A Long Beach Newspaper
Press-Telegram – Opinion

Back then, the lines were clear: On one side were the working people trying to ensure decent wages and basic safety for the dangerous work deep in the earth. On the other side were the heartless thugs brought in by the fat cat bosses to break the strike.

The current Metropolitan Transportation Authority strike by mechanics and drivers and other workers brings to mind the story of striking coal miners — only in this case the roles have been reversed.

This time the MTA strikers are the thugs, using political blackmail to shut down public transportation for nearly half a million people. And the workers are left by the side of road. Like the coal miners of yore, those who can least afford it are those who will suffer the most.

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This is not helping. Almost everyone I know has had to tighten their belts and deal with the downturns in the economy. If the union-managed Pension and Health Care fund has lost money, well, almost everyone else’s pensions have been reduced.

These mechanics are not going to be very popular going forward.

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I am forced to fall back on using my car. The bus mechanics are striking, so all the busses are stopped in solidarity.

Now, I think it is important to band together to be heard, but you have to pick your battles.

The public transportation system is something that many city dwellers rely on. There are some that use it exclusively.

the MTA website has this to say about the strike:

MTA Media Relations – Press Release

The biggest issue dividing MTA negotiators and union leaders is over contributions to health benefits. MTA deposits $16.8 million annually into a trust fund administered by the maintenance union which buys medical coverage for 2,000 employees plus retirees. An independent audit of the trust fund shows the union has wasted millions of dollars in recent years through duplicative coverage, poor record keeping and other problems.
Among other issues, the audit faulted the union for transferring $36,000 a month into union operating funds but union officials refused to provide documentation for how the money is spent. The audit also noted that the union has been paying a consultant up to $15,000 a month since 1998 to automate their record keeping but the task still has not been accomplished and the data is kept manually so the union has no real time information about how the trust fund is doing.

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We already know that the last bus strike lasted for more than a month. It is a crisis, really.

LA has been coming to terms with it’s Metropolitaness, and creating public transportation systems that were approaching usefulness. A lot of my co-workers have been learning to rely on busses.

But this is not a step forward. In addition to the massive inconvenience, this same MTA article repeats a figure I have heard elsewhere.

The bus strike costs the local economy 4 MILLION bucks A DAY.

I don’t know that I’m terribly supportive of this strike.

Iranian Wins Nobel Peace Prize

“Ebadi, who is the first Iranian and Muslim female to receive the honor, has maintained that democracy and Islam are compatible. A devout Muslim, she has fought against conservative Islamic rulers on behalf of women and children, in particular. Her efforts represent a radical change in a country where clerics maintain strict rules.”

I am very pleased about this. Iran, and all the middle east needs some brave women to stand and be heard.

This woman literally risks her life to do what she is doing.

Bravo!

5. It didn’t drag on forever.

Regular elections seem to go on and on, allowing for a HUGE amount of junk mail a mudslinging. This one got straight to the point: JUST VOTE

4. I got out of work early to vote.

This might not work everywhere with everyone, but it worked for me so I don’t care.

3. With this number of candidates, no one argued with me about “Throwing my vote away” if I vote Green.

It’s not possible to throw your vote away on a governor. Actually, it’s not possible NOT to throw your vote away. Which of these candidates could possibly be taken seriously? Which brings me to my next point:

2. We can debate about “the principle of the thing” and completely ignore the principles of the people

Yeah! Should we be allowed to recall a governor barely a year after we’ve voted him in? there are pros and cons, and it may have NOTHING to do with Gov. Davis’s personal principles. Or any of the candidates morals. “It’s the principle of the thing!”

AND THE NUMBER ONE REASON TO LOVE THE RECALL:

It’s fun! Look at the turnout!

So my cat had a little disorder last weekend. I made an appointment for him at the vet, and even though he seemed better by the time the appointment arrived, I thought I’d better keep it.

I’d been meaning to talk with the vet about my cat anyway. He’s fat. About 18 pounds of cat.

YES, he’s big boned, YES, he a very muscular, and YES he’s a little fluffy.

But he’s FAT. I’ve been buying him this high-fiber diet cat food for forever, and it seems to do no good. Therefore, I wanted to discuss the situation with a vet.

The vet looked him over, agreed with me that he’s fat and told me to put him on the ATKIN’s diet. Well, to use the ATKIN’s principles anyway. All meat for the cat.

Cats are carnivores, supposedly. My previous diet cat food choice was high in fiber ‘n’ stuff, and may well have been working against him in his need to lose weight.

He seems to like his all-meat diet.

I was very saddened a few weeks ago when I heard the news that Gregory Hines had passed away. He was so young, I really didn’t expect it.

He was a kick-ass dancer. Wow! I am a fan of him. He can MOVE. He is so smart about it, he can do all kinds of things.

I don’t know what his last role was, I last saw him in Waiting To Exhale. He did not dance in that movie, which is a shame.

My FAVORITE Gregory Hines movie is White Nights. This movie is one of my favorites in general, because it goes into the communist life of Russia. It treats Russia very, very well. Meaning, it gives a really good view of what it was (is?) like there. Some of the things in that movie are difficult to grasp until you’ve actually been to the country. It was so, so real.

Except the KGB parts. I couldn’t tell you about that.

But the part where Barishnikov and Hines dance off, where they are talking about dance and freedom and poverty and culture, is my most most most favorite part.

It is worth seeing. The movie is a treasure.

I am sorry that I will not get to see Gregory Hines dance again.

Some of the people who know me have heard me talk about this site.

It’s a great site.

My OWN curly headedness has began to be spread around the ‘net. The lovely ladies at naturallycurly.com have contacted me to ask if they can put up my Curly Top story on their site.

I said yes, and I am pleased to be part of their outreach.

Check it out, they really are great!

I’m on a business trip right now. LONG days here at the sattelite office. Last night I was having a rather late dinner, relaxing in the hotel restaurant and enjoying my meal.

Yes, I was alone. I have read older books, references in outdated magazines to a stigma attached to a woman eating alone in a restaurant. Some women used to feel uncomfortable and pathetic to eat alone. Some restaurants would not welcome solitary females.

But I can find a lot of pleasure in a good meal eaten alone. Especially when the meal is really worth savoring, conversation is not missed because I can focus on how delicious the food is.

Last night i had a lovely soup and salad, with interesting textures and flavors. I was delighting in my meal. I took my hair down and rubbed my head a little.

“I like your hair down.” The man from a nearby table leaned away from his other companions to tell me this tidbit.

I smiled and said thanks. I was interested in my meal.

Later, he felt the need to call over to me again.

I answered, somewhat amused. Until he said, in reference to his companions, “These guys have no idea, but you and I know what’s going to happen later.”

I said, “Well, you’re going to think whatever is in your head, and I’m going to go to bed.”

“That’s what I mean,” he said with a leer.

When I used to explore the streets in Russia, I remember I had a rule of thumb. I was worried about the safety of walking around, an American in this foreign city. I took note and realized that there were three levels. When I walked in the company of a male, any male, I was invisible. I was safe and no one paid me any attention. If I walked in the company of one other female, I got a little attention. Lots of stares, a few loud comments.

But when I walked alone, it was as if I was the property of everyone. All the men would stare, and anyone that felt like saying anything to me just when right out and said it. “Devushka..Hey girl, where are you going?”

It’s true here in America too. One male person, no matter how physically insignificant or bland, stopped all potential harrassment. It was like it never even existed.

I started to call them magic amulets. If me and some girls were gonna go out somewhere, I would ask them “Should we invite a guy to be our amulet?”

It depended on how much hassle we were willing to put up with that evening.

So, I was remembering that with the guy in the restaurant. I hadn’t thought about my harrassment formula for a while.

But my god! This was the Four Seasons, not some back-alley Russian construction site. You would think that up-scale establishments would have a clientele with a greater degree of enlightenment.

The men at that table had been talking about how much money they made earlier. It was somewhere around the million-dollar-a-year mark. At least that is what they were telling each other.

In between my delicious bites, I wondered about having that much money. I wondered if they were enjoying their meals more than I did mine. Or if they enjoyed their lives more than I did mine.

I thought about what their wives might be like. As I unerstand, men who make scads of money usually have a stay-at-home wife. It’s an agreement, just like the old days: Man makes money, women gives man anything he wants.

That how it had to be, before. Before women had equal (or mostly equal) access to employment and could pay for their own homes and sustenance.

And restaurant meals.

But I can afford my own home, and I have a job that supports me. The job even sends me out on trips and picks up the tab at a nice restaurant for me.

But my troglodyte neighbor hadn’t seemed to move into the new feminist reality, a reality that says women belong to themselves. We now have made way for women to live with dignity, and not have to tolerate male rudeness and lewdness to make their way ahead.

Jackass millionaire man had said loudly to his buddies at the table: “Look at that! There is nothing more delightful than watching this young woman here butter her cracker and take a bite with absolute enjoyment.”

Perhaps he didn’t understand that the bite I took was for MY enjoyment, not his.

I had no need of him. He started out as amusing and moved to annoying.

Feminism had meant the whole world shifted. Women no longer find men necessary.

What does this mean? I remember my mother discussing the Equal Rights amendment when I was a teenager. It was up for vote in our state, whether we would ratify it or not.

She said one important argument against it was that it would give women the same wages as men and then women would no longer be interested in being good wives and mothers. THey would abandon their families.

I told her that the argument in favor of it was that it was fair and made sense.

“It’s very complicated, ” she replied.

As it happens, she may have been right. How has family fared since the advent of economic feminism? How are marriages and children doing?

We have a high divorce rate. Higher than the 60s. How are children? That’s tough to say, but it is true that there are a lot of single parent households.

What does this mean? Should we go Taliban and turn back the clock? I don’t think that two wrongs make a right, but we still have a problem here.

How do we keep a relationship intact when niether party needs the other? When they are equally able to survive without the other? It would seem that a lot more effort and desire to make it work is necessary.

That is a huge challenge to our moral character. What kind of determination and will can we bring to the table in a relationship? And also, no matter how much you try, there is always the factor of how much the other one is putting out.

Things are changing. According to Ronald B. Mincy, Columbia U professor of Social Work Policy, there are a couple areas to look at:

… There are three broad factors that are affecting marriage trends: the increasing independence of women and the deterioration in the economic status of men. Women are increasing in terms of their educational attainment. They’re increasing in terms of their occupational status and their earnings.

Men, on the other hand, are reducing their college graduation rates. They’re also reducing their earnings. The only men who’ve experienced increases in their earnings since the 1970s are basically men who have gone to graduate school. So you put together improving economic conditions for women, deteriorating economic conditions for men, and then the removal of this moral imperative for marriage, and I don’t think that we should be surprised that marriage rates are falling. …

So what is the imperative? One of my dearest friends said to me:
What about a public commitment of love to one another?

Hmm..In our cynical and self-reliant world, we want to bring up love?

Maybe all we need is love. Maybe that’s the whole point. If we take away the “have to” side of it, and focus on the “want to” we are left with love.

I think that may be one of the greatest legacies of feminism. We have yet to realize it. But we have made some progress.

Oh baby, I went dancing this weekend! I had so much fun. I was so sore I could barely walk afterwards.

Me and my girls were out, and we were wiggling and giggling. One of the fun things about going to a big club is watching what everyone else is doing. There were these two amazing girls that managed to writhe and sway their booties all the way down to their heels, and them work their way back up again.

And they did it again and again. Go!

Of course, we all had to check out everyone else’s outfits. These two girls walked in, one of them all dressed in a sort of cheerleader thingy.

“What, is she trying to be Paula Abdul?’ my friend said to me.

But I was looking at the other girl, all in white.

“I cannot wear all white,” I said back. “I’d be kicked out of Abba first thing.”

It’s true. I’d spill something on it right away. I’d be like, “Oh, that’s stain is gonna need a sequin. A lot of sequins.”

Why don’t you eat your cutlet, man? Eat it with pleasure and joy. Love your wife. Make your babies. Love your friends and have the courage to tell those who seek to diminish you that they are the devil and you want no part of them. Courage, man, courage and appetite!

-George Blecher “The Death of the Russian Novel”

I don’t know what “The Death of the Russian Novel” is. It may be an article from some random magazine or something. I just found this quote on my hard drive, and thought I would share it.