Author Archives: oinsketta

Being Tough

Just because someone can take a punch, doesn’t mean they like to be punched.  

“Look, you didn’t go down and your nose isn’t even bleeding!” says the impressed face puncher.

People are tough because they have to be.  It doesn’t mean the circumstances that make them so are to be prized, nor the ability to take a punch celebrated.  The real celebration is reserved for when you are not being punched.

Great short video editorial about the Trayvon Martin killing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6OuP-wiiQg

views 7-17-23         at 1:48 AM   570,960

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7/18  at                         2:19 AM   759,556

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De Minimis Non Curat Lex

There’s a book in this old judicial maxim “the law does not concern itself with trifles”.  An entire library of trifles with which the law does not concern itself.  One man’s trifle is another man’s indigestible, unvomitable hairball, after all.

Think of the things that may bother you most.   Trifles, virtually all of them.  The Law does not regard or concern itself with them.   Like a demented four year-old on first discovery of the equally chilling “I know you are, but what am I?” the justice system’s got one for you right here, pal.

“De minimis non curat lex“

 

Heat Wave in NYC

It’s humid as hell during a heat wave in NYC.   Sekhnet does not sleep enough, even under ideal circumstances.   This morning she had to be up at 6:00 a.m., to water her garden before heading off to Katonah for a work assignment.   At 1 a.m. she was still doing something.  I urged her to go to sleep and she eventually fell asleep on the couch.  It was around 80 degrees downstairs and moist.

When I went upstairs an hour later, where it was several degrees hotter, she’d crept up there somehow.   She was on the bed, splayed out like a star fish, with both tower fans pointed at her.   There was little point trying to squeeze on the small bed with her so I let her sleep and went into the other room to pound at the keys of this computer.  

By 4:00 I was ready for sleep, pointed one of the fans slightly northward and went horizontal on a northerly sliver of bed.  She stirred, made some ridiculous remarks, only half awake, and then fell back asleep.   It was too hot to sleep, but she flopped an arm affectionately over me.  A few minutes later I slipped out of bed for a cool drink.   Could not shut my mind off.  Read a bit.  At 4:45 or so I tried again.  Then it was light outside and birds began sending out their tweets.  Sekhnet’s friend “Pietro” was back, imitating a dozen other calls and then singing his manic, signature “Pietro, Pietro, Pietro!!!”

“My father always liked Pietro,” she told me once.  Her father named him Pietro.  I knew she’d be glad he was back.  She was.

Weird babble began, her odd comments, my amused answers, her soft, slightly mad chortles.  The bed was hot, and she was still mostly asleep.  Soon the radio alarm went off, it was probably about 5:30.  Sekhnet likes to hit snooze as many times as possible before she gets up, but this time she was too wiped out to reach for the snooze bar.  I was almost asleep when her other alarm, a weird, electronic chiming guaranteed to get a sleeping person’s attention, went off.  Then, seemingly, a third alarm began to bleat.

“Sekhnet’s house of horrors,” I said grimly, to a cackle from Sekhnet.   

“Wake me up in five minutes,” she said, amid the cacophony of alarms.

I told her I would, if I wasn’t lucky enough to be unconscious in five minutes.   I wasn’t lucky enough, but she was soon enough up and out of bed, heading to the garden.

Letter to Poland

So here’s the deal.  Over here a lot of bad stuff is going down, I think we are actually in the grips of a societal insanity that is rapidly approaching critical mass.  I know you try not to pay attention to the news from here, being an expatriate and all that, but I’ll give you a quick run-down of what’s been shaking since you’ve been gone.

In 2000 there was a presidential election, another of those farcical exercises in mass-marketed democracy we have every four years.  I heard the president described recently by the great Harry Shearer as the man (or woman) who has climbed to the top of greasiest pole in American society (listen to the first two brilliant minutes).  Word.   And, as you know, the higher the monkey climbs the more everybody can see the monkey’s behind, but forget that, if you can.

It was a close election in 2000.  Goon squads were actually sent to disrupt the recount of votes in Florida, the state whose electoral votes would decide the election.  A challenge was made by lawyers for the Republican candidate in the Supreme Court, claiming irreparable harm if the count was allowed to continue.  It was decided  on partisan lines for the Republican, in a one-off decision that oddly cast itself as setting no precedent.  You know that we were attacked on 9/11/2001 by 19 Saudi fanatics.  In the aftermath of that attack Congress voted special wartime powers for the president and we invaded Afghanistan and then Iraq.  These wars were very costly, and bloody, and corrupt, and rage to this day, though we are no longer officially fighting in Iraq.  

The war powers were abused, as war powers often are, and these abuses continue to this day in the name of The War on Terror.  Things that shocked the conscience of many Americans no longer seem to bother too many people.  The War on Terror is to our basic freedoms and general sense of decency what the War on Drugs has long been to people who like to smoke a joint once in a while– as well as to the many victims of violence by international drug cartels who sell pot and other drugs to Americans.  Get as drunk as you want sometimes, that’s your right as an American, you know.  Smoke marijuana and you’re a drug addict and probably a pervert.   Everybody knows that.  

Just like everyone now knows you have to rough up people you suspect of hating you.   In fact, a jury just acquitted a hopped up, gun toting asshole in Sanford, Florida for shooting a black kid to death.   This guy was patrolling his multiracial neighborhood one night when he saw a black teenager in a hoodie.   He called the police to report the suspicious Skittles wielding young black man.  The cops told the guy to stay in his car, that the cops would come.  The guy followed the kid, got out of his car and confronted him.  The subsequent fatal shooting of the young man was deemed self-defense by a jury of six white women.  People are outraged and don’t know what to do.  Officials are warning blacks not to think of rioting.  Other people are rejoicing, that we are still a country that believes in laws, even ignorant laws like the Florida “Stand Your Ground” law that allows a person with a gun, who feels in danger, to kill the person he reasonably believes to be threatening him.

So, dude, if you come here, don’t hang out with your young black friends, at least not in Florida.  Some disturbed asshole with a police record can stalk you, confront you, grab you, and if you defend yourself, can argue that he felt in danger and then be legally justified in killing you with his handgun.

Hell of a day here in the USA.

On the other hand, I felt an unexpected surge of pure joy today watching the naming and honoring of a young baby girl, the new granddaughter of old friends of mine.  Impossible not to feel the love and good vibes in that room.

In other news, I got this mysterious email from an “edcsnowden@gmail.com”.  Makes me want to find the perpetrator (the sloppiness is revealing, methinks) and confront him, if you know what I’m saying.  I am, as you know, Ahimsa Man, but even I have my limits:

Ed Snowden <edcsnowden@gmail.com>
I saw  your site and was filled with wonder. Do you need an event planner and fundraiser? As I am both I also have experience with volunteers. I currently work with homeless families as well as homeless individuals suffering with the HIV virus.I would love to work with you as your are doing amazing things with small ones!
Sincerely, Ed Snowden