I was born in 1964, four years into the Space Race. Science was everywhere in American life and a cornerstone of the public & private school. We watched in awe as Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the Moon and Jacques Cousteau took us into the deep ocean each week on TV. Chemistry sets were popular items at toy stores and Mr Wizard shared the world of Science with young minds on Saturday morning.
Then something happened in the 1970s that has begun to poison America and it has been spurred on by white people.
"Back to Nature" happened. Failed Hippies decided that technology was evil and began to back away from science and began to embrace wives's tales and folk medicine. At first it was only a small number of drug-addled losers who headed off into the woods, not the real woods like you'd find in Alaska, but the safe woods of Colorado and Vermont. From those sad few has sprung forth a billion dollar industry of books, produce and dietary supplements that should be considered monuments to quackery, yet they are not and otherwise intelligent people (most White) have embraced well markets fairy tales and magic potions. Alternative medicine, alternative fuel and all kinds of blame-your-parents self-help books (DVDs and Cd's) can be commonly found in the homes of people who should know better. As I covered briefly in the last entry, the new White has backed away from religion but it seems that it has only backed away from traditional religion because in 2008 it seems that the New White of America has a pretty ridged demi-religion based on faux-science.
Alternative medicine has it's roots in 19th Century snake-oil salesmen who traveled the land selling miracle elixirs that cured everything from gout to back-pain. It was usually grain alcohol and sundry other useless additives. The swindling salesmen were usually hunted down and hung as people died from their miracle cure. Somehow snake-oil has made a comeback in the form of Alternative Medicine and the supplement industry. Once again snake-oil salesmen canvas the country, this time via paid commercial television info-mercials, making the exact same claims for health breakthroughs that "Conventional Science" has yet to achieve. They can cure baldness, impotence, aging, obesity and even cancer. How this is allowed and why these people are not all in prison defies what used to be known as logic. My all-time favorite alternative medical treatment is the Colonic. Essentially you shove a hose up your ass and pump warm water into your rectum. One bullshit Internet site says that it removes accumulated waste from the colon, prevents constipation and improves overall health. The problem is that none of that is true. Why? Because today they (real Doctors) can shove a camera up your ass and see what is up there and guess what they do not find? Accumulated waste. Your intestines and colon are very efficient at moving waste through your body, if anything gets stuck in there you'd know very fast because you get sick and then you die in a matter of days. So if you know some idiot who gets a colonic on a regular basis it's not doing him any good and he/she may just like having stuff pumped into his/her asshole. Then there is the whole "Environmental Sensitivity" bullshit issue where people are "Allergic" to modern chemicals and have to live in special homes and apartments. These people need mental help, not an immunologist and worse, some of these places are built with taxpayer money. Why this concept isn't given it's proper due, which is to be laughed off of the planet, is beyond me as well. It's Hypochondria plain and simple. Yet main-stream media treats the subject with great sensitivity yet on the very same broadcast the anchor people (usually white) will read a story about the Virgin Mary appearing in a tree while rolling their eyes. Would they roll their eyes if the Virgin Mary spoke and said that they need to live in chemical-free housing and get enemas every Thursday? Might as well, if you're gonna be stupid then be completely stupid.
Not all of those anti-technology idiots fled into the woods, one became a US Senator and eventually became Vice President of the United States. He even co-won the Nobel Prize for his activism in raising consciousness about global warming, the bench mark of the New White's overall stupidity. Al Gore is a religious fanatic and he has twisted his apocalyptic vision into a very profitable business using the emerging science of climatology (which really began in WWII) to weave a twisted tale of woe where - stop me if you've heard this before - man, in his arrogance has made the Earth foul with evil (technology) and hence God, I mean the Earth has begun to cause the seas to rise and soon mankind will be erased by a great flood and a host of other biblical plagues. Well, he's left the Bible out of it but it's pretty much the flood story of the boom of Genesis and the Egypt part of Exodus thrown in for affect. If you've ever read the Unabomber Manifesto and then Gore's "Earth in the Balance" you cannot tell the two appart because both are written by mad men. Gore just looks better on TV but he's a nutcase. Climate change is very real but the facts are obscured by bullshit as big industry scrambles to cash in on the emerging "Green" technology market. Who's the biggest producer of windmill generators? Shell Oil. Yet people are passing laws giving tax payer monies to windmill generator companies because it's "Green". So in the 2008 we elect a President who will stop giving tax breaks to oil companies but then well just give them taxpayer money because they build windmills. That is logic only the New White can fathom.
Then you throw in the whole self-help industry. While the New White poo-poo Scientology they shell out big bucks for books and seminars that all pretty much tell them the same thing that Scientology would tell them: Your problems are somebody else's fault.
Usually your parents. Heaven forbid that you accept responsability for your own actions, that just won't do because that would mean that you've been in full control all along and you might just be an asshole. No, Mom & Dad fucked me up and my getting VD at 15 and losing my job at 34 because I came to work drunk was THEIR FAULT. At least Scientology hangs the blame on aliens which is slightly more ehtical because there's not the ugliness and akward Thanksgivings that you get with the self-help gurus. I had issues with my father and step father. I had good counceling from a certified psychological expert and I was able to move on with my life. That's how it is supposed to be, I was hurt, I was healed and I'm okay. The professional victim has been discussed at large in the media and rightly so and I don't want to re-hash it here. My issue is that just because your parents sucked is no excuse for whatever stupid actions you take. Unless your parents by you booze/drugs/hookers and then force you to use them then the fault lies with you.
The AA knows this. Their 12-Step program is still the single most effective way to beat addiction and change behavior but it cannot be adapted by Schools, Colleges or the Government. Why? Because the 11th & 12th steps involve praying or meditating to make a contact with God. Uh oh! The arguement against seems logical, that you are simply surrendering one crutch (booze) for a new one(God) yet there is no other treatment (drug) free that can tout the same success that AA can. I'm not pro-religion, I'm just pointing out what works best and that while the New White has turned it's back on solid science to embrace a religion of the oppressed and abused that has it's own dogma of special (re: suppressed) science, the New White thumbs its collective nose at any mention of God.
Much like a bunch of pathetic vampires.
It it hard to believe that we put men on the Moon and have mapped the human genome.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Saturday, November 22, 2008
The Disconnect Between White People And Religion
There has been a dramatic fundamental shift in how White Americans deal with religion since the 1970s and it is not good. The other day my buddy, Mike, was working in Carmel and was having a discussion with a client when he reference the Bible. He says that it was if he had pulled out a gun because his client, an otherwise smart,educated and wealthy man completely became unglued. It was like showing a Vampire a Cross. This is an all too common reaction that is exclusive to White people and it is both sad and more than a little silly. I do understand why there is a issue with religion in today's American society but it does not justify the near hysteria demonstrated by White people no matter which side of the debate they are on.
A Quick & Sloppy History
America's first large group of immigrants were Puritans, who settled in New England to escape religious persecution in England. They soon got around to persecuting non-Puritans which seems to have established a trend in America as new immigrant populations arrive that have different religious beliefs. America was huge and this allowed sub-sects of Anglican churches to spring up and thrive between 1690 and 1899. Shakers, Quakers, Methodists, Baptists, Brethren and those crazy people who dance with poisonous snakes all became part of the American religious landscape. To deal with this the Congress during the Constitutional Convention made a point of mandating a separation of church & state by forbidding making of law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. In some states at that time you couldn't run for office if you didn't belong to the right church. This has worked pretty well until the 1980s. In the old days, religion and church was something that White people did for a variety of reasons. Church was a good social gathering, a good place to catch up on the week's activities and chat with friends. Church was good for businessmen who could network and drum up work for the next week. Church was also a good place to go and for an hour get a dose of the Bible either in soothing Episcopal tones or in fire & brimstone sermons. The other six days of the week most White people went about their days business as usual but some (many) would try to incorporate what they were reminded about in church into their activities. The majority of White people kept their religion to themselves and minded their own business. In the 1920s it would actually be the Catholic Churches in Chicago and New York that began to force government to do their bidding as motion pictures became more popular. Movies brought "Dangerous ideas and questionable moral behavior" into their neighborhoods and were considered a threat to the minds of young Catholic children. Their cause was soon taken up by the Southern Baptists and smaller Evangelical churches and soon the movie industry was forced to adopt a strict code that made movies suck until the 1960s. Outside to the theaters things were civil until the turmoil of the 1960s. Young people replaced LSD and pot for Jesus and the Bible. Anything went and often did. Then in 1973 the landmark Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion began the snowball that has become the Conservative, Right-Wing Christian (CRWC) movement of today. Up until 1973 the government had allowed itself to give judgement in favor of religious groups [ not that this was all bad. John Bron was a religious fanatic and later the Republican Party was formed by anti-Slavery Christians who plunged the United States into a civil war to decide that question once and for all]
The CRWC movement was a reaction to the liberal intelligentsia who had been actively trying to push out traditional morals (as the CRWC saw them) and instituting a non-moral society with concepts like relativism. Roe v Wade was the straw that broke the camel's back and would ignite a movement that would eventually put two Presidents into the White House. The problem was that the CRWC sold their souls to the Republican Party (GOP) in order to gain power. The GOP in the late 70s was crippled by Nixon and Watergate and saw the CRWC (and their money) as a way back into power so they opened their doors wide and thus created the single most unholy alliance since the Third Reich and the Vatican. All a GOP candidate had to do was be against abortion and maybe be against gay marriage and they got the votes. Nobody cared that many were actually crooks. Plus, the Republican Party was against social spending which meant that believers in Jesus were electing politicians into power who were fucking the poor. Worse, the cuts in social programs under the Republicans lead to MORE abortions as financial options of singe women dwindled under their leadership. Non-fundamentalists and non-Christians became disgusted by this alliance of the GOP and CRWC so soon there became a large rift as White people no longer minded their business and gleefully stuck there noses into other people's lives to question/mock their motives. This went both ways which has gotten us to where we are today.
9/11/2001
The anti-religious White Americans got their broken camel's back on a morning in September of 2001 when 19 religious fanatics hijacked four commercial passenger jets and flew three of them into the World Trade Center in New York and into the Pentagon in Washington D.C. ( the fourth jetliner was flown into the ground in Pennsylvania as passengers staged a revolt). They saw this act as proof that religion was a cesspool for the weak minded and a backwater movement gained traction. This was the Militant Atheist (MA) and they saw their chance to step out into the sunlight and raise their smug voices to point out the insanity of religion in the 21st Century. Atheism had been around for a while. The Communists were big on it and in the 1940s, 50s,60s and 70s it had flourished in college campuses amongst Philosophy students. It was harmless and in many ways liberating because one felt that their personal conduct was based upon their own morals and feelings instead of being dictated by an unseen, all-controlling being. Militant Atheists were few and far between and seen as trouble makers. Madalyn Murray O'Hair
would fall into this category for while she is seen as a champion of the First Amendment the fact is that she was a con-artist who (according to her son) took money from a lot of people. She began a chain of events that has co-formed the foundation of the religious disconnect of the New White American.
The MA are different than traditional atheists just as the CRWC are different than traditional Christians in that they do not conduct themselves as atheists. The MA are so solid in their beliefs that they have turned atheism into...wait for it...a religion. Make no mistake on this, the belief that there is absolutely no God/creator/supreme universal intelligence is as equal a statement of FAITH as the belief in a God (or gods). It is the intellectually honest truth of the matter. That's why the old-school atheists were so quiet, theirs was a philosophical belief and not a statement of fact which in the case of a God is also a statement of faith. So Americans was divided into the CRWC, who elect politicians who are everything BUT Christian and the MA who are conducting a religious war against other religions but don't know that it is a religious war because they've turned Atheism into a de facto religion. In between the two are everyone else. People who have some kind of religious faith but don't go to church , church-going folks who don't drink the Kool-aid and normal non-believers. So as the MA file lawsuits over increasingly stupid things and the CRWC lick their wounds from the 2008 election the majority of White Americans just want to avoid the topic of religion all together and it is starting to make them(us) crazy. Some literally run from the room if religion is brought up and of course everyone is now offended at any perceived slight. So honest discussions of faith are few and far between outside of church and I don't see this as a good thing.
Most people have not bothered to read the Bible or read beyond the Bible into the archives of Biblical Scholarship where one can learn how the Bible was written and who wrote what and why. What comes into focus through Biblical scholarship is that a group of people were trying to make sense of crazy times and bring some kind of order into play to cool everyone off and make them less crazy. They didn't have all the answers and you'll find that today we don't have many more answers than they did. The problem is that you cannot teach Biblical scholarship in a public school and while a good Catholic School will offer these classes you often will not find Biblical scholarship discussion within the church itself. So the faithful are at a loss to the developments in archeology and scholarship that have fleshed out the Bible and the Gospels bringing them into clearer focus. So you have churches that don't want to educate people about what is going on in Biblical scholarship and you have people who think that they know everything about religion yet cannot answer basic questions about the subject even if only to dispute it.
For example, there are many MA and young religious types who call Tom Cruise's church a religion. They don't know the difference between a cult and a religion. This is painfully common even among better educated White folks as well. A cult is easy to get into and hard/impossible to get out of/away from. I walked away from the Episcopal church in 1979 and they've never said boo about it. They've never tried to kidnap me and reprogram me and I do not even receive a harassing newsletter. Church doors are always open and you can walk in and walk out any time you please. That some self-proclaimed Atheists don't know this calls into question their judgement and that other young Christian types the same as true as they somehow see the faith of Cruise as somehow on equal apostolic footing.
Really, you gotta be white to think like this.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Up Scale Grocery Shopping
Living on the Monterey Peninsula I find my grocery shopping options restricted to small independent markets and large “Up Scale” chains. Although deals can be found the food is mostly more expensive than similar items I would buy at markets in lower income areas. So I limit my shopping in these places to goodies that are exclusive to them. However I find shopping in upscale supermarkets a great chance to observe upper-middle class and wealthier white people in one of their new natural habitats. They put in a Trader Joe’s down the street from where I work and I go there at least once a week to buy their pre-packed salads and maybe some cookies. The folks who shop at Trader Joe’s are the poster children of the new white in America.
First off simply entering the Trader Joe’s parking lot is an act of suicide if you are a pedestrian. Although people who shop at Joe’s tend to think of themselves as intelligent and socially aware this does not extend to pedestrians, city buses nor other drivers. This was observed behavior at the other Trader Joe’s over in Pacific Grove, CA, were I stopped going after my third near death experience with either a soccer mom in a over-sized SUV talking on the cell phone or a Mercedes driven by a guy in a suit who is at war with the world. So awful at driving are those who shop at Trader Joe’s that the city of Monterey has been compelled to move the Transit Center four blocks away because it has become too dangerous for the Transit system to risk the lives of their riders as they attempt to cross the street at the funky intersection. You need to understand that with the New White in America it’s only about them and their needs and while they slap Amnesty International and anti-Bush stickers on their vehicles they have no empathy for their fellow drivers or the hapless pedestrian who gets in their way.
Once inside of the market you find the same situation that you’ll find at Borders except at a much accelerated rate. Also, many of these people rarely read because they already know everything. Here you will find people who will cut you off with their shopping carts and block off huge sections with those carts as they attempt to make up their minds. It’s as if they take up station to blockade a location. The next group is mostly middle-aged female and they are what I call “Zombie-Hawks” because they movie as if they are in a trance but they also dart from section to section, their eyes fixed solely on their target. Often there are near collisions as two zombie cross paths and the new White way is visible at these moments because instead of a pleasant apology (“Oh, I’m sorry. I wasn’t watching where I was going”) the zombies will shoot each other dirty looks. The phrase “Excuse me” is absent at Trader Joe’s as it is at Borders. As I stood in front of the frozen burritos a older women just wedges up beside of me and then swings around and wedges in from the other side never once acknowledging my presence if even only to ask me to move. This has become so common that I’ve surrendered to the vulgarity of the new normal. If a 70 year old woman, who should know better, cannot even bother with basic civility then there is truly no hope.
This is NOT a knock against Trader Joe’s, their staff is friendly and courteous and their store is clean and well stocked. Trader Joe’s is a well-run store from top to bottom from my perspective.
Meanwhile the California supermarket chain, Safeway, has quietly gone upscale as well. I walked into a recently re-modeled Safeway that I had grown up with in Carmel. They’ve added a large deli and a Starbucks but they’re swapped out the old well-lit store for a darker store with “Feature” spotlighting. Isles have been sacrificed for smaller islands where certain items are featured as if they were in an art museum. Since this Safeway is at the mouth of the Carmel Valley, where the average home is $1.2 million the shoppers here put on what can only be described as a fashion show for freaks. Older women dressed like anime cowboys, wearing black legging on bodies that have long since seen better days. Other women are in outfits that are just way too over the top to wear to a supermarket.
This is the same Safeway where actress Doris Day came to shop for dog food at least twice a week back in the 1980s and she always wore blue-jeans and always drove her Jeep. The very same Safeway where Ansel Adams and Edward Weston came to shop back in the day.. Even John Travolta and his wife, Kelly Preston have been regular shoppers to this Safeway from time to time. None of those folks were ever…how should I put this? None of those people were ever assholes.
One thing I notice is that at both Trader Joe’s and that Carmel Safeway is that there is little conversation at the check-out counter between the shoppers and the cashiers. You would think that in a place that where people shop on a weekly or bi-weekly basis that there would be some basic familiar chatter. You would think this because in normal supermarkets this is a standard practice because when you see the same people regularly you begin to smile and wave at the very least and most of the time you will say hello and even learn their names. Not at Trader Joe’s and not at that Carmel Safeway. There is almost no interaction between the customers and the staff. This is probably the saddest aspect of the New White, they just can’t be bothered.
First off simply entering the Trader Joe’s parking lot is an act of suicide if you are a pedestrian. Although people who shop at Joe’s tend to think of themselves as intelligent and socially aware this does not extend to pedestrians, city buses nor other drivers. This was observed behavior at the other Trader Joe’s over in Pacific Grove, CA, were I stopped going after my third near death experience with either a soccer mom in a over-sized SUV talking on the cell phone or a Mercedes driven by a guy in a suit who is at war with the world. So awful at driving are those who shop at Trader Joe’s that the city of Monterey has been compelled to move the Transit Center four blocks away because it has become too dangerous for the Transit system to risk the lives of their riders as they attempt to cross the street at the funky intersection. You need to understand that with the New White in America it’s only about them and their needs and while they slap Amnesty International and anti-Bush stickers on their vehicles they have no empathy for their fellow drivers or the hapless pedestrian who gets in their way.
Once inside of the market you find the same situation that you’ll find at Borders except at a much accelerated rate. Also, many of these people rarely read because they already know everything. Here you will find people who will cut you off with their shopping carts and block off huge sections with those carts as they attempt to make up their minds. It’s as if they take up station to blockade a location. The next group is mostly middle-aged female and they are what I call “Zombie-Hawks” because they movie as if they are in a trance but they also dart from section to section, their eyes fixed solely on their target. Often there are near collisions as two zombie cross paths and the new White way is visible at these moments because instead of a pleasant apology (“Oh, I’m sorry. I wasn’t watching where I was going”) the zombies will shoot each other dirty looks. The phrase “Excuse me” is absent at Trader Joe’s as it is at Borders. As I stood in front of the frozen burritos a older women just wedges up beside of me and then swings around and wedges in from the other side never once acknowledging my presence if even only to ask me to move. This has become so common that I’ve surrendered to the vulgarity of the new normal. If a 70 year old woman, who should know better, cannot even bother with basic civility then there is truly no hope.
This is NOT a knock against Trader Joe’s, their staff is friendly and courteous and their store is clean and well stocked. Trader Joe’s is a well-run store from top to bottom from my perspective.
Meanwhile the California supermarket chain, Safeway, has quietly gone upscale as well. I walked into a recently re-modeled Safeway that I had grown up with in Carmel. They’ve added a large deli and a Starbucks but they’re swapped out the old well-lit store for a darker store with “Feature” spotlighting. Isles have been sacrificed for smaller islands where certain items are featured as if they were in an art museum. Since this Safeway is at the mouth of the Carmel Valley, where the average home is $1.2 million the shoppers here put on what can only be described as a fashion show for freaks. Older women dressed like anime cowboys, wearing black legging on bodies that have long since seen better days. Other women are in outfits that are just way too over the top to wear to a supermarket.
This is the same Safeway where actress Doris Day came to shop for dog food at least twice a week back in the 1980s and she always wore blue-jeans and always drove her Jeep. The very same Safeway where Ansel Adams and Edward Weston came to shop back in the day.. Even John Travolta and his wife, Kelly Preston have been regular shoppers to this Safeway from time to time. None of those folks were ever…how should I put this? None of those people were ever assholes.
One thing I notice is that at both Trader Joe’s and that Carmel Safeway is that there is little conversation at the check-out counter between the shoppers and the cashiers. You would think that in a place that where people shop on a weekly or bi-weekly basis that there would be some basic familiar chatter. You would think this because in normal supermarkets this is a standard practice because when you see the same people regularly you begin to smile and wave at the very least and most of the time you will say hello and even learn their names. Not at Trader Joe’s and not at that Carmel Safeway. There is almost no interaction between the customers and the staff. This is probably the saddest aspect of the New White, they just can’t be bothered.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
A Story in the Local News to Illustrate My Case
The local news has been following the murder trail of a John Kenney, of Carmel Valley, who shot his neighbors over a property dispute. It is the apex of the downward spiral of upscale white folks.
The facts of the case are that in 1999, Kenney bought property next door to the home of Mel and Elizabeth Grimes, presumable he built a house or there was already a home on the land. In 2005, the Grimes built an artist’s studio and carport without permits from the county (illegal) and this forced them to cross a small portion of Kenney’s land. (It would later be discovered that the disputed land was a public easement.) This lead to a deterioration of relations between the two parties which lead to a physical altercation between Elizabeth Grimes and Kenny in June, 2005 that sent him to the hospital. Both parties then sought restraining orders against each other. A year later, Kenney files a $1 million dollar lawsuit against the Grimes over the altercation claiming injury and emotional distress. On January 29th, 2007, Kenney orders a 1-ton boulder and has it placed on the disputed spot of land which then partially blocked the Grimes carport. Later that evening Mel Grimes went out with a sledge hammer to begin hacking away at the boulder and his wife called 911. Kenney went down to confront Grimes and at some point (so says his defense lawyer) Grimes threatened Kenney with the sledge hammer at which time Kenney pulled a .45 out of his waistband and shots Grimes. Elizabeth Grimes runs outside and begins to attack Kenney while he is on his cell phone talking to a 911 operator. Kenney then shoots Elizabeth Grimes and then shoots Mel Grimes one more time and then fires a second shot into Elizabeth. His hands are shaking so badly that he accidentally discharges a round as he attempts to safety the weapon. The Sheriffs deputies arrive and arrest Kenney. He pleads not guilty and we’ve sat through two long trials since then.
The Jury is still out.
This is typical of Carmel and Carmel Valley in the early 21st Century. You have the Grimes, Mel being a defense attorney and his wife living out – way the hell out – in Carmel Valley so that they can have a large home for a relatively reasonable amount of money. Then you have Kenney, a former chemist for a construction company move in next door presumably for the same reason. No problem, everyone’s entitles to live where they please. Then you have the Grimes build a carport and artist studio without permits. The permit process is in place so that your neighbors have a chance to speak about any concerns they may have about what you might do to your property and see blue-prints and so on. In the process one might have to revise plans based on negative feedback but the permit process is in place to head off disputes that can lead to ugliness. The fact that Grimes was a lawyer makes this move inexcusable, I cannot speak to his motives but it is my opinion that he figured that if the County caught him in his misdeed that he’d pay a fine and schmooze his way out of it. He didn’t account for his neighbor.
He did not account for his neighbor.
So they essentially illegally expand their house. It angers their neighbor, Kenney, who complains to Monterey County but Grimes gums up the works with legal tricks and nothing is done about the illegal modifications to the home. I assume that there are some ugly events in between the construction and the shooting that have not been mentioned but at some point Kenney suspects his neighbors of dumping trash on his front yard so one day he decides to sit in his car with a camera and try and catch them in the act. Elizabeth Grimes sees Kenney in the car with the camera and storms the car and yanks the camera from around Kenney’s neck and then whacks him with it. That’s when the restraining orders were filed.
So you can keep score, Elizabeth Grimes attacks an old man and sends him to the hospital.
A few weeks later Kenney is at church attending a meeting when Elizabeth storms in and starts yelling about how Kenney is no Christian and she had to be forcibly removed from the church. So Kenney definitely feels physically threatened by the Grimes and abandoned by the Sheriffs department.
To further keep score, you have an attorney and his wife illegally put an addition to their home which upsets their elderly neighbor and they respond by throwing trash on his lawn and assaulting him. They had no problem using their position in society to break the law and terrorize an old man because he dared to speak up against their unlawful act.
Not only did following the law not cross their minds, they could care less about how their neighbor felt. The idea of sitting down and talking like adults never entered their minds and compromise was out of the question. Kenney felt helpless but he too would not back down and bought a gun.
All over ten square feet of land that belonged to neither of them.
That is where we are at today. I want things my way and everyone else can fuck off. I was here first, you can move away! I’m a lawyer and I can cheat the laws of the state to get my way. My neighbor is shit out of luck. In Carmel there was no postal delivery for almost 70 years and everyone was content to get their mail at the post office. Then some idiot who spent $1.7 million more than he needed to on a house on San Antonia street decided that he was too important to play along and demanded mail deliver to his home. Soon other rich idiots joined in so that today there is sporadic mail delivery in Carmel which has spoiled a really nice town. They are giant four-year olds with money.
They need a good spanking.
Next time: What ever happened to being the bigger man?
The facts of the case are that in 1999, Kenney bought property next door to the home of Mel and Elizabeth Grimes, presumable he built a house or there was already a home on the land. In 2005, the Grimes built an artist’s studio and carport without permits from the county (illegal) and this forced them to cross a small portion of Kenney’s land. (It would later be discovered that the disputed land was a public easement.) This lead to a deterioration of relations between the two parties which lead to a physical altercation between Elizabeth Grimes and Kenny in June, 2005 that sent him to the hospital. Both parties then sought restraining orders against each other. A year later, Kenney files a $1 million dollar lawsuit against the Grimes over the altercation claiming injury and emotional distress. On January 29th, 2007, Kenney orders a 1-ton boulder and has it placed on the disputed spot of land which then partially blocked the Grimes carport. Later that evening Mel Grimes went out with a sledge hammer to begin hacking away at the boulder and his wife called 911. Kenney went down to confront Grimes and at some point (so says his defense lawyer) Grimes threatened Kenney with the sledge hammer at which time Kenney pulled a .45 out of his waistband and shots Grimes. Elizabeth Grimes runs outside and begins to attack Kenney while he is on his cell phone talking to a 911 operator. Kenney then shoots Elizabeth Grimes and then shoots Mel Grimes one more time and then fires a second shot into Elizabeth. His hands are shaking so badly that he accidentally discharges a round as he attempts to safety the weapon. The Sheriffs deputies arrive and arrest Kenney. He pleads not guilty and we’ve sat through two long trials since then.
The Jury is still out.
This is typical of Carmel and Carmel Valley in the early 21st Century. You have the Grimes, Mel being a defense attorney and his wife living out – way the hell out – in Carmel Valley so that they can have a large home for a relatively reasonable amount of money. Then you have Kenney, a former chemist for a construction company move in next door presumably for the same reason. No problem, everyone’s entitles to live where they please. Then you have the Grimes build a carport and artist studio without permits. The permit process is in place so that your neighbors have a chance to speak about any concerns they may have about what you might do to your property and see blue-prints and so on. In the process one might have to revise plans based on negative feedback but the permit process is in place to head off disputes that can lead to ugliness. The fact that Grimes was a lawyer makes this move inexcusable, I cannot speak to his motives but it is my opinion that he figured that if the County caught him in his misdeed that he’d pay a fine and schmooze his way out of it. He didn’t account for his neighbor.
He did not account for his neighbor.
So they essentially illegally expand their house. It angers their neighbor, Kenney, who complains to Monterey County but Grimes gums up the works with legal tricks and nothing is done about the illegal modifications to the home. I assume that there are some ugly events in between the construction and the shooting that have not been mentioned but at some point Kenney suspects his neighbors of dumping trash on his front yard so one day he decides to sit in his car with a camera and try and catch them in the act. Elizabeth Grimes sees Kenney in the car with the camera and storms the car and yanks the camera from around Kenney’s neck and then whacks him with it. That’s when the restraining orders were filed.
So you can keep score, Elizabeth Grimes attacks an old man and sends him to the hospital.
A few weeks later Kenney is at church attending a meeting when Elizabeth storms in and starts yelling about how Kenney is no Christian and she had to be forcibly removed from the church. So Kenney definitely feels physically threatened by the Grimes and abandoned by the Sheriffs department.
To further keep score, you have an attorney and his wife illegally put an addition to their home which upsets their elderly neighbor and they respond by throwing trash on his lawn and assaulting him. They had no problem using their position in society to break the law and terrorize an old man because he dared to speak up against their unlawful act.
Not only did following the law not cross their minds, they could care less about how their neighbor felt. The idea of sitting down and talking like adults never entered their minds and compromise was out of the question. Kenney felt helpless but he too would not back down and bought a gun.
All over ten square feet of land that belonged to neither of them.
That is where we are at today. I want things my way and everyone else can fuck off. I was here first, you can move away! I’m a lawyer and I can cheat the laws of the state to get my way. My neighbor is shit out of luck. In Carmel there was no postal delivery for almost 70 years and everyone was content to get their mail at the post office. Then some idiot who spent $1.7 million more than he needed to on a house on San Antonia street decided that he was too important to play along and demanded mail deliver to his home. Soon other rich idiots joined in so that today there is sporadic mail delivery in Carmel which has spoiled a really nice town. They are giant four-year olds with money.
They need a good spanking.
Next time: What ever happened to being the bigger man?
Friday, September 5, 2008
Observing The Well Off White At Borders..
I have always loved bookstores. When I was a kid if it wasn't the Thunderbird it was Books Inc. or Waldon's. I also loved the library starting from when the Monterey Library would park it's "Bookmobile" in front of our house once a week. The idea that I could read about anything that interested me is magic and the idea that everyone does not do this leaves me shaking my head. I've discarded hundreds of books as I began to run out of space in my room and I've had to stash books that I cannot bear to part with in storage containers in my closet. Books about ghosts, the Titanic, Little Big Horn, the KGB/CIA and tons of military-related books make up my personal library. So I need a book fix on a regular basis and God was kind enough to put a Borders in Sand City and that's on my way to and from work. So I will stop into Borders at least twice a week to see what's new.
I began to notice something around 1997.
I was standing in the "New Age" section scanning for new ghost titles when this weaselly little man just leaned right in front of me for a few seconds and then pulled out a book. Since I was in the "New Age" section I blew it off as an encounter with a local weirdo. A few days later I was at the magazine rack and a well dressed woman just shoved her way in front of me to grab a magazine about dogs. I then became aware that people were just cutting people off at one moment while blocking the isle in another. These were all white and wealthy people acting like apes.
[ for those of you who may be confused as to why this bothers me I will bring you up to speed. It's all about manners. When I was nine years old my mother spend a lot of money so that I could attend a dance school. I have no clue as to why she did this because I never had expressed any interest in dancing and I was so traumatized by this that I refuse to dance today, even at gunpoint. However, this dance class was filled with the children of wealthy Pebble Beach and Carmel Valley people. Half the time was spent on etiquette, proper greetings and how to act like young ladies and gentlemen. Later, as I worked in a beauty salon for a couple of summers I was taught further proper manners and learned that these manner pay off in many ways. I also have learned from my Gangsta friends that bad manners will get your ass kicked because they will just assume that if you are a douche then you MUST be looking for a fight. So instead of pushing your way past people you first say "Excuse Me", or "Pardon me" and then allow the person to get out of your way. Also a well mannered person will keep their wits about them so that they don't block people who need to get through. If you insist on living with your head up your ass then you are a douche bag.]
So here I am surrounded by white upper and upper-middle class people who are acting doltish. Once I had become aware of this I began to go to Borders just to watch people just as Jane Goodall watched Chimpanzees. I was amazed at how rude and brutish the upper crust had become. I would focus on the biggest offenders and watch them as they returned to their cars. Sure enough they'd often had Pebble Beach tags or stickers on their windshield indicating a gated community or the City of Carmel.
Many of these people are completely worthless. One of my favorite places to eavesdrop is near the information desk. I only need to be there a few minutes before some twit arrives at the counter to torture the staff with his boundless bafoonery:
Twit: "Yes, I'm looking for a book"
Information: "What's the title?"
Twit: "I don't know, it has a red cover"
Info: "Do you know who the author is?"
Twit: "Yes, that famous guy"
And so on and so on. The twit was so impressed by that famous guy that he ran down to buy the book but not impressed enough to pick up a pen and write the title and the name down. Needless to say that next the twit becomes frustrated by the young girl at the information desk because she has no clue what the hell he's talking about. On a good day, a four-star twit will track down every employee in the store and ask them if they know what book he's talking about.
Then there are the people who either won't hold the door open for you or can't bring themselves to say "Thank You" for holding the door open for them. SAY THANK YOU, it won't cost you a dime. White people are the ONLY people who are this thoughtless. All other ethnic types will say thank you or something else nice. When a person cannot say thank you for a another person's selfless act they need an ass kicking and I fear that one day I will put one of the large on-sale coffee table books that Borders displays near the front door to a more creative use.
Everybody say it with me now: T H A N K Y O U!
Try it, people will think you're the Pope.
Then there are the white people on their cell phones talking real loud as if they are on Iwo Jima in an artillery barrage. Cell phone etiquette is a who other thread but if you don't think that everyone within earshot isn't secretly hoping that the IDF has planted C-4 in your earpiece then you are a lost cause. Again this is an issue almost exclusive to upscale white people. I see other non-white people on their phones but they're usually talking in a normal tone and volume of voice.
Borders selection of on-the-shelf titles is revealing as well. Their "Self-Help" section is four times as large as their "Do it yourself" section. There are almost 200 titles relating to Nazi Germany and Hitler both in the military and European history sections. The Nazis are equalled only by titles in the "Gay Studies" section, which dwarfs the African-American and Native American Studies sections. There are currently 17 titles about Che Guevara but only one on Zapata. U.S. History is dominated by the Civil War, JFK, Lincoln, Reagan and Lee Harvey Oswald. The Science Fiction section is four times as large as the Science section. In fact, there are more books on Witchcraft as there are about Platetechonics. The magazine rack is full of women's magazines, men's fitness magazines, computer magazines, craft magazines, sports magazines, movie magazines, political commentary magazines but only carries a small section of history and news magazines.
The also have a good newspaper selection and even though there is a sign that asks "Please purchase newspapers before reading" you can always find some guy there reading a news paper(usually a large one like the NY Times) and take a wild guess what ethnic background he is! Plus you can always count on the guy to not bother returning the newspaper to a saleable state before he shuffles off to somewhere else. It is remarkable that in a time when newspapers are fighting to survive that a person whole loves to read them cannot bring himself to plunk down .50 cents or $5 for a Sunday edition. When they all eventually fail my guess it will be these white cheapskates who will cry the loudest.
The issue here is the devastation of thoughtlessness that now pollutes the white upper-class . Behavior that in the 1960s that would have been thought oafish, tacky and rude are seemingly acceptable. It's not exclusive to Borders at all, I will chronicle my expeditions into other upper-class white bastions such as Trader Joe's and the bike/walking path. However I won't make you read 20 or 30 posts until I get to my underlying theme. I've always hated the phrase "New Money" because it was mostly used by other "New Money"-types to insult those who's success had opened the door to exclusive places; that said "New Money" best describes the makeup of this hoard of dufuses.
There problem isn't that they're wealthy it's that they're pretending to be something that they are not. They have made money the center of their lives and eschewing the accouterments that once marked the upper class ( etiquette, good taste, patients and reserve). Old-school wealthy folks saw money as a tool or a means to an end but not as the sole point of living. They understood that money comes and goes and that wealth can vanish in an instant. They tended to embrace life and enjoy people whereas today these new types are too self-centered. If you aren't rich then you can't do anything for them and they'll tell you to fuck off. In the old days the old-guard would at the very least offer you a polite smile and a kind word. They'd never judge people by wealth because they were in the unique position to know that wealthy people could be jackasses as well. This new breed is not only lost but they have begun to undermine our social and economic fabric as they exclude undesirables and embrace questionable economic practices.
But that's another post.
I began to notice something around 1997.
I was standing in the "New Age" section scanning for new ghost titles when this weaselly little man just leaned right in front of me for a few seconds and then pulled out a book. Since I was in the "New Age" section I blew it off as an encounter with a local weirdo. A few days later I was at the magazine rack and a well dressed woman just shoved her way in front of me to grab a magazine about dogs. I then became aware that people were just cutting people off at one moment while blocking the isle in another. These were all white and wealthy people acting like apes.
[ for those of you who may be confused as to why this bothers me I will bring you up to speed. It's all about manners. When I was nine years old my mother spend a lot of money so that I could attend a dance school. I have no clue as to why she did this because I never had expressed any interest in dancing and I was so traumatized by this that I refuse to dance today, even at gunpoint. However, this dance class was filled with the children of wealthy Pebble Beach and Carmel Valley people. Half the time was spent on etiquette, proper greetings and how to act like young ladies and gentlemen. Later, as I worked in a beauty salon for a couple of summers I was taught further proper manners and learned that these manner pay off in many ways. I also have learned from my Gangsta friends that bad manners will get your ass kicked because they will just assume that if you are a douche then you MUST be looking for a fight. So instead of pushing your way past people you first say "Excuse Me", or "Pardon me" and then allow the person to get out of your way. Also a well mannered person will keep their wits about them so that they don't block people who need to get through. If you insist on living with your head up your ass then you are a douche bag.]
So here I am surrounded by white upper and upper-middle class people who are acting doltish. Once I had become aware of this I began to go to Borders just to watch people just as Jane Goodall watched Chimpanzees. I was amazed at how rude and brutish the upper crust had become. I would focus on the biggest offenders and watch them as they returned to their cars. Sure enough they'd often had Pebble Beach tags or stickers on their windshield indicating a gated community or the City of Carmel.
Many of these people are completely worthless. One of my favorite places to eavesdrop is near the information desk. I only need to be there a few minutes before some twit arrives at the counter to torture the staff with his boundless bafoonery:
Twit: "Yes, I'm looking for a book"
Information: "What's the title?"
Twit: "I don't know, it has a red cover"
Info: "Do you know who the author is?"
Twit: "Yes, that famous guy"
And so on and so on. The twit was so impressed by that famous guy that he ran down to buy the book but not impressed enough to pick up a pen and write the title and the name down. Needless to say that next the twit becomes frustrated by the young girl at the information desk because she has no clue what the hell he's talking about. On a good day, a four-star twit will track down every employee in the store and ask them if they know what book he's talking about.
Then there are the people who either won't hold the door open for you or can't bring themselves to say "Thank You" for holding the door open for them. SAY THANK YOU, it won't cost you a dime. White people are the ONLY people who are this thoughtless. All other ethnic types will say thank you or something else nice. When a person cannot say thank you for a another person's selfless act they need an ass kicking and I fear that one day I will put one of the large on-sale coffee table books that Borders displays near the front door to a more creative use.
Everybody say it with me now: T H A N K Y O U!
Try it, people will think you're the Pope.
Then there are the white people on their cell phones talking real loud as if they are on Iwo Jima in an artillery barrage. Cell phone etiquette is a who other thread but if you don't think that everyone within earshot isn't secretly hoping that the IDF has planted C-4 in your earpiece then you are a lost cause. Again this is an issue almost exclusive to upscale white people. I see other non-white people on their phones but they're usually talking in a normal tone and volume of voice.
Borders selection of on-the-shelf titles is revealing as well. Their "Self-Help" section is four times as large as their "Do it yourself" section. There are almost 200 titles relating to Nazi Germany and Hitler both in the military and European history sections. The Nazis are equalled only by titles in the "Gay Studies" section, which dwarfs the African-American and Native American Studies sections. There are currently 17 titles about Che Guevara but only one on Zapata. U.S. History is dominated by the Civil War, JFK, Lincoln, Reagan and Lee Harvey Oswald. The Science Fiction section is four times as large as the Science section. In fact, there are more books on Witchcraft as there are about Platetechonics. The magazine rack is full of women's magazines, men's fitness magazines, computer magazines, craft magazines, sports magazines, movie magazines, political commentary magazines but only carries a small section of history and news magazines.
The also have a good newspaper selection and even though there is a sign that asks "Please purchase newspapers before reading" you can always find some guy there reading a news paper(usually a large one like the NY Times) and take a wild guess what ethnic background he is! Plus you can always count on the guy to not bother returning the newspaper to a saleable state before he shuffles off to somewhere else. It is remarkable that in a time when newspapers are fighting to survive that a person whole loves to read them cannot bring himself to plunk down .50 cents or $5 for a Sunday edition. When they all eventually fail my guess it will be these white cheapskates who will cry the loudest.
The issue here is the devastation of thoughtlessness that now pollutes the white upper-class . Behavior that in the 1960s that would have been thought oafish, tacky and rude are seemingly acceptable. It's not exclusive to Borders at all, I will chronicle my expeditions into other upper-class white bastions such as Trader Joe's and the bike/walking path. However I won't make you read 20 or 30 posts until I get to my underlying theme. I've always hated the phrase "New Money" because it was mostly used by other "New Money"-types to insult those who's success had opened the door to exclusive places; that said "New Money" best describes the makeup of this hoard of dufuses.
There problem isn't that they're wealthy it's that they're pretending to be something that they are not. They have made money the center of their lives and eschewing the accouterments that once marked the upper class ( etiquette, good taste, patients and reserve). Old-school wealthy folks saw money as a tool or a means to an end but not as the sole point of living. They understood that money comes and goes and that wealth can vanish in an instant. They tended to embrace life and enjoy people whereas today these new types are too self-centered. If you aren't rich then you can't do anything for them and they'll tell you to fuck off. In the old days the old-guard would at the very least offer you a polite smile and a kind word. They'd never judge people by wealth because they were in the unique position to know that wealthy people could be jackasses as well. This new breed is not only lost but they have begun to undermine our social and economic fabric as they exclude undesirables and embrace questionable economic practices.
But that's another post.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Classy Rich People I Knew
To start this all off I need to illustrate what I base my observations on. My intellectual foundation for what constituted "Class" in those few folks I'd met in my life that I now use to measure the decline in that social stratus now.
The First person I only knew as Mrs. Firestone. Mrs. Firestone was married into the Firestone Tire family and I knew her from All Saint's Church in Carmel. Mrs. Firestone was cool. She drove a Volkswagen Beetle (yes, it had Forestone tires) and was a fixture in the kitchen during the many pot-luck diners. She was kind and outgoing and I never saw her make anyone feel like less of a person because they didn't have as much money as she. She quietly helped out those in the church who were in need but never wore that on her sleeve.
The next man was an interesting guy named Johny Urnstead, I apologize if I've misspelled his name. Johny was a flaming homosexual who was a trust-fund baby rich from Texas oil. Johny was friends with one of my sycophant bosses and would come into the restaurant that I worked in. Johny was insanely wealthy. He always made a point to remember every one's name and always asked me how my mother was. Johny was flamboyant and enjoyed life. He also never rubbed his wealth in your face and never made people feel as if they were lessor than he because they didn't have millions in the bank.
Clint Eastwood is someone who's been part of the Carmel landscape since the 1960s. I've met and talked to him a number of times as it's impossible not to bump into him around town over the span of a single year. Clint is a good neighbor. He stands in line at the market (when he could have his goodies delivered), if there is nobody at his office he will go up to the post office and stand in line there and while he's in line he makes a point to say hello to people he recognizes. He refuses the star treatment while in town. Clint donates tons of money to the Carmel Youth Center and when Arnold Schwarzenegger was clearing out his year-old gym equipment Clint got him to donate it all to the Youth Center. The coolest thing Clint has done was buy an artichoke field on the south side of the mouth of Carmel river to use as a flood plain should the river overflow. The Mission Fields area on the other side of the river had flooded in 1996 and while the county wanted to buy the fields as a flood plain they didn't have the money. So Clint stepped in an (with his ex-wife, Maggie) saved the day. Yes, Clint got a substantial tax break from the county but it paid for itself within three years when the river threatened to flood again.
There are more but these folks stand out.
Let me make this clear, none of those people ever invited me over to their homes for parties and they never wanted to be my friend. I'm also sure that not everyone has had positive experiences with these people either. That's not the point. These three embody the way things used to be in the land of the wealthy, they never pushed people around unless warranted and they were always polite. They invested in the community both because it benefited them and because it was the right thing to do. Yes, they all belonged to exclusive, member's only clubs where I could never go but that's acceptable to me because I have nothing in common with them nor their friends. They never rubbed their wealth in the faces of the community, almost never dressed flashy unless the situation demanded it.
They all three said "Please", "Excuse Me" and "Thank You". Something that you rarely hear today in the current habitat of the wealthy white person.
Next entry: Borders Bookstore - Oasis of the Wealthy and Upper-Middle Class.
The First person I only knew as Mrs. Firestone. Mrs. Firestone was married into the Firestone Tire family and I knew her from All Saint's Church in Carmel. Mrs. Firestone was cool. She drove a Volkswagen Beetle (yes, it had Forestone tires) and was a fixture in the kitchen during the many pot-luck diners. She was kind and outgoing and I never saw her make anyone feel like less of a person because they didn't have as much money as she. She quietly helped out those in the church who were in need but never wore that on her sleeve.
The next man was an interesting guy named Johny Urnstead, I apologize if I've misspelled his name. Johny was a flaming homosexual who was a trust-fund baby rich from Texas oil. Johny was friends with one of my sycophant bosses and would come into the restaurant that I worked in. Johny was insanely wealthy. He always made a point to remember every one's name and always asked me how my mother was. Johny was flamboyant and enjoyed life. He also never rubbed his wealth in your face and never made people feel as if they were lessor than he because they didn't have millions in the bank.
Clint Eastwood is someone who's been part of the Carmel landscape since the 1960s. I've met and talked to him a number of times as it's impossible not to bump into him around town over the span of a single year. Clint is a good neighbor. He stands in line at the market (when he could have his goodies delivered), if there is nobody at his office he will go up to the post office and stand in line there and while he's in line he makes a point to say hello to people he recognizes. He refuses the star treatment while in town. Clint donates tons of money to the Carmel Youth Center and when Arnold Schwarzenegger was clearing out his year-old gym equipment Clint got him to donate it all to the Youth Center. The coolest thing Clint has done was buy an artichoke field on the south side of the mouth of Carmel river to use as a flood plain should the river overflow. The Mission Fields area on the other side of the river had flooded in 1996 and while the county wanted to buy the fields as a flood plain they didn't have the money. So Clint stepped in an (with his ex-wife, Maggie) saved the day. Yes, Clint got a substantial tax break from the county but it paid for itself within three years when the river threatened to flood again.
There are more but these folks stand out.
Let me make this clear, none of those people ever invited me over to their homes for parties and they never wanted to be my friend. I'm also sure that not everyone has had positive experiences with these people either. That's not the point. These three embody the way things used to be in the land of the wealthy, they never pushed people around unless warranted and they were always polite. They invested in the community both because it benefited them and because it was the right thing to do. Yes, they all belonged to exclusive, member's only clubs where I could never go but that's acceptable to me because I have nothing in common with them nor their friends. They never rubbed their wealth in the faces of the community, almost never dressed flashy unless the situation demanded it.
They all three said "Please", "Excuse Me" and "Thank You". Something that you rarely hear today in the current habitat of the wealthy white person.
Next entry: Borders Bookstore - Oasis of the Wealthy and Upper-Middle Class.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
The Way Things Used To Be
I'm 44 years old.
I was born in Carmel, California in 1964 and circumstance kept me there for half of my life. I was lucky to live there, it is a physically beautiful place and was once populated by a variety of diverse and interesting characters. Carmel is 99.99% white. It was once a mix of blue-collar industry (lumber mills, dairies, blacksmith, brick making and knife making) and artistic folks (Jack London, Robinson Jeffers, Edward Weston etc.) who lived in small houses and cottages that were built upon small lots. It became an eccentric place where cottages were designed much like something from Hansel & Grettel and one mayor dreamed of erecting a stone wall to isolate the city from the outside world. During WWII, Carmel became home to the wives of Army officers serving in the Pacific with the 7th Infantry Division as well as Naval Officers who were taking flight school in Monterey. Even General Joseph Stillwell stayed with his sister in 1941 while he oversaw the construction of Fort Ord and the organization of the 7th Infantry Division. After the war many veterans chose to stay in Carmel and make it their home and they were welcomed and they added a common sense approach to developing the town while protecting it from unwanted outside influences. Carmel was one of the first small towns to enact strict zoning laws against gaudy architecture and deemed that no commercial businesses be built near the ocean. Carmel had been home to many artists who were broke during the depression and to protect them from leg-breaking bill collectors the city simply decided not to have street addresses. This meant that everyone in Carmel had a post office box and went to the post office to collect their mail every day. The by product of this was Carmel became a very socially integrated community, a place where the guy who fixed cars at the service station chatted with the president of a large Central Valley agricultural company and a legendary science fiction writer could get advice from his vacuum cleaner repairman. The unique decision not to have street numbers bound the citizens of Carmel together in a special way that you might only find in 19th century America.
The surrounding area also reflected this picture. Carmel Valley and Big Sur offered isolation that meant that you needed to count upon your neighbor to help in times of trouble. New comers to the area who embraced this philosophy would soon be accepted into the local social scene while those who thought that they were above such concepts found themselves isolated from the community and most of the time they would move away to some other place. Carmel by the early 1970s was mostly home to retired people and young families. Carmel River School had a student body of around 400 children so the classroom usually held 20 students each. The children of blue-collar parents attended class with the children of doctors and architects and they all got along. Hippie-painted VW buses shared the school parking lot with Mercedes Benz sedans and parents from different world chatted as they waited for the final bell that would send their kids bouncing out of the school. Looking back I find it hard to believe that this kind of communal perfection would not last. The idea that the people of Carmel would allow new comers who rejected being a good neighbor into the fold baffles me and will continue to do so to the end of my days.
I don't live in Carmel anymore.
Today I live in Castroville, a small farm town 18 miles north of Carmel. Castroville is mostly Hispanic and industrial. It's a small spur on Highway 156 between 101 to the east and Highway 1 to the west. One of thousands of such towns that most Americans drive through or past on their way to somewhere else. I moved out here in 1988 but I continued to work in Carmel until January, 2001. I have not returned to Carmel much since I began working outside of Carmel. These days I do not wish to either.
The reasons that I do not desire to return to Carmel will become the foundation of this blog. I don't like going to Carmel today because I don't recognize it. It's not that the buildings are gone (although that is part of the problem) it's that the people who made Carmel special are almost all gone. Gone with them is the unique spirit of the town and it has been replaced by tackiness of the highest order. Carmel has become a suburb of Southern California. A picturesque septic tank filled with the "Nouveau Riche", a sub-race of human that has a lot of money and measures everything and everyone by monetary worth and thus assigns status according to a warped social model. They do no smile when they walk down the street, they do not shout "Hey! How's it going?" from their car when they see you on the street. They seem to live inside of a fantasy bubble and refuse to step out of it, refuse to acknowledge their own humanity and worse they refuse to acknowledge yours. Because of them Carmel has become a sad and evil place.
I will explore the descent of the upper class from admirable people who had grace and class to a proto-race of well-dressed Neanderthals. I will also survey the deterioration of my own social strata from honorable, hard working folks to a bunch of finger-pointing cry-babies. If America is headed in the wrong direction it's not because of what happens in Washington D.C. but what has happened in the boardrooms and factory floors. The bile of the "Nouveau Riche" (NR)has fouled not only the workings of Wall Street but also Main Street as their get rich quick and stay rich at any price has ground down the American machine to the point where our economy has become a marionette to foriegn interests. A decsent that can be tracked from 1964 up until now as America raced to plant flags on the Moon and then boarded up the windows of oportunity in the 1970s.
I don't want to make this all sound so serious, I think the whole thing is laughable.
So bear with me as I explore the strange twists and turns of sad rich people and crazy working people.
I was born in Carmel, California in 1964 and circumstance kept me there for half of my life. I was lucky to live there, it is a physically beautiful place and was once populated by a variety of diverse and interesting characters. Carmel is 99.99% white. It was once a mix of blue-collar industry (lumber mills, dairies, blacksmith, brick making and knife making) and artistic folks (Jack London, Robinson Jeffers, Edward Weston etc.) who lived in small houses and cottages that were built upon small lots. It became an eccentric place where cottages were designed much like something from Hansel & Grettel and one mayor dreamed of erecting a stone wall to isolate the city from the outside world. During WWII, Carmel became home to the wives of Army officers serving in the Pacific with the 7th Infantry Division as well as Naval Officers who were taking flight school in Monterey. Even General Joseph Stillwell stayed with his sister in 1941 while he oversaw the construction of Fort Ord and the organization of the 7th Infantry Division. After the war many veterans chose to stay in Carmel and make it their home and they were welcomed and they added a common sense approach to developing the town while protecting it from unwanted outside influences. Carmel was one of the first small towns to enact strict zoning laws against gaudy architecture and deemed that no commercial businesses be built near the ocean. Carmel had been home to many artists who were broke during the depression and to protect them from leg-breaking bill collectors the city simply decided not to have street addresses. This meant that everyone in Carmel had a post office box and went to the post office to collect their mail every day. The by product of this was Carmel became a very socially integrated community, a place where the guy who fixed cars at the service station chatted with the president of a large Central Valley agricultural company and a legendary science fiction writer could get advice from his vacuum cleaner repairman. The unique decision not to have street numbers bound the citizens of Carmel together in a special way that you might only find in 19th century America.
The surrounding area also reflected this picture. Carmel Valley and Big Sur offered isolation that meant that you needed to count upon your neighbor to help in times of trouble. New comers to the area who embraced this philosophy would soon be accepted into the local social scene while those who thought that they were above such concepts found themselves isolated from the community and most of the time they would move away to some other place. Carmel by the early 1970s was mostly home to retired people and young families. Carmel River School had a student body of around 400 children so the classroom usually held 20 students each. The children of blue-collar parents attended class with the children of doctors and architects and they all got along. Hippie-painted VW buses shared the school parking lot with Mercedes Benz sedans and parents from different world chatted as they waited for the final bell that would send their kids bouncing out of the school. Looking back I find it hard to believe that this kind of communal perfection would not last. The idea that the people of Carmel would allow new comers who rejected being a good neighbor into the fold baffles me and will continue to do so to the end of my days.
I don't live in Carmel anymore.
Today I live in Castroville, a small farm town 18 miles north of Carmel. Castroville is mostly Hispanic and industrial. It's a small spur on Highway 156 between 101 to the east and Highway 1 to the west. One of thousands of such towns that most Americans drive through or past on their way to somewhere else. I moved out here in 1988 but I continued to work in Carmel until January, 2001. I have not returned to Carmel much since I began working outside of Carmel. These days I do not wish to either.
The reasons that I do not desire to return to Carmel will become the foundation of this blog. I don't like going to Carmel today because I don't recognize it. It's not that the buildings are gone (although that is part of the problem) it's that the people who made Carmel special are almost all gone. Gone with them is the unique spirit of the town and it has been replaced by tackiness of the highest order. Carmel has become a suburb of Southern California. A picturesque septic tank filled with the "Nouveau Riche", a sub-race of human that has a lot of money and measures everything and everyone by monetary worth and thus assigns status according to a warped social model. They do no smile when they walk down the street, they do not shout "Hey! How's it going?" from their car when they see you on the street. They seem to live inside of a fantasy bubble and refuse to step out of it, refuse to acknowledge their own humanity and worse they refuse to acknowledge yours. Because of them Carmel has become a sad and evil place.
I will explore the descent of the upper class from admirable people who had grace and class to a proto-race of well-dressed Neanderthals. I will also survey the deterioration of my own social strata from honorable, hard working folks to a bunch of finger-pointing cry-babies. If America is headed in the wrong direction it's not because of what happens in Washington D.C. but what has happened in the boardrooms and factory floors. The bile of the "Nouveau Riche" (NR)has fouled not only the workings of Wall Street but also Main Street as their get rich quick and stay rich at any price has ground down the American machine to the point where our economy has become a marionette to foriegn interests. A decsent that can be tracked from 1964 up until now as America raced to plant flags on the Moon and then boarded up the windows of oportunity in the 1970s.
I don't want to make this all sound so serious, I think the whole thing is laughable.
So bear with me as I explore the strange twists and turns of sad rich people and crazy working people.
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