That’s pretty much it. Doubtless I’ll have something to say tomorrow or the next day. For what it’s worth, I’m making no predictions. It rather surprised me how close Romney has come and I no longer know what my fellow citizens will do.
So I’m working on fiction, reading, kicking back. For now, here’s a place marker.
Fortune sometimes favors the impulsive.
For years, we’ve been toying with joining PBS. The cycle of fund drives that present interesting specials on our local station (Channel 9, KETC) both annoys us for the interruptions and for the twinges of conscience triggered because we feel like we’re not doing our share to support it. The question has always been, when to do it?
Because they always offer gift packages to sweeten the deal and we’ve been tempted. Last spring, though, they came through with something we couldn’t turn down—tickets for a dinner train.
Both of us like trains, though we have ridden them fewer times than the fingers on one hand. There’s a romanticism about them that appeals to both of us, even though we don’t frequent them. (We took one train trip to Chicago, which was novel and unromantic, and I’ve taken the train from St. Louis to Kansas City twice—well, once, really, since one of those trips was during a time when the line was coopted by freight line after a flood and my ticket was fulfilled by bus—and none of those trips endeared us to the fact of train travel. But the idea lingers on and one day we may well do a cross-country in a sleeper.) So for our pledge of X dollars, we found ourselves with a guidebook to such trains across America, a DVD about them, and a pair of dinner tickets for the Columbia Star.
We’d planned to do this in mid-August, but fate intervened in the form of a ruptured appendix and we had to delay until I could actually sit through a three-hour gourmet meal on a rolling vehicle. So it ended up in mid-October.
Which was kind of ridiculous, really. After all, part of the novelty—we assumed—was the passing scenery. After seven in the evening in mid October, what exactly would there be to see? “Oh, we have floodlights mounted on the cars to light the way,” I was told by the charming scheduler when I asked. Hmm.
In any event, we were getting special treatment. The tickets were time-limited and we’d delayed past their due date. I explained the reasons and pity was taken. We were slated for October 20.
It’s a hundred and twenty plus change miles from St. Louis to Columbia, so we arranged to make a weekend of it and stay with out friend John in Jefferson City. The weekend turned out to be spectacularly beautiful, the drive down Highway 50 relaxed, and peppered with scenic delight.
We ambled from Jefferson City up 63 to Columbia and found our destination easily enough (earlier, Donna had fun playing with Google maps on John’s iPad, finding the location). It was off in a combination of old farmland and industrial development that was still active but had seen more plentiful times. The Columbia Star terminal looked nicely restored and a large parking lot filled with cars and guests as the sun headed down for the day. (The range of vehicles ran from modest—older Nissans—up to opulent—a couple of new Lexus and Mercedes.) (The plural—would it be Lexuses or Lexi?) We walked around the train, admiring it like some great antediluvian beast brought back from a cloud-obscured plateau, uncertain of its provenance but impressed by what we thought we knew of it, both its power and its rarity.
The dinner train phenomenon, as we learned from the PBS special that brought us to this place, is widespread and one of the chief ways many old, historic trains have been preserved. Some of them run quite a long distance and they are day-long excursions. This one runs between Columbia and Centralia, rumbling at a stately pace for about three hours, there and back, long enough for the repast on offer.
People continued arriving after we parked, leaving ample time to inspect it. The gathering on the parking lot reminded me of scenes on docks, crowds facing the ships about to take them away. A line of track acted as psychological barrier—a steel rope in the tarmac—keeping onlookers safely separated from the docile beast until its handlers declared it safe to approach.
But a few minutes before seven, people with clipboards began sorting us out, allowing us to board, directing us to tables within the finely-restored dining cars.
The lack of scenery beyond the twenty or thirty feet the floodlights illuminated was ostensibly compensated for by the fact that people were placed at tables with strangers—unless you had a larger group—with whom you were forced to either engage pleasantries and become cordially acquainted or stoically endure if you’re not the gregarious sort. I admit to having difficulties in that department and were we to do this again we’d make plans with another couple at least.
But to be fair, the couple with whom we were paired was pleasant, the conversation, while shallow, was not without moments of shared laughter and some interest. After fifteen minutes, though, it was also clear that we really lacked anything very much in common with them and while it was not awkward it was not the kind of experience one would necessarily wish to repeat.
But the food!
Our waitress brought our drinks and then took our opening orders (the main courses were already set in advance) and I decided that this was excellent training for them—serving on a moving platform that rocked (gently, yes, but nevertheless) and none of them spilling a bit, drop, or particle.
There was a pulled-pork on cornbread appetizer, followed by an acorn squash bisque that…well, I’d never tasted anything quite like it. I could have done with a full bowl of it and been wholly content.
That would have been a shame, though. The main course—there were several to choose from—was superb. Now, both Donna and I have high standards for prime rib. We were spoiled. All joking aside, the best prime rib either of us ever had was at the long-defunct St. Louis Playboy Club. I’m serious. The chef there could turn prime rib out like ambrosia. We’ve had close before, but never better. This was probably as good. It was wonderful.
We trundled along through small town Missouri. After our trip to Chicago, I decided that contemporary passenger trains really take you through America’s back yard. That’s pretty much what you see, the back end of what is hidden from the highways and main streets. This was no different. However, some people whose houses stood along the line knew the schedule of the train and were outside, with fires going, a few barbecues still underway, waving as we passed by.
Our table mates imposed on us to take a picture of them and we asked the same in return, something we almost never do. But I felt that this deserved a bit of commemoration. There was a moment of intimidation when I handed across my Canon 60-D, but I’d already set it up and pointed to the button. The picture was successful.
We drove back in a state of satisfaction, heads filled with nothing but agreeable impressions and an unspoken decision to do this again. That’s as good recommendation as an establishment can get, the promise of repeat business. It helps that we think the idea behind it—preserving a bit of history—is a worthwhile one.
But it is the food that makes it worth doing.
Bon appetite!
I know, it’s November. But this is what I found in October.
Yes, yes, I said no more politics till after the election, but that just goes to show you the pitfalls of making promises you may be unable to keep. But I didn’t actually make a promise, not like, um, a politician.
The weekend is upon us. Next Tuesday a goodly portion of the citizens of this country will step into voting booths and choose…the next four to six years of leadership.
I have written about why I will not vote for Mitt Romney. “Mitten” as he is affectionately known by those in Massachussetts glad to see him no longer governor, is not my idea of a president. To reiterate what I wrote in that piece, my chief problem with him is that he is an advocate for a failed fiscal policy. Trickle down economics did not work, has not worked, will not work, so it seems ludicrous—no, stupid—to assume it would work just because it’s Romney and not Reagan.
But have Obama’s policies done much better?
If you’re one of those still un- or under-employed, you probably don’t think so. All you have on your mind is “Where are the jobs?!?” (Interestingly, Romney this week started talking about the unemployed who are not usually counted by the national labor board, a subject I’ve complained about in the past—actual unemployment is much higher than the number cited monthly, much higher, and always has been. Do I think Romney has twigged to a deeper truth and might do something about it? No. It’s a tactic. Someone whispered in his ear “Hey, boss, if we talk about these people we can make Obama look really bad.” It’s bullshit coming from him.) But for a lot of people who either were at risk for losing their jobs or have found employment in the slowly growing economy, no, things aren’t as bad or worse than they were. Romney is citing the fact that this month’s unemployment went up—from 7.8% to 7.9%, which is higher than when Obama took office. This is spin, of course, because Obama took office just when the real toll of the Bush recession (and why they keep calling it that, I don’t know, it was a depression and still it, because of all those folks Romney just discovered) was washing ashore. It was over 10%, we must not forget, and has dropped.
Now, the thing a lot of people are bitching about is how slowly the recovery is happening. They overlook the fact that recovery is happening and is expected to continue steadily for the next four years (so much so that Romney has been taking advance credit for jobs that would be created no matter who wins next Tuesday). It is frankly better in the long-run for this to happen slowly rather than do something to superheat it and blow up a new bubble that will burst in 10 or 15 years, but that doesn’t matter much to people who can’t find work. Fair enough. But that begs the question as to why these same folks might vote for someone who has sided with policies that will only hurt them more.
More? The GOP as it currently exists is anti-union, anti-minimum wage, and anti-fiscal regulation. If you work for a living any one of these runs counter to your best interests, but we have a trifecta here of antagonism toward the working class and a good chunk of the middle class. Every state that has adopted Right To Work as law and busted the unions has seen standards of living go down. Wages go down. Quality of working conditions go down. As for minimum wage laws, they barely raise the quality of life for hundreds of thousands of people in the first place—eliminate it and you drive those people even further down. Those who have never worked for minimum wage may not realize that this is not for students anymore, but a lot of families are trying to get by on minimum wage.
As for the demand to deregulate the financial sector further, pardon my directness, but just how stupid are you? It was deregulation that allowed the practices of the banks which caused the 2008 meltdown. So now you want to go back to those circumstances? Capitalism is a wonderful thing if you put a harness on it and control it, but left to “the Market” it is a ravening beast that could care less about Bob Cratchitt and Tiny Tim.
So given all this, just why in hell would anyone vote for these people? It beggars the imagination.
But—politics is like sex: when you get right down to it, it’s just a matter of what turns you on, what appeals. It’s a limbic system thing, and generally makes no sense.
Which in that regard makes Romney ideal.
Not many people have talked about his religion through the campaign, which for the most part I approve. Religion ought to have no part in this.
But that’s not the same as saying it doesn’t play on people’s minds, that it isn’t a consideration. Sure, it bothered me when Jimmy Carter made a deal out of his evangelicalism. Every time some politico mouths off about “putting god back in [fill in the blank]” I cringe.*
In this case, I will remark on Romney’s religion as an aspect of his character. He has campaigned diligently with unexpected agility. He’s told a lot of half-truths, some outright lies, fabricated some stuff out of whole cloth.
And apparently believes every word of it.
He’s a Mormon. As such, he must be facile at accepting nonsense as truth. (Disclaimer: my parents were Mormons, I am more than passing familiar with Mormonism. While never one myself, I’ve had many a conversation with visiting teachers. I’ve read the two principle books—yes, there are two of them, The Book of Mormon and A Pearl of Great Price—and I considered joining, so allow me to claim I know a little something about it.) We have the documentation, the history, and can weigh the claims of Mormonism. This isn’t some ancient thing of which most of the pertinent texts are missing and the civilization that invented it lies in ruins over which archaeologists must pore to reconstruct. It’s a recent advent. It is very much like Scientology in many ways.
It is a compendium of the improbable, the fantastic, and the patently false. In order to believe it, one must be willing to suspend all credulity, divorce it from critical thinking, and pretend the world is different from what it clearly is. One must ignore evidence, be willing to cut off friends and family who dare to speak ill of Joe Smith and Brigham, accept a cosmogeny created virtually from whole cloth by a man fleeing New York ahead of creditors and charges for fraud. It is so obviously bullshit, that it is the perfect mirror of the mindset of a politician willing to front for things he or she might never accept outside of the arena.
I will therefore also not vote for Romney because he is so utterly gullible.
Okay.
So am I gleefully and whole-heartedly casting my vote for Obama? I will vote for him because I do not want a GOP-dominated government. But it is far from whole-hearted. He has disappointed me in many things, but I can’t in clear conscience vote my choice and risk seeing Romney win.
(In case you hadn’t noticed, this is a very partisan post—not so much partisan for anyone as against.)
I’d like to vote for Jill Stein. Not so much because I agree with everything she touts, but because she’s so utterly despised by all the folks I despise. She would be a refreshing change.
Look, under ordinary circumstances, the two parties we have dominating our politics are not really that different from each other. These are not ordinary circumstances but the divide is over things that are normally at the margins. If you want to fix the core, both parties need to be overhauled completely.
We need a viable third party, one not funded by corporate money or tied to the people with the biggest mouths.
But until someone like Jill Stein can garner better than the paltry percentage she does, most of us see our choices forced.
So this coming Tuesday I’m voting against Mitt Romney…and against just about every Republican candidate on the slate, because they are all of them espousing nonsense in my opinion. They’re not even good Libertarians, not that I’d particularly want them to be, but that way they’d at least keep their opinions about peoples’ private lives out of the public arena.
But come 2016 I’d love to see a viable third option.
VOTE!
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* Let me explain. It’s not god per se that I object to (how can I when I don’t believe he exists?) but the fact—the fact—that all this sanctimony is pretty much, in this context, Show. Nothing but an act to parade piety in front of people and mask the fact that serious problem solving is not going on. Putting god back in city hall will not stop the corruption. Putting prayer back in school will not fix your failing educational system. The public lip-service to a religiosity especially not embraced by the political actions of the people demanding it the most is a massive distraction. Many of the same people most vociferously demanding this nonsense wouldn’t know “christian spirit” if it visited them on Christmas Eve. What it really is, to be clear, is a song-and-dance to make their opponents appear curmudgeonly, evil, and on the wrong “side.” I’m tired of people professing their christian values from one side of their mouths and then defending the death penalty out of the other. Hypocrisy is a poor way to advocate for your country.
So…be careful out there.
Bwahahahahahaha!
Just ’cause.
And I didn’t want to put up something predictable, like a full moon or a werewolf or blood spatter.
Happy Hallowe’en. Be safe.
I know, I said no more political posts till after the election, but I couldn’t NOT put this one up. Before you freak out, watch all the way through. Then, I’m sure, no matter who you’re voting for, everyone will have a reason to freak out.
Oh, and one more thing. Check this post by P.Z. Myers. This pretty well sums up my feelings as well. I’ve had a low-level concern about the congressional elections longer and more consistently than the presidential campaign, but really, we ought to be worrying more about local elective offices even more—offices which traditionally get the lowest voter interest.
Anyway, I just wanted to share. See you on the other side.
Hard upon the heals of my previous panegyric, a placeholder.
Last week Donna and I enjoined our first dinner train, the Columbia Star out of—you guessed it—Columbia, Missouri. Here’s a photograph and a promise that I will shortly be writing about it at more length. Meanwhile, have a pleasant next few days.
Another GOP candidate has stirred the hornet’s nest of women’s rights and abortion by making one of the most blatantly absurd statements— no, that’s inaccurate, mainly because there is no way to gauge “most absurd” in this context. So many of them have come out and said shit everyone knew they were thinking but till recently had managed to either not say or have couched in more sophisticated and euphemistic language.
Richard Mourdock said that any pregnancy resulting from rape is “God’s intent.”
How to delicately respond to this…?
Oh, fuckit. This is bullshit.
The basic assumption of Biblical literalism these asshats have been using is a compendium of tribal law no one would approve across the board anymore because we don’t believe that shit anymore!
Did you know that, per the Old Testament, if a woman is raped and does not immediately scream and accuse the man, she is presumed guilty of adultery and is to be stoned to death? (All the various sexual rules related to this can be found in Deuteronomy 22.)
What is wrong with this is that it all—all—reduces a woman to property. I don’t care how you dress it up, interpret it, or reconstitute it, the reason we no longer regard Old Testament morays as valid is that they treat so many categories of people as property. It condones slavery, chattel bondage, the rights of fathers to kill children. They are rules, sure, and it does not give categorical rights to the father, but that doesn’t matter because it is all based on a construction of human rights we no longer support.
At least, most of us don’t.
Here is the basic problem and the reason I have always supported a woman’s right to choose.
It is her body, her life, her choice. Period. It’s not yours, it’s not the state’s, it doesn’t belong to the man who fucked her or her father or her husband and certainly not her rapist. It belongs to her, to decided what to do with. If people did not own their own bodies, then we wouldn’t have to get permission from them as individuals for organ donations (even after death).
So at what point does this cease being true? How does becoming pregnant alter that fundamental fact, especially if said pregnancy was not her choice?
I’m sorry if you think that embryo/zygote/fetus is a human being, it does not by its simple existence trump a woman’s right to decide if she is willing to serve as incubator to it. It does not trump her right to determine how she wants to live her life from that moment on. It does not trump her right to be able to say yes or no to a situation that will irrevocably alter any course she may have set or predetermine what options she may have in the future, regarding career, partners, and personal matters having nothing to do with other people.
Because it doesn’t trump any of these things for a man, who can walk away and have nothing further to do with what he has left behind.
The argument that, among certain seriously neurotic types, that if she didn’t want to be pregnant she should not have had sex is nothing more than a different set of constraints to tell her what she can or cannot do with her own body. Besides, she invited him inside, she never said he could leave any relatives behind.
I base my support on a lifetime of privileged autonomy, knowing that this was not something I, as a man, would ever have to deal with, so any pronouncement on my part would be at virtually no risk that my life would ever have to change. Realizing that, I knew that I rather liked that autonomy and would never deny it to anyone else. I see it as the epitome of hypocrisy for men to dictate this to women. They would have to enforce a situation on women that they themselves would never be subject to. This is the basis of discrimination.
I, were I a woman, would damn well insist on being able to live the life I want to live and determine my procreative future entirely for myself. No one should insist, through law or any other means, that a woman do something not of her choice.
But we have been seeing the naked assertion of male privilege in all this, of men insisting that women should not have the same choices they do.
Well, to be perfectly blunt, fuck that.
Unless you are willing to embrace all of the rules in Deuteronomy and Leviticus, your presumption of speaking for Biblical morality is a sham. If you do embrace all that nonsense, then you have no place in the government of a democracy, because all of it is born out of an autocratic mindset that has no problem predetermining what people are—master, chattel, slave, outcast.
Now. This is all, ultimately, a major distraction. The GOP was never serious about rolling back Roe v. Wade—why would they give up such a wonderfully effective campaign issue by fulfilling the implied promises they’ve made since the 80s and actually outlaw abortion? Furthermore, they know very well the shitstorm that would create. Most of the antichoice movement is leery of discussing legal redress—punishment—for what they claim is murder. Most don’t want to talk about it. The leadership very well knows why—because the fervent hope of most of these folks is that abortion simply go away. If you punish people for it, it will never go away. It will be in the courts forever, until one day the tide reverses again and it is once more legal, and maybe after that it will remain so because we will have really locked down this argument over who owns a woman’s body.
But now all it does is serve to obscure other issues and delude a large segment of the voting population into thinking this is something that will really make any difference. By this tactic, they have you all voting for people who while touting “family values” have just been picking your pockets and diverting your real power into the hands of oligarchs.
I have one parting question for all you people so bent on ending abortion. How come none of you advocate mandatory vasectomies, not even for dead-beat dads? I never hear anything like that, even as a theoretical argument, from any the antichoice folks. Nothing that would shift the focus to the man. You don’t want people getting shot (pregnant) don’t take their guns away, just the bullets.
That was rhetorical, yes, but the question is legit. Why is this all put on the woman, every time?
I think I may write nothing more political till after the election.
Vote!
I have a new short story in this anthology. really, you should go buy one. I mean, I’m not the only one in it, there are many stories by some really good writers. They even went so far as to do this rather interesting book trailer:
Look who else is in this!
Erik Lundy
John Rector
Caleb J. Ross
Hilary Davidson
Aaron Michael Morales
Matthew C. Funk
Kevin Lynn Helmick
John Hornor Jacobs
Jane Bradley
Matthew McBride
Cortright McMeel
Fred Venturini
Gordon Highland
David James Keaton
Nic Young
Jason Makansi
Robert J. Randisi & Christine Matthews
Jesus Angel Garcia
Tim Lane
Nate Flexer
Glenn Gray
Duane Swierczynski
Jon McGoran
Les Edgerton
Frank Bill
Mark W. Tiedemann
Benjamin Whitmer
I mean, hell…that’s a lot of bang for the buck.
You can buy it from Subterranean Books. Not to be confused with Subterranean Press, which is completely different.