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“…the lines sag heavy and deep tonight…”

So, Friday, March 3 is my birthday. I’ll be turning 27. If I were a rockstar, I’d be about to die, but I’m a union organizer so I’ll merely get balder and fatter. I’d like to see my friends, particularly those of you that I have not seen much lately (those of you that I have seen, I’m frankly getting sick of you). Being an extensive party planner, I’m probably just going to go to Botanica at happy hour and hope to see you at some point.

More Cat Charity

The Stony Brook Cat Network is a group of students, faculty and staff at SUNY Stony Brook who humanely trap, neuter and vaccinate feral cats on the campus. They try to find homes for the tamer ones, and release the others back into colonies in the woods behind campus, where the cats are fed and live healthier lives than before. I’m awfully sympathetic to this project since my own duck was a rescue cat, herself (coming from the grounds of an retirement community), and I have my own heart-wrenching run-ins with the stray cats of Kew Gardens. If you’re in the market for a mouser or lap cat, please take a look at these needy kitties, and if you have your checkbook open, support the SBU Cat Network financially.

Year Two

I posted my first blarg article one year ago, on February 2, 2005. This website has been a wonderful outlet, and I thank all of you who have joined as readers. The frequency of my postings has declined as of late. I’ve been a bit sidetracked by duck and the floozies, computer problems, an organizing campaign that’s heating up and my studies. I find my two research projects, in particular, very exciting, and will try to keep you updated on them, in between my usual blatherings. I trust you prefer longer periods of silence to pointless surveys and repetitive forwards…?

Help Animals in Need

It’s end-of-year charity-giving time. If you want to help rescue and nurture a dog or cat, I recommend a donation to the North Shore Animal League. It’s a wonderful no-kill shelter, where I have adopted most of my pets. The cat (still no name, suckers) was rescued from a Wal-Mart parking lot by a nice lady who would not let me contribute to her vet bill, so I made a donation in her name to NSAL.

Finding J.D. Salinger

Shedding itself of Sara Edward-Corbett’s delightful cartoon, “See Saw” and Alexander Cockburn’s enjoyably bilious essays long ago, the NY Press lost the rest of my interest when zinester Jeff Koyen resigned as editor. I’m glad, however, that I caught Sean Manning’s account of scanning a microfiche library of “New Yorker” back issues to read the most famous of J.D. Salinger’s “underpublished” short stories, “Hapworth 16, 1924.” Salinger had a very formative influence on me as a teenager, and is most responsible for my overuse, as a writer, of asides and adjectives like “awfully,” “lousy” and “terrific.” I also appreciate to hell the romantic mystery of this crazy guy going off to the country in New Hampshire to write in peace. He’s continued writing every day since he last published “Hapworth” in 1965. Some accounts have him as completing three whole novels. Others, more likely in my opinion, have him completing […]

Cat

She still has no name, but at least now she has her own page on the internet. Perhaps a MySpace profile will follow. It’s the cat! Call her whatever you would like. The best names of late have been Lt. Sulu, Jesus, Chairman Meow, Mr. Bojangles and Pukey McTwitches.

Breaking Up With Work Is Hard To Do

It’s funny how quitting a job can sometimes feel like breaking up with a girlfriend. Even if the break-up occurred for good reasons, it tears you up to hear what she’s been up to, and makes you wish, if only for a moment, that you were still there. Sunday’s New York Times profiles the upcoming contract fight for the city’s hotel employees union, where I worked for three years before resigning last November 3rd. That fight was brewing for at least as long as I worked for the union, so I’ve had a front row seat to this drama. The term “Me Too” still makes my heart sing. More than just a promise to keep the employees working, as the Times frames it, a “Me Too” is actually where the company signs the contract before it is even written. Whatever the other companies agree to, we do too. Please don’t […]

She Came From Wal-Mart

I finally got a pet. A cat. I found her lounging under a tree, at a “golden community” located behind the parking lot of the Wal-Mart at the Green Acres mall at Valley Stream. I was doing my usual union organizer thing, but stopped to pet this unusually sweet and friendly stray cat. One of the residents, Pat Day, caught me petting her, and commenced a month-long lobbying effort to get me to adopt the cat. Lots of strays gather at the retirement community, since the residents are perfectly happy to feed and care for them. I’ve been thinking about adopting a pet for some time, so I was tempted by this cute little rusty-colored calico with an awful gravelly meow. But I was worried about my long hours at work, and how little I would be home for it, not to mention cat hair everywhere and cat claws scratching […]

Everyone You Know Someday Will Die

This is going to be unforgivably morbid. A lawsuit has been filed against the Port Authority by the kin of those who died in the 1993 car bombing of the World Trade Center. Without comment on the lawsuit, which has serious merits, one motivation is dubious. According to the NY Times: “Among survivors of the first attack, which left six people dead and more than 1,000 injured, there has long been a feeling of neglect, as if their suffering was not valued as highly as that of the people who endured the horrors of Sept. 11, 2001. There was no federally engineered compensation fund, no blue-ribbon panel to apportion blame.” Well, geez, whose death is as valued as those who perished in the attack on New York four years ago? And what, exactly, is fair about valuing any random death over another? We have in the Gulf Coast devastation wrought […]

“You just don’t fit in.”

Apparently, to soften the blow from being fired from her reality show, contestants on Martha Stewart’s new version of “The Apprentice” will be told, “You just don’t fit in.” Ha! Where have I heard that one before?