So there we were wrestling....

  Wet tee shirts and mud.  Utter emotional chaos.  In the working world there was resistance to change, resistance to youths and ex-cons getting work, and resistance to becoming slaves to the machinery instead of each other.

  Middle agers were a mix of shock and doubt.  The challenge from the young workers who'd survived various "trainings" (bumped up pay by roughly 1/8 of a load of laundry and served as part of promotion for many) had come without mention of whether or not there would be alcohol involved.  The survey on preferred beverages was as revealing as the assessment question how far would you go to help a team member? And this helped us too busy to put it on paper people to pass torch and glean what wisdoms we could in a workforce suddenly really on the move.

  Some local parents were mortified that a generic management team was going around surveying "knockers and ass".  Scouts for "server jobs" were mostly young, white, and male.  They were at odds with male and female "in house" management that had developed a practice of people looking each other in the eyes when speaking to each other and being like soccer players not touching "the ball" with hands.  Actually looking at each other to communicate, well, it changed the tone of megaphone and pedestal management.  Looking at your boss/propietor and admitting the nature of error, well, it gave space for people to work our attitudes into more work day; less backstabbing, talking behind backs, and slamming things around instead of reasonable confrontation.  

  "Is this over the top?" An intermediary asked.  "The extension cord?  Or, the amount of fantasy in 'dream job'?" The painting crew wrapped up a mix of disposable and re-usable tools in a sheet of plastic.  The floppy painter's hat was spattered and autographed and had big black marker music notes all over it.  "Are they making you guys, uh, girls wear the outfits they picked?" She asked.

  "No ONE IS MAKING ME DO ANYTHING.  I'M JUST having a work day until it all becomes too ridiculus.  Then I'll..."

  "QUIT?!  I've done it 18 times already this morning."

  "Up your butt micromanaging control freaks and then the disappearing vacuum style?"

  "I guess."

  "I heard about them," a visiting site-manager raised bushy eyebrows and made spooky sounds."

  For trying to keep conversations professional some of us young people kept calling everything style.  It went with glimpsing aspects of full-grown peoples' "lifestyles".  And there were "good people" among the crowds.  These were grounding rods in sometimes stormy days where all manner of people were equal as consumers.  Some of the best managers refused to get wrapped up with anyone emotionally, but managed to filter the rough and tumble into calm and steady work environment.

  At one job we spent about three weeks taking turns being manager.  "That's a style alright," a beloved traveling manager rolled his eyes at the asleep on a stool for working three jobs M O D (manager on duty).  "Better than being whistled at and ordered around through a megaphone," someone commented on another's turn taken.  "Hey," the other person said, "I told you guys I was also a PE teacher." Chuckles.

  "Or was before...."

  "The avalanche

  "Landslide

  "Armaggeddon"

  People were coming up with similar description for the mixture of debt and job change and wage stagnation.  Disasterous economic state.  "And that will never change in a place like this," a good person spoke truth.

  Meanwhile any time outside work for people with energy and ambition (despite a lack of funding) was spent in a landmined landscape with it's own mostly unchanging tones of dysfunction.  The language for all that varied.  The super-religious colored it all witches and demons, no gray areas, don't care what you call it.  And, almost as a response to terrible troubles made fortress of church and family.  This as political party shuffled "the peoples'" point of view like playing cards to develop a presentable popular show.

  People who'd spent lifetimes on cause were bordering on feeling suicidal, but nobody could talk about that out loud without being slapped with labels like "crazy" and being told (like you'd say to an overtly romantic couple) to "get a room"....only there weren't any more sanitoriums or group homes.  Especially for working people it was a one foot in front of the other march into the battles of survival, no safety nets.  And for people who couldn't get work and/or couldn't get on "the grind" it became work to drum up survival too.  People teamed and re-launched as their economic recoveries happened.

  And people grew thicker skins about getting attached and not holding back....say what you need to say.

  If you go down that road, you might not make it back.

  Who says I want to come back.

  I don't want to get stuck.

  The stuff of my dreams or bust.

  For some people all disasters-- natural, economic, emotional were all the same.  In analysing "abuse" we were also getting better understanding of "balance" and good enough and drive!  In looking at the "divisions of labor" and the American Dream we were also gaining insight into how much time and energy anything takes.  Youthful passions didn't often match up, exactly, to "vision plans" and not losing "edge" creatively, as a caring person.  We wondered if we'd traded our souls for purely "making money".  People marveled at how just working people could get.  And in music and the arts, some "outsiders" said, told you, told you.

  Just be you!!!!!!!   People were yelling at people in a daze of picked apart, never quite the ideal (given in media, magazines, and theoretical worker modeling), crumbling under an ethereal pressure that sounded like a chant: USA, USA, USA.

  No matter political persuasion and/or religion, we prayed for STRENGTH.

  

Building relationship IS part of recovery

  It was a major discovery in the 1990s to realize that "relationship" had to do with "recovery".  It was why we organized networking dinners without alcohol.  Many "small businesses" were just ideas and seeds at first.  And even people in the midst of divorce and devastation could understand, more objectively, that seeds need water and soil and sunlight.  There's a relationship there.  Or not.

  "Work-life-balance" hadn't been a thing, certainly not for the working poor.  And we had to overcome being raised up as servants and taken advantage of and even abused in/within ourselves as we were adjusting to the equalities of being professional.

  Of course there was no way around giant issues which people had been boxing and slapping labels on--GENDER, RACE, SEXUALITY, RELIGION....all the diversity had been labeled and people had been mastering CAUTION, CAUTION about personality.  And bringing things up.

  All this stuffing stuff down, ignoring, and denial lent itself to a stiff structure between management and "worker", and/or wrestling over job duties for team.  Kind of like the infighting in D.C.

  Is we is or is we ain't a team?  Some Knoxvillians reinvigorating jazz culture and working in retail and restaurant kept asking.  And that asking each other was checking in on relationship.  It was also more "give" than just showing up.  And, it was: Let's take the high road here.

  We can do it together.

  But it's a professional relationship.

  Silence.  Assuming something else?

  My MAN....

  Suddenly, everyone had a man!  Even manly men.  Stumbled through awkward for me parts of the over-talkative exuberance about getting on with life, around gaffes, with "saves" like, "Yeah, I gotta guy for that."

  Fighting crime and drugs just sort of happened most days as we all made a safety-net of professionalism.

  

  For a while in the 1990s we were full brakes and full speed ahead.  People were getting the economy back on track and we all discovered: you can't do that without being in your life.  Even the people in denial and fighting that basic factor were worked over by group dynamics which required presence.

  This was before 4000 choices of energy drink and a non-profit craze.  The world seemed split like an atom....came up, uh, what word do we say now?  Us young people had had good educations and had  already started down the roads to, all fresh and excited about "the American dream" and the promises of a prosperous nation.  Our middle agers were towing "the mainstream" and losing the Greatest Generation.  Our mentors and leaders were not in Washington.  Not except for visits and carrying the batons to the face we need to put on.

  "You're fucking kidding me?"  A manager was sucking a cigarette in two drags and letting the body fluids and drinks ooze out of a trash bag before carting it to a dumpster.  He'd whittled his entire vocabulary down to those four words though he'd studied philosophy and psychology.  It didn't matter if "the news" was good or bad.  "Yah," an out-of-work Ukrainian mechanic said back.  "Is he?" The manager asked a co-worker.  The co-worker shrugged and walking away loudly mumbled, "How the fuck would I know if he's fucking kidding you?"

  "What this mean 'kidding'?"  The Ukrainian asked me.

  "Means faking or pretending," I told the mechanic's girlfriend.  She translated and the man's face fell out of the trying to uphold smile--new day.  He pointed his finger at the manager and said something in Ukrainian.  The girlfriend translated: "Don't point at me." The finger then pointed at the sky and he asked the girlfriend to explain, he shouldn't be accused of breaking the pipes, that's bullshit, and he'd explained he was a mechanic and not a plumber.  "Did he tell me that in English?"

  A squid of an electric sound zapped and hissed.  Cooler lights flckered then kah-put'd.  Workers sighed and frowned.  The boombox kept playing.  And stockers who'd worked up to letting their personalities "shine" but only at work pulled dance moves with inventory and mentally wrote if this was a movie.  "You're fucking kidding me?" The manager asked the ceiling.

  In the parking lot a makeshift team of kind of like human resources rotating assistant managers tried to sort which stores were at what exit.  Highway traffic had been picking back up and, too young to sell alcohol; if that one's there until the other one's kids come home from school; just left, the MOD or the manager of the store?  A mounting list of snafus and issues per new policy demands.  A pot of coffee.  Highlighters rainbowing schedules and reports.  "Are you really Human Resources?" A guy in a shirt and tie under his tee shirt asked.  "No, but we're people who care."

  "Good because I've been sent to four different stores this week.  This is only Wednesday.  And I'm out of gas."

  Between the pay and the debts and the mis-spending of budget and the unforseen costs of damaged property, just go to work and work was becoming nearly impossible for most everyone.  As was getting through a day without confrontation between people not working and workers.  One visiting manager had off-the-record taught us by example that the store couldn't also be "social services". She'd recite not my problem, not my problem before having to approach on the nod in front of the pumps, or, piling up groups of people waiting for an EBT holder.  Then she'd diplomat.  Maybe one out of six people needed to PARK IT OVER THERE OR IT WILL BE TOWED.  Some people got out of steaming vehicles with hands up, waving, NOT ON ANYTHING.

  Some of the days in a final phase of the last free stuff UNLESS....find a program....for your friend then....were a crush of rambling inactivity even while previously "laid back" workers were drilled on not succumbing to apathy.

  "Wassthat?"

  "Not caring."

  "And if you don't care about yourself, just so you know, most of us are FILLED UP."

  A woman with big hair piled under a floppy painter's hat shook her head, no, not me either.  

  I have my own to care for was implied.

  An abundance of people showed up in the mornings at stores on the highways and all over in the mountains.  Political frozen-over was in a thaw.  There were, of course, people who kept on being political.  And there were those feeling ousted, so fine ah-ga-me-su.  An older woman gasped then pressed her lips together.  Then walked over to a man painting and whapped him on the back of the head.  "How dare you teach younger people to curse in Greek." He smirked.  A manager called out, "That's a cuss?!"

  "Why?"

  "Told me it was a friendly greeting." The manager put a hand over his mouth.  Shook his head.  "And on a Sunday, so you know who I cussed."

  The painting man smirked harder and winked.  "Perfect world, not so perfect eh?!" He dripped paint on the shoulder of the older woman. 

  "Because your recovery is yours, get it?" Other workers had worked through a short list of blames and excuses and into a daily sort of okay and not okay on the agenda.  Apparently a couple, someone mouthed.

  "Okay, so this hand-held device makes your labels," a visiting manager started to explain.  Someone asked, "Who drowned ours in IPA?"

  "Come on I'll show you how on this one."

  Yes, we got to this point in the 1990s too.  In fact we often do in America as we go through boom and bust, policy changes, and 'recovery'.

  We go through experiences as locales like disasters and/or being "hotbeds" of political cause and this creates an overall climate (and sometimes a group consciousness).  If the experience is frought with dangers like drugs or other illicit behavior "the landscape" can be challenging to navigate.

  That's when people find it helpful to have a steady at the helm.  When the steady is mostly on the same page about getting well (safety and prosperity) the tone of the big picture holds sway through the particulars of change.  There can be awkward moments.

  Businesses responding to changes in policy have empowered smaller groups of people to develop navigation tools for awkward.  A lot of development was put into human resources precisely because money is rarely the total solution to problem.  And often just throw some money at the problem has created more problems.  If an undisciplined human nature can devolve, a human nature motivated by simply a vague "money" tends to turn climate violent.

  Just like in grammar school individuals have to work on their personal selves in addition to all the choices about group.

  In a lot of the places I've worked there's an ongoing steady even as people discover and hone personal talents and abilities.  It makes sense that a company or corporation has different "departments" or channels of work-focus.  And in retail as brands and management groups took on more and more work "in house" (like advertising and wellness) entities got more diverse within themselves as far as capability.  

  Companies have "forward facing" parts and "internals" just as nations do.  People = talents.  Even with all our different personalities and potentials we have to move along with group.  That's why we're hearing a lot of comments right now about the pace of getting better.  It's in progress.

  I think, more than eradicating diversity or forcing a bunch of diversity into molds of "white men" what we are witnessing at this stage is more like definition of the helm.  Deck ends here, the sign might read.  And if we don't remove previous "license" that was making it possible for "slippery slope" to blur off the edges of the boat of nation, well, all may just get lost or drift out into generic "space".  That's how I'm trying to think of some of this to date.  I feel less offended and disrespected that way.

  Well in the 1990s we had the TV show "Murphy Brown".  It was like a breath of transparency to a world of obscurity created around a Cold War D.C.  The show evoked laughs that were as repressed as too much  personality and lifestyle (feared because of the vacuums of diplomacy and walls against secret-stealing).  We'd had sitcoms to "veg out" to in regards reality being sometimes different than "laugh it off", shake it off, now get through this, but nothing as innovative in approaching every living generation is too old for this shit.  Nothing as funny in calling out, so....

  So there's this stall between pulling somebody off the mainstage for being too....and getting gonged.

  So, there's this way Americans need to out what we're up to without blaring military secrets.

  So....there's some things to "keep under your hat" in certain situation.

  So?  We asked of people "making it" at work and as professionals.  Some people balked at sharing trade secrets....the they should suffer like I did mentality....not the best mentors.  Others carefully staked out boundaries around jobs against job-stealing, and hostile takeovers.  And the absolute best team members spoke from the place where I can speak from on this (because, we can't talk about x,y,z yet).

  Warriors of every race, religion, and gender tentatively put dents in our own Berlin Wall.  America was looking at ourselves.  And we had a heightened "paranoia" tension as the great divide to overcome in sales and research/development and dating.  We did it.  And we were many feeling imprisoned by poverty and bottom dollar.  We replaced the up and down lines of drug/sex trafficking with professional networking.  We agreed to (and didn't) some amount of generic professionalism from which to personalize as groups of professionals.

  In that way we were passing the decade making real progress on what before that had been contentious and polarizing "big words" for our problems.

  Some of it was comical looking back.  It'd be hard to describe the wrangle of nerves and emotion-compartmentalizing we all had going on.  Introducing abject poverty to the dollar bill earned might have broken us as a nation of people who have a lot of love for each other.  But we stuck together as an economic engine.  

  "What good is that gonna do me?"  The one proverbial "white guy" kept asking of potential employees who were only "assets" and "liabilities" in his world.  Not people.  Nobody in the regional pool of labor was as perfect as this guy.  Nobody "good enough" to underpin his livelihood by using their credit and time and energy to "make him manager".  Oh, yes, people talked amongst themselves.  Between us we had like 1056 years of experience, 17,000 hours of "training", and two dollars.  

  The guy had fished and snooped and paid money to find out who in the area might make him manager.  On a fresh business day, early, he was souring the mood behind a hear-thru wall of his "oval office" (that was a stock room) and throwing away a ream of paper printed with resumè.  He piled the remaining "selections" into credit/no credit.  Then he hissed, Find out if any of these are over twelve years old.

  Man, was he surprised when people who "look" twelve years old on financial paper turned out to be nobility, service people, people with "gray hair" from navigating world affairs and business negotiations.  And, long after he was deemed the perfect manager (who nobody chose to work for/with) he was still clueless about true "success". Nasty dictators don't have "fans".  Houses of cards, pyramid schemes, and superficial "leadership" falls apart almost at it's implementation.  People ain't got time for that.

  By then we were into "the show down" between salaried pay to play workers and people with potential investment money and so "access" to everyone's personal data and the 24/7 surveillance of consumers/users of the economy.  A lot of "pairing meetings" to find counterparts in differing companies via common ground of distribution and services began and ended without much said.  Insulation developed between co-workers and rivals.  Making a politically correct "funny" (not a joke or gaffe) was an indication of a general awareness that it was humanity versus the machinery of humanity.

Disaster burnout

  Unfortunately disasters happening can contribute to not feeling good.  And that not feeling good about situation and self can be contagious.  And that, of course, can lend itself to a coloring of mood about everything.  So then we can create an invisible voice in the national "room" that's blaming and paranoid.  That voice that's screaming...over this, tired of this, everybody's screwing everybody, and...it can really spiral us.

  More than being an ugly dictator circumstance, so far, the Republicans are putting forks in the works, and, trying to say we need to look at this and that.  I think of Social Security which was a program created per economic catastrophe in the 1930s.  It's 2025, so yeah, there may be some updating/changes that need to happen.

  I also think of economic troubles in 2008ish.  Retail was having "sales" of 65-75-85% off hard goods.  In retail we were seriously wondering what "fire sale" mode was going to do to consumerism longer-term.  We had to work harder at customer relations to tow a mid-range on costs.  Have some items we could sell really inexpensively but not just "follow the lead" and hurt our business by selling everything "cheap".

  Someone brought up the point the other day that when Hurrhell happened (on top of post-Covid) there was a desperation for workers and employers were paying more in wages, but those hourlies are not sustainable.  We have to be adaptable which is harder when the costs of living are drowning and starving us.

  In the Bible the tide turns more strongly against Jesus making any more headway.  He hadn't picked a fight with a more powerful enemy, but the brute forces (not interested in love and forgiveness, and not accepting of Jesus as sent by God Almighty) were displaying their version of "power" in going after Jesus.  Even as sword is drawn and a defender of Jesus' ear is cut off, Jesus heals the wound and intimates that the bigger picture requires an acceptance of making the ultimate sacrifice, and, letting the longer storyline (God having Victory over death, Jesus giving his life to take away the sins of the world--creating a Way for every person to receive forgiveness) survive Christianity-universal.

  When it comes to "deals" without a lot of layers of diplomacy, there's a part of it that is more about cutting our losses and moving on (directly attached to the hard goods of money and weapons); and there's a vacancy of intelligible explanation/interpretation (although there's no shortage of "commentary").

It's never all bad

  My mom Sherry was the type of person who could (and consistently willed herself to) find gold in a shitpile.  Even decades before "recycling" and "repurposing" was a thing, she'd eye a pile of beat up stuff as we did "elderly chore aid" and realize...oh, I'm going to be decorating for the Fifties Dance at the kids school, that somewhat broken lamp with the poodle, that's perfect.  "What's perfect?"  We'd ask just seeing a depressed old person's old stuff that us young people were going to have to muscle up and cart.  "Oh, you'll see," she'd say.  And then in the lighting, with themed table centerpieces, and 1950s mood music...wal-ah! The poodle was "spit shined" and a glorious focal point helping us overlook more Tang and sgetti.

  In the 1990s there were enough people who'd survived the ravages of the 1980s that their ideas and practices about recovery and building something better shone on the humdrum get her done work days, and we all, across America, got something going!

  We also got more confident about what makes us unique, not just all-the-same-kind-of-American.  There was still a lot of fear of the "other" (even between States) and there was a healthy dose of that's my story and I'm sticking to it.  In other words, honoring each others' boundaries but also honoring "progress" in a forward direction.  The past is the past could be said of some movements in history, as well as an individual's life turned around.  Discussions about image could sometimes get into the whys...why something degenerated and so sales slipped from steady and so cuts to worker hours and so...a professional "we" got to work on local and national.

  We'd had a lot of loss, generationally and in on-the-move like shepards to business, and there was hard alone time for travelers and it took music and art and media to keep reminding local and particular--hey, we're all still part of America.

Is "image" perspective?

   The questions about image and perspective have always come up for human beings.  Before the fig leaves in the Garden of Eden, humans may have been just humans all over the planet not seperating thoughts of beingness into categories (data and consumables) but the Biblical God made great effort to interject a storyline/reality that created God and humans as different entities.

  Flash forward more than 2000 earth years and see a person pull a car into a parking lot of a grocery store.  There are people sleeping, standing, milling about.  Another person squats, poops into a cup, and eats the poop.  2024, Knoxville.

  There are times when perspective, image, and reality all mush into the same hard-to-define occupation of the same space.  And there are a lot of diverse people pre-/problem-solving how to achieve a transparently "good" image.

  In many group discussions people have success with opening the talks to all the perspectives involved, and work on image from there.

  "THAT'S ALL YOU CARE ABOUT, YOUR DAMN IMAGE!!!!" A teenager in the 1990's yell-screamed from behind a wall of advocates.  An entire parking lot had been under curfew and the hardcore "winos" slurred be okay, stick together.  A line of people going to work looked at their feet and the sky and the bus drivers carefully exchanging seats.  A woman started crying.  A man louder-than-mumbled that he did care, work had to, has to, has to come first, and someone else straightened a heavy backpack on shoulder and said, "She'll understand someday."

  "Way they got us makes me sick." 

  "Not sure that's what's making you sick honey."

  "I CARE," said a woman with her long curly hair shoved up under a knitcap as she pulled a fridge-magnet-notebook and pen out of her pocket.  "Write down phone numbers of someone to call." She stood in front of the red-faced, hoarse-voiced teenage girl and held her eyes long enough to say again, "I care."

Brain training in the rain

  Change the music, change the tapes, change perspective, make necessary changes.

  More inches of rain and storm in the Southeast is dampening the spirits today.  Hurricane Helene ('Hurrhell') came at a rough time in the seasonal cycle and the election cycle.  Remember?  We were already ground to a pulp in the lead up to voting.  And going into winter has made landscaping harder.

  Everything is saturated!  We learned long ago about living with trees...going near them for any reason, you've got to take a 360° survey of potential damage-action.  And always, always have an out. It's slow going around so much weight and water force, hiking or working.

  Many trees are broken and you can only hear the splitting.  Others are lying on the ground (especially sloped in the mts) as prospective tobaggons or dead weight sleds.  Some forestry roads have known rock ledge where you might crouch in a vehicle safely in a slide.  The soils are often more loose and shallow than held in by deep roots and "walls".  And, of course, our tree friends can snap, and often do per weight above, but can also be like dominos and cause chain reactions.  

  The roaring waters of floods change footprint.  So while repair and recovery work gets put on hold in times of impact and immediate assessment, we can still observe changes and plot for future accommodations to damage.

  People trying to survive as professionals are taking heart in the gigantic news that I40 may have some capacity for travel and money-making near the first of March.  A Waynesville newspaper had great details about the projects including maybe getting rocks and other base materials closer to the collapses.

  Spring will come.  In the meantime we be happy for snow places and people havin some winter conditions!

Get in the Dorito bag

   In the 1990s it was apparent that the working poor that were older than the youth were in rough shape.  And with not good medical standards for all professionals across the board, a kind of trouble developed that was hard to blame on one source so a general bitch and moan developed.  Along with a re-rigiding of a management hierarchy and what seemed to be a lot of people on pain meds.  

  But there was also a pulling for youth to come up into the trades and professions without all the "drama" of what had been typical working poor life.  Let's not poop in the pool, piss in the river, or otherwise sully the fresh of American potential, as an expression of your jaded outlook.  There were grown ups fighting grown ups as the pesimism waned, the criminality was contained, and a vigorous professional vibe caught on.

  People assessed routes and crunched numbers and bandied ways to drum up competition in the world but stick together as a nation turning things around.  "Get in the Dorito bag," one thickly accented salesman told a lesser known name of chips.  People squabbled about package sales/packaging sales and streamlining process versus being as cheap as....

  And all kinds of people were involved in what should "merge" and how a person, place, thing isn't just a generic prisonmate in an economy that needed some stuff to be uniform.

Perspective

  A lot of things do come down to being a matter of perspective differing from law-proper.  This is why we've seen a flurry of "executive orders" which plunge us headlong into legal "battles".  It's the equivalent of "initiative" without having to start the process in the streets because a president won votes and an administration got put in place.

  In the professional world we talk more about policy though overall law sets the baseline.

  And as professionals we are constantly in an interplay between laws and other factors that sometimes "dictate" and "necessitate"---- stuff like supply chain issues and logistics; tariffs; "best practice" regarding "wellness" and "resources".

  Sales and service people navigate the big picture ocean of being a Capitalist society in addition to brokering/mediating money matters (nuts and bolts).  And management (individual--proprietory, and teams of management) advise and guide based on factors du jour and longer term trends.

  It helps everyone inside and outside of the company in our country when professional-role-players are "people people".  Though as we discovered through the 1990s and early 2000s, there is sometimes a strong Human Resources element, and sometimes none.

  This is where, in a work day, we sometimes overcompensate on the "different generation" speak and stick with routine as some time passes and we all "get on the same page" with policy and practice.  We also work to find good balance in thinking of "work family".  And we often hold our opinions on the salesfloor until we have "meet ups".  Some meet ups are small group and some are bigger meetings.

  Just as in sales, a bad word by a customer "sticks" like 23 times more often than accomplishment, when it comes to employee(s)/employer relations it's very similar.  I think there have been several presidencies too, where the "executives" had to be privately and publicly reminded that even commander-in-chiefs are ALSO citizens.  

  Involvement with any entity has lots of cause and effect.  And everything, every cell that makes up entity and function, has perspective involved AND it has "where the rubber hits the road".

  One big focus this year so far is moving past disaster and all the "trauma"/disruption from pandemic rolling into regional disaster.

  Jesus really brought a different perspective to the same old, same old life that was a caste of routine set up to mask (a lot of) hatred and corruption.  In many examples throughout the Gospels Jesus finds work arounds for the same old stumbling blocks.  He himself had been sent by the Holy Father God as an update/upgrade to the Ten Commandments and Jewish law.  Jesus and his disciples were teaching freedom.  It's a message that has stuck through the ages.  With the Big Ten as a firm foundational guide, Jesus came to tell everyone that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit understands that people are human (not angels, not Old World god characters).  Jesus as God-made-flesh spent all of his days on earth experiencing the human condition and relating with people as people.

  He performed miracles and dashed evil away from loving, trying to be good people, but most of the time he was relating to people to raise the standards of an equality as God's children.  He conveyed understanding of all kinds of despair and challenge, and told people about the hope that is a wellspring available to anyone with even simple love and faith for God.  The update was that a person can ask to be forgiven for any and all sin.  And ultimately he revealed also, perspective on the profundity of his personal mission to turn his killing into service for the world's humans and Our Father--his death was a taking away of the sins of the world.  No person but Jesus could work on such a level as turning his own killing into a holy beyond-sacrament offering.  No one could go back into the past and undo "original sin" but every human might could atone and be granted a fresh start, clean slate.  Through his own prayer relationship with God, Jesus came to a powerful perspective about what he and Christian people endure. And with his death, he proved that God Almighty has ultimate Victory, always and forever, even over the worst this world throws at people.

Love & Money

  In some ways that's the totality of the American life.  It sums it up.  Having lived that truth most Americans don't freak out about that.  The pettiness about it goes on forever, and the two things rip apart and build the world 24/7.  So for the president of our "corporation"--USA to suggest buying up "real estate"...it's not as "weird" as it may sound.

  As thinkers we've been thinking about "poverty" and "wealth" our whole lives.  It's the obsession of this lifetime.  For those with money there's the freedom from the prisons that chain to trying to get the money.  But for those born into poverty and can't not be on the poverty side (the dollar bills don't fix the kinds of damage the destructions of poverty reap) it's not just a real estate deal.  It seems like, I don't know, there's a lot of mentality involved. 

  I don't have confidence that we can ship or transport a mentality to far-flung places with their own ethnic strife and destructions.  Even if some of us rise to an altruistic equality of love and respect amongst all people, or on paper (in the language of "money") we deem something or someone destroyed, do over, there's so much involved.

  But, on the other hand, what?  A government doles out the bread?  Or there is no bread?  It's not like "aid" hasn't been contending with this forever.  It's, the president's assertion, is not "bad" but more like an acknowledgment or admission I guess.  Gaza, like many places in the US and elsewhere, is plum broke.  In terms of humanity, a mentality of being American...get the money, get the money...may be the best, most practical.

  Over here when life and money destroys we find something "to love"/care about whether its place or whatever and that can be expressed--love of country, love of life's work--especially by example and that part of mentality can be "shipped".

  In WWII Americans showed up to liberate.  All of the world had been fearing Communism, didn't know much about Islam, and was dumbfounded by the mixture of hate as/at the root of ideology mixed with weaponry, and since then we identify nasty tyrants and bad influences.  We also assess factors of death, disease, and disaster.  Money gets managed well or poorly.  And different U.S. administrations have differing "plans" of operation.  All of it requires the peoples' time and energy.

  We don't want to "typecast" and "write off" chunks of kinds of people.  But, just monetary aid doesn't always liberate.  And we've all experiencef what happens when a foreign entity gets into an existing mix.  In WWII there was quite a bit of confusion-days when the U.S. was liberating from Germany, German occupation and aggression, but, for example Italy was still Italy.  An Italy with Allies.  We can call politics just how people think of things, but nation is more than property and service.  So we have to talk in terms of working the program and essentially "getting on the band wagon".

  Somewhere in that is contemporary "work around" to sieged and sieging.  Factors produce starts and stops to a nation's consistency.  And "dropping the ball" disrupts and creates the opposite of trust...like hurt and anger and jealousy and more failure.

  President Trump has the ability to think big picture and long-term, but that's never going to be "miracle" working.  He's introduced a potentially liberating idea.  The amount of building anew from destroyed is astounding.

  It's the same here in WNC.  And in California.  And in Ohio--devastated by drugs over the decades.  It's why people talk about "family now" and having to re-establish painstakingly forged community networking and generational "wealth".

Good enough for two weeks

   Have to work this Sunday so last week's church, Candler Church, will have to last 2 wks.  And it sure was a good one!  An outrageously cool puppet show about a little muppet waiting on a Valentine in the mailbox from God.  A kindly neighbor tried to explain, it doesn't always work quite like we think it might.  In reality anything I can think of God can think of 10,000 (at least) times better than me!  I can let go in trusting God to have the best solutions to keep me, personally, me, on my Godpath.  Fortunately in the puppet show, the Good Book showed up and very cool-ly explained He is full of Valentines from God for every single one of us!  It was awesome.  And the music was over the top cool too.  Interpreters relayed the lyrics.  I especially loved the song about the God who stays...my God stays.  And we praised and thanked God and each other for daily and disaster support.  It really was a lively mass and good enough for two Sundays!  Thanks Candler Church.

Camping 2024

 Whooooo-gosh, nothing like the 1990's conflagration of trends and the trendy.  I had about 8 weeks of glorious alone time with nature, pre- and post-Helene.  I'll write more about all that on a day off sometime.  Lots of travel and pre-elections people working hard to keep the calm but make changes to dark and depressing poverty.

  Writing's my hobby, so I'll keep the blog going.

  Cha, good times, good times.  Whammy after whammy for people with disaster and turning economy around.  It has been pretty challenging like this in the past!  For real young people.  Lots of "tongue and cheek" about getting ahead; rooting for people with their lives ahead of them yet; not pretending positive but not sloping downhill into blackholes.  The idea is not to be a burden on burdened people.  And us willing and able carry the torch, carry the torch as we duct tape the whole economy into turned over.

  People talk about an atom split between rich and poor but the very common ground is still there, not split.  In God We Trust and God Bless America is the real deal.

  And the courage I've seen of all kinds of random-to-me people!  It's hard not to panic, but one foot in front of the other.  More than fifty years that's what I've witnessed.  Us all surviving our nation.

We learned a lot and made better

   As professionals in the 1990's we were all touched by not having a foundation where we even recognized substance abuse isssues.  We'd come of age ignoring that all that stuff affects everyone.

  We worked the recignition just like that of discrimination into a more well-awareness.  For a while we were all sticking together at work on drug-free and "been there done that" in terms of unwellness not being work.  It made not being at work a little scarier.  And the social scene seemed weird for a while.

  We curved our differences into being professional businesspeople.  While some people were support for each other, on the whole we weren't an all day "meeting".  We did adapt tools and experiences to flow charts and P2P though.  Socially, people older than us were honest--this sucks!  There was encouragement not to be like "this".  Didn't mean we didn't go through our own tough stuff.  But it meant a general right and wrong way to go about stuff.

  And it became cool not to drag all of our pasts into work day.  Less counseling of each other; more respect for who somebody is today!

  We've got this.

Still the best

   Right now the best thing to do is pray for Our Country.  For as much as we stay positive (so many blessings and solutions) this is a challenging environment.  To some extent the big picture's waves hit an end point and the waves are doubling back on us.

  We went through this back in the 1990's when the crack-cocaine had done its damages.  The fentanyl is an epidemic/pandemic and it's deadly and killing a lot of people, but it's not a party atmosphere anywhere in the mountains of T'see and WNC.  Part of what was so hard in the 1990's was that drug-using was really tied into "climbing the ladder" and a rage that was embodied in "cool".  This is hitting us as people have been driven down by Covid changes, as a generation of workers ages into retirement, as disaster kicked our butts, as the economy proved in debt is in debt and that's a prison.

  The key to working through the daily grind or where most people I know have common ground--highways and the few stores left, the streets, and "towns" is actually respecting the space and each other.  And we've got, again, a mix of not able and able; been doing that all along and new to me.  In the day to day world there are always people coming up into next professional growth stage and people having been in that stage and we all tend to forget that people are unique, not robots or automatons.  We all need to respect that everybody's been through life-to-date and what we do at work is work-of-the-day.  Patience helps...nobody can rush to payday or make a sale without making a sale.  We hang in there.  We do the day.

  Right now it's the big money fights.  How many bodies to just jail versus who gets money to "recover" bodies.  And the economy all messed up so it takes a little while to plug bodies into jobs.  Law Enforcement and Military got put in a backburner place as everything got disorderly.  So we have to work together to balance.  Coming back to laws isn't authoritarian.  And it feels really lousy for decent, hardworking, upstanding citizens to be in this hellish stage of suspicion and criminality etc.  It is awful.  But we get through this as a Country.

  What they said on the radio is that it's like the size of two grains of salt, the fentanyl (fen-tan-all) and drug dealers don't bother to measure carefully, two is a "high" and three kills.  Weird drugs.  People who do Fentanyl (straight up? On pot and stuff?) stop breathing; can "OD"; can be resus-itated with nasal spray; but scientifically aren't living-using longer than 18 months on average.  So in addition to the usual diseases from that lifestyle all over "the common ground", we have to be careful about garbage and stuff we touch, and the usual stuff regarding unsafe intoxication--the rest of us driving, the rest of us not stealing, the rest of us...yadda, yadda.

  And not despair.  Pray the people who need help, get help.  Pray we keep stabilizing.  Pray we're not overwhelmed with feeling down.

  I'm praying for our Country.

   Yeah, it took quite a while for Europe to recover from all that ethnic strife.

  The Pope and the Catholic church preserved their "authority" in a more spiritual sense than in an expanded way--as they had done in the Black Plague times.  There are times in history when it's just lessons learned and bodily survival that furthers the generations of humanity!

  We sort of go through that culturally in America especially when drugs wipe us out, and the economy's all screwed up.  People survive but for little times we're all over the place with our feelings about it all.  Our Country still exists, in part because, we get basic in Constitution and business.

   A lot of work stuff is popping for people!  Here in the Southeast we get little glimmers of Spring coming.  It's coming.  In New England February and March the weather kind of stays colonial...stays colder longer, people "celebrate" with stew and potatoes.  By St. Patrick's Day the hunger for garden fresh shows up in cooking cabbage and corned-beef.

Why the Lateran Pacts and the US Constitution?

  Very interesting differences between the Pope being socked in and storing Catholicism in a spiritual space and the John Hancocks stepping up with their lives to get it done--manifest a physical nation (accepting of all religions), forge sovereign Republic.

Me? Resumè

  

Spring 2025 update.

Happy dance, happy dance!  The kind people of Candler, NC helped me get grounded with coffee and church when my truck broke down.  Major repair has to happen so it'll take a while.  I was able to do work stuff with what I have with me, and got part time work with two solid, awesome businesses!  Mapco and Days Inn.

2025 is rockin' great!

------------------------------------------

  I try and do carpentry, painting, housecleaning, chores in warmer months.  I love doing that sort of work. I'm not an easy-idle person, like to make the most of my life.

  And I've also done that kind of work as "odd jobs" or "sidework" alongside working for others.  My professional resume includes lots of work like this in addition to my scholarly and writing work.  

But the bulk of my work life (since I was 12 years old) has been as merchant of food, services, and product.  I have over forty years of sales and customer service experience.  That's a lot of learning time!  I love learning while doing...experiential plus making money.  I think entry level jobs and exploration of career work allows people to hone skills.  It also, often, lets us (and others) know ability to function on teams.

  Currently, I am seeking to work in the hospitality/Customer Service industry/sector in Candler, NC with a future role in U.S. National Parks.

Lara Lynn Lane

1106 Heathwood Dairy Road       Apex, NC  27523

Also, PO BOX 14364   Knoxville, TN  37914

919-607-3859   //   lane36266@gmail.com

 

Summer-October 2024  Sonic, 5003 Millertown Pike, Knoxville 37917

Front end efficiency assistance, cooking, helping team prepare fresh and fast.
Tel  865-525-9551     Manager:  Jennifer

 

Spring 2024    Waitressing at Shoney’s, 4032 N. Broadway, Knoxville, TN 37917 

Waitressing 

Tel  865-687-5432     Manager:  Trish

EGGS UP GRILL, 1421 Kelly Road, Apex, NC 27502    

Position:  Dishwasher, January-March 2024

Focus:  Reliability, back kitchen organization, efficiency.  Great team to work with as we came out of winter and into spring warm-up.

References:  Owner, Krystal Nichols, 201-627-9226 and Supervisor, Tina, 919-618-9986

 

Food Lion #1496, Apex, NC 27523     919-362-1986     Reference:  Gladys, a Front End of Store Manager

Positions:  Receiver (2023), cashier (2023), front office assistant (’21-’22), cashier (2021)

Focus: Customer Service, attention to detail, accuracy, efficiency, dependability, participating in the routine of staff and customers; learning the culture of the company; being an example of compliance with rules and regulations--especially important in grocery!  Learned system of sales, called "POS" or "point of sale" at registers in Retail.  Learned how to do daily reports and summaries for "End of Day" in both Front and Back End.  I worked in "center store" or on the salesfloor in conjunction with pulling stock and shelving.  Late in '23 I was arriving early to the Loading Dock Area and helping trucks keep on schedule by checking in product/inventory, and keeping the offload area clean, neat, and organized.  In my time at Delhaize-America's Apex, NC Food Lion #1496 Store I had exceptional training in-store with Tony, Store Manager; Gladys & Travis on the Front End; and Department Managers that have long-time developed expertise.  Also, the Delhaize Corporation offers work-tools through digital-training.  Overall, Food Lion does an exceptional job of letting workers maintain professional integrity and this helps a giant operation be timely behind-the-scenes and outward-facing with a positive attitude.

 

Kentucky Fried Chicken, Apex, NC 27523     919-303-7997     Reference:  Andrew, General Manager

Positions:  Cashier, counter, prep, dishwashing (late 2022-early 2023)

Success for me at challenges of learning how to do customer service and food prep the proper KFC way, and quickly!  Also, learning experience of working with different crew to meet goals and keep facility up to par.  I appreciate the fun-ness in the on-boarding and training and the opportunity to learn about the Colonel's start in business with an emphasis on hospitality: Service as welcoming friends.  And I see great value in how KFC is building on its roots as a company to move forward into the future.  Working with GM (General Manager) Andrew, and Shift/Team Leaders like Anita, Rene, and Valerie let me learn every aspect of associate-level work and how to be most helpful when managers need extra hands but restaurant timing needs everyone to stay customer-focused.

 

Guardian Angel Thrift, Inc.    Apex, NC          919-303-8180      

Reference:  Manager, Crystal Waterman

Position:  Assistant Store Manager, March 2021-February 2022

Focus:  Retail-side of non-profit raising resources for Alzheimer's Awareness.  Duties included--data entry, banking, receiving, cleaning donations to re-sell treasures, inventory management, pricing, sales, customer relations, working with staff at daily routine and in organizing fundraising events, register coverage, sales floor supervision and coverage.  To say appreciate in this work opportunity would be a great understatement.  I had the privilege of working with Founder Laura Gaddis, her daughter Sherry, and others like Apex Manager Crystal Waterman, who've been with this organization

Lara Lane, 919-607-3859, Professional Highlights, pg. 2             lane36266@gmail.com

                         

 

since its beginning.  As a student of charitable and non-profit--the successful Guardian Angel has raised over three million dollars!--business, there's no better group of people to learn from and work with administrative-ly and in-store.

 

Lowe’s Home Improvement   Apex, NC       919-303-4200    

Reference:  Store Manager:  Brian Brannock

Positions:  Fulfillment Clerk, Millwork Sales Associate, 2018-2021

Accomplishments: Helped develop the Pick Up In Store (PUIS) program.  Worked with all departments to acquire inventory, stage product, complete sales.  And worked with other Lowe's stores and Receiving to secure and transport inventory through the receiving and delivery phases of customer service.  We hustled!  And grew logistics and management of our PUIS team into a million $/yr revenue generator.  At the time I was primarily working with Kim Kelly and Sherry Ray under direct supervision of Store Manager Brian Brannock.  Everyone at Lowe's is part of a strong team and business-culture focusing on sales, "shrink", and safety to achieve how we can better, improve store security and safety customer satisfaction.  Staying focused on sales

helps us achieve goals so everybody profits; awareness of shrink--gets everybody in-tune with loss and gain that occurs in retail and helps fine tune technique; and safety has to be a number one priority in any private-open-to-public-work-environment.  I'm the type of person that's always learning so at my level of workmanship in the trades--carpentry, and in Retail and Administration, every day in an environment that encourages learning as part of the job is skill-building that leads to mastery.

     To the Millwork Department I was able to transfer my small business owner/trade experience in carpentry plus a successful track-history in Sales, and this helped me mediate between customers and Installation Specialists, Vendors/Representatives of other Companies and Corporations, and co-workers.  Designing home features using available software programs, putting together contracts, helping keep projects on schedule, understanding products and product comparison, tending to and ordering inventory, daily in-store sales, putting together "package sales", offering store credit and helping with installation bids, listening to customers on needs and budget, working with people who have varying degrees of familiarity of product and process and service...made for challenge to be met with professional acumen and positive attitude.  Inventory control and management (including sales floor "security" and ordering specialty products for Millwork; the safe use of power equipment (kept all licensing up-to-date and got lots of practice in Lumber with Tim and Ray as Supervisors); using muscle and determination; keeping up team spirit; going the extra mile every day, each shift--early and mid and late--made my work very dynamic.  I loved applying my skills and talents at Lowe's and earned several Service Star Awards in my time there.

 

Msanna/Poster’s Arts, Crafts, and Framing     Fairfield, CT

Position:  Sales Associate/Keyholder, 2015-2018        

Direct Supervisor:  Store Owner, Alexandra Moutran

On a mission to keep a small, independent establishment vibrant for customers.  At this long-time business in a merger-challenged industry we worked diligently at customer service, inventory control and management, pricing, framing detail/"specs" (measurements and customers' preferences), and keeping a consistent schedule of opening and closing the store.  Meeting with Vendors/Salespeople/Representatives of other businesses and experimenting with products was fun.  But not the slime, so much, though our children-visitors seemed to have fun with it.  We did enjoy showing off our knitting/crochet skills, drawing and mixed-media talents, and being part of the area's art scene as merchants.  My favorite also-work-tasks at this job were helping Scouts with Derby racing cars, making a board game for learning about the English Language, and making models of landscape and buildings in history.

By "Don't watch"

  We had a chance in our area on the AM radio to hear a Sunday night talk show that was on par with the very much missed Jim Bo Hannan.  And on Bill Cunningham's show we got critical information in a more casual talking atmosphere.  To me, that's important with these big topics like AI and border issues and drugs because we're all trying to find balance between hardliner and do nothing, especially as Christians and contemporary American Republican or Democrat.

  Back in the 90's when women were assessing things like role and tone-required, and how we "come across" we went through some comic relief in types of women.  This was a window for everyone to peek at that tendency to typecast and steteotype.  It was almost like choosing baby names coming up with "the right name" for "the kind" of women being portrayed.  

  No one liked hysterical woman.  No one.  You couldn't even approach her to see if one side or the other of an argument, or any kind of solution might be possible to whatever it was making the woman do that.  She had a sort of energetic hum that could accelerate rapidly into full blown.  "Just give her some space," even a military-type woman who'd encountered every kind would say to everyone else.  Even to look upon hysterical woman would be to "call a siren" or threaten to interrupt flow.  Though no one thought to weaponize her until one day when we really needed someone who wasn't corporate to "pitch a fit."  Not even sure she knew...we'd set the stage for the sparks to fly.  No one had to jab.

  Getting word from the Southern Border last night did not come from hysterical woman, but it did come from a woman who was able to humanize events there without doing activism.  This was someone who really has a sense of the "big picture" and an ability to connect, in person, with the people involved in the different capacities of involvement.  And, it's really important for all of us to honor that every situation has degrees of involvement as well as official roles of the involved.  The woman's reportorial style was informative of her sources as well as giving us information (even though some of the information shows people being in a transitional phase, lacking micro-mangement directive, and on front lines where situation is always fluid).

  She was even able to reveal that on the human side of IMMIGRATION there's an aspect of feeling for people who were "sold a bag of goods" and are encountering, now, a totally different deal.  For a few seconds she brought up it's hard to watch.  And suggested that for people choosing not to ride a roller coaster on this issue, not to watch.  The "issue" currently has the focus of stemming a tide of criminality that happens to involve the borders, and, a Homeland sort of visitor and citizen.

  By don't watch she isn't/wasn't telling people to "turn a blind eye." And, to do so would be/is akin to people in a communism not seeing violence that occurs even as the day or night presents as perfectly normal.  And, there's always a lot of stuff implicit and explicit attending any suggestion or order.  Rather than obsess or get all hysterically piqued, she also seemed to be saying, find your level of engagement.

  Passmore takes us back to a kickoff of maybe unnecessary chaos, Auiges-Mortes, France, 1893.  A summer's August when "...unfounded rumors that Italians had killed three French workers triggered a veritable manhunt against the unlucky migrants" (1, Fascism).  The day after "...police escorted as many Italians as possible to the railway station" (1).  The narrator of this literature is "watching" and tells, "On the way the frightened workers were savagely assaulted by Frenchmen" (1).

  By way of affixing a context for a topic like genocide, Samantha Power in A Problem From Hell tells, "I had been reporting from Bosnia for nearly two years at the time of the playground massacre...[people had] long since given up hope that the Nato jets that roared overhead every day would bomb the Serbs into ceasing their artillery assault on the besieged capital..." (xii).  [In general] "...not especially alarmed..." (xii ?) when Bosnian Serb forces began attacking the so-called 'safe area' of Srebrenica (July 6th 1995).  "I thought that even the Bosnian Serbs would not dare to seize a patch of land under UN guard" (xiii, intro, A Problem From Hell).

  The updating person on the Bill Cunningham show (2-2-2025) let people know she'd gone ahead and is using PPE, Personal Protective Equipment, in the U.S. border area.  Doing so especially because "cartel" actors are heavily invested in people and drug trafficking that requires transportation and boundary/territory infiltrating.  So far, there has been some shooting.  And in the real life space between policy and "on the ground" human life can get hurt, or worse.

  One of the biggest differences in border maintenance after September 11, 2001 was that being attacked was a call to arms in terms of implementing a surveillance assistance to management of our issues/problems.  And, there were continuities of management styles and chain of command potentialities under Republican versus Democratic adminstrations and atmospheres/environments in the differing time periods (1990's/post9112001).

  It is worth noting that Passmore cites Yugoslavia as a "poor country" which didn't have a level of development-needed for the organization of mass political parties.  And, still there was violence.

  As Europe (not like I was there; it's been a long time since I've studied this stuff; I have to rely heavily on the materials in an increasingly paperless world...we so feel stumble-ly when we start thinking and expressing) and the Middle East came into modern times....

  Well, there was a lot of jostling about for resource and "power".  People had different experiences of the "old world" and being on earth.  And people, some people, had fresh ideas.  Some ideas were innovations on traditions or continuities; some were "radical" or quite different than tradition.  Some of the ideas were people trying to make things work better.  And some of the ideas were bouncing around and collided with others and/or got blended with other ideas.  And the whole time modernity was catching on in system ways.  "OH! Now we need to feed four hundred people!  Bigger bread ovens?  Or maybe more ovens?  Or maybe, maybe we bring the bread to all the people after we keep the same ovens and bake for longer!"

  "Maybe."

  The maybe, maybe's of ideas had to match up with actualities like funding and investment of time and physical space.  Plus, "success" and "failure" would depend on personality and peoples' personal circumstances as much as implementing ideas.

  In the key dictatorships, the take over of people-to-people space by power over forces happened through degrees of influence.  The will of the people was not always clear "by majority".

  Passmore cites the Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco as somewhat a fascist.  Seems a contradictory phrase unless we take into account the historical evidence that shows that a state of fascism, like a state of communism evolved.  So over several decades political theory found form.

  The Spanish Franco actually led a military uprising against the Spanish Republic (1936).  And by the end of the ensuing civil war he'd established a fortified dictatorship which lasted until his death in 1975.  That part of the movement with real support for Franco was a fascist component called the "Falange Española".  The Falange was committed to a particular form of corporatism called "national syndicalism".

  There are several places in the book Fascism where Passmore divulges more details on "national syndicalism" which came to the fore as coalition and "corporatism". Groups within groups.  Exclusionary and inclusionary.

 The Spaniards were aiming to be freer of business and state control than Italian and German versions of corporatism.  The Falange also advocated for/demanded land reform.  And, like Internationalist Communists, were interested in the nationalization of banks and credit.  All the groups trying to form into hierarchies with dictatorial leadership sought ways to bind everything together and in this way, be done with inner power struggle.  

  National syndicalism NOT being a Constitutional upstart/aspect of group-being had all the wiggle-room of "coalition".  And we can see where not having constitutional-grounding aided in a general slide into contentious ethnic strife where some people use violence to force, and some people do not.  Fascism itself was neither established party nor royal rule.

  Passmore writes, "The diverse origins of those who became fascists underlines, once again, the contradictory nature of fascism, and reminds us that fascists disagreed amongst themselves about the very essence of their movement" (30).  So here, we see how confusion about foundation coupled with confusion about AIM created an element of confusion.

Looking at soon...

The survivals of religion and nation through such actions as the Lateran Pact and the birth of the U.S. Constitution.

"Through the looking glass"

  It distorts.  When we look through the glass, whether it be at a dead insect or through glass blocks frosting the space between us and a city.  And when we contort or distort what is already perversion of, dissolution of, contorted/distorted our perception is even further removed from being that.

  Orwell's 1984 is one of the Totalitarian novels in a series being hosted by Hillsdale College (also available online).  The second "episode" in the series gives us a seat at the table with students and the college's president.  I joined in after only scoring a 60% on a quiz in between 1 and 2 and forgiving myself because I don't have the books on hand.  And because I've been steeping in Passmore's introduction to Fascism.  And as the students presented examples from the Literature to jump us into theme and challenges of the work, my mind did indeed present some thickness to imagined totalitarianism.

  It was also comforting to hear from an educational expert (Larry Arrn) that education is oft "messy" and "imperfect".  That recent years of education have been more about conformity and conditioning and less than performing well to engage thinking citizens growing into participation in a self-governing government such as the United States of America.  Education here is supposed to be very different than the way O'Brien "educates"--through torture and brainwashing!

  "Orwell builds a world for us to think about," explained president Arrn.  Specifically, we're looking at history and language in this focus.  And the passages the students brought up were excellent-ly relevant to both outsiders looking into other place, other time, and to us Americans these days.  In the book, a regime (that aims to be immortal-ly in power) is influencing human nature by controlling history and contorting language to: limit the range of ideas its subjects can contemplate.

  That type of regime seeks to distort the natural tendencies of sentient beings to feel and think and be individuals with free will.  That type of regime isolates and tries to convince.  That type of regime gives no merit to "soul" and so seeks to eliminate "self".  At every turn the fascists involved with Italy's Mussolini and all the fascists/Nazis of Hitler's Germany worked to destroy even the notion of a self that wasn't party/regime.  They kept advertising that everything done in day and night should be "for the good of the Overseers, who are going to take care of you."

  Orwell's 1984 goes into great detail about the surveillance, propaganda, torture, and abuse at every turn used by such political-forms in constructing their ideal power-over.  The characters "bring to life" the elements of human nature wrapped up in all of this societal structuring.  

  And the students picked up on the themes that are the most private and universal.  Like, love, family, one's own mind, and the destruction of rationality.  Arrn reminds that part of the power of Literature is an author's ability to show us something, but not suffer the something.  And guides the discussion away from scary rabbit hole of feeling overwhelmed and hopeless by reminding, the fact that a thing can be destroyed, doesn't mean the thing is not good, and that no matter what happens there is a permanent-ness to love.

  And questioning the extent and kind of love between Winston and Julia gets us diving into story.  Is it real?  Is it old-fashioned like before the regime head-messed with everyone about everything?  Because the characters are in the context of a broader fight, do their betrayals of each other negate what was?  Does their love morph over the course of the plot?  And, Arrn, adds to the questioning of the material: Isn't it "love" where power-over meets the most resistance?

  In that, the discussion circles back to assert that this is so.  That Winston finds out completely and totally that tyranny will crush.  It will steal, and lie, and lead on, and exploit whatever means something to a natural human.  The torturer lets him know, point blank, "I AM here to HURT YOU." No matter how the characters entreat with the totalitarianism, the regime and all its extensions, the pulsing of that kind of power "says" go ahead...resist...fight...try and please...We need you to differ from us, so we can hurt you and MAKE YOU CONFORM.

  Not a pleasant relationship.  And since even thoughts (of God being in charge, of the natural "niceness" of love and family) can elevate us, tyrants seek to destroy that as well.  Tyranny seeks to replace personal thoughts with thinking only of it.

  That is why Orwell also gives us the famial characters all bent out of shape to traditional family of the  West.  And because traditional Western family values stem from ancient and prehistoric days, through generations of survival, and being forged as something universal, the tyrants totally interfere with family in as many ways as they can.  Things get "upside down" as parents are fearing their children since all children are promised some day...you'll be us!  You'll be the leads in the Party play.

  From cradle to grave is the indoctrination, the fusing of humans in a territory to the dominating (human + machines) power-over.  The tyranny takes away choice(s) in the matter.  It is perpetual loss and grief, trauma and crisis, sublime calm "sugar-coating", and a total erasure and rebuild in the image of themselves.