We Can't Make it Here Naivete

Sometimes my song,"We Can't Make it Here", seems a bit naive. It's still a pretty good song, and songs don't have time to be fair and balanced. Songs are mostly about emotion. So I still sing it. But I read the New York Times a couple of Sundays ago, and I now understand why we can't competitively produce iphones here. It seems that Steve Jobs was not happy with the easy to scratch plastic screen on his prototype iphone and demanded that the screen be made of scratch resistant glass. Making good glass is not a problem in the U.S., Corning has been doing it forever. Cutting glass to specs at a competitive pace is a different matter. After the meeting at which Jobs expressed his dissatisfaction, one of his execs booked a flight to China, where he knew there was a factory that could mobilize three thousand workers on a moments notice, by which I mean, waking them up in their dorm beds, putting them on the production line, and training them to cut the glass for the iphone screen. Corning did get the contract to produce the glass and a Corning plant in Kentucky was revived. But now, Corning is building plants in Asia to save on time and shipping costs.It takes thirty five days to ship glass from Kentucky to China, not competitive.

The Times article did a good job of detailing the intricacies of modern production. Cell phones employ materials from around the globe. The article mentioned, but did not dwell on, "rare metals from Africa". A memory rose from my mind like a pre-historic fish, long thought to be extinct. I was in a bar in Austin. The guy to my right was some kind of computer person, a nice enough fellow, but most of what he talked about was incomprehensible to me. Yet, he told a story that I at least partially comprehended. He told me that there is a rare metal in the Congo. This metal is necessary for the miniaturization of circuitry, without which, there would be no cell phones of any kind. People dig large chunks of this metal out of creek banks and carry it out on their heads, at gun point. The people who harvest this metal are slaves. So are the Chinese workers who can be forced to wake up at any time of night, paid though they are.

We can't make iphones in this country because we don't want to tolerate slavery within our own borders. We tolerate it within the borders of other nations because, without slavery, there would be no cell phones and cell phones have come to be seen as necessary by every culture in the world. So we outsource our slavery.

People love to talk about fixing our country. The Tea Party wants to " take our country back", from whom, or to what, I'm not sure. Such talk is as naive as my song. The manufacturing jobs aren't coming back here as long as, elsewhere, there are people willing to enslave and masses of people desperate enough to be willing to be enslaved. Fixing the country would not be enough anymore. We'll have to fix the world.

It could take a while

The Occupy Movement

About a week ago, at the end of a short solo tour of Southwest Alaska, I wandered down to Occupy Anchorage. The camp was only a block from my hotel. The temperature was in the single digits with a light snow. There were three tents, the first of which was wide open. Inside were four young men, two white and two native, a dog, and a propane heater. I offered them some smoked salmon and some CDs. They took great interest in the salmon and it was quickly consumed. The white guys introduced themselves. The natives did not.

I guess I should have introduced myself to all of them, but I felt sheepish and shy, like an interloper or a tourist. They all seemed to handle the cold pretty well. I asked them if they had any tips to help Occupiers in the lower forty eight get through the winter. They shrugged. John, the dog's owner, said,"It's pretty simple. You need shelter, heat, and food." About then, a nice woman named Wendy, who lived in the neighborhood, came in with a crock of hot soup. Morale improved instantly. Wendy struck up a lively conversation with a young man named Matt, who seemed like he could become a spokesman, if the movement wanted a spokesman. He had something of a thousand yard stare from, I guessed, fatigue and constant cold.

Matt considered himself lucky to be protesting in Anchorage rather than Portland or Oakland, because the Anchorage Police were not bothering the protesters, and some officers were openly supportive of the movement, stopping by to chat and to gripe about departmental budget cuts. Matt said he thought he preferred sub zero temperatures to pepper spray, horses, and batons. He offered me some of the soup. I'd had plenty to eat and had to
catch an early flight, so I declined, wished them luck, and left. I was struck by their generosity. I liked the salmon, but they needed that soup.

Historically, it's always been pretty easy for the powerful to get poor people to swing sticks at other poor people. The powerful simply have to pay the stick swingers just a little bit more than they used to pay the strikers or the protesters or whatever group is causing them annoyance, divide and suppress. Police officers may not live in abject poverty, but they're
certainly not rich. They need their jobs and they're trained to follow orders. They are not paid to care whether or not they belong to the one percent that gives the orders, though I don't doubt that some of them do care anyway. I'm curious about the origin of the orders.

With regard to Occupy and Law enforcement, mayors and college presidents seemed to be charged with giving the orders, at least officially, and they are subsequently charged with taking the heat when the execution of any of their orders goes terribly wrong and produces violence, physical injury, and embarrassing Utube. Politicians and Administrators don't
generally like controversy, it's bad for careers. I don't think such people would give orders that would likely result in some really messy controversy, unless enough pressure were brought to bear on them that they would fear for their careers anyway. I think there are bigger forces at work here.

In October, the New York City Police Department arrested over seven hundred Occupy protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge. Some were held for hours without charge. Earlier this year, J.P. Morgan/Chase, one of the recipients of the government bailout, derided by both Occupy and the Tea Party, donated 4.6 million dollars, partly in technology, patrol car laptops and such, to the New York City Police Department. This was the largest single donation ever received by NYPD. You can't tell me there were no strings attached. City Budgets are strapped. Departments are underfunded. A direct donation from a major corporation must be like manna from heaven to a police department. But of course, the department will need more in the future, and it won't get more if it turns on its new benefactor.

No one gives away 4.6 million expecting nothing in return. J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon is quoted as saying, "These officers put their lives on the line every day to keep us safe, we're incredibly proud to help them build this program and let them know how much we value their hard work." I wouldn't argue that NYPD, or any police department, is not worthy of such a donation, but I must question the motive and the timing. I wonder if Mr. Dimon actually lives in the City. The few New York CEOs I've had the pleasure of dealing with all lived in Connecticut and rode limos down the Meritt Parkway to work and back. Wherever Mr. Dimon lives, I doubt he fears for his safety.

I hear complaints that the protest is unfocused, that the protesters rejection of traditional hierarchy renders the movement ineffective as a political force, that it has no clear message. But I don't see a problem yet. Occupy has been effective simply by coming into existence. No one organized Occupy ahead of time. A call went out and people showed up. They're still showing up and their numbers and tenacity do have an effect. They get noticed. As for the message, one can google Keith Olbermann and hear the message, well written by Occupy and well read by Olbermann. Basically, occupiers want to take their country back from the banks and lobbyists. Their demands aren't that different from those of the Tea Party. The two groups should join forces. They're mad about the same conditions, though they disagree on where to put the blame.

The Tea party blames the government, Occupy blames the corporations that now own the government. Is there that much difference? Ultimately, we will all have to join forces if we are to call ourselves a nation. Right now, we are too polarized to be effective. We no longer recognize each other as Americans. The mayors and college presidents who call out the riot squads apparently don't know that those are their fellow Americans getting beaten and pepper sprayed. Those are American sons and daughters. Those are American students, American librarians, American grandmothers, and American veterans, and when they get hurt, we all get hurt. The stick swinging has to stop. It serves no useful human purpose.

I've taken part in very few protests. I attended one No Nukes march in Washington D.C. in the late seventies. It seemed to be conducted mostly by old hippies who wanted to do it again, and younger people like myself who thought we were sorry to have missed the sixties. My son and I attended several anti war protests in Austin at the start of the Iraq war. Our fellow
Americans screamed expletives at us as we stood on the street, but we didn't get arrested. There were some "protest for fun" types there too. I think Occupy is different. I'll have to go to New York and check it out. I'm pretty sure the guys in Anchorage weren't out there for the fun of it. They seemed to feel that they needed to be there, that they had no choice. It's
common feeling and common conviction that makes a movement. And it seems that more and more of us feel that we have no choice.

What Happened to The Border?

Late in the summer of 1992, my tour manager and I crossed into the United States from Emerson, Manitoba, after a tour of Western Canada. We were tired and disheveled. The U.S. Border Patrol agent at the gate was a big man with a handle bar mustache and a big nickel plated revolver, with nice custom stag horn grips, hanging from his hip. He wore the green uniform of the era, and had a sense of humor, though a rather twisted one. He told me to pull into the bay on the left and park on the orange tarp. I did as I was told, he had a gun after all. Another officer, I think from U.S. Customs, met us at the open bay, took the customs form on which I had listed descriptions of our instruments complete with serial numbers prior to entering Canada, and told us to go into the building while he performed the inspection. The building was full of students yelling about their rights as American Citizens and silent, leather clad bikers. The bikers were not the insurance man, brand new Harley riders of today, their leathers looked live in, and they wore no helmets. My tour manager, Danny Thorpe, now deceased, was led off into another room because he had the money. He came back only a few minutes later because there wasn't much money for Customs to count. He informed me that there was a biker by the door who wanted to kill me for parking on his tarp.

I crossed from Emerson with my band two days ago. The place looked a little different than it had nineteen years before. There seemed to be cameras mounted everywhere, one of which flashed brightly as we approached the booth. The woman at the window and the big man behind her both wore the blue uniform of the Department of Homeland Security. I handed her our four passports, as is now required. The woman asked the usual questions, twice asking me how long we'd been in Canada. Twice I answered that we had entered on the twenty-sixth of September. We hadn't counted our cash, so we didn't have an exact figure for the woman's queries regarding the state of our finances, but we were pretty sure we had less than ten thousand dollars. If you cross with over ten thousand dollars, you must declare it or Homeland security can seize it all. Since 1995, our only border crossings had been at busy crossings, Buffalo, Niagara, and Detroit, where we were never inspected, so we hadn't anticipated much scrutiny. The woman told us to pull up to garage door number one, and that we could have our passports back after the inspection. Where the open air parking bays had been in 1992, there was now an enclosed garage. I pulled the van up to garage door one and killed the motor. Garage door two opened and we were ordered to pull around. A stern looking woman waved us forward. There were several fast looking Japanese motorcycles parked to our left. I handed the woman the customs form and she ordered us to stand over by a stainless steel table and empty our pockets. A male officer told us to turn our pockets out so he could see that they were empty. They both wore the blue uniform, with light body armor, carried night sticks and modern, polymer framed, semi-auto pistols and neither seemed to have a sense of humor. The male officer asked me what we were bringing in from Canada. Usually they ask if we bought anything in Canada. The usual question was so ingrained in my mind that I replied, "We didn't buy anything in Canada." The male officer repeated, in a more intimidating tone,

"What are you bringing in from Canada?"

"Our gear", I replied.

The woman kept grilling Tim, our current tour manager, about the money, tapping the declaration form with her index finger and telling him to answer the question of whether or not we were carrying more than ten thousand dollars cash. Her tone was that of a middle school teacher who had had enough of a disruptive student. There were two bags of cash. Daren, our drummer handles the merch money, Tim handles the gig money. We don't sell merch in Canada because the Canadians tax it too heavily for us to profit, so all the merch money had been earned in the states and carried through Canada, but there was no way to prove that. Tim counted his cash and Daren got out his paperwork and checked his figures. Now, it looked as though we had somewhat over ten grand. The officers took Tim off to another room to fill out forms and recount the money, refusing to give back his pocket knife, saying they would leave it in the van. I realized then, that I had a multi-tool in a belt pouch on my hip. They hadn't seen it under my shirt tail. I thought about offering it up but didn't. They hadn't asked if we had anything on our belts. After Tim left, the rest of us were told to wait in the waiting room, really more like a closet with a one way window through which they could see us. From the inside we could see our own reflections in the bright glare of the fluorescent lighting. The walls were cinder block and painted yellow. I didn't try the door to see if we were actually prisoners. A woman in two tone leathers sat quietly in the corner. There were two helmets on the chair next to her. In a while, a man in two tone leathers, her husband I guess, was led back into the room. She asked him if he had been treated nicely. "Oh, you know, third degree", he replied in a British accent. They were summoned shortly. As they left, I thought I heard someone say "English people are not allowed to enter this way . . . now, you're not under arrest . . . we'll have to move the bike . . ." After thirty minutes or so, The male officer came and told us he had completed his inspection of the van and told us to pull it outside and wait for Tim. As soon as I pulled the van out, the formerly ever so stern female officer came up and asked to see Daren. There wasn't as much cash in the merch money bag as he had reported. He had forgotten to subtract credit card sales from his total, so it turned out that we had well under ten thousand dollars. We were proven innocent after only having been assumed guilty for forty minutes or so, not bad as border hassles go, but it left a bad taste. I haven't traveled the world extensively, but I've been in and out of the country a few times. I've never been treated like a suspect by officials of any nation other than my own. Sure, they have a tough job and we didn't have our shit together. But they were nasty from the get go. I don't know how such an attitude helps them do their job.

Entering Canada was different this time, too. The U.S. officer who gave me the customs form in Sweetgrass Montana, actually insisted on looking in the van before stamping and signing the form, a first. Then, Canadian immigration charged us four hundred and fifty dollars for work permits, another first. The immigration officer folded the permits, stapled them into our passports, told us we were good until the fifth and to have a nice trip. I just took my work permit out and read it, here in Iowa. Apparently we were supposed to have stopped at the port of exit to tell the Canadians we were leaving and give the permits back. The immigration officer didn't say a word about exiting, and we'd never run into this requirement before. The last time we'd been in Canada, a couple of years before, one could simply leave Canada without a word. We'll have to get on this situation right away if we want to work up there in the future, mole hills just seem to want to turn into mountains these days. We mused on the changing world as we rolled toward Lethbridge, Alberta. Wasn't NAFTA supposed to make it easier to do cross border business?

I spent a week in Canada and watched the news a time or two. Their news is different than our news. The Canadians are alarmed, to say the least. Apparently, we now have gun boats on the Great Lakes, drones and Blackhawk helicopters patrolling the land border. There's talk of building a fence or perhaps even a wall. What terrible threat is coming at us from Canada, I must ask? And how will we get enough Mexican Nationals to the Canadian border to build a wall? Canadians don't sneak into our country. They're doing pretty well up there, by the look of the place. Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon and Winnipeg all looked prosperous. In none of those sprawling cities did I see the signs of poverty so often evident from crosstown freeways in the U.S., and I suspect their health care system works better than the elder George Bush would have had us believe. No doubt many of us can be fooled into thinking a wall would make us safer, keeping out drugs and terrorists, but I file such arguments under "Yeah Right". Where there are walls, there are tunnels and bribes, and most walls are built to keep people in rather than out, food for paranoid thought, given that Canada's economy is holding up relatively well, and they have the majority of the world's fresh water which will soon be the world's most precious commodity (If you doubt this, note that T Boone Pickens, former oil and gas tycoon, is now in the water rights business). Big Brother paranoia aside, any real threat is most likely to arrive in one of the countless shipping containers I see piled up on our docks and piggy backed on train cars all over our nation. I don't know the current figure, but I remember that during the rough tough Bush administration, Home Land Security was allocated enough funds to inspect four percent of inbound shipping containers. There's no way to inspect them all. There are simply too many. So, the politicians clamor for walls, to make us think they're doing something to protect us, pad the pockets of a few construction firm and high tech CEOs, and keep the DEA funded to the gills. Meanwhile, a once friendly border grows more and more militarized and unfriendly. This can't be good for business.

Still A Good Place to Leave My Stuff

I played my first Austin area gig in 1987 at a now long gone joint called Breezy's, out on 620 near Lake Travis. I lived and played in San Antonio then, and Austin seemed exotic and out of reach, though I'm not sure why. San Antonio has given the world some great musicians, Doug Sahm and Flaco Jimemez, to name two. But in the mid eighties, Austin seemed more like a step towards the big time. Stevie Ray Vaughn had broken out. South by Southwest was in its infancy, but already had a bit of a buzz. I had no idea how to get into the Austin scene, but it so happened I was among the winners at the 1987 New Folk contest at the Kerrville Folk Festival, a lucky break which gave me just enough visibility for my friends and champions, Kathleen Hudson and Tim Henderson, to finagle me the Breezy's gig. I remember rolling up to Breezy's and being thrilled at seeing my name spelled correctly on the yellow roll away sign with the black blow away letters. I've since seen my name in giant lights on the side of a Nevada casino, and on many theatre marquees, but no such sight ever quenched my narcissism the way the sight of that yellow sign did. I don't remember if anyone actually came to that show, but I remember thinking, "I've played Austin". I didn't know that I had actually only played Lakeway or Oak Hill. It was close enough for me.

I had a record deal when I moved to Austin in 1989. I didn't move for the music, Elena, my fiancée, was in graduate school at UT at the time, but I liked the scene. I played a few gigs at clubs whose names I can no longer remember and some that I can, Headliners East, Ravens. When my first tour looped back through Austin, I got to play Liberty Lunch as the middle act, wedged in between the Del Fuegos, from Boston, and The Beat Farmers, from California. I was nervous and played badly. The Beat Farmers scared me and it's likely that one of them left a scratch on my old Guild guitar. Funny, now that the Beat Farmers are no more, since their legendary front man, Country Dick, collapsed and died onstage, I treasure that scratch.

Ronnie Johnson, my bass player, used to say, "Austin is a good place to leave your stuff." The town is perfectly located for touring the U.S. as it is almost equidistant from either coast. One can work either coast economically in three and a half to five weeks and get home in time to still have a life. Had I chosen to live on one coast or the other, I would have had to tour for much longer stretches and might have missed a lot more of my son's growing up. I can't imagine a better place for a musician to grow up than Austin. There are so many live music venues. A kid with ample talent and drive can find a gig here. Curtis has both, and when he's home, he tends to have more gigs around town than I do.

I had lived here more than ten years before I really became part of the local scene. Except for a brief stint at La Zona Rosa, I never had a regular gig here until I started playing with my band on Wednesday nights at the Continental Club sometime in 2002. It was and still is a good night of music, with Jon Dee Graham on at ten thirty, us at midnight. Our audience has expanded due to the regular gig. A lot of people show up just to hear who's playing at the Continental Club. Recently, I've started playing a solo acoustic show upstairs at the Continental Gallery early on Tuesday nights. I like that little room, wooden floor, great sound.

After my Tuesday night show, I usually hang around to hear the Ephraim Owens Trio, three incredible jazz players. I don't know what they're doing, but I like it. Through the plate glass window, I can see our rapidly changing skyline, new glass highrises climbing skyward. The remains of Liberty Lunch and countless other clubs are buried somewhere under that glass, metal, and stone. Ronnie Johnson leaves his stuff in Marfa now, Austin having grown expensive for a side man. It's not the same town, but the music carries on. I'll stay a while yet.