Watching the Recession from my Window

Today, Friday July 31st 2009 I watched the Great Recession from my window. At about 1230 PM two police cars arrived. In the building across the street they entered and they removed children from their mother because she was being evicted- from what I understand she had not paid the rent- that is what the super said to me.

The cops called the woman's ex husband who had to come to get the kids. In the middle of the street there was allot of screaming and yelling. The police drew their guns. The woman was arrested for hitting one of the cops. The father left with the screaming kids. The last word I heard from the woman's mouth was

"I have been looking for work for seven months"

A Call to Action: Poets and the Great Recession

http://www.poetsagainstthewar.org/worldpoets.asp

In 2003 amid the hysteria of the Bush war machine poet Sam Hamill created Poets Against the War. In a sea of jingoism and Goebbelssque hysteria Sam and many other poets were a voice of reason and sense. If they had been listened to so much of our current pain and suffering would not have happened; if they had listened to Sam there would be 100,000 more Iraqis alive and 6,000 live American soldiers and our economy would not have become bankrupt.

What Sam did mattered. While Dana Gioia and his Right Wing Cronies were trying to use poetry to legitimate the Bush/Cheney Regime, Sam Hamill was America's poet laureate. There have been other times in American literary history where Poetry and Prose was a mirror on the lives of people and where the poetry defined an era. Just think about the Leaves of Grass, The Wasteland, Grapes of Wrath, A Streetcar Names Desire, On the Road, The Ugly American, and many other books have defined eras and were penned within the epoch of the events that were occurring.

In Latin America this type of writing is central to the literary landscape. Writers like Eduardo Galleano (The Open Veins of Latin America), Ernesto Cardenal, Octavio Paz, Laura Solorzano, Mario Vargas Llosa and many others of all political colors bring the urgency of now and the urgency of telling the story to an audience with vigor and art. During great upheavals in American history there have been writers and poets who did what Sam Hamill did and tried to make sense of the turmoil and disaster befalling the Republic. Unfortunately those type of writers and poets are few and far between today.

Most poets that I know fall into one of three categories; Independently Wealthy, Academics, and Poets who Work In Full Time non-Academic jobs. By far the most dominant groups of these three in "experimental poetryland" are the Academics. They have the time and the resources to publish and to write. There are many non-academics of great influence, Ron Silliman comes to front of mind. But for the majority of poets who are influential the writing is an interior exploration or an artistic pursuit separated from politics and the everyday.

No poet has come forward the way Sam Hamill has to write about and mobilize people about the Great Recession that we are now mired in. I have seen a few blog posts from people like Maxine Chernoff lamenting the complete destruction of California's educational system but no poet has come out to write about the collapse of the American economy.

It makes me wonder is it the fact that most influential poets are academics and thus are not effected? Are just the education budget cuts important?

Is it that many poets live in urban enclaves or college towns and so the the pain and dislocation I see around me is not part of their lives? Why is it that I don't read or see anything about outrage that is the Global economic collapse on the many blogs I read? I think that it bears reflecting on this fact; if you read poetry blogs and poetry online journals it is business as usual and why that is?

I would like to ask poets and other writers who read my blog to email me stories, poems or essays on this Great Recession. Post them in comments or email them to me and I will try to set up something so that somewhere on the web the poets and writers who are enduring this period of destruction can give voice to this generation's collapse perhaps in the spirit of Grapes of Wrath or The Wasteland.

Why Bad People Hate Obama

On Sunday Traudi and I went to see my grandmother who is 95 at her nursing home. When we came out someone had written over my Obama 08 sticker on my car "Stupid Nigger". This was quite a shock because even in Republican DuPage county where my Grandmother's facility is located Illinois is mostly for Obama. The vandalism and its intent to shock really effected me and it caused me to pause.

I have heard all kinds of vitriol about President Obama and not just from the Fox News crowd. The reality is that an entire segment of our population hates President Obama for what he stands for and his race is just added wood on that fire.

There is a whole social class of people who really believe that they have worked hard and that they dont owe anything to anyone. My cousin Gregory has this mindset as does my Aunt Bonnie and Uncle Chuck. They believe that what Obama is doing is "socialism" because he wants a modicum of real equality in our society. What these people want to do is eat at the trough and fill their bellies while the nation declines.

Now, I have not been totally pleased with President Obama. The lack of investigations of the Bush administration really bothers me. George Bush and Dick Cheney should be in jail right now for their crimes. I am also not happy with his stance on torture and labor unions he needs to do more. But he is trying. He has put forth a moral argument that everyone in America deserves health care, something that is a right in most rich countries. The Right is frothing at the mouth and we his supporters are not out there for his plan enough. The truth is if you really want to reduce healthcare then it needs to be Single Payer but lets give him a chance.

In the end there is a whole population of White middle and upper middle class people who hate what President Obama stands for and calling him "Stupid Nigger" makes them feel good I guess? But to see such hatred played out on my car was a shock- but it has not changed my opinion.

Edgy Post Avant Poetry? You Gotta Know Where the Edge is to be Edgy

http://adamfieled.blogspot.com/2009/06/anything-with-edge-rethinking-post.html

Adam Fieled, on his blog has really opened an issue I think is essential for poetry as an art form today. Can "post avant, experimental, Post Language, Flarf, Conceptualist" poetry be edgy?

In Kenneth Rexroth's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Rexroth Autobiographical Novel he shares with us his life . Rexroth experiences everything the IWW, the Bughouse Square Socialists, The Beats, Helping Japanese Internees, Thomas Merton's Trappists, SF Rennaissance poets, Various painters, and more. Rexroth is cutting edge because he is living on the edge without comfort. The edge is a place where he lived. The writing did not need much for that life to come out and become central to the work.

The kind of diverse formation that Rexroth had also informed other writers like Witold Gombrowitz the great Polish diarist. He lived in poverty and exile but who was committed to the work and to pushing boundaries. It did not matter to Gombrowitz that he was poor, alone and far from home he lived on the edge and it filled his work.

The reason contemporary so much of Post Avant writing is not edgy is that poets do not know where the edge is located. Poets writing today lived lives of comfort on a set formative track that I like to call the Poetry Industrial Complex.

Poets go to grad school where they make connections and they never have even seen the edge much less lived it. They write clever blogs and they are published by their friends who also were formed by the Poetry Industrial Complex. Most of these poets live very comfortable lives and anything edgy they write is mostly artifice. How could the cutting edge come from that formation? Out of the Poetry Industrial Complex and its formation some interesting Conceptual Poetry and Flarf have developed but the work is hardly edgy.

Poets who write edgy work are pushed to the margins by those formed by the Poetic Industrial Complex. he poets of the Poetry Industrial Complex prefer to exist within their sealed Tupperware world where they only breathe their own air. This air does not allow for truly edgy poetry.

All is not lost however there are many poets writing Post Avant who are edgy- they just are not as well known or many times in New York...

Here are some suggestions for edgy work ...

• In Chicago there is a slam poet Kevin Coval whose work has the "slam" aesthetic but is also challenging and you can feel edgy truth in the writing.


• Another is Mark Nowak whose work is both edgy and well done and actually working class which is a place most Post Avant poets have only read about in books.


• Chicago poet (But now in Poland) Mark Tardi has all the Poetry Industrial Complex bonafides but he is a poet of hard edges without sentiment.
• Jesse Seldess poetry is filled with the disturbing world of for example Alzheimers yet his work is not read widely yet.
  
• A couple of well formed edgy poets are Harryette Mullins and Ed Roberson's whose work is well read. Maybe someone ought to send a pallet of their books to President Obama so when he picks a poet to write a poem for the inauguration he gets something stomach able.


• Garin Cycholl whose geographic/historical poetry weds a poetry of place with a true avant garde sense in ways that have not been seen since Charles Olson's Maximus is very edgy.


• Jen Hofer has all the Poetry Industrial Complex formation but none of the artifice pushes boundaries from a life lived on the edge. She is also a great bridge to Latin American writing.
• Speaking of poets on the edge there are so many global poets whose work is filled with edginess- Virna Teixiera, Sergio Medeiros, and Maria Esther Maciel in Brazil, Giovanna Frene and Marco Giovenale in Italy, Haydar Ergodian in Turkey, Dunia Mikhail in Iraq, Laura Solorzano, in Mexico and many others.

Their books are all available... So go buy them and break the tupperware seal of your mind.

The End of Tiger's Stadium-The End of General Motors

When my family immigrated to America from Italy they went to three places- Newark, NJ, Chicago, IL and Detroit, Michigan. The result of these movements were that we were divided in our Baseball loyalties. Some of us loved the Dodgers (Then Mets), Yankees, Tigers or White Sox.

So these teams were always real to me because of family get togethers. We liked to rib each other and rarely were my White Sox on top and so I had to sit and listen to the others. My Detroit relatives always talked about the Tigers. Willie Horton, Al Kaline, Sparky Anderson, Alan Trammell and all the rest. Hell they even had Denny Mc Clain who was a South Sider but played in Detroit. Detroit was rough when I was a kid. Nothing like Chicago or New York which still pulsed. But there was something about the Tigers- that I hated and still do to this day.

Today, Tigers Stadium, at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull is being torn down. Along with her sisters Comiskey Park, Cleveland Memorial Stadium, Forbes Field, and Ebbets Field she represented something that has been lost amid our iPods and blogs- Depth. Some people want to put Wrigley and Fenway in that category but they have always been and remain parks for the Gentry.

There was a time in America when solid people made solid things. These were the kind of people who filled Tigers Stadium, Comiskey Park and the rest. They were not corporate and they were not office workers and this made their collective souls different from other places. The end of Tigers Stadium is the last link from that America to ours and it is sad to think that it moves into history.

America has become like Phoenix- everything is new and clean and antiseptic. You are more apt to find an office with a Zen Fountain then you are to find a person who is the member of an industrial union or works with his or her hands. As we watch Tigers Stadium fall to the wrecker's ball we look at General Motors and by analogy an America that is gone forever.

The reason that no one cares about General Motors dieing is because so few of us know anyone who make things.

General Motors, Tigers Stadium demolished....

Literary Influence in Chicago?

http://newcity.com/2009/06/03/lit-50-who-really-books-in-chicago/

It was a pleasure to be chosen by New City Chicago as one of the 50 most influential literary figures in Chicago and hell to be on a list with Oprah is always good. Cracked Slab Books has tried over the past three years to publish poets we care about and do something for our local community. Chicago gets short shrift in America's literary scene mostly because all the money is in New York and at Universities while in Chicago we have no money for literary pursuits (excluding the Poetry Foundation).

The Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago

If you grew up in the Midwest Chicago will always be a comfortable city. Unlike New York Chicago is a city where the country and the city flow together almost seamlessly. The streets continue out into the suburbs and the flat Midwestern plains are not far away from the artificial mountains that sit at the middle of our metropolis. Everything about Chicago is comfortable, except the weather.

Until recently the special exhibitions and permanent collections of Chicago's Museum's were not especially provocative. One can become exhausted in museums such as the Metropolitan in New York or the Tate in London but our museum's never gave the visitor that sense of being overwhelmed until now.

The Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago is a masterpiece created for Chicago by Italian architect Renzo Piano. The juxtaposition of this new wing (It is almost the same size as the old museum) with the staid and terminally Midwestern be aux arts building that is joins is jarring and overwhelming.

Most Chicagoans view the Art Institute in the same way they view Comiskey Park or Wrigley Field. They know what they are going to get and it is 'nice' in a Midwestern way. The Modern Wing changes everything. The old standards are no longer in the Art Institute. The room of armor, the Chagall Windows, the small galleries filled with Cezannes and Monets are a thing of the past now and this is a welcome change.

The first thing you notice in the Modern Wing is the quality of the light. Unlike the older sections of the Art Institute the Modern Wing is filled with natural light. A kind of atrium joins the Museum to the city and the street. Out of every window you can see the 360 degree panorama of the city. On one side you have the many famous buildings of the Michigan Av Streetwall, on the other the Wing is joined to Millenium Park by a wonderful over the street footbridge and on the other side you can see the water and the lake.

The gallery spaces are not only filled with some of the most important works of art of the past 100 years (Modern beginning in 1915)- But the galleries are so open and light filled that you can actually enjoy the paintings in many different settings. I especially liked the design and furniture rooms which are filled with drawings and models of famous buildings and design pieces.
There are whole rooms filled with installations and rooms for films. In the end the whole museum allows you to get a sense of art since 1915 that in the old museum seemed an afterthought in relation to the Art Institute's enormous French Impressionist collection.

Another aspect of the museum that is interesting are the public spaces. The Terzo Piano restaurant sits on the roof and has easily the best views of the downtown. A garden is still under construction but it melds well with the Lurie Shoulder Garden in Millennium Park.

The thing that the Modern Wing does most effectively is remove provincialism from the Art Institute. For many of us who grew up on the Art Institute it always seemed that we were in Bertha Honore Palmer's Salon in the pre-Modern Wing museum .

That stodginess has been eliminated. The only criticism that I have is that to get from the lobby to the pedestrian bridge there are only down escalators creating a line at the only Elevator but this is a traffic issue and does not take away from Piano's triumph.

Modern Wing at the Art Institute of Chicago

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/arts/design/14inst.html

Flarf- Conceptual Poetry and CNBC

Since so many people around the world are going through the Great Recession with me it has become a kind of group experience. No matter what happens in my day the reality of the Great Recession is right there like a muscle pull always reminding you of what might be.

I have had time however to think about the situation we as a world find ourselves in and something has become clear to me. The reason we are in this situation is because of elites and their domination of the conversation.

I often watch CNBC during the day. This is just to avoid TV shows with Depends ads. As you listen to the business leaders on the screen it becomes very clear that none of them are in danger of losing anything. They all went to the best schools, they all come from the best places and when this is over they will still be on top. It is kind of like watching a poetry panel with Charles Bernstein, Ron Silliman, Barrett Watten and Michael Palmer their place is secure and they have no fear.

The result is that the realities of life and the fear of many of us are abstractions to them. All of the TV personalities also live in a dream world. They all speak the same language and talk about the same things. The millions of people who have lost so much are simply not real to them. The result of all of this is that when this is over the Elites will be on top and the rest of us will be left with the scraps on the floor.

One respite in this sea of stress and vexation for me are pod casts. I especially like New York’s WNYC they have great conversations especially the Leonard Lopate show. I downloaded a poetry reading the other day that was held at the Whitney- advertised as a “poetry war” between Flarfists and Conceptualists.

Here is the URL to listen to the reading

http://blogs.wnyc.org/culture/2009/05/13/talk-to-me-flarf-vs-conceptual-writing/

I was interested because most podcasts about poetry suck. So I put this one on my ipod and went to the gym. I thought perhaps it would motivate me to write? The poets who read were Christian Bök, Nada Gordon, Kenneth Goldsmith, Sharon Mesmer, K. Silem Mohammad, Kim Rosenfield, Gary Sullivan, and Darren Wershler

Kenneth Goldsmith who was the empresario of this event at the very fancy NY Whitney Museum set up some faux war between the Conceptualists and the Flarfists which is as relevant to our current world situation about as much as a war between Dungeons and Dragons Devotees and those who prefer Mist on Playstation.

It became clear as this podcast played on that what caused the economic meltdown- the elites serving elites and ignoring the effects of their work on society as a whole-- is also true in poetry. Goldsmith talked about ‘that in poetry there still is an avant garde’ and that these two groups are totally separate from the ‘mainstream’ poets who are getting published in the New Yorker.

Is he really serious?

Do people still worry about that? The way I look at it at least the New Yorker Poet gets a check with which he or she can buy some beer.

The reading began with someone bleating sounds then Christian Bok read his elitist drivel. Nada Gordon’s poem on why she loves men is sort of funny at the beginning but then you begin to think if a man wrote that poem using the same tone about women he would probably be called violent and misogynistic.

K Silem Mohammed’s reworked Sonnets are clever but he lost me when he said that he was the smartest man in the room. The poetry does not sound that different than many other experimental poets work? It must be the marketing that makes it better? Or am I missing something? Or is it because allot of it comes from New York and San Francisco?

The Podcast played and it became interesting to see how close its tone was to CNBC and the talking heads there. You had all the inside jokes and special words, which are also central to the elites on CNBC and secret codes (Flarf, NASDAQ). The separation from reality and the affinity with fine things and aversion to the ordinary the sense of being set apart from the masses. The elitism in this poetry reading oozed over the airwaves. This group of poets- who are mostly college professors- continued to ply their elitism not realizing how cliché they have become.

I have been spending allot of time lately reading through the 1930’s. In the Autumn of 2006 issue of Chicago Review Kenneth Rexroth was profiled and I have come to appreciate him more and more. In a letter to Jonathan Williams in 1951 he said that following about poets that I think applies

“keep away from dilettantes, potters and weavers, get your nose in the sweaty armpits of real people”

Maybe these folks need to get out of the Whitney....

The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day

In the middle of the 20th Century self described Catholic writers, poets and activists mattered to global discourse. Today most Catholic poets and writers try to play down that part of their lives because many times the Church makes being faithful and thoughtful impossible.

In these days when Catholics are arguing whether it is acceptable for Barack Obama, the President of the United States to speak at Notre Dame. We look at a near past where intellectual discourse was welcomed within Catholic institutions.

The pre-Vatican II Church was more dogmatic and has been rightfully vilified as close minded in many things but it was also far more open than today's Church to debate. Within the same Church at the same time Dorothy Day and William F Buckley wrote, spoke and both were viewed as good Catholics.

During the period from 1930-1980 important Catholic intellectuals, activists, poets and writers like; John Courtney Murray SJ who with Reinhold Niebuhr defined a theology for the nuclear age; Flannery O'Connor, Jack Kerouac, Thomas Merton, Walker Percy, William F Buckley, Malcolm Muggeridge, William Everson, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Francois Mauriac, and Jacques Maritain all wrote important literature . These thinkers were not just read by a small ghetto of conservatives but often graced the cover of Time Magazine.

Catholics were also central in social change globally. Ernesto Cardinal in Nicaragua, Dom Helder Camara in Brazil, Cesar Chavez in the USA, Charles De Foucould in France, Pope John XXIII, Lech Walesa, Pope John Paul II, were all witnesses for peace and justice and among all of these great figures perhaps the most interesting and important for American Lay Catholics was Dorothy Day of New York.

In The Duty of Delight, The Edited Diaries of Dorothy Day, from Marquette University Press, Robert Ellsberg a long time editor for Orbis Books and friend of Dorothy's gives us 5 decades of her inner most thoughts. In this volume we get to experience the Depression in New York- and realize how our current economic situation is similar. Day also lets us see what it meant in Catholic parlance for a Lay Woman to start an organization with the word Catholic in the title. Along with Paul Elie's 'The Life You Save May Be Your Own.' Robert Ellsberg's Duty of Delight revives a lost world. A world that we are not likely to see again in our age of narrowcasting and Facebook.

The Catholic Worker, Dorothy Day's organization was uncompromising. Founded with her friend French philosopher Peter Maurin the Worker believed in the corporal works of mercy (See Matthew 25) were central. The Worker also believed in Labor Unions, Pacifism, and apostolic poverty which flumuxed Marxists and Conservatives alike. Dorothy Day was a radical the way St Francis was a radical and this upset everyone. She believed that the reason that there was war and poverty is because we failed to love as Jesus loved. Day was arrested in her life hundreds of times protesting war and poverty. She believed as well that the urine caked Bowery bum was the image of Christ and she lived accordingly. The Catholic Worker newspaper is still published over 70 years later and over 100 Catholic Worker houses exist today.

In a May 1973 entry in the diary she defined her creed;

" I am dogmatic, I believe in the Divinity of Christ, Christ as God, and Redeemer, Saviour, True God and True Man. I believe in a Heaven and Hell, Resurrection of the Body, Life Everlasting. I believe with St Augustine that we are all members or potential members of the Mystical Body of Christ,. In other words we are all members of one another and that if the health of one member suffers the health of the whole body is lowered. I also believe with the IWW (Early 20th Century Marxist Organization) that an injury to one is an injury to all" (TDD: P 531)

The Catholic Worker was listed in 1957 along with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference by J Edgar Hoover as Communist Front organizations. The FBI director wanted to arrest Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King as subversives. I guess Dorothy would have thought it good company. In the Duty of Delight Day's reflections on her many friends important people like Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Thomas Merton and Cesar Chavez are shared. But she also introduces activist priests, sisters and lay people who today are not remembered.

The book ends with Dorothy Day's death in 1980. 1980 was a perfect time for her to leave us. Soon after her death a campaign to marginalize the kind of activism promoted by Vatican II, Pope John XXIII, and his encyclical Pacem in Terris, and the Catholic Worker was begun by Right Wing groups and the Church Magisterium.

Today most of the important Catholic thinkers and activists of Day's time are not highlighted in Catholic media or in Catholic parishes. On many Catholics sites every major Catholic thinker and activist of the 20th Century from Day to Merton to Murray to John XXIII will not be mentioned because of some concern about "Doctrinal Purity". In fact the website Catholic Culture (Right Wing) Says of the Catholic Worker website "This site has articles which distort the Church's social teaching by promoting a radical pacifism." As if Jesus was something other than a pacifist? It seems to me that Dorothy Day would have laughed at that.

In the end The Duty of Delight edited by Robert Ellsberg shares with the world the inner life of an extraordinary woman. While the Church continues to canonize people for creating new novenas or devotions Dorothy Day's "cause" for sainthood is stalled in Rome. Could it be that she is already a saint and we should not bother with the paperwork?

Cook County: Barack Obama's America

It has been 100 days since Barack Obama was inaugurated and I have watched over the past few days ad nauseam reflections on what the Obama Presidency Means. I have not heard the obvious- America is becoming more like Cook County.

While to many in the South and West the idea of Chicago Politics seems alien and filled with strange names and ideas the basics of Chicago politics now define America. In Chicagoland as 0ur region is called there are Democrats and Republicans but they seem to agree on most issues.

• Government exists to provide services.
• Politics is a place where government, business elites and Labor cut up a pie.
• The job of public servants is to make sure that the garbage is picked up and the streets are clean and things run well.
• Graft is tolerated as long as these things get done.

Quality of life is central to what drives Chicago politics. Anyone who comes here in the summer will be dazzled by the parks, flowers and beaches. Chicago is about quality of life and this means higher taxes and graft and city workers- but also the fact that the parks, libraries, and alleys run well makes a difference for average Chicagoans.

In the end what matters in Chicago are public spaces and this seems to matter to Barack Obama.

Since Ronald Reagan was elected public spaces have been derided as wasteful. The Conservative movement has been about the private. Government should leaves me alone. I should be able to make as much money as possible. My neighborhood is gated and the parks and pools are private and public spaces are neglected. Our ideal has been Scottsdale or Plano Texas not Chicago or New York.

I will never forget when I lived in Dallas and I went to the main library. It was filled with homeless men and was shabby and dirty. Compare that to the Harold Washington Library Center in Chicago- which is a palace- and you can see the difference between a Cook County vision and the Conservative vision of America. Sure the Cook County vision is not always graft free but there are great services. In Conservative America you get no services in fact you get what you pay for.

This sense of the public being important is why President Obama is supporting Green Energy, High Speed Rail and national health care. He cares more about public spaces. Many on the right especially in the South will find these ideas very alien. I will never forget again when I lived in Dallas all my colleagues who would go to Chicago for vacations in the summer. They would laud the parks and the culture but they did not want to pay for them in Dallas. In the end will America want to pay for what President Obama is proposing? It will mean less gated communities and less granite countertops but more public wealth.

It is true that entrepenurial America has given us Microsoft, Apple, Wall Street Titans and alike but has that really bettered the lives of the average American? In Chicago- my hometown- a Middle Class person can live, buy a house, go to a nice library, go to great parks and museums all for a moderate price. It is true our taxes are higher and our corruption and graft more evident but would I trade my lifestyle in Chicago for a much cheaper but more culturally meagre life in Texas?

I made a choice to return here.

So as President Obama brings some good Cook County to America. We can hope he can teach Washington DC to do better. If D.C.'s streets are clear of snow two hours after a storm we will know that Chicago style has come to America.

Giuliana's 39th Birthday

Today is my sister Giuliana's 39th Birthday.

I come from a family of magisterial women of which she is the latest.

My Great- Great Grandmother, Matilde has been dead since 1933 but her personality and things about her are still part of our lives. She was a titled woman and her strength is still with us.


My Great Grandmother Lucia, who I knew was the kind of person that everyone respected and who did for everyone and was held in esteem. She ran a business and took care of everyone but never in a soft way.

My Grandmother Matilde is a strong 95 year old who survived and thrived through World War, Depression and immigration. She gave us a template of what a strong woman is supposed to be. My Nonna Matilde and her sisters Gina and Dolores are the strongest people I have ever known.

My mother Lucetta comes from this same line. She is strong and forceful and in a take no prisoners style is able to manage everything in way that most are not.

In the end all of these women have always been the iron center of our lives and my sister, who turns 39 today carries this mantle.

Giuliana my sister is the mother of two great kids, Chiara and Luca. She is not only a great mom, wife and professional. She is also the kind of woman who is able to juggle and manage everything while remaining what is important the iron center of her family.

Softness has never been revered in my family. I wrote once that the women of my family are beautiful the way a sheer cliff in the Alps in beautiful and my sister comes from that genre of women.

So- on her 39th Birthday the last Birthday of her youth Giuliana- we celebrate.

Immortal Cupboard: Lorine Niedecker Film Review

http://cccook.wordpress.com/

On Friday night at Loyola University here in Chicago the new film project Immortal Cupboard by filmmaker Cathy Cook was screened. I must give the proviso that I have never had much affection for Niedecker but she is an important poet especially for a whole generation of Gen X poets who are my contemporaries. There are many midwestern poets who have been profoundly influenced by LN and Woodland Pattern, Milwaukee's great bookstore did a seminal conference a few years ago so she is in vogue at the moment.

The film Immortal Cupboard is at the same time innovative and conservative. It has lots of rich images and has a kind of post-modern Voices and Visions feel. If you have ever seen that PBS series there are lots of boots crunching snow and poems superimposed over lovely images of place. We are lead to understand the importance of her home and her ambient to her writing and this is important.

This film takes the genre a little further and also brings into play a sense of place for Ft Atkinson the Wisconsin town that Niedecker called home. The years she spent in Ft Atkinson are strongly described. The area where this film is weakest is in her intimate poetic relations. There are lots of images of her letters and poetry but there is little controversial here. Niedecker's real victimization by Louis Zukofsky is all but ignored. The fact that Zukofsky forced Niedecker to have an Abortion is not mentioned and I cannot but imagine that this caused pain to Niedecker?

The rejection of her poems as too personal for Zukofsky also must have stung but this is not mentioned?

I was also disappointed by the coverage of her relationship with Cid Corman and Objectivist poets. Her time in New York is described but not developed. I think that this weakness ignores her real community which was poets and letters. I also think that the coverage of her marriages is given short shrift

On the whole the film comes across as a meditation. It reminds me a little bit of the film A Great Silence about the Carthusian Monks. It is a homage to a fine poet and a great voice of the Midwest. But the omissions are glaring and I don't know if that will effect the validity of the film as scholarship?

When I asked the filmmaker about these omissions she was clear that she chose to ignore these realities. How is it possible that a 30 year correspondence- and an intense romance that resulted in much pain and abuse for Niedecker is not explored fully? This is the Achilles heel of this film. It would be like ignoring Pound's Fascist period as unimportant.

As a work of art this film is beautiful but the omission of the Zukofsky effect makes it flawed and makes one wish someone would do a film on Niedecker's most important relationship. I would urge the Filmmaker- who said that work is still being created to rethink her omission of these painful realities and add them to her fine film and give us a picture of Niedecker which is three dimensional rather than two dimensional.

Four Essential Books for the Jobless Poet

It is obvious to those of us currently unemployed and suffering through the rot of our current decline that we are entering a new world.

The world that produced the American hubris of the past 40 years has ended Also much of the triumphalism of American poetry and letters of the past years has become passe or anachronistic and it seems we need something new.

I wrote a few months ago that it is impossible now to be ironic in the age of Obama. The spate of 'ironic' movements from Language Poetry to Flarf that have been energized by irony and a sort of intellectual snarkiness have become dated .

Being both a poet and an unemployed business professional has given me time to think about what that world might look like. I find that the ironic does not work in the bones anymore. I find myself looking for new and old ways. I want insights that feed the current situation.

Four books that I have recently read have given me some insight into what might be possible in a new world-view. America as a nation has become more serious and frankly more scared --we need to ask more questions.

I am not interested anymore in the commentary from the sidelines. I am however interested in commentary on where we are going and what we need to understand. I have found these books helpful.

MARCOM-The Mirror in the Well

Micheline Aharonian

Dalkey Archive Press

isbn: 978-1-56478-511-4

Micheline Aharonian begins her novella Marcom with quotes from the likes of Ovid, Buber, Anne Carson, Clarisse Lispector, Octavio Paz. It is this global literature sense that informs this book. I think that Marcom in many ways is the first book of our new literary world and I hope that poets and writers read it with interest because this book bears the future.

This book which is based on a love triangle and a zombie marriage and is the best estimation of our current American situation I have read. Marcom could be called a 'sex book' or a 'dirty book' but I think in many ways it has its antecedents in Tropic of Cancer. It uses great prose, almost poetic language, to define an era. I think that when the history of this period is written Aharonian's book will be listed as seminal- forgive the pun.

The lack of moorings for the characters in this book give us a sense of the world in which we live. It just loosens everything and we understand that the old world has passed away and we are now naked in the sun with no modesty and no covering.

The Winter Sun: Notes on a Vocation

Fanny Howe

Greywolf Press

isbn: 978-1555-975203

In contrast to the future that is displayed by Aharonian, Fanny Howe's Winter Sun tells us where we have been. Howe's collection of essays is a description of writing and poetry as a vocation which is something that is not really a truism for most poets and writers today.

In the past many writers lived the kind of lives that allowed them to live in a vocation the way that St Augustine was able to live a lifestyle rather than a job.

Howe creates for us meditations that are almost religious in scope and show to the poet or writer what makes the vocation we share different. The poet (and she is a poet) also in the process defines a generation. She defines what motivated a group of writers from the end of the great World War 2 until today and for this I think her book will stand up as a Dénouement for generation of poets and writers that we all have loved.

The Winter Sun needs to be read along with other great books of essays or diaries. It has echoes of Shklovsky, Camus and Stein. It defines and age for us that is remote and yet near.

the five seasons of love

Joao Almino

Host Publications

isbn:978-0-924047-51-0

One of the goals of Modernism was in Pound's phrase to "Make it New." No place in the world is more an embodiment of this mentality than Brasilia the faux city that was made to give Brazil a new capital. The city was built out of Oscar Niemeyer's vision of what a Modernist capital would look like and almost immediately the realities of the world smudged the clean rough edges.

Brazilian writer Joao Almino has been one of the most important chroniclers of this smudging. He has in his book the five season of love created a 'Romance' which is a the Brazilian word for novel. But in many ways this book is an Anti-Romance and a distopia. The love is cold and hard, the edges are rough and broken and this book deconstructs the Modernist's ideals to show us how empty we are. Ana/Diana from the five season of love embodies emptiness and questing of our time.

my vocabulary did this to me

The Collected Poetry if Jack Spicer

Edited by Peter Gizzi and Kevin Killian

Wesleyan U Press

Isbn: 978-0-8195-6887-8

Contemporary poets have created a Pantheon of poetic God's. In this Pantheon are many poets whose work is so important that it dwarfs much of what is written today. In that pantheon one poet whose entire output is small has continued to be included, Jack Spicer. The volume of his Collected poetry masterfully assembled by Peter Gizzi and Kevin Killian is less than 500 pages. It shows to contemporary poets and readers what a poet could be in mid 1950's America.

Ron Silliman, who has never preferred brevity to verbosity, said that this book is one of the most important books of poetry written in the past 50 years and I think he is correct. Here is a book that even an unemployed poet like myself can read and feel filled with the creativity and the sense of vocation. While Howe in her book gives us the Dénouement of this epoch here is the epoch is full flower as if we are seeing Solomon in all his splendor.

Out of destruction comes new life. When the old Roman Empire rotted away we got Hagia Sophia, Gregorian Chants, Gothic Architecture, Averroes, the Alhambra, and Rumi. These products of the rot lead to a new world. It appears that is what is happening here in our current Roman Empire. I have found meaning in these books and they have helped me to understand what is happening to our world both poetically and spiritually.

I do not think that when Augustine, Boethius or Cassiodorus were writing they realized that they were setting the stage for what was to come next. But I think that these books do something of what these late Antique/early Medieval authors did. They realize that we are entering something new and perhaps more simple. I think that this simplicity and coldness is going to be part of our future and I will return to these four books often for guidance on the way forward.

My Great Recession at Three Months

It has been three months since the Great Recession began for me.

No one seems to want to say the truth that those who were running the economy failed their corporations. In many cases those who failed are still employed while millions of hard working people are jobless.

There is a divide in America between those who are incompetent (See Wall Street and Detroit) but who are taken care of with buyouts and employment contracts and the rest of us who get to see all we have worked for washed away because of their incompetence. Anyone reading this who has worked in a corporation knows what I am talking about.

I have some questions that I would like answered.

• Why is it that we are hurt and they are not?
• Why is it that the Union worker in Michigan or the middle manager on Wall Street is punished but the big wigs continue to have plenty of money?
• Why is it that we are all not a lot angrier?
• Why do we all continue to believe in a system that has failed most people?

In some ways the last three months have become monastic for me. I have tried to become as frugal as possible. I don't go out much so peripheral friends that I might see at a reading or a gallery opening are no more. Only a few good friends are left and I guess that is ok? I write alot more but it is darker and less interesting stuff I think?

I now have persistent worries. In my own family my brother in law lost his job recently. I worry about my niece and nephew and their family allot. Our situation is not good but we do not have children so survival is less complex than for my sister and her family.

I continue the daily ritual of applying for jobs- over 1200 of them since January. I have had four interviews so my batting average is obviously not that great. Employment reality is the plight of my social class- the manager class- we are falling and we don't know where the end is if ever. I returned to the USA in 1998 in the past four months all the growth in my retirement account has been eliminated. That means I essentially worked for 11 years for free even though I saved and invested.

The reality for me is that in a monastic way things are being stripped away. Things that I never needed are now gone and understanding what really matters has become central to survival. A focus on truth rather than facts is essential to survive all of this stress. I think about the Gospels allot especially the quote "look at the ravens neither do they sow or reap but the Lord God provides for them" but then I read Job and think perhaps that is what God has in mind for all of us?

What I have come to believe is that Generation X, my generation, bought into a fantasy. Our generation which has survived the .Com bubble, Housing Bubble and now we are surviving the Great Recession, were told that if we worked hard we too could be millionaires and have security. In reality our hard work gave security to our bosses while our generation is sinking. We all worked hard for nothing and our children will live more meagre lives because of our bosses gluttony. Gluttony is the problem and that is the reason all this pain has become reality.

The big lie is now obvious.

Our society chose to believe that we were all rugged individuals who owed nothing to our fellow citizens. We would take care of ourselves not depending on others, this is the biggest lie of them all.

Now the waste of the past twenty years has become obvious. The rich and powerful used the big lie to become even more rich and powerful and those of us in the middle gave away our youths for nothing.

It is time for a metanoia and that metanoia does not include Lexuses, granite counter tops, I pods or gourmet dinners.

A Metanoia is what we need.

The Lord's Supper 2009

As a Catholic Holy Week and the Triduum (Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Vigil) are the central holidays of our tradition. I for one love the drama of the Triduum.

I have written about this before but the most moving Holy Thursday I ever experienced was when I lived in Bolivia in 1995.
I worked in a men's prison in Cochabamba, Bolivia. The worker priest who I worked with Fr Benoit was doing the Holy Thursday Mass in the open courtyard of the jail. He decided that the congregants should wash the feet of the other inmates, especially focusing on those inmates that they most disliked.

I often think about Fr Benoit and that evening. Under a pouring rain thousands of desperate men washing the feet of others. Somehow it was the closest I have seen to the spirit of Jesus.
I have been to St Peter's in Rome and I have met saints and Popes but the simple act of washing feet in a prison in Cochabamba that was the true Metanoia moment.

During these tough times when many of us are watching our world melt it is important I think to remember what truly matters. I often think about sacrifice about St Francis, leaving his clothes in the Plaza and retreating to the mountains to rebuild God's temple. What quote did Francis use "look at the ravens neither do they sew or reap but the Lord God provides for them..."

So sacrifice puts our suffering in perspective. The three days of the Triduum show us that sacrifice and betrayal are part of our lives. This is not the plasticine life that we see on television but the life of service and sacrifice that was demonstrated by Fr Benoit to me in Bolivia years ago and by Francis 800 years ago.

Yet Easter is still to come and we need to remember that there is rebirth.

A Reading that Mattered: Raul Zurita in Chicago

Friday night at the Instituto Cervantes the Guild Complex presented a reading by Chilean poet Raul Zurita. This important poet's work has been masterfully translated by Chicago's own Daniel Borzutzky and the books are eagerly awaited.

Raul Zurita comes out of a poetic tradition of protest that includes among others, Nicanor Parra, Regis Bonvicino, Affonso Avila, Pablo Neruda, & Ernesto Cardenal.

His masterpiece 'Anteparaiso” ranks with Neruda's Canto General and Eduardo Galleano's work as the definitive postmodern epics of the Americas. If Walt Whitman has an heir it is Zurita and his work fills the room.

The fact that Daniel Borzutsky, a prominent member of our poetry community here is Chicago chose to translate Zurita's work bodes well for more of his work reaching a thoughtful audience in English in the US. Daniel is to be commended for his good work.

The reading on Friday was a tour de force. Zurita's words flowed out like honey on metal tiles. He brought before us the sheer depth and altitude of the Andes. I imagine this is what listening to Vallejo must have been like. I could not help but give Maestro Zurita a standing ovation. I was a bit dismayed that the entire room did not stand and cheer. I imagine that is because they do not understand Spanish (even though the translations were masterpieces in their own right). I for one was moved to my core.

Having spent allot of time translating Brazilian poets in my career I find that working in the Andean-Castillian idiom (rather than the Spanish Language) as it is expressed in Chile to be a challenge. Chile is kind of the New York Yankees of poetry scenes. With less than 14 million people Chile has produced Mistral (Nobel winner) Neruda (Nobel Winner) Parra and Zurita. Chile is a place where poetry has mattered for a long time and for Zurita to be so important in that sea of excellence expresses how important he is as a poet.

I am not sure if the attendees at the reading realized how important this reading was. I for one will not easily forget Raul Zurita's evening in Chicago.

2009 Poet's Baseball Preview

The country is in depression,

I am unemployed and scrambling for work and yet there is hope on this second day of April because we are close to opening day.

This will be my 41th opening day being born in May I missed my first in 1967. It is a appropriate that I was born in that year because in 1967 the White Sox were in first place all summer only to lose at the end of the year setting a tone for my beloved Sox that would continue until 2005.

In Chicago where I live- we have two baseball teams. The Cubs whose fans are beautiful and whose most famous fan is Rod Blagojevich.

The Sox whose fans are a little mutilated but whose most famous fan is our dear president Barack Obama. As President Obama said last year on the south side there is real baseball.

Who am I to argue with the President?

I always get angry at the various baseball previews so I thought why not I will write my own so here we go. I will add the poetic to each;

National League East

The teams of the NL East are varied. They include the New York Mets, who are now rather poetically playing in a replica of Ebbets Field and just for the gesture of the Jackie Robinson Rotunda should be lauded, the Philadelphia Phillies whose new ball park is great, the Washington Nationals who are so bad they are channeling the 1962 Mets, the Atlanta Braves who play in a great ballpark in a city where no one cares and the Florida Marlins who have won two world series and whose fan base would rather not sit outside in the summer pea soup to see them win.

Here are my Picks

New York
Philadelphia
Florida
Atlanta
Washington

National League Central

The NL Central is what I like to call the pathetic division because it contains the Cubs and the Pirates. It is made up with the Chicago Cubs whose fanbase and go Cubs go song is so annoying that I want to rip the skin off my face every time I hear it, to the magisterial St Louis Cardinals whose whole franchise oozes Stan Musial and class, to the Milwaukee Brewers whose stadium is a delight and everyone in America should see the Klement’s Sausage race once. The Houston Astros who we (White Sox) crushed in the World Series but hell you have access to great barbecue and strip clubs in Houston to finally poor pathetic Pittsburgh which makes one want to clone Roberto Clemente so that Pittsburghers can remember what greatness is. H

Here are my Picks

St Louis
Chicago
Milwaukee
Houston
Pittsburgh
Cincinnati

National League West

In contrast to the NL Central the NL West is the Happy Division. Who would not be happy to play your games in Baseball’s prettiest stadium, (Dodger Stadium), Baseballs best positioned park (ATT Park in SF), its best Dome, Chase Field in Houston, its highest park, Coors Field or its nicest city San Diego with its enormous Petco Park? Where the NL Central is filled with Angst the NL West is just happy and why not?

Here are my Picks

San Francisco
Los Angeles
Colorado
San Diego
Arizona

American League East

Now we move to the Major Leagues. The American League East is made up of the two teams that ESPN spends all its airtime on, the Yankees and Red Sox and three other teams that they ignore. The fact is however that this is a great division but that the Yankees recent spending spree will end up for nothing and in the end Joe Girardi will spend the off season in Evanston with his sick father looking for a job. By the way they built a new Yankee Stadium where the priciest seat is $3400 dollars I bet allot of those have been sold.

Here are my Picks

Boston
Tampa Bay
New York
Toronto
Baltimore


American League Central

Our division could best be called the recession division. With Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland all bearing the brunt of the Great Recession I wonder how many tickets get sold? I am unemployed but I am going next Saturday (Cannot keep me away from a Sox/Twins game. But for those of us in the division it is a comfortable place. No need for the drama or $200 a plate steakhouses of the AL East and no pathos of the NL Central we just grind it out and oh how I HATE the Twins and the Indians….

Here are my Picks

Chicago (Of course)
Minnesota
Cleveland
Kansas City
Detroit

American League West

I like to call this my nobody cares division. The fact is that no one cares. This division is made up of teams that are second in each of their markets with little history. The LA Angels play in Orange County with the plasticine people, the Oakland A’s play in an empty stadium, Seattle Mariners have Ichiro and a great park and the Texas Rangers used to be owned by George Bush I think that says enough.

Here are My Picks

Oakland
Los Angeles
Seattle
Texas

Playoffs

NL Round 1

Chicago v. New York
San Francisco v. St Louis

NLCS

Chicago v. St Louis

NL Champion
St Louis

Playoffs

AL Round 1

Boston v. Chicago
Tampa v. Oakland

ALCS

Boston v. Tampa

AL Champion
Boston

So now go out there and enjoy the season even if you are unemployed the Radio is still free and hot dogs are cheap and the thrill of the grass makes it all feel a little better.

Or as Luke Appling said even when we were 20 games out and the nation had 20% unemployment you could enjoy a line drive just the same.

I say amen to that….

Barack Obama and Notre Dame

As a practicing Catholic, Poet and Obama supporter I am vexed by the recent 'outrage' by some right wing Catholics about the invitation of President Obama to speak at Notre Dame.

As a matter of public policy I disagree with Catholic theology being imposed on a nation that is less than 25% Catholic. I think however that the Social Teaching of the Church has real value but it seems that this is not the agenda of right wing Catholics who are outraged by Obama appearing at Notre Dame.

The argument that has been made right wing by right wing Catholics like Michael Novak, Pat Buchanan and George Weigel is that allowing President Obama to speak at the University and giving the sitting president of the United States a honorary degree is akin to approval of his position on Abortion.

It has in fact become such a cause celebre that the Bishop of Fort Wayne in which Notre Dame resides will not be attending the speech.

It has bothered me for a long time how Right Wing Catholics have chosen to augment the outrage about some issues and ignore others. It appears that Abortion is the only social issue that needs to be highlighted but other issues that Catholics also hold important or even central are ignored. I

t appears that in fact only Sexual issues are important while other issues can be easily ignored by these Right Wing Catholics. There are however strongly held positions on many issues for Catholics except that these are ignored because they are politically uncomfortable for these right wingers.

Economics and Justice

On a recent episode of "The World Over" a Right Wing Catholic news program on EWTN TV Raymond Arroyo the host, chose to interview Grover Nordquist- the anti-tax zealot about President Obama's economic plan. Nordquist's positions are in direct opposition to Church teaching on economics and no one who agrees with the Church's social teachings on the economy were interviewed.

Why?

Because Catholic social teaching on the economy does not concur with Republican orthodoxy . In fact Catholic Social Teaching starting with Rerum Novarum in the late 19th century is the origin for European Social Democracy including a large welfare state and rights for Labor Unions. Economic justice is central to Catholic Social thought but this is ignored by these Catholic thinkers. But this is ignored by the right wing amid their outrage about Abortion.

George Bush and Richard Nixon were not prohibited from speaking at Notre Dame. Yet the Church condemned their views on many issues. The Church was not endorsing their views for inviting them.

Pope John Paul II has in fact condemned neo-liberal (conservative) economics in the strongest terms but this is glossed over in a rush to the pelvic. These Right Wing Catholics do not care about the Church's social teaching they care about Right Wing Republican power and making points.

Just War and the Death Penalty

http://www.cjd.org/paper/jp2war.html

For the entire period of the 'war on terror' the Roman Catholic Church has condemned the war in Iraq as unjust and sinful. In fact Michael Novak, who was US Ambassador to the Holy See was dressed down by the Pope himself about this issue.

The Pope condemned as unjust and evil war in Iraq and yet GW Bush was allowed to speak at any number of Catholic Universities.

Why was there no outrage as Bush speaking?

Because they do not care about the Church's social teaching they care about making right wing points.

Also, the Catechism of the Catholic church says that the Death Penalty is almost never just- yet George W Bush acted on the executions of over 200 people and yet he was able to speak at Notre Dame and other Catholic universities.

The Church condemns the Death Penalty and George W Bush's direct actions resulted in, according to the Church, unjust deaths, but he was still allowed to speak.

The fact is that what Right Wing Catholics want is for the Roman Catholic Church to have the same 'moral 'positions as American Evangelicals. This means supporting American 'conservatism' and its formulation on what is moral but that is not what the Church believes or teaches. Catholic social teaching is contrary to BOTH the right and the left in the United States and that is not something that right wing Catholics want to admit. This shows an intellectual inconsistency among Catholics on the right. Many right wing Catholics (EWTN, Michael Novak, Michael Gerson & now Newt Gingrich-he is converting) want the teachings of the Church to be the same as the teachings of Rush Limbaugh but they are not.

So why does Obama's position on Abortion merit more outrage than GW Bush's position on war or economic justice?

With my Church, sexual issues have of late, become very important. It seems that we have forgotten the entirety of the Church's social teachings and it seems that Right wingers want us to forget the entirety of our Church's positions.

I am not arguing here for a change in the Church's position on morality. What I am arguing for is consistency on the part of Catholic pundits and outrage mongers.

This is lacking in Catholic media and in Catholic publications. If one reads left leaning Catholic publications like The National Catholic Reporter there are a host of thinkers like Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Al Smith, Robert Kennedy, Dom Helder Camara, Arch. Oscar Romero, Cesar Chavez and others whose faith and witness are highlighted. There is an integrated struggle with moral issues and what it means to be a Catholic. Catholic social teaching is more than the labels of current American political discourse. In the NCR for example the Church's social teaching in total are taken seriously this is not true in Right Wing Publications.

http://buchanan.org/blog/

The Catholic thinkers and issues mentioned above are completely avoided in Right wing publications like the Wanderer, EWTN, Crisis and First Things. The reason for this is because they want to be part of the vast right wing world of evangelical preachers and right wing think tanks.

The true Catholic world-view that was 'conservative' but also Pro Labor, Pro Worker, and Just War Supporting is ignored because it is not convenient and it does not fit into established political labels.

By inviting President Obama to Notre Dame the University is saying that it is a Catholic institution.

Catholic Social Teaching is more than one issue, admittedly an important one. Hypocrisy has it seems become a leading Catholic value among the right wing.

Where was the outrage when Cardinals were protecting pedophiles?

Where was the outrage when unjust war was being waged in Iraq?

This is Fox News Politics not Catholic Social Teaching

Scoundrels I have Worked For

During this AIG outrage week I kept thinking

"what are people so surprised about?"

I have worked in international business for the past 11 years and I have had my share of bosses some have been exceptional and some have been dreadful.

1. I worked for one manager who worked her way up from Secretary to Director and she never forgot where she came from and always treated all with respect and I was motivated to come in everyday and give my all I remember that time with longing.
2. I also worked for someone whose only goal was to have affairs with the newest and youngest member of the staff. One of his goals was also to do a little work as possible in that quest.
3. I have worked for a VP who hired me to develop and event business and then insisted that he knew more about events and when he screwed up the marketing he blamed me for his incompetence and lied to our customers.... that is the kind of VP who gets to be a CEO.
4. I also worked for an EVP who was a model of moral recititude giving money back to customers to keep the business going long term building a bond with them forever- and who always took time out of his day to listen to his staff. That CEO is the kind that are profiled in 'where are the best places to work' and by the way if you have one of these stay at that company they are few and far between.

On the whole most senior level executives do not live in the same world that the rest of us live in. The gap between a Director level manager and a VP is quite large. Most senior executives can fail and know that they will recieve generious severance and payouts.

Most middle managers will be lucky to get a month severance.

The average CEO in America get 400 times the salary of his normal worker. This means that when the outrage about AIG bonuses comes out they are not equiped to understand the outrage. It has been my experience that the best departments are run by managers 1, and 4, above for that more often than not managers 2, and 3 are the norm.

Our society rewards managers 2, and 3. Those are the people who matter in our society and who never pay for their errors. The only difference between them and Bernie Madoff is that they are less agregious. They are the kind of people who are concerned about themselves only they are not visionaries like a Bill Gates or a Henry Ford- they are small people with power.

During my lifetime the CEO class in America has destroyed every governor on their abuse. Regulations, Unions, Pensions, Severance Laws and corporate loyalty have been destroyed in the name of profits and 'competitiveness'.

What this really means is let me make my huge money and bonuses and don't question me. I am better than you and I am getting mine- now.

So now we have hit the rocks. In Europe there are protests and riots but at least the European workers get generous social benefits and healthcare. In America once the unemployment and savings runs out what will people do?

I do not think that the CEO class in America understand what has happened. They need to understand that their world is over but they won't give up what they have gained without a fight.

Corporations have rewarded the scoundrels and they have abandoned the broad bulk of Americans in the name of 'capitalism'. Those who have played by the rules are now left with nothing. In the 1930's theresulted in Franklin Roosevelt in America, but with Hitler in Germany. Which will we get?

Where will we end up?

If people think that populist anger is strong now just wait until the whole recession plays out. The tens of millions of 'information workers' and 'creative class' members are not going to be the ones working on infrastructure projects and they are the class that is being destroyed.

just wait....