All Posts Tagged With: "personal"

The far north suburban village of Fox Lake neighbors my hometown of McHenry; they’re both about an hour and a half northwest of Chicago. For those who live in this region, there is an informal hierarchy establishing the trashiest towns in the area. McHenry, I’m afraid, is pretty high up in the rankings. In most people’s eyes, however, Fox Lake takes the top prize.

I bring it up because the Tribune reports today (sorry, subscription required) on Fox Lake’s refusal to enact a smoking ban, bucking a trend followed by several nearby towns. Smoking bans have been debated ad nauseum, and I don’t want to start one up here (regular readers will assume correctly that I favor them and that certain other contributors to Urbanagora vehemently oppose them), but I did want to highlight this quote from Fox Lake citizen and barbershop owner Ron Swanson that made me chuckle:

That’s what this town is all about–drinking and smoking and pizza and hamburgers…and I think it should stay this way.

Am I being a liberal elitist for laughing at this man? Yes. Will this post provoke comments haranguing me for my snobbery? I wouldn’t doubt it. Nevertheless: hahahahahaha!

~a trip down the historical rabbit-hole by Tom (tet)

So, no shit, there I was…

I was bound and determined that I was not going to miss the radical excitement this year. It was the first anniversary of the shootings at Kent State. Tuesday was one of the two days that I had arranged in the week during spring semester to have no classes, so I was going to spend it seeking out the radicals and participating in something meaningful to commemorate the fallen students.

I had seen the Daily Illini photos of the National Guardsmen in front of Murphy’s Pub. When I had come down to the university the summer before for early registration, four blocks of Champaign’s North End lay in ashes. Every ground-level window facing into the Quad had been smashed and had then been covered with a sheet of plywood. The hippies had painted upon them stirring pictures of Superhero Hippies with Omegas on their chests, their fists raised in defiance against the government and oppression.

Damn, I was pissed that I had missed the action! Not this May 4th, no way, no how. I went from room to room in Noble Hall looking for students to accompany me on my quest for radical meaning and hot, patchouli-wearing chicks in khaki. Unfortunately, the dorm was full of former farm boys, engineers and journalism majors and they had all headed for class about an hour before I had pulled myself from bed. This was going to be harder than I thought.

As I was heading back toward my room, I spotted my buddy Pat at the other end of the hall. We met in front of my room and he held out a surprise for me. Since he also had no classes on Tuesday, we often would spend the day together in varying mental states. Today, he had two doses of Window Pane in a small envelope in his hand.

Now, for those of you of the younger two generations, I have to tell you this was something very special. The effective dose of LSD was measured in hundreds of micrograms. When you took a dose that came in a tablet, you had no idea what had been mixed with it to alter its properties. However, Window Pane was clear polyethylene that had had the proper dose pipetted onto it. It was pure as was available anywhere. Pat had obtained a small treasure for us.

Now, I had never tripped during the day before, although I had quite a bit of experience of evenings under controlled situations in dorm rooms. We had both heard horror stories about students who had burned out their eyeballs staring at the sun, but a quick glance outside showed us that there was a light overcast, so we promised each other that, no matter what, we weren’t going to look up.

Down it went. Pat agreed to accompany me on my journey to find other folks interested in doing something in remembrance and we headed for the Quad and the Union. Nobody. Nothing going on–everyone was going about their business, attending classes, playing bongos on the Quad and watching the little green worms drop from the new trees that had been planted on the west side near the Administration building.

And then the Acid hit. (A few days later, Pat and I found out that each of the little poly panes contained not the usual 250, but a full 500 micrograms of the substance.) The spring colors suddenly took on hues that we hadn’t really ever seen before. The students began to exhibit more and more of the attributes of a circus parade and the leaves in the trees were forming arcane writing that you couldn’t quite decipher. There still were no radicals, no demonstration, nothing. Where the hell were they?

The Alma Mater! They always met at the Alma Mater, where someone would crawl up onto the seat with a bullhorn and speak to everyone. Quickly, we gathered enough of our loose wits to enable us to head that way.

Still nothing. Green Street, looking toward the engineering campus, was taking on the characteristics of a Van Gogh painting. The edges of the brick buildings were becoming more and more indistinct and light breezes were creating wind-chimes in our heads as the uncut grass blew in waves. This would never do. We decided after some thought that the best thing to do would be to start a demonstration ourselves, by burning our draft cards. We pulled them out of our wallets, spend a minute or two figuring out which end of a cigarette lighter was the business end and within a few minutes, the ashes blew across the grass toward the Union.

In actuality, we were about seven hours too early. By sunset, a huge crowd had gathered at the statue and were worked into a frenzy by a bullhorn toting firebrand. They marched across campus aimlessly, looking a great deal like a warband of Huns that had asked the Pope for directions to Rome. After going back and forth for an hour and a half, they decided that the proper thing to do was to pillage Follett’s Bookstore. Evidently, someone had told them that Nixon was planning on filling the bays of B-52 bombers with overpriced textbooks.

We, of course, were still puzzling over the lack of action. Where could the radicals be? Finally, it dawned on us both–they were not here because the police had scared them off. This was clearly unacceptable. What to do, what to do? Aha! If the students could see the police cars coming from a long way off, they’d be able to scatter and not get caught. They’d be free to pursue their aims of free speech followed by long hours of sex afterwards. Being an engineer, my mind began going over ways to make police cars more easily visible although my analysis kept being interrupted by moments when the stoplights became hilariously funny. Suddenly, a bright light exploded in front of me (literally) and the answer became clear–if they were bright orange, they’d be visible for blocks and blocks.

At this time, there was a small hardware store about four blocks from the statue. After some discussion, we remembered which direction the store was in and headed down a street lined with trashcans that would move slightly when you were looking at them out of the corner of your eye. We were surprisingly successful in locating the store and even more fortunate in finding that there were three cans of bright, day-glo paint–(you know, the kind that are used for safety purposes). The total cost came to just over five dollars, which presented a problem, since both of us had forgotten how dollar bills were used. There ensued a short discussion with a bored manager, who finally just took all of our bills from us, did some mysterious thing with them behind the counter and returned others.

Off we went. At this time, the campus police station was located in a decrepit building on the engineering campus. It took a bit of exploration, but we spotted it at last and noticed that there were, indeed, several of the offensive police cars parked in front of the place. It began to dawn on Pat, who was a bit more massive than I and therefore had taken a relatively smaller dose that this might not be as good an idea as we had originally thought. He suggested that he watch from across the street and signal me if anyone came by.

I got right to work. It was delightful, the feel of the can in my hand was almost sensual, the orange paint coated the surfaces almost completely the first time. I had finished the right rear fender of the first car and was just starting on the door when I sensed that I was not alone. I glanced over my right shoulder and noted, indeed, that there was a rather large police officer standing behind me.

“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?”

“I am painting police cars orange so they’ll be easier to spot!”

“YOU, STOP THAT RIGHT NOW!!!”

“I will not cease my actions until my mission is complete!”

“WELL THEN, YOU ARE UNDER ARREST!”

I drew myself up to my full five foot, four inches, one hundred twenty-six pounds of defiance and said,

“YOU CAN’T ARREST ME, I’M INVISIBLE!”

At which point I spun upon my heel and headed off towards Green Street. Pat, watching from across the street, saw the entire exchange and watched in first horror, then amusement as the officer stared in my general direction, suddenly looked puzzled, looked on the far side of the police car and then went back into the building shaking his head and talking to himself.

By the time we had joined up again and reached Green Street, we had run across Jane, a young lady of somewhat Bohemian tastes. Since Pat and I were both eighteen years old, radical activities disappeared immediately from the plans radar. She invited us over to her apartment where we spent the remainder of the afternoon listening to Dory Previn records and trying in vain to find out what was behind Skirt #1. By evening, the dose had worn off enough that we were exhausted and I spent the evening and night on her couch.

And this, guys, is why I ended up paying full price for my Physics 107 textbook.

Tom

~By Tom (Tet)

As promised, here’s part two of three. This section of the article describes the physical plant of the house and the decisions and parameters we used to find it.

We first made up a set of criteria:

1) Price needed to be within the range of $130k-170k, including repairs

2) We needed about 500 sq feet/person

3) There needed to be one kitchen per wife (my eldest wife argues that this was not a real condition, but I counter-claim that I would never have agreed to a place without this being true)

4) There needed to be a separate air-supply for Cheron, since she is allergic to cats

5) There needed to be a balance of personal space and common space

We spent about eight months looking. We found, during that time, two houses that fulfilled our criteria. The first, unfortunately, was grabbed out from under us by someone with faster reflexes. The second looked promising, but there were a number of problems.

Our house began its life as a single-family dwelling during the early 1950s. It had been built by the son of the man who built and lived in the (still-unpurchased) brick luxury house to our immediate east. It was built with a usable basement, two fireplaces and ground floor with a two-car garage in the back.

During the 1960s, a in-ground swimming pool was put in the back, with the garage being turned into a bathhouse for the pool. Also during this period, central air conditioning was put into the house.

Unfortunately, the family sold the house during the big “student-apartment boom” in the mid-1970s, when many houses were converted into rooming houses. Unfortunately, the conversion was done, apparently, by three rednecks and two kegs of beer over a long weekend. Short cuts were made, corners were cut and the overall value of the place was reduced. The backyard pool was filled in.

It stayed this way for about thirty years, with the general structure of the bulding deteriorating where neglected. When we found it, it had tenants in both the upstairs and the basement, with a guy dealing crack out of the cottage in the back that had been created from the bathhouse.

*However*–the absentee landlord, who was in Massachusetts was eager to sell off in the current market and we managed to get them to lower their price to $138k–a steal for the square footage (or so we thought.)

We rented the apartments until we could convince the tenants to leave (in two of the three cases, they were low-life enough that they defaulted on their rents and we were able to have them evicted–in the third, she and we agreed that the lease could be broken and she found a new place after selling us her sectional sofa for rent credit.)

We took *real* possession of the house in the late spring of 2005–that’s when the real fun began….

If you’re not a fan of Extreme Makeover, you can safely ignore the next three paragraphs.

The plan was to expand as much space in all the units as was possible to increase the open-air living space. As much work as possible was going to be done by the family itself, but code-important work was to be done by licensed contractors and electricians. Mission accomplished–the floor in the downstairs was removed (as well as the ceiling, walls removed or moved, bathrooms renovated. The cottage was turned into a two-room efficiency apartment.

New problems were found then. Beneath six layers of flooring in the downstairs living room, water seepage was found from the chimney area. Two full walls of the sun porch were eaten by termites to the point where you could put your hand through 2×4s. There wasn’t a grounded circuit in the main house. Contractors fixed all of these problems–the house was rewired, followed by the family restoring the ceiling, Sean built a temporary wall to hold up the sunporch’s roof while New Prairie Construction build two walls, another outfit rehung the gutters on the front of the house, which had been angled to dump rainwater along the side of the chimney into the basement.

Total cost? About 45k–over our estimate, but adequate for now. Remaining work to be done consists of finishing the siding and replacing the roof on the sunporch, new windows for the cottage and, within a couple years a new roof on the main house.

Physical Setup

Imagine an inverted L. I’ll descibe the main house by telling what is in the top and side legs on each floor. The sun porch (ManCave) is attached to the top side of the side leg and is accessible by French doors.

Main Floor–Main House

The side leg is the common area for the commune. It consists of the dining room with the table set where the family takes its evening meals plus a large common living room/entertainment area with fireplace and media center. The color scheme in the room is dominant light yellow with deep red highlights. At the top of the leg is the entry to the ManCave, along the two outer sides are five windows looking out on the side yard and the street. There are paintings and clocks all over the walls in this area.

The top leg has the stairs to the lower level on the farside of the eldest wife’s kitchen. The kitchen is where she, Sean and occasionally kitten prepare the evening common meal. The kitchen is done in teal and brown. Down the hall, past the full bathroom is her office, from where she runs her home business, plus her bedroom. I believe that the office is done in light green and burgundy and her bedroom is goldenrod and burgundy.

The total space of the two legs is approximately 1000 square feet, evenly divided.

The ManCave is attached to the top of the side leg, but parallel to the top leg. It contains Sean and my game materials and a pair of hotstuff homebuilt gaming computers. (It, and every other room in the house is net- or wireless-connected to the Internet and each other.) It has windows on three sides and has its own heating and cooling system. Total space in the ManCave is 14 feet by 8 feet.

Lower Floor–Main House

The entire lower floor has bookshelves on every available bit of wall space everywhere except for the kitchen and laundry room. These shelves contain most of the 3000+ volumes in the family collection. (Probably 200 are in the cottage.)

The side leg contains kitten’s office and living room. It is lined on three of the four walls with bookshelves. The walls are dark orange or wood. She has her writing desk here plus a small television, stereo and futon. When we have visitors, it doubles as a guest room.

The top leg contains kitten’s kitchen, which is decorated in Barbie-pink and white. It, like the rest of the basement, has indirect, diffuse lighting and white ceilings to minimize the feeling of being in a cellar-space. The half-bath, including shower is at the foot of the stairs heading upwards. Beyond the stairway is kitten’s bedroom, which is done in deep purple and midnight blue. Off the kitchen and near the door to the outside from the downstairs is the laundry room, which contains survival materials, clothes hangers and the dryer (the washer is in part of the kitchen to avoid moving major plumbing fixtures. The laundry room is painted lime green.

Total space 1000 square feet, evenly divided between the two legs.

Cottage

The cottage is approximately 25 by 15 feet in size and is divided into a living room/kitchen area with full bath off to the side (approximately 16 by 15) and a computer-gaming room/bedroom that measures 9 by 15. Our dog, Java, has a living area within the cottage (including a bed that is in the larger room.

The back yard will soon contain a ritual circle and firepit, as soon as spring comes. My son, who has worked in landscaping, estimated the value of the ground landscaping currently as 10k. Fortunately, it came with the property.

We also have a shed in the side yard where we keep our gardening tools and a compost bin where organic materials from the kitchen is mulched.

~Tom (Tet)

Thanks to Brandon for this intimately and sincerely written piece. As an update, Urbanagora will soon be changing, we will be adding more regular authors and we may have a new look. Stay tuned:

I sometimes find myself slipping for months into accepting the world we live in and then something happens. It’s like a spark. I read a book, see a movie, or meet someone new that reawakens the idealist within me. Whether it is reading Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, Sinclair’s Jungle, or watching a movie like “Motorcycle Diaries” as I did last night, I am every once in a while reminded of who I am and what my philosophical foundations are. I am constantly reminded of the big picture, think big. That’s why I often think we live in a sick sad little world.

I think much of this sense is captured in a quote by C. Wright Mills from his Essay “The Sociological Imagination”:

“The facts of contemporary history are also facts about the success and the failure of individual men and women…Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both. Yet men do not usually define the troubles they endure in terms of historical change and institutional contradiction. The well-being they enjoy, they do not usually impute to the big ups and downs of the societies in which they live.”

In fact, I was looking for another quote by the same man that went something along the lines of: ‘Each of us lives out our biographies, our individual lives within the context of a much larger historical period…’ and so on, but couldn’t find it. Anyway, the point is made.

The sick sad little world is the private lives each of us lead. Over the course of the continuing industrial revolution, humanity has been in a constant state of change. Sometimes this change is in violent upheaval such as civil wars and revolutions. At other times it is in economic booms and busts. For the past few centuries, human life has been in a constant state of flux, never the same from one generation to the next and these changes has profoundly shaped modern life.

We have withdrawn from public space and into our private McMansions in our gated communities with private security. We get into our cars each day and drive from home to work and then back at the end of the day only to repeat it again the next. Our leisure time is spent watching television shows of infotainment which blur the lines between information and entertainment (think most of Fox News or its Comedy Central counterparts). We have become increasingly private and isolated. We lack public forums and spaces. The modern idea of a public space is a shopping center, a Mecca of consumerism and social anomie.

Recent studies have shown that people have fewer close friends than they did a generation ago. We are becoming the world of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. If you have any doubts go to your nearest electronics store and look at what they’re selling—wall-sized televisions that bring you crystal-clear lifelike pictures so you can watch TV and stay at home. We live in a capitalistic “me culture” that encourages us to think of nothing but ourselves (no doubt a contributor to the rise of Libertarianism) and our personal gratification at this exact moment rather than taking a long view of our lives and the impacts our actions will have on future generations.

We have created the fantasy of the individual to make ourselves feel special and different while we constantly want to be different with someone else. We constantly deny the fact the humans are essentially social in nature and not only desire but at some basic level need to be surrounded by others and to be part of something bigger than ourselves. We find this in groups of friends, churches, organizations, etc and yet these things are dying a slow death (except possibly churches). Read Bowling Alone and you’ll get a better idea of the death of public life.

I’m not here to say that each of us does not have quirks or particular sets of beliefs and combinations thereof, but rather that who we are is inexorably linked to the world in which we live. Hitler would not have been Hitler if he did not live in a cultural time and a place that was supportive of his ideology. Alexander would not have been Alexander if he had not been his father’s son, was not taught by Aristotle, and did not live in a time when it was believed that humans could be gods. It is pure folly to try to disassociate one’s biography, one’s individual life from the specific socio-historical context in which one lives. Dad losing his job at Ford isn’t just a stroke of bad luck for dad, it has to do with global markets and the decline of the American auto sector. Grandpa and grandma getting that house back in the 50s, the equity of which they used to send mom and dad to college (if they even had to pay given the low tuition costs back then) had a lot more to do with the Montgomery GI bill than it did with Grandpa’s hard work.

I suppose the overarching point to this is that we cannot divorce ourselves from society and the world around us. We should never speak of our lives in a vacuum but always look to the larger picture of the world surrounding us to understand the “why” of our actions. There are things larger than any one of us at work in this world the results of millions and billions of decisions by as many people, but even those decisions are made within the context of the historical moment in which they find themselves and all of its attendant opportunities and barriers thereto.

~By Brandon

Thanks to Tom (a.k.a. Tet) for sharing one of his many incredible stories:

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is the first in a series of stories involving interesting people within the political and/or philosophical sectors during my life.

The Connecticut Valley is a Rift Valley, like the big one in Africa that first spawned humanity. The river flows down the middle of it with low mountains on either side. Occasionally, a small earthquake will knock down rocks. Only thirty miles to the East are formations that match rocks in Morocco. They slammed into the continent sometime in the Cretaceous, I believe.

Deerfield, Massachusetts lies along the river. It was the scene of a famous massacre back in the early 18th Century during Queen Anne’s War in 1704, when 56 people were killed and the rest of the village transported to Quebec. Even today, if you drive the backroads, you come upon signs stating where bodies were found when people investigating the incident began exploring. It feels sort of like a Puritan CSI episode.

Two of the premier private secondary schools in America are in Deerfield and in Northfield nearer the border with Vermont and New Hampshire. They’re the places where princes and sons of oil millionaires come to read Shakespeare and become cultured enough to take their fathers’ places in society. To the south is Northampton, known for Smith College and the highest per-capita population of lesbians in America. Amazing town–little crime and lots of fat, happy women.

My most radical wife lived for about 15 years in Greenfield, which was a town 10 miles north of Deerfield on I-91. She was member of the War Tax Refusers, which is an organization whose members do not pay some or all of their income tax which would be used to support the military. A lot of the work that the organization did was centered in a place called the Trap Rock Peace Center, which sits atop the west ridge overlooking the Connecticut River.

She told me story after story about this fellow who was sort of the philosophical center of the organization–and the eventual point of my story, here, I guess. Wally and Juanita Nelson lived next to the Center in a small unpainted wooden house.
She got us invited over for a meal, and I was amazed at what ensued:

Here was a couple who had been living their political beliefs without compromise for decade after decade. Wally was a Conscientious Objector in WORLD WAR 2! While I had heard of such, I didn’t realize that there were any that were still alive and being activists.

[It turns out that he also found that the alternative work that he was doing was contributing to the war effort, so he quit doing that and ended up spending a considerable amount of time in jail.]

Wally also did Freedom Rides beginning in 1946, YEARS before the rest of the Civil Rights movement caught up with him. He and Juanita stopped paying any taxes years ago, and took themselves completely off the grid to allow themselves to exist while using the minimum amount of money.

Their home was warm from the wood-burning stove. During the spring and summer, they grew crops in their garden. What they needed above and beyond their own food needs, they sold at the local farmer’s market and spent that cash on those things they could not replace themselves. Most of the time, they traded it in barter for tradesmen’s work in repairs around the house that they couldn’t do themselves.

Wally resembled a cross between Uncle Ben on the rice package and a bantam rooster. He was full of energy, even though he was only about 5 feet tall. I was absolutely shocked that this little guy had faced down Southern sheriffs, real racism and folks who were probably in the KKK in their spare time and lived to tell the tale–all while using completely non-violent, Gandhi-like methods. I thought back to the Gandhi movie with Ben Kingsley in a loincloth, spinning in his humble home, and suddenly realized that I was in the presence of greatness. He was nearly 90 years old on my first visit.

He and Juanita had made chili for us, and we sat around the table. Since there was no electricity, candles came out as the sun sank behind the next ridge ten miles to the west. The view westward was breathtaking.

We talked for hours. He and I didn’t agree on some things. He was more opposed to violence of any kind, for any reason, than anyone I have ever met before or since. I still don’t agree with him on that point–I’ve always figured that there are just some varmints that oughtta be shot–however, every argument that I ever proposed to him in favor of that was quietly, purposefully shot down when we were discussing it.

We returned to their home over and over over the next five years. They even came down to the house in Greenfield for Thanksgiving dinner–that was a lively bunch of dinner guests–and he was the one who mentioned that the insulation needed to be removed from the chimney to prevent even MORE smoke from filling up the house.

About the turn of the Century, he began getting ill. He was diagnosed with cancer, but decided to spend the time he had left at home. The last time I visited, he was drifting in and out–his frame covered with a blanket to keep him warmer. There was a near-endless stream of people who came to visit him atop that mountain–I kept thinking about all the cartoons I had ever seen in magazines about folks coming up to the mountaintop to consult the guru. Even though he was in pain most of the time, he was still sweet and talked when he could.

I was in Massachusetts in May of 2002, when he finally died. We attended his memorial service–I really didn’t know what to expect. It was absolutely huge. People from all over the country arrived over the space of an hour and were seated in a huge tent. David Dellinger, a Quaker pacifist, gave the keynote speech, as well as others, including Juanita, herself.

I was very surprised to find last year that there was an excellent wiki article on him. There are all sorts of links on it to things like his obits and articles concerning him. I think that, for the most part, the reason that he did not become more famous was that he was “means” driven, rather than “ends” driven like so much of the radical and civil rights movement.

Brian, this is the man who taught me never to compromise with evil:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wally_Nelson

“I guess a long time ago I got it out of my head I was going to save the world. So I act to save Wally and his integrity. Sometimes it’s a situation that’s dangerous and sometimes not so dangerous. But I would hope that other people would be inspired to do what they ought to do.

Commitment may be seen as a constant state of fertilization of the heart and mind which fuels the determination to live up to one’s beliefs. It means keeping a promise to oneself and others. Sometimes it can be scary. Nevertheless, one feels a sense of integrity, striving to express in action the soul’s deepest sense of what is right and good.

We don’t intend to cooperate with the IRS in its attempts to make us pay for killing. What would you do if I came into your office tomorrow with a cup in my hand, asking for contributions to enable me to buy guns and kill a group of people I don’t like?

Nonviolence is a constant awareness of the dignity and humanity of oneself and others. It seeks truth and justice. It renounces violence, both in method and in attitude. It is a courageous acceptance of active love and goodwill as the instruments with which to overcome evil and transform both oneself and others. It is the willingness to undergo suffering rather than inflict it. It excludes retaliation and flight.”

All of the above were from wikiquote.

*sniff*

~By Tom (a.k.a. Tet)