Category Archives: Bloomingfoods

Hot Air

Potty Mouth

Okay, you wanna know what’s weird? Fox News, natch. ‘Course, you already knew that. But the point was driven home again yesterday when one Fox News commentator reacted huffily to Barack Obama’s utterance of the word “nigger” on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast.

Obama/Maron

The Prez & Marc Maron

For the two of you on this planet who don’t know the backgrounder yet, Maron does this online interview show in his garage and somehow scored a date with the Most Powerful Person on Earth. If you want more detail about it, click over to Terry Gross’s Fresh Air interview with Maron [the first time, I dare say, that the act of fellatio was ever broadcast on NPR.]

Anyway, Obama, talking about race relations in this holy land, said to Maron during the podcast:

Racism, we are not cured of it. And it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say “nigger” in public. That’s not the measure of whether racism still exists or not. It’s not just a matter of overt discrimination.

Now, that’s the kind of statement we’ve come to expect from the Good Obama — nuanced, incisive, compelling. As opposed to those statements of the Bad Obama — mealy-mouthed, evasive, nebulous — you know, the kinds of things that we demand our presidents say.

Obama has violated countless cardinal rules of the presidency, first and foremost among them being brown-skinned. Remember when George W. Bush’s chief of staff Andrew Card had apoplexy because BHO had the nerve to work in the Oval Office in his shirt sleeves? By uttering the South’s most famous gift to the American English vocabulary, Obama soiled the presidency once again, at least acc’d’g to a jimoke named Todd Starnes, who, apparently, says words for Fox on a regular basis.

Starnes, writing in his “Todd’s American Dispatch” online column, sez:

President Obama caused jaws to drop across the fruited plain when he uttered the N-word during the interview which was published on Monday. He mentioned the incredibly offensive racial epithet during a conversation over race in the aftermath of the church massacre in Charleston, South Carolina…. 

If he talks like that in public — I can only imagine what he says in private. [all sic]

Dig, this is from the “news” network that that for at least 36 hours tried to convince its senescent audience that the Charleston shooting was an attack on Christianity and not dark-skinned people. That Dylann Roof kid had to shriek that he did it because he wanted to start a race war before the Foxers finally came around to the truth of it all.

This, too, from the “news” network that champions and/or features the following people: Rudolph Giuliani, Jeb Bush, Nikki Haley — each of whom has been quoted as saying it’s impossible to know why Roof gunned down nine black people in a church, despite the facts that he told friends he wanted to kill black people, he explained to one of the black people at the church why he was killing black people, and then told the police he went to the church specifically to kill black people. Right, that Roof kid, he’s sure a puzzler.

So, Starnes positions Barack Obama as a foul-mouthed punk for merely saying the word that I’d guess a significant percentage of the Fox News audience uses in everyday language — and not in the abstract, illustrative sense that the President used it. Starnes shudders to think what maledictions Obama employs in private. One can only assume that in the Oval Office, women are “cunts,” Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who’ll visit Washington in September, is a “slant-eyed gook,” and a good weekend is chockfull of “bitches” and “whores” whose derrieres are covered with “animal trank.”

Because, isn’t that how black guys talk? And Obama’s a black guy, QED.

BTW: Starnes has written essays and/or posted videos at least five times regarding the Charleston terrorist act. Not once has he decried the odious racism that was at the heart of the massacre. In fact, he stuck with the attack-on-Christians trope much longer even than his Fox confreres.

The killing of nine black and brown human beings by a white supremacist, apparently, is far less serious than the president using the term “nigger” to make a point. Like I said, Fox News is weird.

Haley’s Kudos

Let’s give credit where it’s due. South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley yesterday called for the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the statehouse grounds in Columbia. I never thought she’d come around but she has and she should be commended.

SC Confederate Flag

Down With The Flag

If you want to split hairs and say she should have expressed herself in this manner long ago, go ahead. I agree. But she’s done it now; not every Republican has.

Bloomingfoods’ Tomorrows

Parsing the statements of the National Co+Op Grocers reps who spoke at last night’s Bloomingfoods co-op owners open house meeting, I sense that they see the local food retailer’s future much as I do.

National Co+Op Grocers people have taken over Bloomingfoods‘ operations this spring and summer in order to find out why the operation was collapsing in a heap. The president of the board of directors and the general manager have resigned, scads of mid-level managers have been axed, and even before Nat Co+Op took over, B-foods closed its flagship Kirkwood Avenue store.

My recommendation is B-foods should shutter all locations except the Near West site. Nat Co+Op director C.E. Pugh told the crowd yesterday that one of the many actions to be taken in the near future includes the shedding of “unnecessary assets.” That sounds like code for more store closings. “We’re going to be in the period of downsizing for a few months,” Pugh added.

Pugh and Nat Co+Op’s Paula Gilbertson, who’s serving as acting GM, both spoke of two of the three remaining B-foods locations in terms that cannot be described as optimistic. On the other hand, when talking about the Near West store Gilbertson and Pugh spoke of spiffying up the place.

Maybe — just maybe — B-foods can escape from this morass leaner and in possession of a brighter future.

She’s Got It

Day two of The Loved One’s birthday week. I’m posting songs dedicated to her Monday through Friday this week. Yesterday’s tune was Queen’s “You’re My Best Friend.” Today, let’s go with something from my fave blue-eyed soul brothers, the Average White Band.

 

 

 

Hot Air

Choice?

What’s more depressing — the possibility that the 2016 presidential campaign will be between two near-doppelgänger dynasts, Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, or the fact that a farceur like Donald Trump’s entry into the race is taken seriously enough that the New York Times covers it?

Clinton/Bush

Pick ‘Em

Me? I’d almost welcome Scott Walker’s nomination by the Party of God because at least he’s an ideologue. He’d offer us a clear choice between him and anybody else in terms of who we want to be as a nation. Then again, I say “almost” because, honestly, I don’t want him to get the nom. I mean, what if he wins the election?

Race War Vs. Class War

With the meme of Gen. Colin Powell decrying the racism within his Republican Party making the rounds again on social media, my pal, the Lake County Republican, poses the following Q: Why does Powell remain a Republican? Why doesn’t he just quit and join the Dems? Now, while the LCR fully agrees that the racists and chronic racism within the GOP are abhorrent, he believes there’s a greater underlying philosophical reason why the Republicans are the better party. After all, the LCR himself hasn’t quit the GOP.

Here’s the LCR’s explanation:

I think it is because the actions of a few [Democrats] are despicable [and] the ethos of the Democratic Party is even worse. They appeal to the base human instincts of envy and resentment of those better off….

This, among other things, the LCR posits, makes the Dems “even more corrosive to the nation” than the racism within the GOP.

That’s quite a charge. My take: I’ll bet Colin Powell himself can’t fully explain why he remains a Republican. It may be inertia. Powell grew up at a time when the most virulent racists and segregationists were Democrats. Harry Byrd, George Wallace, Orval Faubus, and Lester Maddox all were Dems. That, of course, was before Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy folded the Neanderthal wing of the Democratic Party into the GOP.

Now then. The LCR’s charge that the 99% appeal (which precious few Dem candidates are embracing in any case) is worse for this holy land than the racism that has torn it apart since the early 1800s. Sheer lunacy, my friend. Peeps aren’t screaming bloody murder because others are successful or “better off.” They’re hollering because the game is rigged. The way the system works now, those who have dough get more at the expense of those who haven’t got it. The plutocracy more and more controls policy and legislation via lobbyists and campaign moneys. Too many Richie Rich’s didn’t earn their dough; they inherited it. And far too many millionaires and billionaires didn’t get that way through hard work and the production of goods and services that somehow benefit, y’know, people. They’ve been degenerate gamblers who gamed the system to rake in their dirty dollars.

Mr. Moneybags

A Crooked Game

And both the Democrats and Republicans are responsible for this economic world of shit.

Better Late Than Never

My delayed reaction to Bloomingfoods‘ divorce from long-time GM George Huntington and the subsequent axing of a nearly two doz. mid-level managers at the co-op’s three locations:

Both are good moves, albeit anywhere from two to 10 years too late.

Huntington

Bloom Mag Photo Of George Huntington By Amber Lynn Brown

My rec. for B-foods’ next good move? Shut down the East Side and the Elm Heights stores before tomorrow morning. Concentrate on the Near West site and make it a viable local alternative to the new Lucky’s Market and the to-come Whole Foods Market.

Hot Air

Foods Facts

In case you missed it, here’s the WFHB podcast featuring an interview with Keith Taylor, a co-op governance researcher who works at Indiana University’s Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis. Taylor started a change.org petition calling on the Board of Directors of Bloomingfoods to come up with a clear and public plan to address some of the issues that are making B-foods employees, shoppers, and co-op members nervous these days.

Bloomingfoods

Bloomingfoods

Taylor was grilled by News Director Joe Crawford last week about goings on at the local co-op grocer. Among other things, B-foods faces a potential union vote by its employees and must find a way to compete with two new natural and organic grocers coming to town within the next couple of years. Both Lucky’s Market and Whole Foods Market have announced plans to hit Bloomington. Lucky’s on South Walnut Street is due to open by the end of May.

Friday, the B-foods Board announced its decision to ask for help from the National Co+Op Grocers (NCG) in resolving its financial picture. At the same time the Board revealed that its president, Tim Clougher, has stepped down.

The NCG move will entail volunteer managers from other member grocery stores coming in and observing B-foods’ operations, doing an audit of its books, and making recommendations for repairs.

If Bloomingfoods pulls through the next couple of years in decent shape, it’ll be a testament to the loyalty of its customer base and the buy-local philosophy. B-foods not only faces competition from Lucky’s and WFM but mega-grocer Kroger has gone all in on natural and organic, especially at its newly remodeled Kroger Theme Park store on the east side.

The NCG request indicates that the B-foods brain trust is serious about the co-op’s future.

Shouting Out For Hamilton

Congrats to Rob Deppert for landing the plum task of intro’ing Howard Dean when the lobbyist/Dem Party sachem comes to town to flog for mayoral candidate John Hamilton.

Dean will spiel for Hamilton at the Monroe County Courthouse Wednesday at 1:00pm. The former Vermont governor and chair of the Democratic National Committee is credited with implementing the party’s “50-state strategy” that loaded both the US Senate and House of Representatives in its favor in the 2006 elections. In 2008, Barack Obama used the same strategy win election as president. Under the strategy, the Dems fought hard in what had previously been regarded as hopeless states and districts. Voters who’d considered themselves outnumbered in those places were targeted and energized, leading to numerous Democratic upsets.

Dean

Howard Dean

Most Murricans only know of Dean through a video of him hollering to rouse the troops at post-election rally the evening of the Iowa Caucuses in 2004. Known as the “Dean Scream,” video of the outburst was aired endlessly that month and was the final nail in the coffin of Dean’s presidential aspirations. Fox News pretty much ran all-scream, all the time for a good four weeks.

Me? I thought he got a raw deal from the get-go. So he hollered. So his voice was hoarse and cracked. It was a pep rally, for pity’s sake.

Truth is, Dean is a top-notch political strategist and certainly would have been my guy for president over both incumbent George W. Bush (duh!) and even eventual Dem nominee John Kerry.

Happy Days Here Again?

Speaking of politics, the folks who run my back office — AKA Soma Coffee — just got in a new shipment of mugs. Said mugs, natch, aren’t really new; Soma’s famed for its retro inventory. Take the mug I got today — on it was a repro of the New York Times front page the day after Barack Obama was elected prez in 2008.

NYT

Of course, I got to reading the impossibly tiny print. I was reminded that the election had produced a Democratic majority in the Senate of 59-41 as well as a 257-178 plurality in the House that happy November day.

All I can wonder is how in the goddamned hell the Dems pissed that advantage away.

OTOH: It looks like presumptive Dem nominee for prez in 2016, Hillary Clinton, is harkening back to those cheery times with her recent moves to the Left. Mebbe the party has learned a thing or two over the last couple of elections.

Hot Air

Criminals

Justice has been served. Truth will out. The law triumphant. Huzzah, and all the rest of the holy horseshit prosecutors, moralists, and plaster saints will toss our way now that those eight Atlanta teachers have been sentenced to prison for the unforgivable crime of participating in a test cheating scandal.

Oh, and guess what — they’re all black.

Who’da thunk?

Three of them were given 20-year sentences (seven in the joint, 13 on probation plus $25,000 fines). The other four got lesser prison terms and fines. The judge in the case, one Jerry Baxter, was livid as he sentenced the criminal bastards. “Everybody starts crying about these educators,” he ranted. “There were thousands of children harmed in this thing. This was no victimless crime.”

Baxter

Judge: Everybody’s Crying

[Image: Kent D. Johnston/Reuters]

Baxter did not elaborate precisely on how thousands of school kids from slum and ghetto schools that were in danger of being closed had their average test scores not reached a certain level would be harmed. Presumably they’d grow up thinking its fine and dandy to cheat when neighborhoods are in danger of losing their schools and teachers are liable to lose their livelihoods.

Which is unforgivably wrong.

Tests, BTW, of which there are altogether far too many in the first place, sucking up time and energy that could be devoted to something like, well, education.

Oh, yeah, that’s right — they are educators.

Or were. They’re convicts now.

Something the following esteemed citizens are not:

  • George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their Halliburton co-conspirators who lied to the world and pressured this holy land into a senseless war costing more than half a million lives
  • Jamie Dimon, Angelo Mozilo, Jimmy Cayne, John Thain, Lloyd Blankfein, Hank Greenberg, Dick Fuld and their consiglieres affiliated with the credit ratings agencies, the state and federal regulatory agencies that winked at their three-card monte financial instruments, and the politicians who helped them all set up the biggest economic bubble in the Earth’s history and the economic disaster that followed its bursting in 2007-08
  • The dons and capos in charge of the world’s biggest polluters including ChevronTexaco, Exxon, BP, Saudi Aramco, Gazprom, Statoil, Royal Dutch Shell, British Coal Corp., Peabody Energy, BHP Billiton, and the rest of the 90 state- and investor-owned corporations that are responsible for two-thirds of the global warming-causing emissions on this gagging planet
  • Every cop who has shot a brawling black man but did not do the same to any such white men

And…, oh, I could go on and on. But you get the point. Wealth has its privileges. Skin color has its perks. But those cheating teachers, man, they belong in prison for chrissakes!

The Board Reacts?

Bloomingfoods petition man Keith Taylor says he’s learned the Board of Directors of the local grocery co-op is having a special meeting today. Could it be in response to petitioners who are demanding the the Board come up with a plan of action to deal with all the crises B-foods faces these days?

B-foods

We’ll see.

They Are What They Are

Those four Blackwater triggermen who were sentenced Monday to prison for whacking 17 innocent Iraqis at a roundabout in Baghdad? Let’s stop calling them “security contractors.”

Let’s call them what they are — mercenaries.

Sure, the term carries emotional and judgmental weight. It should.

News anchors and reporters have been referring to them as security contractors, which makes them sound like trained technicians who are performing some necessary task for the good of us all. In reality, they’re killers for pay.

Now you might argue that all soldiers are killers for pay — there’s a grain of truth in that. But, traditionally, soldiers in this holy land and likely all the self-described holy lands of this mad planet have been dragged into the uniformed life pretty much against their will. Even during the “good war,” World War II, guys who got their notices from their local draft boards opened those missives with with dread. Popular depictions of guys who were gung-ho about going into the army rarely were complimentary. Such characters were seen as, well, loons.

And that’s precisely what guys who worked for Blackwater are. (The defense contractor is now called Academi — Blackwater has such a negative connotation; Academi sounds sort of excitingly futuristic. Let’s not participate in the company’s PR campaign, alright?) Anyway, Blackwater employees were (and are) guys who want to go to war. They want to carry big guns and shoot other humans. They dig the blood, the gore, the spilled intestines, the rush of fear, the flood of adrenaline.

Nisour Square

Blackwater, Red Rivers

[Image: AFP]

They got all that and more at the Baghdad intersection in 2007.

Mercenaries.

Get It First But Get It Right!

From The Pencil Department of Corrections: A clarification. In my Monday post referring to Jeffrey Wolin’s Pigeon Hill: Then & Now retrospective, I noted that you can see Wolin’s pix at Pictura Gallery, which you can. But the specific exhibit on Pigeon Hill is at the Monroe County History Center.

[h/t to Mike Burns]

Gone

Percy Sledge — November 25, 1940-April 14, 2015.

Hot Air

Petition Pushes B-foods Board

Anybody want to lay odds that Bloomingfoods will be nothing more than a fondly-recalled part of this town’s history within five years? That’s no sucker’s play. “Natural” and organic mega-grocers Lucky’s Market and Whole Foods Market are coming to town and B-foods already is feeling the pinch.

In addition to grappling with the potential unionization of its workforce and the need to shutter its underperforming Kirkwood Avenue store, the Bloomingfoods co-op is running for its life at this time.

Blame it on the vagaries of the trendy “natural” foods market or the phase of the moon if you wish. Some, though, are blaming the co-op’s Board of Directors. In fact, a change.org petition page has been set up, demanding that the Board, well, do something. Acc’d’g to the petition, the Board has been sitting on its hands through what is described as the current  “crisis.”

One Pencil source says that because B-foods had been the only “natural” and organic grocer in town for decades, its Board has come to suffer from “extreme hubris.”

[The Pencil will not disclose the identities of many of its sources for Bloomingfoods stories because they are employees and may not wish to put their jobs at risk.]

This person explains: “Our Board has never had to do anything. They don’t have the will [or] knowledge to act.”

The petition asks the Board to “Reach out to our national association, [National Co+op Grocers (NCG)], and request an emergency peer review/audit.” The NCG, apparently, can send in volunteer General Managers from other member grocers to pore over B-foods’ books, interview management and employees, and assess things like merchandising, buying, and pricing. The vol GMs then would file a report with recommendations for a course of action.

Should the Board take the petition-signers’ advice and apply for a NCG review, they’d better hurry. Even Kroger has upped its commitment to “natural” and organic foods of late. In fact, the east side Kroger Theme Park’s organics section is as big as any of Bloomingfoods’ entire locations. Kroger has gone all-in on “naturals” and organics. Its overall sales in that category for 2014 reached to between $3-4 billion. Kroger’s organic house brand, Simple Truth®, accounted for a billion dollars in sales last year.

Mainstream customers here who have shied away from crunchy grocers like Bloomingfoods are embracing the trend at their preferred neighborhood Kroger. And while many Bloomingfoods customers are driven to remain loyal for moral and ethical reasons, many others who simply want “clean” foods likely will get their grub at Kroger rather than make the trip to B-foods.

A quick lesson in label designations: I put “natural” in quotation marks because there is no legal or regulatory definition of the term. Many consumers define “natural” foods as those without chemical additives, ignoring the scientific fact that things like water (H2O) or table salt (NaCl) are themselves chemicals. Organics, on the other hand, are strictly controlled by the US Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) National Organic Program. The growing, processing, packaging, handling, and merchandising of certified organic foods all must meet the NOP’s rigid standards.

National_Organic_Program

The USDA’s Official Organic Program Logo

BTW: much of the NOP body of regulations was written, essentially, by Whole Foods Market. The Organic Foods Production Act was passed into law by Congress in 1990, calling for regulations covering organic farming practices and the publication of lists of allowed and forbidden ingredients. The NOP took effect in 2000. During that ten-year period, Whole Foods was essentially the only game in town — or, more accurately, the nation — when it came to organic retailing.

Anyway, business and food store co-op expert, Keith Taylor of Indiana University’s Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, set up the change.org petition. You can hear him explain the situ. tomorrow afternoon on WFHB. As soon as I get more info on the time and show, I’ll pass it on.

Time Flies

Make sure to catch this slate.com piece on photographer Jeff Wolin’s fascinating study of Bloomington’s citizens. Wolin snapped pix of Pigeon Hill  folk back in the late 1980s and early ’90s. Then he did it again with many from the same cast of characters some 20 years later. Pigeon Hill is a small stretch of shotgun houses northwest of downtown Bloomington, on the other side of Rogers Street. Suffice it to say professors and doctors do not live there.

Tempus fugit, babies, and that maxim has been brought home dramatically through Wolin’s lens. Here’s a taste:

Images/Jeffrey A.  Wolin

A young fellow named Timmie in the neighborhood, 1991, and Timothy in 2012 at Wabash Valley prison — Images by Jeffrey A. Wolin

See more of Wolin’s pix at Pictura Galley, on the Square, through May 30th.

Who Runs This Town?

Perhaps one of the lawyers or pols who read these almost-daily screeches can clear something up. Yesterday I spoke with someone purportedly in the know. This person said that as far back as the Frank McCloskey administration here in this thriving, throbbing megalopolis, there was an understanding that real estate developers have held an absolute upper hand in any negotiations with the city.

That is, if a developer and construction company partnership came along and proposed to erect a mixed-use hotel, grocery store, and opium den at the corner of, say, Indiana and Kirkwood avenues, well, then within a year or two there would stand at that intersection just such a structure — let’s call it The Blooming-den Suites. And no matter how many citizens would object to a grocery store standing there, or how many city council members would rant and rave about the loss of a row of forsythia bushes at that location, the real estate partnership would get its way.

Developers and construction cos., this person observed, were — and are — as powerful as gods. Their will, in other words, be done.

In fact, this person swore, Frank McCloskey gathered the city’s planning commissioners one day in his office and said:

I won’t tell you what to do but I will say this — when a big development plan comes in, no matter how much it violates our dearly-held “character” or flouts our zoning guidelines, if we nix it, then that developer will sue our pants off. And we don’t have enough money to pay for those legal fees even if we win.

Hmm. This is one of those stories that sounds really good. The world is rife with avaricious money and concrete men who are dead-set on ruining our quaint small town. And the valiant, embattled mayor, realizing the deck is stacked, sadly explains the facts-of-life to his people.

These facts of life, my source attested, are in play today even more than they were back in Frank McCloskey’s day.

So, is there anyone out there with the guts to admit this or the credibility to deny it?

 

Hot Air

A Refreshing Truth

I was sitting around shooting the breeze with a few MCCSC employees, one principal and two teachers, earlier this week.

Now generally I tend to run like the wind when there are teachers around but I have to admit that since I’ve moved to this town I’ve met some teachers who don’t make me want to scream. In fact, I’ve met a teacher or two hereabouts whom I’m actually fond of. Imagine that.

Take the principal from last night. S/he (See how cagey I’m being here? Just try to figure out who this is — I dare you.) told us about the parents at his/her school. A photo of them, s/he implied, could illustrate the dictionary def. of “helicopters.”

“They’re involved in everything,” this principal said — and it was no compliment. The stress this person put on the word every made his/her lip curl in disgust.

This inspired one of the two teachers to spout off about parents who post gazillions of pix of their little darlings on Facebook. “Yeah,” the other teacher chimed in, “and what about the all the people who have to comment about how gorgeous and cute the kid is.”

Mom Meme

Mom Meme

“And these parents who constantly say that their kids are the absolute joy of their life!” the principal said. “I mean, c’mon! No kids are that perfect.”

One of the teachers nudged the principal. “Tell ’em what you told me that time about your kids,” the teacher said.

“Oh yeah,” the principal said. “You know how these parents go on and on about how their kids have brought nothing but joy into their lives? I mean, I love my own kids, sure, and they really do bring joy into my life but, honestly, they turn all the other joys of my life into shit!”

Now there’s an educator (and parent) who’s got this kid thing figured out.

B-foods Kirkwood Store to Shutter

Bloomingfoods is doing the right thing. Any time I’ve ever gone into the Kirkwood store, I’ve felt as though I’m walking into the set of some post-apocalyptic movie. Y’know, not much of a selection and no other customers around.

Bloomingfoods

Ghost Town?

Sometimes you have to admit the times have passed you by. Besides, the place never did offer the caviar and Champagne fare the new breed of Richie Riches at Indiana University demands.

Know Your Homeland?

From Washington Post blogger Suzanne Dovi comes the news that nearly a dozen states may make passing civics tests mandatory for their high school students. A sample test reveals the knowledge demanded of HS seniors amounts to little more than memorizing a few dates and geographical locations of certain historic landmarks. Civics Lite, as it were.

From "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"

Anyone? Anyone?

Dovi offers the following Q’s for a more thorough understanding of this holy land’s civic environment:

True or False:

  •  If the police knock and ask to enter your home, you don’t have to admit them unless they have a warrant signed by a judge. (Answer: True)
  •  If the police come to your home and ask you to step out and you do, they no longer need a warrant for your arrest. (True)
  • If you are arrested outside and you accept any offers to let you go inside — to get dressed, for instance — the police can escort you inside and then search the rooms you enter without a warrant. (True)
  • The police are not allowed to lie to you. (False)
  • The right to videotape the police depends on the state you live in. Twelve states have adopted “eavesdropping” laws that prohibit videotaping police without the officer’s consent. (True)
  • The police are allowed to delete photographs or videos on your phone under any circumstances. (False)

Multiple choice:

  • If you feel that your rights have been violated by the police, to whom could you file a written complaint?
    • Police department’ internal affairs division
    • Civil complaint board
    • ACLU
    • All of the above
  •  Under OSHA regulations, an employer cannot retaliate against whistleblowers by:
    • Firing
    • Demoting
    • Denial of benefits
    • Reducing pay or hours
    • Blacklisting
    • All of the above

The answer to the T-Fers are T, T, T, F, T, F. Both multiple choicers are All of the Above. Howdja do?

A Boatload Of Criticism

I have no particular axe to grind concerning the Dave Matthews Band. Meh is pretty much the most voluble reaction I can muster regarding them.

Pitchfork music critic Jeff Weiss has schooled me, though, on turning a non-reaction into an emotional extravaganza, thanks to this critique written by him and passed along by bassman extraordinaire Gordon Patriarca:

Once upon a time/When the world was just a pancake/Fears would arise/That if you went too far you’d fall/But with the passage of time/It all became more of a ball.

— some Dave Matthews lyrics

You want a real American Horror story? Sit in the back of an SUV with off-key sorority house members singing along to Dave Matthews Band. “Dave” is a jam act with no jams. They make Perrier seem vibrant and ethnic. Dave Matthews croons like Kermit with a hangover, for a presumed intended audience of trustafarians and frat bros bonding via hacky sack and horseshoes. Them, and folks whose favorite book is The Da Vinci Code and favorite TV show is Two and a Half Men. They are permanently beige, the sonic instantiation of Ambercrombie & Fitch cargo shorts, South Carolina Gamecocks hats, and flip-flops flailing.

Weiss is a wordsmith. Permanently beige? Inspired. Trustafarian? Brilliant.
Sometimes the curmudgeon’s art must be acknowledged.
BTW: The DMB was involved in one of the grossest incidents in Windy City history a few years back. It seems the band’s tour bus was crossing over the Kinsey Street Bridge, one of the city’s landmark ironwork bascules spanning the Chicago River. Just at that moment, the bus driver opted to empty the vehicle’s septic tanks. Now, Chi.’s bascule bridges have iron grate roadways so the effluent dropped down toward the river below. Only the tour boat Chicago’s Little Lady, carrying a hundred passengers who, prior to the incident, were enjoying an architectural tour on a sunny afternoon, happened to be immediately below the bus.
They got hit with 800 pounds of the band’s piss and shit.
Kinzie St. Bridge

Chicago’s Kinzie Street Bridge

From a Chicago Tribune article on the driver’s plea agreement in which he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor reckless conduct and water pollution, the tour boat’s passengers “described a downpour of foul-smelling, brownish-yellow slurry that ruined their clothes and made several of them sick.”
Happy Friday!

Hot Air

Bloomingfoods

The Pencil just got a hot tip that a certain very well-respected Indiana University professor is writing a comprehensive article on the Bloomingfoods/union dust-up for an upcoming edition of The Ryder magazine.

B-foods

Until it comes out, though, you can’t do much better than to keep monitoring Nancy Hiller’s Facebook page. Her posts on the situ. are must-reads.

 

Hot Air

The Bloom Is Off The Foods Store?

Here’s some alleged inside dope about the air that Bloomingfoods workers breathe. I caution you to take it with a grain of salt. It’s one person’s observation. I’ll continue canvassing other insiders at the five-store co-op, some of whose employees are making union noises these days.

Bloomingfoods/Union

Acc’d’g to this B-foods employee — let’s call him Joe Doe — morale at the stores has been sinking for a good long time. There are several reasons for this:

  • Newer employees must obey the rules and do the dirty work while older, entrenched employees tend to take these things a bit less seriously
  • B-foods is bruised and bloodied, thanks to competition from the likes of Kroger which is now selling many of the same natural and certified organic products at better prices
  • Management seems slow to respond to the competition — B-foods’ merchandising, inventory, and retail strategies are the same ones the co-op has depended on since its inception 38 years ago
  • Those sweet employee benefits linked to here yesterday? They’re available to full-timers but — here’s the rub — try getting F-T hours

Again, this is one Bloomingfoods worker’s testimony. If there’s any truth to it, though, it would indicate the co-op just might be suffering through a mid-life crisis. Most companies go through it. Brilliant, ambitious, visionary entrepreneurs start businesses that take off like rockets. For years these operations are model wealth generators, their set-ups sleek and enviable. After a couple of decades of robust growth, the ideas that put these cos. ahead of the pack have been co-opted by everybody else in the industry. Those one-time visionaries eventually find themselves incapable or unwilling to adopt newer ideas in their fields. They’ve become hidebound and cocksure.

Hell, even Apple kicked Steve Jobs out the door at one point. Every company needs a shake-out at the top at some point in time.

Is this Bloomingfoods’ time?

Maybe, maybe not. Stayed tuned here for more testimony from insiders who may or may not buy into this theory.

Ebola Causes Insanity

And now a new flood of crazy has begun. This time the topic is ebola.

You had to figure that would happen, no? First, batshit paranoia emanated from the cakehole of that deep thinker, Phyllis Schlafly (who, unaccountably, is still alive and being interviewed). Schlafly sez Prez Obama, natch, not only is responsible for ebola coming into this holy land, he wants it here. The reason? So’s we can become just like the rest of the planet’s cool kids.

He wants us to be just like everybody else, and if Africa is suffering from Ebola, we ought to join the group and be suffering from it, too.

Schlafly

Schlafly

So says the woman whose greatest accomplishment in life was to lead the battle against the passage of an amendment to the US Constitution that would guarantee civil rights for half its citizens. Thanks, Phyll.

Anyway, pop star, noted domestic abuser, and serial violent tantrum-thrower Chris Brown has now weighed in on the greatest threat to America since the last one. He tweeted yesterday:

I don’t know … But I think this Ebola epidemic is a form of population control. … getting crazy bruh.

Brown

Brown

Laugh if you want, but his tweet contains an unassailable truth: he doesn’t know.

Whee, Me!

Scads o’thanks to writer David Brent Johnson and publisher Malcolm Abrams for the neat profile of this scribe in the October/November edition of Bloom magazine.

Johnson/Abrams

Johnson (L) & Abrams

Somehow, Johnson succeeded in catching the gist of The Pencil and me in only 400 words. That’s writing, babies. And Abrams had the good sense to recognize that the founder of this communications colossus must be immortalized in his mag.

Honestly, boys, I appreciate it. Now, let’s see some good Bloom ink translate into a gazillion page views here!

Hot Air

Grocery Grumbling

Wood czarina Nancy R. Hiller gets itchy just thinking about the whole Bloomingfoods/union contretemps going on.

Natch, which of us aren’t torn in this little tug of war? The majority of the citizenry of the People’s Republic of Bloomington are union partisans — yet everybody who’s anybody is hot for Bloomingfoods, the five-store co-op’s founders, its management, and its boardfolk.

Bloomingfoods Union Rally

Rally For B’foods Union Last week

In any case, Hiller got her hands on a list of benefits B’foods offers its galley slaves. The bennies look good, I’ll have to say. Shoot, they even offer free professional counseling which employees are eligible for the minute they start working. Dang, mang, I’d have saved tens of thousands of dollars in shrink fees had I worked for B-foods in my late 20s through early 40s.

Anyway, as soon as I get some free time, I’m going to grill some insiders about their grievances. A very friendly inside source has provided me a list of names and phone numbers of people who just may offer some insight into why at least some B-foods workers are ready to man the barricades.

Until then, read about Bloomingfoods’ employee benefits here, courtesy of our town’s most adept juggler of hammer and saw, the fab Ms. Hiller.

Boo!

The two most effective political messages in American history were Lyndon B. Johnson’s fabled mushroom cloud TV ad in 1964 and George H.W. Bush’s Willie Horton spots.

Mushroom Cloud Ad

Don’t Get Burned By Goldwater

I was too young to remember the mushroom cloud commercial, being eight at the time, but I remember Willie Horton well — I was 32 in 1988. Willie Horton was almost perfect in its simplicity and impact. Lee Atwater and company concocted the archetypical bogeyman: a scary, grotesque, really dark-skinned black man, a rapist/murderer sprung from prison by a lily-livered, pointy-headed Democratic governor. And you wanted that milquetoast Dem to be your president?

Horton

The Face Of Fear

As Atwater, Bush’s storied political strategist, said early on, “By the time we’re finished, they’re going to wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis’ running mate.”

His strategy was no less craven than that of adman Tony Schwartz, who created the mushroom cloud commercial (which, BTW, ran only once.) But craven in politics and other public pastimes works. Barry Goldwater was effectively painted forever as a nuke-slinging madman, Mike Dukakis a patsy for criminals, welfare queens, and — worst of all — black people.

The secret to success in public discourse is to scare the bejesus out of people.

Just as soon as GHWB trounced Dukakis in the ’88 beauty contest, it struck me that what separated the Democrats from the Republicans was the latters’ gleeful willingness to scare the populace and the formers’ hesitancy to do so (at least in the years post-1964.)

I immediately thought of the environment — you know, the air we breathe and the water we drink? All the environmental movement needed to do was start making the citizenry of this holy land wet its pants about pollution and, next thing you’d know, we’d start doing a thing or two about it. After all, the Reagan Administration had been as careful a steward of the environment as an eight-year-old husbanding his bag of Halloween candy.

Cut to almost two decades later: Al Gore et al came out with An Inconvenient Truth. Wouldn’t you know it, that Oscar®-winning doc got millions of us shuddering over the possibility that the likes of New York City and Miami Beach might soon be under water.

Gore/Truth

The Documentary Film Spawned A Book

We on the crunchy end of the political spectrum finally had our Willie Horton.

Don’t get me wrong, I dug An Inconv. Truth the most. Still, as I watched the picture, I had the feeling that certain suppositions in it were less than sure-fire bets. Nevertheless, the scare job was for a good cause, not for painting an entire race of American citizens as murderers and rapists.

Now comes a think piece by Charles C. Mann in September’s The Atlantic mag. He posits that the environmental gang is overreaching with its oft-times overblown rhetoric. Mann is a science writer who penned, among other works, the highly-lauded 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.

Mann feels the scare tactics of environmentalists are working against their own aims. He cites for support, for instance, French philosopher Pascal Bruckner, who insists that many climate worriers are apocalyptic fanatics:

A best-selling, telegenic public intellectual (a species that hardly exists in this country), Bruckner is mainly going after what he calls “ecologism,” of which McKibbenites are exemplars. At base, he says, ecologism seeks not to save nature but to purify humankind through self-flaggelating asceticism.

To Bruckner, ecologism is both ethnocentric and counterproductive.

McKibbenites, of course, are fans of high-profile ecologist Bill McKibben.

Mann is right about some of the overblown rhetoric: One anti-Keystone Pipeline activist says if the thing is built “civilization would be at risk.” Mann’s conclusion is such operatic verbiage marginalizes environmentalists.

Mann is wrong, though, about the scare tactics. He may know a lot about science — and Bruckner may know a lot about philosophy — but neither knows the American people.

Priorities

You had to know this would happen: many parents in Middlesex County, New Jersey, are far more teed off about the cancellation of the remainder of the Sayreville War Memorial High School football season than they are about the digital/anal raping/hazing ritual that caused the cancellation in the first place.

Just to keep you up to date, seven Sayreville HS football players have been arrested for their alleged near-daily hazing of team freshmen. Acc’d’g to the cops, the seven would trap freshmen in the locker room, turn out the lights, and proceed to digitally penetrate the poor kids’ anuses for fun and laughs.

Eek.

Number One

The Foam Finger Takes On A Whole New Meaning

Anyway, some student victims told their parents about the ritual and the parents called the police. Seems open and shut, no?

No. Because of the scandal, the school’s principal cancelled the rest of its football season. And many parents are steamed about having to face life without high school football.

Anally raping an adolescent is one thing, I suppose, but canceling a football season? Now that’s an outrage.

Football. America’s game.

 

Hot Air

Revolting

People occasionally bleat, “If we didn’t have guns, we’d still be colonies of England.”

To which I might respond, “So what?”

Tread/Snake

What has become the United Kingdom is a parliamentary, constitutional republic. That’s pretty much what the United States is now, only without a bunch of pretentious, bloated, old, white peers shouting Here, here at each other. In this holy land, we have a bunch of pretentious, bloated, old, white self-proclaimed populists shouting Gimme, gimme at each other.

So yeah, maybe without guns we’d still be subjects of a useless, purposeless crown. How is that worse than being subjects of an obscenely rich plutocracy of transnational corporation CEOs?

The people of Scotland the day before yesterday voted by a healthy margin to remain under the ceremonial thumb of the Queen of England. Prior to the vote, there’d been a loud, seemingly wildly popular movement for independence. Scottish independence has not been, of course, the only mass call for autonomy in this mixed-up world in recent years. There’ve been successful independence movements in Zimbabwe, Namibia, Eritrea, South Sudan, Brunei, Yemen, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Timor-Leste, Latvia, Belarus, Slovenia, Estonia, Ukraine, Moldova, Macedonia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and even the Federated States of Micronesia, all since the late 1970s.

South Sudan

South Sudanese Soldiers Celebrate Independence

Each of the aforementioned new nations became proudly independent, often at the cost of hundreds of thousands of its citizens’ lives and limbs. Not all newly independent states achieved their autonomy through the use of ammo, but most did. Very often, other, much more powerful nations gleefully assisted those seeking sovereignty if only to weaken or humiliate the countries the rebels were fighting. In fact, we would not be the United States were it not for the help of our friends from France. And the Confederate States of America might be a thing today if only Great Britain and France had pitched in to the Southern cause during the Civil War.

Funny thing is, it’s hard to glean just exactly what each of the proud, new independent nations gained, besides pride, of course, a new flag, and a national cemetery bursting with fresh customers.

In any case, the Scots opted not to fire guns at the Brits. They voted, huzzah. And the independents lost. Generally in such a case, there’d be a wailing and gnashing of teeth from the losing side, followed by the sound of guns and bombs. That’s the way, we’re taught, independence works. You try to talk your way to autonomy and then you blow the other guy’s brains out.

It hasn’t worked that way in Scotland. In fact, here’s what Alex Salmond, the leader of the Scottish independent movement said after Thursday’s vote:

It is important to say that our referendum was an agreed and consented process and Scotland has by a majority decided not at this stage to become an independent country.

I accept that verdict of the people and I call on all of Scotland to follow suit in accepting the democratic verdict of the people of Scotland.

Salmond

Salmond To The UK: You Win

What the hell kind of revolutionary is that? Salmond resigned his post as Scotland’s First Minister this morning. What a wuss! Why didn’t he go down with guns blazing?

Perhaps it’s because he’s a civilized human being.

One of the very few in this crazy, mixed-up world.

Bloomingfoods Union

If you support the right of workers at Bloomingfoods to at least consider unionizing, here’s a Democracy for America petition for you to sign:

Petition

Click Image To Access Petition

Lotus Fest Saturday

Here’s your Lotus Fest 2104 lineup for tonight:

Venues

  • Buskirk Chumley Theater 114 E. Kirkwood Ave.
  • First United Methodist Church 219 E. 4th St.
  • First Christian Church 205 E. Kirkwood Ave.
  • First Presbyterian Church 221 E. 6th St.
  • Ivy Tech Community College Tent 6th St. between Walnut & College
  • Old National Bank/Soma Tent 4th & Grant streets
  • The Bluebird 216 N. Walnut St.
  • 3rd St. Park 331 S. Washington St.

Saturday, September 20th

● Noon to 5pm: Lotus in the Park 3rd St. Park

∙ 12:15pm: Kaia

∙ 1pm: Banda Magda

Banda Magda

Banda Magda

∙ 1pm: Radha Lakshmi

∙ 1:45pm: Arga Bileg

∙ 2:30pm: Sancocho Music & Dance Collage

∙ 3:15pm: Lotus Dickey Song Workshop

∙ 4pm: The Revelers

● 6:30pm: FullSet Buskirk Chumley Theater

● 6:30pm: Arga Bileg First United Methodist Church

● 7pm: Banda Magda Bluebird

● 7:15pm: Catherine MacLellan First Christian Church

● 7:15pm: Tsuumi Sound System Ivy Tech Community College Tent

● 7:15pm: Las Cafeteras Old National Bank/Soma Tent

● 7:30pm: Nagata Shachu Buskirk Chumley Theater

● 7:50pm: Kaia First United Methodist Church

● 8:50pm: The Revelers Bluebird

● 8:50pm: Vanesa Aibar & Company Buskirk Chumley Theater

● 8:50pm: Derek Gripper First Christian Church

● 8:50pm: Nora Jane Struthers & the Party Line First United Methodist Church

● 8:50pm: Mames Babegenush Ivy Tech Community College Tent

● 8:50pm: Aurelio Old National Bank/Soma Tent

● 10:25pm: Emel Mathlouthi Buskirk Chumley Theater

Mathlouthi

Emel Mathlouthi

● 10:25pm: Singing for the Planets First Christian Church

● 10:25pm: FullSet First United Methodist Church

● 10:25pm: Orkesta Mendoza Ivy Tech Community College Tent

● 10:25pm: Movits! Old National Bank/Soma Tent

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