Imbolc\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Bridgit Moon<\/p>\n
This week had a lot of Latin time.\u00a0 I made it through ten lines of Diana and Actaeon which Greg and I discussed at length during my tutoring session today.\u00a0 I need to pay more attention to the verb and its object; when I get that, I get the translation; when I don’t, I make it fit anyhow, the Procrustean bed of my mind.\u00a0 The work of translation, at least in Latin, lies within my competency level, I can see that now.\u00a0 All it will require is ongoing attention.\u00a0 All.\u00a0 Well.\u00a0 Good thing there’s a lot in Latin that interests me.<\/p>\n
Madison, Wisconsin.\u00a0 Politics, the way they work in our country, allow this mercurial swing from one perspective to another in the course of one election.\u00a0 Republicans seem to need two things in the public arena:\u00a0 enemies they can flog and to be the enemy themselves.\u00a0 It’s a peculiar combination, like group sado\/masochism with both aspects of S&M in action at the same time.\u00a0 Enemies right now:\u00a0 public sector unions, bloated budgets and those that love them, perverters of the constitution–at least they one they read, environmentalists, the environment.\u00a0 Being the enemy right now:\u00a0 ruling with a peculiar maliciousness–witness the Wisconsin Governor’s “conversation” with billionaire David Koch,\u00a0 acting as if the nation were a one party system, theirs, with a pesky group of liberals who act like horseflies and insist on inhabiting seats in their government, choosing a mainstream way of interpreting the constitution, the living document school, and pushing it, in their minds, to the dustbin of history as if it had never existed.<\/p>\n
We need parties that represent different communities and different interests, that’s what politics is for, the mediation of disputes, but our politics don’t work unless respect for the others existence stands as a given.<\/p>\n
I’m a pro-union guy.\u00a0 Here’s why.\u00a0 If I work at Target, say, as a clerk making $10.00 an hour, do you think my interests are the same as the CEO making multiple millions a year?\u00a0 They are not.\u00a0 At best I’m a number on the sheet which reads costs of employees, a number to be cut if times are bad or enlarged if times are good.\u00a0 I’m not a person.\u00a0 If I work as a teacher in a large public school system, are my interests the same as the school boards?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because they manage a large budget with many moving parts, my salary and benefits only one among many.\u00a0 Who will speak for me in the management suite if there is no union?\u00a0 It is a simple matter of power distribution.\u00a0 When the power lies with the money and hierarchy, the power of the lower wage, bottom of the heap employee has significance only in numbers, in a group that can sit down and represent the employee’s needs.<\/p>\n
Have unions become corrupt?\u00a0 Yes, but they hardly beat the bosses to the trough.\u00a0 Corporate corruption entails a wide menu of things from price-fixing, account jiggering, golden parachutes and a focus on quarterly reports.\u00a0 Just as corrupt corporations do not make the corporation useless in our society, neither does a corrupt union make unions useless.<\/p>\n
Holders of power do not relinquish it without a fight.\u00a0 Just look at the Middle East.\u00a0 Think citizens as employees and autocrats as corporate chieftains.\u00a0 Same same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Imbolc\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Bridgit Moon This week had a lot of Latin time.\u00a0 I made it through ten lines of Diana and Actaeon which Greg and I discussed at length during my tutoring session today.\u00a0 I need to pay more attention to the verb and its object; when I get that, I get the translation; when … Continue reading Union, Yes<\/span>