Hunter gatherer diet and trailer trash

We were invited to attend a costume party last night whose theme was "white trash or trailer trash." I was at a loss about what to wear, what a trailer trash costume would look like. I was raised in poverty, no lights, no indoor running water or plumbing for much of my childhood, but I never lived in a trailer. My sister, before she died at the age of 26, lived in a single wide trailer in Gallup New Mexico. And when I was in the army we lived off-post in Lampassas Texas where almost all dwellings and most of the businesses and government offices were in some sort of trailer. We lived in one of the few duplexes in town: a roach infested, stifling hot one bedroom that in hindsight might have been considered upper-class! I'd come a long way from our waterless, utility free houses on the ranch that didn't have roaches and were kept clean to a rodent infested upper-class abode in Texas. (Maybe they should secede from the union)  It was the first time I had ever been upper-class. The Post Office, Social Security, City Mayor, and even the police station (including the jail) were in some sort of trailer.

Some of the lifelong residents built porches on the sides of their trailers and some even put a pitched roof over the entire mess. Those more affluent citizens, presumably the Mayor, Chief of Police, the woman who ran the XXX movie business, all lived in trailers plopped rather haphazardly on a plot of land. (the XXX movie house was a trailer with an extension built towards the back to cover--presumably--the screen) Most, residents however, lived in trailer parks. Each trailer was parked within a few feet of its neighbor. There was enough room between trailers to park a vehicle, usually a pickup truck. Most had a small patch of lawn--less that 100 sq. ft.--and all had some sort of plastic lawn gnome, flamingo, or wishing well in the center of the lawn. The towing frame stuck out of the front of each of them and many had not bothered to skirt the trailer. Dogs and cats, children used the undersides as play areas with trails worn around and behind the tires and axles that had never been removed after the trailer was "installed."  An occasional rattlesnake or copperhead would crawl out of the thickets of brush surrounding the parks and shade-up in the cool and dark undersides of those trailers. At night centipedes as long as the span of a large hand and scorpions stalked crickets and roaches that took refuge in piles of trash stockpiled under the trailers. Layered habitat.

I looked up trailer trash on Wikipedia but other than stereotypes it wasn't helpful.  When I looked up white trash it was more helpful. It even included a reference from Harriet Beechers Stowe's work. The term came into common usage in the south in the 1830's as a term used by black slaves to describe white servants and share croppers. It's hard to imagine that there would be a perceived social order below slaves but apparently "white trash" fit that bill.

So what to wear? I thought about a relative who had purchased my sisters trailer that had been standing empty for several years after her death. My relative and his wife lived in it for a two or three years. When they got the trailer it was in good shape, well tended both inside and out. At the end of three years the trailer was trashed. Holes had been punched in walls, the floor around the toilets was rotting, windows were broken and patched with plastic, none of the interior doors would open and close. Trailer trash? White trash? I suppose even though he had all of his teeth and dressed in clean clothing.

So where to turn for costume guidance  for the trailer trash themed party? I'm missing a couple of teeth that a horse kicked loose and that a very expensive oral surgeon extracted but they are/were at the rear of my jaw, not strategically and stereotypically missing in the front. How could I get a gap in my front teeth? Finally I wore the jeans that I usually mow the lawn in, the pants that I wear when I'm plumbing, or doing dirty chores around the house or farm. They have both knees ripped out and have dried plumbing glue and paint stuck permanently all over. And I wore a torn work shirt, a ball cap, and a pair of work shoes that my new pup has chewed from lace-ups into clogs.

When we got to the party it turned out it wasn't as much a costume party as it was a come-as-you-are. Many of the guests hadn't changed clothing for several days. They weren't faking! They didn't have to pretend.
 Almost all of them came with a well worn beer-can sleeve (a invention that wraps your beer can in foam to keep it cool), cigarettes, ball caps. Most of the beer-can sleeves were preloaded with a beer already being kept cool when they arrived.The host had cases of cold beer in coolers and beer on tap from a keg housed inside of a refrigerator. "Wow, wheredjewgitthet fridge? someone asked?  "We need one of them for our back yard," the man told his wife. Both had tooth gaps. I was jealous. "I madeit," the host said.

What does this have to do with the hunter-gatherer diet? I will discuss the diet in depth in a later posting but basically some s__t-for-brains has decided that paleolithic man ate mostly protein at a ration of 2:1 protein over carbohydrates. Because most at the party were drinking lite beer their carb consumption was down. All dove into the beeny-weeny hors d'oeuvres, and other fried meats like a pack of hyenas. There was even some under-the-breath growling. Nothing was wasted except the salad we brought. I went back into the kitchen after and all of the food bowls (except the salad bowl) looked like they had been licked clean. A few party goers hung around the table wiping out smudges of grease with a finger, licking it clean, wiping any residue on their finger on their jeans or shorts, and then chasing the snack with a slug of beer."Them beeny-weenies was suregood," someone said.

When the host and guests started jumping into the pool it was time to leave. The lemming-like plunge was started by someone bellowing: "geterdun!" Non swimmers were dragged out and left flopping on the lawn. Other "dippers" were comparing the chilled nipple effect in what could have been suggestive of the scientific method.

I forgot to mention that the party was at a home (not a trailer within ten miles), in an upper-class neighborhood funded by old Utah money which suggests (scientifically) that being trailer trash is not necessarily based on an economic scale.  Indeed the "evidence" suggests that trailer trash behavior may be genetic.

Get rich quick

Want to get rich quick? Are you willing to lie, scheme, and take bribes, trade your soul? Are you able to keep a straight face when you manipulate tax laws and tax regulations to favor you and your  rich friends? Does not having to be held accountable for your actions ring your endorphin switch? Then run for Congress!
http://www.rollcall.com/50richest/the-50-richest-members-of-congress-112th.html

Before you start pointing fingers understand that 7 of the top 10 most richest are Democrats. The only redeeming fact is that of the top 50 only 19 Democrats make the list. 

Things I've seen along the road

When you ride a bicycle, whether there is a bike lane or not, the right edge of the road, both on the road surface and in the ditch, are where discarded things collect: metal, plastic, wood, and things decomposing. It is in that section between black top and gravel, shrubs, are where  trash, cast off or lost clothing, and unclaimed  humans settle blown in by the wind.

I've seen:

Plastic gas cans,
empty jugs for oil, antifreeze, and transmission fluid,
juice, cheap vodka, energy drinks;
plastic wrap and diaper covers;
plastic pants, plastic rain coats, a purple plastic belt ;
a plastic grill from a Subaru with a stick driven through it;
and plastic bags flying like windsocks
in the dark forests of the northwest
or waving from the spines
of cholla cactus--next to the remains of a desiccated collared lizard impaled
and left to cure by a bird--on the over-grazed government lands in New Mexico.

There is wood:
dimension lumber: 2x4s, planks, a 10inch wide beam maybe 16 ft long;
plywood sheets, a square of cedar shakes;
and logs spilled from logging trucks,
some smashed through standing trees
others plowing divots of black earth,
reasserting P=MV of classic mechanics;
and a stick rammed thru the plastic grill of a Subaru.

If all the metal I have seen were recycled we could re build the Titanic.
There was a metal beam (see P=MV above);
a roll of copper wire;
and auto parts: mufflers, tailpipes, fenders,
springs, the burned hull of a semi truck,
a chrome fender wrapped around the base of a fir tree;
and lots of screws and nuts: wing nuts, lug nuts, square nuts, hexagonal nuts,
locking nuts and one nut (with a long beard) who should have remained locked up.

Clothing like ball caps, socks, shirts, skirts, underwear, and
the waist band of a pair of jeans with a purple belt still cinched.
Tennis shoes, running shoes, logging boots, cowboy boots, ballet slippers, clogs,
none paired, presumably lost by a man called "Peg leg Slim?"

Live and dead animals,

all families represented, mammalian, reptilian, avian, insects, and many genera of insects
perhaps even one or two that might have been the last of a hitherto undiscovered species,
one salmon miles from the ocean,
and a dead moose (no auto parts nearby).
No dead humans--even at the tree with the fender wrapped around its trunk--but some
that were like the walking dead,
a man with a long beard, who yelled skyward and gesticulated with his arms and hands, his fingers wiggled independent like soon to hatch snakes in opaque white tubes,
and a teen girl who pedaled past me crying.

There are miscellanea
like combs, a hair piece,
a ripped sleeping bag (that I checked for human remains),
tie-down straps, bungee cords, rope,
a freshly branded calf,
tires, old and new, one still mounted on a rim,
car and truck axles, 
hitch hikers,
and gnats, flies, mosquitoes, that are not a problem until you're pedaling uphill.



Future archeologists or anthropologist will sift through this accumulation of junk and then after, in the lab, writing up their notes, have an orgasm describing such things as religious artifacts, language, signs that we believed in reincarnation.

Looking for Love in all the wrong places

Warren Jeffs, polygamist leader, prophet, pedophile, was found guilty, in Texas, of sex with underage people and of arranging marriages between other horny older Fundamentalists men and underage girls. Next, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, he may be tried in Utah, presumably for many of the same things. Texas gave him life in prison. All pedophiles should be given life. Statistically they do not respond well to "rehabilitation" and most, soon after release from the poky, start molesting children again. So, why release them if there is a high risk of "relapse" and recidivism? Why spend the money, especially given today's economy, to try them again and again? Every time they get out many just hurt more kids. Keep-em I say!!  And who knows, maybe Jeffs will find love in the Texas prison system!

I grew up around polygamists in southwestern Colorado. They farmed and ranched just north of the New Mexico/Colorado border along the La Plata River. I didn't know they were poligs until after I got out of the army. My grandfather and I were at a horse sale at the local livestock sale ring south of Durango. One of my high school friends from the small town of poligs  introduced me to his wife. A few weeks later, as I opened the door to go into the bank, he came out of the other door, with another woman! What do you say?
"Hey, A.J." he said. "How you been? Did you guys buy that grulla dun horse? Let me introduce you to my wife Pauline."
I fumbled through the introduction trying hard to keep my poker face on. That face had made me money over time playing poker in the back room at the aforementioned livestock ring but it failed me this day.
Pauline put her hand on my arm (to comfort me? reduce my anxiety?) and looked at her husband and said: "I thought you said he knew we practiced plural marriage?"
Both laughed. He said "I thought you (me) knew we were polygamists? My dad had three wives."
I could remember the clusters of trailers and small frame houses in the small town, where  I had spent many overnights with this friend and others when I was in high school. I just thought that the other women were aunts and all of the kids running around were cousins. After all, in our economy at the time, it wasn't unusual for the men to travel away from home for weeks at a time to make money. My own family practiced this, as did I,  usually working in the hard rock mines or following construction projects across the west.

Since moving to Utah I've met even more polygamists. I don't know how many poygamist men I know.
But I can count the number of polygamist women I know on the span of two hands. They're invisible.The women I've met are absent emotionally and physically. I know polygamists who are county commissioners, a couple of legislators, and others from all professions: attorneys, farmers, construction workers, IT specialists, cops, etc. One older rancher I knew, a member of a militant polygamist sect--Kingstons--which owns  land and businesses in Utah and five other states, told me: "I'm trying to beat Brother Brigham's record before I die! I'm marrying my 29th wife next Friday." He didn't live to beat the record because BY had dozens of wives. The girl, that Merlin Kingston the rancher I knew married,  was fourteen. The old guy died the afternoon of his "wedding", hopefully before he had ruined her life. The Kingstons own many businesses that many of us have unwittingly patronized, adding to the Kingston's wealth--conservatively put at 170 million!
Some figures suggest that there are up to 20,000 practicing polygamists in Utah alone. Who really knows. The Utah border is haven for colonies. The most famous town being Hillsdale in south-central Utah--home of Warren Jeffs before he started living in jail--on the Arizona line. But polygamists are every where in Utah and in the surrounding states. They tend to keep to themselves so few people realize that the oddly dressed women who live in a cluster of houses at the end of a cul de sac in many Salt Lake County neighborhoods are sister wives.

Love seems to come in strange ways. I'm OK with polygamy (no, I'm not advertising to become one!) as long as the children aren't hurt. But how can a secluded life and strict fundamentalism not hurt a child not even counting the many alleged victims of child marriage that occur?
For Warren Jeffs love will be in the form of a "room mate" who shares his cell in a Texas prison. The only advice I have for Jeffs is: if you relax. . . . . . . .! May you live long, may you become a plural prison wife yourself.

Riding my bicycle seems to bring clarity to my mind, which is odd because I am seriously ADHD. At the best there are hundreds of unexplored strings of stimulus trying to be processed at the same time inside my head. I could find more peace if I stood on one of the north south runways at Salt Lake International. The often overwhelming noise from competing ideas, things I glimpse (deer hiding in brush along some of our busiest streets, a rare bird, an odd human, out of the corner of my eye, a totally crazy driver talking on the cell phone (or texting) and trying to drive without seeming intoxicated), sounds like the noise of Victoria Falls.
But riding in traffic makes me focus. This is helpful especially since Salt Lake City, in a recent Gallup Poll, was ranked as the sixth worst city to drive in!! If we could design a car specifically for SLC it would look as follows:

• the steering wheel would have ergonomically correct slots for your knees so that when you use them to steer, while you're eating, texting, putting on make-up, or picking your nose and then gloating about your trophy (yes I saw you lady, you gorgeous thirty something blond creature, the one driving the BMW Porsche-want-to-be sports car down Highland Drive)  your knees would not slide on the steering wheel and you would at least have some control.
• No signal lights or the switch bar (which if you're curious is on the left side of the steering column on most cars) inside the car. While it wouldn't save much in the way of weight, wouldn't give you better gas mileage, or increase your speed when you run a red light, it would be less (broken glass, plastic, car parts, etc) for the road crew to clean up after you t-bone someone in the intersection. And you'd have to find another place to hang your little scented tree. 
• It would have a foldout tray across the center of the steering wheel to hold your makeup, hamburger, etc. The tray would be designed with a gyro to keep it level. The gyro (A gyro or gyroscope is a device for measuring or maintaining orientation, based on the principles of conservation of angular momentum ) should never be confused with a gyro. If you drive, like I think you do, you need a better gyro inside your head while your noshing on a gyro. The simplify even further--just in case a legislator or Congressperson reads this--the gyroscope was invented by the Germans and the gyro was presumably first served up by the Greeks. One keeps you somewhat stable the other can give you heartburn. 
• The car would have a sign that flashes on automatically: when you turn right out of the left turn lane (or left out of the right turn lane), run a red light, or drive down the road like a drunk weaving from side to side while texting, thereby cutting off semi-trucks, bicyclists, joggers pushing their kids in strollers. The sign would say in brightly flashing neon: "Caution this aggressive, moronic, and seriously distracted  driver's head is stuck way up where the sun don't shine! Tee Hee! My Bad!!"
• And for bicyclists, joggers (with or without strollers), and cars approaching an intersection with the green light in their favor, every car would have a klaxon horn that would blare at 200 decibels when a distracted driver was coming up from behind or approaching an intersection: "Watch out dumb-ass approaching!" Or maybe a device that sends a signal to DMV every time a dumb-ass runs a red light, cuts off any of the above, or starts to do the texting weave that would keep track. After two or three violations DMV would take away their license and make them take the bus or ride a bike to work for an year! The car would also be outfitted with an alarm that would alert the cops if the dumb-ass driver got back in the car while under suspension. Perhaps the car's engine would immediately seize.

In spite of crazy drivers, potholes the size of small cars, trash and gravel pushed into the bike lane by construction and the endless digging up of utilities in the shoulder of most roads, I find riding my bicycle fun and relaxing. I somehow blots out all of the competing thoughts, noises (and voices), scents, anxieties and I'm more aware of myself, am better able to work on the issues I have left to fix, and I'm even more aware of crazy drivers coming up behind me.
But be forewarned: If I'm hit by someone who is talking on a cell phone, texting or otherwise distracted I have instructed my family to slap you with a law suit that would make it impossible for you to ever have children or drive again.

Surviving the Tea Party

I would like to think that the Tea Party is like a festered blister and if properly treated--not enabled--it will shrink and go away after time. If the Republicans find themselves held hostage by the TP it is their fault.
The TP says (from their web site:http://theteaparty.net )

"The Tea Party movement is a grassroots movement of millions of like-minded Americans from all backgrounds and political parties. Tea Party members share similar core principles supporting the United States Constitution as the Founders intended, such as:

•  Limited federal government
•  Individual freedoms
•  Personal responsibility
•  Free markets
•  Returning political power to the states and the people

As a movement, The Tea Party is not a political party nor is looking to form a third political party any time soon. The Tea Party movement, is instead, about reforming all political parties and government so that the core principles of our Founding Fathers become, once again, the foundation upon which America stands."

But. . . . . .! 

I agree with the Founding Fathers  who (Thomas Jefferson) strongly recommended limited government

(not all of them agreed to this principle)

.  However, if you read the writing of several of these men they did not necessarily favor semi-autonomous states. Instead they strongly favored the idea of individual states that could manage certain needs of the citizens while at the same time presenting a strong united front: thus the Name The United States. Limited government had it's place in a simple world of thirteen states and a population of about 3 million people. The first census (1790) reported a population of: 3,348, 458 (in the thirteen original states) which did not include blacks, Native Americans, and depending on who was taking the census and where, women.This figure is just slightly less than the 2010 Census that reported about 3.8 million people inside the city limits of Los Angeles CA. Presumably this figure did include those excluded in the first census in 1790. 

Our population is close to 300 million and many of the fifty states have proven that they can not manage a broad spectrum of programs. Some of these states are very close to default. Government can be "fixed" as I've written in other blog entries. But the words efficiency and effectiveness do not form a nice tight package., Indeed they do not belong in the same package. Government and businesses centralize for efficiency and decentralize for effectiveness. The idea that some of the Founding Fathers had was that the federal government would manage the larger pieces of government to more efficiently distribute funding and support and that the individual states would manage these programs for effectiveness, because application of the funds would be closer to where individual needs reside. 

The current opportunity for efficiency and effectiveness in government is to close the holes I've written about that bleed national programs so badly that when the anemic flows do reach the states (that further bleed these programs) there is not enough to meet the needs of all of those people that need the help. 

Individual freedoms are nice to talk about but given the core question in Zero Sum--what is in my best interest--impossible to implement at least in a broad sense. Again it is the issue of a huge population. Much of what we do on a daily basis must have some regulation. How much is to much? That indeed is the question. 

I readily and wholeheartedly  agree with the idea of personal responsibility but again given zero sum many people do not have the same definition of responsibility that I have. As a consequence my taxes and insurance premiums (to name just a couple) are higher that they should be. In my world I would say: you can choose not to wear your seat belt or ride your bicycle without a helmet, but if you get killed not following these concepts (one a law and the other a strong suggestion) then I do not want to be penalized for your stupidity and poor choices. I do not want to be charged "my share" of your emergency room expenses. Let that burden be placed on you and your family. Would the TP support this? Probably until one of them had to pay their own way and then they would want shared liability!! What about abortion or gay marriage? Does a woman have the right to choose in the TP world? I don't think so!!! Shared costs, liability and responsibility form the core values of socialism! Oh my!

The concept of free market has always been a myth! IF the market and business were not controlled by just a few people (globally) it would work quite well. It can and does work at a local level but that is why you pay more for organic carrots at the farmers market than you do at the local natural food store or the chain grocery.

The TP stands for all of these things but only within certain sideboards. Again does it include the rights of individual Americans to make all of their own choices even if they ensure society that they will accept all costs and personal responsibility? NO! The world that the TP promotes is an idealistic picture of what might have worked in the thirteen original colonies but only for a while. Big government sucks and is very inefficient at best but it does try to manage zero sum in the interests of the people. 

.

First aid kit when friends are in conflict

Conflict is a growth industry for mediators like myself. It's sad that I can say it's a growth industry! I would love to work myself out of a job. Yet the growth of conflict is, in my view, directly proportional to the growth in stress caused by many issues.
But what do you do when friends get into conflict with a high potential to ruin their relationship? What do you say to them?
I have a couple of friends who have been building critical mass in their relationship for years. The fuze has lately been lit! Ultimatums and demands have been made and emotional walls that were already under construction have been finished and fortified, and the parties are in the process of enlisting their friends. This is natural. We go to our trusted friends for support. Yet, what we, as the friend must remember, is that we aren't getting both sides of the story. We are getting one person's "truth" which will look significantly different than the "truth" the other person is telling. Whose side do we choose? Logically we would say: "I want to remain neutral," but if one of the parties has approached us or if we like one of them better we will subconsciously weigh in on their side.
Conflict is a contagious disease. If we are recruited (which we may not realize that we've been recruited) we react to the stress of the conflict by sharing it with someone we love. In a way, we are recruiting them into the fray! The disease can infect our personal relationship with our loved one very easily.

When I am mediating conflict I ask both parties to share (briefly) their story. Then I tell them that the past is non-negotiable because it can not be changed. We can, at best, hope to survive the present and negotiate an agreement to settle the conflict. An agreement does not assign blame, it does not pick a side, it does not make judgements. It simply creates a future condition that the parties agree will manage their relationship.

I'm trying to remain neutral in the conflict my friends are in. I definitely do not have both sides of the story and what I do know I've gathered from my historic interaction with them and what I've been told second hand. So, how will I survive their conflict? How will I prevent their conflict from infecting my relationship with my partner? I told my partner that I wanted to remain as neutral as I could be. I said I didn't have enough facts to weigh in, and I told her that the "facts" she was getting were heavily weighed and one-sided. I was careful to explain enlistment, "absolute truth" and other conflict traps. Then I told her that I saw my role as that of a listener, not for my friends but of her. If our friend's conflict was hurting my partner I promised I would listen to Her Fears, that I would hold her close, that I would gently but firmly not pick sides, and that the only relationship I would work hard to save would be ours.