If they’d been reading Have Coffee Will Write or No Cleveland Walmart people calling into this morning’s edition of Whad’Ya Know? to answer the qualifying question to play the Whad’Ya Know Quiz would have known the in Yelm, Washington, citizens are prohibited from mentioning Wal Mart during city council meetings.
I knew that Roldo Bartimole couldnt’ avoid this story. I thought it would pop up on Read Roldo, not the Cleveland Indy Media Center (or was Cool Cleveland first?) In Publish Or Perish, Roldo writes: …what puzzles me is why Clifton wrote the piece proclaiming the PD held illegal documents. Can that itself be construed as illegal? Could be….
Wonder why Sunni and Shia Muslims are blowng each other up? Check out Bethany Christian Services in Jackson, Mississippi. This private adoption agency has decided that Catholics aren’t Christian enough to get babies from them because, said director Karen Stewart, Catholicism does not agree with our Statement of Faith. Now, there’s love for you.
While the case doesn’t involve a Wal Mart, in light of the recent Kelo v. The City Of New London, the taking of an underperforming K mart to make way for a Home Depot is a harbringer of things to come. According to Justin Rubner in Taken For Home Depot:
In a written statement, Home Depot spokesman Jerry Shields wrote that the company has a duty to its shareholders to locate in desirable areas.
When cities or states identify areas for redevelopment and present them to The Home Depot for consideration, the company has an obligation to its customers, shareholders and associates to make a careful review of the potential investment, its return to the shareholders and the community, Shields wrote. If a city moves forward with plans to use eminent domain, The Home Depot is often one of the most desired tenants to participate in this type of redevelopment.
All hail the corporation-state!
My Soundtrack: Like A Friend by Pulp on WOXY.
OK, OK. I’m sure that my conservative friends wonder: how the $&#*! can he move any further left? That’s not the kind of left I mean. This is a more literal left: like into the left-side column of the blog. One of my readers commented the other day that they were about 100 posts behind me, but that they didn’t feel too bad since I was putting the headspace up everyday. And they were right. So, if you’re interested in what’s bouncing around between my ears, you’ll now find the information just above NEO Blogs.
My Soundtrack: My Last Breath by Nyles Lannon on WOXY.
On Wednesday evening while I was sipping my espresso at Metro Joe’s and waiting for more people to show up for our No Cleveland Wal Mart meeting I glanced at the television and glimpsed the face of Lech Walesa on a CNN broadcast.
More than either President Ronald Reagan or Pope John Paul II, I have always thought that it was Lech Walesa who was the true international hero of the ’80s because he was the one who risked it all. Walesa and the members of Solidarnosc — the Inter-factory Strike Committee/Solidarity — stood up to one of the most repressive regimes in history and prevailed.
In the manner of cable news, the Walesa story was quickly lost to the next piece. I stayed, however, with my thoughts and wondered: where is the Lech Walesa for Wal Mart employees?
And as I considered my question, I began to consider the differences between Walesa and Solidarity and any possible worker action at Wal Mart. Walesa and the people in the Gdansk Shipyard were highly skilled workers not minimum-wage retail associates.
If Wal Mart employees were to organize and stage a walkout, it would be no great challenge for the Bentonville behemoth to quickly hire replacements.
Other group members arrived for our meeting and pulled my thoughts to more immediate discussions.
On Thursday mornings I have a student I’m tutoring in 20th century United States’ history. Yesterday we were looking at protest in the ’60.s Section Two of the chapter discussed Hispanics in general and focused specifically on Cesar Chavez, the United Farm Workers and the international boycott of table grapes.
Here, I thought, was the model for Wal Mart. There was no one more easily replaced by an employer than a migrant farm worker. So where is the Wal Mart associate who can be the moral center for change at the retailer?
That person is out there. I have no doubt that union organizers are doing everything they can to find them, but, as I contemplate all of this, I think the organizers will fail. Not because they’re doing anything wrong in their search, but because people like Walesa and Chavez aren’t found, they step forward.
There is a proverb that appears in most cultures that goes something like this:
When the pupil is ready, the teacher will appear.
Maybe Wal Mart employees aren’t quite ready. Maybe they will be soon.
My Soundtrack: Alpha Beta Gaga by Air on WOXY.
This aspect of the Doug Clifton story is just too hilarious for the update section. The Free Republic, the self-proclaimed premier online gathering place for independent, grass-roots conservatism on the web has a long list of comments on the Plain Dealer story. Browse down the list to get a really good view of the wrong-wing’s grassroots supporters.
Back on 10 July, I wrote tongue-in-cheek about the scariness of the Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes affair. I don’t usually care about the insanity of spoiled rich people playing at celebrity as if it mattered. But Rebecca Traister in Holy Fem-bot Batman! on Salon, raises questions that make this Hollywood story different.
In the third paragraph of her piece, Traister writes:
But it’s all fun and games until somebody loses an eye. And if the cover story in August’s W magazine is any indication, Batman Begins star Holmes has had both her peepers gouged from her gamine face by a sharp Tom Cruise stick.
Reading the piece, it’s hard to ignore the rather awkward position we, consumers of America’s cotton-candy media, have gotten ourselves into. Holmes’ goring just officially stopped being fun or funny; suddenly we’re not simply fans or spectators, we’re accessories, standing idly by in uncomfortable paralysis as she gets her body and mind snatched on a national stage.
The world is full of stupid adults. They do stupid things like buy lottery tickets and dream of buying houses and big cars. And, with the exception of adults declared mentally incompetent by a judge, everyone has a right to pursue happiness by doing stupid things free from the do-gooder interference of other adults.
Katie Holmes is 26 and, absent of a judicial ruling, competent.
But what interests me is how the wheels are coming off the Tom Cruise wagon. People are getting creeped out by his actions. By exposing the cult stupidity of Scientology, Cruise is giving people who know nothing about it a warning. And that’s a good thing.
My Soundtrack:
In My Backpack… Women’s Reality by Anne Wilson Schaef; In My Car… Naked Prey by John Sanford; On My Nightstand… Shelby Foote: A Writer’s Life by C. Stuart Chapman; On My Computer… Dandelions by Howard Nemerov; On My Screen… Mr. Monk Goes To Jail (**) directed by Jerry Levine and written by Chris Manheim.
My Soundtrack: One Glass Of Water by A Band Of Bees on WOXY.
I am $%^& near $%&$%^ speechless. From the Lebanon (Pennsylvania) Daily News comes a flat-out honest statement from a member of Wal Mart’s corporate management. This exchange (warning! be seated with no hot beverages at hand before reading!) appears in David Mekeel’s Wal-Mart flacks detail plan – again:
Wal-Mart real-estate manager Jeff Doss also spoke about an oft-cited remark by company founder Sam Walton that Wal-Mart would not build stores in towns if the residents did not want them – a matter that Doss said is often brought up at these types of hearings.
“Were that the case,” he said, “we”d never build a store anywhere.” [emphasis mine.]
How do these people sleep at night?
My Soundtrack: Fuzz by Silversun Pickups on WOXY.
Bill Callahan in today’s Dispatches From The Swamp writes about the Plain Dealer editor Doug Clifton’s decision to sit on two stories of importance. Callahan raises the issue of Ohio’s Reporter Sheild Law. As quoted by Bill, the law reads:
No person engaged in the work of, or connected with, or employed by any newspaper or any press association for the purpose of gathering, procuring, compiling, editing, disseminating, or publishing news shall be required to disclose the source of any information procured or obtained by such person in the course of his employment, in any legal proceeding, trial, or investigation before any court, grand jury, petit jury, or any officer thereof, before the presiding officer of any tribunal, or his agent, or before any commission, department, division, or bureau of this state, or before any county or municipal body, officer or committee thereof.
My question is: are bloggers covered under the press association rubric?
[Update — 1528, 13 July 05 — Wendy Hoke of Creative Ink provides some answers inside.
My Soundtrack: Crank by The Catherine Wheel on WOXY Vintage.
In My Backpack… Women’s Reality by Anne Wilson Schaef; In My Car… Naked Prey by John Sanford; On My Nightstand… Shelby Foote: A Writer’s Life by C. Stuart Chapman; On My Computer… Water-Lilies by John Clare; On My Screen… Mr. Monk Goes To Jail (**) directed by Jerry Levine and written by Chris Manheim .
My Soundtrack: Sister Saviour by The Rapture on WOXY Vintage.
Brownie’s Bakery on Front Street in my Hometown of Marietta, Ohio, burned Saturday night. My dad sent me this series of pictures. The fire required firefighters from not only Marietta, but also Williamstown, West Virginia (from across the Ohio River) and volunteer squads from Oak Grove, Reno and Warren Township (where I grew up.)
At the turn of the 19th century, it was common to find company stores in mining and manufacturing communities. These stores would issue credit to workers and accepted company script as payment. The result was to tie workers so tightly to the company that they could never leave, regardless of how horrible working conditions might be.
Tennessee Ernie Ford immortalized the practice in the chorus to his 1950 hit Sixteen Tons:
You load sixteen tons, and whattaya get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St. Peter don’cha call me, cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store
Wal Mart, it seems likes the concept. So much so that it wants to have its own banks. In Will Wal Mart Someday Own A Bank? the Madison, Wisconsin Capital Times explores where the Bentonville Behemoth is headed. Writes reporter Anita Weier:
In 2002, the giant retailer tried another tack. Wal-Mart attempted to buy Franklin Bank, an industrial loan company in California, but the California Legislature passed a law preventing such purchases.
Industrial loan companies are consumer banks with fewer powers and less regulation that other banks. Originally established to provide factory workers without bank accounts a chance to save and borrow money, they operate in only a few states, with most located in Utah. They can be owned by commercial companies.
Wisconsin does not have this type of financial institution.
But community bankers in the state fear legislation that has been proposed in Congress in recent years would broaden the limited powers of industrial loan companies, possibly allowing unrestricted branch banking, for instance.
Our association and the National Community Banking Association have been opposed to language that would allow commercial entities such as Wal-Mart to get into banking, said Daryll Lund, president of Community Bankers of Wisconsin.
To whom does Cleveland want to owe its soul?
My Soundtrack: Angel Of Harlem by U2 on WOXY.
I got to step up to the big machine Sunday and pull shots of espresso. My final shot had a gorgeous rat-tail and was good enough to get a high-five from Superbarista. We used it to make a special espresso drink called iced ambrosia. Like all art, the process takes five minutes to learn and a lifetime to perfect.
I pulled half-a-dozen shots or so, working on my settling, smoothing and tamping skills. I want to get a plastic scraper to use to work the coffee across the portafilter and get a uniform density.
We fractionated a number of shots. Using a plexiglass rack and three small, 50 ml beakers, we pulled shots and slid the rack under the coffee stream so that each beaker caught 1/3 of the shot. The first third contains the extraction of the sensitive voltiles and aromatics. The second third consists of the solubles and sugars. The final third is made up of the solids, astringents and caffeine.
One of the last things we did was to examine the puck, the dose of coffee in the portafilter. It taps out in a neat little disk. Sarah showed me how you look for irruglarities and worm holes (she didn’t get my Star Trek reference to Data when she mentioned them) in the coffee. I made the comment that it reminded me of a biologist pulling apart scat to figure out what an animal is eating. That one got a turned up nose.
My final puck came out near perfect. Steve Goldberg, who took the picture, said:
You look like the proud father of a hockey puck with Sarah all aglow. The end result of naked espresso shots, I guess. We coffee people are a sick bunch.
And if you think that’s a little strange, read this.
My Soundtrack: Cruiser by Red House Painters on WOXY.
In My Backpack… Women’s Reality by Anne Wilson Schaef; In My Car… Naked Prey by John Sanford; On My Nightstand… Joseph Andrews and Shamela by Henry Fielding; On My Computer… Beans in Blossom by John Clare; On My Screen… Mr. Monk Goes To Jail (**) directed by Jerry Levine and written by Chris Manheim .
My Soundtrack: The Author Surrenders by Kimone on WOXY.
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