Monthly Archives: September 2005

Baltimore, Family, Friends, gallagheria

Weekend Idolatry

And now for something a little lighter.

Saturday was Soccer Day, with my Under 12 Boy’s CYO team on the road with a 2 pm game. J. had been skating the night before at a Katrina relief ice-skateathon or something with his friend C., and then had a sleepover at C.’s, so perhaps he was a bit more sluggish than usual. But in any case, we all managed to get out the door to the game together this week (the whole crew in one place…the logistics are mind-boggling).

K., now hard-core as he’s playing JV soccer at Poly, wanted to run the kids into the ground as a warm-up. I eased him up and reminded him that it was going to be a long, hot game. And it did get hot–90’s again. I don’t remember September this late being this hot recently.

In the end, it was a tie again (making Brood X’s record for this year 0-2-0, at least 50% better than our record at this point last year). Then we grabbed lunch and headed for HampdenFest.

After grabbing beers and snow-cones, we wandered down toward the Hampden Idol contest in time to catch:

  • An adequate execution of “Gloria”
  • A woman who made “Whole Lotta Love” sound like a cat in a dryer
  • Ali’s inspiring rendition of “Don’t Stop Believin'” (to which K. and I waved our cell phones)
  • Chris, the “Thin White Guy”, performing “Let’s Go Crazy”, and stealing the show

My ex A. and her husband D. arrived in the midst of this. As we stood there on the Avenue after the wrapup of Hampden Idol, Benn came by. He pointed out that the spot where P. and my ex were sitting on the curb was in fact the scene of a murder:a street person, known for being a loan shark to addicts, had grabbed a little girl walking to the community center after school, and she ran in to the center crying; her grandfather emerged with a cane and beat the guy to death in broad daylight.

On that note…we headed out shortly thereafter. The boys left with my ex for the night, and P., Z. and I headed to New No Da Ji for dinner before calling it a night.

Sunday, we met up with the boys and A&D at the Irish Festival at the Armory. Nothin’ is as Irish as passing through an armed checkpoint to get a beer, I suppose; the Guard was conducting ID checks on every person who entered the Armory. Aside from the asses from Noraid (or, perhaps, the “reformed asses” would be more appropriate now that they’re allegedly behind the peace process–but from the stickers they were giving people, you’d think they were still shipping the Provos Armalites), it was a pleasant enough event, with Z. enthralled by the Irish dancing and K. intrigued by the Irish dancers. I got a free Smithwick’s as the beer concession tried to empty the kegs. J. shook us down for money for a shamrock ballcap and a faux-celtic dragon pendant. It was a Gallagher family heritage event.

Then, it was home and back to homework and other work and the grind of the week ahead.

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General Chaos, politics

Is this where we are?

Carl of Baltimore blogs:

For an interesting civil rights/racism analog to ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ see ‘The Space Traders,’ a story by Derrick Bell (visiting law professor at NYU) about what would happen if aliens came to earth offering to trade oil (ed: actually, energy and gold and all the answers to the country’s woes) for black people. It’s available on-line within an article length commentary by Bell himself at:
http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/lsf/bell23.htm

(Via carlofbaltimore.)

Note when the story was originally pubished.

I’d like to think that we as a society wouldn’t let that happen. But we’ve let New Orleans happen. We’ve let poverty happen. We’ve let all manners of intolerance and hate happen, and we mask it over with patriotic bullshit. When 60% of African-Americans (or more) agree that George Bush doesn’t care about their fate — and 30% (me included) of white America agrees with them based on the evidence– there’s no hiding the fact that there is an almost unbridgeable divide in America. On one site is, disturbingly, what now appears to be the majority of American culture: not just Red state, but redneck America, which waves the Bible and the flag in the face of anyone who disagrees with it. On the other is the disenfranchised of all creeds, but especially minorities and especially the urban poor.

And it looks like even Bill Clinton agrees:

The Ex-President: Clinton Levels Sharp Criticism at the President’s Relief Effort: “Former President Bill Clinton said the storm highlighted class divisions in the country that often played out along racial lines.”(Via NYT > Most E-mailed Articles.)

How do we change this? How do we bring America’s pieces back together? If you buy what Professor Bell has to say, we can’t–it’s a permanent condition, and the patient cannot be cured , only be made more comfortable.

I suspect that it can be cured, but only through radical means. John Brown knew what that meant.

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