Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Sunday, May 15, 2005
Mood Change: some NYC pictures/new MZ essay on-line
Interesting essay, MickeyZ. - reads like a portrait of Schenectady in the 60’s. Of my four “best friends” during my school years: Dennis blew his brains out. Walt got arrested for selling automatic weapons to an undercover ATF agent. Got his picture on the front page of the Schenectady Gazette. Ronnie got shot in the back after winning a bar fight. He’s paralyzed from the waist down. Last I heard, EMS people were dragging him from his burning apartment. He was selling coke, and his customers robbed him, tossed him out of his wheelchair and set his place on fire. Wes disappeared after a car accident. The guy who was driving is still in a coma.
I live in Oregon. I’d have driven farther away but I ran into this big bunch of salt water so I had to stop…
(I’m “gone” but “it” is not… I carry Schenctady with me wherever I go. Don’t know how to put it down...)
Almost certainly, had we grown up in a sane, anarchist society, all this would have been different. These guys would have had a chance.Posted by joe on from grants pass 05/15 at 04:04 PMPS - I should add: When I was a kid, running with these guys, I thought that all this madness and hatred and savagery was normal. I thought WE were normal. I ALWAYS expected violence, and I was rarely wrong.
Posted by joe on from grants pass 05/15 at 04:14 PMThanks, Joe. As I re-read that essay, I realized that if judged through the prism of the present, the story left me wide open for plenty of PC criticism. But your point is THE point. This is what was normal for me back then...what I knew. I’m just re-telling it.
P.S. I also noticed many typos. I think I accidentally sent an unedited version to Shotgun Mouth. Oh well...who wants purity?
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 05/15 at 04:40 PMthink I’m glad of my sheltered upbringing. Don’t know if I would have survived the world you tell. Inspired me to write a little this evening on chiselpoint. Best wishes to you and yours a chara. declan
Posted by declan on from dublin 05/15 at 05:49 PMJoe, very interesting....I lived in Schenectady in the 50’s. I was working at GE, and I remember it being such a nice place to live then. I never got to see the exciting nite life because I spent all of my nights at Union College...that was back in the days that I still thought that conventional education was to be valued.
Posted by rosemarie on from 05/15 at 06:02 PMHi Rosemarie -
GE was huge, then - I was told it was the largest manufacturing plant in the world, at the time. My father worked there for ~30 years. The entire town was built around the plant - and around the Locomotive Plant. Edison and Westinghouse were there for a while, in its heyday…
Schenectady was already entering its “rustbelt” stage of life when I became more or less aware of self and place and time… There were still safe, affluent parts of town. I lived in an Irish-Italian working class neighborhood where, to look at someone for - just a second too long - could get you into serious trouble. Thanks much for mentioning this, Rosemarie. (BTW - when I lived in Mexico City, in 1980, the guy who ran the house, Gregory Marquez, spoke great English. I assumed he was a very well educated Mexican guy. We were always a bit uncomfortable around one another, so we never talked together at any length. One night, tho, after about 6 months, we were drinking Mescal together. I learned, much to my amazement, that he was studying how to teach English as a second language - and that he grew up about a mile from me, in the Bellevue section of Schenectady… Amazing world.)
Where are you now, if you don’t mind my asking...? Be vague, if you’re uncomfortable with specifics…And - Hey, Mickey - I’ve been reading Daniel Guerin. When I got to this paragraph, I thought of our “conversation” here:
“Diego Abad de Santillan demonstrated the immediate impracticability of libertarian communism: ... He held that the capitalist system had not prepared human beings for communism: far from developing their social instincts and sense of solidarity it tends in every way to suppress and penalize such feelings.”
Don’t it tho?! -joePosted by joe on from grants pass 05/15 at 07:36 PMThat sums it up succinctly: “the capitalist system had not prepared human beings for communism: far from developing their social instincts and sense of solidarity it tends in every way to suppress and penalize such feelings.”
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 05/15 at 08:33 PMJoe, There were 32,000 employees at GE when I worked there. It was really an amazing place. I worked in the Large Steam Turbine Engineering Dept. and I really learned a lot. At first I lived in the Y and then I got a little apartment. I was just 18 years old at the time. It was quite an adventure. I had no money, no car etc. I rationed my food and lived on canned spagetti. Cooking was not allowed in the rooms at the Y but I had a contraband hot plate. I remember walking through blizzards to get to Union College at night. I eventually had enough credits to get a teaching certificate in New Jersey, so I left GE and taught school in New Jersey. Since then I have lived in Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania and now live in Vermont, about 50 miles due east of Schenectady. Seems like you and I are kindred spirits.
Posted by rosemarie on from 05/16 at 07:50 AMGreat essay, Mickey, ever think of writing an autobiographical novel?
I don’t think I would have arrived at my present non-violent self if I had not been surrounded by (and participated in) violence in my youth. I had a desire for trouble that I had to experience and learn from.
Whether it was in the schoolyard at recess as a kid, or in the streets of Harlem as a teenager...being interrogated by Singapore detectives for “gang” fighting in eighth grade, or spending the night in a cell at Central Booking in downtown Manhattan as a young adult…throwing that first punch, or taking one right in the temple…I learned through experience.
I guess some people need to be hit over the head with a lesson in order to learn from it.
These experiences and the people I ran with molded me into what I am today. Not one minute of it was PC. I don’t think life, real life, is ever PC.
It is the memories of the violent acts I saw and participated in, or more specifically, the feeling of emptiness that came with them, that drives me to fight against violence today.
I’ve never been in a war zone, but knowing even a small fraction of the fear that comes with an environment of violence helps me understand why there never is a reason for war.
I’ve never shot at an “enemy” on the battlefield, but experiencing the guilt and horror that follows hurting another human being (especially an innocent one) was enough to teach me that sending young people to kill is a horrific crime.
I now know standing up against violence is more courageous than participating in it, but it took a whole lot of experimentation to arrive at that truth.
Posted by James on from Puerto Rico 05/16 at 09:27 AMoh yeah, and…
Go Tino! (8 hrs in 8 games)
Posted by James on from Puerto Rico 05/16 at 09:34 AMJames - yup, fear - lots and lots of it, eh?
I read something a long time ago by a guy named Big Daddy Lipscome, a huge, fierce NFL lineman. He grew up in L.A., if memory serves, in one of its toughest neighborhoods. (L.A. is a really tough town) - He said: “I’ve been afraid most of my life. You wouldn’t believe it to look at me, though...” But I believed him. I knew just what he was describing.
(And, of course, fear and hate and violenc are the other side of the coin...)Hey, Rosemarie! So you’re in Bernie Sanders’ state. One amazing guy - a lone voice, crying out in the wilderness. I spent some time in Port Henry, NY, and, later, in Wadhams, NY, not far from Westport, a few years ago. My old travelling buddy, Don, lives there, now. He writes that he often takes a ferry over to Burlington to visit the bookstores and meet with various progressive types. There’s a lot going on in Burlington - and in Vermont, in general, he says. My wife and I thought about Vermont, when we decided to escape from Schenectady. We picked Oregon because my sister is up in Portland, and because - along with almost no snow here, Oregon has medical marijuana laws, and doctor assisted suicide laws. (Justice Dept. is challenging both, of course. It’s unpatriotic to wish to smoke pot, or to control your own death. The State has “compelling interest in such matters...")
I’ve spent alot of time in that YMCA - working out and running on the track above the basketball court. Spent some time at Union, too - I went back to school when I was 41 - got an RN. My grad ceremony was at Union. A very good school - if, as you say, you still believe in such things. (No, I don’t either.) I know the hotplate in the room thing very well - wierd, at the time, but interesting, even wonderful memories, somehow, you know? Yes, I’d say kindred, too -
Well, we may not be kids, Rosemarie, but we’re quite a bit more radical than most of the young people I’ve met during the last few years… We’re still learning, still thinking, still hoping for justice and compassion in a world which rarely exhibits either.
Talk to you soon - and, often, I’ll bet -
take care. -joePosted by joe on from grants pass 05/16 at 10:27 AMYeah, Joe. Fear is a powerful thing. It is the driving force behind violence and our inability to oppose violence, in my opinion.
Everyone experiences it… I guess it is how we react to it (or don’t react) that is the important thing.
Posted by James on from Puerto Rico 05/16 at 01:11 PMi am still 18 and young and learning and experiencing, but i believe that without war there would be no peace, communism is a great idea just not practical in our age. I have not grown up with much violence and much fear, but I do plan on joining the military and I will experience it there. I am what some would call a progressive, I like the idea of justice in this world which we rarely see. I am willing to fight for that justice and don’t necesarily agree with the whole senseless killing, or crime of war. War is necessary for progress, its a sad fact of life, but it is a fact. If there were total peace, people would stop inventing things becuase of the lack of competition. I would like to talk to you more but i must go
Posted by jared on from PA 05/17 at 10:01 AMGood luck, Jared. We’ll be here for you if you make it back.
Posted by Harry on from 05/17 at 10:47 AMJared...I also grew up in Pennsylvania and, like you, when I graduated from high school I was filled with patriotism. I believed all that I had been taught in school. I joined the military because I believed some of the same things that you do. I now know better. Please check out the Veterans for Peace web site. Many ordinary vets like me and many thousands of extra-ordinary vets like Ward Churchill are members. Also please read WAR IS A RACKET by Gen. Smedley Butler. At the time of his death, he was the most highly decorated Marine in the USMC. You can read it on the web. Please think about how you will feel after you kill an innocent civilian or a child.
Posted by rosemarie jackowski on from 05/17 at 07:09 PM
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