My trip to the hospital

It reached a point where I gave up hope. My stomach was hurting so bad I made my way over to a City Council aide. Noting her name tag, I asked if there was any first aid room in the building. I was having trouble functioning on my own. She contacted security and they called for an ambulance.
It was about 4 o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon when my stomach was starting to hurt. I was waiting for the bus heading to a Housing Levy meeting at Seattle City Hall. I figured since I hadn't eaten all day I'd feel better when I had a meal downtown. That wasn't the case. Then I figured if I went to the bathroom I'd feel better but I was in pain when I attempted to do that.
I sat down in a chair and tried to get comfortable. I closed my eyes but didn't fall asleep. Then I heard the ambulance (what some people in Seattle call an `aid car.') in the distance. The siren stopped but I wasn't seeing any help arriving. Turns out, Mayor Nickels was presenting awards to high school students down on the second floor and one of the main entrances was closed. It took the ambulance people about five minutes to reach me. Was this the mayor's plan to get even with me for writing for less than flattering things about him on my blog.
After talking to me for a few minutes the ambulance workers proceeded to lift me on to the stretcher. For the first time in awhile I had a humerous thought. I had just watched Season 2 of the Get Smart TV show. All I could think of was the ambulance workers who put Maxwell Smart on a stretcher and then tipped him over. Those guys also stood him up to get through swinging doors and he fell on his face. I was luckier.
We headed on the elevator to the bottom floor and the ambulance guys weren't sure how to get to the parking lot. A guy who looked vaguely familiar gave them what turned out to be the wrong directions. Watching TV the next weekend I almost had another attack when I realized the unhelpful passerby was none other than Tim Cies, a Mayoral assistant called by the some, ``the Mayor's hatchetman.''
I arrived at the hospital and my confusion continued. I was told I was going to Cherry Hill but now saw Swedish Hospital towels hung up on the wall. How could I get home if I didn't even know what hospital I was in. A kindly orderly explained that Cherry Hill was Swedish's emergency room. Or something like that.
Wondering what would happen next, a doctor came in and explained that I had a hernia. He lifted up my shirt and I saw that a piece of flesh was growing out of my stomach, looking like a thumb or a thimble. He was able to push it down and the ice and introvenus apparently helped.
I was feeling better now. A friendly male nurse came by; perhaps a bit too friendly, as he immediately started to pull my pants down. At times like this you start thinking like your mother, ``is my t-shirt clean? Are these the shorts with the hole in them?'' I knew what was coming next though; he was going to stick a needle into my arm; and like a vampire, suck blood from my body.
The nurse started looking for a vein, and started to wipe my arm down, ``so you won't feel a thing.'' I try and not pay attention when someone's sticking a needle into my arm, but then the nurse started doing play-by-pay. ``Here it comes now. 1, 2, 3...'' Jeez, how could I NOT pay attention to that. Fortunately, I was able to settle in after that, listening to some nurses outside my room discussing the movie, Borat.. ``Now Borat, is he supposed to be retarted?'' one asked.
I've had some tightness around my belly button for a while but that grotesque-looking third thumb hasn't returned. For the record, I have an Incarcerated Umbilical Hernia. I saw my regular doctor and now I'm waiting to hear from the specialist. Like the wheels of justice, the wheels of medicine turn slowly. But except for some bloating I've been feeling good. It just goes to show, you don't know what'll happen next?
I did have a little bit more pain that night. The cab from the hospital to my house about five miles away, was $25.

Jailhouse rots

David Simon, the creator of the HBO TV show The Wire recently appeared on Bill Moyers Journal on PBS and gave the best reason I ever heard for making drugs legal. Simon, a former Baltimore Sun reporter painted a bleak picture of modern-day society when Moyers asked him what he would do to solve today's problems. ``I would decriminalize drugs in a heartbeat. I would put all the interdiction money, all the pretrial, all the prep, all of that cash. I would hurl it, as fast as I could into drug treatment and job training and jobs programs.'' If I could paraphrase Mr. Simon, deal with problems at the start and not at the end.
That makes me think of an initiative I'm involved with in Seattle, I-100. Basically, the initiative states that instead of the city (i.e. Mayor Greg Nickels) deciding to spend $226 million on a new jail it would go to a public vote. If we get enough signatures by the end of the month, I-100 will go on the ballot for the next election. The initiative also talks about analyzing ways to decrease incarceration rates; analyzing whether investments in social services will lower crime and arrest rates; and develop a strategy to address racial disparity in arrest and incarceration rates.
There are some who might say this will lead to just more committees as opposed to decisive action, AKA the Seattle way. Not true, according to Lisa Fitzhugh, the Chair of I-100. ``Twenty-five years ago we made the choice to invest in recycling over building a new waste incinerator. Today we have a world class recycling system. Ten years ago, we made the choice to invest in treatment and prevention programs for juvenile offenders over building a new juvenile detention facility. It required King County to re-evaluate every aspect of its system. We averted millions in construction costs and increased public safety.''
I don't know if Simon and McHugh have ever met but they have the same concerns- programs for the mentally ill being reduced to fragments; pre-arrest diversion programs to treat non-violent drug offenses going by the wayside; but here in Seattle, we're building a new jail, screw the budget crisis.
The complete name of I-100 is, A Citizen's Initiative To Promote Efficiency and Fairness in Public Safety. Who can be against public safety? I urge anyone who stumbles on this blog and is a registered Seattle voter to sign the petition.
And for more info contact the Committee for Efficience and Fairness in Public Safety, 2129 2nd Ave., Seattle, WA 98121 (206) 441-3247 X206.

Advertising Lullaby

Another George Carlin clip. Sort of the companion piece to the Modern Man. Jon Stewart said he watched Carlin rehearse this when he was about 66 years old. He didn't screw up a word.

What comes after Ball 3

Courtesy New York Daily News

The first week of April has become one of my favorite times of the year. I stop worrying about everything else for a few days and enjoy the opening of the baseball season. All is right with the world.
I used to watch a VCR of Game 6 of the 1975 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the Cincinnati Reds the day before the regular season began, considered by some the greatest game ever. The game was played before the heydey of VCR's, but the Boston PBS station showed it as part of a fund-raising drive in the `80's. Everybody remembers how the game ended, Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk waving his home run smash fair; I watched the tape so many times I remember the first play of the game - Carl Yastrzemski making a sliding catch on Pete Rose's sinking liner. Announcer Joe Garagiola said ``nobody plays the outfield like Carl Yastrzemski plays leftfield in Fenway Park.'' But alas, after a few moves, including one cross country, the tape has long disappeared.
Another way to celebrate the opening of the baseball season is to re-read Jim Bouton's Ball Four. For the unititiated, it's hard to explain why this book is considered by some one of the best books ever, not just one of the best sports books. Bouton was a former star pitcher barely hanging on in the major leagues. Most of his 1969 diary involves the Seattle Pilots, the only major league team of the 20the 20th century to last only one season (it's stadium is now a Lowe's Hardware Store).
The baseball establishment was shocked by the book - players looking into women's hotel windows, playing in games drunk, and playing kissing games in the back of the bus. Bouton even said that the game's best player -Mickey Mantle- was a drunk and mean to little kids who asked for his autograph. It was a real-life MASH, or Animal House.
As the years went by, people weren't too upset with Ball Four anymore. Mickey Mantle even had fun with his boozing image. I'm sure high school and college players who read Bouton's book figured the major leagues were pretty cool.
Jim Bouton also pitched in the first major league game I ever saw- Red Sox-Yankees, Fenway Park, September 1967. Bouton didn't pitch that well in an 8-1 Boston victory. The RS third-string catcher, Mike Ryan, hit a triple off him. Time-wise this was around the low-point of Bouton's career. He spent most of the next season in the minors. Ironically, the Red Sox winning pitcher that day, Gary Bell, would be Bouton's roommate on the Pilots two years later. Bell won 13 games in `67 and would pitch in the World Series.
The 1967 RS pitcher coach was also on the Seattle Pilots in 1969; Sal ``The Barber'' Maglie, a former star pitcher with the Brooklyn Dodgers who always had a day-old beard before anyone ever heard of Don Johnson. When pitchers whould go over opposing batters in meetings, Maglie had the same response on how to pitch to about half the major league, ``just smoke him inside.'' Gary Bell did a great Sal Maglie imitation. Players appreciate that.
I met Jim Bouton at the Society of American Baseball Convention when it was held in Seattle a couple of years ago. I told him about seeing him pitch against Gary Bell. He liked it when I said I was 10 years old at that time but that he (Bouton) now looked younger than me. Jim Bouton wrote an inscription into my copy of Ball Four that day. ``To Ray, Smoke Him Inside.''

Another World

These have been unhappy times for newspapers. Following on the heels of the Rocky Mountain News, the Seattle Post Intelligencer, around since the 1880's, called it quits this week. And who knows, the famous P-I globe may end up on E-Bay yet.
Also a company I worked for back in the 1980's and `90's, the Journal Register Company, became the first newspaper chain to file for bankrupcy a couple of weeks ago. JRC, based out of Philadelphia, owned a dozen newspapers in Pennsylvania, NY, Connecticut and Rhode Island.
Unfortunately for JRC, the Connecticut Attorney General must have woke up last week with a burr in his butt, and exclaimed that JRC executives shouldn't be getting 1.7 million bonuses (chump change of course by Bernie Madoff standards) when they owe all kinds of taxes to the state ($21.5 mill, just in corporate taxes).
Fortunately, I was low enough down in the food chain to be left alone. But the CEO at the time I was there fired publishers as often as he changed his shirt. The rumor was that he actually had a bodyguard in case he ever ran into a former (or current) employee who had gone over the edge.
As a company, I don't have much sympathy for JRC, but when newspapers close shop I have sympathy for people who lose their jobs. In the case of the P-I, until recent years when the Seattle Times and P-I became almost interchangable, it was usually considered the better Seattle daily. Tom Robbins wrote for the P-I; so did Frank Herbert, who wrote Dune; they even named a street after one of their reporter-editors, Royal Broughan.
The P-I did more investigative reporting and won more awards. I'll miss the P-I because it actually covered Seattle. The Times is liable to have a story on Enumclaw or Western Washington on its front page than one about Seattle.
It's a different world today. When I was growing up in Rhode Island, I'd wait for the paper boy. He'd deliver to all three floors in my house, two floors next door, and a couple of papers across the street. He'd deliver 20-30 papers in a block. Now, I live in an apartment building of about a dozen people. I've never seen anyone reading a newspaper, and most don't watch TV news either, which is crimes, fires and car accidents anyway.
News is moving more to the Internet. Paper is getting too expensive and I've written a few things myself that a tree shouldn't have had to die for. But people at the P-I seemed a little embarassed to compare their on-line ``paper'' to the actual paper. An on-line paper just doesn't employ the amount of people that an actual newspaper does.
No doubt, these are interesting times. Some of the smaller suburban papers are still doing well. They don't have the overhead and people will always want to read about their own kids hitting home runs in Little League. There are easily a half dozen web sites trying to fill the P-I void and there will be more. I don't know if anyone knows how it's all going to turn out.

There's Roller Derby and then There's Roller Derby

When it looked like the Seattle Sonics would be the leaving the northwest for the filthy lucre of Oklahoma City it was suggested on various websites and in chatrooms that one ideal tenant for the Key Arena would be the Rat City Rollergirls, the city's all-female Roller Derby league. This year, those skating affecianados get their wish - the league will be skating all of its bouts (as they're currently called) at Key.
I attended the Roller Derby tournament at Key Arena a couple of years ago, featuring teams from all over the country, as part of the Bumbershoot Festival. It was a good way to spend the day but when it comes to Roller Derby I'm a traditionalist. Some would say a conservative.
To me, Roller Derby will always be the game I watched on TV as a child - the San Francisco Bay Area Bombers led by Charlie O'Connell and Joan Weston. The women would skate the 1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th periods and the men would skate the 2nd, 4th, 6th and 8th. The Bombers would take on teams like the Northwest Cardinals, Northeast Braves, New York Chiefs, Midwest Pioneers and Southern Jolters at the Kezar Pavilion in San Francisco. In later years, the Chiefs and Pioneers would start playing home games and I saw the Chiefs several times at the Providence Civic Center.
Of course, there was a certain degree of showmanship and the dirty little secret was that the star pivot skaters like O'Connell, Bill Groll and Ronnie Robinson (son of Sugar Ray) knew how to control the game and keep the score close.
The current game features leagues all over the country that skate under basically the same rules. The game's are ``on the level'' which means that team's can theoretically beat their opponents, 120-1. The new league gets its' share of criticism as well. The women wear low-cut tops, shorts, and fishnet stockings. The Westons and Ann Calvello's of my childhood have been replaced by skaters using names like Atilla the Nun and Lucille Brawl.
When I attended the ``bouts'' at Key Arena the guy sitting in front of me turned and asked, ``what are the rules of this game besides cheering when a girl on the visiting team gets knocked on her ass''? At times I wasn't sure myself of some of these new-fangled Roller Derby rules.
However, I did find a YouTube clip explaining the rules in Bay Bomber-style Roller Derby. It's not the greatest clip in the world, but it shows the final period of the 1968 championship game between the Bombers (with O'Connell and Cliff Butler) and the Northwest Cardinals (led by Ken Monte and ``Wild Man'' Bobby Seever) at the Oakland Coliseum Arena.
Enjoy.

Wither Nickelsville

I reently attended a meeting for Nickelsville to discuss the future of Seattle's homeless encampment. Residents have to leave their current home, the University Congrational United Church by March 5, and currently have nowhere else to go. This is the Nickelodeons second home in the U District.
There were about 75 people in attendance and one thing was made the clear, Nickeleville isn't about to disband. According to Peggy Hotes, one of the on-stage speakers, a permanent site REMAINS the number one goal of the Nickelsville residents.
That was also the feeling of just about everyone who spoke from the floor. People in the hall did vote for finding a temporary home as the next thing to do but philosophically they want Nickelsville to find a permanent home.
I said there were plenty of places for Nickelsville. There were 39 proposed sites for the jail, and 34 of those were in South or Southwest Seattle which is where the city wants to dump such a facility. The Nickelodeons are a little more open-minded; they're considering the entire city, and are still looking into sites not owned by the city.
I think my comments from the floor made one of the Nickelsville leaders nostalgic. ``The first site we had (at Marginal Way and Highland) was being considered for a prison spot. That was a great spot for Nickelsville.'' Well I remember that Thursday night, two days after Nickelsville opened, when people came from all over, building a kitchen, a sign-in house, and putting up pink tents. And then the next morning, the city came and destroyed it.
There was also one guy in the audience who said Nickelsville should change its name because it was too political and scared away support from some housing groups. The response from the rest of the gathering was a resounding no. My friend Margaret, who's an outsider (she cooked one time for Nickelsville), was the hero of the day. She gave a passionate speech about why Nickelsville should keep its name and stay in Seattle. I think she said something about corrupt politicians as well. She received the loudest applause of the afternoon.
As for Nickelsville's namesake, supposedly there's a poll in existance that shows former City Council president Peter Steinbrueck ahead of Nickels in the mayoral race. What an irony it would be: Nickelsville, which they said would never last, lasting longer than Mayor Nickels.

The Modern Man

This week George Carlin was posthumously presented the Mark Twain humor award at the JFK Center. Carlin found out about the award a week before he died saying, ``Twain's people contacted his people.'' George Carlin would have been a great journalist. He was a keen observer of people and loved and respected language. The above was shown as George's ``acceptance'' speech.

F-U to G-A-U

Picture courtesy of Seattle Weekly blog.

I'm dating myself here but there was a joke in the `60's and `70's about the guy who said, ``my friends told me if I voted for Barry Goldwater the Viet Nam War would last another eight years. Sure enough, I voted for Goldwater and the war lasted another eight years.'' The modern joke, at least in Washington state, is about the guy who said, ``my friends told me if I voted for Dino Rossi, GAU would be cut. Sure enough, I voted for Rossi and they're cutting GAU.''
Christine Gregoire, she's the women who looks like she had too much Mexican food in the picture above, handily defeated Rossi for governor in November and in her new budget the kinder, gentler Gregoire announced she was cutting the state's General Assistance program.
GAU's a program for people who can't work because of health problems and they receive a grand total of $339 a month. It costs Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels more to sweep a homeless encampment on Beacon Hill. Someone told me that GAU was $333 a month 12 years ago. That means it's been raised a grand total of $6 in 12 years. People on Social Security got a $40 cost of living raise last month.
A few years ago I went with Real Change vendors and volunteers to the state capitol on Martin Luther King day. I was able to get an interview with Speaker of the House Frank Chopp, who was a bit of a hippie in his younger days. I set Frank off, which isn't the hardest thing to do, when I asked him about the state cutting GAU. Chopp said that was Dino Rossi and the Republicans deal. And they'd have to cut it over his fallen carcas.
I returned to the state capitol on Monday for another MLK Day and another opportunity for a lot of poor folks to meet with their legislators. A pleasant woman in Rep. Zach Hudgkins office told us that a lot of Senators and Representatives were unhappy with the Guv's budget proposal.
Of course, Gregoire may be playing some politics here. By putting GAU on the table she might be hoping that there will be such an outcry about trying to cut it, that the Republicans will never be able to go after it again.
Now some of you may be thinking, ``anybody who's living on $339 a month is probably homeless already and saving GAU isn't going to save the homeless.'' Of course, GAU should be much higher just like the minimum wage. But when I was on GAU I was able to get subsidized housing by putting down $339 a month as my income. Then my rent was fixed accordingly (CPC didn't make a lot of money off me). If GAU gets cut what happens when people put a big 0 next to their income?
Just another obstacle in preventing people from getting a roof over your heads. It's enough to make you feel like the Governor looks. Pass the chilli please.

Movietime

The best of `07 in `08 (or `09)

This time of year many media outlets rank the top movies of 2008. But since I watch most movies on DVD most of the movies I saw this past year came out in 2007 which was an outstanding year for movies. So to be different, here's my list of the top films of 2007.

10 Tie (ties for 10th are always good). Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Outrageous and vulgar this movie with the double entendre title was laugh-out-loud funny. The poor guy almost got hit in the face with a penis.
Persepolis. I didn't think I'd ever watch a cartoon about a girl (autobiographical cartoonist Marjane Serepi) growing up in the Middle East. But this engrossing film will teach you more about Iran than you'll ever learn on a TV newscast.

9. In The Valley Of Elah. There have been several movies about the Iraqi war (all of which have bombed at the box office) but this was the best thanks to a standout performance by Tommy Lee Jones. Tommy Lee's character lectures a school janitor early on about how the American flag is only supposed to fly upside down if the country's in a lot of trouble. When you see him walking towards the flag at the end of the film it's pretty powerful.

8. The Waitress. A small, independant movie about the trials and tribulations of some small-town waitresses. The movie's also about pies: The I Don't Want To Have A Baby Pie - quiche, egg, brie and smoked salmon; or the I Hate My Husband Pie - bittersweet chocolate and caramel.

7. Sicko. American health care sucks; Europe's is better, and this Michael Moore offering (his best movie) sends Sean Hannity into apoplexy. The DVD interview with Che Guevara's daughter is a must for socialists.

6. Before The Devil Knows You're Dead. The bungling partner movie of the year. Philip Seymour Hoffman cons his brother (Ethan Hawke) into doing all the work. Said brother always screws up. Movie begins with a full-screen shot of Hoffman's bare butt.

5. Juno. During a trip to the video store last summer I realized that everyone knew Juno. Even people who hadn't seen the movie. Some of it was the poster but Juno was a unique character and none of the movies characters made predictable decisions. Washington state's Kimya Dawson provided the funky music.

4. Gone Baby Gone. One of the things about living in different parts of the country is that you realize how pronounced regional accents are. Even if Gone Baby Gone (adapted from a Dennis Lehane novel) wasn't a good story these are the best Boston accents in the history of movies. That's because director Ben Affleck cast actual Bostonions who really did ``drive their caas to Dorchestuh.''

3. Across The Universe. A musical comprised solely of Beatle songs was probably inevitable and this movie will also get higher points from (some) Beatles' aficionado's. Also kudos to the movie's producers for using some lesser known (at least to me) Beatles' songs such as Across The Universe, Dear Prudence, and Happiness Is A Warm Gun. However, the male lead is still named Jude.

2. Michael Clayton. An underrated movie that focuses on three characters played by George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton. The message here is that corruption is there but sometimes we just don't want to see it. And if we do see it, Michael Clayton (Clooney) will ask if we've stopped taking our meds.

1. No Country For Old Men. Speaking of interesting characters this Coen brothers' epic stars Javier Bardem as the stoic killer with the Moe Howard haircut. Despite criticisms of being too violent, No Country is reminiscent of the quirky, unpredictable movies of the `90's (some made by the Coen brothers). The only movie made in the last few years that may be considered a classic.

A trip to one video store showed that only Gone Baby Gone and Sicko aren't in the new movies section. I went to one movie in theaters this past year - Burn After Reading - and spent $17 on the movie, popcorn and soda. No doubt, I'll be watching most movies at home again this year.

Where's Denny Crane when we need him

The Boston Legal TV show began winding up last week just as a pre-trial hearing took place at Seattle Municipal Court for 23 citizens who were arrested at Nickelsville back in October. Those folks opted not to leave the West Marginal Way site as a sign of civil disobedience when the police told people living there (residentially challenged, a new term I just found) that they couldn't campout.
You can read the jist of the homeless problem on some of my previous posts and on some of other blogs that I hope to link too sometime this century. Anyway, I showed up at the court to lend moral support to Andrea Bauer and Steve Hoffman, two of the people arrested at Nicklesville that day. Andrea and Steve represent the Freedom Socialist Party, one of many organizations that's stepping up big time for people who sometimes have trouble fighting for themselves.
Andrea, Steve and the other Nickelsville defendants went out in the corrider to plan their next move as the rest of us sat watching the other court cases. Some of it was tedious, and we almost wished that BL's outrageous Denny Crane would make an appearance to liven things up.
But there was one case that stood out. A young woman was brought into court, wearing orange prison garb, and her hands tied behind her back. I wondered if she had just killed 15 people. It turns out the women, who looked about 21, was involved in a hit-and-run accident (apparently no one was hurt); she has a drinking problem and no way to pay damages on the other car.
The judge, Judith Hightower, said that the court would work with the girl if she gets a job (I assume that's after she got released) and she started with restitution for the car. I had two thoughts: 1) this poor girl probably ain't going to find a job and 2) if she had a rich daddy, she sure as hell wouldn't be getting dragged into court tied up like Bobby Seale at the Chicago 7 trials. It is indeed a classist society.
When the Nickelsville people returned it was decided that they'd be heading to court on March 10 at 9 AM. It sounds like they're ready to fight the system and Andrea says, that why'll many of these people were strangers, they're starting to bond, kinda like a sports team.
Hightower, the judge hearing the case, is the same judge who told the city a couple of years ago that she wasn't going to prosecute anymore people who were brought in for sleeping on the street if the shelters are full. The judge, a small black woman, with short hair, probably in her late `50's, seemed pretty lay back as well. She said if anyone wanted to film the trial just let the lawyers know. Apparently, there's at least one Nickelsville documentary being made.
Let the games begin.

The above YouTube has some really cool stuff that was mostly filmed by Revel and Alex from Real Change unless otherwise noted. There's stuff from all over the country if you click on to the little boxes underneath.

A Personal History

On December 1 2008, my father would have been 95 years old. Even though he’s now been dead more than half of my life he’s still the best person I've ever met. I’ve been thinking about how much 20^th century history my dad actually lived through.

My dad was an altar boy growing up. He never would have said anything if a priest touched him inappropriately but he remembered being on the altar a few times when the priest was too drunk to serve Mass. He remember leaning on one priest so he didn’t tip over.

He quit high school during the Depression to go to work in the mills to help support his family. These were changing times in Rhode Island where he grew up. The unions were becoming a force in the mills and Irish, Italian and Polish immigrants were literally taking control of the state, voting straight Democratic tickets of course and going to Catholic Church every Sunday. The Republican White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (called WASPs) who owned the mills, the media and the banks were losing power.

My dad probably thought at one point that he’d never leave Rhode Island. But most able-bodied males went into the service when World War II started. My father traveled to places like Guam, New Guinea and even briefly Hawaii. I guess I’m my father’s son, the thing that most impressed my dad about New Guinea was that women didn’t wear tops on the beach. Looking back, I would have liked to have asked more about his travels. But when you’re a teenager you know everything, and then when you get older there’s so much you want to learn.

My dad was stationed in Washington D.C. for much of the War and said he looked liked Radar from MASH then- he was a clerk also, relatively short, wearing green fatigues and glasses. Sundays were the soldiers’ day off. My dad never forgot riding on the bus; there were no problems when the bus was in Washington, but as soon as it reached the Virginia state line; the blacks (most of them soldiers in uniform) had to go to the back of the bus.

When my dad grew up in RI there weren’t many blacks living there and he didn’t think much about black people. But he thought it was the damndest thing that black soldiers, who were defending their country, had to move to the back of the bus. I’m sure my dad had more empathy for black people when he saw signs in front of stores in Virginia saying, ``no dogs, Yankees or (insert `n’) word allowed. And that was the pecking order. My dad was below a dog but above a black. The greatest irony is that the part of Virginia just outside of DC is a fairly wealthy area now; what some commentators call the most ``liberal or Democratic’’ part of the state. My dad went back to school on the GI Bill and got a college degree in accounting. That’s something W wanted to cut out, even though HIS father and a lot of influential Americans went to college on the GI Bill.

I’ve been reading Tom Brokaw’s book about the 1960’s where Bill Clinton said you can tell a lot about people by how they felt about the `60’s. My dad liked the `60’s. He liked the military also because it had been a good experience for him, but at parties he liked to hang out with my younger cousins. He said that the younger generation coming up was less hypocritical than his generation. It particularly bothered him that his generation considered it so terrible if a man and woman lived together without being married.

Even when my dad died it was an historic time. He died walking outside in the blizzard of 1978, the worst snow storm to hit the Northeast in 100 years. My mom and I had to go to the hospital to identify his body and got stranded there. It was over a week before we had a funeral.

Of course, my memories of my father are more personal. He told me to never use the `n' word, the `f' word, and go to church every Sunday. Well I never use the `n' word. And he taught me how to drink while we watched Johnny Carson monologues on television. ``Hey son, I'll open another can of Narragansett if you share it with me.'' I won't get a better offer all day.

What A Difference Four Years Make

The night of the election I saw something I thought I'd never see. I was chilling out at the Showbox in downtown Seattle when CNN flashed across the screen that they were projecting Barack Obama as the next President of the United States.
The room literally exploded. I saw one girl jump two feet in the air from a standing position. A woman I'd been talking with came back from the bar where she'd been ordering some food. ``I just made out with about 12 people, four of them girls.'' Later on I discovered that hundreds of people were partying on Capitol Hill, an area filled with young people, liberals and gays. It wasn't that a black man had been elected that surprised me so much; it was the massive celebration for a politician. Aren't politicians somewhere between ax murderers and child rapists on the food chain. Usually people celebrate like this when a team in the city wins the World Series. Yes, I know this is Seattle but as more than one person pointed out to me, Seattle sports fans don't have this passion.
As revelers continued their reveling, I couldn't help but think back to Election Night four years earlier. I'd been writing a lot for the Real Change newspaper in Seattle and received two passes from the editor to go to the Democratic Party shindig at another hotel. Stacey, one of the RC interns was voting for the first time and was really into the election. She was driving everyone in the office crazy talking about it. ``Gee, why don't you take Stacey with you to the political party.''
So off I headed, with my intern to Democratic headquarters (insert Bill Clinton joke hear). It was no joke to see Stacey (who people thought was my daughter) crying at the end of the night when George W. was re-elected.
Stacey's mood was even worse in the next couple of days. She attended Antioch College, a progressive school in Ohio. If students came from a state where John Kerry was expected to win - like Stacey who came from upstate New York - they were being encouraged by their teachers to vote in Ohio where a close race was expected. Stacey had been on the phone with friends and Antioch students were assigned to a polling place that had only a couple of old voting booths. The Ohio secretary of state WAS head of the Bush campaign. Some students waited eight hours or didn't vote at all. I was tempted to say to Stacey, ``welcome to the real world." But she felt bad enough without me being a smart-ass.
I got to thinking about Jimmy Breslin's book that week - How The Good Guys Finally Won about Richard Nixon's resignation. And how Bush's re-election showed good guys don't win anymore. It turned out that there were a lot of voter discrepencies in Ohio but Kerry didn't have the fight in him. Too bad for Stacey and her friends.
Maybe that's what people were celebrating that Tuesday night. I have a lot of cynicism about Obama - Nixon got us out of Viet Nam and into Cambodia, Obama will get us out of Iraq and into Afghanistan - but I like how he gives people hope. And as the title of the book says, for one night at least, it felt like the good guys finally won.

Baseball and Porn

Two of the three major league baseball players from Rhode Island - Tampa Bay Rays' outfielder Rocco Baldelli (bottom) and pitcher Danny Wheeler (top) - played in this year's World Series. The third - catcher Chris Iannetta - played in last year's WS for the Colorado Rockies. More importantly, he took one of my cousins to her ninth grade prom. As the comedian Steve Wright once said, ``it's a small world but I wouldn't want to paint it."

Wheeler was coming up thru the Warwick, Rhode Island Little League and Babe Ruth programs when I left that city in the early `90's. I don't think anyone expected him to be a big-leaguer when he was 14. He was one of those guys who just kept getting better.

Rocco on the other hand was one of the greatest athletes to come out of the state. Besides baseball he ran track and was offered a college volleyball scholarship almost unheard of for a player from New England.

I interviewed Rocco once along with his cousin Jonathan Smith when they were about to face off in the state high school championship series. I remember two things - 1) Rocco was quieter and Jonathan did most of the talking and 2) a couple of nights later Baldelli hit a home run off his cousin that left McCoy Stadium - the home of the Boston Red Sox's Triple A team.

Baldelli came from the northern part of the state and played high school ball at the Catholic school down in Warwick so my old paper and new paper at the time showed an interest in him. I was working for my new paper when I talked to Deb my partner from the old paper on the phone. Deb thought Rocco was a great kid but was surprised when she heard that Rocco's family ran a porn shop.

I was surprised also. Rocco's uncle, Charlie Baldelli had once been Mayor of Woonsocket, R.I. But then again Rhode Island had bishop's who went to mobsters funerals. Fortunately, I was talking to my friend Rich a few days later. Rich was working in Central Mass. at the time; the best editor I ever had and a guy who knew everything about Northern RI sports not to mention the name of every bad baseball player and rock song that came out of the `60's and `70's. He was the guy to ask about Baldelli.

After nearly passing a kidney stone from laughing so hard, Rich exclaimed, ``I love how Rhode Islanders pronounce the word p-o-r-n and p-a-w-n the same way. '' In fact, Rocco's dad ran Woonsocket's biggest pawn (not porn) shop for several years.

If you've read this far, that's the only connection I know between baseball and porn (although some would argue that both were better in the 1970's than they are today).

Rocco Baldelli battled a mitochondrial disorder to hit home runs in last month's American League Championship Series and the World Series. Rich Pedroli, a former writer and editor for the Woonsocket Call, Miford News and MetroWest News, died suddenly of a heart attack last year. He touched the hearts of many in the newspaper and sports world.

Let's All Go To Nickelsville

In the movie Burn After Reading, a couple of CIA agents wrap up all the storylines in the final scene. At one point, one of the CIA guys looks into the camera and says, ``have we learned anything from this? I don’t think we’ve learned a fucking thing.’’

For a second I thought I was watching Seattle mayor Greg Nickels and his staff discussing Nickelsville the homeless encampment that the mayor’s office has been chasing around the city for the last month.

Seattle’s shantytown, built by and for the homeless, has had four homes since it came to fruition last month. First it was in Southwest Seattle, but police chased Nickelodeons off the West Marginal Way site although 22 campers and friends stayed to be arrested as a sign of civil disobedience.

Nickelodeons camped in the parking lot briefly (that’s owned by the state, the vacant field they were originally squatting is owned by the city) and then moved to Discovery Park in the northern part of the city. Nickelodeons thought they were okay on tribal land but the city claimed their presence violated the city lease with the United Indians of All Tribes. The tribe also asked the Nickelodeons to leave presumably to avoid further hassle from their landlord. Fortunately, Nickelsville now has a lawyer, from the Northwest Justice Project, who kept getting the date moved back before the Nickelodeons left Discovery Park.

I recently talked to one of the guys who got arrested in Southwest Seattle and he was in a grumpy mood. ``The city said they own the West Marginal Way property but that’s only in white man’s law. The Duwamish (Indian Tribe) owned it first. Then the city says that Nickelsville being on Indian land violates the Indian’s lease with the city. What does the lease say? You’re not allowed to be humane towards the homeless?

His mood didn’t improve any when I told him that if Nickelsville hadn't left Discovery Park the city was planning to fine homeless groups for every day that they stayed. Groups such as Share/Wheel, Veterans for Peace, ROOTS a.k.a. Rising Out of the Shadows and the Interfaith Task Faith on Homelessness.

``The UN ruled that you can’t do that (fine third parties),” my friend Steve bellowed. The United Nations! Holy crap. Perhaps someone like feisty Anita Freeman, a Nickelsville spokesperson, could go and speak before the UN. All kidding aside, people who can’t get food and shelter must feel like they’re in a war zone sometimes.

Things have been quiet lately as Nickelsville has been at its new home- the United Christian Church in the University section of the city across from the Church Council of Greater Seattle. Members of Nickelsville met with their new neighbors last week and explained what they were all about.

Some members of Nickelsville would like to the mayor as well. The day before they left West Marginal Way a group from Nickelsville went down to City Hall. The mayor refused to meet with them (surprise) and one Nickelodeon told me they even locked the elevators. If you’re healthy enough to walk the long staircase it doesn’t matter because you won’t get any farther than the reception area, all the offices are behind locked glass doors.

Like the campouts in front of City Hall, Nickelsville has been successful in putting the plight of the homeless into the mainstream media. A couple of web sites – nickelsvilleseattle.org and the realchangeorganizingproject.blogspot.com provide information and links to past media coverage.

As someone noted on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer web site, ``I’ve complained in the past about the homeless in Belltown who panhandle and defecate in alleys. But Nickelsville is an example of homeless people doing something to help themselves.’’ Here’s hoping the city will see it that way someday.

You Can't Register A Complaint Here

One of the things about being a political activist, who by definition is tilting windmills at the establishment, is that you occasionally run into one of those delicious moments right out of the books 1984 or Catch-22.
Nickelsville opened Monday at 4am in Seattle, a new shantytown/homeless camp, named after our beloved mayor Greg Nickels. A hard-working group of homeless who don't have anything else had their pink fuscia tents set up (thanks go out to the Girl Scouts for those) by evening. Then the cops showed up and put up a sign giving the campers 72 hours to evacuate.
I work at an activist organization on Wednesday and my boss thought it would be a good idea that instead of writing the events calendar like I usually do, I should round up some people in the office to call the Mayor and register complaints about Nickelsville closing. Many people around the city were doing the same thing.
While I sent out an e-mail to the Mayors office and wrote a few letters, three women made calls. One couldn't get through, another had her name taken by the main reception who said the Mayor's office would call back (she's still waiting for that call) but a third women hit the jackpot.
She talked to the City Hall receptionist who was quite friendly and got transferred to one of the Mayor's aides. By the way, the Mayor is getting new aides all the time, he could solve the homeless problem just by hiring the people at Nicklelsville as aides.
Su wisely asked the aide if the Mayor was still planning to close Nickelsville. When the female aide, not as friendly as the receptionist, said he was, Su said she wanted to register a complaint. The aide replied, "you can't register a complaint here, you can only leave a message."
Several people I've told that story too have responded with various degrees of amusement. But there's no missing that it shows just how arrogant the Mayor's office has become. Sadly, not unlike other politicians, Nickels has gone more-and-more to putting policy pronouncements on his web site so he doesn't have to deal with the media directly. So much for accountability.
Hopefully, the electorate will hold Nickels accountable in the next election. And if his aide winds up living in a pink tent in Nickelsville - don't complain, just leave a message.

Beware of Hockey Moms

Last week at the Republican National Convention the GOP’s nominee for vice-president, Sarah Palin, identified herself as a ``hockey mom.’’ In a lot of the country, people just shook their heads knowingly trying to pretend they knew what a hockey mom was. But outside of the upper Midwest, New England, and apparently Alaska, most people really don’t.

At one time in my life I was primarily a hockey writer. The hockey team in the town I worked was ranked the number one high school team in the country. Several of their players went on to the National Hockey League. I wrote about college hockey, minor league hockey, even a couple of articles on women’s hockey. And I heard from the hockey moms.

Hockey parents are unique. It’s the only sport where parents have to drive their kids to practice before school because of rink availability. There are also hockey tournaments; so parents have to drive their kids hundreds of miles in the cold winters to get to all of their games. You can imagine what it’s like if parents have two or three kids playing at different age levels. I also imagine that Sarah Palin buys her kids new hockey equipment every year.

Those may be some of the factors that make hockey parents and hockey moms, shall we say, a little on the feisty side. Besides the berating of coaches, referees, other players and other parents, they sometimes get in a little snit with the local paper. I took calls from hockey moms about spelling their kids names wrong; a legitimate complaint even though the kid had a name like Tzulowinowski or something likes that. And you’d try to explain that the coach, or worse, a high school girl calling in the score to the paper, didn’t know (or care) how to spell the name.

There were some hockey moms who weren’t even subtle. People I know, especially those who don’t consider high school sports a life or death, are surprised when I tell them that there were parents who would call the paper and say we weren’t writng about their little Johnny enough. Parents had it in their minds that how often we mentioned their kid would affect whether they’d get a college hockey scholarship to a good school. The rest of their lives was in our hands. Of course, there were scouts who went to the game who knew far better than me whether a player was a college or pro prospect.

Some of the hockey moms (and dads) really were barracudas and I’m kinda glad I’m not dealing with them anymore.

Come On Down...To Jail

You can tell you’re in the Bible Belt when you see more churches than Starbucks

Down here (West Texas) there are more prisons than Starbucks

- from the movie `Life Of David Gale'

A group I’m involved with, the Real Change Organizing Project, has recently taken up the cause of not building a new prison in Seattle. Projections that the county made for estimated prison population is about 4,000 people short but the city wants to build a new prison anyway.

I’ve always felt the worse thing about prisons is that the powers-that-be always find a way to fill them. Prison population in this country went from 19,000 in 1980 to 251,200 in 1999 no doubt in large part to the countries ill-advised war on drugs.

But it wasn’t until recent years, when I stopped writing just about sports and took a shot at more real world stuff, that I discovered the whole concept of privatizing prisons. Prisons just like wars and TV news has become nothing more than a way to make money. And that means more prisoners. Dick Cheney’s company, Halliburton, is involved in prisons.

Sometimes it’s hard to find who actually owns your neighborhood prison. A Seattle paper is using the Freedom of Information Act to find out who’s building the new Seattle prison. When I did a google search, ``who’s building Seattle prisons,’’ I couldn’t get anything.

However, I did stumble across one of the great Internet rumors which is that former Price Is Right game show host and Happy Gilmour star Bob Barker, owns 90% of the prisons and makes $3,000 on every prisoner. If you don’t watch game shows this is the guy who’s always yelling for people to ``come on down.’’ Insert your own joke about Bob Barker greeting prisoners here.

It turns out that Bob Barker Company of Fuquay-Varina, N.C. is in fact American’s leading detention supplier (and we all thank them for that). But this Bob Barker has nothing to do with game shows. It’s actually a family run business that started with plumbing and now even provides the telephones at the prison in Minneapolis.

Nevertheless, there are people who still believe that TV’s Bob Barker, who also tells people to neuter their pets, runs our nation’s prison system. It makes for a good blog posting but I’ve always felt that the really ridiculous conspiracy theories just get in the way of those that have some truth to them. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.

A tie to the past

Recently I attended a Boston Red Sox game against the Mariners at Seattle's Safeco Field. The first Red Sox game I attended was at Fenway Park in Boston, September 18, 1967. The Red Sox beat the New York Yankees that day, 9-1. Mickey Mantle played in that game. So did Jim Bouton, who wrote ``Ball Four,'' one of the best sports' books ever. I enjoy telling Red Sox fans I meet that I probably saw my first game before they were born. I'm usually right.

I'm one of those nerdy fans they talked about on ESPN after Boston won the World Series in 2004. People who thought about parents and grandparents who had long since passed away having never seen the Red Sox win a world championship. My parents weren't huge fans but my dad took me to my first game and many others after that. My mother didn't know a lot about baseball but Red Sox Hall-of-Famer Carl Yastrzemski was her favorite player. She called him Carly. And I often think of the words of former Red Sox relief pitcher Mike Myers (one of the most obscure players on the team) who said ``when a New Englander finds out you were on the 2004 Red Sox they don't say congratulations they say thank you.''

So it's hard for me to scoff at Seattle Sonic fans who feel a void now that they've lost their team. For me, following the Red Sox (and other Boston teams) 3,000 miles away is a tie to home and to the past.

The Red Sox beat the Mariners, 6-3, in 12 innings. There were loads of Boston fans on hand. Many were born after 1967. It wasn't Fenway Park and Carl Yastrzemski didn't play but you can't beat a day at the ballpark.