Peas and Onions

Here You Have a Stone

2009-05-31T09:36:00.000-07:00

This, basically, is what I essentially live and breathe these days: persuading people to admit to themselves the insanity of intergenerational cruelty and to eliminate all forms of it on the very lowest, most personal levels of which we are capable. I believe the effects of human behavior and action are "fractal" in precisely the way as Lindgren describes here.

The sweet lady with whom I worked to translate this from the Swedish (she did the largest part of work) had been unable to find any other English translation. [added July 29, 2008: A couple days ago I did discover several earlier translations.]

She tells me that Lindgren had at first been prohibited from making this speech--even today when speaking publicly about issues involving children people will preface statements that involve cruelty and child beating with things like "I don't mean to be controversial, but..."

Lindgren declined to accept the prize, then. The Booksellers eventually relented; she had her say.

I believe when she writes "...of course there is so much else...that needs to be changed" she is capitulating in order that her position might be allowed to at least remain on the table. I suspect she believes completely otherwise. Nothing is more radical than standing for the natural rights of children. Nothing meets more resistance than the notion that human beings are not things that may be owned.

The world as human beings have experienced it for thousands of years has been upside down and backwards.

Question authority

Never Violence!

Delivered upon children's author Astrid Lindgren's acceptance of the German Booksellers Peace Prize in Frankfurt, Germany, October 22, 1978

Dear friends!

What I must do first is thank you, and this I do with all my heart. The German Booksellers' Peace Prize has such a luster around it and is such a great honor to receive that one almost totters when it is put into one's hands. And now I stand here, where so many wise men and women have stood during the years, putting their thoughts and hopes forth about the future of humanity and about the eternal peace that we all are longing for. What can I say that hasn't been said already in a better way than I can?

To talk about peace is to talk about something that doesn't exist. Real peace does not exist on our earth and has never existed other than as a goal that we evidently cannot reach. So long as humanity has lived on this orb it has dedicated itself to violence and war, and the fragile peace as it now exists is constantly threatened. At this moment the whole world is living in fear of a new war, a war that will destroy us all. At the prospect of this threat more people than ever are working for peace and disarmament—that is true. This could be a hope. But it is difficult to be hopeful. The politicians gather in large crowds at top-level meetings and talk so warmly for disarmament, but the only disarmament they desire is that of someone other than themselves. “Your land shall disarm, not mine!” No one wants to start with oneself—no one dares to start—because all are so afraid and have so little confidence in other's will to work toward peace. And while one disarmament conference replaces another, the most insane rearmament in humanity's history takes place. It is not strange that we are all afraid. Either we live in the East, North or South; either we live in a great and powerful country or a small, neutral one. But we know that a big new war would hit the whole of humanity, and whether it is in a neutral or not neutral heap of ruins that I lie dead can make no big difference.

Mustn't we, after all those thousands of years of constant wars, ask ourselves if it is because of some kind of construction fault in the whole species of man that we always take up violence? And ask if we are doomed to come to our end for our aggression's sake? We all want peace. Isn't there a possibility then that we can change before it is too late? That we can learn to dissociate ourselves from violence? Simply try to become a new strain of human beings? But how should that come about? And where should we, in that case, start?

I think we have to start from the foundation. With the children. You have given an author of children's books a peace prize; you must not expect any big political views or suggestions for international solutions to the problems. I want to talk about the children, my worries for them and my expectations for them. Those who are children now shall take over the handling of the world, if there is anything left of it. They shall decide between war and peace and what sort of society they shall have; if they prefer one in which violence continues to escalate or one in which human beings live in peace and community with each other.

Is there on the whole any hope that they shall be able to create a more peaceful world than what we have succeeded with? Why have we failed so badly in spite of all good will? I recall what a shock it was for me when, still very young, I suddenly realized that those who governed countries and the world's destiny were no Gods with a superior outfit or clear, divine sight. They were human beings with the same weaknesses as I. But they had power, and they could in each moment come to the most ill-fated decisions by the impulses that ruled them. If things were against us, it could be war because of one single human being's desire for power or revenge or vanity or triumph or—what seemed to be the most common—blind faith in violence as the most efficient aid in all situations. And in the same way, one single good human being filled with consideration could ward off catastrophes, just through being good and filled with consideration and through repudiating violence.

The conclusion from this could be: it is individual human beings who determine the destiny of the world. And why aren't all good and filled with consideration then? Why are there so many who only want violence and power? Is there an innate evil will in some? I couldn't believe it then, and I don't believe it even this day. The intelligences—the gift of reason—are innate, but in a newborn baby no seed lies within from which it will automatically grow good or evil. What determines whether a child will become a warm, open, trusting human being with the ability to commune with others or a cold, destructive loner is decided by the ones that welcome the child into the world and either teach it what love is or leave it to be shown.

Goethe has said “Überall lernt man nur von dem, den man liebt”, and then it must be true. A child that is lovingly met and who loves its parents learns a loving attitude to its surrounding world, and keeps this basic attitude throughout life. Which is good, even if he or she comes to belong to those deciding the world's destiny. And should, contrary to expectation, he or she happen to become one of those deciding the world's destiny, that's good luck for us all—if their basic attitude is love and not violence. Future statesmen and politicians are formed in their character before they are even five years old—that's horrible but it is true.

And if we now look back at how children have been treated and raised so far as we can follow it through the times, hasn't it too often been a question of breaking their will with violence of some kind, either physical or psychological? How many children haven't gotten their first lesson in violence “von denen, die man liebt”, their own parents—and then passed this teaching on from generation to generation? “Spare the rod and spoil the child” you can read in the Old Testament. This, ever since written, many fathers and mothers have believed. They have diligently swung the birch and called it “love”. But all those “ruined boys” of whom there are so many at this moment in the world—the dictators, the tyrants, the oppressors, the tormentors of human beings—how was their childhood? That you ought to do some research into. I believe that behind most of them there is a tyrannic father or other raiser with a birch or a rod in the hand.

Mustn't you then become despaired when there are voices screaming for retrogression to old authoritarian systems? That is what is going on in many places in the world. Those who blame “too much freedom” and “too little strictness” in upbringing for youthful “misbehaviors” now want “harder grips” and “tightened reins”. This is to use Beelzebub to drive out the Devil and will only lead to more violence and bigger and more dangerous gulfs between the generations in the long term. Those much longed for “harder grips” would possibly “achieve” a superficial effect that its advocates could interpret as an improvement. Until, that is, they are gradually forced to notice that violence breeds violence—as it has always done.

Many parents are worried by those new signals and have begun to wonder if perhaps they have done wrong. Is an anti-authoritarian upbringing something objectionable? It is only if it becomes misunderstood.

An anti-authoritarian upbringing doesn't mean that children shall be left to care for themselves or to do precisely what they want. It doesn't mean they shall grow up without norms, by the way, or that they will reject them. Both children and adults need norms for conduct, and children learn more from their parents' example than from anything else. Of course a child shall have respect for its parents, but indeed—parents shall also have respect for their children and not abuse their natural advantage over them. A mutual, loving respect—that one wishes for both parents and for all children.

And for all those who are now screaming so eagerly for harder grips and tighter reins, I would want to tell you what an old lady once told me. She was a young mother when the common belief was “Spare the rod and spoil the child”. She hadn't been fully convinced of it, but at one time her little boy had done something, so she decided he “needed” a spanking—the first of his life. She said to him that he had to go out and find a birch for her. The little boy left and was out for a long time. At last he came back, crying, and said:”I didn't find any birch but here you have a stone you can throw on me.” Then she too began to cry, because suddenly she saw everything with the child's eyes. The child had thought “If my mother in fact wants to hurt me, then she can as well use a stone.” She put her arms around him and they cried together for a while. And then she put the stone on a shelf in the kitchen, and there it laid as an eternal reminder of the promise she gave herself at that moment: “Never violence!”

Well, if we now raise our children without violence or tight reins of any kind, do we then get a new human species living in eternal peace? Only a child book author can hope something so silly. I know it is a utopia. And of course there is so much else in our poor, sick world that has to be changed so that there can be peace. But we have, in the here and now—even without war—so incomprehensibly much cruelty and violence on earth. The children are indeed aware of it. They see and hear and read about it daily, and must think violence is a natural state. Mustn't we, at least in our homes and through our own examples show that there are other ways of living? Maybe it would be a good idea if we were to put a stone on the kitchen shelf as a reminder for children and ourselves: Never violence! It would yet maybe at last be a small contribution to the peace of the world.

In the US, those working most effectively to secure the natural rights of children include:

Parents and Teachers Against Violence in Education

The Hitting Stops Here!

The Natural Child Project

Laurie A Couture.org

Rapp's Pizza Train--Fact or Fantasy?

2009-03-13T04:12:00.000-07:00

I hate titles. I really do. It's like trying to think of user names or passwords. I don't even know what I'm going to say yet. Yes I know, I could write first and then name it afterward. I might, still. On the other hand life's short. In the broader scheme of things Is Writing Anything at All About Rapp's Pizza Train Really All That Important?

I've searched the net twice for it. About 2002 I found it mentioned briefly in the forum of some Las Vegas brothel, I think. About a month ago I got that same hit as well as a few more instances, all or primarily all involving local Bloomington, Indiana discussion boards. The most interesting was written by a musician who'd said he'd been rushed off their open mike stage by John Mellencamp, at the time I suppose probably still (0r possibly not yet) calling himself Johnny Cougar. I'd forgotten there was an open mike there at all; I feel reasonably sure now that Lynn Fredericks, a housemate of mine and a crazy-intense guitar/mandolin/banjo/trombone player, actually built that stage, which I'll guess was a four by eight sheet of 3/4" plywood nailed to some 2x4s, probably painted black, I'll bet. It was in the west room of the 6th Street house (Rapp's opened a Pizza Train 'annex' in Eastland Plaza, or whatever that's called, about 1973. There were a few small tables in the Eastland store, I think, but it mostly seemed to exist just to help us speedy, courteous delivery pros get to our eastside clientele faster).

But generally our mass consciousness' answer to the question of Rapp's is that no, it's not important to waste people's time or space on the Internet either, saying anything about it. I have to wonder, though...

In 1975 I reluctantly emigrated from Bloomington after discovering I could make more than a dollar sixty an hour elsewhere. Yes, I sold out. I know. So what you probably have too, one time or other. And there's still time in life to keep my promise to myself to one day return, too. Actually I was just there January 2nd of this year.

But what I meant was that I'd always imagined that my living somewhere other than Bloomington would just be temporary, that Bloomington [insert something mushy here and then go on].

Before I forget: I do remember that in three years or more I spent pizza delivering there I managed about sixty-three cents in tips, total, which really was pretty much more than most of us managed. The guy who gave it to me laughed when I came to his door, cried "I used to be just like you!" and told me to cut my hair. What a weirdo. Seemed like a business school type. To be straight on this, I am in no way anti-business. Not by a longshot. But there is, I think, something creepy about suits and ties, except when worn by blues guitarists or otherwise look slept in. And I do have to give begrudging near-respect to members of the Indiana University business school--though just because words like "anomaly" and "surrounded" come to mind. Those people were certainly outnumbered. As arguably short-sighted and shallow as they may have been, the over-arching spirit of that place and time still sums up best in my ex-friend and fellow Bloomingtonian Annieo's motto-y thingie-wing (previous post): "There's room for them, too." We no doubt even had a few business school people working at Rapp's. I'd bet you a burnt strom we did, in fact.

To be continued, I hope. Possibly continued a bunch. I think I could write a book's worth of stuff centered around the Pizza Train, the incredible times, color and diversity we all basked in then. I think somebody could write something that would make Breaking Away fade in comparison. (Nice movie, really, for what it was. It misses something, though. Like the whole point of what was actually going on there at the time. Almost as though it missed deliberately.)

With all due respect to the other operating fine pizza places there (there are at least two still operating that were there in those days as well), a joke at the time was that everybody in Bloomington had worked at Rapp's. If you did during that period (1972-1975), it'd be great if you spoke up. I may not remember you but hey.

2009-02-28T08:01:00.000-08:00

So I had a friend, once, a kind of a crazy lady with a mind that sometimes I thought might just go on forever and ever. I wasn't really ever afraid of her; actually now there's sadness only, pretty much, when she comes to mind. Or a sad indifference maybe, like the feeling I had knowing I'd have no choice but to sell an old Dodge pickup I'd owned for less than a day, not being able to leave it parked where it was and not able to afford to replace its tires either, the ones kids had slashed during the night.

I think it's true that to one extent or another every living human being is some mixture of health and "damage"--the health she enjoyed when I knew her was so strong that it couldn't even be rightly acknowledged, I think. Discussing damage is almost always taboo, at least when done honestly, but the most I think I ever heard anyone say about this woman's other, healthy side was "Oh, I think Annie is very intelligent." Well, Annie and I both, I know, would feel almost compelled to start arguing to the contrary if we'd hear something like that, her I'm sure much more quickly than I would. In fact mostly I'd probably keep my own thoughts to myself; argue the whole thing there only, much as possible. The bottom line is that she only seemed to be from Neptune or somewhere; she was basically just as regular as anybody else. Only weirder. And if you got to know her very well the fact that in most ways she was pretty much the same as you or me would become obvious.

Maybe what bothered me about her was the notion that to some extent it seemed as though we shared something. "Wavelength", I suppose. Perception. Not across the board and certainly not all the time, but a significant portion of what not many others (if any at all) seemed to me to be connected to that seems like native territory to me personally--she seemed, unnervingly sometimes, to be right there.

This paper letter, received thirty years ago, is the only acknowledgment I think either of us ever made that there did exist some sort of overlap. In its way it probably felt most of the time too embarrassing for either of us to admit it, feeling too much like two seven-year-old kids who kind of liked each other being paired up and forced to dance together in music class:

Mostly she was just crazy, as I said. "Is crazy", actually; far as I know this is still a living person. Whether time and space have in fact finally done their thing or whether it's Damage that's to blame (hers, or mine, or ours in combination), my strong hunch is that her "orbit", as she'd say, won't likely ever again intersect my own. One thing about Annie that almost annoyed me was that this was a person that actually "cackled". You read about people cackling, sometimes: usually old, crone-like women, and maybe that's what bothered me. She seemed to know it made her sound witch-like and she didn't seem to care. In fact she enjoyed it. Counterbalanced her Lauren Bacall speaking voice and her Joni Mitchell singing one, she likely thought. (She was merely influenced by Joni Mitchell, of course, I'm sure.) But strong hunch #2 that I'm now having is that were she to read that orbits-no-longer-intersecting stuff she'd cackle. And she'd look me dead in the eye with a "knowing" smile (yeah, right, I'm sure, Annie, quit it you're making me embarrassed for you!), laying down a third (iron-clad correct, in her opinion) alternative explanation: "The Universe constantly expands."

And that will make me stop and think. Naw, Annie, you're right, it does, but it's not that, it's Damage. I'm sure of it. And then she'd purse her lips into a smile, raise her eyebrows and walk away nonchalant and unconcerned, thinking no doubt "There's room for you, too," "Have good dreams and remember them," and all other kinds of gook like that that she was always saying.

Well the point is that I have to tell a story about her. Really it's about me but she figures pretty heavily into it. Seemed like she needed a proper introduction, is all. It's an Internet story, really, in the end. (Sorry!) What happened was this:

Probably about 1976 I'd somehow wound up at a party. Graduate student-aged people in the hostess' parents' house, in a college community neighborhood. Parents gone for several days, I think. Only thing off limits was the obviously new grand piano--I thought that was responsible and reasonable, really, students, alcohol and any piano sometimes just, well...

Anyhow yes, Annie was there. So was her sister. Far as I can think there was no one else in the house that I'd even seen before. Think I must have gone there with the sisters because I remember it being about four in the morning, eventually, just wanting out of there but having no way home on my own. The point is that I was very much a guest, there, more than most, I'd say, being a first-timer in that house and not knowing the hostess or her regular friends. I don't think she knew the sisters all that well either, come to think of it. There's no question she protested in near panic when Annie's sister, probably, pushed me to the bench of the grand piano and took the felt dust cover off the keys. That part went all right, actually. The hostess realized I was reluctant, she eventually agreed. Once she heard a little I could definitely see her relief. "Oh. That's all right, then." Was probably "Time Passes Slowly" (Dylan ala J. Collins) and "Blue Sky" (Dickie Betts). No one played after that. I don't know why it was so important for whichever sister that was to insist "Let him play!"

Anyway--and here's the thing: there's nothing else I did that night that could even be halfway considered remarkable. I don't recall conversations with anyone and in fact the sisters themselves left me totally on my own most all of the time. But suddenly from the other side of the piano, I think, there was Annie saying loudly and for no reason I could ever figure out "He knows! He knows!" The whole room looked, first at her and then at me, wondering as much as I was what the heck she was taking about. "He just can't tell anybody!" she finished--cackling-- completely pleased with herself. A second or so ticked off, the room seemed to think "Oh. That's strange." and went back to what it was doing. Annie wouldn't be pressed into explaining herself. She just stuck to her stupid knowing smile. I finally had to let it go.

So. When I see stuff "out there" on the Internet I feel that kind of condemnation, I guess. "Doom", even. I'm feeling it now. Yes of course I can comment, publish, submit--and sometimes I do (cackle that, Annie!)--but for the most part I think and rethink and decide against taking action.

I'll say this though: even if they exist somewhere outside of Annie's hopes and mind, life's way too short to wait around for any furnaces of justice to show up and burn the trash away. We have control, I think. The world rarely brings justice to us, we need instead to take it there.

The Origin of the Stupidities

2009-02-12T06:28:00.000-08:00

I realized at the time there was something humorous happening. I was, though, terrified. I'd just gotten off the phone with my friend Greg when it struck like a ten ton brick: "If I'm smarter than ninety-nine percent of the rest of the world, then...then.... oh Jeezus Jeezus we don't stand a chance we're dead MEAT!!!"

Thankfully it turned out to be a case of faulty memory. Anyway, I'm one hundred percent convinced that as attributes go, kindness, empathy and courage (not that I necessarily have more than my share of those things either) are exponentially more important than intelligence when it comes to such things as not wiping every extant form of live forever from the face of the earth. (Maybe those anaerobic bacteria down at those deep ocean vents will manage? And cockroaches.)

Since it seems clear to me - even with my mainly "regular" faculties - that what most all of us think of when we hear the word "stupidity" is in fact a kind of idiocy that has been deliberately, systematically and artificially induced, it strikes me as ironic that so many reely-reely-smart people right now have not ferociously engaged themselves with that problem but instead have stuck their heads as far as possible into holes in the sand, in fact now developing artificial intelligence (as though there's no tomorrow, actually.) I think the most likely explanation is that reely smart people suffer from the same stupor that dumb people do, actually, but that it manifests itself in a different way.

But Greg hadn't accused me of being terrifically smart. I'm not sure what his problem was, besides being I think as drunk as anyone I've ever been obliged to hold a conversation with. Except with myself now and then, in olden times. (College, mostly, all right?)

Greg (quitting alcohol altogther two years ago now) called me twice a week that summer, drunk. He'd had stuff going on then that made talking to somebody important. Listening to drunks sucks, to sum the experience up from my end. But that particular call had something different in it. It wasn't that he was miserably crying, he'd done that plenty of times. This time there was an urgency; a story he'd needed to tell - badly - sobbing all the way through. He never explained why he needed to tell it. He never came to his point either.

A friend of his, the valedictorian of his high school class, a National Merit Scholar, had sometime during college taken LSD. This guy then quit school to work the rest of his life in a local factory (making car parts I think) as a general worker guy, nothing special. "Do you know what that means?" implored Greg, blowing his nose, returning even more hysterically, "Do you know what that means?" I had to say no. "National Merit Scholars are the top one percent of the brains of the whole country! The country!" I finally managed "Oh."

I'd been thinking as Greg told his story how my own life since drugs of that sort and quitting school had been the morally superior one when compared with his buddy's, me eschewing the corporate thing right from the start. But that National Merit deal had me worried, because for years I'd been under the impression that I were one. It turned out I weren't, though. I'd taken some test or pre-test to be one, I think, and hadn't paid attention or cared much about the results, thinking that taking that test at all had qualified me, I suppose. My high school yearbook had been handy after Greg's call. I had a clear memory of - almost like some kind of pervert - enthusiastically listing every activity and award I could in my "Senior statistics"- so I knew there'd be a record there, at least. There wasn't a single word about it. Our own valedictiorian had listed that she'd been a National Merit 'finalist'. I don't know if that means "close-but-no-cigar" or that she'd "made it all the way to the Final Four" or what. Though possible (I saw her in college a few times; she at least loosely associated with at least a few freaky people), it's doubtful she ever tripped. She became a lawyer. Possibly a corporate one.

My own point I take from the fact that today is Charles Darwin's birthday. His 200th. It's been 150 years since information has poured in from literally everywhere proving that "the earth is not flat". The majority of Americans continue after so long a time to resist that enlightenment, many with every fiber in them. I know: it's enough to make you barf. Believe me I know. I know as well: I'm not that much smarter than most of those people, in fact I'm sure I'm plenty dumber than many of them (I don't think she and I ever discussed Darwin so I can't tell you her views on that subject, but our valedictorian and her family were deeply religious).

Darwin or no Darwin though, the evidence here is that human beings are and no doubt for a very long time been actively and deliberately taught to be stupid, or at least very, very blind. That's clear to me, and I'm just "regular". (No significant amounts of booze and no drugs at all, either, besides coffee and smokes - square ones - for decades.)

Personal to Mark Twain: Sammy, it's not smart people putting us on who run this world. I'm sure of it. It's idiots who mean every bit of it. (Some of them idiots are smart enough, tho', and mean too, underneath, so watch out for them.)

The positive in all this is that science now has good reason to ponder (and hopefully solve--hurry! Please!) even more pertinent questions than those involving the origin of species, such as "Why do we go around deliberately making ourselves so goddam fuckass STOOPID?! What the hell is the origin of THAT shit?"

Happy birthday, Dude, thanks from everybody for cracking that wall.

2009-02-02T06:46:00.000-08:00

"I know what you're thinking. And you're right." Well you are. At least a fair amount of the time you are. Maybe not at the moment. Maybe not completely.

"I can explain!" Yeah sure you can but does anybody actually want to hear?

You're right again. It's just that I want so badly to apologize for having named this blog something so dumb, and was prepared to blame Determinism for it. Because I really can't think of much other excuse. The stupid thing just popped into my head and I couldn't get rid of it. I tried. Honest. Must have spent most of an hour at it. It was like trying to shake the theme from The Flintstones out once it gets stuck in there, though. Which actually has been a lot, for me, these last few weeks, because one of my back-burner projects has been to make and upload a (public, I'm afraid) video of myself playing the thing on piano--just to make a sweet sweetie lady I know smile if I can. It would be meant as sort of a tease, since she's a pianist (well-rounded but favoring classical) and has sent me a performance of her own, just a nice, unpretentious sweet thing. Norwegian, I think, composed recently. I'd just like to send her something back, is the thing. I may never get around to my project, actually, partly since hearing "They're the modern Stone-Age fam-il-eee...IN the--TOWN of Bedrock...." in my head all day long impairs my ability to function in daily life so much that--well, I expect you see the problem. Stupid instant karma. I really hate it.

At any rate, the "Name your blog" page contained one of those distorted security words that you have to punch in to prove you're human. The first one was "Snons"--which, I finally realized, is "Peas and Onions" with a few letters missing. Well? It could be it was that! (I blew typing "Snons", actually, and was given a different word for a second try. So human.)

A Place Right Out of Hiss-STO-reeee!

You're right again: that heading does deserve not one but three exclamation points. But there are grammarians lurking everywhere these days, and frankly, they terrify me. NObody, probably, would have any problem with the fact that Bedrock, being pre-historic, couldn't possibly be a place out of "History"--that that's just a lie, one shamelessly repeated over and over--worldwide from what I understand--for what--three generations??? But tell the truth about that or anything else using three exclaMAtion points in a row, boy, and watch out!!!!

Okay sorry. I'll watch it. It was thanks to a grammarian, actually, that I was able to shed my Kurt Vonnegut-induced fear of semi-colons; he was just wrong about them, is all. Please let's not start some huge pointless debate about this; you're welcome to your opinion! I don't care! Peace! Peace! Peace!!! (Though yes, Vonnegut was right and you are too: I did go to college. The fact that I deliberately didn't finish it leaves me with semi-colon usage as the only way I have of even half-way proving it. Most of us Back-turner-on-thingsers do experience a seemingly never-ending struggle to attain even modest amounts of credulity or approbation, you know. Even when we go around saying junk like "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"--something I'd hoped at first might help but which has turned out really to be just a big woo; too hard to work into conversations, maybe.)

Well. Welcome to this blog. At any rate. Two quotes:

"Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart; Th' effect doth operate another way."
Troilus and Cressida Act V Scene III

"In age, talk; in childhood, tears." Hopi