Maybe there's something to this "collective action" thing after all . . .

FROM: Charles Kernaghan, National Labor Committee

RE: Under Pressure, Wal-Mart Changes Policy on Swine Flu

It is not enough, but it is a first step.
Last Friday, November 6, on Good Morning America, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman said no Wal-Mart employee would be fired for having swine flu. Still under pressure, on Monday (November 9), a senior vice president told the Washington Post that workers needing to stay home due to the flu will not receive a demerit or be docked their wages. Workers can use the sick leave they have accrued to pay for their first day out.
It is no small thing that popular pressure can force the largest employer in the U.S. to change its punitive policies.
Wal-Mart employees quickly point out that these policy changes should also cover workers who most stay home to take care of children or other family members who are sick with the flu.
This should be just the first step in ending Wal-Mart's punitive demerit system and the docking of wages when their employees are out sick, no matter if it is for swine flu or seasonal flu, strep throat, a 24-hour virus, conjunctivitis or taking care of a sick child. This would be the right thing to do. It would protect both Wal-Mart employees and customers from the spread of their illnesses.
Wal-Mart must now immediately review all cases where employees were fired, directly or indirectly because they contracted swine flu. We do not believe that the attached account of Tricia, a worker who was recently fired from the Wal-Mart supercenter in Nampa, Idaho for having swine flu, is an isolated case.
Wal-Mart employers who have been fired for having the swine flu should contact the NLC. We will help. Please spread the word.
Tricia worked 3 ½ years at Wal-Mart, Before being fired for having Swine flu.

Down with the fomenters of discord and divisiveness! Ostracise them at once!

[honestly, tho, R.D. Laing is much better at writing these things than I am - and he had more first-hand experience with them. See Knots (1970)]

Your insight is really blindness. That is my insight - which you can't see, b/c you're blind.

Isn't it Just Like People to have such a dim view of human nature.

Now, isn't it just like them to be so prejudiced against us?

Remember: If it's bad, and it happens to you, then someone is to blame. And that someone ISN'T YOU.

We love one another because we are not them.
They hate us, and it's OK
to hate the haters . . .

every love has to find its corresponding enemy

from _Joe's Marginalia_ : _A Selection of the Poems of Laura Riding_

paradox/reversal

(stasis)

- lyric cluster -

i.e., she's bigger than love

subsumed/objectified.

*     *     *

fuck-you poem  -  Millay

self-realization?
v. alienation

soul-retrieval -

a type -
a fantasy > what she tends towards herself

de-corporeal --> anorexic?

* * *

(goddess?)

yikes       beautiful dead woman?

multiple but one

no possession possible

rather than vice-versa

having v. seeing 

* * *


past life?

cut off
from past -
hi modernist topos

- portrait
- degraded saint

- Cf. Loy's Bowery poems

Apology of Genius

Eve as apple?
knowledge of good
& evil - or Ultimate Knowledge?

Graves?

Veiled goddess.

* * *


the anti-Beatrice?

the Ultimate as
dark & female -
that can't be named

love &/as death

declarative
statements,
detachable/
modular

woman as lack/gap?

not an aporia

surcease

* * *


aphrodite from the spume

so, antipodes -
topsy-turvydom

"ALL ONE!"

for herself

The Kansas Blotter Interviews

Here's an intriguing new project by poet/sci-fi writer Ben Cartwright - The Kansas Blotter - an interview series of writers in Lawrence KS. Lawrence KS?? you might ask. And the answer is Yes. I still wish someone would do a literary history of this town - what a fascinating core-sample of US literary history that would be!

Anyhow, here's Ben's description of the site:

"The Kansas Blotter interviews are conducted by me, in Lawrence, KS, with a variety of writers and artists. The purpose of these interviews is to investigate creative practice in my community, and the world at large, and to foster a feeling of connection and understanding between working artists. I hope these interviews will be listened to by everyone. Barring that, I hope they will be listened to by people for whom they have some use. Please don't give these interviews new lives, in other contexts, without first contacting me for permission."