Fifteen is Not Enough

You can't draw water from a dry well. Just take that as gospel. If you don't know what a well is, search "Timmy" and "Down the" at your earliest convenience. But for now assume that the well is metaphor for the working class, and we are (have been for a long time) running on dry.

When adjusting the minimum wage from our hey day years of the 40's through the 60's, economists tend to put the minimum wage between $12 and $20 per hour, or somewhere between 24,900 and 41,600 a year before taxes in today's dollars. Another way to look at this kind of money is this: enough to make the three times rent margin with most apartments, enough money to purchase a new car, enough to afford a house costing between $70,000 and $120,000. Of course not everyone will do all of those things. Who needs to rent an apartment and buy a house; not everyone wants a new car. So instead, with this kind of money, people will do other things. Go to more movies. Buy more trinkets. Go on vacations. Spend more on groceries. In short, they'll dump that money into the economy.

Evidenced in the post war boom in America, where wages and middle income soared, more money for the middle meant more money for everyone. The gilded age of the 60's saw the rise of American purchasing power--something that is still happening today, though we can barely afford it anymore. If the 1980's and 2000's have taught us anything, it's that giving money to those who already have more than they know what to do with will only hurt us. Reagan created one of the largest deficits in our history with his planned tax cuts, which he then reneged on in order to make the government solvent. Similarly, W's tax cuts in the 00's turned our surplus nation on it's head, leaving us in a deficit that we are still in, seventeen years later.

The rich will only hold on to their money. That is what makes a rich person rich: miserly behavior. But a middle and working poor American will spend. They, after all, need to spend. The kids need shoes or new shorts for school, and the fourteen year old Focus dad has been driving to work is about to crap out. Americans will spend because of necessity. Then they will spend because they feel they deserve it; a long day of working on the Focus deserves a stop at the local ice cream shop, or local theatre.

But there is a caveat to all this. In order for this kind of economic boom to happen, you need people in the black right off the mark. This was the problem with Obama's big tax breaks during his first term. He managed to push some big tax breaks for the middle through, but the middle was already saddled with debt, under water mortgages, and financial PTSD. Instead of spending and jump starting the economy, they socked the money away, or paid of their long overdue bills. And to economy petered on, making it but barely.

To jump start the economy the way Obama foresaw, and Bernie dreams about, a wage increase of astronomical proportions is due. The fight for fifteen is not enough. Fifteen won't buy an apartment in Detroit. It won't buy a new car either. If we are to see the golden years like the 50's and 60's we need to see wages go up to at least $20 per hour for every full time worker. It will mean that the profits won't be astronomic for our corporation, but, to be honest, they've made a nearly immoral amount of money over the past few decades at the expense of the American people. If you want a growing economy, you need high wages. The more money you give the middle, the more they will spend it on the things that companies make: more phones, newer cars, more houses, more movie tickets, more ice cream at the local shop. Corporate America will have to get used to the idea of being just rich, instead of filthy rich.

If something isn't done soon, there will be no saving the middle of America. Not only will we have been too poor for too long, but there won't be anything left to give back. If Trump's tax plan, Trickle Down Redeux, goes into effect, there may be no money left in the economy to go back to the middle. It will all be tied up in investments and savings accounts in the Cayman Islands. The top one percent already has most of the nations wealth. How much longer until they get the rest?

And it will only be after they've gotten all that money that they'll realize: it does nothing to make phones or cars when there is no one left with a dollar to spend on them. But don't expect that to be a lesson learned. Misers will always be.

It was easier for everyone under Obama

You can go ahead and admit it; it's true. Life was easier for everyone under Obama. Republicans had it easier. Liberals had it easier. The only people that seem to be having a good time with all this are the American Taliban, otherwise known as the far right evangelical, and alt right white supremacists.

It was easier for the Republicans,because it's so easy to hate a guy that exemplifies everything you've been railing against for years: a brown, college educated, liberal/globally minded intellectual with aspirations to bring America into the future. Basically the antithesis to a party that routinely championed the greatness of our country, based primarily on the mythos of Vietnam being our attempt to "bring freedom" and WW2 in which we stopped the Axis of Evil--something that was done primarily with Russian blood, not American, but that is an topic for another day. Obama championed health care for all, reforms for banks, and deescalating our foreign wars.

In 2008, he was called the Anti-Christ, UnAmerican, someone how hates freedom. And that was so easy. It was, in fact, the easiest eight years for the Republican party. They sat back, said, "no," a lot, and spent a great deal of their air time complaining that what Obama was doing would destroy America. Never mind the fact that Obama turned into a real war hawk, expanding the drone program, assassinated an American citizen abroad, and expanded our presence in the Middle East. To the GOP he was the greatest villain they had ever seen.

The reality is this: none of the initiatives that Obama put in place turned out the way the GOP and its satellites like Fox and Info Wars said they would. The ACA was not a death panel; it did not take over health care in America (though it should have). It was a lukewarm jump into socialized health care, opening markets in a way that was previously impossible, and--in many respects--in ways that many of Obama's detractors liked. No previous condition restricts is Obama's legacy. Making it so that health insurers cannot charge women more is also Obama's win. But the ACA did not achieve universal coverage. Costs did not go down. The disparities between an X-ray in America versus an X-ray in Canada is still staggering. Almost as staggering as Obama's change on foreign policy.

Obama's foreign policy was a continuation of what every president has done since Truman: more war for the war machine, less liberty for the free. The only major difference is that spending did not go up after the sequester. But despite that, even under Obama--the peacenik communist Muslim sleeper agent--US spending was still more than it's allies, minus Japan, combined.

Trump makes things a lot harder. Mostly, now the GOP has to do actual work. If the past six months is any indication, writing laws that don't suck is a lot harder than zero sum opposition, especially when you have a party largely high jacked by a large section of the population that does not believe in facts. Case and point, watch this exchange from Raul Labrador here, or Mike Pence's reaction to an HIV outbreak in his home state of Indiana here. Both of these men are proof that republicans will choose their ideology over the good of the people they serve. And the consequences are devastating.

Pence and Labrador are clear markers of how the GOP is great at pushing ideology. It is, in fact, the best. An entire part of the news cycle is built off of a GOP platform, something that Democrats have struggled with since the left leaning (hell, left tumbling) MSNBC still has loose cannons like Rachel Maddow, who spent weeks of her life hitting Obama for expanding the drone program, and many liberals decrying the continuity of domestic surveillance programs here, and here. Really, you can look plug a few key words into google. You'll get a mountain of data.

This solidarity on pro-life, guns, Murica, anti-science--along with a gerrymandered to hell electoral map--is what made 2017 possible. The USA political body is now so conservative, white, and evangelical, one would not be remiss in mistaking us for a Christianity version of Iran; states like Texas clearly already are, and have been for some time with their pro-life and anti-LGBT legislation that shatters basic tenets of our Constitution and Supreme Court rulings like Roe v. Wade. But it is policy know how and smarts that get things done, not a flag waving in the wind or a Bible in your hand. That truth the GOP is yet to learn. Then again, truth has never been their strongest suit.

Chicago Trip II: the Distant Sister

We arrived an hour late--by anyone's time--in the Windy City, and right on time for rush hour. Already the similarities between Detroit and Chicago were already taking shape before us. Rush hour here is almost as bad at rush hour at home.

Make no mistake, Chicago has a beauty and mystique that is truly it's own. The sheer number of high rise hotels, apartments, and business towers is staggering--and climbing ever taller, every year. The history behind the city--a series of mishaps, misfortunes, and miscreants looking to make a buck or a thousand--is one-of-a-kind. But in the same token, it was still eerily familiar.

The presence of young and old hipsters, helping to raise the rent, was all around us. The streets and businesses named after states that were not Illinois, were there too. Chicago has it's Ohio. We've got Wyoming, among others. Detroit and Chicago share their talent for making a memorable hot dog, though we did not draw a consensus over which was superior. All for the better. Nick is a man of the moment. In this moment it was the Chicago Dog. In another moment, it would have been the Coney. And Mike had his with ketchup. Nothing else.

And, of course, there is the art as architecture. Now, there is no denying it here: Chicago got us beat. The sheer number of artistic structures that you can find all over this city is ridiculous. The glowing glass block towers and "walk like Jesus" fountain, to the headless men wandering around Lakeshore Dr., to Cloud Gate, otherwise know as the Bean--it was almost overwhelming. One weekend in the city was not enough time to get in all of it.

Still, the Bean is no match for the Spirit of Detroit, who sports a Red Wings jersey during the Stanley Cup. I'd like to see the Bean do that. Or see it try and go a couple rounds with Joe Louis' fist.

And then there was the poverty. 

Chicago is a city of layers, much like the onion it is named after. Layers of roads that cross over other roads, and parking structures so integral to the city you couldn't imagine anything else in its place. And there are layers of garbage, and dirt. Some of it hidden by concrete. Some of it not.

We had the luck of taking the bus tour of the city, which gave us a solid overview of the entire experience. Sears Tower, the Pier, the Chicago Theatre. We got a taste of all things awesome. But in an unexpected stop under the Lakeshore Dr. over pass, where police sirens ground all of us to a halt, we got a taste of somethings else.

In Detroit, we wear our despair on our sleeve. You see the homeless everyday, at every turn. You see their living situations clearly on every drive at eye level; there are fewer dark corners to hide. But it took dumb luck to find this. It reminds you just how hard it is to make it anywhere. And the homeless of Chicago seem particularly hardened.

Still, like Detroit, you move on. The sadness does not get you down when there is so much to do, so much concrete to walk, hot dogs to eat, towers to climb, and history to take in. And I have cataloged most of it in my bachelor weekend in my viewbug portfolio, available here. It is a beautiful city to walk--which we walked roughly 20 miles over the course of two days--and breath taking when you stop and look up. For a big city boy like me, this was one for the bucket list.

That's all from Elliott at the Kitchen Table.

Chicago Trip I: the Places Between Cities

I took a road trip with my two best friends, Mike and Nick, a few weeks back. It was an early bachelor party for my August wedding this year. Better to get these things out of the way early, and avoid being a still-drunk groom cliche later.

We started our trip riding out of farm country, Adrian, in what can only be considered a light class monster truck. Mike, my oldest friend, was the driver, and the only man I know capable of parallel parking an F-250 in a spot meant for a Prius, Lucky we didn't have to; the concept of a truck for personal use was a novelty in Chicago, and granted us a very special parking spot.


But out journey was not as easy as finding that spot.

We have a saying in Michigan. There are only three seasons: Fall, Winter, and Construction. Illinois and Indian, as it turns out, have the same saying. Routed from I-94, our five hour journey turned into a back roads adventure, eventually dumping us off in Gary, Indiana.

I have no photos of Gary. I grew up, and live still, just outside Detroit. I walked the Cass Corridor nightly between 2005 and 2010 in order to avoid parking fees on campus. I'm used to seeing abandoned homes, empty stores, hollowed out skeletons of things stripped then burnt. I grew up by a city of fire.

But in Detroit, there is hope. The corridor has WSU. Where, I used to park, there is now a textile shop. The old Blimpy was torn down to make way for high rise apartments. When all else failed, all I had to do was look up, and see the Downtown sky line in ink black silhouettes, incandescent, and neon lights.

In Gary, the sorrow went on, seemingly forever.

I know we left Gary, Indiana at some point. I just can say when that point was.

"We've got to be out by now," Nick, my newest friend, said, appealing to the logic of time and space in a place frozen from both.

Mike checked the map. It, too, was unsure.

Finally, Mike said, "Oh, we're coming up from the south."

"So this is the South Side now?"

It might as well have been Gary.

Slowly, the South Side turned into the city interior: Streeterville, then the Miracle Mile. All turned glass, and glorious. It the world inside Chicago, Gary might as well have not existed.

Driving through it, I feel that Gary is more than just a place. It's an idea. It's a sense of despair, of loss, of a time and place that left it behind. In Gary--and all that surrounding sorrow that Gary seemed to infect--time was immaterial. And to its detriment, very material to the world around it.

That's all from Elliot at the Kitchen Table

The Long Away

It's funny finding something of yours online that you almost forgot entirely. You see like one sees an ex-partner: you recognize; they remember; but time and experience has rendered the both of you nearly unrecognizable.

That's the way I felt seeing Elliot at the Kitchen Table.

It was a part of my life for so long, yet one day I said enough was enough. No reason beyond that. Life, maybe, was getting in the way. My bouts of depression were making it harder to write and generally function. My son was starting grade school, and I was working more hours than I ever had. And not in industries I enjoyed--just the ones that paid a regular check.

Fulfilling, they were not. Soul-sucking. Spirit-crushing. But there was a check every two weeks. That was the perk.

You know--a real world job.

Yet here we are: close to three years later after my last post. Maybe it's time to indulge again in this child's dream, even if the typewriters are spending more time in the closet than on the desk now, and that my hair is a little thinner on top than it was before.

I guess this is a long winded way of saying: New Material in 2017.

That's not all from Elliott at the Kitchen Table.

Freelance: Part V

Another in a series of articles done for the Observer & Eccentric website and newspapers. This is my coverage of the Big Reveal, on the 20th of November, and a feature for Thursday's Christmas Open House.

http://www.hometownlife.com/story/life/2014/12/02/thursday-open-house/19771195/

That's all from Elliott at the Kitchen Table, wrapping up his holiday shopping with the joy that he didn't have to go out on Black Friday.

Stringers Attached

It's an instant conversation killer, saying that you're a freelance writer. Usually I get a noncommittal--nonetheless nice--smile. Other times I get nothing. After all, that can't possibly be a career. No one makes money writing little "stories" right?

The Journalist's weapon of choice circa 1949

Well, not enough, I have to clarify. I do this other things, too. A job that is more of a "job" in said person's mind, and their attitude changes from one of incredulity to one of general approval.

In truth, I would probably feel the same way had I not met the nicest freelance writer in the world when I was at Wayne State University. He took a writing class with me. His writing was solid, though he confessed a fear of writing from imagination, which complicated things since it was a fiction writing class.

Afterward, when we had gone our separate ways, I ran into him in the library. I was researching medieval castles for a novel I had been working on for two years, and am yet to finish! He was looking up possible jobs.

"You seriously find work this way?"

"Yep. This is how I have always been paid."

It seemed incredulous then, too. Then I never entertained the idea of being a journalist. I was yet to read "Fear and Loathing: on the Campaign Trail '72" or "In Cold Blood" or "Travels with Charlie" or Hemingway's work with the Toronto Star.

That was years ago. Now there is the karmic simplicity of having to explain myself to those who don't understand, who do not see my job as a real job.

And I revel in knowing that I can now find myself on Google. Then feel sad, thinking that I hold that as some kind of standard of existing.

That's all from Elliott at the Kitchen Table, getting ready to bust out the Cranberry and Goat Cheese. Happy Thanksgiving.

The Comeback Kid

My father and I had this debate: Would anyone be interested in a period film version of Batman and the Justice League? I stood (and stand still) firmly on the side that says. 

My reasons for why are: the rise in fascination (and the price in resale) of typewriters, rotary phones, vintage glasses and vintage anything; Kickstarters like the qwerkywriter; the popularity of Mad Men, Gangster Squad, Public Enemies, Boardwalk Empire, and Gotham--all of which borrow an analog aesthetic; hipsters; and now the Hemingwrite.

from hemingwrite.com

According to its press kit, the Hemingwrite will be everything that I had ever wanted in a word processor. As a prototype, the Hemingwrite sports a Macish aluminium body, cloud connectivity, mechanical keyboard switches, and a 1 million page memory. Also, it kind looks like a typewriter, which is perfectly fitting for it. It's named after one of the most famous typewriter promoters of all time. All it needs is a place to put in the paper and laser print the text as I type, and it will truly be a machine out of my dreams.

And it's about time.

It's been too long since the dedicated word processor was sold to potential writers and not to public schools. For Christmas last year, my fiance bought an Alphasmart NEO for me from an elementary school. For those that don't know, the Alphasmarts were marketed for students with special needs to aid in their education. They are as simple as they come: instant "on," automatic save, no internet, and universal computer connectivity.

Neo Direct, the maker of Alphsmart, stopped making the Neo and Neo2 (the last incarnations of the Alphasmart) in 2013, as their sales were in decline as laptops became cheaper and more powerful. Yet there remains a fierce loyalty to the dedicated word processor. A new version of the Neo is in the works from writerlearning.com called the Forte/Fusion. There are journalists and novelists that adore the Alphasmart models still out there - even if they are ugly as sin.

Will there be some kind of renaissance for the word processor, launching it back into the lime light with a hip, new design that strikes the right chord with the nostalgic millennial generation? Who knows. But I hope it does. There was once a time when everyone thought that the tablet was a bad idea. Costs as much as a computer but no keyboard. Now the world practically runs on the silly things. Perhaps one day, seeing a college student on what looks like a steam punk keyboard will be as natural as swiping on the iPhone.

from hemingwrite.com

That's all from Elliott at the Kitchen Table, getting ready for NanoWriMo.

Did you ever know that you're my hero?

Everyone likes to talk about the writers that influence them. That being said, no one likes to be told that they write like one of their influences. The key is in burning down the ladder that took you to the top, and, once there, pretend as though you had been there the entire time. Kind of like Clark Kent in every episode of Superman...ever.

Me? I like to think that my ladder is still very much in tact, that my life's work will always be a work in progress. After all, masterpieces are for latter years. Youth is for experimentation.

And without further adieu: My ladder...

JOHN IRVING

This is the man that made me want to write. I wrote a bit about him on medium.com a few months ago. You can find that article here.

Though his work is mostly in a serious vein, it is John that taught me how to laugh with literature. I spent most of my nights in college laughing as I read and reread The Cider House Rules--one of the best titles of all time. That book was also the first since Harry Potter to make me cry at the ending.

WOODY ALLEN

Everybody who's anybody wants to be a somebody, and that isn't necessarily the somebody that they are in the present. They want to be an icon. That's Woody.

I came late to the Woody Allen game. He was already well into his winter years, and I was still yet to see Annie Hall or Manhattan or even The Scoop, which came out when I was a teenager...and idolizing Hugh Jackman, so how could I miss that, right?

But what came from my exposure to Allen was the work ethic that it takes to be an icon. It doesn't just happen overnight. Image is cultivated to practice and hard work. In many ways becoming an icon is like writing yourself as a novel. Your body is the text, main and supporting characters. And it is exhausting.

TRUMAN CAPOTE

There are good writers. There are great writers. There is Truman Capote.

If only you glance at his short stories, you will feel that you are in the presence of a writing genius. Capote's prose are the cleanest, most precise, and most labored of all the 20th Century writers. And that's saying a lot considering all the greats in the 20th Century. But when asked why I think Capote is so good, I need only give you three words: Breakfast. At. Tiffany's.

or: In. Cold. Blood.

or four words: Other. Rooms. Other. Voices.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

I love short fiction. I especially love Hemingway's. (I also love beards and fancy hats, of which Hemingway has in spades.) I also love his work with the Toronto Star. If ever you wish to see how a news article should be written, you need only look to Papa for an example. He serves as the standard of what 100% useful words represents. Even when his prose run on the flat side, Hemingway's work is still a wonder to behold.

THE HONORABLE MENTIONS

Neil Gaiman--enchanting prose, enchanting fantasy

J.K. Rowling--moved me in ways I never could have imagined

Patrick Rothfuss--only time and his next two books will prove if he is truly a thing of legend

J.D. Salinger--great writer, though I still haven't gotten through "Catcher in the Rye"

Freelance Part IV

I continue my relationship with the South Lyon Herald in this weeks online edition. My article on the local hop gardener, Nick Mascero, can be found here.

South Lyon is a wondrous, historic community with surprises and treasures at every turn. The South Lyon Herald is equally amazing. Please read and pass this on.

This is also the link: http://www.hometownlife.com/story/life/home-garden/2014/10/16/growing-hops-home/17233255/

That's all from Elliott at the Kitchen Table, feeling like a big shot.

Postmaster, Letter Writer

Looking back at myself over the past two years, and I wonder where I became so infatuated with the method in which words met a page. In days gone by, it did not much matter. If you typed it, or your secretary--the words were there and that was all. And here I am, pouring over my computer, wishing it was my Olivetti or one of my fountain pens.

Then it hits me: email.

The great, unintended footprint of our great writers--your beatnicks, lost generation, gonzo reporters--are their letters. It may not have been important to them back in the day, because EVERYONE had stacks of the damn things floating around the office waiting for the filing cabinet or the paper shredder. We don't get that joy today. There isn't the same kind of footprint.

I delight in letter writing. I write my sister away at school. I write my fiance, even though we speak on the phone every day. Sometimes I write Barack and Michelle Obama. My congressman has gotten a letter or two from me. And I have written many perspective editors, bosses, and a few writers, hoping to elicit a response. But the fact is that letter writing is a mostly dead art. Like making hats, learning Latin, or playing the sitar, no one writes letters anymore because it is easier to talk on the phone, text, or send an email. They are fast. They are instant. They are instantly disposable.

So I lament in that there will be no collection of letters when I die. (Lest you forget, every writer imagines that he or she will be one of the greats.) No one will want to wade through the mindless emails that I have sent. They do not yield much; they are for utility only. Letters in the mail are art.

That's all from Elliott at the Kitchen Table, telling you to watch hometownlife.com this week for my latest article from South Lyon.

The Greatest, or just another Generation?

I grew up knowing that all of my grandfathers and great uncles had done their part to win the war. They were the generation of heroes. Grandpa, on my mother's side, road supply lines for the allies. On my father's side, grandpa was discharged due to physical disabilities. During his discharge exam the doctor told him, "I don't know how you faked it through the first examination!"

Today, our involvement in Iraq, Syria, and whatever else in the Middle East next becomes a ISIS stronghold threatens to become WWIII of our history. If my son is lucky, it will be in the history books by the time he gets to high school, where they'll watch movies about brave Americans trekking the desert in motley crews, battling the evil ISIS troops shouting, "Death to America!" as they fire their weapons. But what will he think of us--the GenX and Millenials--that will be fighting the coming war? 

Will we be the heroes? Will we be the stuff of legend? Or are we going to another in a long line of power seekers, oppressors, thugs. The same way we, in America, view the British of the Revolution, the Japanese of WWII, Saddam Hussein, Stalin, Putin, Hitler, George W Bush and Dick Cheney. 

What will we say of our choice to go back to a land we couldn't liberate the first OR second time?

Quietly Happening, or Shouts Over the Waves

With joy I greeted a message from a good friend. He lives in South Lyon, where I had an article slated for publication. It finally came out in this week's South Lyon Herald, though it has been online at Observer & Eccentric's hometownlife.com. 

This of course is good news to me and the man I wrote about, Chuck Theile. I passed along the news in the morning, and quietly went about my day: mundane shopping at Meijer and jotting notes on a legal pad--the exciting life of freelance.

Like a gradual wave, the news began to pour in from Chuck and online. Searching for my article, I found it three separate times, cataloged under different cities and their respective publications. I found this odd, but thought little of it. Then Chuck sent me a reply. He knew that the article had come out...and it had come out in several papers.

I was overjoyed. That explained the multiple entries on Observer and Eccentric's website.

Then this came in:

"FRONT PAGE OF WAYNE-WESTLAND'S PAPER."

All the while, I wondered whether or not to put a cereal bar in my son's lunch this coming Monday, and dated photos with my fiance from the past four months for our photo-albums. 

News, it seems, comes in waves, and life never stops being strange and funny all at once.

That's all from Elliott at the Kitchen Table, ready for a road trip to see these newspapers with my own eyes.

Freelanced Part III

I am proud to say that I have been published by the illustrious Observer & Eccentric of Oakland County. The story I wrote for them can be found on their page:

www.hometownlife.com

That's all from Elliott at the Kitchen Table, glad that the flood waters have receded.

On Model Manliness

I saw a construction crew, contracted for the company for which I work. They were the kind of people one would stereotype as construction worker material. Rough and rowdy, one of them was wearing the misnamed Ten-Gallon Hat, while the others used obscene language, shouted at the top of their lungs. It was like watching a jungle, as wannabe alphas fought for dominance over anyone who happened to wander into their concrete shattered domain.

And that is the proper world for a man, so many have told and recommended to me. That is real man's work.

***

Working with the mentally and physically ill, we are not always the most civil and proper. We work under stress, end our days feeling that we largely accomplished nothing, and as a means of relief often turn to gallows humor. As it often goes, if you can't laugh in the face of death, whose, then, can you laugh in?

Though it is not the most physically demanding (and what job is nowadays?) it is still taxing and tiring.

Yet, as the perception goes, my work (for men, anyway) is less admirable than others. Construction is where I should be, or in the auto industry, because if I'm not doing something with my hands, or breaking my back (with a hammer in hand, not a weak man that needs to set in his bed) than I am not living up to my manly potential.

This, I think, is another of those North and South, water and dry-land, divides that seem to be at the core of Michiganders and their perception of work and place and life in general.

In the south, a man isn't a man unless he's out breaking his back to bring home the bacon. That is a real man, and a real man is more worthy, more trustworthy, and somehow all around better than those phonies that answer phones or work in law. Smarts breeds distrust. Smart people are also lazy if you're from the southern end. 

When you travel north, a real man is someone who worked his way out of the back breaking, and is now riding the waves of his "well deserved" success. A teacher need not apply, for a man who is a teacher is not ambitious enough. Lawyers get the pass, especially if they hold a fancy public office, or know how to dodge small business taxes. Business men and auto industry white-collar are gold.

***

I think that we are still caught linking Man with Muscle and Money, no matter how much we don't want to admit it. But the facts are facts. A guy with a shovel is no more or less a man than the guy wheeling a poor old man into a hospital. Base pay does not make a man. Neither does bicep size.

That's all from Elliott at the Kitchen Table, learning how to stand and write at the same time.

Papa Returns

It was announced that there is going to be another movie next year starring ole Papa--Ernest Hemingway. Not another magical bout into the past a la Midnight in Paris or an adaptation of one of his books, which has always been very close to memoir rather than outright fiction, Papa is a tale of a time in Hemingway's life when he had befriended a young journalist in Cuba. The entire movie is being shot in Cuba, which is a fact that seems to have eclipsed the very basics of the movie itself.

I remain ambivalent about movies about writers. Capote was an excellent look at the man during some of the most interesting years of his career as a novelist and reporter.  On the other hand, The Rum Diary was a messy (at times indulgent) farce, hiding Hunter S. Thompson and his beliefs behind a supposed work of "fiction" and said little or nothing by the time the credits rolled.

My problem is that sometimes the writers tend to not be nearly as interesting as their personas lead us to believe. In the case of Truman Capote, he was an icon, whose social candor was second to none, and whose life was as interesting as he wrote it to be. In Thompson's case--and I am a big fan of his work--he was by-in-large an overly exposed drug addict, and his work suffered for it. His landmark book, Fear and Loathing: on the Campaign Trail '72, chronicled his drug addiction as much as it followed Nixon and Humphrey. And as great as it was to read the insights he had on the candidates of '72, it was equally sad to see his work fall apart because of his numerous addictions. His life, unlike Capote's, can be largely summed up as a man who wrote well for a while but was very inconsistent.


Whether Papa Hemingway is interesting enough to warrant a movie dedicated, not to his life, but to a specific moment closer to the end than the beginning remains to be seen. I suppose that 2015 is just around the corner now anyway.

That's all from Elliott at the Kitchen Table, getting ready to "pen" the next great American novel--then maybe a bar fight.

People in a Strange Place

Apartments are mostly the same. No matter how many you have been to, the creeping sensation of corporate sameness is never far away. The walls will always be white--or off-white, but who can really tell the difference? The carpet is nice but not too nice. And the layout will vary little. With two bedrooms and the obligatory kitchen, the only great surprise will be whether or not there is a hallway.

Yet, like a Woody Allen protagonist, when in another's apartment for a prolonged period of time--even if I had been there repeatedly on other, shorter occasions--I grow uneasy and neurotic. I take to pacing, or following Melissa from room to room, like a lost puppy or a shadow. In every corner I think of how my stuff would fit in the space; where might my "work" area (e.g. my typewriters and pens and pencils) be?

"Will you stop following me?" Melissa asks, as she moved about the kitchen barely large enough to warrant steps between the sink and stove, even when cooking.

"I can't! I don't know what to do." I look around the apartment. 
"I don't know what to do in here."

"Don't do anything. Just relax."

"I can't! I need my stuff. I've got nothing here."

I have people, though, of a very precious nature. There is Melissa my fiance and Zander my son. He is off in the other room cuddling with a stuffed toy. But we are still people in a strange place, when we long to be in a home.

Populaire: a Reflection

This weekend was awash in movies for Melissa and I. Thanks to a quiet Saturday night, and Sunday afternoon, we were able to watch Populaire and half of Wolf of Wallstreet. The following podcast in about Populaire, because--well--I am me, and I love movies with typewriters in them, am I right? Also, a great many thanks to the Antique Typewriter Collectors club on facebook, whose power over the miasma that is the internet was able to point out that Netflix was finally streaming Populaire.

That's all from Elliott at the Kitchen Table, licking my speed-typing wounds this week.

The Sound of Silence

I drove a man home the other day. He lives on the outskirts of Ypsilanti Township. It's pretty much Milan. The edge of the world.

He's a nice man--friendly, though very quiet, which is unusual for most of the men that I move around. Once we reached his home, and I helped him out of the van (he's in a wheelchair and needs a great deal of help getting around) I became anxious.

I had no idea why. There was nothing around us. Nothing was stirring in the nearby woods, and the neighbors were out for the day. But the anxiety grew in spite of me telling it that there is nothing to worry about.
Nothing
That's when it hit me: my day is a crowded room of somethings. My body is constantly moving. Even when sitting, I am shaken by the vibration of the van's engine. My ears are busy with the voices of others, the radio, the road noise, noise, noise.

This man lives in the woods. Neighbors are scattered far, and there isn't a freeway for five to ten miles depending on which direction you take. In that silence and stillness, my ears were straining for something. The idleness of gently blowing leaves, and the whistle of wind through the trees were too subtle for ears accustom the metallic cacophony of the city proper. I needed to make a concerted effort to appreciate this moment of solitude. 

But he went into the house, and it was time for me to go. The moment was left behind; my day felt worse off for it. Back in the car and the chaos, my mind searched for that moment again, screaming to know the sound of silence.

That's all from Elliott at the Kitchen Table with a little help from Simon and Garfunkel.

The Universal Church of Twitter and a Linkedin Myspace

When choosing a deity to worship, one might as well choose the church of Social Media. Like a religion, it has the potential to be anything you wish it to be, so long as you have a voice to overpower the rest; like religious institutions, social media can ruin lives, setup impromptu charities, destroy careers, raise troglodyte racists to celebrity status, and make a pantheon of gods out of dust. And like gods, when you shout your pleas and prayers and thank you's into the ether, feeling that (if only for a brief moment) you are the center of the universe, the chances are good that no one cares.

That's all from Elliott at the Kitchen Table, just learning how to sharpen a pencil with nothing but my wits and knife and the idea that I can do anything!