Getting Down to Business.

Dependency

Fri, 02 Nov 2012 20:41:43 +0200

There’s some nonsense floating around about how having FEMA to take care of our disasters breeds dependence. I see the point: if someone else, in this case, the government, routinely takes care of a particular problem, others benefiting from that shelter of care will become numb to that risk, will fail to prepare for it in the future, will lose the ability to react to it and will therefore be dependent upon that organization to save them when calamity comes.

(Scoundrels)

As an argument, taken very generally and only in certain contexts, for building self-reliance say, in children or young adults, this makes a certain kind of sense - we want people to be able to engage the world and solve their own problems and so in a lot of circumstances parents or mentors will stand back and let people build that experience and confidence to tackle their own problems. There’s a catch though which is that we don’t apply this principle across the board on all issues, no one is going to say, “stop feeding that infant, you’re breeding dependency,” because it’s not reasonable to expect the it to overcome the trial and learn something from the experience of being totally ignored and therefore forced to fend for and feed itself.

(Make your own dinner)

If we shouldn’t have FEMA, because they arrive in disasters and solve the problem for us (how terrible!) then we probably shouldn’t have firefighters either, or, as is sometimes the argument, we should privatize both. Individuals could enter into contracts with each other, one performing that service of search and rescue and fire extinguishing for the other (with no temptation or structural inclination for extortion in those crucial moments, no sir!).

And if, at the end of the disaster, the people who were paid to rescue you didn’t, and if you’re still alive, you can enforce your own contract because having a court system and police and so on also clearly breeds dependence. Think about it, when was the last time you enforced your own contract? Would you even know where to start?

(Justice)

Our society is so dependent already. You are so dependent.

And what about national defense? Having such a wide-scale government takeover of the national defense industry as we have in this country has truly bred a nation of pansies, utterly dependent on our national defense agencies to defend us as a nation from foreign invasion and attack. When our embassy was attacked in Libya, did a single private citizen stand up, get a flight over there and investigate what happened? NO! Because we’re all dependent on the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate crimes at a federal level for us.

(Watch out al’qaeda!)

Let’s not even mention the fact that we were already dependent on the government to do the work of an embassy in Libya. Why don’t we trust average Americans enough to let them be the public face of our nation to others? Plenty of young, intelligent college students go abroad every year, why can’t they be our face to other nations?

Don’t even get me started on the medical profession and how utterly clueless 99.9% of Americans are to the kinds of things doctors know after 9 years of schooling.

Whether it’s government or even privately performed, the very notion of specialization implies that one person is doing for another a thing they ought to be doing themselves, denying them the opportunity to learn how, to succeed or fail and ultimately making them dependent on the other for that service - what a racket! Just look at how we’ve designed our economy. The whole thing is set up to deprive people of the opportunity to learn how to do for themselves whatever they need doing. Did you build the computer you’re reading this on? No. Did you build the house you’re in? No. I bet you didn’t even design the computer you’re using or cobble your own shoes, tanning the leather after hunting or raising the animal yourself.

Useless.

Now don’t kid yourself, some will say that specialization makes things (tremendously) more efficient, that a division of labor and responsibilities allows people to find work they are better at and excel, doing a better job than any jack-of-all-trades amateur would. Again, don’t be fooled by this nonsense. The idea that some skills or contexts require different solutions and have different intended outcomes is ludicrous. Don’t start down the slippery slope of thinking that sometimes it’s better for the individual and society that some members specialize in solving certain problems so that others can be freed up to do a better job in their field.

Nonsense.

The only way for us to be truly independent is for all of us to do all of our own work, make all of our own clothes, homes, shoes, computers and energy grids. The only way we’ll be truly free is if we sever ourselves from the controlling and reliant relationship we currently have with government, private firms, our neighbors, parents, friends and children, and refuse any and all distribution or division of responsibilities and labor.

When I see everyone building their own fortresses, hiding behind thick stone walls in the cold, tanning their own leather and cooking down their own slop which they picked (shoveled?) from their personal farm plots just before ignoring the eager and yearning shouts from their infants to feed them (dependency!) then I will be truly happy in the knowledge that we have created a dependency-free civilization.

(Click for a view of this utopia)

Or total anarchy.

And then the South Koreans will show up and wonder why the fuck we can’t get our act together and just embrace systems that work by combining self-reliance with collective and structural solutions, and stop clinging to ideologies that no longer inform us with metaphors that usefully illuminate the problems we face.

“Better have a short life, doing what you love doing, than have...

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 20:34:13 +0300

“Better have a short life, doing what you love doing, than have a long life spent in a miserable way.”

Another gem, though not so inspiring…

“It’s all wretch and no vomit.”

"Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die; and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the..."

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 20:06:04 +0300

“Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die; and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life. Both life and death are parts of the same Great Adventure.”

- Theodore Roosevelt

Grey-Day.

Sun, 07 Oct 2012 08:05:38 +0300

We woke up early and watched the sun rise over the plains, the moutains unbelievably huge, but distant, the sun a red line and then an orange disk you could look at with naked eyes. The morning cool turned into noontime perfection and people started to come to the secluded farmstead. They cooked chili and drank beer and met each other. Working people in their few moments stepping outside of responsibility, necessity and the constant demand of their no doubt important, professional careers - worry, concern and stress whispering in their ears just loud enough to remind them how important these moments, 70 mies away from The City were to them, to their mental health and to the development of their young children whom they worried about growing up in the city and not getting enough fresh air.

The air gained a little more dust from the wind and activity about them, it’s dry this time of year after all, but that makes the tomatoes, drip-irrigated, all the more delicious, plumb, exceptional, and impossibly delectable by City standards. “You can’t find tomatoes like this on a shelf,” they would say, literally tasting what their urban living normally sought to deprived them of. You can find the most ingenious and mouth-watering combinations of food, spice and herb in The City, but you will find purchasing something fresh much more difficult. Even the air here had a taste. Dirt doesn’t exactly taste good, but it’s real, and it didn’t come out of the back end of a car.

They added soaked beans, onions, spices, ground meat and peppers to their tomatoes to make each of their own special recipes of this American Mandja come to life. They showed their children how to do it, planting the smallest seeds of verbal tradition and history in the minds of slightly larger seeds of human life. They drank beer and tried not to curse too much, but they still had a good time.

The sun approached the Western horizon just as quickly as it had left the Eastern some hours before and as the light turned to dark those one-time strangers came together to share and to feast; to sit around the table first and then around the fire in a place so far from home, but quickly becoming a new one. They brought their liberal sensibilities, concern for humanity, and sarcastic humor, rarities in these rural parts and it was a treat to share drinks in the open-air intimacy of new friendships under the stars. And there were so many stars - more, they would swear, than there usual are.

The kids, the adults and the youths finally rested, some in tents, some in sleeping bags only, all of them under the moon, huge, full and glowing, making the night a grey-day for all to enjoy.

When they woke they packed and ate breakfast as a family. The unfamiliarity between them had been slepted away and friendship could be witnessed not just in the change of tone, but also in the tighter seating, as people seemed to need less personal space to be comfortable. They were at ease with each other. No chit chat, no alcohol needed to warm their budding affections.

They toured around the grounds, learning about production, crop growth, harvesting and what strawberries, red to their core, plump and gushing with flavor, taste like when you pull them off the vine yourself. For a moment they apprecaited it. A moment is all they dared ask for, any more than that would be to shout what could only ever be a whisper. Any more than a moment and they’d have to tell each other how afraid they were about this or that, how much they loved their parents and their children, how much they missed the dead and regretted their mistakes. Any more than a moment and they’d explode. Or implode, or maybe it was the universe that would. It was impossible either way. It couldn’t be done. You just didn’t do that. You never asked for more, you took you’re 2 seconds being alive and thanked the clock that it had finally ticked its way through the work day and you fell to your knees in your mind, in the darkest part of it so not even your mind’s eye could see it because there can be no witnesses.

If there were a witness, then it’d be real, and you’d have to quit the job you hate and do what you love and never look back and who knows what that would do to the social fabric of society. It would tear itself apart and your family would be so disappointed in you.

artemisdreaming: Rachel detail, 1888 Jules Joseph Lefebvre .

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 15:32:33 +0300

artemisdreaming:

Rachel detail, 1888

Jules Joseph Lefebvre

.

"Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your..."

Tue, 29 May 2012 09:30:09 +0300

“Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.”

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (via zeitlauf)

(a dilapidated weigh station and communal factory) I am starting...

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 10:00:05 +0200

(a dilapidated weigh station and communal factory)

I am starting to believe that the truth of Communism is that all of the things we’ve heard were so. All of them.

That for some people they worked hard for the collective, for what they believed in, for an ideal: getting up early, working hard, and contributing greatly, and were in return taken care of in a virtuous cycle, by the collective.

And that for others they didn’t like working all that much, and so they became a social spy, reporting on the thoughts and misgivings of those they had coffee with every morning.

That for some they had been mysteriously blocked from their studied and chosen profession or from promotion, or had been blocked from such things quite obviously, as a result of their low favor with the party, because of anti-communist sentiments, or for being to inquisitive, or for questionable behavior they, or even a dead grandparent of their’s had expressed.

And for yet others, someone listened to foreign radio and was punished severely.

That the government was good and looked after its people, while at the same time it intentionally didn’t alert them to the catastrophe in Chernobyl and how the radtion was flowing over their country in the air they were breathing. The government flooded the valley where they grew the majority of their crops in order to make a dam.

For some there were no concerns, no problems, it was heaven. Get up, work, buy food at extremely low and then discounted prices for breakfast, lunch and dinner, go to the cafe for drinks with the boys, and go home. What else do you want in life?

Finally, that the end of Communism came when The West paid Gorbachev to end it while at the same time the system collapsed because the entire country was hemorrhaging money faster than it could be sent to them in tremendous “loans” from Russia.

Basically it’s all true, and gives us a whole host of lessons about human-nature, the importance of openness in society, social-trust/capital, pragmatism over ideology and the necessity of connection rather than disconnection of individuals with the costs of their life and the resources they consume.

No matter how long you tell a story about how the world is, simply telling it will never make it so.

Night time and French Fries Bolognese.

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 09:45:16 +0200

Night time and French Fries Bolognese.

Elections in Bulgaria

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 01:57:06 +0200

Turns out I’m still a huge sucker for the democratic process and having elections in my village, in which my boss and friend was running was really exciting.

People here constantly asked me if I’m voting or who I’m voting for etc. I of course do not have the right to vote here since I’m not a citizen, what’s more, my role here is to be somewhat impartial to the political process.

That said, I also tell people of course I’d be happy if I didn’t have to learn to work with a new person and if I could instead simply continue building on our relationship and success. There are practical considerations and implications of elections as well.

On election day people waited outside the polls in line literally all day, and by around 8 or 9pm, the polls just shut closed as the national election committee called an end to voting. I started asking the people hanging out around the polling station what was going on, why voting had stopped when there was still a line of people who had been there since before the predesignated cut-off time.

This is one of the rare times when I unashamedly tell people how something is typically done better in the US. “If you get there before the polls closed, they let you vote, it doesn’t matter how long it takes - everyone votes.”

Of course there’s been tricky business along with this: deception, leaflets in poor neighborhoods spread around to fool people into missing the election and all sorts of of other nonsense in the US, which is why we now have a great deal of lawyers who show up to volunteer to monitor polling places to make sure everything goes according the law. The thing about this particular form of vote obstruction and denial is that it was totally legal and in fact was a decision passed down from the national government.

The sentiment around the polls was that this is “a false democracy” and that it was the “mafia” (mafia is often short-hand for anything between actual organized crime involvement, all the way to skimping on work or everyday, low-level tax evasion).

Seeing quite clearly the conflict between how I felt, and what my role and responsibilities were in this situation I was left simply asking people what they were going to do about it - it’s their democracy after all.

I noticed my boss, the previous mayor wasn’t there at all so I went over to his house where I found him, his family and close friends sitting in a wood fire heated room escaping the cold and worrying, debating and complaining about the situation. There were two candidates for mayor including him and he was worried that a majority of the people who were turned away from the polls, despite being there on time (in some cases people waited for 6, 7, 8+ hours), were his supporters, thus losing him the race.

I had more confidence in his ability to win with a lead regardless of this nonsense, but that didn’t stop me from being thoroughly annoyed and outraged given the symbolic defeat of the situation, nor did it stop me from soaking up some of the ambient concern and doubt the room was filling with.

“Even in communist times everyone got to vote, we only had one party to vote for but still everyone got to vote,” a friend said to me.

Eventually someone came and said that people at the polls were wondering where he, the previous mayor, was and what he was doing.

They needed a leader.

The two mayoral candidates found each other in front of the polling site and were gave some advice from one of the people there saying that they had the right to file a complaint and get additional votes cast, those of the people who were waiting in line (70 or so) the following weekend when the national run-off elections were to be held.

The two candidates together wrote a complaint on behalf of the villagers, printed copies for each of them and signed them and planned to set off for the municipality that night to have them filed officially. That moment of shared interest and cooperation between opposing candidates, it was beautiful.

The candidates returned to their homes to get ready to head out and in the mean time the vote count for the mayoral election had been completed. The previous mayor had won by a margin of about 80 votes, rendering the un-cast 70 votes inconsequential to that race.

People lost it, shouting and howling in the streets, “Poh-be-da, poh-be-da!//победа, победа!//VICTORY, VICTORY!”

Beer, wine and rakia materialized and someone even tried to hook up a stereo to play music and do traditional dance despite the fact that it was about 30 degrees F and 2 in the morning.

The candidates again met for a moment, shaking hands and saying something to each other in private.

Sadly, once that race had been decided the deeper issue, that the right of some to cast votes had been nullified to satisfy some bureaucratic formality was lost and forgotten.

I got to see firsthand just how fragile good will toward the government here is. People were offended and let down, and though party representatives came to the village to congratulate the mayor and to try and convince people to vote in the following run-off election, few people were happy to see them, or moved by their words. People tell you to vote, that your vote matters, you go to do just that and then you wait all day and still don’t get to exercise your right to be heard. People already think very poorly of their government and officials, thinking most of them to be beholden to organized crime or actual members of the mafia itself.

Out of 300 voting-age people about 60 abstained and another 70 were cut out of the process, meaning about 1/4 would-be voters were ignored because the poll was under-funded and therefore under-staffed which slowed the voting process and then because the national government cut off voting at a certain time instead of just letting it go on until it was done.

At the end of it there’s tons of lessons here. Democracy is not magic and as inalienable as our rights may be, they can be taken away or marginalized in ways sinister, mundane or even accidental. What’s more, the reality of the situation in the country, levels and modes of corruption, wealth disparity, accountability and the culture of political involvement versus the national sense of disenfranchisement are all important ingredients in the making of a better- or barely-functioning democracy.

In other words, a pile of organs does not make a living person.

A living body, body-politic in this case, requires not just basic ingredients but a balance and particular interaction between them for it to work properly, or at all. People have to care and know about what they are voting on, they have to know that voting matters (and it does indeed have to matter) and they have to be able to hold their officials accountable and to have some basic level of faith in their government for any of that to happen in the first place and for the results of the election and the authority of the government to be accepted as legitimate.

People don’t pay taxes to nor do they follow the laws of governments they don’t see as legitimate.

Bulgaria is a country in transition. The new “center-right” party, which is largely responsible for the funding and building of the road to the village, is now in the office of the President and the Prime Minister, coming out ahead of the Bulgarian Socialist Party. Here’s hoping that they are well intentioned and capable and as much as they are those two things, successful in their endeavors.

Building walls, being a villager and installing new benches

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 15:16:26 +0200

Building walls, being a villager and installing new benches

First Weekend of Hunting Season

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 10:01:06 +0200

All Pictures

Up at 5:30, at the cafe by 6 - it’s hunting season.

I’m sure there’s some science lurking somewhere ready to explain why the air is so much more crisp and clean, enjoyably so, when you’re up and out going somewhere so early. I defer to the people in the white lab coats for such musings, sadly they didn’t come to the first day of hunting season.

My landlord and I did though, and so did another 20 or so people from the village and from neighboring cities.

It being the first day of the season there’s paperwork to file and figure out so we all sat around the cafe for a little longer than usual. People were taking care of that, catching up with friends whom they hadn’t seen since the end of last year’s season, BS’ing and discussing a little bit of the strategy for the day.

“T’s” crossed and “I’s” dotted, we all piled into various jeeps, with the dogs in the dog cages bolted to back of the jeeps in the place of spare tires. We rounded the bend out of the village, got out, debated back and forth how many people to put where and where they thought gaps in the net of hunters would be. As is the usual, the basic concept is you spread groups of hunters out in lines below the ridges of the mountains and then another group forms a line perpendicular to those and they shoot guns, shout and light fire crackers while hiking through the bush and trees to scare the game in the direction of those waiting patiently in lines below the ridges.

Within that there’s plenty of variation as the guys consider where they’ve seen tracks in the last week when they’ve been out hiking or going to and from the various fields that they own and work as well as how many times wild boars have dug up potato crops and where.

That all decided, we headed out to our various posts, spread out from there, sat and waited in the quiet beauty of the forest.

As the time passed, some distinct movement could be heard maybe 200m below me so I stood, and started shouting (not having a gun relegates you to shouting detail, which is actually still great). The pidder-padder and leaf-fall noise moved further down and across from my right to my left and then shots went off, BOOM, … BOOM,… BOOM-BOOM.

I can tell who is shooting by how many shots go off at a time and by the end of those three sets of shots I knew whatever was running below us had made it past at least the first two shooters and maybe even the third.

We piled back into the jeep and moved to a knew location, all the while scanning the side of the road for signs of animal traffic to know if they’d gone out of our area of control. We got out, got into position, waited a bit, got a call from the rest of the guys and suddenly we were part of the shouting-driving effort, marching down the mountain 100m in between each of us making noise trying to drive whatever was below toward those on the other side of the valley.

Again no luck. So we piled back into the trucks and headed up to the basedka (gazebo+benches and tables+barbeque pit) for a celebration of the first weekend of hunting season.

As people arrived over time, the more wine, beer and rakia (brandy) got brought out, salads and then later barbequed meats and steaks followed. Life was good and only got better as the singing and trash-talk built up over time.

One of the guys even drove to the next village and picked up a keyboard player and his portable gear (keyboard, speakers, amp, microphone, generator) and drove him back to the party.

Good times all around.

The closeness between these guys, people who have known each other their whole lives is pretty great to witness and even better to be a part of.

The next day, Sunday, I joined the shouting-driving squad, bush-wacking our way across the trail-less sides of mountains, shouting and in general making noise trying to scare animals to ward waiting shotguns and rifles. It was definitely enjoyable - kind of like hiking and singing at the same time. It’s also just great to wander in the wilderness and it’s made better by the amount of solitude involved in this task because you’re supposed to be as spread out as possible to make the line longer, though not so spread out that animals just pass between you.

All in all, the weather was gorgeous and we had a great time. The rest of the guys were more disappointed than I was though with not bringing anything back. I definitely would have enjoyed wild boar steaks that night, but I’ll live without ‘em.

OCCUPY YOUR NEIGHBOR'S HOUSE! (or, "Halloween")

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 14:27:37 +0200

Soooooooooo Halloween was a huge hit and excellent fun. Just what I needed.

ALL PICTURES HERE

Kids, man. What awesome miniature people they are.

It started when I walked into a class in session and told them we were going to celebrate Halloween and go trick-or-treating, which, thanks to television and globalization, required little explanation in order inspire maximum excitement.

“YAAAAAYYYYYY!”

“Also, we’re going to make Jack-o-lanterns, do you guys know what those are?”

“Yeah of course we do! When?”

“We’ll make masks out of paper later today or tomorrow. jack-o-lanterns this weekend and go trick or treating to celebrate Halloween on Monday.”

“YAAAAAYYYYYY!”

I may have taken some liberties with the specifics of that conversation, but you get the point.

At any rate we made Jack-o-lanterns over the weekend, and, as is typical here, it was last minute, totally unprepared and nearly 100% happened by chance. Bulgaria definitely keeps you flexible and on your toes. Try as I might to impose some kind of schedule on the future, there’s just no such thing here.

Everyone had a blast carving and gutting pumpkins, perhaps most of all me, which I’m totally fine with. As we were packing up to leave I printed out some fliers/descriptions for the kids to take home to their parents and to show to their neighbors so everyone would know why we were raiding their house for candy in the middle of the night. These three girls, 11 years of age all said they wanted to take the fliers around the village and hang them up so people knew. They even came back and said they didn’t have enough fliers so I told them to just actually tell people and that that’d be even better. How awesome is that? Campaign volunteers for Halloween!

Come Monday, “H-Day,” we met in the town center or in other words “the intersection,” and waited for all of the costumed and excited half-people to show up. By 6:30 ish everyone had arrived and we took a shouting/democratic consensus to determine where to go first. All of the three cafes handed out candies to the kids and the people inside were nearly as happy as the chil’ens, who, for the first time ever got to A) wear costumes outside of a carnaval celebration and B) demand candy en masse from pretty much everyone.

We then proceeded to go house to house, hitting almost every one of them in the whole village and it only took a little bit of prompting to get them in the habit of shouting the Bulgarian translation of “Trick-or-Treat!” That is of course, in between their constant, slightly crazy, and totally enjoyable howling - no joke.

“WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHH!”

I tried to coax most every person I saw on the street into walking with me as a companion chaperone for the 20ish masked hooligans parading in front of me, each of whom was experiencing a steadily rising tide of sugar in their blood. Sadly I marched on alone (except for the kids of course) for most of the night until one brave soul joined me and we had a good time keeping the kiddies in line (actually just following them around).

“Чиста луденица//Cheesta loodenitsa//PURE INSANITY,” as they say.

As the night went on, a few people didn’t answer or didn’t have candy to give out and I continued to get those getting riled-up to chill-out and those concerned that they hadn’t been given candy at a certain house to not worry about it and to just have fun.

We did and ended the night having literally run out of doors to knock on.

At some point someone gave me a bag full of apples. I think I was supposed to hand them out to the kids - and I tried, but they were being given apples at every house (due to what I thought was a slick move on my part to add “or fruit” to the list of things acceptable to hand out in the Halloween flier) and so they resisted my efforts. The downside (in a way that is typically awkward for Americans in Bulgaria) was that as a result of having a bag of any kind, I was now trick-or-treating as well in the minds of the homeowners. I explained that it’s not a holiday for adults and that they didn’t have to and shouldn’t give me candy but the notion of them NOT treating someone who was basically taking all of the village kids out for a huge play-date was unfathomable and actually once or twice even offensive to them.

These are, of course the kinds of problems you want to have - being the guy watching the kids during Halloween, and coming home with a bag full of homemade popcorn, enough apples to make a pie and a bottle of 20-year-old homemade wine.

That’s Bulgaria, everybody. People are crazy hospitable here.

Letter sent to CA AG Kamala Harris

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 14:10:00 +0200

Earlier today I sent this email to CA Attorney General Kamala Harris in regard to her potential participation in a weak settlement with big banks being accused of fraud.

Her contact information is:

Electronic mail form is here.

Mailing Address

Attorney General’s Office

California Department of Justice

Attn: Public Inquiry Unit

P.O. Box 944255

Sacramento, CA 94244-2550

I strongly urge that if you are interested in the idea: “equality and justice for all” that you read the two articles linked to in the email below, form your own opinion and contact either Kamala Harris or the AG of your state and encourage them to support AG’s Eric Schneiderman, Beau Biden and Catherine Masto in their investigations of criminal behavior and fraud in the banking industry that lead to the financial crisis and the global crisis and high unemployment that are now pervasive.

It will take you 10 minutes and I assure you that at while you’re doing something great for your state/country/future/childrens’ children, it will also feel good.

Dear Attorney General Kamala Harris,

My name is Cameron Ottens and I’m a registered voter in California, also a currently serving Peace Corps volunteer in Bulgaria.

I am writing you today in reference to this article at Firedog lake and this article at the NYT.

Do no back the banks on this or settle cheap. No one will win in a weak settlement. The victims of what was likely financial fraud will not win. The American people will not win because the facts will never be known and the rule of law will not win because those banks and organizations that willing wronged their fellow countrymen, the world economy and ultimately the stability of the capitalist system, will have learned that the rules do not apply to them as long as they convince those in government that they should be above the law.

Do not let that happen.

No one is above the law. To let them off the hook is not just wrong or unfair but it undermines the rule of law elsewhere (if the rules aren’t fair, why follow them?). It undermines trust in government and in parties and it will undermine our trust in you, personally.

I remember your name from my time as a PoliSci major at SFSU, and I remember the excitement of the Dems club there in backing you when you ran for election. Ever since then, whenever I hear your name I think immediately of my time at university, doing campaign work, of my friends there and the excitement of participation in that great thing called Democracy.

The notion, should you be catering it, that we as a country or people need to “move on” from these black marks on our history rather than drag ourselves through the process of justice may be well intentioned but it is misguided. The experience of justice, though it may not be pretty is necessary and cathartic. It is different when people agree mutually to forgive and forget without delving deeper into wrongs done, in that case all participants are consenting. In the case of society, the only people giving consent are power holders, and none are victims. What’s more, the facts never come to light, and the divisive influence of suspicion and conspiracy theory is left to linger. Members of both parties will believe the leaders of their opposition to be corrupt, colluding in the shadows with banks and other interests and generally that they are puppets of some ruling elite.

And to the degree that you let criminals off because of their pay grade, or the market capitalization of their bank, they will be right.

What’s more, the notion that “we need them” is also misguided. Why anyone thought that we had to reinstate huge bonuses for people working on Wall Street in order to retain their services is beyond me - stabilizing the financial industry does not mean colluding with it. Where did everyone think they were going to go work when the entire global financial system was in the tank? Without specifically allowing bailout funds to be spent on huge raises and bonuses who was going to pay them more? No one. On the contrary, we do not need them nearly as much as they would like us to believe, and I can assure you that anyone removed from a high-paying position for unlawful action already has a long line of people behind them wanting that job, and any banks collapsed as a result of the accurate dispensing of justice most assuredly have a slew of competitors waiting to soak up their business. And if not, I’m sure consumers will be whistling happily waiting in long lines at honest banks knowing that their patronage will help good businesses flourish and that as they stand in line, criminals sit in jail.

Can you imagine a sunnier day?

I do not hate banks, their industry or the people who work there. They all have the potential to provide an important service to our economy through credit, equity, and liquidity. That’s great. If I sound like I want everyone on Wall Street in jail, let me be clear: I want every criminal regardless of whether they have a white or blue collar to pay their due and to be equal under the law and it should be obvious from my tone that I do believe there are plenty of criminals on Wall Street.

If this is a case of bad apples, then it’s your job to sort apples. Anything else is to ensure that the quality of our society be tainted, our justice only partial.

Do the work with AG’s Eric Schneiderman, Catherine Masto and Beau Biden. Do not settle. Get to the bottom of it.

If you lose, you lose only yourself, if you win, the whole country wins.

Most sincerely,

Cameron Ottens

I don’t know about you but I feel great.

Happy Halloween.

-C

"Help"

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 11:27:05 +0300

A friend of mine had a homeless guy living in her neighborhood pretty close to her apartment. She got to know him over time and one night when it was particularly cold noticed he had a pretty bad cough. She resolved to buy him a sleeping bag - that she could do and it’d keep him warm.

The next time she saw him he was beaten and bloodied. Someone had come upon him, seen his new found wealth and taken it from him - violently.

“Helping” is complicated.

There’s a lot of lessons we can draw from this, but it’s important that they be lessons thought through more than just one step. Suppose he got tuberculosis and would have died without that sleeping bag? And suppose that because he had been attacked, he was admitted to a hospital where the nurses and doctors snuck anti-TB meds into his treatment in a way where he could get them and not be charged for them (AKA “afford them”)? Or suppose she didn’t get him the bag, and he died one night? Or was fine and the situation unchanged? Or simply suppose he didn’t get beaten up for the sleeping bag. It’d be all roses and sunshine as far as lessons go, right?

(LEFT-Magic beans and head-sized potatoes, “it was a good year for potatoes.”)

I get the question a lot, “what do you do there/here?” and given the changing nature of circumstances and life here, the answer is continually shifting. There’s about a million ways to answer the question regardless of who you are or where you work and I’m slowly making my way through every possible explanation I can think of that applies to me.

(RIGHT-Some of the beans really do looks like jelly beans. It’d be quite the terrible trick to play to mix them into a dish of candies since they are rock hard if they haven’t been soaked properly.)

That said, the gist of it, is obviously “trying to help people.”

There’s a lot of helping that goes on out there, in our daily routine, in work, in charity and in things that mix two or all three of these. To quote a friend and colleague here, Dan W, “Give a man a fish and you’ll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you’ll feed him for a lifetime. Teach a man to teach himself to fish and you’re in the Peace Corps.”

(LEFT-“LEARN TO FISH YOU LAZY STRAY ANIMALS! DAMN YOU!”)

That’s how it’s supposed to be anyway. Between volunteers, villages and countries, no doubt the scope of what actually fills our day-to-day varies quite a bit.

Still, the notion of “help” is an absurdly complicated one. Should you do someone a favor or teach them how to do it themselves? If you should teach, how can you if they’re not interested? Or if they think your chief purpose in being here is to “do” and not to “teach how.” Your philosophy of why one helps whom determines what kind of “help” is appropriate, as well as whether or not you should get involved in the first place. Throw into the mix a little bit of, at least perceived, pressure to make our projects “sustainable,” (implying that we should perform some kind of magic that will have the community perpetuate our projects after we’re gone) and I end up in a situation where I feel as though it is my job to recontextualize a sisyphean act into a winnable game oF Drunken Chess Boxing - a mixture of strategy, hard work and finesse balanced with belligerence, all tempered with timing and patience. Oh, and luck.

There’s a word for that actually, it’s, “life.”

(RIGHT-Turns out Bulgarians also have a version of the “Pickleback,” called a “spirachka” or “brake.” Theirs’ is done with Bulgarian brandy, “Rakia”)

Just as important is learning how to let go of the need and therefore my inability to quantify all of the variables that will determine the future of this tiny, beautiful, “quirky” (to say the least) place I now live in and have so irresponsibly taken responsibility for.

I need to master a kind of zen state that matches calmness and thoughtfulness with intention, diligence and haste.

Being around Huelo helps me tremendously with this. She’s great to and for me and I evidently work better in a team than solo.

At the end of the day, absent discrete goals for what I ought to produce personally, I inevitably end up pulling and pushing my self in lots of directions, which will have to be good enough, and indeed seems to be so. My neighbors, friends and I all seem to get along, enjoy ourselves, and generally learn from one another.

Something concrete I have learned about my self thus far is that while I enjoy and can stomach a great deal of this wishy-washy “work” I need a fair amount more discrete and measurable projects to occupy the side of my brain that is constantly trying to measure things. I’ve gotta throw it a bone at least once in a while.

Gift Giving

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 15:16:00 +0300

For a brief time I tried to include every possible future cost in a budget. I say brief because I’m referring to a period of maybe 2 hours when I tried to write that personal budget and, finding accounting for the future to be impossible, stopped.

Still, not having reached that kind of perfection that time didn’t alter my notion of “perfection,” of including and accounting for everything.

More recently I was reading one of these books that’ll take me a year to get through, reading only a few pages too a chapter at a time and then coming back to it later, like a favorite, but rarely eaten food, when I want a nibble or a bite. The topic that happened to be before me was that of gift giving, a very relevant topic in Bulgaria.

Written there, as barely even an aside, was a simple statement saying that you should live below your means so that you can afford to give gifts freely, or in my mind, without having to have accounted and saved for them previously.

One man’s, “Duh, idiot,” is another man’s, “My God, it’s genius!”

I read this as I was waiting at the bottom of our village’s road for whatever car was to come next, returning villagers, friends of mine no doubt, from whatever errands called them out of the laze or bussle of the village that day. This means I was already planning my day, my return home based on the notion that someone would afford me a small favor, a gift, picking me up and driving me home.

When I got back I ran into a friend who, as is customary in the Villagio (my snazzy Italian-ese name for the village), promptly asked me where I had gotten lost to (a somewhat awkward translation), because we hadn’t seen each other recently.

“I’ve been here,” I said, “except for today, I was picking up some things in the county-capital.”

“Ohhh, excellent. Do you have potatoes to eat?” She asked.

“No I fried the last ones I had a couple of days ago.”

“Oh well wait here, I’ll get you a sack (~5kilos), don’t go running off anywhere!”

And just like that she hustled, sort of, to go fetch me a bag of potatoes they had grown on their various acres around the Villagio.

It’s already baked into their habits, yearly plans and forecasts, none of which aren’t actually conceived, discussed or written down, that they will grow “a bunch” of potatoes sell “a (smaller) bunch” and than have “a (also smaller) bunch” left over for “themselves, their family and friends and whomever else needs some.”

People here may live poor but they aren’t on the razor’s edge of anything. When it comes to planning things that are out of routine pretty much anything can derail a (always unwritten) plan, but when it comes to food, beer, brandy and wood for the winter, it would take a true cataclysm to eat up the reserves my neighbors here very commonly maintain.

It is a lesson I hope to not forget anytime soon, to live below my means, to have resources left over to give, without calculating how much or how often. So that I not only have potatoes for me, but plenty for you as well.

Thanks again Bulgaria

2011 July 22 Running and Working

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 18:55:00 +0300

From 2011-07-18 Road shots for subor invite (that’s the new road the government just finished building using Euro-Union infrastructure money).

During up-periods I tend to think a lot about specific quotations from various people that happen to resonate with me. It’s one of the reasons I admire the various holy books in the world as pieces of cultural technology - written and spoken word, meant sincerely or with purpose grants the recipient a kind of canvas on which to paint their own meaning. Jesus says “X” and you hear it as “X+Y.” That’s what I’m talking about. The recipient adds their own meaning.

The last week has been excellent. Excellent in the getting things done, staying disciplined and keeping a routine sense. It being an up-period I’ve had a couple of lines on my mind.

Huelo gave me this good one which she got from one Chris V-J:

“You’re only a runner if you run when you don’t want to.”

It’s a good thing to repeat to my self, say on Wednesday morning when I got up at 415am to go run 8 miles before traveling all day. That’s the only time I was going to have that day so the choice was obvious: If you have to run, you have to run when you have time, I didn’t have anywhere to be that early, but we were planning on leaving the village at 630 so there we go. What’s most important is that you really can replace the word “runner” with anything.

In fact, you should.

Outside of ascribed statuses, where someone holds a license or a title granted them by some board somewhere (like being a contractor or a lawyer etc.) you really are what you do and if you’re not doing something much, you’re not much of that thing. In fact if you’re not practicing law, despite your license to do so, I’d say you’re not much of a lawyer. (Of course there are other lawyerly activities that use the same skills so don’t take me wrong here.)

If you want to do or be something. Start. Do. That’s what I take from it. Communication always being a two-way street, you’re welcome to come up with something different.

Something else that’s been getting me out of bed earlier and earlier, which has been the flavor of the last week is something one Denny Plyler told me:

“Champions train while others sleep.”

Now I’m not going to be a champion of anything in the near future. Being a “champion” is actually not something I’m planning on. Being great is, however and in thinking this over I equate the two absolutely. If I want to be great at anything, if I want to have an impact on peoples’ lives in the way I seek to, there is a kind of vigilance this desire demands of me, of us. It requires more than showing up and accepting what the world serves me, excuses and successes both. The world being inflexible in certain ways, I must bend to meet it.

The last couple of words that keep coming back to me come from Seth Godin an it goes like this:

“A definition of a leader…

Leaders lead.

Is that too simple?

Writers write. If you want to be a writer, write. And be sure to have people read what you write.

And leaders? Leaders lead.

If you want to be a leader, go lead.”

Again, replace “leader” and “writer” with any ambition of yours and you’ve got your road map, marked only by that single imperative. Once you decide to go, your compass only needs one direction on it anyway.

Fear of failure, especially under circumstances where I’ve seriously applied my self, has always been a fear of mine. I can’t imagine that’s unique either. Having been put through a situation where no amount of work on my part could have resulted in my normal rate of success (Pre-Service Training) has done a lot to push that fear elsewhere. Swimming almost entirely in unknown waters since then has done a lot more. I’ve been just as affected though, and perhaps in an interdependent manner, by the notion that failure is irrelevant in many areas of life that otherwise are perceived to be governed by hard, pointless rules and thresholds that must be met or all is hopeless.

It simply is not the case.

And even if it were, “we must become the change we want to see” in the world, right?

Special Report from The Economist on how news is changing

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 15:31:16 +0300

Special Report from The Economist on how news is changing

The Familiar and the New

Fri, 13 May 2011 22:41:49 +0300

Sooooo today I found myself doing something I’ve done far too many times before, installing Windows XP on a computer that will no longer work:

For some context I took a picture of how super green the 2nd World has become in the last two days:

The Osama-ning

Mon, 02 May 2011 23:53:00 +0300

I’m happy that “Osama ‘been shot.” (Like that little pun there?) The world is better without such a jacka$$ running about plotting and executing senseless and mass violence.

Clearly.

So since we all, probably, agree on that, let’s take a moment to consider the “next thing.”

What that is, is: was Osama Bin Laden worth two wars, over $1 trillion, countless lives, a dramatically more divided country and a fundamentally changed international dynamic?

I’d say, “no.”

Why? Because we should be treating terrorists like criminals rather than like terrorists.

By calling a terrorist such, by having a war on terror, we immediately let them win. Sure we can pursue them (for decades) and spend government-crippling sums of money doing it and maybe eventually “get ‘em,” but in taking such an approach, we ensure that our struggle against extremism is crippled, protracted and more likely break us while it emboldens our enemies.

Terrorists are not special, they are just a different breed of criminal.

It does not matter why someone tries to rob a bank, whether for religious, cultural or monetary reasons. The bottom line is that they are committing a particular offense and should be pursued and tried accordingly.

We call them terrorists because we already know that it is their intent to provoke a disproportionately large reaction from us by committing an offense whose main significance is symbolic.

They want a never-ending war on terror where we spend all of our resources, act beligerantly, dirty our reputation internationally and make their ranks swell by taking actions that they’ve predicted we’d take and which they’d describe as aggressive signs of our imperialist intentions. Proving them wrong is possible, cheaper and it’s the right and responsible thing to do.

Basically, terrorists are saying, “I want you (America) to freak out, and start another Vietnam-style war, and then another after that until you’re bankrupt and hate each other so much you can’t even pass a budget (…).

And when we started and then continued the War on Terror, we answered, “Okay.”

There are plenty of ways to condemn or legitimize what we’ve done since September 11th, 2001. The past is done, however.

What we have to remember now is that, if we ever did before, we certainly no longer have the luxury of making rash decisions and acting on national and untempered anger. We cannot allow ourselves to be played in such a way again. For one reason we cannot afford it financially. For another as the last remaining super-power, the de facto biggest kid on the block (for now Re: China) we have a responsibility to the world to act prudently in the name of peace and global stability.

We may still be a young nation by world-standards, but we cannot act like it.

Thoughts?

When to Not Tell the Weather What to Do

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 11:58:44 +0300

(The spoilers:)

Wednesday we met in the center of town around 8:15, heading out around 8:30 for a trash clean up a half mile outside of town. It was a good solid half day of work, though it was somewhat exhausting. 12 of us picked up and hauled away some 80 large trash bags from the drop-off off the side of the road.

I think we made a dent in the total amount of trash but the general experience was that when someone would pull a plastic bottle or something else half-stuck in the ground, up and out, they’d uncover still more trash, deeper in the topsoil.

We were cleaning up this plot of land because the mayor is responsible for cleaning it up by law since it was reported while he was in office, even though the trash could be, and is reportedly, from years before he was elected.

People have been dumping their trash off the side of the road for decades. And we aren’t talking about candy wrappers, no we’re talking about large things, parts of beds, gallon water jugs, whole bags of trash. It’s been used as an actual trash dump. It’s disappointing and frustrating to say the least. What’s more, while we were working, some guys on the clean-up crew were actually working to bury some of the trash so it wouldn’t be visible, because the whole purpose of the clean-up was to remove the trash so he wouldn’t have to pay the fine he’s legally on the hook for.

Ideally this would be an all volunteer event (probably most of the people there were on the social-jobs program), with the mayor leading the way toward volunteerism and community service. It would be planned in advanced and attention would have been paid to inspiring and mobilizing people. Instead it was totally last minute, haphazard and devoid of narrative or ascribed meaning.

There are good things though, the work did get done. There is that much less trash sitting in a forest in Bulgaria now and additionally, those who took part were able to see how much we could accomplish in such a little amount of time - an important lesson and victory as well.

We were all set to go out again on Thursday and then…

As you can see from the first two pictures at the top on Wednesday there was no snow on the ground and it was a pretty clear day - even warm out. Everyone had been saying, “it’s going to rain by lunch and we’ll have to stop working.” I told them “I’ve decided it’s not going to rain today so we can work more.” They laughed and it ended up being true, but then it appears there was a greater cost inherent in that decision.

I will now add, “either rain today or snow tomorrow,” to my ever growing list of life’s trade-offs, and I’ll try and be more weary of telling the weather what to do lest I get my self into another Faustian deal again.