Wayward Landlubber

    In a small workshop on a Philadelphia military base a team of mostly women-mostly immigrants produce the Presidential and Vice-Presidential flags, stitch by meticulous stitch. They also produce regimental colors for the various military branches. Produce is not the right word. They create the flags and each one is signed by the artist who did the hand-stitching of the eagle with the arrows in one talon and the olive branch in the other, as well as the adornments for the regimental flags. Each flag can take six months of conscientous work. There is a long list of craft-people waiting to get into this exclusive group of 13 people employed in a low building on a military base operated by the Defense Logistics Agency. Military jets parked at the entrance of their workplace provide atmosphere. I'm pretty sure these talented people don't make more than a government salary, which will be among the government salaries that will be held up if Republicans in the House are not capabl...

     On July 24, 1983, in a baseball game between the Kansas City Royals and the New York Yankees, George Brett hit a home run that was disputed by Yankees manager Billy Martin. Martin disputed that home run on the basis of too much pine tar on Brett's bat. When the head umpire agreed with Martin, George Brett stormed out of the dugout and a brouhaha ensued which had not been repeated until a group of entitled white boaters driving a pontoon boat, in Montgomery Alabama, were told they couldn't moor their boat where a tour boat was trying to park.      Some say pine tar makes the handle of the bat sticky, so the bat doesn't slip out of their hand. I always thought that was what the glove was for, but whadda i know? Other sources say that the pine tar helps the batter to visualize the ball on the fat part of the bat. Sort of like visualizing the belt line between Donald Trumps white golf shirt and the expanse of avoirdupoir that blocks out the sun beneath it....

     Most of us know something about the Luddites. Typical of most Americans it is not much. After all, it happened a long time ago over two hundred years ago, and didn't happen here. Why bother? What we know for sure is that they, the Luddites, destroyed machinery at the beginning of the industrial age. We're pretty sure it happened in England. To know more would be woke. And that's where it stands. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was written about a half century earlier, Karl Marx and Frederich Engels would write their book, Capitol, about a half century later. In between this, a new nation had come into being, and that was the United States of America. What could be more important than that? DAMN THE LUDDITES!       What only a few understand is the context. These protests against industrialization were led, and participated in, by workers in the textile craft industries. They were not industries until the industrial engines began putting these craft...

     I grew up in the postwar years. Our fathers fought fascists, they did not defend them. A Republican president's campaign slogan was "I like Ike" and we did. Most of us who lived at that time were younger members of families who could purchase a car and own a mortgage with a single breadwinner and stay-at-home mom, because 30% of the workforce was union. We were beginning to make progressive changes. Maybe not easily, but steadily. We, white people, were learning to see civil rights differently, most of us too slowly for many who experienced racism. Congress was still investigating Hollywood writers and actors for their student involvement in socialism... in the 1920's. They would have been young idealists at a time when socialism was gaining currency, and capitalism was showing its weakness, but the aggressive investigators did not much care and carried on until the steam ran out, they were unsurprisingly Republicans. By the middle of the next decade, one of the ...