Poseidon’s Wake
Posted on March 30, 2009
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Sharing: Barbara Ehrenreich
Posted on March 20, 2009
Mostly out of laziness I decide to start my low-wage life in the town nearest to where I actually live, Key West, Florida, which with a population of about 25,000 is elbowing its way up to the status of a genuine city. The downside of familiarity, I soon realize, is that it’s not easy to go from being a consumer, thoughtlessly throwing money around in exchange for groceries and movies and gas, to being a worker in the very same place. I am terrified, especially at the beginning, of being recognized by some friendly business owner or erstwhile neighbor and having to stammer out some explanation of my project. Happily, though, my fears turn out to be entirely unwarranted: during a month of poverty and toil, no one recognizes my face or my name, which goes unnoticed and for the most part unuttered. In this parallel universe where my father never got out of the mines and I never got through college, I am “baby,” “honey,” “blondie,” and, most commonly, “girl.”
My first task is to find a place to live. I figure that if I can earn $7 an hour—which, from the want ads, seems doable—I can afford to spend $500 on rent or maybe, with severe economies, $600 and still have $400 or $500 left over for food and gas. In the Key West area, this pretty much confines me to flophouses and trailer homes—like the one, a pleasing fifteen-minute drive from town, that has no air-conditioning, no screens, no fans, no television, and, by way of diversion, only the challenge of evading the landlord’s Doberman pinscher. The big problem with this place, though, is the rent, which at $675 a month is well beyond my reach. All right, Key West is expensive. But so is New York City, or the Bay Area, or Jackson, Wyoming, or Telluride, or Boston, or any other place where tourists and the wealthy compete for living space with the people who clean their toilets and fry their hash browns. Still, it is a shock to realize that “trailer trash” has become, for me, a demographic category to aspire to.
So I decide to make the common trade-off between affordability and convenience and go for a $500-a-month “efficiency” thirty miles up a two-lane highway from the employment opportunities of Key West, meaning forty-five minutes if there’s no road construction and I don’t get caught behind some sundazed Canadian tourists. I hate the drive, along a roadside studded with white crosses commemorating the more effective head-on collisions, but it’s a sweet little place—a cabin, more or less, set in the swampy backyard of the converted mobile home where my landlord, an affable TV repairman, lives with his bartender girlfriend. Anthropologically speaking, the trailer park would be preferable, but here I have a gleaming white floor and a firm mattress, and the few resident bugs are easily vanquished.
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Art Underground: Andrea Marshall
Posted on March 17, 2009
 Walkabout Jones wants to feature artists of all kinds. Submit your paintings, graphic art, photography, drawings and other forms to “Art Underground” at walkaboutjones@gmail.com
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Shadows in the Sand
Posted on March 12, 2009
Every morning, I listen to the news on the radio and some days I break down when I hear another story about people killed in Iraq. I can’t help myself from feeling so helpless and frustrated at the same time. And then I think about the soldiers who’ve come home. The ones who were fighting for us, and now have to readjust to something like a normal life. I can only imagine how hard it is for them. This photograph was taken in Santa Monica, California. Every Sunday, from sunrise to sunset, the Arlington West Memorial Project places crosses, stars and crescents in the sand for each soldier lost in Iraq. As the waves from the Pacific hit the shore, this weekly memorial offers a powerful place for reflection.Photo and Essay by S. Yim Read more
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When the Sun Goes Down
Posted on March 6, 2009
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Dad’s Last Drive
Posted on March 3, 2009
By Scott Tejerian
Ryan Adams’ “Let It Ride” from the Cold Roses album is cranking on “repeat” as I fly down the 10 West, from USC Medical Center to the Angeles Clinic in Brentwood. There’s something sadly optimistic about the song that feels like it’s meant for a road trip to heartbreak. It feels right because my dad is going to die, and the part of me not pissed off is pleased. This is what he deserves. This is his life lesson. I won’t make the same mistakes as him. I will listen to my son. I won’t challenge him on every idea. I will find inspiration and action in his words. But I drive fast anyway, for my mom and my sister, and because I’m not so heartless to let a man die—even if I know it could’ve been prevented if only he had listened to me.
From the look on the doctor’s face, we know the prognosis is grim. Even without the scans of dad’s liver—the ones I’m driving to retrieve—the doctor thinks surgery won’t be an option. He would need at least twenty percent of his liver to be free of the melanoma, and for a man whose liver’s so big he looks pregnant, the chances of that seem unlikely. But I drive fast anyway, knowing my dad is in pain and my family is counting on me.
I’m trying to be at peace with my father. For thirty-two years, I wanted him to listen, but it wasn’t critical until seven years ago when the first itsy bitsy, teeny tiny melanoma popped up on his retina. A check-up at the eye doctor, and congratulations, you have cancer! At twenty-five, it never occurred to me that my parents were mortal. My entire view of life shifted the moment the phone rang and dad said, “It’s nothing to worry about, but…”
A little laser beam took care of that teeny tiny, itsy bitsy melanoma on dad’s right retina. Hooray for modern medicine! Until six months later, when Tiny’s big bad brother showed up. No laser this time. Big bad brother refused to quit until they took dad’s right eye. But who needs two when you still have one?
Life went on. Dad was still walking, talking, laughing, and now he had a new set of lame jokes. His two favorites were covering his good eye and staring straight into the sun. Dad also enjoyed poking the marble with distressingly sharp objects. But beneath his veneer, and the jokes, I knew his new affliction was killing him emotionally. Though family and friends said Dad joked to put those around him at ease, I knew it was the other way around. Vanity had always been a weakness of Dad’s. Growing up in the family clothing store, image was everything. “When you look your best, you do your best” was a family motto. And now, for someone who took so much pride in his appearance, for the first few months after the surgery, he wouldn’t take a photograph unless he was wearing sunglasses. Read more
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Now on MyTunes
Posted on March 2, 2009
Como Fue– Ibrahim Ferrer
Dunmore Lassies – Chieftains and Ry Cooder
Muhabbet – Richard A. Hagopian and Omar Faruk Tekbilek
A Cool Wind Is Blowing – Djivan Gasparyan
Honolulu City Lights – Keola Beamer
Medication – Son Volt
Lanarime Lamiseu – Aurelilo Martinez & Andy Palacio
Air – Mike Mills
Tango – Victor Achelatt Navaroo & I. Albeniz
Cinquante Six – Ali Farka Toure
Light & Day – The Polyphonic Spree
Candela – Buena Vista Social Club
All You Deliver – Jose Gonzalez
A Forest – Nouvelle Vague
Cavatina– John Williams
Silver Bamboo – Dean Evenson & Lu Xiangting
Healing Circle– Deuter
Star Chant – Carlos Nakai
Dig our playlist? How many places offer a mix of Cab Calloway and Temple of the Dog? Jim Croce and State Radio? Kenny Rogers, Etta James, Sam Cooke and Johnny Cash? Now it’s your turn to play music savant. Send us your top five songs of all time and we’ll start adding your choices to the site. Whether it’s old, new, country, folk, jazz, rock, or straight-up funk, what matters is that it’s musical nirvana from the very first note. So dust off your records, maximize your music files, and send us your picks of legendary licks. Mail them to “myTunes” at walkaboutjones@gmail.com
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