Hungry.

There's a lovely little article in The Guardian today about the world's shrinking food supplies.
No, no...no.
...In actuality, it's about the world's violent crises surrounding growing food costs.
The above are
Two Very Different Things.

Robert Zoellick, World Bank president, is pleading for $500M from wealthy countries for the World Food Programme. In the World Bank's assessment, "Rocketing global food prices are causing acute problems of hunger and malnutrition in poor countries and have put back the fight against poverty by seven years." The International Monetary Fund is right in line with this, stating that, "more than 20 African countries will see their trade balance worsen by more than 1% of GDP through having to pay more for food." And while it seems like Africa and their (Western-)imposed poverty are a long way off, look at post-Katrina New Orleans, muthafucka, and tell me starvation can't happen here. Look at any major US city, look at any poor US hill country, look anywhere in this country outside the golf courses and resorts and tell me that It Can't Happen Here.*

In lieu of physical food, here's some food for thought: if the IMF and World Bank are the agencies acting as canaries in our global coal-mine, something is seriously fucked up. How morally bereft are we Western peoples if we've gotta have two of the most notoriously money-grubbing organizations in the world tell us to quit being so goddamned greedy? I mean, really.

On a very relevant side note, why the hell aren't more people growing gardens? From personal experience, I know how easy it is to grow enough food for yourself, your family, and a few of your neighbors in just a smidgen of space. I mean, tending anything to fruition is a bit of a commitment, but...what a worthy commitment it is! Get seeds from Sand Hill Preservation, from Heirloom Seeds, or from the Seed Savers' Exchange, all companies committed to real food, unadultered by genetic modification or insecticides. Sand Hill Preservation also sells all manner of fowl for eggs and meat, including many breeds of geese, chickens, ducks, and etcetera that have gone out of fashion or are in risk of becoming endangered. Many cities now allow, if not outright encourage, keeping a couple of chickens (yardbirds, according to Grandad) around the house, both for their obvious culinary benefits and for the less obvious benefits of natural pest control and soil enrichment.

While I am overwhelmed by current global food trends and my inability to just fix everything, my inability to make sure no one goes to bed hungry, I/we can at least take care of ourselves and our neighbors. We can at least make a start, a dent, an honorable effort at reversing our downward spiral into starvation.

It looks like we gonna be poor and poorer for a long while yet, but poverty need not be a death sentence.

We are all we have.
Take care of each other.
Grow your food and feed as much Family as you can.

*"It Can't Happen Here," written by Sinclair Lewis in 1935, is available in full text through this link to Project Gutenberg. Read it, damn it.

Wait.

I listen for your truck in the street outside our bedroom.
I wait for your footsteps
on the sidewalk,
the stairs,
the porch.
Wait for the crashing tiny tinkle of our front door's bells;
Wait for your keys & wallet & skull beads to impact the countertop tile;
To hear you in the toilet before bed, top hat set carefully aside.
I wait to hear moving air stop
as you walk between
the high-speed fan & our subtropic bed;
Wait for the metal-on-metal of your belt buckle releasing, of your pants hitting the floor,
The fabricskinfriction of shirt pulling over your head,
buttons & all.
I wait for your weight, trying not to wake me, as it shifts & shimmers in beside me.
I wait, anticipate your whiskertickle & soft lip-to-cheek whisper
"I love you"
before I let go & let sleep finally take me.

Last Night I Almost Went to Jail

...For smoking pot in the park. Which, y'know, I knew was against the rules, but fer cryin out loud: after 9 hours being nice to people who populate this little island just long enough to photograph it, rape it and trash it, I really just wanted to relax on the beach and remind myself why I continue to reside in a place where slavish attention to tourists is so high on the survival list.

I brought a joint with me, which several of us smoked in due time. We were not loud, obnoxious, or obvious. We were all tired, all local, all wanting to chill the fuck out and enjoy our current home for the sunset hour. When the bone was finished, it was finished. Done and done. We're not sure whether the out-of-uniform head park ranger witnessed us or whether it was some idiot tourist; regardless, my brother looked up about 20 minutes after we were finished and saw a very diminutive, very hostile cop fastmarching toward us with two uniformed park rangers and a really tall (vaguely familiar) guy in tow. BadCop immediately started shouting in his Outside Voice (wanting desperately to impress everyone within earshot),

"Where's the marijuana? Huh? Don't lie to me. Don't make me be an asshole! I know you're smoking marijuana out here, now where is it? Who's got it? We've got witnesses!"

Of course, all of us were fuckin stoned by this point, so fortunately didn't get as irate as LittleGoebbels (nee Lopez) deserved. He obviously had an eyewitness, the tall guy, who was unwilling to let go of the issue. Kept squawkin about "kids know(ing) what marijuana smells like" (begging the question of whom the hell exposed 'em to pot in the first place). Reiterated to us how criminal our activities were, that this was a state park, a family park (with concessions full of carcinogenic nonfoods). I realized we had too many witnesses and one PsychoCop(Lopez) too far off his rocker, too mad with power and inferiority to let us go with just a bag of denials. Somebody had to confess something or he was gonna have us there forfuckinever.

So, I, with my West Coast sensibilities, told him and the assembled rangers (who know me well enough) about the joint. Told them, yes, I brought it down; yes, a couple of us smoked it; yes, it was irretrievably finished and had not left a trace of evidence. I apologized for my mistake and reiterated (in careful fashion) that LittlePapaDoc was too late, the deed was done, over, finished, with nothing but the squint in my eyes to prove anything had ever happened. The confession mollified him a bit and he treated me a little less patronizingly after that (a little less), but oh that man was fuckin desperate for someone's head. Just desperate.

Unfortunately, there was a little metal Zippo case with a smidgen of pot in it sitting on one of our tables. GestapoLopez made a big show of asking to whom the case belonged; no one owned up (of course). So, he, shouting, said, "Well, if this doesn't belong to anybody here, and since it's on state park property, then I, as a police officer, can just come right over here and open it! See? And I'm not gonna find anything, right? Isn't that what you told me?"

"No, sir, we told you we don't know whose it is. We don't know what's in it."

"Oh, really?! Well, I'm just gonna pick this up, see? And now I'm going to open it, right here in the state park. And...and look what I found! And this doesn't belong to any of you, is that what you expect me to believe?"

The dialogue was so impossibly cheesy. I was having a hard time separating his reality from my own stoned "This is totally a cartoon, right? Nobody honestly speaks like this outside of pulp comix, right? Jeez, this guy is really badly written."

PsychoCopLopez demanded our IDs, knew we were criminals. Several of us denied having identification; several handed over their licenses; I gave 'em my Green Parrot Bar Tradesman card, unflappably.

Stormtrooper Lopez stalked off to run our information. I overheard him tell the tall guy that he intended to keep everyone's IDs, that we "should all be booked." Then Otter comes sauntering out of the water, walks right up to the tall guy and starts a conversation. Turns out Tall Guy is actually the Head Ranger Guy who's known Otter since he was a pup. Ranger was quickly and quietly informed that he was about to arrest Otter's wife and brother-in-law. Ranger Guy, after a bit of consideration, said he wanted to give us all a second chance, since we were local and otherwise not causing a ruckus. Ranger gave us a little talk from the You Know Better lecture series; told us to "smoke (y)our dope at home;" told us Otter had been in trouble many times before and that, much as he'd hate to do it, he'd bar us from the park if he caught us doing anything so blatantly ridiculous again. The petulant and egregious Lopez was angry as all hell that he didn't get to take anybody "downtown" (do we even have one of those here?), and did his best not to kick up gravel as he pulled out of the parking lot, probably to go home, get drunk, and beat his wife. Or his dog.

So, I didn't go to jail last night. Went home, rolled a huge joint, and smoked it with my brother instead.

Pays to be married to the guy who knows everybody, I guess.

Fair Trade vs. Fair Shake

Dude and Lady just came in asking if we carry fair-traded coffee (we don't yet).
Proceeded to tell me, while I was frothing and foaming milk for his cappuccino, what a pity it was that we weren't supporting indigenous workers and how "unfair"-traded coffee was taking money out of local people's hands.
I gave him his cappuccino, handed him his change, and watched him carefully put his 62 cents in his wife's pocket, avoiding my tip jar entirely, and walk out with an over-the-shoulder "thank you."

Local people, indeed.

The Unrealized American Dream

Do yourself, and the U.S. in general, a favor and check out Bitch Ph.D.'s notes on the Institute for Policy Studies report "40 Years Later: The Unrealized American Dream." It's a dark and beautiful introduction to the longer work itself, a tiny expose of our rotten little cores. Think we've progressed in matters of racial equality since 1968?

Wrong.

After reading her wonderfully written piece, for the love of change and empathy, head over to the Institute for Policy Studies and read the whole damned report yourself. Don't count on anyone else's interpretation;

read, judge, be aware.

Do whatever you can, in your own little way, to make some part of this better.

It's whatcha here for.

Not too long to wait, now...

Three, maybe three and a half weeks until I'm in New Orleans.
Otter says "Save your energy! Save your excitement! You'll need every last bit of it to make it through four days of Jazz Fest!"
...and with thirteen stages full of musicians, with a great racetrack full of food and art and food and artisans and food, with a barrage, a melange, an esoteric montage of all the great muddy wonder an underbelly could possibly offer, I am sure Otter is correct.

Nonetheless,

The Hotel St. Marie, the place Otter's always stayed, is full for a few nights of our trip, so we are spending the remainder at the Lafitte Guest House, both within the French Quarter, both ridiculously, authentically antiquey and boutiquey, both absolutely beautiful. Lafitte is purported to be "the most haunted hotel in New Orleans," a hell of a boast. I look forward to stumbling through foyers of both hotels, high and greasy, swimming at St. Marie, passing out on the balcony at Lafitte, hopefully still cognizant enough to treat people decently, still high enough to let the city eke into my porous bones, infect my marrow-bound dreams, without reservation, without a trace of my sizeable, malleable ego.

In Otter I've found another human being who shares the same rusted mercurial tracks with me; I wonder if New Orleans will be the candyfloss citystop whose edges melt into my own...

Not too long to wait, now.

Not too long.

Jazz Fest is Comin!

OMFG, I'm sooo excited about going to New Orleans for the Jazz and Heritage Festival!

Gobs of musicians, artists, artisans (c.j. chenier, stevie wonder, john prine, kermit ruffins, neville bros., michael franti & spearhead, rebirth brass band, dirty dozen brass band, the radiators, ann savoy, hot club of new orleans, the roots, marcia ball, the raconteurs, keb' mo', galactic...i'm heaven-bound!),

Our still-gutted house on the Lower 9th/Holy Cross cusp (moldy drywall all gone, water-warped studs mostly replaced, the whole damned thing raised 18", water finally flowing to both storeys, still no electricity, still not quite liveable, though i wanna live there anyway),

...and Food...did I mention the food? (dead animals ever'where y'look, y'all, ain't no lie: red fish bouillabaisse, crawfish pie, cornbread, poulet fricassee, jambalaya, couscous and veg, beignets, innumerable barbecues, fuckin snoballs!, pralines, fried alligator po'boys, crawfish bread for otter to shove into his drunken pockets for later-snacks, cracklins, muffulettas, crowder peas and okra, pheasant quail & andouille gumbo, catfish almondine, and red beans & rice. damn!).

Oh, Lawdy.

Oh, Lawdy, I'm excited, y'all.

"For your troubles---"

Yesterday, a gob of children with loud squeally voices found my last nerve and began poking it with a stick. Screaming inside is a nasty little habit for which I have no patience. It's mean, it's rude, and if even a goddamned toddler can be taught Inside/Outside voices with relatively little pain, it behooves every parent to take a little time out of their busybusy schedules and actually, y'know, parent.

Instead of any of that idealistic-parenting pap, what I received yesterday was this:
a torn piece of notebook paper folded around a $50 bill, handed to my employer, handed to me. It read:

"For your troubles--
ps. It wouldn't hurt you to learn how to hide the fact that you despise children---if just for the five minutes my kids are in the shop."
(parent-customer's name)

I read it quickly and put it away, not having much time for anything but work while I was there, thankfully. I didn't read it later, after I got home, but I thought about it and actually felt kinda bad for hurting this guy's feelings. Brain kept trying to think about it in its nightly insomniac shuffle, trying to make me obsess over the asshole I surely am. I put off and put off, wording and rewording my apology to this guy until I went to sleep.
Then I sat down to write this morning and read the note again.

~fuckin bullshit~

I mean, I am in the service industry, so I should have the patience of a goddamned saint. I should be superhumanly able to deal with every idiot who thinks I owe him somethin based on our relative positions around a countertop, but uhm...

Y'know,
I'm human.
I hate people just as much as everyone else does,
probably more.
I hate being stuck inside any enclosed space with a screaming anything,
but especially children with their freaky-loud glass-shattering registers.
Fingernails on a chalkboard?
Doesn't bother me.
Screaming kids?
I'll happily blow my brains out to avoid them.

Happily.

So, was this guy just trying to buy me off? I understand the snarky note, but what's with the $50? What does the half-C have to do with his children? Is this the New Parenting? Just fuckin throw money at whatever stands in the way of your child's whimsical desires? If s/he wants to scream her fuckin lungs bloody in public, does daddy just pay off the people who are most affected by it? Pay off the people who'll stand up with a "Dude, that's really not cool in here"? Do I get another $50 if I'm rude to his offspring next time? What's the protocol here?

For the moment, I'm stuffing the 50.spot into the Jazz Fest fund and resolving to exercise more patience and empathy with the people I endeavour to serve.

I wish more people would give me big bills when I offend them.
I'm sure I do it a lot.