August Fires

Smoke from Canadian fires

apricot the morning light.
Asthmatics hope for a wash
of rain or muscled breezes
off the Pacific. August

in the northern half
of our planetary melon
has ritualized fire--
images of charred houses,
cars, schools, towns,

and mountains stomp
steadily into media's flow.
I don't know, I don't know
what to to--what can I do
amdist this burning?

hans ostrom 2024

Broken Government, A New Blog Concerning

I think I've written, contributed to, and edited too many encyclopedias--at least that's my excuse for writing the title of this post in alphabetical topical fashion, although more strictly, it should begin with government.

. . .This is how old I am: I can remember a time when working-class people could afford the services of doctors and medicine. I can also remember when immigration was one of the society's virtues, even as the society didn't routinely treat immigrants virtuously.

Now immigration seems chiefly to be a way for some companies to get cheap labor (I suppose it always was) and a way for some politicians (and pundits--Lou Dobbs is obsessed with the issue--which means it must be working for his ratings) to wear out the xenophobia drum. Meanwhile, no one with power seems to want to address the issue soberly.

Add two wars, cash-bloated politics (what does it cost just to run, say, for the school board?), a one-party system in two-party drag, etc., and you seem to have quite a mess. I am, by the way, officially pessimistic about any significant changes to health-care occurring. In this area, we're the embarrassment of the industrial world. Canada, France, Sweden, and England have systems that wipe the floor with ours. Ed Schultz, radio guy, nicely parried the stuff about "waiting lines" in Canada; he just took random calls from Canadians, who said, "Nah, the system is good, and you have to wait only for things like cosmetic surgery." Cosmetic surgery: what Congress and the President will perform on our health-care system.

Like a lot of people, I'm lucky to have medical insurance and to have access to good care, but like most people, I'm aware that a slight change in circumstances could make it all vanish.

I ran across a blog that touches on one aspect of the mess--how those in military power cycle into political power, and how those in political power cycle into influence-power by working for lobbyists and "think tanks":

http://123realchange.blogspot.com/

Someone We Know

Someone We Know


"He's a nobody," people sometimes say,
as a way of saying the person described
should be ignored. Overlooked. Forgotten.
The sentence raises problems.

If the person were a nobody, he or she
wouldn't have a gender, and there'd be
nothing and no one to ignore. Also,
"a" nobody implies particularity,

when indeed we must assume that all
who constitute the mythical Nobody
are indistinguishable. If, however,
"nobody" is used only in a figurative

sense, even more problems arise.
Figurative nobodies--the obscure,
the abandoned, the betrayed, the
common, the exploited, the humble--

approach heroic stature as they
persist in their lives. Think of
an obscure waitress in Canada,
Uruguay, the Ukraine, or Lesotho.

To herself she's not obscure. She
performs tasks well, keeps herself
clean, cares for others, remains
patient and energetic amidst

persistent obscurity and impending
oblivion. How extraordinary. How
utterly not in keeping with the term,
"Nobody." The unknown, exemplary

waitress embodies somebodyness--
in secret, without hope of extraordinary
reward. At a news-stand, she glimpses
a magazine's cover, on which appears

the rendered image of an officical
Somebody, a Celebrity who appears
momentarily to have slain Time and
seized immortality. The waitress, the one

who serves, alleged by some to be
a nobody, smiles. Her smile is particular.
She is herself and specific, standing there,
just like someone we know.


Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom