Questions and Homeland Security

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“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning. “

Albert Einstein

“Question Authority!”

Seen on a button in the sixties

Hello Reader,

Got  congressmen?

I am getting “revved up” from reading a thrilling young adult novel, Little Brother, where the hero’s code name is Winston, (A little like Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four) by Corey Doctorow, a name well known in computer and literary circles. I’m confident Doctorow realized that even though the computer nerd side of him liked facts, the reality is many other people are only revved up by stories.

Here’s a story:

 You may recall how the fascists gave us good order, stopped those bomb-throwing anarchists, and made the trains run on time. And, in the case of Germany, also stopped the nightmare of runaway inflation, something the conservatives had failed at miserably. (People were bringing their paycheques home in wheelbarrows)  Sounds good. 

There was a certain “good European”: After the war, which he had hated, being a man of peace, he still did not truly believe in the horror of fascism, not even from the facts of the death camps in Poland. No indeed… not until he heard police boots clumping offstage for the story of Ann Frank.

Doctorow presents a world where the hero, a high school boy, by being arrested, has seen the iron fist beneath the velvet glove of D.H.S. … A bomb is thrown—no, that’s too 20th century—a line of bombs is set off, blowing up a bridge in San Francisco… No one else seems to grasp, or will even question, how D.H.S.  must have had plans in place to obstruct liberty before the bombing. The D.H.S., of course, is Department of Homeland Security.

Naturally Doctorow, like Einstein imagining riding on a beam of light, is only doing a thought experiment. No newspaper journalist today is saying H.S. is fascist, not yet. Furthermore, many people would say only a long haired hippie would question authority—but Albert Einstein had long hair, too. That gentle, credible man was never afraid to question. Question the Nazis, and question conventional gunpowder war. In fact, it was due to his gentle credibility that the U.S. president agreed to undertake something out of science fiction: to invent the Atomic Bomb.

If the police and D.H.S. are innocent, then they shouldn’t fear any questions, right? But no, in Doctorow’s San Francisco, after the bombing,  they want to dominate and to squelch questions from citizens. Not like a pair of police walking sternly outside a dingy “bad guy” bar, but by having many police walking throughout the boy’s entire city, as though anybody might be a bad guy, especially anybody the computer shows having unusual behaviour, as does that peace-loving loyal boy.

So the question for us to ask today is: Could the federal H.S., in the future, in our world of computers, become bad? Should we be holding that horse with close firm reins to prevent any future foolishness? 

I don’t know much about federal departments. Here in Calgary, more often than I visit my member of parliament, I will visit my city alderman, or my Member of the provincial Legislative Assembly. One day my MLA and I were talking in his office, the phone rang, and it was a constituent asking about finding a job. The poor guy’s accent was too strong. So then I delighted my politician by alerting him to evening classes in “accent reduction,” that he could tell job seekers about. (He phoned the constituent back right away) Here in Calgary, when you apply for a job with the city, the interviewers ask you for your stories about your past performance as a predictor of your future. 

My question: The Department of Homeland Security may be new, but to predict the department’s potential for messing up, are there any older federal departments we could look at? As Einstein would say, when it comes to H.S., can we “Learn from yesterday”?

As  Governor Sarah Palin might say, “You betcha!” … Consider the Federal Bureau of Investigation. As children we all saw the lovable Jimmy Stewart in The F.B.I. Story, a movie starting from the 1930’s. Kids would send away cereal box tops for their junior G-man badge, while Hoover’s boys were known to be wholesome, well groomed Americans we could all be proud of—so what the heck happened? 

By the early 1950’s President Truman, having contempt for the F.B.I.’s  director, J. Edgar Hoover, didn’t feel safe removing Hoover from office, partly because the F.B.I. was gathering dirt on prominent Americans. I believe President Johnson was merely quoting Truman when he told the New York Times in 1971, “It is probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.” 

The F.B.I. secretly taped John F. Kennedy in bed at night sharing his doubts and lack of confidence in things. (In fairness, they thought Kennedy’s female lover might be a communist) Even when Kennedy had become the U.S. president, with his loyalty surely beyond question, they kept the transcripts, kept them even after he was assassinated—perhaps to hold power over the attorney general— but then again, they kept the transcripts even after his brother Bobby was assassinated, too. 

This annoys me mightily because the data collected on Kennedy should have been protected by being destroyed, long ago. As local professor and computer expert Tom Keenan said, “If you collect, you have a duty to protect.” 

At the time of Bobby’s death some clean-cut agents were running dirty tricks, covert operations called “cointelepro,” against loyal non-communists such as the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. Even after Watergate the F.B.I. would not reform: They never did apologize for their complicity in the killing of Karen Silkwood.

If even the F.B.I.’s noble agents could decline into resorting to cointelpro, what hope is there for H.S.? Are they already starting to collect data the way the N.S.A. was doing right up until Edward Snowden’s revelations? Is your congressman allowed to even ask?  

In fairness, within the F.B.I., maybe only a small percentage of agents went over to the dark side, just as, in the Roman Catholic Church, surely only a small percentage of priests went on to be child molestors. Trouble is, as with the Church, sometimes a whole organization can be complicit. Just like in the movie Snowden, where patriotic staff see their not-so-patriotic boss on the six o’clock news lying to congress—and not one …single… solitary individual… blows the whistle.

Perhaps the way to understand government, then, is to understand individuals. I ask you: Don’t we all sometimes get too focused, too much looking down on our own pet issue, for example security, ignoring the larger issues?

Here’s another story:

Canadians were happily protecting their sacred culture, thwarting “Yankee imperialism,” by legislating that a certain per cent of their airwaves must be “Canadian content.” Dirty Canadian socialism? Not to all those self-employed business-artists who were finally able to keep their heads above water. About the time satellite phones were the size of war-time walkie-talkies, there came these giant satellite dishes filling up people’s yards. A cabinet minister, forgetting to lift his eyes to the larger issues such as the informal Right to Property, said government must control the dishes, in order to control Canadian content. To quote a Yankee: “Say-What?” He backed down.

Here’s a story:

In my city, we have a love of the environment, plus an ever-worsening shortage of landfills. (In New York City they have resorted to taking their garbage out to sea—which worked just fine, I guess, until needles wash up on the shore) One day a Calgary alderman, forgetting the principle of Citizens Deciding For Themselves, said that there should be a restriction on the number of garbage bags put out by each household. Call it “prohibition light.” A more experienced politician quashed his idea by saying that people would meet their numbers by coming out with giant bags the size of the next town. Better to use education and peer pressure.

A story:

In another year, another alderman proposed a law that garbage bags all be transparent, so peers, nosy neighbours and the government too, could all enforce recycling. The greater issue he forgot? The Right to Privacy. A fellow retorted, “Some of my constituents have adult diapers, and that’s nobody else’s business.” The man backed down.

Right now the problem with Homeland Security is they have no shame, no, not even when a powerless senator is reduced to asking questions with sarcasm, while they just keep a straight face… Come to think of it, I read this story on BBC News, on the web—do you think U.S. newspapers carried it? I refer to the story where border agents no longer need any suspicion, let alone probable cause, regarding you taking your private cell phone or tablet across the federal border.

While every citizen’s duty is to question, surely the business world models for us the value of, and encouragement of, questions. In business, the way to remind people to stop their vested tunnel vision, and to lift up their eyes to other issues, is with questions. (For example, asking: “Have you considered the tax implications?”) It might seem rude for a top executive to ask his people this, but after they stop blushing, they’ll thank him. 

As you know, every incorporated business must legally include, besides the obvious such as a president and (treasurer) finance officer, a board of directors. Historically, the board members would be from the same field as the company. However, decades ago we learned better. Now we know boards of directors should be diverse. Not just to think outside of the box, but to ask better questions, inside the conference room. 

(But can they force you to name a financial officer? Can’t you instead, for example, have a commune of cardinals doing the finances in complete equality, socialism-wise? Answer: You can have freedom of religion, but not freedom of corporation—and legally you will need yearly audits too: Because society has learned the hard way what is needed for the “greater good.” When it comes to business, religion and yes, Homeland Security too, “we are saved not by our faith, but by the lack of it.”) 

A half-fictional story:

A company which makes facial tissues (Kleenex) was grappling with the high costs of shipping tissues across the country, focusing on various transport means, hubs and warehouses… A board member from the field of dentistry asked, “Well, can’t you just suck all the air out before you ship them, shipping concentrated kleenex, and then re-air them later?”

I am in Calgary, far away from the swelled heads in the federal capital. Here ordinary people, government people, are fully aware they are fallible, and so when they pass a new bylaw they always put in an appeals process. Only a very self-righteous individual, like the head of H.S., would assume they would get it right every time.

My concern is that H.S. has a “tunnel visioned” for security, without due humility, without lifting their eyes to the issue of Liberty, and without even having Common Sense…. To me the smoking gun for that department’s gross incompetence was when the head of H.S. publicly said that some of the 9/11 killers had crossed into the U.S. from Canada—and no, the head did not resign after that evidence of gross negligence. 

If H.S. is already beyond questions and appeals, beyond the check and balance of congress, if H.S. is trying to be both judge and jury, then I can only conclude they will follow down the same path the F.B.I. took—only greased, on skids.

Back to you, dear reader. Have you got a congressman you can ask? 

Sean Crawford

In the fourth largest city in Canada

Where the biggest minority group is U.S. citizens

February

2018

Footnotes:

~Got tunnel vision? The motto for the local university, where Professor Keenan works, translated from Gaelic, is: “I will lift up my eyes.”

~I describe in detail the role of a board of directors in my essay Olympics and Boards. You may find it in the archives for February 2013, or via clicking on the label Olympics.

~ The investigative book on The Killing of Karen Silkwood could stand alone as proof that “The innocent do have something to fear from surveillance,” as agency after agency is shown breaking the laws for surveillance, despite Silkwood’s innocence. Poor girl. I think it was a surveillance team who killed her. 

Karen was neither communist nor criminal.

~As documented in the movie (link to review) Spotlight, a “small percentage” of priests translated into 90 priests in the city of Boston alone. I won’t speculate on the percentage of “insert fear of choice” in Homeland Security.

~Link to movie review for Snowden.

~Canadians are not socialist, they can indeed buy a private satellite dish, but their constitution, despite controversy while they were writing it, back when I was a young man, does not recognize the right to property.  

~I like how Snowden, rather than try to be both judge and jury, used the check and balance of confidentially going to respected sober journalists, and then letting them rule on whether the sound of his whistle should remain secret, or whether it was appropriate to publish.

~My Kleenex story is based on real life, where I think it was an executive, not a board member, who came up with the air question during a brainstorming-like discussion. He began by curiously noting that stuff travels faster in a vacuum. 

…Perhaps he was thinking of how, before interoffice communicators, (intercoms) company memorandums (memos) flew through pneumatic tubes, typed by secretaries who would stop off after work to get a permanent wave. (perm)

~While Doctorow is Canadian, it was a well known British author, Neil Gaiman, who did the front cover blurb for Doctorow’s book, saying, “A wonderful, important book … I’d recommend Little Brother over pretty much any book I’ve read this year.”

Lantern Life

Seen on a T-shirt:

So many books, so little time

Hello Reader,

Got metaphor?

A lantern makes a fine metaphor. When I was growing up we had lanterns between joists in our basement, and one even had a cool sticker of a bat on it, but the dusty lanterns were never used. How symbolic: perfectly good stuff, not used.

An old lantern metaphor, which I found in some religious tract, was about proceeding through a dark life on faith: The radius of light from a lantern is so darn small. You can lift your arm so the lantern is as high as possible, and all that does is make the ground much dimmer. Your two choices: see the ground, or see in front. How frustrating for a small scared boy in the dark, heading across a pasture to the barn.

But how encouraging for me as an adult, looking at my dark life in the midst of my discouragement. In my new improved metaphor, I move through a night pasture looking down at the ground, seeing pages and knowledge, dry facts and awesome insights, clearly read by lantern light until… I walk onwards. As new books appear in the light, old ones are lost.

Last week, on a brief vacation, I found illumination. I realized I had forgotten how much I liked hanging around at Joe’s place on holiday, rather than constantly traveling. And I just know the lantern will move on, and I’ll forget Joe again. I’ll forget life lessons X and Y, right up until my lantern walk brings me, yet again, across that part of the pasture.  My metaphor is improved by saying the field is trackless, for wandering. No sunken path to shuttle back and forth on, down the years.

Besides being sad about forgetting, there is this: I don’t care if my knowledge is out of date—I just care that I retain so darn little! It’s a bitter-sweet consolation to reflect that I could, in theory, save my money all year, never buying any new books or DVDs, if only I would keep recycling through the stacks I have. Yes, but how dull.

I’m not the only one who’s frustrated. One of my favorite essayists, Paul Graham, would also swing his lantern by his books, forgetting and reading, forgetting and reading. Oh the forgetting! He tries to console himself that books are never wasted, that somehow bits of knowledge remain down in the subconscious… a small bit, that is. It would be nice to think so.

Ah, stuff. The lantern metaphor: Just walk on, you can’t retain it all, it’ll turn up again. This could be an exciting excuse to get rid of my stuff! Just now, the DVDs on top racks in my closets are touching the ceiling. And the books! At least none are in piles on chairs, nor on the floor—OK, except for one half-tidy stack in front of my bookcase. Years ago someone said I should look into renting a storage locker. So I did look, for a moment, then realized I want to have my stuff close at hand. Besides, a friend filled a storage locker, and it didn’t work for him. In fact, I helped him clear it out… and then I came home with more stuff he had thoughtfully given to me.

Of course, books are the hardest to discard. Now, books in the library might seem plastic and boring, maybe. Not like the delicious ones I find in the second hand stores. They all have spicy character, as if they were all signed by an author, all having time traveled from the good old days when the grass was greener and sky was bluer. Back when folks had more fun. What am I to do?

At the thought of so many books still unread at home, collected from my travels, from towns along the railways and byways… it drives me mad.

Maybe, for my books, I can use my lantern metaphor as an excuse to Stop The Madness: letting the perfectly good books go… content that one day, as I wander over our common pasture, I shall chance upon them again, at yet another treasure house, thrift store or bazar. At least, it would be sure nice to think so. Especially since at my latest home, I do have a storage locker close at hand. It’s the largest size I could buy, in the basement of my condominium block. Bounded by a chain link fence. Full? Right to the very top. And the fence is bulging!

I have to laugh.

Sean Crawford

In a cozy suite with big storage,

and the mortgage all paid off,

Calgary

January

2017

Footnotes:

~I don’t do links, but I will say that if you search-engine for “stuff” plus “Paul Graham,” you’ll find his delightful essay.

~I’m not the only one who “don’t do links.” One of my top ten essays of all time, by hit count, is No Links is Good Links, archived July 2012.

~I feel a fondness towards folks who care and search for Paul’s essay. As for a chap who won’t bother looking without a link, handed on a silver platter? Him not so much.

~No, I haven’t just offended him, because if a man is too "busy" to type then he won’t read footnotes either.

Poetics of Billboards

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

I wonder if U.S. citizens take the prevalence of billboards for granted… because they feel helpless to have any effect? Consider: If they feel “everybody else” believes in “extreme freedom” for capitalists to put up lots of billboards, then they feel helpless to discourage billboards, and so they stop paying attention: They take such eyesores for granted, like a husband not noticing dirt.

I for one believe there is hope. I say this based on a California writer, whom I’ve met, and my brother in law.

I’ve often mentioned writer David Gerrold, and his masterpiece, which is NOT about war, called The War against the Chtorr. Not about war? Not war as we know it: It’s about an alien-from-outer space ecological invasion. Remember: Gerrold is from crazy southern California, and so his series, understandably, is hopeful, about a hero, and his stressed-out society, learning to grow, and accept more and more responsibility…. I have to chuckle: I too have known personal growth, and I too, like the hero during book four, have known the embarrassment of suddenly realizing that I still haven’t grown up as much as I had hoped.

In the book Hawaii is totally free of infestation. No war. The army endorses a California-type human potential course on the big island—and sends the hero there. I’ll never forget one brief scene: The hero is looking out his hotel window and marveling at how quiet things are. Then someone tells him: The street seems so quiet because of something psychological… there are no billboards allowed.

I believe Gerrold the artist is aware of the subconscious price we pay for an overly chaotic environment. Here in my home town—very short on billboards I might add—we respect the subconscious by having a building code where, among other things, there are height restrictions so the human sky line along the river valley matches the skyline of nature: no chaotic jagged roofs along the valley. I suppose our American cousins would have suppressed their awareness in order to accept billboards. Too bad.

What makes me hopeful is that so much of Gerrold’s Chtorr future series is based on the present day. What if Hawaii, unlike the U.S. mainland, really does have such zoning? An exciting thought. Could the rest of U.S. America grow to have such awareness, and grow in responsibility to engage in such zoning?

I’m also hopeful because of something my brother in law told me. He lives in the middle of British Columbia, a province of Canada. He’s part aboriginal, by the way. So it’s politically OK that he told me how when you are on the remote highway you can tell when you are suddenly driving through an Indian reservation: There’s an abrupt presence of billboards. Which implies that non-Indian land, both private and crown, enjoys zoning regulations against billboards. Not like in the U.S. of A. Which means there’s hope for Americans: They could follow Canada’s example, becoming less libertarian, and acquiring more common sense. A hopeful thought.

In the meantime, until the day Americans wise up, a sense of humor is never out of order—so here’s this week’s poem:

by Ogden Nash, 1932

I think that I shall never see,

A billboard lovely as a tree.

Indeed, unless the billboards fall,

I’ll never see a tree at all.

Sean Crawford

Calgary

June

2015

Footnotes:

~I copy-checked the poem using Quote Investigator.

~For Canada and Britain's equivalent of the Chtorr, for a weed where it's a criminal offence to remove it yourself (because it's too powerful) see today's June 19 CBC radio, http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-june-19   
-2015-1.3119751/destructive-japanese-knotweed-sprouting-in-canada-brace-yourself-1.3119781

~As for the Chtorr story, Gerrold has finished the ending but now needs to fill in the missing volumes. As I understand it, he put his story on the backburner after accepting responsibility for raising The Martian Child, now a major motion picture starring John Cusack as the father. Strange how having a child illuminates your priorities.

Sometimes, like everyone else, I dim my awareness; I resort to humor.

I don’t have any mid-life crises myself, no, not I, but if I ever reread Gerrold’s Martian Child book I’ll know to skip the gloomy-to-me first chapter where he reveals his yearning for adopting a child. My God has not blessed me with children. Perhaps because I don’t have a wife.

A Poem for Richard Cory

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

I got invited to a party! Oh boy!

Well, not just me, everyone who had ever attended the Advanced Toastmasters club was invited. I had attended the last two meetings before the party. Normal clubs meet weekly, but this advanced one met monthly—or perhaps fortnightly …it was all so long ago…—and I never went back.

It was a special party, where “One man’s junk is another man’s treasure!”

The “spending limit,” you might say, was to bring something from home you were willing to part with, of about a dollar’s worth, and wrap it up. Maybe it was near Christmas, I forget …but I surely didn’t feel any Christmas spirit afterwards.

Back at my house, I have always liked art and design. For example, I appreciate  when graphic artists use a “four color sheet” for designing a chocolate bar or popcorn wrapper,

Strikingly, I feel awe seeing art where the sky, of truly indescribable color, grows ever duskier towards the stars—how do they paint something like that? I still don’t know. Until the night of the party I had a big tin with a wrap-around picture of peaceful cows under the trees at dusk, with their barn awaiting them in the background. No printing on the tin, just the painting. It was big enough to use to hold my fleecy zip-up-the-leg over-pants. Well. Not only did I gaily wrap it, but first I rolled up some long lengths of newspaper and put them around it too, hiding the geometric shape, making more of a fun mystery. I doubt that I put something inside to make an intriguing rattle—that would have been gilding the lily.

We did some usual party stuff, and then came the anonymous presents, one by one. I think I received a tiny novelty book of things to say in the bar. I remember looking in askance at a present that was a coconut-rice chocolate Bounty bar while wondering: why would anyone bring a mundane present, of zero creativity, that just gets eaten?

A man started pulling apart the wrappings of the present from me. Then came the loud harsh voice of a witch: “What are those—are they newspaper things? That’s just stupid.” The man got down to the pretty tin. “What is that?” asked the witch “Hey, it’s only a stupid popcorn container...Who would ever wrap that?” Who indeed. And who would ever attend a party that included a witch? A witch everyone would condone, enable and approve. Nobody told her “hush,” and nobody said “Nice painting.” And now I was out a really nice tin.

I’m sure I kept a straight face without turning red, or white, or any revealing combination of colors. The party swirled on and I had no chance to go over and ask my friend, as a perception check. Or, to be honest, there was no chance I would embarrass myself by asking. I went home feeling a little too young, too poor, and with all my “oh boy’s” used up.

Once home, besides thinking, “I guess I could have wrapped a Bounty bar…” I thought of an orphan. No, not Oliver, and not Ann: I remembered Friday, the young woman in the book Friday by Robert Heinlein. Poor Friday, like a boarding school orphan out of Never Let Me Go, (now a movie) couldn’t leave the cold orphanage until adulthood. Referring to the rest of us as humans, she said, and I’m paraphrasing, “I’ll never understand human behavior, all I can do is memorize the rules.” I hear you sister.

I’ve got nothing against rich humans—what the scientists call the “middle class.” In fact, as a university graduate, I suppose I’m an honorary member of the middle class myself. Another honorary member would be the Boss, a working class singer. I’m sure Bruce Springsteen's television set is in color, and really big too. One day, looking at his set, he said in disgust, “Fifty-seven channels, and nothing’s on.” (Which became a song refrain) If rich people think a candy bar they can gobble down is better than something real and permanent, then maybe it’s because they own far more than 57 things— so their stuff is “nothing” to them. Does this mean they don’t collect buttons to sew on? Don’t put patches on their old blue jeans? I guess so, if their stuff is nothing. Must make it real easy for them to de-clutter.

When I was a boy, with parents who came of age during the Great Depression, we’d economize by wearing sweaters in the house and turning the thermostat down. I was the kid who slopped coffee grounds on himself doing the chore of taking stuff to the compost: a practical way for us to save money. We’d recycle stale beer bottles for cash. We’d re-use and we’d repair. That was how we coped. Now I’m a grownup, living alone. If I wake up feeling hung-over, looking out at a Sunday morning sidewalk, wishing that I was stoned, I don’t want to complain, “My fingers are cold and nobody loves me.” I can’t control love, but I can sure control my thermostat.

Owning my own place now, with no grubby compost, I always keep it hot enough to wear a T-shirt, and never mind the expense. Besides, my condo suite is right over the boiler room. I had never dared hope one day I’d have nice wall-to-wall warm linoleum.

Some behavior I have witnessed, but which my thrifty parents would never have understood, is this: Now it’s the rich who are into recycling, as something exotic, as a voluntary noble joy. That, and they think the lower classes need to be ignobly forced to recycle as a drab chore, for their own good.

I can just imagine that rich witch from that party saying, “Anyone who doesn’t recycle like me is stupid.”

I’ve memorized the rule of “Next time, just giftwrap a chocolate bar” but I’ll never, ever understand a witch.

Here’s a poem,

Richard Corey

by Edwin A. Robinson

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

“Good morning,” and he glittered when he

            walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—

And admirably schooled in every grace:

In fine, we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the

            bread;

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Sean Crawford

Calgary

January

2015

Footnotes:

~My favorite Star Trek episode is the one where Captain Kirk and Nurse Chapel are underground, where Lurch from The Adams Family played Ruk. (I like it for the “blocking,” where the actors stand) In that one, Dr. Roger Korbyn—surely named for Richard Cory—while respected and rich in knowledge, is misunderstood by the landing party and he even, as he realizes at last, misunderstands himself.

~A brilliant piece of characterization in TV’s Sarah Connor Chronicles is where a tragic high school girl, a friend of John, describes a wonderful time by saying, “It’s all carrots and apples.” She says this because in the show her sort never, ever, get to taste “peaches and cream.”

~Years ago I went through a phase of reading every nonfiction essay by Dorothy Allison, best known for her novel Bastard Out of Carolina, now a movie starring Anjelica Huston. Something Allison said struck me, and although there are oodles of her quotes on the Internet, I could not find the one I read so many years ago, so here it is in my own words: “I’m an incest survivor, a feminist, and a lesbian: And none of those things have affected me as much as growing up poor.”

~Speaking of artistic tins, here’s a quote of hers: “Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is that if we are not beautiful to each other, we cannot know beauty in any form.”

Dorothy Allison, Two or Three Things I Know For Sure, 1995

~A related essay is my Poverty and “The Hunger Games,” archived February 2012.