Protest threats: Big-box retailer.

So the other week I went to a protest downtown against a big-box retailer, and the people at the worker justice center where I’ve been volunteering started telling me about another protest against a distribution center of the same big-box retailer.

A bunch of ministers went, and everyone ended up blocking a route into the distribution facility and shutting down work there for like an hour, which eventually resulted in some abuses against workers getting corrected.

Before they were able to block the road into the center, though, I guess, the big-box retailer’s private security came out all done up in riot gear and started threatening to tear gas everyone.

“What?!”, I was like.  “They said that?”.

“Yep,” the one (black) (female) staffer from the worker justice center was like.  “It was unbelievable.”

“And did they actually have tear gas, or were they blowing smoke up your ass just to scare you guys and get you to leave?”.

“No idea,” she was like, “No idea.”

Then I joked that it wouldn’t matter anyhow even if they did have it, since in that case it would be price club tear gas, and then it probably wouldn’t have hurt them that much anyways.

Vengeance feedback.

So at this one apt. I was 1st in line to apply for, the landlady didn't tell me she was having a hard time contacting 2 of my refs until late Fri. afternoon of Labor Day weekend, at which point I really couldn't do much, and so she gave the place to someone else on the list, possibly also b/c she got it ready for a slightly earlier move-in date, too.

I was pissed and had spent $25 for a credit report charge, so I called like 2x and left a message checking up on the apt (oddly, after she had told me that the apt was someone else's, she had later told a ref of mine that I was "still in the running"), and then I called just checking up, and seeing nicely if there was anyway I could get my $25 back since I was confused about the process and she had never even called to say my credit report cleared, at which point she could have also told me that she was having problems with my references and I would have cleared them up before the holiday weekend.

She didn't return my calls, and during my tour of the apartment she had mentioned some stuff about putting a two-by-four to better secure a back door off the back porch stairwell, so I had contemplated giving a heads-up to city zoning, to check her fire exits.

I asked the one (black) security guard at the grocery store I go to what he thought of that, and he laughed and was like, "If she don't give you back your money, do it!".

She did call back after 3 days, though, and did agree to give the money back.

Now I'm wondering if I should alert zoning anyhow, since I really do think she might create a fire hazard for tenants, and if there was a fire on the front stairwell, people could die.

Pre-WWII Berlin: Gay priests.

An anecdote from Dr. Ludwig L. Lenz's "The Memoirs of a Sexologist: Discretion and Indiscretion" (New York: Cadillac Publishing Company, 1954), pp. 272-273 (a summary, since the anecdote is too wordy to quote verbatim):

In 1925 a guy approached the doctor because his brother (a Roman Catholic priest) had died, and a bookshop sent him a letter for unpaid debts - on books all "of a homosexual nature"!

The guy was disquieted because he just couldn't see his brother as gay, and Dr. Lenz said he really didn't know his brother well enough to tell him one way or another, but it was certainly possible.

Then, 5 years later, the same thing happened again, brought about by a bill from the same bookshop.

Dr. Lenz nosed around, and found out that a retired civil servant with a bad pension was Roman Catholic and would subscribe to local ecclesiastical journals, and then would whip up a fake bookshop bill and send it to relatives of recently deceased priests, who would routinely pay it off quietly, in order to preserve their dead relative's reputation.

. . .

On another note, Dr. Lenz says all a huge proportion of Nazi higher-ups were severely perverted, and that's why one of the first things they did was completely destroy the files of Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute of Sexology in Berlin.

Trip Home (23 of 23): Back to the city.

When the train arrived, I went to the wrong end, then had to hustle down to the car on the other end of the train, and when I got on board, the forward-facing seats were full, so I ended up plopping down next to this (white) guy around my age.

When the (black) (female) conductor came around and asked for tickets, he didn't even acknowledge her in any way, but kept doing something on his iPhone, and she asked again, and he just did that, not acknowledging her, and I was so confused, and was like, "Hey, she's asking for tickets," in a tone of voice slightly louder than her.

Finally, he pulled up his ticket on his iPhone and gave it to her to scan, and she went on.

Later, I was in the cafe car and the (black) (female) conductor was there, and so I told her that I was so sorry that that guy was rude to her, and that I wasn't associated with him at all, I just happened to sit down there.

"I was wondering that," she was like.  "I thought you were with him at first, but then it seemed like you weren't."

Then, she was like, "That man was an asshole.  I was this close to asking him to get off the train.  I can do that, you know."

Trip Home (22 of 22): Women priests.

The dad of my one friend from high school who runs the integrated women's-homeless shelter is an extremely liberal Catholic - and he just got invited to a Roman Catholic WomenPriest mass at a house in a small town like 45 minutes away.

He's never met any WomenPriests - "I have no idea who they are, never met them before," he was like - but is going to give it a shot, because he can't bring himself to quite Catholicism entirely.

Trip Home (21 of 22): Too much caffeine.

My one friend from home's mom is raising some of her grandkids, and though she's doing a great job, for some odd reason she lets them have all the pop they want, including a ton of Mountain Dew, even 4+ cans a day.

At a family reunion I was at, the kids were arguing over the last can of Mountain Dew, and one of them said they'd had 8 that day.

"Holy fuck," my one friend from high school who runs the integrated women's-homeless shelter was like. 

Then, after we talked about that and both raised eyebrows, she was like, "Seriously, eight cans of Mountain Dew?  You might as well have the kids each do three lines of coke and then go out and play."

Trip Home (20 of 22): Strange Arby's customer.

My one friend from home's older half sister was saying that back when she was in high school, she used to work a Wednesday evening shift at the local Arby's, and though they'd close at 10pm, at like 10:01pm this (older) (white) guy used to pull through and order a cup of black coffee and an Arby's super sandwich no tomato, every week.

Then, when she was graduating and getting ready to move downstate, the guy began asking her at the drive-through window for her name and address, so he could take her out for lunch if he was ever down that way, and she kept having to refuse him, and say nicely that she didn't really know him, but maybe she'd run into him around town when she was back sometime.

Then, like 3 years later, she was in this little liquor store that used to be in the far end of the big grocery store in town and had a separate entrance (it's not there any more), and she runs into that guy, and he's like, "Hi, [her first name]," and she's like, "Hey, Mr. Black-Coffee-and-Arby's-Super-Sandwich-No-Tomato man," though of course she didn't say that exactly, but she recognized him immediately and knew who he was.

Then, he asked her, "Does your mom still live out [the location of her mom's house]?"

That gave her pause, and she asked him a few things, and it turns out that he used to follow her home after work, and would then park up the road and sleep in his car and wake up with the sun, and then go home after he saw her and her little sisters get on the bus safely to school.

"After that," my one friend from home's older half sister was like, "I told my mom that the girls were *never* to go around the house in just their bras and underwear again, because we had a lot of trees around, but who knows what this guy was doing."

She also said that some of her friends used to have apartments above some shops on my hometown's main street, and sometimes at night she would see his car parked across the street from there, and she now realizes that he must have been in there behind the tinted windows and looking up into the apartment's windows to catch glimpses of the girls' parties.