What My Job Is

Oh, I know what Management
thinks my job is, don't worry. It's
to help those to whom they
report report that a profit
was made. My family and truth
to tell my friends, and me too,
we think my job is to keep
my job. Beyond that, no one
cares about my work, not
even the ones who send me
bills.  Because computers
and some people trying to
keep their jobs send me
the bills, which, if I don't
pay--well, Management there
manages a legal department.

When I'm on the job, I
do my work.  Something
I don't tell anyone is this: I
always do something to
hang on to a piece of myself.
What that is varies. Sometimes
people see me doing that kind of
thing, a self-saving thing, and
I'm not giving examples. Anyway,
I see people at the place
looking at me, trying to figure
why I did that or said this.
That kind of thing, that's
not in the job-description.


Hans Ostrom, 2012

Brief of History of the Working Class

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Labor Day seems like a good occasion to mention the following book:

A Short History of the U.S. Working Class: From Colonial Times to the Twenty-First Century (Revolutionary Studies), by Paul Le Blanc (Humanity Books, 1999).

Catholic Worker Movement Is 75

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The Catholic Worker Movement, which Dorothy Day (photo above) helped to found, is 75 years old this year. Day's fine autobiography, The Long Loneliness, sheds light on the movement's origins. There is also a nice biographical film about Day and the movement, featuring Martin Sheen.

A link to the CWM's web site:

http://www.catholicworker.org/#

Plumber

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Plumber
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The plumber that summer was busy. So
many pipes seemed clogged or rusted, hence
entrusted to this fitter of tubes that transfer
effluvia and water. What was odder was
the silence of the plumber, who only sat
and smoked on breaks, would not characterize
the leaks and clogs but only fix them--with
skill firmly fitted to a will; then he would
present us, with deeply dirty hands, a bill,
which we were glad to pay, and after which
the silent plumber spoke: "I don't think
you'll have any more trouble with those
pipes," and indeed the pipes seemed to
work only too well, as if afraid the plumber
in a fit might return with a wrench in his hand.
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New Book About Langston Hughes

(image: Langston Hughes, 1902-1967)

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If you have any interest in the life and/or work of Langston Hughes, you will likely want to take look at a new collection of essays about both: Montage of a Dream: The Art and Life of Langston Hughes, edited by John Edgar Tidwell and Cheryl R. Ragar.

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Hughes remains one of the most widely read American writers, and he's read by a wide spectrum of people: critics, scholars, middle-schoolers, high-school students, librarians, college students, people not associated with schools, and so on. He is, for example, among the most popular poets on poemhunter.com, which tends to get visited by people who simply like to read poetry. The accessibility of his work, like that of Frost's and Williams's, helps, but so does his indefatigable concern for the lives and circumstances of working people.

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He wrote more than poetry, as essays in this new book remind us: a novel or two; short stories (including the classic collection, The Ways of White Folks, still in print); essays; works for children and young adults; plays; opera libretti; journalism; and criticism).

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Immodesty induces me to mention that I've written two books on Hughes: Langston Hughes: A Study of the Short Fiction and A Langston Hughes Encyclopedia (although let the record show that 8 of the entries in the latter work were contributed by others). His work seems to have survived my books just fine, however. Hughes is resilient that way.

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I also teach his poetry and short fiction (and one essay) regularly in a course on the Harlem Renaissance. Another scholar and I have a friendly running "argument" about which of Hughes's short stories is the best one. He gives the honor to "Father and Son." I have given the honor to "On the Road," but more recently I'm leaning toward "The Blues I'm Playing."

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Both because of the relative clarity and simplicity of his work (especially compared to that of Eliot and Pound, for instance) and because of his steadfast interest in labor-politics, socialist thought, and civil rights, Hughes has not always been held in high esteem by academics, so books like this new one, which broaden and deepen an understanding of this work, are welcome. At the same time, Hughes can take care of himself. People read his work. They just do. Comparisons to Frost and Williams obtain, as do ones to Dickinson, Neruda, Rumi, and Yevtushenko (to name but a few consistently and widely read poets).

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The book is from the University of Missouri Press, which also published Hughes's complete works.

Employee

(image: Art Carney in character as Ed Norton,
NYC sewer-worker. I have a poster of the image
on my office-wall, and occasionally I point to it
and identify Ed as the editor of the Norton
anthologies of literature, which are most popular in college
English classes)



Employee


No matter how long, how well,
you work for us, you're only
as good as your health is today.

We're not sorry to say
that to us what we pay
you is overhead.

Yes, your record is good,
but alas, it describes a past
from which we've made a

profit already. We're a
forward-looking company,
as we mention in our

annual report. Yes,
experience counts,
but our calculations

show inexperience to be
cheaper. Thanks. We hope
you've set a little something

aside. Our size is downed.
Your time is up. We wish you
luck (one more lie for old time's sake).


Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom