of the most humiliating and oppressive conditions. And yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to grow and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery couldn’t stop us, the opposition that we now face will surely fail.

We’re going to win our freedom because both the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of the almighty God are embodied in our echoing demands. And so, however dark it is, however deep the angry feelings are, and however violent explosions are, I can still sing “We Shall Overcome.”

We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

We shall overcome because Carlyle is right—”No lie can live forever.”

We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant is right—”Truth, crushed to earth, will rise again.”

We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell is right—as we were singing earlier today,

Truth forever on the scaffold,

Wrong forever on the throne.

Yet that scaffold sways the future.

And behind the dim unknown stands God,

Within the shadow keeping watch above his own.

With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair the stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

Thank God for John, who centuries ago out on a lonely, obscure island called Patmos caught vision of a new Jerusalem descending out of heaven from God, who heard a voice saying, “Behold, I make all things new; former things are passed away.”

God grant that we will be participants in this newness and this magnificent development. If we will but do it, we will bring about a new day of justice and brotherhood and peace. And that day the morning stars will sing together and the sons of God will shout for joy. God bless you.