Ahoy lovely readers,
What a month it’s been. I have felt far too busy for someone still spending 90% of his time at home. Between work and gardening (with the certainty that nothing shall grow) and trying to bike more during our false start to Spring and somehow still planning things for the second half of the year and simply not sleeping much at all…it’s been a lot.
I wanted to take a moment to say that it was a hard month and this issue reflects it a bit more than I’d like, but these are the things I wanted/needed to share this month. Below you’ll find bits of local history and politics, a lamentable loss for workers (though one we must still count for the partial victory it was), and a lamentable personal loss to boot.
With all that heavy, I gotta keep it light somewhere. But for those three things, I’ve endeavored to keep the rest on the nicer side of things.
May as well start right here in the intro: I got my first jab, something about which I was unreasonably excited…but then again you all more or less experienced the same thing I did the past year so maybe everyone getting vaxxed feels that way? In any case, I am so thrilled for jab 2, the immune-response, and a feeling that I may strike out into the world without posing unreasonable danger to myself or others.
A Chance for Big Change in the City
In the summer of 2020, amid protests ignited across the country by the murders of George Floyd and Brianna Taylor by police, activists in Portland, Maine secured a seemingly inauspicious victory. BLM Portland—now Black Portland Organizers Working to End Racism, or simply Black P.O.W.E.R.—and others pushed a ballot question to form a charter commission to consider changing city regulations regarding financing and other elements of city governance. And they won with more than 72% of Portland residence voting in favor of the question.
While protests in other cities focused on calls to defund the police—and in a very small number of cities, including Austin, Tx, such calls were moderately successful—Portland efforts pushed for something more politically wonky, something hard to boil down to an easily digested nugget, something which needed more than a mere moment to communicate. Why?
In 1923, fearing democratic elections and changing demographics would shift power in the city, Portlanders surrendered their right to popularly elect their mayor in favor of an appointed City Manager with outsized powers. The effort to abolish democratic control of city government was lead by F. Eugene Farnsworth, “King Kleagle of The Imperial Satrapy of Maine” and accomplished with the help of the Portland Chamber of Commerce. I almost didn’t use his idiotic title, preferring not to dignify the pretensions of the KKK, but ultimately chose to because sometimes bigots make fun of themselves for you.
The story of the Klan’s massive victory in Maine’s largest city was written up in the September 10, 1923 edition of the NYTimes. This racist legacy remains to this day, and not just in Portland. In response to the special election of two democratic senators in Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp signed into law new Jim Crow voting provisions aimed at Black disenfranchisement while a Black legislator was arrested outside his office for knocking on the door to speak.
Portland now has a democratically elected mayor, but only since 2011 and then only possessing a relatively small amount of power. The appointed City Manager continues to wield the majority of power in the city, a fact which hamstrings popular mandate time and time again. BLM Portland, Southern Maine DSA, and affiliated groups were able to direct righteous anger and fervor into specific and substantive legislative movement in 2020. They opened the door to rework how the city of Portland operates, something which serves to empower not only racial minorities in the city, but indeed Portlanders of every stripe, people long since ignored by an undemocratic arrangement of city governance.
On June 8th, 2021, nearly 1 year after this victory, the city of Portland will elect 9 of 12 members of a commission (3 members will be appointed by the City Council) to revise the city charter, which is effectively the city’s constitution. Commission candidates looking to rectify city government’s history are focusing attention again on the clear racial animus which designed how things continue to work to this day. People First Portland, the organization behind last November’s largely successful ballot initiatives securing a $15 minimum wage, a local Green New Deal, a ban on facial recognition, and strong rent control regulations, established on online forum to allow Portlanders to weigh in on policy ideas for the future of the city, with an eye to providing those charter commission members interested in actual democratic governance with the voice of their community. (If you live in Portland, you can declare your support of various candidate positions here.)
Portland has an opportunity not only to address the city’s racist past and present, but to redesign city governance in accordance with popular mandate. We have the opportunity to turn this city that we love into one that seeks to serve all, fairly and equitably. In just two short months, we’ll elect those who will have the ability to help the city shed the modern manifestations of a horribly racist legacy. Racial division serve those with money and power. It pits those without against their natural allies and comrades, one another. It will always be part of our past, but it damn sure doesn’t have to be part of our future.
Questionable Boxes
Ever notice how a lot of 18 wheelers (or box trucks, lorries, whatever you call them) have a metal quilted pattern on the doors?
I’ve always assumed this was for refrigeration. You see the panels on non-cold trucks as well, but standardization between the two to the benefit of cold storage seemed..like maybe a thing, so why not just leave it at that?
According to Jalopnik, it’s not to do with refrigeration at all. Instead, the irregular shiny surface of the pattern is meant to reflect heat away from the box without directly blinding other drivers. The article makes this obligatory joke: “Truck drivers and tractor trailers are actually more considerate than the cursed bunch of drivers who cruise around with HID lights that are not properly dialed in for road use, and inevitably end up damn-near blinding the rest of us.”
Not everyone was convinced of this simple answer, and not because simple answers usually hide a lot of unsatisfactory complexity. One of my favorite industrial design blogs posed a clear financial reason why there must be more to it: these panels cost between $800-1000, and it’s hard to believe they couldn’t simply paint the trucks with a flat finish if the ultimate point is saving other drivers.
Whatever the real, most salient reason for these panels, it cannot be denied that they do diffuse reflected light. Whether this is a specific feature or just a fortune side effect of something else hardly matters. I prefer the idea that it’s good for them, good for us, good for all.
Bessemer: A Loss, Not a Failure
I considered writing a piece this month on the results of the union vote at the Amazon fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama but ultimately decided against it. There are many writers far better equipped to talk about organization and unionization news than I. If this news is of interest to you—and I am of the belief that this news should be of interest and import to absolutely everyone, as we are all affected by worker unionization no matter our social position—you already know the disheartening news that the unionization drive did not success.
I say did not succeed, because I think to call this effort and out and out failure would be a huge disservice. While the news is absolutely disheartening, and the successful formation of a union at an American Amazon fulfillment center might have set off similar drive all over the country, we should still take note and inspiration from how far these workers got. Amazon was clearly terrified of a YES vote, as was made so evident by a bungled and transparent social media effort which both included actual bots and made Amazon employees look like poorly crafted bots and saw the company first deny and later admit that their employees must regularly relieve themselves in bottles and bags due to overwork. The company scrambled to combat well deserved bad press and forced employees into endless captive audience, anti-union meetings. They knew the death knell unionization represented for how they do business today. It was the workers fighting for better working conditions and solidarity that did that, and that will always be a win, even if it’s a partial one.
While we take a moment to feel the loss, we have to learn from it and push forward to the next fight. There are learnings to take away, but ultimately the deck is stacked against workers and passage of the PRO act would go a long way towards making the tactics Amazon rolled out this time around illegal in the next fight. Even as I am pessimistic about the prospects for passage of the PRO act, I know we have to push to pass the most viable pro-worker legislation under consideration in decades and would restore necessary rights we’ve lost over the past 100 years. We must remember, and teach the next generation, that all protections for workers came after hard struggle. The 40 hour work week, the 5 day week, sick time off, recourse against sexual harassment (by no means comprehensive or complete, but there by a measure), these were all hard won. And we can win again, but never easily.
A Little Room Left on the Plate?
Not content with already having far too many things to fill my days—reading, cycling, gardening, working, writing, cooking, and so on—I made the somewhat spontaneous decision to buy a used keyboard. I have never played one, nor any proxy of a piano, before.
I grew up around good music and solid musicians. I have an aunt whose claim to fame/greatest shame (yep, did that on purpose) is not sleeping with Stevie Ray Vaughn when she had the chance. I’ve never been terribly musically inclined, but I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for the violin and the piano.
My wife is a lovely cellist, so now I have a keyboard. I have grand ambitious of being able to host jams with friends and strangers, something which requires a proper end to COVID risk mitigation and some measure of skill with my new instrument.
Thus far I’ve not found much time to play, and my heart aches that I don’t foresee having much time soon, but I’ve found a place of prominence for my new, soon-to-be hobby horse to live and I figured out the note progression for Ode to Joy. That at least is very exciting.
In Memorium
On 31 March, my wife and I had to make the decision to put our 13 year old Corgi, Benazir, to sleep. After several weeks of fast decline, it was clear her quality of life would not return. It was the first time in my life that I’ve been with a pet as they passed. I know it was the right thing to do, but that is a poor salve.
I’ve been fortunate thus far. I’ve not lost many loved ones. I did lose my grandmother just over 25 years ago, and I’m told that in my grief I stopped speaking for 6 months. Despite being 10 years old at the time, I don’t remember it. Those 6 months are simply absent from my memory. I was very close with her and it was like losing a parent.
It feels as though I’m experiencing something altogether new. I got Benazir when she was 8 weeks old. She’s been the only constant in my life for the past 13 years. She accompanied me as I moved across the country three times, through multiple relationships and into marriage, through the end of undergrad and all of graduate school. She was particular, often seeming to possess a cat’s soul. She was hyper focused on food and toys to the exclusion of all else. She was restless, something I attribute to my own restlessness as well as her being a working dog. She was sweet and willful, yet generally very well behaved. And she was comforting though many hard times.
Though the loss is very new, I feel fortunate still to have known her for the years I did, and to have a reason to feel as I do now. Much as I hate it, I’m grateful for the grief.
Rest in peace, little love.