Sleeping on the Job #1

Written 9/1/22

When I was a kid, white-collared businessmen would see road crews along the highways leaning on their shovels and declared them lazy bastards never having hard to perforn hard labor in their lives.

My father had worked a lumber camp in his youth and tell them, "You've never worked a day in your life, if you say that."

He was an electrical engineer. His hands were soft, but his voice revealed his respect for a working man.

Farangs criticize Thais for laziness without realizing that Thai workers are pushed to the limit.

10 hours a day. 6 days a week. 200-300 baht a day.

The money goes to cigarettes and alcohol to fuel their labor, so they'll find someplace to catch up on their sleep and no one does it better than this day-laborer lying on a steel atop a townhouse.

Comfortable?

Click on photo to enlarge and you'll see how comfortable a Thai can be__

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Much more to come.

Communality of Minds

There is no problem that doesn't have a solution. Most people are fighting to make enough money to provide for themselves and their family. They have a thirty second window to get the message and sometimes even that is too long.

Between work and home their heads are bowed to the phone. I walk without the phone in my hand. I see instead of look. I hear instead of listen. I smell instead of breathe. I feel when I touch. As for eating, I taste.

I live in Brooklyn. I speak with people on the streets and avenues. I am trapped here in this city for medical reasons, but I make the effort to be human. I say hello. Maybe the next time we speak. Never if 'they' are on a phone.

I don't talk to people about quantum physics, but do tell them about eternity. About the color of the sky. The breeze on my face. To create a communality to bridge the gap. We exchange names. I ask if they want to hear a poem.

For the most part and surprisingly they say yes. And they enjoy interaction with someone who isn't trying to sell them something. As for my friends. My smart friends. Their minds are also closed to ideas by the day to day worries.

"So what about you?"

Everyone's minds think all the time. Usually a looping of worries regrets and hopes and dreams and a slice of pizza too in NYC. With pepperoni. AS for intellectualism. I prefer Communality. 137 is just a number. A prime number. 1/137 is something altogether different and is the answer to nothingness. 137 is the odds that an electron will absorb a single photon.

Gimme Shelter

Listen to it loud

Foto Angkor Wat 1999 PNS

May Day Thailand

Thailand has an amazing galaxy on public holidays, mostly religious or honoring the royal family history. Many farangs are befuddled by this unexplained cosmos, especially since the nation celebrates three different New Year's Days.

Western, Chinese, and Thai.

Today is a bank holiday in Thailand, but few Thais or westerners know the origin of this holiday.

Originally May 1 was a pagan holiday for the first day of spring, although in a different month than the present Julian calendar. Peasants danced around the Maypole. The Catholic Church suppressed the pagan practice by naming May the month of Mary.

As a child at parochial school the nuns would parade us around the church with the girls wearing white dresses and flowers in their hair. The boys had white jackets and slacks. Parents would take snapshots of their angelic children.

Years later we abandoned this pious procession to march in the May Day protests against the Cambodian Bombings.

1969-1970.

Washington, Kent State, Kissinger, Nixon talking to the protesters.

May Day for the Left honors seven Haymarket anarchists executed for participation in Chicago's Haymarket Riot of 1886 in Chicago.

May 1, 1886 was the start date for the 8-hour day. Big?business wasn't happy with this new law and workers staged a series of protests. Anarchists met in Haymarket?Square. The gathering was peaceful until someone threw a bomb into the police ranks, killing one officer. In the ensuing violence more died on both sides.

Hence 'bombing-throwing anarchist' entered the American lexicon.

The subsequent trial of eight anarchists based the accusations on hearsay. Evidence revealing the involvement of the Pinkerton Detective Agency in the bombing didn't prevent the death sentence for seven of the accused.

Public pressure for leniency forced the?governor of Illinois to commute?the capital charges against two 'conspirators'.

At court Louis Lingg, the accused bomber, protested that the bombs at the Haymarket were not his and even this prosecutor agreed with the anarchist. After sentencing the German-born revolutionary said, "I die happy on the gallows, so confident am I that the hundreds and thousands to whom I have spoken will remember my words. When you shall have hanged us, then they Will do the bombthrowing! In this hope do I say to you, I despise you, I despise your order, your laws, your force propped authority. Hang me for it."

On the eve of the execution Louis Lingg, an anarchist bomber, offed himself by exploding a dynamite cap in his mouth. Mot likely the bomb was placed their by the Chicago

The remaining four, Spies, Parsons, Fischer, and Engel were publicly hung, but not before they?sang the Marseillaise, the anthem of the international revolutionary movement.

All eight were exonerated in 1893 and May 1 became a rally day for labor throughout the world, although in the USA it is called Loyalty Day.

Thailand gives the day off to workers, 70% who have decent jobs say they are happy with their present situation. Others are less so.

In honor of the Haymarket martyrs I'm taking the day off too.

Power to the people.