The Family at Christmas

Christmas is one of those times when far-flung families are reunited for the ritual of gift exchange, feasting and for catching up with each other's individual journeys. This Christmas was no exception with my own family. Mom and Dad are long gone. Those of us who remain are numbered among sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, grandchildren and great grandchildren. And so the circle widens as the center dissolves.

Families are conglomerations of disparate branches that would not ordinarily associate with each other without the ritual expectations of family Christmas gatherings. I found a renewed understanding of this on Christmas Eve. We began to gather with hugs and warm greetings. Layer after layer of family that sprang from the same center congregated around the tree and buffet. Then the differences began to appear as if they were strata along the fault lines of the San Andreas. Social strata were exposed in the same way that geologic layers are ripped open for inspection following the rifts of seismic shifting.

What was exposed at our family gathering was an upper strata, self-appointed and identified as such by its continual interactions and isolated reinforcement within its own social channel. This form of social and cultural isolation ensures a closed social consciousness. The self-chosen members of the upper crust in our family circle are immersed within their own isolated "class" culture. They are essentially blinded by the delusion that they are essentially different. This is a class that looks down upon the less desirable, less achieving levels of social strata with languid acceptance. Our presence is tolerated for the duration of the holiday ritual. All the while the socially privileged ones are thankful, no doubt, that the festive proximities to the lesser ones will be mercifully brief. Thus a return to one's own cultural milieu is the reward for having endured the loathsome ritual of toleration.

In our culture where one percent of the wealthy control as much wealth as the ninety percent of citizens below them, it is helpful for me to be reminded that the upper crust of our family is not included in that upper one percent of the ruling elites. Rather they are merely splashed upon occasionally by the ruling elites who find them useful as a buffer between themselves and the rest of us. Such splashings are tantamount to a baptism of acceptance. However, what comes after the baptismal drops evaporate? What happens when the upper strata's usefulness to the ruling elites dissolves ... as it surely will? All strata below the ruling elites is subject to compression and deformation. The resulting formation will be a new stage of capitalism ... neofeudalism. Can you dig it.

WikiLeaks, Toto and "The Beast"

WikiLeaks reminds me of Toto, Dorothy’s little dog, in the Wizard of Oz. When Toto pulls back the curtain in Oz’s throne room, the emperor is revealed to be both less than and more than his public image. Now that the curtain has been pulled back for us by WikiLeaks, the Empire is similarly exposed. One can only become aware of how much secrecy our government engages in for the purpose of misleading its citizens. Noam Chomsky has observed that governments employ secrecy in order to protect themselves from their own citizens. This is certainly no less the case here where the United States has not only kept secrets from its own citizens, but is currently seeking to prolong the practice of deception by silencing anyone who has the audacity to pull back the curtain.

Among the latest obstructions, WikiLeaks has been rendered unable to participate in the world system of banking and commerce. Initially it was PayPal that severed WikiLeaks’ revenue stream; shortly thereafter Visa and MasterCard followed suit. PayPal has admitted that it was pressure from the US Government that prompted it to withdraw financial services from WikiLeaks. One wonders what that threat must have looked like. And, earlier, Amazon reneged on contracts as it jettisoned WikiLeaks from its servers.

It appears from all of this that one cannot participate in the World economic system without the specific permission of the US Government. If this sounds familiar, it is. Speaking of the World power identified as “the Beast”, the writer of Revelation observed: “He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name.” (Revelation 14:16-17) This is a disturbing description of the actions of a powerful dictatorship that is provided in Biblical literature. The same power also hurls fire from the sky. The picture given seems to apply in a rather sinister way to the World neoliberal, globalized banking and commerce system in which the United States is the prime force.

The PayPal action against WikiLeaks prompted me to contact PayPal by phone. I reached two separate operators who told me they were stationed in the Philippines. I told each of them that I wanted to cancel my PayPal account as a protest against the PayPal’s disruption of WikiLeaks’ revenue stream. As it turned out, neither agent admitted to knowing what WikiLeaks was. Needless to say, I did not bother to explore First Amendment implications with them. My next attempt to severe my account ties to PayPal took me to their web site. I was confronted with a complicated on-line form in which I would not have been able to register the reason for my displeasure even if I had been able to fill it out correctly. This brought back another memory from literature, Kafka's “The Castle." The castle is there above us. From it flow the powers of commerce and truth. It would seem that our lives depend upon it. But there is no two-way communication. Check your hand. Check your forehead. Read the cables.

The Year in Retrospect

2010: The Year in Retrospect

As my mother would have said, this has been a hum-dinger of a year. To begin with, today we had a Wood Insert installed in one of our fireplaces and we are now being kept warm, for the most part, by wood we grew in our own backyard. We got this brilliant idea in January when at 2:00 am one morning a large oak tree fell into our roof and our power lines during a massive snow storm. This caused a surge of voltage throughout our home and burned up the stove, lights, DVD player, Monitor Heater and three satellite receivers before the power went totally out for more than eight days. With the power out our only source of heat was one of our two fireplaces which are not designed for heating. We burned over a cord of wood. We slept on our hide-a-bed couch next to the fireplace; and had to put in wood every couple of hours. Finally, on the morning that our electricity was restored, it was 38 degrees in the house. So this time we are prepared for a power outage with a new roof and newly installed insulation in the attic as well as a new wood stove.
John and I have been busier this year than in any other time in our lives it seems. This is due in large part to our 170 pound Irish Wolfhound, Patrick and to our ambitious travel schedule. We have also become involved members of our church in Ashland, Oregon. So we sneak over the state border on most Sundays. The members have really made us feel welcome and we are making many close friends.
We are going to be away at Christmas again this year. Last Christmas we were in Florida with John’s sister, Molly, and her husband, John. This Christmas we are going to be at my brother Wil’s home in San Jose with my family and then we will spend some more holiday time with John’s daughter, Joanna, her husband, Steve and John’s two grandchildren, Faith and Stran. This will be in Auberry near Fresno. So we really get around.
Speaking of getting around, John and I were in Detroit, Michigan in the latter part of June for the United States Social Forum. There were 18,000 activists, mostly younger people. It was part of the World Social Forum. The theme of the Forum was: “Another World is Possible … Another Detroit is happening.” We participated in a number of the 1400 fora with different topics including: Islamophobia, conducted by an imam from the Detroit area, Indigenous Peoples’ struggles for control of their home lands, Pastors for Peace and their mission to Cuba, on ending of the Afghanistan War, a two-way fora between compañeros in Venezuela and ourselves and finally, a large GLBTQ gathering.
There was one scary, actually terrifying, event in September that almost ended John’s life. We had been having trouble with our HMO. Their initials are Anthem Blue Cross, Next RX-Express Scripts. John takes many medications. He has for years. We had a total breakdown in the delivery of his prescriptions. Although we thought we had everything under control, a bad assumption when you are dealing with corporate control of medical care as we do in this country, John’s meds did not arrive even after we had ordered them a month ahead of time. By the time we managed to get emergency refills, John became so ill that he was hospitalized at the insistence of our family doctor. John required emergency dialysis as his kidneys had ceased functioning altogether. He was in the hospital for eight days after receiving excellent care at Shasta Regional Hospital in Redding. And miracle of miracles, John was able to resume his daily swimming three days after he returned home from the hospital. And then he joined me for some more activism.
John and I were with our Unitarian Universalist Church in Ashland as a part of the Gay Pride celebration in October. Both John and I wore tuxes like the ones we wore at our wedding celebration a year ago here in Mt. Shasta. On the Friday evening we attended a huge bash as the Ashland Springs Hotel. Then on Saturday, still in our tuxes, we rode with our minister, Lesley, on a wedding cake float that our church had in the parade. We were even interviewed by Channel 5 in Medford. The parade ended in Lithia Park at the Pavilion. There so many beautiful people there. In fact John met these two very, very tall men who were attired in rather “piss elegant” fashion. He reached up to share an embrace with one of them and his tux pants plummeted strait to the ground. I told the young man, “John is just very excited to see you.”
We also had several weekend trips this year to San Francisco to visit the museums and enjoy the classical music. For Easter we attended the San Francisco Symphony, visited the De Young Museum and the Legion of Honor. We happened to catch a drag show as we were walking back to our hotel from the symphony. On Easter day we went to Grace Cathedral. Our latest visit found us at the San Francisco Opera House for a performance of the Makropulos Case. It was performed in Czech. As our Czech is getting a little rusty these days, we were relieved when the libretto was projected in English above the stage. We got sort of a bargain on the price of the tickets. Well some what. Let’s put it this way: I was expecting oxygen masks to drop from the ceiling any second since we were so far up. We also viewed the Neoimpressionist Exhibit from the Musée D’orsay in Paris.
So that just doesn’t even begin to cover everything. I almost failed to mention the chamber music concerts in Ashland and the Shakespeare festival. We saw this great performance of American Night. As we were leaving we happened upon one of the lead performers from the play. She let us take pictures with her.

So… we would just like to wish you all Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and good fortune in the year to come.

Stephen and John