The Return of a Florida Baseball Friend

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My baseball coach in the ninth grade was a man named Richard Gay. Coach Gay took me seriously the day I walked into his offfice and declared that I wanted to be a catcher. Every year before that year I wanted to be an outfielder or even in my wildest dreams a pitcher but the reality of my first year taught me that if I was going to make the varsity baseball team as a freshman I could only do it as a catcher. I offered up myself to Dick Gay and he accepted the offer.

Throughout spring training (in Wisconsin in March and early April that means playing catch in the baseball gym) Dick Gay had me catching wild knuckle balls thrown by Pat Byrnes and he had me standing over the plate and getting knocked over as my own team mates practiced sliding into home plate. By the end of spring training when we were ready to actually play on a field I felt pretty confident about being a catcher and doing what catchers do best.

One of our first games that year was against Prairie Farm, the town where my father grew up and the team for which he played baseball in high school many years before. Prairie Farm had on its baseball team a kid who was also a track runner. A damned good track runner. In fact a track runner who was so good that he had won the state championship in the 100 yard dash the year before. This sucker could run.

While we were doing warm ups before the game I remember Coach Gay telling me to make sure that every time I threw the ball down to second base I threw it wild. That was against my better judgement because I prided myself on my ability to throw a ball to second base. After all that's what catcher's are trained to do - among other things we throw out people trying to steal second base. However I followed Coach Gay's command and every time I threw a ball to second base it wound up in the outfield or almost hit the pitcher or may have been picked off by the shortstop. Every ball went eveywhere except where training told me it was supposed to go.

In the bottom of the first inning, last years champion in the 100 yard dash came to bat and immediately hit a single. With him on first base I remember scanning the field wondering if I could follow through when this guy tried stealing second base - something everyone expected him to do. Sure enough. When the first pitch was thrown to the batter this kid took off for second base. I threw the ball straight and true and with conviction and I nailed his ass. He was out by several feet. I'd just thrown out the state chamption in the 100 yard dash.

Three innings later this same state champion in the 100 yard dash came to bat again and this time he drew a walk. He trotted down to first base and when he got there I knew he was going to try to steal second base. The bastard was fast - that's what fast runners do. True to form when the first pitch was thrown to the next batter, last year's champion in the 100 yard dash took off for second base. The ball was waiting for him in Keith Popko's glove for a couple seconds when he valiantly slid into second base.

Without me knowing it Dick Gay taught me a valuable lesson about baseball. Its called "ruse." During warm ups he knew that we were up against a very good runner. He also knew that he had a fairly good arm on his team behind home plate. He told me to make my throws to second base look like I had no arm and certainly no accuracy. The Prairie Farm runner took the bait and twice the Prairie Farm runner was thrown out by feet trying to steal second base. No other Prairie Farm runner even thought about trying to steal second base for the rest of the game.

Dick Gay also taught me how to be an aggressive catcher. I remember once having him tell me that "I don't care what you say to that batter I want you to make an ass out of him." When I was behind the plate it was my job to "run" things on the field and if there was anything I could do to distract the batter and give my team the advantage Coach Gay demanded that I do so. Like the time during a game in the 11th grade when we were playing Bloomer High School. For whatever reason I always picked out one kid for merciless heckling. Heckling is part of the tradition of the game and my coach wanted me heckling so I did. For this poor kid from Bloomer I was particularly obnoxious. I remember well in the seventh inning when he came to bat for the third time that game. As he stood there waiting for the pitch I was in his ear trying to distract him. I distinctly remember that day and what I said because as he stood at the plate I made a particularly pointed and suggestive comment about his sister (I had no idea he had a sister but he obviously did). When I described not only what I wanted to do to his sister but where and when he switched the hands on his bat, shifted his feet a bit and swung the bat with full force directly into my catchers mask. His team had had enough of my heckling throughout the game and they cleared the bench. My team came to my rescue and one hell of a fight followed. It was one of the high points of my baseball career. And all I was doing was what my coach had taught me to do - make an ass out of the batter.

Joe Ayrault was the manager of the Sarasota Reds (Class High A) affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds in 2009 when I moved to Sarasota. I hadn't paid much attention to minor league baseball before that year but the closeness of the stadium and the quality of the baseball I got to watch there turned me into a Sarasota Reds fan. I had a permanent ticket directly behind home plate within easy heckling distance of whatever hapless soul happened to be playing against "my" Sarasota Reds. I had a great time heckling and actually once had a player from the St. Lucie Mets throw a baseball bat at me to shut me up after I made a less-than-complimentary comment about the size of his penis as he stood at the plate.

Joe Ayrault and his team had no idea who the hell I was. They just knew that no matter where the game was or who they were playing, that mouthy bastard would be behind home plate trying to distract their opponents.

The Sarasota Reds had a less than excellent year in 2009 but it wasn't because of the coaching provided by Joe. There were kids like Devin Mesoroco and Dave Sappelt and Yonder Alonzo who played for the Reds who were top notch players. And in fact if none of them are playing in the Show in 2012 I think I'm going to have words with Reds management about why they aren't up there.

But I digress.

Despite their less than perfect record the Reds were lucky because they had Joe Ayrault as their manager. Not since the ninth grade in 1966 had I been around a manager who was so much like a female Kodiak bear protecting their young as Joe was around his kids on that team.

If I was a betting person I would have made millions betting that in the sixth innning of any Sunday afternoon game during the 2009 season something would happen and Joe would go ballistic. He would fly off the bench and get in the face of the umpire and invariably get kicked out of the game. I particularly remember one game against the Charlotte Stone Crabs where Joe simply lost it with an incompetent umpire and let him have it verbally. Joe was kicking dirt over home plate (always a huge no - no) and throwing a tantrum and finally said to the umpire "you blind motherfucker my six year old could call a better game than you can." Joe was immediately ejected from the game (as we expected) and he walked from the field to a standing ovation of every Sarasota Reds fan in the audience.

Throughout the season I missed about 8 games (away and home) that the Reds played but I never said a word to the team or introduced myself to them or anything else. Instead I was just this giant pain the ass of whatever team happened to play the Reds.

The final game of the Reds life was held in Charlotte against the Stone Crabs on September 6, 2009. I was there to watch the game and to cheer on my team. Before the game began a bunch of the players were hanging out signing autographs and I saw Joe in the bench area so I walked over to introduce myself to him. Here verbatim is how the conversation went:

As the game was getting ready to begin Joe saw me standing by his team and walked up to me. Without introudcing himself he said to me, simply, “so who the fuck are you, anyway?"

I asked asked what he meant and Joe said, "It didn't matter where we were playing or who we were playing you always sat in the same seat behind home plate. You started heckling whomever we played from before the first pitch was thrown and you didn't let up until the last out. You were relentless. I asked my team if you were a father of one of the kids on the team and nobody knew you. So who the fuck are you?"

I told Joe that I was a retired wildlife biologist who moved to Sarasota and discovered the Reds. I then said “when I watched you guys play you took me back to the days in high school when I was a baseball player. Watching you made me feel like a kid again, and I knew that I had to do something to help you win, even if you couldn't."

Joe asked, "So did you make it to the minors?"

I told Joe I never made it past high school baseball.

Joe then said, "So what position did you play?"

I said "I was a catcher from ninth grade on."

Joe chuckled and said "That explains everything!"

After the 2009 season the Reds disbanded. They moved to Lynchburg Virginia as an affiliate of the Reds and Joe lost his job with the Reds organization. Later however he was picked up by the Helena Brewers of the Advanced Rookie League for the Milwaukee Brewers and he coached for two seasons in Montana. His family stayed here in Sarasota while he was out west.

Meanwhile the Bradenton Marauders (High A Affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates) filled the void left by the departing Sarasota Reds and became the local minor league team.

Over the last two years I really missed Joe not only for his on-field antics and the fact that he openly appreciated my heckling and what I was trying to do to help his team, but also most importantly for his ethics as a manager. He's a good one and deserves to be in the Show some day. Yet he was stuck out in Montana and there was little chance I would ever get to see him in person unless the Brewers organization came to their senses and promoted him to Milwaukee.

Well....imagine my elated surprise when tonight a mutual friend, Debbie, informed me that it was official. Joe Ayrault was returning to minor league baseball in the Florida State League. He was to become the manager of the Brevard County Manatees, the High A Affiliate of my home state Milwaukee Brewers.

I almost couldn't contain myself when I heard this great news because to me a real hero of baseball was returning to Florida and now I could watch him and his kids in action. Joe apparently told Debbie to make sure I knew he was going to be with Brevard County and that he was looking foward to hearing me heckle from the stands.

There's just one thing. As much as I appreciate Joe Ayrault and his ability as a manager there is simply no way I could ethically heckle or harass any team of his. Instead this evening I became a fan of the Brevard County Manatees!

They play about 3 hours east of me on Florida's Space Coast so I won't be able to get to all of their games. But when they are on this side of the state I want to be sitting directly behind home plate and I will use every heckling tool I have to help Joe's teams win. I can't ethically heckle the Bradenton Marauders because they are technically "my" team geographically but the rest of them - fair game.

Joe and I both share a mutual disgust for any team that has the word "Yankee" in their name and I know I will be in Tampa when the Manatees are in town. I personally cannot stand the Clearwater Thresher Sharks (Philadelphia Philllies High A team) because I was threatened by several of their fans one night while heckling for the Sarasota Reds there in 2009. When the Manatees are up in Clearwater guess where I will be.

The St. Lucie Mets and the Palm Beach Cardinals - your ass is mine. And those pussies down in Port Charlotte - the soft crabs or whatever your name is - the entire team despises me from the last three years. When you play the Manatees you've not heard anything yet. And of course there is that team in Fort Myers that plays for the losers from the state just west of Wisconsin. I have a feeling I'll be in Hammond Stadium a bunch of times this summer but I won't be cheering on the Miracle!

It is so great knowing that my friend Joe Ayrault is going to be back in Florida teaching kids how to play real baseball with real passion and to never back down from a fight just like my ninth grade baseball coach did for me ages before Joe was even born.

And Joe....if you find some players on some Florida State League team that need special attention from the stands just send me a note and consider them no longer an issue.

The Money Pit

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One of the first movies that Tom Hanks ever starred in was The Money Pit co-starring Shelley Long (Diane from Cheers). The movie is a hilarious tale about how Hanks and Long poured uncountable sums of money into an old house they had purchased.

I thought about that movie on Friday this week when I sat, again, for hours at the Lexus dealership in Sarasota waiting for the latest repair to be made. I don't own a Lexus - Susan does. Its 2004 series 330 SUV shown above. Driving the car is a dream. Its incredibly comfortable and has more bells and whistles for your comfort than you can count. I first drove it in July when Susan and I drove back to Florida from Indianapolis (via baseball games in Huntsville Alabama and Mobile Alabama). A couple weeks later I drove it as far as the Nashville airport (Susan continued on to South Bend) and then ten days later I flew to South Bend and drove the Lexus back to Florida with her.

When not doing trips across the corn and redneck belts of the country we have traveled quite a bit around Florida in the Lexus - trips to the Florida Keys and jaunts to the east coast and a couple of times to Orlando. In six months we have put some serious mileage on the car.

The first indication we had that the Lexus was becoming a money pit was in late October just before our trip to Nicaragua. The left front tire was constantly going low on air and when we finally took it to Tires Plus we learned that the front tires had virtually no treads left and in fact metal used to maintain the structural integrity of the tires was poking through the rubber. Then there was the issue of the back tires that were very badly worn. The verdict was that four new tires were needed immediately. $675 later we had four new tires and the Lexus rode so nicely it felt like you were on a cloud.

Then a couple weeks ago Susan left her car at my home while she returned by air to Indiana. One day I noticed that the electric remote that opened and closed the doors (found on the key) was working half the time. It was running out of juice and needed to be replaced. At the same time a light was showing constantly saying "maintenance required." I also noticed that when the car was started it was taking longer than normal for the engine to kick in.

The last real maintenance of a car that I did was in "Doc" Miller's class in high school in 1968. From that time long ago I reasoned that the problem with the slow starting was the starter. When I had heard that sound before it always meant a new one was needed.

When I arrived at Lexus the highly professional staff took the information on what was wrong with the car, showed me to the waiting room (with leather covered couches) and invited me to eat bagels and drink coffee (if only I could) until the car was finished. An hour later I was informed that a new battery was put in the remote on the key ($8.00) and that the maintenance required light meant only that an oil change was needed. Lexus changed the oil and filter for me ($60) and then told me that my initial guess was correct and that the starter was shot. I didn't want Susan driving around having trouble in the middle of nowhere so I told Lexus to replace the starter. They then said that I should probably change the spark plugs while they were in there mucking around. When I was presented with that final bill it was $866 for the starter and the plugs. Ouch.

I drove out of the lot thinking the car was fixed, Susan was safe, and I'd never have to stop at Lexus of Sarasota again.

That fantasy lasted a week when another light came on indicating there was a problem with the traction system. Traction? How on earth could that be? Still I didn't want her driving to Indiana for Christmas if there was a traction problem. I quickly called Lexus of Sarasota and made an appointment for 8:00 the next morning.

Dutifully I was there at 8, checked in, and sent to the bagel room to wait. An hour later the helpful service manager informed me that the traction light was on because the gas cap isn't being screwed on tightly enough. How in hell can that be? The service manager informed me that the problem had been fixed and then laid this on me. "While we had your car on the computer we discovered a couple of disturbing things." I could feel my VISA card gasping for air.

"First" she said," the brake pads on the rear brakes are only 1 millimeter thick. They should be 10 millimeters thick. On top of that the brake pads are severely rusted and needed to be replaced." She then added "That will be about $500."

While gasping for air she also told me that all of the fluids in the car were dirty and needed to be replaced along with the filters. "That will be about $450." While clutching my chest she then told me that the rack and pinion steering mechanism was leaking. "Right now on a scale of 1-4 your car is at a 2. But it could blow out at any time and needs to be fixed." Smiling, Liz said "That repair is about $2200."

And to think all of this started with the replacement of an $8.00 battery in the key!

Susan is leaving in a few days for Indiana for Christmas. No way did I want her driving on brakes that were dangerously thin (especially when she'd have to be driving with the confirmed nut cases in Atlanta and Nashville) so I asked that the brakes be fixed immediately. The others we would think about.

Friday morning we replaced the brakes. Liz found me in the bagel room and said "we were able to give you a bit of a discount so the cost was only $422." ONLY? I wonder if she would say "only" if it was her VISA card going into shock?

I told Liz that we would think about the other issues and probably get them fixed when Susan was back in Indiana and had more time.

Wishing Liz a happy holiday season I drove directly from the Lexus of Sarasota dealership to Sam's Auto Repair on 17th Avenue. Everyone raves about Sam's and they are recommended by AAA and I wanted a second opinion.

Sam listened to my story and did some calculations and said "bring the car in Monday morning and I'll have it fixed by Monday afternoon." He then added, "I know this is expensive but I can fix it all for you for $1014." When I told Sam what I had been quoted by Lexus of Sarasota his assistant said "don't EVER take a car to Lexus. They think just because you own a Lexus you have money and they stick it to you. Bring it here and we'll fix it for half what Lexus would charge." No kidding.

Next I drove to University Auto Spa on University Parkway where my buddy Kevin works doing car washes and doing car repairs. I showed Kevin the list of things that Lexus said needed to be fixed as far as fluids and filters. Kevin checked the brake fluid and it was filthy. He checked several other things and confirmed what Lexus said about things needing to be replaced. He then said "With everything you need done its going to cost about $150. I can do it right now if you want me to."

From my hip pocket I could feel my VISA card sighing a sigh of relief as I gave Kevin the go ahead to change the fluids. When he was done with his work he gave me my bill. "I overestimated on one thing Craig, the bill is actually $122."

It was at this point I told Kevin that Lexus told me it would cost $450 to do what Kevin accomplished in 30 minutes and for $330 LESS than Lexus. AT this point my friend Kevin gave me the same lecture that Sam did at Sam's Auto Repair. "From this point on Craig, when your Lexus needs to be fixed you bring it to me first. Don't go to those greedy bastards at the Lexus dealership ever again."

As I drove away from the University Auto Spa parking lot I thought to myself "No kidding Kevin, you don't have to worry about me ever stopping at the Lexus dealership ever again." Their profitable money pit just dried up.

I haven't had the nerve to total up how much we have spent on the Lexus getting everything fixed and safe for trips to Indiana and elsewhere. And when you think about it logically the money spent to keep her safe is inconsequential. However getting fleeced by a dealership like what has happened to us has been less than a pleasurable experience. Talk about getting screwed and not enjoying it!

And to think this all started with the repair of an $8.00 battery on her key!

The Southernmost Point in Africa

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Geographical extremes capture the imagination. From ancient mariners to contemporary mankind, the quest has always been to reach the poles, sail around the tips of continents, conquer the highest peaks and dive to the ultimate depths...South African National Parks

My first job with the US Fish and Wildlife Service was as an ascertainment biologist in our regional office in Minneapolis. There were four of us whose responsibility it was to review lands proposed to the Service for acquisition and inclusion in the National Wildlife Refuge system. We did this work in Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and that state just west of Wisconsin whose name begins with an M.

After reviewing background information on the lands and doing site visits we prepared reports for submission to Washington DC justifying (or not) the preservation of those lands. Our reports became known as the "superlative" reports because in them we used words like "most", "fewest", "biggest" or "best" or "last" or the massively overused phrase "at a biological crossroads" between the "southernmost" and the "northernmost" or "easternmost" or "westernmost" points in the range of a species or a habitat.

It was partly because of our responsibilities in that job (and partly because I'm anal-retentive) that I developed an interest in visiting places or seeing species that are at the edge or the limit of their range. For example, a few years ago I made it a point to fly to Ushuaia, Argentina in Tierra del Fuego because its the southernmost city and has the southernmost airport in the world. Similarly there is Barrow Alaska with the northernmost airport in the world. In 2000, I chartered a plane and flew to Rose Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in American Samoa - it is not only the southernmost refuge in the system but also the southernmost point of land controlled by the United States.

One spring I walked to the tip of Point Pelee near Leamington Ontario so I could urinate on the southernmost point in continental Canada.
Point Pelee, Ontario - the southernmost point in continental Canada


When you land at the Hilo airport on the Big Island of Hawaii not only is it a new airport for your airport list but its also the easternmost airport in that state.
Hilo Airport - the easternmost airport in Hawaii

And who could forget Port Oxford, Oregon, the westernmost point in the continental United States? Or taking off from the Hobart, Tasmania, airport, the southernmost airport in Australia? Or Key West, Florida, the southernmost city in the continental United States?

One of the many reasons I wanted to visit South Africa was because it is the southernmost country in Africa. And before making this trip I had always been under the misguided assumption that the Cape of Good Hope south of Cape Town was the southernmost point in Africa - its not.
Cape of Good Hope - the southwesternmost point in Africa

When I discovered this little geographic oversight I had to make a change in my trip plans to go to the southernmost point. I was so close there was no alternative.

This information from Wikipedia pretty well describes Cape Agulhas:

Cape Agulhas is the southernmost point in the continent of Africa. It is located at 34°50′00″S 20°00′09.15″E,34°50′00″S 20°00′09.15″E in the Overberg region, 170 kilometres (105 mi) southeast of Cape Town. The cape was named by Portuguese navigators, who called it Cabo das Agulhas — Portuguese for "Cape of Needles" — after noticing that around the year 1500 the direction of magnetic north (and therefore the compass needle) coincided with true north in the region. The cape is within the Cape Agulhas Local Municipality in the Overberg District of the Western Cape province of South Africa. The official dividing line between the Indian and Atlantic oceans is defined by the International Hydrographic Organization to pass through Cape Agulhas.

South of Cape Agulhas the warm Agulhas Current that flows south along the east coast of Africa retroflects back into the Indian Ocean. While retroflecting, it pinches off large ocean eddies (Agulhas rings) that drift into the South Atlantic Ocean and take enormous amounts of heat and salt into the neighboring ocean. This mechanism constitutes one of the key elements in the global conveyor belt circulation of heat and salt.

Unlike its better-known relative, the Cape of Good Hope, Cape Agulhas is relatively unspectacular, consisting of a gradually curving coastline with a rocky beach. A survey marker indicates the location of the cape, which would otherwise be difficult to identify. The waters of the Agulhas Bank off the coast are quite shallow and are renowned as one of the best fishing grounds in South Africa.

The rocks that form Cape Agulhas belong to the Table Mountain Group, often loosely termed the Table Mountain sandstone. They are closely linked to the geological formations that are exposed in the spectacular cliffs of Table Mountain, Cape Point, and the Cape of Good Hope.

I visited Cape Agulhas on September 29, 2011 arriving there in early afternoon after driving over from the penguin colony at Simon's Town. Just like a major tourism attraction in the United States the road signs telling you that you are approaching the area begin 50 miles before you get there. Its no different with Cape Agulhas.

On my arrival I discovered that I had to disagree with some of the words in the Wikipedia description because the snarling, angry ocean crashing relentlessly into the rocks at the Cape made the Cape awfully spectacular.

Geographers have determined (decreed?) that the Cape is the official place where the Indian Ocean meets the Atlantic Ocean. However looking out over the water I couldn't tell where one ocean ended and the other began. Maybe next time?
Where the Indian Ocean and Atlantic Ocean meet

Despite 50 miles of highway signs leading to the Cape, and signs on almost every building in the village proclaiming this to be the southernmost point, and there being a National Park at the Cape, I was the only visitor during my hour at the Cape.
A Cape Wagtail was the "Southernmost" landbird in Africa when I visited the Cape

As I stood at the southernmost point of continental Africa looking south into the fierce spring winds my usual case of incurable wanderlust came over me. I fantasized about being on a ship headed due south from that point. Google Earth told me that it was just 2,400 miles from where I was standing to the first point of "land" on the ice continent of Antarctica. A well-provisioned ship could get me there in five days. Imagine all the cool seabirds I could find in those 2,400 miles. Then came thoughts about all of the explorers who passed through those waters just after everyone realized that the earth isn't flat. And think of the crazy folks who have passed through the "roaring forties" in sailboats as they have tried to circumnavigate the globe. Then I thought about Mark Twain's superb book "Following the Equator" and realized that at some point on his around-the-world journey Mark Twain had to have passed directly south of where I stood.

There was so much history in front of me that I wanted to learn and so much geography that I wanted to experience and so much biology swimming and flying around somewhere south of where I stood. And here I had gone and planned only an afternoon out of my five week trip to be at Cape Agulhas. Before going there I thought it was just going to be another bunch of rocks by the ocean where tourists would take pictures and Aunt Edna would say to Uncle George "did you see that big wave, George?" and then forget that they had even been at the Cape the following day. One of the first things you learn when you travel extensively is to always plan more time than you think you'll need for each place you want to visit. I didn't do that with Cape Agulhas and left the Cape feeling I had missed out on something.

There are many other "most's" I would like to see some time. And if you think long and hard and objectively enough almost everyplace could be turned into a "most" of some sort.

Still among all of the "most's" I have already experienced Cape Agulhas, described as "unspectacular" has been the most spectacular most of them all.

I think I need to go back there.

When Debt Collectors Have the Wrong Address

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In the hilarious movie Ruthless People there is a scene in which Danny DiVito gets a phone call that is a wrong number. After listening politely to the caller, a smirk comes over DiVito's face as he says "I'm sorry. She's busy right now. She has my cock in her mouth." DiVito then slams down the phone and with a smile on his faces says "I love wrong numbers."

If it was possible to do the same with mail being sent from debt collectors to someone who lived at my address before me I would gladly do it. Unfortunately I do not know the former resident's current address (or do the bill collectors) or I would do it.

Since moving to my current residence on February 28, 2011, my mail box has been regularly cluttered with mail for a Laura Riley who obviously used to live at my address. There were lots of letters and they came from all manner of collection agencies. At first I would write "not at this address" across the front of the envelope and drop it back in the mailbox hoping the post office would return it to the sender and the sender would get the hint.

The senders kept sending her letters. Finally in July I started opening her letters to see what this volume of mail was all about. I would read the letters and then toss them in the recycling bin. Certainly, I thought, Ms. Riley must be an adult to have been able to rent a townhouse. And certainly as an adult she had the common sense to file a mail forwarding request with the US Postal Service. However as time wore on it was apparent that being efficient and responsible were not in Ms. Riley's vocabulary.

Today, for the umpteenth time, a letter appeared for Ms. Riley from ARA a bill collector in Villa Park, Illinois. Finally having reached the limit of wanting to deal with Mr. Riley's mail any longer I decided to fight back. From now on when a bill collector letter comes for her I'm calling the company and telling them she's not here. Ms. Riley is incapable of being responsible for her actions so I'll take care of some of those responsibilities for her. I called the company twice and then wrote them a letter.

When I contacted the company by phone I was put through to the "Collections Manager" (sounds like someone at a museum). I left that person a voice mail begging them to find Ms Riley and stop filling my mail box with her stuff. I then was connected with the collections agent who sent her the letter I received today. When I called her extension I was put through to voice mail and I left essentially the same message with that person as I did with the collections manager.

Then I decided, as a follow up to the voice mails, to send a letter to ARA and the collections agent regarding Ms. Riley and her inability to get her mail forwarded. That letter follows:

December 23, 2011

Shelly XXXXXX
ARA Incorporated
Box 5022
Villa Park, Illinois 60181

Re: ARA File Number 332272

Dear Ms. XXXXXX

I am writing as a follow up to my phone call (left on your voice mail) today regarding both the referenced ARA file number and the person, Laura Riley, who is responsible for this account.

For the record – LAURA RILEY DOES NOT RESIDE AT (my address)

I have no idea who this person is but since I moved to this address on February 28, 2011, my mail box has been cluttered weekly with letters from your company and other collection agencies (and a couple of state tax revenue departments) regarding Ms. Riley’s various delinquencies.

I am writing to not only ask and request but beg you to stop sending collection information to Ms. Riley at this address because she does not live here. I have no idea where she is – perhaps you could do a Google.com search on her name. Check with the IRS for her current address. Send up smoke signals. Do whatever it takes to find her but PLEASE stop sending mail to her at this address. She is apparently an adult and should be responsible enough to have filed a forwarding information card with the US Postal Service so she can get her mail at the proper address. This is all her problem, not mine. I’m just fed up with getting her mail.

Thanks for your attention to this request. I hope you find her and I hope you get your funds from her. Perhaps when you do you can give her a handful of mail forwarding cards so she can get her mail at her address not mine.

Attachment – Incoming from ARA Inc

Its unfortunate that my phone number is not the same as the one Ms Riley had when she lived in my house. If it was and I started getting phone calls for her from collection agencies I think I'd recount verbatim what Danny DiVito said to his wrong number in that movie :)

Making a Real Bird the State Bird of Nebraska

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In the 1991 session of the Nebraska Unicameral we had a bill introduced that would have removed the Western Meadowlark as the state bird of Nebraska and replaced it with the much more appropriate and regal Sandhill Crane. After all six states have the mundane Western Meadowlark as their state bird but none has the Sandhill Crane. And when you think about Nebraska and birds the first thing to pop in your head is Sandhill Cranes.

The hearing in the Unicameral regarding this bill was held on January 20, 1991. By the time of the hearing the "Impeach the Meadowlark" bill as it had become known had generated more media coverage, more letters to the editor, and more arguments in bar rooms and coffee shops than any other bill that year. It was even more popular an argument than was the Governor's proposed budget that had a $1 Billion deficit.

I drove over to Lincoln on official time in a US Fish and Wildlife Service vehicle that day and testified on behalf of the bill. It didn't make it out of committee and in fact the final vote was 6-0 against the bill. In the hallway after the vote I was asked by a television reporter from channel 11 in Lincoln what I thought of the bill losing in committee. I remember saying "Loss? What do you mean loss? We got the entire state from Nebraska City to Sioux County and everywhere in between talking about and thinking about the Platte River and the Cranes. To me that was a giant victory."

And it was. In 1979 I was told by a farmer by Kearney that I should carry a side arm for protection because of who I worked for because "you're trying to save those god damned cranes." Today Sandhill Cranes are the number one tourist attraction in Nebraska and they bring more than $40 million into the central Platte River economy just in March each year.

All of this stuff came to mind today when I saw the new Nebraska license plate. On it is a Western Meadowlark (the current state bird) and the goldenrod (Solidago gigantea) the state flower. Seeing the meadowlark on the plate reminded me of that great time twenty one years ago when we turned around the thinking of an entire state about the environment and we did it with Sandhill Cranes.

I posted a note about today's experience on my Facebook page and a dear old friend suggested that we should try to impeach the meadowlark in the 2013 legislative session. She has friends in the legislature and I have the data and the stories to tell about how everyone knows of cranes and Nebraska. People like the US Customs agent in Toronto who let me bring Cuban cigars and Cuban fruits back into the country after traveling to Cuba when he started asking questions about the cranes on the river he had heard about. Or the Swiss birders I met in Chiang Mai Thailand who told me they wanted to come to Nebraska to see the cranes after seeing a special about them on television. Or the cardiologist from Argentina I met while looking at a penguin colony in the Beagle Channel in southernmost South America who told me that before she died she wanted to see the cranes on the Platte River at least one time.

None of them ever mentioned the lowly Western Meadowlark when they thought about Nebraska.

My old friend and I used to teach a lot of fourth and fifth graders about Sandhill Cranes back in those early 1990's days. We called the kids "ecowarriors" because thats what they are. They are all grown up now and in their 30s and many have their own families. I'll bet it will be simple to get some of those same kids fired up next year and have them descend on the state capitol building to testify with us on behalf of making a real bird the state bird of Nebraska. Wow. Am I ever stoked.

In the Presence of Greatness - My 34th Jimmy Buffett Concert

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My 35th Jimmy Buffett Concert

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Once again it was time to revert to childhood and enjoy everything there is to enjoy about a Jimmy Buffett concert. Last night it was my 35th concert and it was held at Ford Amphitheater on the grounds of the Florida State Fairgrounds just outside of Tampa. It wasn't the best concert of his I've ever seen (that one was in Honolulu in 2005) but when I'm in the same air space as Jimmy there's really no such thing as a bad concert. As Jimmy says in his song "Here We Are", "Its the child in us we really value" and that is so true at one of his concerts. I recently told a friend that when I'm at one of his shows I go off in my own little world. He asked where that world was and I said "I'm taken back to being a 20 year old college student whose biggest concern is getting up in time for class tomorrow."

It's like that at every concert and last night was no different.

Part of the fun of Jimmy's concerts isn't the concert itself but the "pre-game" party in the parking lot before the show. So far my 35 concerts have been spread among Honolulu, Irvine California, San Francisco, Denver (Red Rocks five nights in a row), Atlanta, Raleigh, Washington DC, Baltimore, Boston (Greatwoods), Orlando, Tampa, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami. Of all those sites I think only the pre-game party at Nissan Pavillion outside of Washington DC is the only one better than the party in Tampa. It must be the salt air here that does it.

People started dressing up in costumes to fit his concerts probably in response to his old favorite "They Don't Dance Like Carmen No More." From that song and others people generally dress up like sharks (from Fins), or pirates (A Pirate Looks at 40), or they wear hats with Fins on them or maybe a hat that looks like a cheeseburger. I once saw a guy dressed up like a lighthouse (from the Salty Piece of Land Tour) and of course there are always men and women in hula skirts with coconut bras onn.

The two costumes I liked the best last night was the woman whose top consisted of nothing more than two cheeseburgers (from Cheeseburger in Paradise) covering her breasts, and a guy who did such a great job dressing like a pirate he would have put Johnny Depp to shame. I failed to get pictures of those two (the woman in the cheeseburger bra really distracted the hell out of me) but I did get some others shown below.





The best quote of the night was the guy who said "There's nothing like a beach ball to bring out the child in an adult." And tossing beach balls around before and during the show are a part of the tradition of a Buffett concert.

Susan wasn't able to go with me to this show because of the arrival of her daughter, son in law, and three of her grand children at the Fort Myers beach house. Instead I took my friend Sue Paschall with me. It was her first Buffett concert and I have a feeling she may have become a convert. Not long after arriving she was concerned that she was under dressed because she came only in a top and skirt. At least she was wearing flip flops. After consuming three double margarita's she no longer cared about her Buffett concert clothing faux pas. I have a feeling that the next time she goes to a show she'll come better prepared.

Our seats weren't the closest up I've ever been to Buffett at a concert. However as my friend Pat Sullivan said so truthfully "There's no such thing as a bad seat at a Buffett concert."


This concert was in the hiatus between the 2011 "Welcome to Fin-Land" tour and the 2012 "Lounging by the Lagoon" tour. Instead he just called it "Spring Break 2012" which was appropriate given its timing. During the show he said that he was going next to New Orleans from Tampa and maybe it would have been more appropriate to call it the "Pirate City" tour. I saw one guy in the audience who was wearing a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball cap. I'm sure he would have agreed.

Ford Amphitheater holds about 29,500 people and as to be expected there wasn't an empty space anywhere. I can't think of a better way to spend a Friday night than to be surrounded by a sea of screaming Parrotheads.


The show began a bit late and did not include a warm up by Ilo, the musician Jimmy found on the Cape Verde islands off the coast of Africa a few years ago. Instead, after the traditional tossing of cheeseburgers into the crowd they went directly to playing Hot Hot Hot. There is no better way to open a show than with that song. And at every show pandemonium breaks out when this song pulses from the speakers.


I have landed in the Bahamas 51 times on international flights and for 50 of those landings this song was being played in the arrivals lounge of whatever airport where I landed. It seems to epitomize a Caribbean view of things.

Jimmy then sang 21 songs before the standard three encore songs. I think he did 27 songs in Miami in January but he'd made a comment about not feeling too good last night so he may have slowed things down a bit.

After Hot Hot Hot he started the show with One Particular Harbour. He ended my first concert, in Chastain Park Atlanta in July 1986 with this song and its been a favorite of mine ever since. He got the inspiration for it while in Tahiti, and he sings some of the song in Tahitian. Guess which island nation I want to visit before any others? The translation is about the bounty of the ocean.



The play list then included the following:

It's Five O'Clock Somewhere, the only song for which Jimmy has won any award in his more than 40 year career. I regularly write to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and complain that they have added Johnny Cash but why not Buffett? One of these days they better!


Growing Older But Not Up - a perfect song for a bunch of middle aged (or older) Parrotheads who want to return to playground if even for only a couple of hours on a Florida Friday night. And I live by the line in this song that goes "Let the winds of time blow over my head, I'd rather die while I'm living than live while I'm dead."


Son of a Son of a Sailor


Come Monday Jimmy said he had often wondered how many children had been conceived on the lawn of one his concerts while this song was being played. Last night he told us that he met someone out in California who actually had been conceived at a Buffett concert!


Knee Deep (a Zac Brown song)


Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes In the mid-1980s this song was also known as the "Haney-Faanes These Song". With me having returned from five weeks in South Africa in October 2011, and Chris contemplating a 6-8 week trip there this year it may very well still be our theme song.


Swinging Hula Man - Jimmy introduced this song (in which he plays the ukelele) for the first time two weeks ago last night on Maui. Unfortunately there is no video of it available yet.

Volcano - One of the best times of my life was the night my two daughters and I were on the Big Island and I took them down to the ocean to watch lava from Kilauea volcano slide into the ocean. Leaving after dark we drove up the side of the volcano playing this song on a CD and singing to it over and over again.

The song is from his album of the same name recorded on the island of Montserrat in 1979. I had the pleasure of hiking to the top of that volcano in 1988 when I was last on the island. Of course in 1996 the Montserrat volcano blew and now there is no top to hike to!

Cheeseburger in Paradise I do not eat beef and have not intentionally done so since 1988. However the week before any Buffett concert I attend is known to me as my own "Holy Week" during which I consume the occasional cheeseburger. And I always have them prepared according to the exact recipe spelled out in the song.


No Plane on Sunday This song, from his incomparable 1986 album "Floridays" is one of my top five most favorite Buffett songs. In 35 concerts since 1986 this was the first time I ever heard him sing it live. As he played it I thought of my old friend Dwight Lee who died in his early 80s claiming to be "The Worlds Oldest Living Parrothead" who used to call himself "No Plan on Sunday" for his personal nickname. Dwight died with a collection of 36 Jimmy Buffett t shirts in his closet. His death came while hiking down a beach on Cayman Brac having flown there to get the airport for his life list. I like to think that last night's singing of it was a tribute to my old friend Dwight. Not surprisingly there are no videos available of this classic Buffett song.

Hey Good Lookin' - From the License to Chill CD.


Making Music for Money - This ultra oldie from the 1974 A1A album does not have a video to go with it.

It's My Job - sung with Mac MacAnally


Pascagoula Run Everyone needs their own Uncle Billy and Jimmy sings about his in this song.

National Anthem of the Parrothead Nation - This song needs no introduction or explanation.


The Weather is Here I Wish You Were Beautiful - I remember once when I was living on Grand Turk Island sending a postcard to my ex wife and all it said was "The Weather Is Here I Wish You Were Beautiful" I wasn't really surprised when she never wrote back. Its a great song to sing and think about when you get overloaded with too much stuff.


A Pirate Looks at 40 - Now that Jimmy is 65 years old he might want to think about upping that age a bit. Its a song I sing every time I am on a boat (or a kayak) out on the ocean.


In The City - This is one of my least favorite Buffett songs. In fact I sat down and didn't utter a word during its playing. Luckily there is no video of it available. Yawn.

Southern Cross - This Crosby Stills and Nash song has been taken over and is now one of the essential components of every Buffett concert. I wonder if that is because its about sailing? I first saw the Southern Cross from the window of an Air New Zealand 767 as we were climbing out of Nadi, Fiji on a midnight departure. I've never erased that sight from my mind.


Fins - This is the ultimate Buffett party song. Jimmy came up with the idea for it one night at the Ocean Deck bar in Daytona Beach. He saw this attractive woman walk into the bar alone and then saw her immediately being hit on by four guys. From that scene came the idea for "sharks that feed on land"...


ENCORE SONGS

Uncle John's Band - Jimmy likes to play this Grateful Dead song on occasion. Never having been a Deadhead I'd rather read a book than sing along.


Brown-eyed Girl - This Van Morrison song has also become a staple of every Buffett concert in recent years. He refers to it as "beach music" but I have yet to see the connection. Still I sing every word. And, by the way, Jimmy does a much better job with this song than Morrison ever dreamed of.


Nautical Wheelers - Jimmy appears a bit younger in this video.


Two years ago at a Tampa show I saw a woman who had to be 80 years old being pushed in a wheelchair to the entrance of the venue. She was toking on a joint and singing "Margaritaville" as her friend pushed her along. I didn't see her last night but I hope that when I'm 80 if Jimmy is still playing (he'll be 85 then) that someone will perform the same courtesy for me. Maybe by then it will be my 100th Buffett concert.

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Opinion

Why Less Isn’t Always More

Richard Glover/View

Inside London's Rosmead House, designed by the minimalist architect John Pawson.

By THOMAS DE MONCHAUX

Published: February 25, 2012

AUSTERITY is an appealing word. It feels good to say: spacious and articulate, lingual and incisive. Echoing through the debate about our continuing global financial crisis, it connotes a self-evident truth — one that is entirely unearned by its actual etymological or economical denotations.

Etymologically, “austerity” is a dispiriting word, descending from an Old French term for harshness and cruelty — and ultimately, perhaps unsurprisingly, from a Greek word describing bitterness so brutal it dries out the very tongue, on its way to breaking the heart.

Economically, austerity — which the Germans, among others, are intent on forcing upon their southern brethren — can sound like a good idea, but might actually exacerbate the conditions it ostensibly ameliorates. One day, we might look back on cuts in public services and infrastructure during a downturn with the same disbelief with which today’s doctors recall the medieval medicine of deliberately cutting and bleeding the sick.

And yet austerity, the beautiful word alone, is simply irresistible. It feels decadent and vulgar to ask one’s government, or oneself, not to be austere.

Why? To start, there’s a hint of ethical propriety: it feels righteous to contemplate tightening the belt, cutting the fat, putting the house in order (especially when it’s someone else’s belt, fat and house). Although the management of an economy is entirely different from the kitchen-table budgeting to which it is reductively compared, it feels vaguely virtuous to imagine avoiding borrowing and lending altogether — even as our current system of capital depends on those very practices.

But there’s more. It may be that the real associative power of austerity as a word is not ethical, but aesthetic. Austerity is, above all, a thing of beauty.

In art and design, and especially in architecture, austerity means modernism and minimalism: the concept, famously advanced by the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, that “less is more.” Some of this expresses the obligation of any good designer to honor an economy of means, to acknowledge that architecture, like governance, is primarily the art of spending other people’s money. But most of it is a little more mysterious.

Not just any “less” is the right “more.” A minimal design must be progressively reduced and refined to its essential and sometimes surprising causes and effects, just as a divinely immanent David was discovered by Michelangelo inside an unpromising block of stone. All else is decoration, deception and distraction. Thus because some cuts are figuratively as well as literally incisive, any cut can seem wise: austere art is smart art. It’s an architecture of revealed order and selective filtering and pattern recognition.

The aesthetic austerity that results requires and rewards our inclination to look and think: wander long enough around Mies’s glassy Farnsworth House of 1950, and you see crystallized in every simple and delicately floating surface the bones of every good house ever made — a severe and serene dream of comfort and clarity, refuge and prospect. At least in theory.

In architecture, this kind of theory dates from at least the Austrian modernist Adolf Loos and his 1908 essay “Ornament and Crime,” in which he didn’t exactly say that the former was the latter, but did observe that, “If I want to eat a piece of gingerbread I will choose one that is completely plain.” To him, “it tastes better this way.”

When the plain architecture advanced by Loos had become an increasingly mainstream taste, this aesthetic austerity was easy to conflate with the no-nonsense mood of emerging economic and political crises — prompting the editors of The Architect and Building News to comment in 1931 that “this phase of austerity is sure to pass eventually,” but “something of the impress of this sensation of aesthetic restraint will remain, because it is sympathetic to any age preoccupied, as is the present one, with very serious problems requiring strong sobriety of thought and action.”

Such austerity, though, is as much glamorous as solemn. As an aesthetic category, it’s strangely aspirational. It can become a mode of luxury, even excess. The difference between a minimalist room and an under-furnished room is freedom of choice.

Today’s minimalism conjures a life of such intangible ease that the mere creature comforts of visibly abundant stuff are transcended. It makes a near ethical virtue out of an aesthetic practice of refusal (perhaps extending, disconcertingly, to notions of physical aesthetics in which obesity is associated with poverty and to be too rich is to be too thin). While Mies and his contemporaries introduced their skinny-framed, flat-roofed, white-walled architecture in the context of prototype public housing, they perfected it in deluxe retreats like the Farnsworth House.

Today’s most celebrated Minimalist architect, John Pawson, counts among his clients both poverty-sworn monks and the fashion designer Calvin Klein, whose own designs specialize in enabling you to pay much more for the right much less. Pawson’s work happens to be beautiful and kind; its proportions are the natural ratios that you find in shells and flowers. It gives you room to breathe. And yet it’s subject to elegant deceits.

A building of few details would seem to be a building of few secrets. But austerity in architecture connotes a visual and functional transparency that it completely fails to provide. Any seamless-seeming building is full of complex joints and junctions, fixes and fudges that make a thousand parts look like a single monolithic, sculptural whole. To look as if you left everything out, you have to sneak everything in. What seems spartan is usually, invisibly, baroque.

In today’s architecture, in which labor is generally expensive and materials cheap, there is a tendency to slap stuff over stuff until it all lines up or looks finished — whether the resulting form amounts to something you’d call minimal or colonial or anything in between.

Consider the strip of baseboard that usually hides the irregular gap between the base of a plaster wall and the edge of a floor. Recently I was considering some details for a house, and had the bright idea of eliminating that baseboard in favor of a simple beautiful linear gap — which would look great if every other piece of carpentry in the house were aligned as perfectly as a Shaker barn.

I told the contractor about my idea. He gave me that long, legendary look somewhere between contempt and compassion, to which architects are often subjected by builders: the look that means, “Yeah, that’s gonna end up costing somebody.”

As in architecture, so in public life — and, one has to suspect, public policy. Those who, consciously or not, exploit the aesthetics of austerity as a way of framing a debate on public ethics may discover, too, a hidden cost.

Thomas De Monchaux is an adjunct professor of architecture at Columbia, who is at work on a book about style.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on February 26, 2012, on page SR9 of the New York edition with the headline: Why Less Isn’t Always More.

How Financial Crisis, Economic Inequality, Social Media, and More Brought Revolutions in 2011--and Changed Us Forever

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AlterNet.org

AlterNet / By Sarah Jaffe
How Financial Crisis, Economic Inequality, Social Media, and More Brought Revolutions in 2011--and Changed Us Forever

Journalist Paul Mason covered the uprisings of 2011 as they occurred. His new book "Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere," explains why they all happened at once.

February 23, 2012 |

We're at an inflection point in history, a shift not just in our politics but our consciousness, says Paul Mason, BBC Newsnight economics editor, author and journalist.

From Madrid to Madison, Tahrir Square to Syntagma Square, London student occupations to Occupy Wall Street, Mason has covered the uprisings of 2011, and he found some surprising similarities everywhere. Those similarities are the subject of his new book, Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere (Verso), which combines economic analysis, first-hand reporting, and a theoretical understanding of technology, sociology and history into a potent explanation of why 2011 was the year of the protester.

AlterNet caught up with Mason in New York to talk about the book, the ongoing economic crisis, and what's next for the young revolutionaries of 2011.

Sarah Jaffe: Tell us what's happening in Greece; you just returned from a reporting trip there.

Paul Mason: The bailout they did Monday night, I think, is designed to do two things: to put off the inevitable moment of Greek default, and to save the rest of Europe from the impact. That doesn't mean that Greece isn't going to slide very quickly into a social crisis—rather, it's already in a social crisis. In the book I document what it's like for the youth who are waking up to the sound of helicopters, moving homes every two or three days; it's like being in the French resistance.

Now for the workers it's going to get much worse. People have a misconception that it's all about the public sector, but for the Greek bailout to work, private sector wages have to fall 15 to 20 percent. The minimum wage has been slashed by 20 percent.

On my last reporting trip I went to a clinic that's run by the Greek equivalent of Doctors Without Borders. It's aimed at migrants who've fallen through their social security network, and have no healthcare. Now it's swamped by Greeks who've also fallen through the network.

Their border with Turkey has become completely porous, it's a freeway in for migrants from all over the world. I met some of them clustered in an abandoned factory; it looked like a scene out of Modern Warfare 3. One of the guys there said something to me that stuck in my head. He said, “This is not Europe, I've lived in Europe, this is not Europe, this is Asia, police can kick you, the population hate us.”

At the bottom rungs of society you're seeing already breakdown. Every time there's a big demonstration, you're seeing very rapid recourse to policing tactics that completely break up the peaceful part of the demo. At best maybe there are 4,000, 5,000 hardline anarchist demonstrators in Athens. There were probably a quarter of a million on the streets the night before the parliamentary vote; they didn't even get a chance to assemble.

The IMF and EU and political class of Greece signed off on seven bailouts and two rescue plans. Nothing worked. And every opinion poll that comes out has the far left having 43 percent of the vote. Even quite sensible journalists look at it and they're in denial. They don't want to see this 43 percent but it's not by any means a joke or an accident. The stage is now set for an election which probably won't return a viable government.

The left can't govern—the Communists don't want to collaborate with anybody; they're the most moderate of the three left parties, the other two used to be together and they split. They don't want to form a government, and also they're frightened because what do you do? You still have to impose the austerity, so it's a no-win situation for everybody.

The amazing thing to see is the resilience of people, the resilience of these young kids who've never had jobs.

SJ: Economic issues are at the heart of the uprising in Greece, but in some of these other places you cover in the book, mainstream commentators don't seem to want to admit the economic issues at the heart of the fight—Egypt, for example.

PM: One thing that has to be said, and I say it in the book, is that the left for 20 years has subscribed to what an English commentator, Mark Fisher, calls capitalist realism.

That is, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, their model of social justice was tax the rich bankers, deregulate banking, and then channel the money to poor blue-collar communities where there will never be adequate work again, the factories aren't coming back, you might work for the state or for a charity but you're never going to work for a decent factory.

This was very win-win. You, the politician, get to hobnob with the bankers because you're deregulating them. Meanwhile your mass base, the workers, you're delivering to them. That's over. What is also over is an era where organized labor is just quiescent.

What has changed is that the collapse of the economic model, the collapse of the narrative of neoliberalism, the collapse of the “recreate-reality” Karl Rove doctrine, means that a space is opened up where the left has to redefine itself towards the emerging events. It's caused a huge crisis for social democracy in Europe and I would argue is probably the root of the crisis inside the various Occupy and Occupy-like movements as well. In Britain UK Uncut is probably the most successful example of a spontaneous horizontal movement, and it completely entered a crisis as soon as it had to define itself against extreme anarcho-violence, and hasn't done anything since.

SJ: You pointed out that the Wisconsin uprising was an economic fight firmly located within the culture wars.

PM: As a journalist working primarily outside of the USA, I would say one of the most stunning things to me is how little Americans understand the severity of this culture war thing going on.

Sometimes traveling through America it's not hard to see two nations. This doesn't matter if you've got strong institutions. What happened in American politics in the 1850s was the institutions could no longer contain it. And one of the organizers of the right-wing protest outside the Pittsburgh G-20 in 2009, a radical right-wing Republican, he told me “My fear is, a lot of the people I talk to basically would like to lock their gates, get a dog and load their gun for the final showdown.”

I'm not saying the country's getting into civil war, but unless the institutions—the media, Congress, the judiciary, the intelligentsia, can hold it together—what then happens is, as America has to confront these massive exogenous shocks, there's no consensus about how to deal with them.

SJ: What's been interesting is that watching Occupy happen, as that went on you could watch the bottom sort of fall out of the Tea Party narrative. When Occupy happened, one of the first things these kids did was reach out to the unions. Everybody's talking about the Democratic party needing to win back the white working-class -- maybe they'll finally figure out how to do that by reconnecting with labor.

PM: When we use the term “white working-class,” we're talking about people who've been left behind by education; the gap has opened up between low-skilled labor and everything else. But even if you're in that demographic, if you happen to work for a local government, whether it's the city of New York or the city of Leeds in England, you're in a situation where there is equal rights legislation in action, your client group will be multiethnic, you're in contact with lots of people who are in unions.

But if you're not--and this is the minority, but we shouldn't let this minority demographic define what we mean by working class—then you are left to be prey of solutions that are essentially nationalist, localist, you spend your entire life grieving for a lifestyle that is gone because the new lifestyle is worse.

It makes it very hard to talk about a “working-class” solution to things. Some of the movements that are the most successful, the networked horizontal types of organization, allow you to actually say there's space for difference. The new labor movement might have to be a space where difference exists. What I mean by that is where the sort of lifestyle and values of the traditional white workers can exist in a bit alongside the values of the salariat. Because if they don't, you more or less are abandoning the former to the right.

But at the end of the day the one thing that determines what people vote about is their stomach. All these issues that mesmerize people, abortion, gay marriage—at the end of the day, Roosevelt built a coalition overcoming the opposition of people like Father Coughlin, overcoming the right wing of his own party because he was able to understand a way of articulating the demands of people who were not progressive, because he put food into their stomachs.

The real people that Steinbeck wrote about were not progressive. I went last year and interviewed lots of modern-day Oklahoma farmers and for the simple reason that the Right wants to cut their subsidies, they are part of an alliance that wants a big state. In a way the challenge for the American center and left is to work out how to galvanize everything.

I do think that we're likely to see quite a large part of the networked protest people flip into a pro-Obama position. The beauty of modern political activism is you can do a lot of things parallel, a lot of contradictory things.

SJ: I wonder, because then we go back to what you call in the book “the graduates with no future.” There's a lot of kids who were on the Obama campaign in 2008 who are now out of school, they have a heck of a lot of student debt, they don't have a job or if they do they don't have the job they thought they'd have, and they're pissed. They're not going to go out and do the same kind of work for Obama that they did in 2008. They will probably grudgingly vote. But do they flip when they get jobs? Do they remember?

PM: Two texts really struck me when I was writing the book. One was that University of California-Santa Cruz “Communique from an Absent Future” -- not only how eloquent it was, but what you just described—did we do a degree to get a job writing hearts in cappuccino foam? But when it was written people thought it was an exaggeration, because in 2009 people thought the recovery was happening. Instead we got this stagnation and double-dip and uber-crisis in Europe, and then we had the Arab Spring, and now we're getting the Nigerian spring. That language doesn't look so apocalyptic.

Because even if you get a job the story has to be, how am I better in 30 years time? Where does my healthcare come from, where does my pension come from, where does my rising asset wealth come from? None of that is possible because of the overhanging debt, we're due for a decade more of deleveraging. Even if we get a recovery in America that's not completely jobless, the jobs on offer will be low-paid, they will be insecure.

So the strategic question for the West is, do we want to race to the bottom, meet China halfway? In some American states it already feels “third world,” the infrastructure is crumbling, the rule of law is tenuous, you've got attempts at defiance of federal legislation. But if the answer is no, we want a distinctive lifestyle that rewards the skills and education of people, globalization has got to be radically reconfigured.

Increasingly you're getting people to come clean about what the neoliberal answer is. Tidjane Thiam, who is the head of a big global insurer called Prudential, he said we just abolish minimum wage in Europe. You might get growth but it's growth on the backs of penury for the young.

So what's the alternative?

SJ: That's where we get back to the lack of any leadership among the liberal to social democratic parties. We didn't expect global financial meltdown and we weren't expecting, in 2011, to be talking about revolutions and uprisings across the world, but it seems that leaders didn't either.

PM: Let's just for a minute go back to the Arab Spring, because a lot of people object to me speaking about the Arab Spring in the same sentence as a bunch of student demonstrations.

First off, the detonator is often the same, it's the graduate without a future. Secondly, social media is not a causal thing, but social media is a great weapon if you are facing a decrepit dictatorship or, as in America, a media that doesn't want to take issues of social justice seriously. Social media allows you to swarm around it, you can swarm at them or you can swarm around and organize yourself.

I think one has to acknowledge the specificity and the bravery of the Egyptian and Tunisian and Libyan youth. I always argue that maybe, it's because the Egyptians could see an achievable goal. There are a lot of people around the world who can't see an achievable goal. Greece is a good example.

But suddenly those Greek youth are, far from saying it's all over when the bailout goes through, they're saying it's all going to begin, we're going to achieve something. A lot of the time they're forced into the horizontalist style of politics by the sheer lack of reaction of official politics. The strength of horizontalism doesn't just derive from the fact that it's a good idea: it's the only option.

The really frightening thing—I'm 52, I remember the collapse of Keynesianism, state capitalist economics. I remember the end of the miners' strike, miners who'd literally been on strike for a year, the next time I saw one of them he was in a pinstriped suit and had become a financial adviser. Though they didn't like it, there was a story. The old story is over, the new story is selfishness, financial capitalism.

What is the story now? Can you tell me what the story is that capitalism has to offer in the developed world other than a race to the bottom on wages? Because if it is only that, we're probably facing a bigger ideological crisis than the 1930s, because at least in the 30s there was an alternative.

Now both intellectually and policy-wise, we're four years into the crisis and there's very little.

SJ: And then we get back to capitalist realism, which maybe you can elaborate on a bit for those who haven't read Mark Fisher?

PM: Fisher borrowed the phrase from Frederic Jameson, “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.”

What does that statement imply? What it implies is an acceptance of of neoliberalism's extreme proposition, which is that the free market is a steady end-state of capitalism.

A lot of the left just basically accepted that, because once Stalinism had collapsed and lost its allure, they couldn't see a way of organizing society that would be more coherent than the free market.

When I observe the left, I still think that's the job of work they would need to do. It's no accident that the only coherent and holistic model on offer to America right now in the election is the Ron Paul model. He's clear on what it would mean—a return to 19th-century-style capitalism, boom and bust, poverty. Where's the left's equivalent to that? Where's the left's statement of what it is?

Equally, if you read The Coming Insurrection, you begin to think that for this generation there might be a third pill, and the third pill is do it yourself. Don't worry about the state level, find each other, create communes, create little islands of civilization within the jungle. That is in fact what early social democracy and early anarchism did a hundred years ago.

As I say in the book, a lot of the horizontalist left would be quite happy to live despite capitalism. The problem is capitalism is quite capable of completely falling apart as you stand there at the sidelines. Certainly in Greece, what is the space for autonomy now, if a massive clash at the level of the state is about to happen?

While people have overcome the psychological paralysis they had during the capitalist realist phase, it's very difficult to see a holistic answer coming forward. There's a fear of engaging with the real and the possible because for so long people think that means putting on a suit and tie, or greenwashing corporations. The fear of compromise is huge.

Yet as a labor historian I know that the entire story of labor in the last 150 years has been the inadequacy of the local and partial solution. Because if the progressive part of society doesn't impose it, the reactionary part of society can impose it, because it always inhabits the world of the power, the structure, the hierarchy, the Nietzschean world.

I keep saying to people, if we did flip into a reactionary nationalist racist world, it would be a much bigger flip this time than occurred between the 20s and 30s. This coffee bar couldn't exist under fascism. The relationships between people, the public discussion, couldn't exist. But it took five years for Berlin to go from a gay nightclub heaven to a book-burning fascist paradise. Berlin was the liberal center of Europe. Don't imagine that the cultural ties would stop it happening. Economics is all.

SJ: But you also say, “Don't presume that nothing is different this time.” And the thing that is different is this technology, that is connecting people on different continents.

PM: When I speak about my thesis, I boil it down to three things. One is the collapse of the economic narrative. Two is the availability of networked technology and network kinds of thinking by people, networked protest, circumventing of mainstream media, horizontalist activism, but the third thing, and I would say a lot of my audience switch off when I say this, we're talking about different types of people.

Who knows whether there's anything neurological, but certainly behaviorally, people are exhibiting a greater propensity to behave in a networked way. Manuel Castells, who did one of the few mass studies on this, does say that the more you use the Internet, the more inclined toward autonomous and progressive personal ideas and behaviors you become.

If that's true, it means that the human material for regimented, reactionary movements, like Stalinism, like fascism, is going to be much harder to assemble. The second thing is that all progressive projects have to take into account the fact that everything today is about herding the individualized people.

I'm a union rep at work, I have led a strike, I have been on the picket line, I have been put in the right-wing press for being on a picket line, but 90 percent of my union activity has dealt with what I call the “me agenda.” Don't mess with me, don't bully me, don't sexually harass me, don't deny me this promotion; as soon as these issues come up, knock-knock on the door, “Can I join the union?”

What people expect unions to do is to defend their individual rights and occasionally they'll in return do something collective. We're past mourning that situation. One has to kind of celebrate it because to me the root of all progressive politics--I would argue that it's even the root of Marxism--is the liberation of the human individual, before it's about class, before it's about power, before it's about anything. If the individual is more confident, has greater ties, can hold in their minds levels of knowledge that it would take one person a lifetime to assemble for ten minutes, work with it, and scrap it and work with something else, if that's the new real, that's surely good.

But it brings its own challenges. This young woman said to me, “Fuck politics, why don't we just vote on Twitter, every day? On everything? Why not just give everybody an account and then poll them?”

To me it sounds vaguely outlandish, to most politicos it would sound crazy, but she wasn't being mischievous, she actually meant it.

I would keep going back to this human individual thing. Virginia Woolf famously wrote “On or about December 1910, human character changed.” She was absolutely right to spot an inflection point. When the masses became exposed to mass consumption, cinema, holidays, unified information that everybody could get at the same time, their behavior did change.

The people who made the Russian Revolution in 1917 were very different people than the cigar makers in Chicago in 1870. The 1870s labor movement used to have this obsession with egotism. They thought the young generation were egotists because they consumed, they had extramarital sex—there was a big boom in relationships in the 1910s.

It's easy to recognize the 1910 thing now because all TV dramas about the Progressive era, the Edwardian era, the Belle Epoque, always contain a young middle-class woman who's been empowered. They never say what's empowered her. We've got the contraceptive pill—she had basic access to some form of contraceptive knowledge.

SJ: That's why they're trying to take it away now, why we're having a huge fight over it in American politics right now.

PM: In the book, I quote from the story of the French Revolution, how the young graduate without a future, essentially, is a revolutionary in waiting. To make them a revolutionary, all the barriers that would normally civilize such people as they get jobs and get older, need to crumble and fall away.

What neoliberalism did for 20 years was destroy the barriers. Feminism partly collapsed because a lot of women could solve some of their social problems on the terrain of a very rip-roaring booming individualist capitalism. When you don't use muscles, they atrophy. The muscle of fighting for basic things like reproductive rights atrophied.

I was brought up in the 1970s, among manual workers who popular culture believes to be sexist. I find modern culture pervaded by anti-woman, violent oppressive images that would've shocked these so-called sexist male manual workers. We are living in a world that is glorifying violence against women, in a way that the so-called reactionary middle-20th-century never did. That paradox explains why you've got the seeming respectability of positions on women's rights that we thought we'd sorted out.

Because while people were solving their own problems individually, society created this. We're in a situation where the fight for women's reproductive and general basic rights are going to have to be done, and the intellectual apparatus is gone.

This is why the behavior in the movements has become a problem. A lot of the anarchists and autonomous people I've interviewed talk about the problem of “manarchism.” I remember left organizations and also unions in the 1970s expelling men who could bring factories on strike, leaders, over domestic violence issues, and they did so at the snap of your fingers because they understood something that I think the modern movements have let go to the back burner: that you can judge the character of any social movement by what its attitude is to women's emancipation.

SJ: I've been quite impressed as well by the internal debate within Occupy Wall Street about how to deal with crises like rape, like violence. They were and are working on mechanisms to deal with these problems within the movement.

PM: I think that all movements have to deal with and in the end compromise with society as it is. All mass movements have that issue, it's never black and white. Even in Tahrir Square, I think you've seen the movement evolve a response. At first there was almost no response; a few brave feminist women would call out people who attacked them on Tahrir, but you then have to move into the organizations of people who think it's OK to attack, and who are those? They're Islamist organizations. There the debate is suddenly on a very different terrain, you're in a world of compromise.

The young people who've done the last two years worth of activism, they find compromise hard to negotiate. To get into your head the reason you're making the compromise is not because you like what you're compromising with, but in order to mobilize the resources to do what has to be done you have to have a lot of diversity of people, whether it's street people in Occupy, Islamists in Tahrir Square—life is hard to do all on your own.

The politics of social oppression, of women, oppressed minorities, gays, have a particular plight in modern society in general, that is important and often is a key to understanding where you're going to go—I don't call that identity politics. When it becomes identity politics is when you're on a losing streak. While you're discussing your identity politics, the Right has won the election.

SJ: And so what next?

PM: The amazing possibilities that the situation globally offers arise from the mismatch between the general pissed-off-ness of people about a world in which the rich just get richer and they don't, and the absence of alternatives coming from those in power.

Even though the crisis today isn't as bad as the 1930s, what is worse is the absence of any kind of an answer, other than more of the same but a little bit less. That is what makes it so volatile, and so what is next is quite clear. Greece, social breakdown. Crisis in Italy, Spain.

I do wonder how long the American poor will go on passively accepting their role. I think the fact that so many people have been put in jail--when you meet the urban poor in America, you meet so many passive men, why? Not because they're not angry, because inside they're teeming with anger, but they know the minute they raise their voice they're back inside. But maybe America will be lucky and the jobs coming back will get to a point of preventing another Watts riot situation.

Because there haven't been any, it's been remarkable. I think if there was another Watts it wouldn't just be black people, it would be all the people who just feel they've just got no stake in the situation. I think there's a big IF hanging over the American situation.

Sarah Jaffe is an associate editor at AlterNet, a rabblerouser and frequent Twitterer. You can follow her at @seasonothebitch.