Music, Food, and Dancing in East Portland: Portlanders Stand With Immigrants and Refugees

3529A.

[Update, 19 Mar 2017: I have names to put to the Afghani dancer now and also the lady leading the Peruvian trio, for which thanks go to the lovely Sitara Razaqi Lones, who indeed happens to be the Afghani dancer. TA MUCHLY!]
[Update, 20 Mar 2017] Thanks also to Claudia Cuentas Oviedo, who shared the name of the other two thirds of her trio (see below)

Statistics show, or so I've heard, that my area of Portland, DavidDouglasLandia, Out 122nd Way, Portland's Heavy Eastside and That Part Of Portland East Of I-205, is the most diverse area of, probably, the whole state.

I think it likely. Of the places I have lived in Oregon, one seems more likely to see east Africans, Asians (eastern and western), than anywhere else. It's a real rainbow out here, and I'm pleased with this every day.

It's perhaps the ideal thing, then, that an evening celebration promoted by the City of Portland called Portland Stands with Immigrants and Refugees happened out here, at the East Portland Community Center, which stands just off SE Washington St on SE 106th Avenue. It was a simple thing, really: some great authentic food, dancing and singing by immigrant groups, and plays. It ran from 6PM to 9PM on Friday, and with only three hours there was a lot to cram in there. We didn't see everything but what we did see was delightful.

We enjoyed the food there (the wife had a chicken shawarma wrap and I had a beef burrito and both were immaculate) but there was a wait, but we couldn't be too sore; I knew the event was probably going to be popular but I had no idea it would be thronged.

The strawberry horchata? Superb.

The main event for us was the signing and dancing in the gym. I was at the end of a long day myself, but there was much happy energy and it kept me interested. Me and The Wife™ were both enchanted.

The first performer we saw was a lovely Afghani woman, Sitara Razaqi Lones, who did a passionate folk dance.

As the dance progressed she really got into the zone. The costume only added to the positive energy.

After that, a trio, led by Claudia Cuentas Oviedo, played Peruvian music, accompanied by Tanya Abernathy and Otto Gygax. The support system, a Mac laptop, was reluctant to come on board (at least that's what it looked like), so, when you're a creative performer, what do you do?

You get out the pretty flute and play. It worked.

But when they got underway, they were on. 

After that, we were treated to some really energizing Bollywood style dance. I was remiss in that, due to acoustics, I couldn't get a clear idea of who the other performers were, but thanks to the book of Face, I was able to figure that the dancers were led by Prashant Kakad, supported by dancers including Blake Schrein, Brittany Newton, Jasmine Jaramillo, and Kathy Nordskog.

Prashant is that stylish fellow in the ballcap in the middle. They had an energy that was infectious, and I can only speak for myself here, but watching a group of dancers like that doing such enthusiastic moves in such great synchronization is infectious, inflecting the spirit with happiness and causing even the most weary spectator to at least, at least, tap the foot and move while seated.

They looked great, they made one feel great, and when they got the crowd involved ...

... they really got involved. Everyone on the floor, regardless of who they were or what they looked like, looked good, looked beautiful. Art really connects.

And when they finish on a high note, everyone else gets to be there with them. I couldn't not feel glad I was there.

[art_in_PDX] Sharpie Art Cartoons in Powell's City Of Books

3417.

Right now, on one of the endcaps on one of the aisles of graphic novel and comics rows in the Coffee Room of Powell's City of Books, there are 6 roughly drawn yet thoughtfully-done and skillfully-executed cartoons. Here's one set.

There are six of them (they're still there as of last weekend), three on one side, three on the other. They appear to be drawn on imprecisely-trimmed foamcore board with a Sharpie. They seem to be very zeitgeist inspired, some obviously, others more indirectly.

Here's the other set:

Let's take 'em one-by-one. Top, left:

BLM. No explanation needed by now, I trust.

Next:

The Political Is Personal. For a variety of reasons I won't expound upon here (though I will eventually elsewhere) I have learned this to the bone over the last year: to the bone. Not just last week's presidential spasm, but a variety of events, votes both local and national have tied the political to the personal in my life like never before.

Thanks to 2016, I'll never look at politics quite the same way again.

This next one is enigmatic, and I'll leave the meaning for the inconstant reader to decode for themselves:

A lot of emotional responses obtain for that one above. None of which I can really put into words, but then, sometimes, art should do that to you.

That was the left side. Top right, now:

A young, hip, modern woman reads from a book on whose cover are the rubrics IMMIGRATION, SAME-SEX MARRIAGE, TRANSGENDER, CLIMATE CHANGE, EDUCATION, ABORTION, WAR. 
Important issues before. Even more, after. It's fitting that a woman should be reading them, because I think we should be hearing more from women about things like this. We know they know a lot, but the last election strongly suggested that we don't really want to hear what they have to say.

I wish that would change. I think we're collectively going to be sorry that it isn't.

Another enigmatic one. Decode the meaning for oneself:

And this last one also spoke very loudly to me. I once aspired to cartooning; editorial cartoonists have long been heroes of mine, and I've gone on to be fortunate enough to get to know a few astoundingly well on Facebook (never let it be said that Facebook never did anything for me). And this is what they do.

A revolutionary act. Especially considering the info-tainment and ratings center that modern news seems to be evolving into.

A tiny, vital art gallery, in the coffee room at Powell's. Meditation during book church.
I highly commend it to you. 

[ad design] Hipsters and Man Buns … Always Comedy Gold

3401.

Saw this on a northbound TriMet bus on SE 122nd and Division yesterday:

I'm of  mixed feelings here. I'll say it, I hate the 'man-bun'. Everything's ugly about it, including the name. That 2-level (!) monstrosity is atrocious, and quite possibly a crime against some facet of humanity.

The joke is an easy one to make, though. The stereotypical hipster is someone everyone loves to hate and it's becoming something of lazy trope.

That said, though? As a reflection of the culture right now? It's funny. We laughed our asses off. 

[pdx] Portlandia, Where You Bound?

3230.

Some time ago, I forget where, I opined that so many people think Portland wants to grow up to be Seattle, but they're wrong … Portland actually wishes it were San Francisco.

Following the news about the techsters taking over there, and the boho, artistic SF culture that the city was famous for being driven out in some sort of human expression of Gresham's law, and following the current news about rents whizzing upward towards some sort of physical escape velocity that is currently driving lower-income workers and renters toward the margins (and perhaps even beyond in the near future), it's hard not to, at least, disagree with my own past thoughts. Portland is becoming SF-like, in all the wrong ways.

On SE 8th, just off Hawthorne, is a basketball backboard, It's in the shape of the state of Oregon, but says Welcome to California. It's gotten some legs. Inspired by that, I offer this little bit of agitprop.

[pdx] What Good is Weird If You Can't Afford It?

3193.

We here at Home Base have been following the upwardly mobile cost of having a place to sleep in Portland with more than a little alarm. And while we're nowhere near retirement age, we do remember when one could find a place to hang in most areas of the core of Portland without having to pay more than half of ones' monthly poke.

We ourselves lived in a lovely one-room/kitchenette with a shared bath in NW Portland … NW Flanders between 21st and 22nd Avenues … for $150/month. And the same apartment we had near SE 52nd and Flavel until '04 … and was paying a mere $600/month for it (860 sf/2br/1bath) now leases for a year at more than $1,000 a month.

That's insane.

I love Portland's weird. I like helping to keep Portland weird. But if there's a sign at the city limits that says "You Must Be This Wealthy To Enter", then what good is weird? 

[teh_funny] The Gay Shipping Forecast, Transcribed

3015.

It's gone round the world and come right back into your face, though not in an embarrassing way.

Blighty has its own chorus howling about how tolerating Teh Gay has 'removed God's protection' from England's Mountains Green. It would seem that, similar to the hectoring warnings about increased meteorological and geolphysical travail that we get in America from fundamentalist teleministers, they get warnings that sound like mail-merge script in the UK.

Theirs is a man named David Silvester, a councilor in the UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party), a sort of British sort of Libertarian sect which advocates leaving the EU, and he wrote a letter to a local editor all but coming right out and saying that a spate of recent flooding may just as well have happened because of tolerance of gay people. This went viral and is currently getting the right sort of ridicule, which is hard and hilarious.

Nicholas Pegg (really, you don't know who he is?) decided to have a bit of fun and coöpted a UK broadcast institution, the shipping forecast. Brittania, of course, once ruled the waves, and the feeling of the UK as a great naval power has never waned. People who have no conception of even how to dog-paddle listen avidly to the shipping forecast; Fog in Channel, Continent cut off goes a famous line.

Here, then, the UKIP Shipping Forecast:



In listening to it, though, I was entranced by the cadence and the easy way with which the areas were ticked off and listed. I wanted to read along, actually, but the words were not to be found.

I have taken the liberty of transcribing them, because I love reading lyrics with a song, and this is no different really. With apologies to the author:

(music fades in, and out)

And now, the shipping forecast, issued by UKIP, On Sunday, the nineteenth of January twenty-fourteen, at twelve hundred UTC.

There are warnings of gays in Viking, Forties, Cromarty, Southeast Iceland, and Bongo Bongo Land. The general synopsis at midday: low intelligence expected, becoming Little England by midnight, tonight. 

And now, the area forecasts for the next twenty-four hours: 

Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire: southeasterly gay 7 to severe gay 9, occaisionally bisexual. Showers, gay.
Forties, Cromarty, Forth, Tyne, Dogger, Fisher: Women, veering southerly 4 or 5, losing their identity and becoming sluts. Rain, moderate or gay.
German Blight: Immigration veering north. Figures variable, becoming psychotic. Showers, gay.
Humber, Thames, Dover, Wight, Portland, Plymouth: Benefit tourism, 98%, becoming variable, later slight, or imaginary. Showers, gay.
Biscay, Trafalgar: Warm, lingering nationalism. Kiss me Hardy, later becoming heterosexual, Good.
FitzRoy, Sole, Lundy, Fastnet, Irish Sea, Shannon, Rockall, Malin, Hebrides, Bailey: Right or extreme Right veering racist 4 or 5 increasing 5 to 7. Homophobic outburst, backpedalling westerly becoming untenable. Showers, gay.
Fair Isle, Faeroes, Southeast Iceland: Power base decreasing, variable, becoming unelectable. Good.

And that concludes the forecast. And now, it's over to Ambridge, where Bridge Farm in still knee-deep in water, and the village is counting the cost of Adam and Ian's civil partnership.

(music)

What really impresses me about all this is the insight into UK isolationism, jingoism and hyper-nationalism and xenophobia this gives us. I'm so used to the sort which grows here in America that it always seems indescribably odd that another nation should go at it with such gusto and joie de vivre, but the insight that Nicholas Pegg's piece gives us is a strangely familiar one. By the tenor and substance of his jokes, we find that UK xenophobia is not all that different from America, as the UKIP-infected shipping forecast shows, the right-wing litany is rather the same, with prehistoric attitudes on women and utter fear of the immigrant moving in to take advantage of the advantageous features of the economy (that's apparently what benefit tourism is).

Plus ça change …

There are a few references worth noting. All the boldfaced names are sea areas in the seas adjacent to the British Isles. Names like North Utsire (ut-SEARY) and Fastnet roll of the British tongue quite fluidly but sound like strange music to the American ear. Two obvious jokes there, of course: "Bongo Bongo Land", being one, and the German Blight, which is a pun on German Bight, which is the name of the elbow of North Sea which abuts Germany's northwest, between the Netherlands and the Jutland peninsula of Denmark, kind of Germany's left shoulder.

The reference at the end is for a wholly remarkable Radio 4 program, The Archers which, at over 17,200 episodes, is most likely the longest-running serial drama on Earth.

Anyone needing to know just where these sea regions are geographically located can view the map here.

I'm going to listen to that thing a few hundred more times.

[liff] Morsi's Latest Album

2892.Due to drop any day now, unless his nemeses drop him first.

Why? Because I've heard one too damn' many Morrisey/Morsi gags, that's why.

Apologies to Attack Records and the cover designer of this disc.

[teh_funnay] This High School is The Fastest Hunk Of Junk In The Galaxy

2798Those who designed Parkland High School, Allentown, PA, claim they didn't intend to make it look, from the air, like a certain Corellian freelancer's ship …

Well, OK, we'll buy that. But so what? This is the most awesome HS campus ever.

And it made the Kessel run in less than 1.3 parsecs. Can your high school say that? I'll just answer for you: NO.

I'm reasonably certain that you won't find the droids you're looking for there, though, budgets being what they are.

Even more injustice: the sports team are the Trojans, not the Falcons.

[teh_funnay] Zooey Deschanel in a Post-Copy-Editor World

2796We always knew that Zooey Deschanel was a special woman of poise and good qualities.

Therefore we were not surprised when she divorced Death Cab for Cutie.

We never much cared for that group anyhow.

[net_liff] How Fast Twitter Spread The East Coast Quake News

2670.Google+ User Matt Morain posted this fascinating animated GIF (direct link to post) illustrating the Twitter traffic for the first thirty seconds after the East Coast Quake of Tuesday.

Yeah, I know it's proves something somehow maybe, but it's damned interesting. Five … ten years ago … we weren't this well-connected.

Yeah we're livin in, in a modern world.

[world] Confirmed: 3 Melted Down Reactors at Fukushima Dai'ichi

2633.I'm going way off topic for this one, because like most of us here in the Willamette Valley and western Oregon, the status of the Fukushima Dai'ichi site (it's kind of hard to call it a "power plant" these days) is at the back of our minds, even though we don't show it here. We have to get through each day.

But it was just announced that what has so-far seemingly been soft-pedaled and suspected all along is correct: Fukushima units 1, 2, and 3 have actually suffered meltdowns.

I wonder how much of northern Honshu is about to be declared uninhabitable? They don't have huge spaces like they did about Chernobyl', that they could exclude someone. And this looks like it's going to be worse than that.

 Technorati Tags: Fukushima, Meltdown, Nuclear

[pdx] Portland: On The Edge Of Something Or Other

2629.(via OLive)The National Lists of Things Administration, outsourced at this juncture to the makers of Edge Shaving Gel, have deemed Portland as one of 10 cities on the "Edge of Greatness".

Having been born in Oregon and grown up in the Willamette Valley, I'd say what we're actually on is the Edge of Wetness, but that's my sarcastic side speaking out, and I've promised to discipline him this year. No dinner for you tonight, young man, and we're not reading you any more Camus for your bedtime story!

What pushes a city up to the Edge? Well, in our case, Indie arts (hallo, Indiewood!), indie music, a whole bunch of LEED-y buildings and soccer.

On the list, we are not quite as Edgy as Denver, but Edgier than Austin, Seattle, and even Los Angeles? Wha? We're edgier than Elay? Dude!

Here's the List. We await yet the next list of something or other that Portland will no doubt appear on.

If there's a list of cities that are apt to appear on lists, Portland would no doubt be right up at the top of it.

 
Technorati Tags: Lists, Portland, Best_of_lists

 

[pdx] Urban Archaeology at the Burlingame Fred Meyer (updated x 2)

2626.(Update, 23 May 11 1957) Just came down from the high induced by watching this posting being mentioned on local TV. KGW's "Live @ 7" program, broadcast weekdays from 7-7:30 PM, mentioned it as a part of the "Web Links" section, selected by producer Aaron Weiss and reported on by Steph Stricklen. Not only was Steph's reporting on the bit articulate and nifty, but she said my last name correctly! Seriously, you'd be surprised how many people have trouble with the name Klein.

Not only does this solidify my Live @ 7 fandom, it bears witness to the fact that, while all the Portland TV stations are fairly nifty, KGW's crew - and especially the Live @ 7 staff - are the most adept at connecting with viewers and fans on the Intartubez and the twitter-device. For your handy reference, the twitter-point for Steph Stricklen is @StephStricklen and for producer Aaron and the Live @ 7 production juggernaut is @TheSquare. This post is also linked from the Monday Links section at http://www.kgw.com/thesquare/inside/Mondays-links-122477424.html. And thank you, guys!

(Update, 20 May 11 0915) A friendly indvidual, fellow-traveller 'sputnik housewares' from the comments, pointed me at a nifty vintage picture of the FM Burlingame sign going in. Please see the bottom of this postng for the goods.

The Burlingame Fred Meyer store, located near where Terwilliger Blvd and Barbur Blvd meet I-5 in southwest Portland, is one of the oldest stores but has survived over the years where stores like the old Hollywood store (NE Sandy and 41st) and the Rose City (NE 72nd, where Sandy and Fremont cross) haven't perhaps because there aren't any other good Fred Meyers in convenient distance. Thanks to its small size, it's been presented as a "Fred Meyer Marketplace" (a term, I understand, for smaller Freddy's such as this one and the Stadium store), and boasts about the last vintage Fred Meyer sign that I can find.

During this season, Fred Meyer closed the store to put it through a balls-to-the-wall remodel. Everything was cleaned out, out to the walls of the old building. The Chase bank brand moved a couple hundred yards east, to the old Hollywood Video store on the west side of SW Barbur between Bertha Blvd and Terwilliger, but the rest won't be back until this Fall, according to the banners around the site. At this point, the building is extremely cleaned out:

Naturally, having the outside off the way it is, the building has had its skin removed; we're looking at the bones. It's more interesting than I thought it would be. For instance, in the above photo, notice the slanting-out faces of the vertical supports. They have details on, some grooves in the masonry that add visual interest, and there are mansard-style caps on each of them.

The vintage sign bears mention at this point. I'll refer back to it presently:

My understanding is that the style of sign used to be Fred Meyer empire style; I don't know how many old Freddy's it graced, but I do remember the old one, exactly similar in style, that used to perch over the corner of 39th (now César E Chávez) and SE Hawthorne Blvd at the Hawthorne store. It was smaller. After the Hawthorne store got LEEDed to the gills, a new sign - an inferior version, IMHO - was placed at the corner of SE CEC and Main. Here, you be the judge:

Meh, amirite (thanks, Google Street View, BTW).

Pulling this digression train back on the tracks, there were two most visually appealing palimpsets that I wanted to point out. At the eastern end of the building (Barbur is a N-S street but this is on an almost east-west kink in the road due to the low-spot in the hills that also hosts the famous Terwilliger Curves) is this:

Fred Meyer stores have long had a tradition of having additional retail spaces for things like salons and cleaners and the like. This is particularly intriguing because of the obvious human touch; the HAIR FASHIONS manifestly created by sight and hand as the uneven kerning and awkwardly sized S attest.

Just on the left of this art is a light blue angle, before the outer skin of the building ends. I wonder what that must have led into. I hope someone else captured it.

The big prize was on the east end of the building, nearest to Bertha Blvd:

In the state the building is in, this is as good as it got, but it's nice, no? Referring back to the vintage sign above, notice that the script style is all but identical (the descender on the g and the low-hanging bottom of the e being the giveaways) with the script on the sign styled to fit in with the backslanted sign edge. It's a small point to note, I suppose, like the Dude's rug, this ties the sign and the building together irrevocably.

As with the other bit of wall art above, I don't know if there was more to reveal. The building has got to be, oh, I don't know, at least 60 years old. I only got this; if there was more, I hope someone else noted it.

If you jumped down here because of the note at the head of this post: in the comments of the post, a commenter by the name of sputnik housewares posted a link to the following picture on Flickr, of the above sign going in at the first:

 

You'll note the sign at the bottom …My-Te-Fine Foods Drugs. As any dyed-in-the-Doug-Fir Oregonian knows, My-Te-Fine was the FM house brand, before the chain went through a series of sales which eventually made it a subsidiary of Kroger (which is why you can find Big K, the Kroger house brand, in Fred Meyer stores latterly.

Thanks, sput! Nifty!

 
Technorati Tags: Fred_Meyer, PDX_history, PDX_photos, Burlingame, Portland

[liff] Three Girls, One Teapot

2622.Them Aussie women are a different kind of crayzee.

I mean, if they aren't planking, they're teapotting.

Some women are doing with sheep, for cryin' out loud!

I know! Sheep … in Australia?

Don't think this sort of public behavior is dangerous? It's getting people fired at Woolworths.

Kids these days. Next thing you know, it'll be jazz halls and dancing.

Technorati Tags: planking, teapotting, Australia, memes

[logo] First Ahhnold and Maria Separate, Now This, or, Paging Sarah Connor

2621.So, just after we hear that Mr and Mrs Schwarzenegger separate, we hear that MSFT has bought Skype.

Hmm…

Coincidence?

I sure hope so.

Will Sarah Connor come to the white courtesy phone?

Via Jeff Patterson.

[tech] They Actually Are Still Making Typewriters, Somewhere

2615.It would seem that, as a wise American once expounded, reports of the death of the typewriter have been greatly exaggerated. This from Gawker, via The Great Penguini:

In the retelling, however, this somehow came to mean that Godrej & Boyce was the last existing typewriter manufacturer in the world, and that this therefore marked the final, wheezing gasps for the antiquated word-processing machines. From the fake typewriter ashes, a million nostalgic personal essays bloomed.

There are at least a few firms left that are creating new typewriters, including a firm referenced in the article that apparently creates "see-through" typewriters for use by prisoners.

Referenced was this search on Staples website which turns up several models. I would point out that these are strictly electronic typewriters, which, to me, is an important distinction … perhaps not to others, but certainly to me. I think the mechanical typewriter has a niche, infinitesimal though it may be.

But breathe easy, fellow lovers of the rustic art of creating type with actual mechanical effort … our day is not completely over. Not yet, anyway.

And while we're there, mea culpa for spreading a bit of un-information there. But it was with a good heart.

[tech] The Typewriter Era Is Over … Period

2611.Typewriters have, of course, been on the way out for a long time. Here in America they've all but become ghosts, and those of us who have actual typewriters and use them (me, for one) have to know where to get typewriter ribbons (not an easy thing, but I at least have Bill Morrison's at 122nd and SE Stark St, which is within walking distance).

I was aware that they were less popular for a long time, you know when I knew that the typewriter's days were numbered? When you couldn't find them at the Goodwill store anymore. They used to have shelves and shelves of broken old machines. Then, one year … and not all that long ago … the old typewriters just kind of disappeared.

Those of us who like type and typing … and for me there's always a sort of joy to it, a healing feeling … cherish our machines. The author Harlan Ellison has several in storage, because nothing lasts forever and, I imagine, soon enough, there won't be any way to even get them fixed any more. Keeps spare typewriter ribbons in the freezer, I understand.

With the announcement of the last known typewriter manufacturer in the world ceasing operations, I fear that day is here:

With only about 200 machines left -- and most of those in Arabic languages -- Godrej and Boyce shut down its plant in Mumbai, India, today. "Although typewriters became obsolete years ago in the west, they were still common in India -- until recently," according to the Daily Mail, which ran a special story this morning about the typewriters demise. "Demand for the machines has sunk in the last ten years as consumers switch to computers." Secretaries, rejoice.

"We are not getting many orders now," Milind Dukle, Godrej and Boyce's general manager, told the paper. "From the early 2000s onwards, computers started dominating. All the manufacturers of office typewriters stopped production, except us. 'Till 2009, we used to produce 10,000 to 12,000 machines a year. But this might be the last chance for typewriter lovers. Now, our primary market is among the defence agencies, courts and government offices."

Well, my Royal Futura isn't on the verge of breaking down, and I can still get ribbons for it. But she's amongst the last of a now-extinct species.

[liff] Advice From the Gosselins? Even at Dollar Tree, That's Overpriced.

2603.The Dollar Tree is a great place to pick up cheap craft supplies. The Wife™ subjects me to visits weekly. The Dollar Tree, however, is not a good place to expand your library unless you want to stock the bathroom or do it ironically. Recently saw this glossy little number, and wondered if this signified some sort of cryptic disdain for the customer base:

The book. Multiple Bles8ings: Surviving and Thriving with Twins and Sextuplets, was on sale at the Foster Rd. Dollar Tree on a table of books they have out there - kind of like they do at Costco, except the books were clearly not exactly huge sellers the public. Jon and Kate, of course, having apparently felt the succeeded long enough at survining and thriving with twins and sextuplets, decided to plant C4 under thier marriage. Last seen, Kate is doing whatever she can to land on the cover of People next week, and Jon … actually, who gives a crap?

They said it was dollar for that. I told them they'd have to pay more than a buck for me to take it off their hands.

There is finally a retail space that is below the remainder bin.

I've tried coming up with another one-liner for this, but find that my mind is beggared for any ideas. But I will say this: though I am solidly against burning books, there are some which argue that maybe trees shouldn't have died to produce them.

[liff] Michaels: Holding The Line On Prices

2594.Seen at one of the Michaels Arts and Craft stores that we sometimes go to find crafty things for The Wife™:

At 00$ OFF, when it comes to price here, what you see is what you get. At least they're straight up about that.

[liff] Powell's City Of Books: Philosophy on the Return Carts

2593.The nifty thing about going to Powell's is, of course, you never know what sort of thing you'll take away from there, and I say that because if you don't leave with books, you leave with something to think about … a little philosophy, perhaps.

Seen on a book return cart in the Pearl Room (my favorite because that's where the art-how-to-books are) was this sagacity:

Now, if you're having any trouble reading this, here's the transcript:

The sticker reads:

NOTE to Supreme Court: Corporations have no belly buttons - Corp are NOT People!

The first response:

Note To Parents: Babies have no conscience - Babies are NOT people!

And the rejoinder to that:

Nonsense! Sociopaths have no conscience, and they are certainly people!

And, in an attempt to graphically define the proposition, there is a kind of circle-diagram below. I say kind of because the curve enclosing People looks more like an amoeba, which is fair, because some people I've met in my life strike me as amoebas (others as anaerobic organisms, but this isn't Rant Day, so I won't go there for now). The breakdown is kind of like this:

1. Babies and Sociopaths are both People but have no conscience;
2. Babies and Corporations both have no conscience but only Babies are People;
3. Sociopaths and Corporations both have no conscience but only Sociopaths are People;
4. Babies and Sociopaths and Corporations have no conscience as a commonality.

Sadly the diagram creator did not treat presence or abscence of belly buttons; hopefully they will revise the diagram when they figure out where the oval has to go. Hey, I'm not doing their work for them! I'm all hoi-polloi here, I do not trouble my mind with such fundamental building blocks of human thought!

I'll check again on this cart and see if it ever gets updated - providing I ever find it again.