When we think of unions, we must remember that their purpose is to support the working men and women who make up the bodies of those unions. It’s about getting a fair deal for the work that you do. It’s about the boss man with his billions being forced, when necessary, to relinquish a few morsels for those on whose backs those billions were made.

Having said all that, unionism has come a long way from those old Wobbly days. Not all picket lines are populated by gruff longshoremen and work-weary steel men. That doesn’t make their cause any less legitimate, however silly it may occasionally look. I’ve never seen a picket line of pasty-white IT guys like myself, but I’m sure I will soon enough. Meanwhile, have a look at this free-for-all:

A Jovial Air on Picket Lines for Hollywood Writers - New York Times

There have been other attractions for striking writers. A special theme day, Picket With the Stars, drew celebrities like Ben Stiller, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Ray Romano in Los Angeles. Susan Sarandon and Robin Williams turned up in New York.. . . Pickets have been well fed. The longshoremen’s union sent turkey baskets, and stars have played caterer roles. Justine Bateman brought tacos, Jay Leno chipped in doughnuts, and Jimmy Kimmel contributed burritos. Eva Longoria handed out slices of pizza.

I’ve had the good fortune to listen to the pre-master version of The Buddhahood’s newest CD, this one a tribute to their recently-passed guitarist/vocalist/inspiration Tony Cavagnaro. It’s the recording of The Buddhahood’s latest blow-out concert in the middle of the Park Avenue Fest. The CD will be available in its fully-mastered glory this Sunday at the tribute show, and even if the proceeds were not going to a good cause (which they are, Tony’s wife and child), it would be worth it’s weight in gold.

Because of course, live CDs capture a moment in time. They are a snap-shot of exactly where a band is at any given time, what inspires them, where they are moving. The Park Ave Fest shows have always been another type of benchmark, year after year, as the band has progressed and evolved. This CD faithfully renders the band as it was this summer, flush with the excitement of their latest sonic discoveries.

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Black civil rights leaders are gathering in Washington to demand more responsive action from the Justice Department over what it sees as hate crimes:

Civil Rights Leaders Gather for ‘March for Justice’

Civil rights leaders announced the march last month. They cited the uproar in Jena, La., surrounding three white teens accused of hanging nooses outside a school and the six black teens charged in the beating of a white student. The civil rights leaders believe the federal government should prosecute the noose hanging as a hate crime.

I am struck by two things, here. The first is that I find it incredible that we cannot muster such crowds or such media coverage to end the war.

But the second is: it has become axiomatic that the black community needs to “band together” to fight injustice in our society. When they fail to build a coalition around a topic, the media reports that, well, they failed to “band together” adequately, and that this, therefore, is the reason their cause failed. The discussion rarely seems to be about the rightness of their cause, but rather whether they’ve adequately raised enough of a stink to make change happen.

When I’m slighted, I don’t need to “band together” with my white brothers (gods forbid!). Nor do I need to band together with my Liberal brothers, tech brothers, long-haired brothers, my “guys with beer bellies” brothers, my Rush fan brothers, nor any other demographic group to which I belong. Why is such an obligation put upon the black community?

I guess what I’m saying is: I’d always believed that fairness was an American ideal, not a black agenda.

Oh, those sly Kentucky journalists! You’ve gotta love the humor in this line:

Creation Museum to expand

Northern Kentucky’s Creation Museum is evolving into a larger facility.

Doh! No, it’s not! It’s always been that size, for five thousand years and not a minute more! And the circular driveway in front of the museum is much to complex to have happened accidentally. It’s the work of God, I tells ya.

It’s been a remarkably busy day today, what with the holidays coming up, and all. One thing’s for certain: you will never find yourself with a lack of work as a web designer for a consumer product corporation around the holidays!

But I wanted to speak briefly about a particular theme of Republican and Conservative politics that deserves some exploration. This is also in relation to the theme of “Government as a Public Square” that I’ve been meaning to return to and haven’t.

» Continue Reading…

The Washington Post apparently only just recently noticed that ticket prices for your average concert are completely out of control, these days.  And so they ask, “Is the ticket biz out of line?”

Let me field this one. .  yes.  I just got done watching Rush in concert at Darien-freakin’-Lake, and paying $200 for the luxury.  $200!  For Rush?  Had I been the one buying the tickets, we would have sat out this concert.  Unfortunately, with ticket prices skyrocketing, especially for classic rock bands, the number didn’t seem out of line for my wife, who wanted to do something nice for me.  I love her, but I though I was going to die when I heard how much they cost.

Of course, Ticketmaster can’t be blamed.  They’re going to blame it on scalpers:

Is the Ticket Biz Out of Line? - washingtonpost.com

Ticketmaster. The ticket powerhouse, which last year sold 128 million tickets, worth more than $7 billion, contends that the armies of independent ticket brokers corrupt its public sales. In particular, Ticketmaster claims that brokers have gained an unfair advantage over the public by using automated phone-dialer programs and software, known as “bots,” that are capable of generating multiple ticket-buying requests at once — practices in violation of the company’s stated terms of use. Many of those tickets end up resold on the Internet via hundreds of ticket resale sites, the company says.

Um, hello?  Our tickets were purchased directly through Ticketmaster, not an intermediary.  What’s more, blaming cheesy bot programs and dialers for the fact that you’ve done next to nothing to stop the escalation of ticket prices is just weak and transparent.  Obviously, if the crazy prices seem par for the course, there’s no need to be shy about raising the base price and scooping up more cash, is there?  It works well for Ticketmaster to have a high demand for their product.

But then, shame on us, as well.  We keep paying those prices, don’t we?  And this is why the vaunted Marketplace cannot be trusted on it’s own: because it raises the price of luxury items well beyond inflation, leaving all but the very rich behind.  What is it like to be 20-something these days?  How do you afford to go see a show?

I spent yesterday evening practicing with The Buddhahood ahead of the upcoming Tony Cavagnaro tribute, and I’m starting to get really, really excited about the show.  Apparently, I’ll be playing Through the Veil with Nate Coffey, Peet Mugnolo, and returning BuddhaHoodlum Evan Stuckless.  There will also be an impressive coterie of percussionists with an array of instruments on hand for this, the last song of the Buddhahood set.

Apparently, I’m bringing my gong as well.  You know a show has to be good if there is to be a gong involved. » Continue Reading…

. . .  New York might actually be a pretty OK place to live.  Alas, we may find ourselves sporting RealID cards - a thing which I would have thought neither Right nor Left would have wanted - because Spitzer made an attempt to try to solve the dissonance between Federal immigration law and State need for highway safety.  Rottenchester at F29 does a good job of summing up the situation:

Drivers’ Licenses Will Still Be An Issue - The Fighting 29th

I didn’t have an objection to Spitzer’s earlier plan, because I don’t think that it’s the state’s business to become immigration police. But his endorsement of the intrusive and pointless RealID program now has turned me against it. Since nobody is happy with issuing illegals second-class licenses, I’ll bet that the final outcome will probably be no license for illegals, and RealIDs for the rest of us. Our highways won’t be any safer, but we’ll all be packing a big-brother identity card.

Fie and a pox on the ReadID card! An unnecessary thing for an unproven crisis of identification.  But then, the entire illegal immigration debate, the license debate, the voter registration debate, the RealID and the War on Terror are all rooted in the same garbage.  It’s the exact same xenophobia that compels housewives to buy antibacterial soap where humans have existed for hundreds of thousands of years without it.  It is the fear - and the intentional amplification of the fear - of the unknown.

Because it benefits someone, you are expected to believe that dangerous bugs crawl on your skin; that terrorists lurk in the back rooms of every 7-11; that people are driving in droves from one polling station to another, voting four and five times for the same candidate; that Mexican illegals are carting canisters of Sarin gas with them as they creep across the border.  Even if Americans are slowly waking up to the fact that they’ve been getting gamed all along, the Republicans are even up for playing the fear card on local issues as banal as driver’s licenses because they still think fear is a winning issue.

And, I fear, they’re right.

Technorati Tags: RealID, Security, New York State, Drivers License

On Sunday, November 18th at the Waterstreet Music Hall, the members of The Buddhahood will be performing with an ensemble crew of Rochester musicians in a benefit concert for Jan and Calvin Cavagnaro, Tony’s wife and son.  I have the honour of playing on stage with them as well.

I’ll be performing dumbek on a classic Buddhahood (or really, Rub the Buddha, as they were formerly known) piece called Through the Veil.  Actually, the very first time I got to perform with the Buddhahood was to this very same tune at Nazareth College, supporting the dancers of Sahara Shimmer.  At the time, Sahara Shimmer’s ensemble included the lovely Christen Salome, so (Sha-wing!) it was a real honour.

But, seriously,  if you value good music, you should really be at this benefit.  Those of you who aren’t familiar with the Rochester music scene might be surprised at the depth and breadth of the talent this city has to offer.  You’re going to see some phenomenal performers play some great music and honour a great man.

Best of all, you get to help out his surviving wife and child, and that’s a good thing.  See you there!

My wife just called me to say that, in the midst of grading papers, she was confronted by a camera crew at the door of her classroom. It seems that one of her students from a previous year decided to take it upon themselves to nominate Mrs. Carbone (now Mrs. Carbone-Belknap, thank you!) to be Teacher of the Week, and she got the nod.

So, she’ll be on TV tonight. We’ll be running the DVR for sure. UPDATED: Doh! I’m a dolt. Forgot to mention that this will be on Channel 13 in Rochester!

UPDATED AGAIN!  I’m even more of a dolt than I originally thought.  Sarah will be on Channel 8, not Channel 13, and apparently, she’ll be on Tuesday, not tonight.

I’m so excited for her, she really deserves the praise. If my teachers cared half as much about me as Sarah cares about her students, I rarely knew it. Sometimes, that means taking her work home with her, sometimes that means she spends a little more time talking to counselors, parents and therapists about troubled students, sometimes it means a whole lot of doubt and a whole lot of burn-out anxiety and thankfully, sometimes that means being on TV to get a little recognition for her hard work.

I think these are things to think about whenever you hear people carp about the price of educating kids: the people who do this job have to care a lot more than most of us. You don’t pay half of what they do every day. You don’t see kids in nearly-hopeless situations trying to keep up with kids who have everything and appreciate nothing. You don’t get yelled at by disconnected parents that expect you to teach and raise their children. You don’t feel the pain of loss that my wife does whenever she sees more school violence on TV. I marvel at my wife’s compassion every day, and we should all be thankful that there are lots more like her.

Congratulations, Sarah Carbone-Belknap! You’re teacher of the week every week in my book and I love you!