The Big Speakeasy
Jul. 23rd, 2020 11:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kimberlysteele
I turned 47 a short time ago. In almost half a century on this planet, I never thought I would see a day when American public schools clung to fading relevance in a zombie state of half-closure and shopping at beautiful, newly built stores would be an activity I avoided because I prefer to breathe freely. Nevertheless, here we are. At least for now, Big Sister is running the show. She has willing armies intent on re-educating anyone who doesn't believe that fastidious hand washing and sneezing into a towel (or just staying home) is enough to keep the majority of people out of harm's way from a severe seasonal flu.
Warning: if you are one who becomes upset at the notion that legally enforced masks are a bad precedent, scroll away. Your comments will not see the light of day here. You have your forums; Facebook and Twitter spring readily to mind. Your voice is already well-received and perpetuated by the mainstream media. There is no need for you to try to exert control over a peon like me who cannot possibly put a dent in your towering pyramid of fear.
For everyone else, please do not waste your energy by wishing harm on the type person I am describing in the above paragraph. They know not what they do and when it comes down to brass tacks, they were depressed busybodies before they tasted authoritarian power and matters have not improved. They are merely a bit more unhinged than they used to be.
Instead of trying to wrest power from petty dictators, let's do what rational people have done since the beginning of time when dealing with petty dictators: GO AROUND THEM.
It's time to bring back the Speakeasy. The Speakeasy was born long before Prohibition. Back in the day, a speakeasy was an establishment that sold liquor without a license. They were called speakeasies because everyone knew you couldn't blah de blah loudly about them in public, just in case the police or a nosy neighbor overheard. Speakeasies ranged from simple back rooms to grand parlors. During Prohibition (1920 - 1933) the speakeasy hit its stride, and within speakeasy walls the genre of jazz music bloomed as musicians did what they do best in a freewheeling, experimental setting.
The Speakeasy is more than just an illegal place to get an alcoholic drink: it is a state of mind. The Speakeasy is peaceful guerrilla warfare.
Death
The end is a strange place to begin, but we are living in strange times. One of the most ignominious characteristics of the shutdowns was their tacit assault on the very elderly they pretended to defend. At this time, old people are still dying without any contact with their loved ones in nursing homes and hospital wards. Anyone who has been at death's door since March of 2020 is condemned to a frightening and lonely death for the crime of dying during a panicdemic. For many, there were and are no funerals or memorial services to help the living mourn the dead. If you are a religious person wishing to send off your loved one with traditional ceremonies, you can expect to be mocked and potentially arrested for gathering to properly mourn your dead.
The solution to all of this is not to allow the dying to fall into the clutches of corporations disguised as healing centers and asylums disguised as assisted living facilities. If an elder decides they must go into a hospital, nursing home, or assisted living, that is certainly their choice and we should respect it, but if they don't choose such an outcome, we should do everything in our power to move them into our own private living spaces despite the burden they will create. The following is only my opinion, but from what I have seen, death of old age and its related causes should happen at home, surrounded by as many loved ones as possible. When death of old age happens in a hospital or a nursing home, there are legions of paid counselors, managers, and medical staff who must be paid in order to "assist" with a phenomenon that never needed their assistance prior to the advent of nursing homes. If death occurs at home, there is time to say goodbye, light candles, play music, and pray as the loved one's spirit hovers nearby, waiting that short time before the next step in the cyclical death process. If it occurs in a remote place where staffers await to whisk away the corpse, it is probable that you won't even be allowed to see your loved one before they are cremated or otherwise interred.
Schools
The American education system was already a bad joke before the tide of current events swept the land. Quasi-scientific restrictions in the US have turned all forms of school, including college, into a lab rat maze for student and teacher alike. Plastic partitions, no lunch, no recess, and bizarre social distancing and hygiene rites succeed in making public school a far more hellish experience than it was when I attended in the 1980s, and that's truly saying something. In areas with "good" schools, property taxes and house prices are staggering precisely because of the money that goes towards the "good" schools. With the New Normal cemented firmly in place, one wonders if the professional managerial classes who occupy these dramatically overpriced homes will remain willing to finance schools their children can only set foot in two days a week?
I am not a parent, but if I was, I would be yanking my kids out of the public school system faster than billionaire cheapskate J.B. Pritzker yanked out the toilets of his mansion to avoid property taxes. There is a stereotype that homeschooled children are isolated from their peers that isn't true for most. Many homeschool situations are co-ops with their own formal curricula. When parents with similar educational interests for their kids band together and homeschool, the result is more like the one-room schoolhouses of yesteryear, where kids of various ages are obligated to help each other learn. It's simple: we need to start our own micro schools in private spaces. These micro schools should be close by (started by a band of neighbors or friends) and they should feature formal curricula. Because kids are kids, it goes without saying they should be mask free and should include food breaks as well as recess and field trips. Can you tell I was a schoolmarm in a previous life?
As for higher education, the mandatory college for all racket is nearly done. We will see it imploding shortly. I graduated from musical college 25 years ago. Among my peers, I am one of two who uses her degree every single day. Everyone else works in unrelated fields for which it is uncertain if they needed their expensive degrees. If your kid is set on going to college, sit them down and have an honest talk with them about finances. Is the degree worth it if they have to go into debt for a degree that will be mostly obtained online?
I feel for these kids. We can do better.
Food
One of the worst features of the panicdemic was the threat of food shortages. In our land of plenty, nobody should ever go to bed hungry. Plenty are doing that as I write because they have been cut off from the ability to make a living.
We have to take food production and distribution away from large corporations and government via any means possible. It's not possible except in rare cases to be off the food grid entirely, however, my suggestion is that we all need to do whatever small things we can to become less dependent on nationwide and global supply chains for our daily bread.
The obvious first method of re-organizing the food system is growing your own. If you can grow any small bit of what you eat, do it, even if it is only a single jar of sprouts. Anyone with a successful garden knows it is a learning curve and that once the curve is mastered, providing free vegetables to dozens of people at a time is going to be the natural consequence of planting a seed in the ground. Get to know your local gardener -- they want to provide you with fresh produce!
The second is food preparation: Facebook is generally a trash site but there's a feature of it called Marketplace where people often sell ready-made food. Do you have a famous dish, a condiment, or a dessert that you can make in a clean setting in mass quantity? Sell it. Let's get used to the idea that food doesn't have to come from a grocery store.
The third is food gatherings: throw a party to which Big Sister and Big Brother are not invited. We can still enjoy food and we don't need to wear masks upon entering the door, and we don't have to sit six feet apart from each other. If we are feeling truly revolutionary, we can give each other hugs and/or shake hands. The old fashioned dinner party needs to make a comeback.
A cooking circle is a series of dinner parties where people take turns hosting -- they're wonderful because the pressure isn't always on the same host and everyone gets to sample different cooks.
Potlucks are another option -- they're quiet, and they always end up with too much food. For a better potluck, have the participants list what they are bringing ahead of time so you don't end up with three tons of leftover hummus.
Cookie (or other food) exchanges are great especially around the holidays. Once again, getting a list of who is bringing what helps there to be fewer unwanted cookies.
Teaching Your Skills
Just like we need to take back the means of production where food is concerned, it is imperative that with universities collapsing and shortages on the horizon that we learn to hone and trade our skills.
Are you good at knitting? Cooking? Gardening? Carpentry? Beading? Electronics repair? Can you speak more than one language? Are you a pro at dealing with stress? Are you good at finding good deals at garage sales? Are you a pet whisperer? People need you. You don't have to start a formal business in order to have a few like-minded people over to teach a small class. If you can afford to do so, offer at least one class for free -- as a music teacher, the first lesson free approach helped me to build a thriving music studio that has lasted 25 years. Don't wait: figure out what you are good at, reach out, and teach what you know. Now more than ever, people need to learn practical skills.
Entertainment
We now live in an era of vacant arenas and empty stadiums. I personally was never into sports, but it angers me that giant stadiums exist partially funded by my tax dollars that rot in the open air.
If you can get to a wild space, for instance a forest preserve, do it for your own sanity. Get away from screens and online games (including social media) for your own mental health's sake.
Musicians are hurting the worst from the panicdemic. I myself don't have it so bad, as I have never been a regularly gigging or touring musician. My gigging and touring musical brethren have been hit the worst by the current mess. If you have any ability, please find a local or regional musician and ask them how you can host a house concert for them. House concerts are where the musician plays in your living or office space and the audience pays directly for the entertainment. These sorts of underground, DIY events are potential lifesavers for musicians who have lost almost all their streams of income.
Host a board game day for friends when the weather turns nasty. A game day is a pleasant activity in conjunction with a potluck as well.
These are just a few of my suggestions to get the ball rolling. I hope they inspire people of like mind to come up with their own brainstorms as we go around the paranoid neo-Gestapo.
Thanks for reading and refraining from profanity in the comments.
Skills
Date: 2020-07-24 06:32 pm (UTC)Anyway, I ended up being the repository of knowledge about edible plants and herbs for healing for my neighbors.
I am lucky I have boxed food delivery service. So cooking from scratch for everyone for every meal is not that onerous for me.
Neptune's Dolphins.
Re: Skills
Date: 2020-07-25 02:42 am (UTC)I'm proud of what little herbal knowledge I have. People who have it are living treasures.
I don't have an issue cooking from scratch either. Having a pressure cooker and a rice cooker takes much of the hard work out of it.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-25 02:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-25 02:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-25 02:58 am (UTC)BTW a good practice as such "speakeasy" gatherings might be to have every guest/participant deposit their portable electronic devices (i.e. spyphones) in a foil-enclosed box before entering. For both symbolic, and ahem...practical purposes.
It would also be cool to see people having similar skillsets in a local area band together and form informal "guilds" and offer their services as an alternative to woke corporations and other business entities that may be hostile to Americans who value freedom and autonomy. And of course keep the guilds unofficial and off-the-books, and of course, DO NOT USE SOCIAL MEDIA to conduct organizational activities. I think the sky's the limit on the sort of organizational efforts that could take root during this crisis. Basically, a totally bloodless revolution. Instead of destroying property and vandalizing monuments, we simply disassociate (i.e. walk away) from all that is dysfunctional, authoritarian, and deranged.
Thank you for writing this, it really made my evening.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-25 06:58 pm (UTC)Probably the greatest gift someone could give a child right now would be to teach them how to be happy and productive with no computing, social media, or electronics. They are looking at a difficult future. The more plugged in they are to online RPGs and first person shooters as entertainment, the more addicted to social media chatting, the worse off they will be.
I love the idea of guilds. There are very few students of mine who would be even remotely capable of doing what I do, but for the tiny handful who have the ability to become good music teachers (bad ones are a dime a dozen) I'd be thrilled to bring back the apprenticeship. The current model is a free for all where the all important piece of paper in the form of a music degree is supposed to qualify you to teach.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-26 05:08 am (UTC)I do think it is possible to use technologies that are either controlled by trusted members, or using encrypted communications while those remain legal, rather than completely removing the digital element for communications.
I do agree that physical social gatherings would in an ideal world require all devices turned over. However it is increasingly difficult to ensure that no hidden spy devices are on a person. Hidden cameras and mics are extremely clever these days. Device policy is no substitute for trust.
You also can't control your neighbors who may have their own properties wired up with spy cams looking out at every angle, capturing the comings and goings in the hood.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-26 05:38 am (UTC)I'm sure in the era of Prohibition, there were snitches who would rat on the locations and dates of speakeasies, no cameras required. I'm with you -- tech isn't necessarily evil. If we're clever enough, I'm sure it's not hard to invent a code language to communicate speakeasy type events online via social media. Heaven knows politicians and celebrities were able to hide their predilection towards pedophilia with code language for decades; we can certainly use code language towards more wholesome purposes!
My house is one of the wired kinds... my husband loves cameras. In my neighborhood, it's helped our house not to get robbed at least once. Tech has its advantages as does surveillance.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-27 12:47 am (UTC)Prohibition
Date: 2020-07-25 02:35 pm (UTC)It also gave rise to gangsters since bootlegging was very profitable, and allowed the expansion of the Mafia. This expanded into drugs after the Repeal and now we have all sorts of gangs that seem to have staying power.
One thing that I have notice is that the PMC liken Trump to a mobster, etc claiming that Russian mob money gave him his riches. i.e. conspiracy theories to connect Trump to Putin. What the PMC don't realize is that in order to do business in NYC especially in real estate, you had to do business with the Mafia. They controlled the building trades.
And all of this ill-gotten money will of course show up in Trump's tax returns. As if people don't understand how taxes are reported. (snark meant)
Neptune's Dolphins
Re: Prohibition
Date: 2020-07-26 02:40 am (UTC)As for Russiagate, what a pathetic load of blowback that turned out to be for the Democrats. Hunter Biden and his billion dollar deal... the jokes write themselves. Democrats are almost too stupid to be believed at this point. They're the opposite of democratic.
Re: Prohibition
Date: 2020-07-26 06:02 am (UTC)If not Alcohol, then drugs, especially marijuana when taken on a harm-vs-punishment scale.
I also don't think it's any coincidence that the growing acceptance of legalization in marijuana coincides with the newly focused crackdown on opioids, the stigma against which is now so far in the opposite direction that people in legitimate need of relief may find it difficult or impossible to obtain their medicines.
The 90s briefly saw a rise of speech prohibition like what we see here today, and political correctness was seen to be running wild. I seem to recall a moment in which that died an ignoble death. It was on 9/11.
Re: Prohibition
Date: 2020-07-26 05:59 pm (UTC)And the fixation with forbidding opium has never worked. Opiates are wonder drugs and they're not addictive if one only uses the amount one needs and nothing more. But of course make something forbidden and combine this with an entire culture of addiction where people can't even manage to eat or shop in moderation and it's a recipe for disaster.
Call me a conspiracy nut, but I am one of those who thinks 9/11 was an inside job.
Re: Prohibition
Date: 2020-07-26 06:52 pm (UTC)Speaking of opium, and the opioid crisis:
https://web.archive.org/web/20191225064807/https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/16/against-against-pseudoaddiction/
^ The entire article is worth a read, but below is a good excerpt.
Re: Prohibition
Date: 2020-07-26 07:40 pm (UTC)Re: Prohibition
Date: 2020-07-27 04:47 am (UTC)not puritanical doctors, it’s Big Brother. Doctors are terrified of losing their licenses if they prescribe “too many” pain or sleeping pills. The last time this happened was in the 90’s, when there were cases of terminal patients denied morphine because they might get addicted. (That still happens, but not as often. Yet.)
Lady Cutekitten
Re: Prohibition
Date: 2020-07-27 04:14 pm (UTC)Re: Prohibition
Date: 2020-07-27 03:20 pm (UTC)I had to remark on 9/11 being an inside job. I witnessed the plane go into the Pentagon. The Pentagon sits at the nexus of 395, 495, and 95 - major highways. There were dozens of witnesses to the plane. I am sorry, this is a sore spot for me since I lost friends at the Pentagon. There was a plane.
Re: Prohibition
Date: 2020-07-27 04:07 pm (UTC)Are there people who somehow believe the footage was fake and nobody was killed at the Pentagon in 9/11? Why would they believe that?
Re: Prohibition
Date: 2020-07-28 05:08 am (UTC)It doesn't require anything crazy like missiles or holograms or fake footage. Real people can crash real planes.
False flags are a thing. I always think of the often forgotten Winter War of Finland vs USSR in the run-up to WWII in this regard, as the soviets staged a false flag attack to blame on Finland to justify an invasion.
Re: Prohibition
Date: 2020-07-28 06:17 am (UTC)Going around the stadium...
Date: 2020-07-26 04:51 am (UTC)Funny thing, as I write this, I'm just remembering another conversation I had with my wife earlier regarding the 4-H fair and auctions, both of which had to take place online this year (which was a wickedy hassle). She'd been talking with one of the parents of a 4-H'er who said words to the effect of, "You know, if we had just gotten together ourselves somewhere and gotten it organized, we could have had our own pig show."
Speaking of pigs, that also reminds me of several weeks ago when everyone was wondering what they were going to do with all these animals which would not be going to market since there would be no auction, and all the local small-scale meat processing businesses were now booked up months in advance. A fellow I was talking to just kind of shrugged and said, "Well, I guess we're just all gonna have to learn how to butcher our own hogs." Yes! Thank you!
My daughter was crushed to hear that in her very first year of high school band, there will be no field show because all but two of their usual competitions have been cancelled. I'm just wondering how many retired-but-not-decrepit band teachers there are out there who could follow the sports parents' lead and try to throw together some kind of private marching competition. I'm telling you, these little sparks could start a wild blaze... the brush is extremely dry.
Re: Going around the stadium...
Date: 2020-07-26 05:21 am (UTC)Butchering animals on private property is usually illegal, isn't it? Isn't that why relatively pampered, free range animals end up at the same slaughterhouse as the factory farmed animals? I think if most people had to actually kill an animal to eat him or her, they would immediately become vegetarians. I don't feel killing animals is worth the heavy emotional price, so I am one of those who would legitimately rather starve to death than have to regularly kill animals to eat.
One of the sadder things I heard about is a friend's daughter who was in her final year of university. They were going to sing one of the loveliest operas ever composed, Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. It got cancelled. Imagine paying those staggering tuitions only to have your senior swan song cancelled by stupid paranoia! Yet I highly doubt her parents got a refund for the missing half-year.
I'm actively trying to find a local school co-op, perhaps a Christian homeschool group, one that's sensibly mask free of course, to quietly sublease my office space when I am not using it in the mornings. I'm also going to see if I have time to start a small mask-free chorus started this year. I'm trying to live what I preach, so in the food arena, I'm going to test out marketing a few condiments and sweets on Facebook Marketplace. I love the idea of a private marching competition. I hope people pick up the Speakeasy idea and run mask-free marathons with it!
Re: Going around the stadium...
Date: 2020-07-26 04:00 pm (UTC)So, if that's anything to go by, I expect your friends will be out of luck....
Re: Going around the stadium...
Date: 2020-07-26 05:46 pm (UTC)Re: Going around the stadium...
Date: 2020-07-27 04:21 am (UTC)Re: Going around the stadium...
Date: 2020-07-27 04:18 pm (UTC)Re: Going around the stadium...
Date: 2020-07-28 02:30 am (UTC)Re: Going around the stadium...
Date: 2020-07-28 12:03 am (UTC)I think what might be happening (or about to happen) is that colleges are suddenly realizing that (1) they're no longer as essential a service as they thought they were, and (2) they are, in fact, part of the economy, whether or not they think of themselves that way or want to be.
If I'm an outbound senior I may be stuck. If I'm a reasonably intelligent inbound freshman, why would I bother to "attend" University of State Remotely through Zoom or State Hero University Remotely through Zoom when it's going to be mostly gen-ed credits anyway and I can get those through Local Community College Remotely through Zoom for a fraction of the price and identical amenity access?
Re: Going around the stadium...
Date: 2020-07-28 02:01 am (UTC)Re: Going around the stadium...
Date: 2020-07-27 01:17 am (UTC)Re: Going around the stadium...
Date: 2020-07-30 07:46 am (UTC)Living in a smallish town in Australia I haven't been able to find anyone of like mind. :(
A really sad story I heard yesterday is from a colleague whose 12-year-old daughter's best friend just died of leukaemia. His 10-year-old was also friends with the girl. None of them could be in the hospital to say goodbye to her; only one of them will be allowed to attend the funeral due to official restrictions on the size of gatherings.
Is this not worse even than the situation for old people, who at least will not suffer trauma for the rest of their lives over such witless restrictions?
lilly
Re: Going around the stadium...
Date: 2020-07-30 06:09 pm (UTC)If it's any consolation, I don't know many of like mind where I am in the second largest city in Illinois. There's one local master gardener I know who is sadly Trump-deranged, so I don't interact with him much.
How terrible for all the people involved in the story you mentioned. It's outrageous how many people have been forced to die alone, including children. One of the reasons I have decided to un-closet myself as an anti-lockdown, anti-mask constituent is because I believe that everyone who goes along quietly or worse, tries to shame others into social distancing and mask wearing, is aiding and abetting the powers that isolated that little girl in her final hours, thus intensifying her already-horrendous suffering.
Pam Popper talks about that sort of story all the time on her YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibo7fnyq6_g
I'm working on an upcoming essay for next Wednesday that will discuss the real reasons a certain class of people want to extend lockdowns and mask-wearing into perpetuity. The faction of people enforcing lockdowns has gone collectively insane. We have no choice but to quietly go around them as fighting them does not work. They have no remaining logic to which to appeal.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-26 11:15 am (UTC)The state has imposed homeschooling on everyone except kids in their last two years of school; they call it "remote learning", but because of its school-by-school ad hoc nature, it is in fact state-supported homeschooling. Essentially we check in to tick the box for them, then do our own thing.
I do some gaming by means of google hangouts with friends.
My older daughter has a month off and is visiting (illegally!) and we exercise and talk a lot.
It's a twilight time for us, neither the light of healthy freedom nor the dark of death and sickness.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-26 05:52 pm (UTC)I'm glad to hear you and yours are making the best out of the situation.
Walmart and Home Depot have been forced to renege on requiring masks because of backlash
Date: 2020-07-26 08:02 pm (UTC)Walmart and Home Depot (and other stores) put out press releases that implied that they were going to refuse service to anyone not wearing a mask in their stores. Apparently Walmart received such a huge amount of public resistance to this policy, they were forced to examine it from a legal standpoint and had to change their tune:
TL:DR Please keep up the pressure on large chain stores. Don't let them pressure you into wearing a mask. Legally, if they ask you why you can't wear a mask it is a violation of HIPAA laws. If you are asked to wear a mask and worse yet to explain why you cannot wear a mask, please consider suing the store or joining lawsuits against them. Obviously this is a matter of resources, however, when the class action lawsuits start against stores like Whole Foods, Target, Walmart, etc. because they forced mask wearing, I'll be signing right up. I'm not usually an advocate of such a loud and ugly strategy as lawsuits, but I think in this case the corporations trying to force mask-wearing need to get hit where it hurts. I will sue them so they don't feel encouraged to do a repeat performance in the future.
Re: Walmart and Home Depot have been forced to renege on requiring masks because of backlash
Date: 2020-07-28 11:26 am (UTC)Re: Walmart and Home Depot have been forced to renege on requiring masks because of backlash
Date: 2020-07-28 04:16 pm (UTC)Washing one's hands and employers being forced to compensate employees who stay home when sick might have real impact. I just don't see how impeding someone's ability to breathe is anything other than symbolic.