The New Passover

| Sunday, April 19, 2020 | 0 comments |
Fueled by money from right wing groups, spin from ultra right media,  Russian trolls, and inflammatory tweets to his rabid base from the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue , right wing protesters, unmasked, heavily armed, and angered, took to the streets the other day to protest the "shutdown" that has been slowing the spread of the Covid 19 virus.  Their protests, typically, carried with them the threat of violence, of revolt, and of "liberation" of labor to continue making money for the corporate rich.  That is, of course, my take.  They blocked traffic, including ambulances.  They screamed at the closed doors and windows of state offices.  They marched up and down with their assault rifles and their fake military gear.  In general, they did what they've always done:  a parade of machismo and hatred of the "gubment".

And in so doing, they are laying the groundwork for a new Passover, a new legend for human history.

The protesters, firm in their conviction that the viral plague that currently is killing an American every 90 seconds, is a "hoax" and that "re-opening the economy" is fully worth a few percent of the population dying, will scream and chant with one another cheek by jowl, showing their machismo and contempt for faggoty "liberal" things like masks and gloves during a plague.  They are the new flagellants, coming from far and wide to show their devotion and piety to their glorious leader and their ideology, and then returning home, reinvigorated and recharged in their fight for righteousness, racial purity. . .

. . .and, I suspect for many of them, now carrying the Covid 19 virus.  They will carry the disease to their homes, to their spouses, to their parents and grandparents, to their children and neighbors and friends.

Some of whom will die.

Those of use who view the rational policies of shutdown and social distancing as our duty to our neighbors, our nation, and to the human race, will likely be spared.  The grim reaper will pass over our homes where we have sheltered sensibly with our families.  He will pass over most of our parents, our children, our neighbors--though, sadly, many innocents will be swept up in the contagion brought by these arrogant and selfish children back to their communities.  They will not understand that their amiable MAGA hat wearing fishing buddy has now returned home with a plague that can sicken and occasionally destroy the ones that they love.  They will pay the ultimate price for human neighborliness shown to the uncaring and immature.  They will suffer and weep, and I will weep with them, for every sick child, every passed Grandmother, every absent family member that didn't need to suffer.  Not for this.

This new Passover, driven by arrogance, ignorance, ego, and greed, will, I suspect, fall into legend; will become more symbolic and more mythic with each telling of it, more so than even the Jingoistic display of Patriotism in 1918 that returned the Spanish flu to stalk this country.  It will become, in its time, an object lesson, a fable, as much respected as it is doubted, as much accepted as hygiene and vaccines, and as much a litmus of logical competence.

I really hope I'm wrong.  I really hope that my native streak toward hyperbole and drama has gotten the best of me with this one, but something grim and certain in the back of my mind whispers that I may have even underestimated what I've just seen.  If I am right, however, then those who survive will have the tools and the metaphors to build a better world, one built on respect for nature and humanity and not on greed, arrogance, and privilege.

And in that kinder, free-er new world, the wise parent will tell their children of the new Passover, and of the people who put their own convenience, egos, and privilege ahead of the lives of their neighbors and of the survival of the rest of the whole of the world, and of the awful price, in the end, that they paid for it.

If this happens, so mote that be.

WDBX Interview 1/31/20

| Monday, January 27, 2020 | 0 comments |
Author and Ecology activist Treesong will be interviewing me about my writing, the environment, and a host of other things this next friday, 1/31/20 on WDBX, community radio for Southern Illinois, Carbondale, IL at 10:30 AM Central/11:30 Eastern.  Should be a really interesting show.  If you're in the Carbondale area, it is, of course, at 91.1 FM.  Otherwise you can listen to the stream HERE.
Author, Radio Host, and Ecologist, Treesong.
Looking forward to this.  Southern Illinois is old stomping ground for us.  Tune in!

M

Electronic Editions of "The Coyote Trilogy" are at long last available.

| Tuesday, November 26, 2019 | 0 comments |
After years of trying, Wild Shore Press has FINALLY gotten an electronic edition of my trilogy of Cyberpunk plays available. The book includes production notes and the original produced scripts of "Coyote," "Cyberpunk Opera," and "Dub for Babylon."   To snag your own copy, click HERE.

FINALLY!  

The Book Proofs are Magnificent.

| Friday, September 6, 2019 | 0 comments |
Got the proof copy of the paperback of Zarabeth's World the other day, and It's really nice.  Wild Shore and the printer have done a great job on this one, just, as they say, in time for fall reading.  You can pop over here and grab a copy. if you like. I know I would certainly like you to.

Fall reading regimen.

BOOK DISCOUNTS SEPT. !st

| Thursday, August 29, 2019 | 0 comments |
In celebration of my new release, "Zarabeth's World," Wild Shore Press is putting all the rest of the electronic editions of my novels on sale for just $.99 cents, for one day only September 1st.  So if you wanna go stock up on some reads for the fall (and I'm assuming you like my writing, of course), drop on over to my Amazon Author Page on the first and grab yourself some novels.  Perfect for anchoring out on a lovely fall evening.

I love Odile's cover for this  Can't stop looking at it.
M

Zarabeth's World is out!!

| Saturday, August 17, 2019 | 0 comments |
The new novel is out on kindle and in book form.  Please click on over to Amazon for details.  I'm really quite proud of this one.  One of the best pieces of writing I've done.

Full details Here.
From the back cover:

The Island was, quite simply, a place of wonder. It began as the fanciful drawings of a dying American artist known only as Hiro, then became series of stories by his belov'ed, and from there an online video game and then, through some magical collision no one quite understood, a real place. It was a world of stunning beauty, of music and kindnesses, of witches and mermaids, talking bears and magical transformations, and Zarabeth had found, unbelievably, a way to get there through the shower in her apartment. Just a short while ago, she had been firmly a member of the uninteresting proletariat: a young woman waiting table and working in a bookstore in a small tourist town. Now she had a foothold in two worlds: One full of the calm safety of her old life, one of adventure and magic, with good friends and happy times in both.

There was just one catch: Spend too much time in either world, and she could find herself stranded, or, worse, so transformed that she wouldn't remember that one or the other ever existed.

That could be a de-convenience.

But Zarabeth is a woman of some resources, with friends she doesn't even know she has, and the Island itself has plans for her far beyond anything she could imagine.

Welcome to Zarabeth's World.

From the author of An Alien's Guide to Sears and Roebuck and The Ganymeade Protocol comes this off-kilter tale of love, transformation, and finding your voice.

Did I mention there were mermaids?

More HERE


Why I don't need you to sell fries to me.

| Sunday, June 24, 2018 | 2 comments |
The Quandary of Work, or : Why I don't need you to sell fries to me.

I have a dear friend to whom I speak on a regular basis. We've known each other forever, but haven't been on the same end of the continent for decades. Still, I value his opinion even when we disagree. The other evening we were having one of our typical conversations. “People need jobs” he said “and we need to penalize those companies that take them abroad so our people can have work.” Then he went on about worker productivity and salaries and the dignity of work and the like.

Sounds fine, I guess, but I have a problem with all of this “job” thing. Not that I don't work. I've worked 60 hour weeks for most of my life, generally in businesses that I created. I've spent a lot of early mornings and ridiculously late nights working to make things happen. I've worked myself to the point of falling over more than once. I mean that literally. Work, I can do.

But here's the thing. In my little galley (we're liveaboards, a life that I recommend) I have a stick blender. We do a lot of cooking. We use the thing for making sauces and gravies, for mulching a must for hard ciders when we brew, for whirring up frozen drinks in summers and hot soups in winters. Doing that stuff by hand would be an utter pain. I could do it of course, but why?

My point is: I use the blender so I don't have to do the work. At no time am I thinking about it being an enhancement to my productivity (I'm not cooking for 40, and if I did, they wouldn't fit on the boat). I have the device in order to avoid work, and avoiding bashing my knuckles pounding ice into a slurry is a good thing, I think we can all agree.

From blenders to electric drills to computer word processors to cars to aircraft, we build stuff in order to avoid effort, to keep us from having to do the work, take the risk, spend our limited lifetimes, and exhaust our energies. We do it so that we can turn our attentions to those things we find fulfilling, be it writing or family or hiking or building houses or staring at a turtle.

This isn't new. We've been building dedicated machines to do work for us since the dawn of the industrial revolution, probably since the dawn of humanity.

So the desirability of automation or lessening labor costs isn't the issue. The issue is: who benefits from it? The elimination of labor is a natural result of automation, as machines take over the tasks we once labored to do. I remember 1950's adverts heralding appliances as “ending the drudgery” of housework, and who wouldn't want that?

Now, to the investor class, those for whom “the market” is the only arbiter of labor and productivity (as well as of human worth), the current round of automation based layoffs and job exportation is not only just fine, it's the rightful way things are. There is, of course, historical precedent. The invention of the Jacquard loom in 1804, for example, laid off a lot of weavers (and created a host of anti-automation protests and actions, here see: Luddite). Despite the mass layoffs, the profits for the weaving industry in that era went nowhere but up. Now (having shipped a lot of American jobs to China where the labor is cheaper) companies in China like Foxxcon are laying off thousands of workers as they automate. The already massive industrial profits are headed for record highs (just look at the stock market). The investor class makes more and more as automation decreases costs and increases productivity, and the displaced workers...well...they can just go find another job. The trouble is, the only jobs available, manufacturing (and soon materials handling, programming, clerical work, truck driving, and delivery) being removed, are service jobs, and with a smaller and smaller class being able to afford the services, there is an unavoidable failure built into such a system. It becomes a feudal nightmare, ever feeding of itself, with collapse inevitable.

Which brings me back to my original point. Taking a broader view: turning our labor over to machines is a good thing. It frees us from tedium and drudgery and danger and allows us to seek fulfillment in our lives, be it to immerse ourselves in wildly productive fields which fascinate us or merely to spend our time in introspection, hedonism, or adventure. The “every man must toil” thing not only isn't needed, it isn't practical. I don't need 350 million people trying to sell me fries or clean my windshield. I need new approaches to physics, new music, new artwork, better ways to heal, more beauty. . . The job disruptions of the industrial age led to the creation of political movements including the growth of Socialism, seeking to redress some kind of balance in society.

Then as now, the answer is, of course, to let those who have toiled share in the productivity of the machines that freed them from that toil. It means decoupling income from the work of the individual and replacing its source with the productivity of the machine that replaced it. Those who are driven to find riches will always find a way to do so, but there's no reason the rest of us must suffer and struggle and starve because of it.

To be sure, if we institute a scheme like Universal Basic Income or the like, some small number of people will choose to sit on their asses for the rest of their lives, and I'm okay with that (those are unlikely to be very productive employees anyway). But humans are restless creatures, and most will find something to do, something for which people will praise them, something that will increase their social capital, because that's how we're wired.

What I'm Not okay with is a world full of windshield washers and fries sellers, scrabbling about in poverty and desperation so that a tiny number of us can live in unimaginable wealth. My friend across the country, moving as he does in corporate boardrooms, is still very much wedded to the “job” mantra, but having worked all my life, I've come to a different conclusion: Let the machines do the work. Let the rest of us get on with the business of being human.