The US has become the world’s prison. Mexico just sent us 14 top criminals. Columbia, in spite of the billions we send them, has some new crooks for us to incarcerate. Now we have arrested 270 undocumented “aliens” in Iowa. Yesterday they were working in meat packing plants earning money and paying taxes. Today they are in prison costing the taxpayers $25,000 a year to feed, house, and cloth each one of them. You thought you knew from crazy?
All of this comes from the growing epidemic of fear that seems to be gripping the planet. Look at what is happening in South Africa. Brutal attacks against “foreigners,” implying they are responsible for the conditions of the poor. Increasing fear comes from natural disasters--tsunami in Myanamar, earthquakes in China, tornadoes in the US and so on. Adding to all those unknowns are the real estate and gas crises here at home. People have never been asked to think about the impending credit crunch or the coming crisis of peak oil. If you go to robertschrank.blogspot.com and take a look at Hugh Jones’ guest blog (Peak Oil, 12/13/07) he was warning that $4 a gallon was immanent. And $5 is on its way. Not a single political leader has been willing to bite the bullet and tell the American people the horrendous truth that we will be confronting.
You wonder why people are fearful? The natural disasters we are experiencing may very well be the Planet hitting back for our years of abuse particularly our unsustainable over population. What were people thinking when they built cities on top of earthquake faults or tsunami prone waterfronts? They weren’t thinking they just did not know what to do with all those people.
Wow, if there ever was a time to reconsider FDR’s “we have nothing to fear but fear itself,” it is now. In these troubling times what we need in the White House is a steadying hand that could diminish the level of fear. Instead we have had an administration that just keeps adding to the fear factor. The upcoming election will give us an opportunity to take a look at the candidates in terms of who can help solve some of the problems facing the planet and who will add to the fear. Be careful how you vote.
Thank you Kate N.H.W.Y.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Love Affairs!
This is the first of periodic pieces on love affairs in my life. I hasten to add, these affairs encompassed many things, persons, and ideas.
I am not sure if any future love affairs can compare with this very first one. (My wife Kate falls completely outside of these declarations as she appeared long after.) My very first affair was with the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE). I have a distinct memory of living on 181st in the Bronx and finding a garage around the corner from the tenement where my family lived. My mother was still alive back then, so that puts my age around five or six and around 1922 or 23.
I would spend hours in the garage watching the mechanics working on cars. At the time there were still plenty horses pulling all kinds of wagons. I saw the last troika of horses pulling fire engines that belched smoke from steam engines that ran the pumps. The horses thundered through the streets looking and sounding like hell and damnation had been turned loose.
Here was the thing about the ICE. It was easy for me to understand a big Belgium truck horse pulling a wagon. What got me crazy was trying to figure out how one could put a liquid called gasoline into a tank that would make the wheels push the car. And so began my search for the Rosette Stone that would teach me how the ICE ran a car.
I came to understand that gasoline was highly combustible. The fuel pump moved the gas to the carburetor. It was then made into a mist and injected into cylinders where it was compressed and then exploded by the spark plug. Riding up and down in the cylinder was a piston connecting-rod that attached to a crankshaft. That changed the reciprocating motion into a circular one. The energy from that turning shaft was transferred to the wheels via the transmission and drive-shaft. God, what on earth could be more beautiful than that! And I was in love with it. Little did I know that I was not alone in this affair.
The basic ICE was made both bigger and smaller until it was as ubiquitous as horse-shit was in the days of the wagon. ICE gave us automobiles, tractors that revolutionized farming, motorcycles, lawn mowers, chain saws, weed whackers, boat engines, outboard motors, and on and on. And man it was cheap. I could fill up my 1929 Packard eight-cylinder engine for two bucks. Who ever thought we might someday run out of that magical liquid?
Okay, here comes the “alas.” I was not at all alone in this great love fest that burgeoned into a universal party. It has spread throughout the world and continues at ever increasing rapidity. China, India, Mexico, everywhere that there is an opportunity, people want a car to take them to somewheres. Now, this has become one of our most serious present day economic and environmental problems. How so you ask?
In our century long party with ICE we lost sight of the fact that the oil from which we make gasoline is finite. This means there is just so much of it and once we burn the oil, it’s gone forever. It shows up in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, a major factor in global warming. Now that we are in the $4 a gallon range going to $5 and $6 we are face to face with a crisis far more serious than the housing bubble. Since I was focused on my love affair with ICE, I did not mention all the other things that oil is used for, including heating most homes in the US, plastics, fertilizer, medicines, cloth, rope, and on and on. With the exception of Al Gore, who is not running for office, there is not a leader who is willing to tackle this eight-hundred pound Gorilla that is about to become an economic catastrophe of repercussions of which we have never seen the like. (I encourage you to read Hugh Jone’s fact filled story and predictions of Peak Oil included in the December 13, 2007 blog.)
Precisely because there is no simple solution to the problem, leaders choose to largely ignore the reality of oil’s decline, perhaps because to act on it could be political suicide. If we don’t talk about it, maybe it won’t happen. That just makes things worse because we become anesthetized. When the steady decrease of oil does hit us, we have what is known as a rude awakening, but no solution. Like people hit by a tsunami or an earthquake, we never believed it was coming. Hopefully we can wake up our folks in Washington and start acting on some things we might begin doing NOW, not in 2020. [I do feel sorry for whoever becomes our President in 2009. He or she will certainly have some mess “when the shit hits the fan” (a World War II joke).]
The automobile in the 1920’s often broke down. Passers-by would shout, “get a horse.” That might now be “get an electric.”
Thank you Kate. N.H.W.Y.
I am not sure if any future love affairs can compare with this very first one. (My wife Kate falls completely outside of these declarations as she appeared long after.) My very first affair was with the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE). I have a distinct memory of living on 181st in the Bronx and finding a garage around the corner from the tenement where my family lived. My mother was still alive back then, so that puts my age around five or six and around 1922 or 23.
I would spend hours in the garage watching the mechanics working on cars. At the time there were still plenty horses pulling all kinds of wagons. I saw the last troika of horses pulling fire engines that belched smoke from steam engines that ran the pumps. The horses thundered through the streets looking and sounding like hell and damnation had been turned loose.
Here was the thing about the ICE. It was easy for me to understand a big Belgium truck horse pulling a wagon. What got me crazy was trying to figure out how one could put a liquid called gasoline into a tank that would make the wheels push the car. And so began my search for the Rosette Stone that would teach me how the ICE ran a car.
I came to understand that gasoline was highly combustible. The fuel pump moved the gas to the carburetor. It was then made into a mist and injected into cylinders where it was compressed and then exploded by the spark plug. Riding up and down in the cylinder was a piston connecting-rod that attached to a crankshaft. That changed the reciprocating motion into a circular one. The energy from that turning shaft was transferred to the wheels via the transmission and drive-shaft. God, what on earth could be more beautiful than that! And I was in love with it. Little did I know that I was not alone in this affair.
The basic ICE was made both bigger and smaller until it was as ubiquitous as horse-shit was in the days of the wagon. ICE gave us automobiles, tractors that revolutionized farming, motorcycles, lawn mowers, chain saws, weed whackers, boat engines, outboard motors, and on and on. And man it was cheap. I could fill up my 1929 Packard eight-cylinder engine for two bucks. Who ever thought we might someday run out of that magical liquid?
Okay, here comes the “alas.” I was not at all alone in this great love fest that burgeoned into a universal party. It has spread throughout the world and continues at ever increasing rapidity. China, India, Mexico, everywhere that there is an opportunity, people want a car to take them to somewheres. Now, this has become one of our most serious present day economic and environmental problems. How so you ask?
In our century long party with ICE we lost sight of the fact that the oil from which we make gasoline is finite. This means there is just so much of it and once we burn the oil, it’s gone forever. It shows up in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, a major factor in global warming. Now that we are in the $4 a gallon range going to $5 and $6 we are face to face with a crisis far more serious than the housing bubble. Since I was focused on my love affair with ICE, I did not mention all the other things that oil is used for, including heating most homes in the US, plastics, fertilizer, medicines, cloth, rope, and on and on. With the exception of Al Gore, who is not running for office, there is not a leader who is willing to tackle this eight-hundred pound Gorilla that is about to become an economic catastrophe of repercussions of which we have never seen the like. (I encourage you to read Hugh Jone’s fact filled story and predictions of Peak Oil included in the December 13, 2007 blog.)
Precisely because there is no simple solution to the problem, leaders choose to largely ignore the reality of oil’s decline, perhaps because to act on it could be political suicide. If we don’t talk about it, maybe it won’t happen. That just makes things worse because we become anesthetized. When the steady decrease of oil does hit us, we have what is known as a rude awakening, but no solution. Like people hit by a tsunami or an earthquake, we never believed it was coming. Hopefully we can wake up our folks in Washington and start acting on some things we might begin doing NOW, not in 2020. [I do feel sorry for whoever becomes our President in 2009. He or she will certainly have some mess “when the shit hits the fan” (a World War II joke).]
The automobile in the 1920’s often broke down. Passers-by would shout, “get a horse.” That might now be “get an electric.”
Thank you Kate. N.H.W.Y.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Who Will Remember?
I wrote “Who will Remember” some time around May 1st as it brought to memory the excitement of preparing to march on Mayday. My Papa would proudly announce, “Today we march for workers rights.”
When I’m gone who will remember?
The IWW, Wobblies, oh the
International Workers of the World,
Their free speech fight.
The Little Red Song book
“To Fan the Flames of the Discontent.”
We held the Fort when
Union men were strong.
God how I worry.
Who will remember?
Union Square glowed in candlelight.
The year of one nine two seven.
1927 if you please.
A sea of humans bathed in tears.
None who knew
Two Italian anarchists
Framed to die.
Who will remember?
I Talian Anarchist poet
Arturo Giovannitti
Whispered in a little boys ear--
Two things matter, only two.
Women first, revolution second.
Who will remember?
May you want to remember
Nelson Rockefeller?
Dead atop Meagan M--
Poor girl.
Who will remember
May Day long ago?
Not for Maypole dancing.
Dawn to dusk
We marched, sang, chanted.
Fifth Avenue came alive.
We marched, sang, chanted--
Free Mooney and Billings
And the Scottsboro Boys.
Black and white unite and fight.
Higher wages, and yes oh yes,
Socialism, free at last.
Shaggy haired Lewis
Coal union leader. Bellowed!
“No human should work
In the bowels of hell.”
The sit down strikers of Flint.
The women their wash-lines
Hoisted food into the windows.
Who will remember?
The Lawrence textile strike.
The soldiers came.
The children went
On train rides to safety.
Could this be the beginning?
A new day dawning
And we sang
“The Commonwealth of toil.”
“We have a glowing dream.
Oh how fair the world will seem
When the earth is owned by labor
And there's joy and peace for all
In this commonwealth of toil that is to be.”
There were small victories.
Eugene Victor Debs
Leader, lifelong socialist
Sent to prison for hating war and
Released in 1926 said
No man is free as long as others are caged.
My high up view
From Papa’s shoulders.
My little body shook, trembled
As this hall of thousands
Showered down their love
To the skinny tall man on the stage.
Will it all just blow away
With the flotsam and jetsam of history?
Who will remember?
Robert Schrank - 2008
When I’m gone who will remember?
The IWW, Wobblies, oh the
International Workers of the World,
Their free speech fight.
The Little Red Song book
“To Fan the Flames of the Discontent.”
We held the Fort when
Union men were strong.
God how I worry.
Who will remember?
Union Square glowed in candlelight.
The year of one nine two seven.
1927 if you please.
A sea of humans bathed in tears.
None who knew
Two Italian anarchists
Framed to die.
Who will remember?
I Talian Anarchist poet
Arturo Giovannitti
Whispered in a little boys ear--
Two things matter, only two.
Women first, revolution second.
Who will remember?
May you want to remember
Nelson Rockefeller?
Dead atop Meagan M--
Poor girl.
Who will remember
May Day long ago?
Not for Maypole dancing.
Dawn to dusk
We marched, sang, chanted.
Fifth Avenue came alive.
We marched, sang, chanted--
Free Mooney and Billings
And the Scottsboro Boys.
Black and white unite and fight.
Higher wages, and yes oh yes,
Socialism, free at last.
Shaggy haired Lewis
Coal union leader. Bellowed!
“No human should work
In the bowels of hell.”
The sit down strikers of Flint.
The women their wash-lines
Hoisted food into the windows.
Who will remember?
The Lawrence textile strike.
The soldiers came.
The children went
On train rides to safety.
Could this be the beginning?
A new day dawning
And we sang
“The Commonwealth of toil.”
“We have a glowing dream.
Oh how fair the world will seem
When the earth is owned by labor
And there's joy and peace for all
In this commonwealth of toil that is to be.”
There were small victories.
Eugene Victor Debs
Leader, lifelong socialist
Sent to prison for hating war and
Released in 1926 said
No man is free as long as others are caged.
My high up view
From Papa’s shoulders.
My little body shook, trembled
As this hall of thousands
Showered down their love
To the skinny tall man on the stage.
Will it all just blow away
With the flotsam and jetsam of history?
Who will remember?
Robert Schrank - 2008
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