Friday, July 17, 2009

I don’t know if this has made the news in the rest of the US yet (or even if it will).  I’ve heard bits on the TV and more from former EPA colleague who heard it from a Coast Guard guy.

Apparently, when Gen. Carlson made his ultimatum to the military forces in New England to back him, disarm, or leave, most of the Navy vessels in New England ports put to sea.  There were a few destroyer exceptions (some up in Bath, ME on refits), but pretty much, we’re without a Navy (we still have our Coasties, God Bless ‘em).  One of the ships (or in this case boat) that didn’t leave was the USS Alabama (SSBN 731).  The Alabama is an Ohio-class ballistic missile nuclear submarine.  She’d just been put in dry-dock at Electric Boat in Groton to be converted from a ballistic missile sub (SSBN) to a cruise-missile sub (SSGN).  Apparently she still had her nuclear-tipped Trident missiles on-board.

According to the Coastie who related the story, the captain and crew of the Alabama wanted to get her the hell out of New England.  The EB workers and managers said she wasn’t safe to sail.  So on Tuesday night, a chunk of the crew broke into the EB dry-dock, re-floated their boat and headed out into the Thames River.  Turns out, the EB mechanics knew what they were talking about.  The boat started taking on water as soon as it hit the river and lost power before they cleared Fisher’s Island.

A couple of Coast Guard cutters from the Academy went out and helped some tugboats pull her back up-river.  There was some ‘discussion’ between the Navy folks at the sub base, the Electric Boat people, and the Coasties.  Admiral Burhoe (Superintendent of the Academy) had the boat tied-up at the Academy’s docks.

Apparently there is now a commission from the UN and EU meeting in New London to oversee the transfer of remaining nukes from New England territory to the US ‘mainland’ without anymore hijinks.  The Europeans are understandably a little nervous about the threat of civil war in a country with 30,000 nuclear weapons (all except the Russians who must be loving this I imagine).

 

Monday, July 13, 2009

Some punk in off-the-rack cammies just tried to steal my fucking chickens.

The chickens spend much of their day scratching among the plants up on the green roof. They keep the bugs down and help aerate the soil and their occasional droppings add nitrogen to the soil — or so I’m told by Ms. Bessler who knows about these sorts of things. We’ve got a coop where they roost at night (locked-up tight due to feral cats and a local raccoon or two). About half the eggs get laid there, too. We sometimes find the ones laid among the garden. It’s a slapdash affair — we had no idea we were getting chickens, after all — but it works well enough.

Anyway, I was home today because April’s got a summer cold that she probably caught at the giant community dinners we’ve been attending. We were painting — well she was painting, I was reading a book — our on the porch when she said, “Mommy, oh! Look! There’s a nice man on the roof! With the chickens!”

“That’s nice, dear,” I muttered and then heard a SQUAWK!

This guy is up in my (tiny, sad, droopy) tomatoes running after one of the chickens. I hollered for Paul to come get April and as soon as he could see her, I clambered up onto the roof. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

“We’re appropriating these here chickens, ma’am, for the troops.”

“The hell you are!” I put my body between him and the chickens (who knew whose hand fed them, if nothing else, and ran behind me when I showed up).

“Ma’am, it’s for the troops, you don’t want to be unpatriotic, do you?” He smiled and he was a good looking kid, maybe 19 or so, and you could tell he got a lot with that smile. And for a few seconds I actually thought that this guy was real army — the new New England one, at least, if not “regular” army.  Then he cocked his head and all but winked at me and said, “It’s to feed the soldiers, ma’am.”

I don’t know if it was the “ma’am” or the heavy handed pseudo hick accent but this guy pissed me off.

“Boy,” I spat out the word, “if you’re a soldier then I’m a supermodel. If you have an actual order to appropriate these chickens I want to see your commanding officer and I want payment.” He hesitated for long enough that I knew I was right — this guy never met a Drill Sargent in his life. I’ve got military on both sides of my family and there’s something about boot camp that just never wears off a man, much less a kid less than five years out.

“Get the hell out of here before I call Lieutenant Hooper,” he’s the Army’s guy in Davis Square, “and he kicks your ass to the harbor.”

His face got hard and cold and for a second I thought things were going to get ugly. You could see this kid doing the math — here’s an overweight middle aged woman in bare feet. He could take me. And he could have. All the bluster drained out of me just that fast and he saw me come to the same conclusion.

Just then Paul clambered up onto the roof. For those of you who have never met Paul, he’s nearly six and a half feet tall and broad at the shoulders. The guy took a long look at Paul. I took that opportunity to grab a shovel and raise it up in a threatening pose. That was enough. He ran.

(For those of you wondering, Paul had had to take the time to drop April with Ms. Bessler before he came charging to the rescue. Yes, yes, the smart thing would have been for me to stay with April while he climbed up. Yes, yes, I know. Hindsight.)

I have to wonder how many folks he’s fooled with that act? There are a lot of “victory gardens” around — he’s probably taken off with a lot of food that way. I wonder why? It’s not like anyone is going hungry right now. Maybe he’s just a black marketeer? Maybe he’s just greedy? Maybe he just has a weird fondness for chickens? (Ew! Grossed myself out there.)

Still, the chickens now get a human guard when they scratch on the roof.

 

Friday, July 10, 2009

I’ve managed to get in touch with the whole extended family — my side and Paul’s. They are fine, living a little leanly, but okay. My brother’s got a broken arm from a scuffle at the local grocery store. Apparently, even though they all live in the verdant hills of Connecticut, there’s just not as much food to go around.

I suspect that it’s a matter of distribution rather than amounts. Even Cambridge has enough food … for right now. It’s July and the farmers are rolling the stuff in by the truckload. There’s still some fighting — MIT, again, is a flashpoint, I wouldn’t go near the salt-n-pepper bridge for love or money. Not even for lemons.

It’s the little things — like lemons — that are really disconcerting. There’s more food available in markets and whatnot than there’s been in a while. Apparently the pro tem government is helping farmers fill up their tanks and they’ve got somebody organizing caravans to save on gas. (I said it before and I’ll say it again — the Children of Liberty have one ass-kicking Quartermaster.) But there are no imports from outside of the region.

Radio Free Boston — the announcers using their real names now — says it’s not a blockade, just a matter of logistics. The ports and the trains will but up and running soon.

For now, New England is doing pretty good — our farms produce got meat, veggies, fruit, milk, potatoes. But no one is growing wheat or rice in New England. There are no citrus or olive trees in New England. There are no spices in New England. Herbs a plenty but no cinnamon, clove, nutmeg. It’s going to be hard to make apple pie this year.

I seem to be the only one thinking ahead to apple pie season, though. Everyone else is having a party. The soup kitchens have become community kitchens and I spent my day making enormous batches of black bean soup. Vats of it. With fennel and carrot slaw on the side. For the first time in my memory, there are more volunteers than we need. And it’s the most happy I’ve seen anyone in almost a year. There’s singing and dancing in the back, and there are lots of pretty college students waiting the tables. People kiss me on the cheek and tell me to lighten up when I grumble.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m a dour sourpuss. But my people originally came from Russia and there’s one thing any babushka knows, deep in her bones, even in the laughing heart of summer:

Winter is coming.

 

Thursday, July 9, 2009

I went out for a visit out to the CostCo in Everett this morning.  We regularly hit the warehouse store on delivery-day (Neve knows someone who knows someone) to see if we can grab some bulk essentials.  I was among the door-busters and headed straight for the rice and canned-goods (along with everyone else). All the price signs were handwritten and caused a lot of people to pause.  Prices had taken a huge jump - try 50-60%.  Things weren’t cheap before, but this was crazy.  People were milling around the place either dumbfounded or shouting prices at the gods.  Most of the food items (the only reason anybody was really there) also had their prices listed in Euros, Pounds, and Canadian Dollars.

Things were looking to get ugly when the crowd turned to demand answers from a manager.  I decided we had enough beans for now and headed out.

I should have seen this one coming.  A note to our CSA/farming contacts in the west of the state confirmed that they are still willing to deal in BerkShares and even Champies.  Sounds like we have some conversions to do before the dollars in our bank account fall too much in comparison with those two local currencies.

 

Monday, July 6, 2009

One of those lessons for when you become a leader anywhere…just because you declare victory doesn’t mean that your enemies see it that way or are going away quickly.

The ruckus that cut off my last post here was in impromptu parade. A bunch of local folks were on the streets hooting, hollering, and waving New England flags — mostly on bikes. The SCULs were out in force, really sort of egging the rest on and helping too feed a carnival atmosphere. People set-up a big pot-luck banquet in Davis Square and an acoustic band provided music for dancing.

While Davis was partying, things weren’t going as well in Harvard Square.  The celebrations there came to a screeching halt when a convoy of Backwater folks (some say with regular Army and/or Guardsmen along as well) showed-up - maybe just passing through.  Things got pretty ugly before the mercs headed off to west along Mem. Drive.  The Harvard Lampoon building is now sporting an array of bullet-scars.

I think we’ll stay holed-up a little longer.

 

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Hey look, TV news is back.

I was never much for the local news even before the Halloween attacks, but one of our neighbors told us to tune in. Crank-up the bike-generator, and check-it out, there’s Governor Patrick having a news conference on the steps of the State House. More importantly, behind him are a bunch of Army folks and a newly shaven (his cheeks were pretty red) Colonel. Yeah, THAT Colonel…the one that’s been leading a leading running fights with the mercs for the past month.

After Deval finished his spiel, he handed-off the podium to one of the Army folks — looking the whole time like he was choking back some of my grandmother’s inedible tuna-noodle surprise. The Army guy, a general according to the network scroll, looked to be doing his best Morgan Freeman impression. And here’s where it got weird.

Major General Jebediah Carlson US Army (un-retired), announced that there was a “fundamental conflict” between serving and protecting the US Constitution and following the orders of of the current occupant of the White House in his role as Commander-in-Chief. He announced that Boston, and the surrounding six New England states, are no longer under the authority of the Federal Government as represented in Washington, DC. He made it clear that he will not require any of the National Guard or regular military folks still in the area to continue to serve. They are free to stand-down or to leave.

After this announcement, the TV camera was blocked for a moment by some out-of-focus pixel-cammo. When the TV guy got the camera up off the tripod and on his shoulder, it showed a swath of military folks, some in modern BDUs, some in the beat-up desert/urban cammo that the Colonel’s vets have been using, all standing at attention and saluting this General.

It was probably staged,,,I know that.  Still, the shot sent shivers down my spine eventhough I was pedalling away on the bike generator.

So now I guess this guy is in charge.  Is Patrick still governor then?  Is he part of a ruling council or something?  Are the Children of Liberty being invited into this semi-military junta?  Or are they behind the whole thing anyway?  Hell, what about the other governors and other states.  Carlson may claim to be speaking for all of New England, but how much does he really have command of…and for how long?

Wrapping this up, some sort of ruckus going on down the street…

 

Saturday, July 4, 2009

For your reading, the listing of grievances compiled by our Founding Fathers against King George III in the Declaration of Independence (the links are all mine):

Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

 

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Holy mother fuck.

I don’t know how they could block the transmissions, but I’m willing to bet that they are doing it. So I’m going to tell you what’s going on here in Boston. This is going to be half-assed as hell, because I’m getting my information through Radio Free Boston and some TV news. We’re currently holed up in the basement, but I’m having to sit on Paul to stop him from running out with a shotgun to help.

We don’t have a shotgun. Thank God.

The Children of Liberty have Declared Independence. They have taken the Old State House where the Declaration of Independence is read from the balcony every Fourth of July and they are … reading the Declaration of Independence from the balcony. With one or two very tiny modifications — replacing King George with George Bush, replacing “Great Britain” with “illegal Bush White House”. And, of course, they are calling it “The United New England States of America.”

What’s terrifying is just how the list of grievances seems to have been written just for this particular tyrant, not for one two and a half centuries ago. Paul sprinted upstairs to get a copy of the text and he’s reading alongside, getting very angry.

(He has taken a moment from his ranting to point out, in very lawyerly fashion, that they’ve abbreviated the list of grievances and added a few new ones. But the original ones still remain remarkably relevant.)

There are fire fights as the Thugs try to get to the State House. But apparently, according to the radio anyway, the National Guard is holding them off. The uniformed soldiers are on our side. I’m hearing reports of a general who has come out of retirement, assumed command of the local troops and is directing things at a regional… should I say national? … level.

The Children of Liberty have just declared war. Holy shit.

 

Friday, July 3, 2009

I admit it, when I heard the Children of Liberty announce a General Strike for this week I didn’t think it would do much.  People need their paychecks and the Fed Powers-That-Be don’t need much from Boston that they are going to miss in a week.

But something is definitely going on.  The mercs have been pushing hard.  They’ve handed-off most of the static jobs (checkpoints, guarding facilities and people, show-the-flag patrols) to the National Guardsmen and instead are doing honest-to-God anti-insurgent raids.  I’ve read a enough of Gen. Petraeus’s Counter-Insurgency Manual to figure that this is one of the “sweep and hold” plans like they used in Iraq a few years ago.  Backwater sweeps; the Guardsmen hold.

OK, maybe I’m extrapolating from rumor on the street and announcements from the radio.  One of the Guard in Davis was a bit too loud in his theorizing while I was at the local food swap this morning.  But that’s what it look like from the cheap seats.

We’re hunkered down and hoping that when the sweeps come to our neighborhood they don’t break too much or kill too many.  I’ve got the rest of this manual to get read.

 

Thursday, July 2, 2008

We’ve gone to ground.

I was out this morning working the soup kitchen lines — with the food supplies dodgy at best, we’ve stopped being for homeless and started being some folks’ main supply of food. I’ve got plenty at home, because I have a fully stocked pantry and an Irish soul (so says Paul, anyway), but lots of people don’t know how to stock a pantry and they are hungry because there’s no food to be found.

Anyway, I had worked the early shift — as a mom, I’m one of the only ones willing to be on the line at 4:45 — and was walking home just after 10 when I heard some loud, flat POP POP POPOPOPOP noises.

My hindbrain kicked in while my fore-brain was still going, “Whaa?” and I dropped to the ground and rolled off into the bushes.

The guy ahead of me wasn’t quite so smart. He made a noise like a dog getting its tail pulled and sat down,  hard, his arm bleeding. Four or ten or fifty guys with black boots came barreling out of someone’s yard, shouting and stomping. They blew by him and never even looked down. There was more shouting and more POPs and I kept my head down and my body pressed hard against some rose bushes growing out of a fence.

For a minute or two there was silence and then I saw a guy in ratty fatigues and a bushy beard skin out of a small place between a garage and house and go sprinting, silently, down the street. There was some noise and some more of the Thugs came back my way.

One of them saw me, nudged me with his foot. (By which I mean to say, he kicked my leg, but not hard.) “Which way did he go?”

I didn’t have to pretend to be scared and so I pointed. The other direction, naturally, but I still pointed. The guy they had shot apparently wasn’t entirely out of it and he agreed with me.

The thugs moved out. I crawled over to the shot guy — his name was Mike, I learned — and tore his shirt into strips and did a half-assed bandage and helped him up. He said thanks and I offered to walk him to the hospital. He said he’d rather go home.

“Dude, you’ve been SHOT!” I revert to 1980s speak when under stress, apparently.

“I’m worried about being rounding up for a work crew,” he shrugged, looking very pale, almost waxy, and he was sweating with cold clammy skin. I was trying to hard to remember what to do to treat for shock that it took me a minute to figure out what he’d just said.

I dragged him onto a lawn and got his feet up in the air on a bird bath and covered him with one of April’s baby blankets that I had in my bag. While I did this, he told me that apparently for the past two days, the Thugs have been rounding up … well…. any able bodied male and putting them to work repairing the roads.

I thought about that as I knocked on the door of the lawn he was bleeding on. No answer. No answer next door, either, though I heard voices. I finally pulled a couple of beach towels off a wash line and covered Mike in them. I kept him talking, because I recalled dimly that that would help. He heard it from some folks who had heard it from some folks who had heard it…. you know. Anyway, he’d heard that they were rounding men up for work gangs.

I called his wife to come and get him and told her to bring blankets and hot water. She showed up without either, but I put him in the car and let her drive him home. I practically ran home.

I don’t know how true the work gang thing is. I know they are using prisoners, but this press gang thing sounds like a rumor to me.

What I do know is that fighting has finally come to my corner of Cambridge. And none of us are going out of the house until things settle down. I feel like it’s cowardly to ditch my position at the soup kitchen, but I’ve got a family to feed and they have to come first.

 

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

I smell like upset chickens.

One of the local purveyors of chickens and eggs, based out in Concord, recently decided to get away from the city.  They said they’re headed for Vermont first and maybe Quebec shortly thereafter.

Before they bugged-out, they let their customers buy their stock of laying hens and rabbits.  Neve and I figured this was a good deal, so I hitched-up April’s baby-trailer to my bike and headed out to Concord.  I’d never followed the Minuteman Bike Path out quite that far, but I figured a bike was a cheaper and safer choice than pulling the Passat out of the garage.

I was happy with my decision when I got up to the 95/128 corridor.  I could see the cars backed-up on Route 4 waiting to get to the cloverleaf with 128.  Pretty clearly this was another checkpoint.  Nobody seemed to care about the Bike Path though.  I rode the little bridge over the highway with no trouble.  I got off the path soon after though.  No need to go closer to Hanscom AFB than necessary.

As I skirted the airbase, I saw a lot more of the orange-suited chain-gangs.  It looks like things got a bit rough out here too.  As the nearest military base to Boston proper, I guess this is where a lot of the Fed raiding parties have been coming from.  There were some obvious attempts a roadblocks that were being cleared away from the base’s access roads.

Then I was on back roads again and among the farms of the near-country.  I picked-up our promised hens and a couple of rabbits (two is enough…they’ll make more), and loaded the menagerie in the baby-trailer.

After one more round of “I’m just a harmless local” past Hanscom and I was back safe, sound, and more than a little sweaty.

 

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

I saw Dash today.

For those who know his people, let them know.

He looked OK considering nobody had heard from the guy in what, three months?  Everybody figured that he’d been nabbed in one of the early raids after the flag-raising fun on Evacuation Day.  Wow does that harmless stunt seem like a world away now.

Anyway, sorry.

I was checking to see if the Whole Foods at Alewife had anything left worth buying and saw Dash in a orange jumpsuit with a shovel clearing the railroad tracks at the Rt. 16 bridge.  I was surprised to see him working in a DPW crew (hell, I was surprised to see a DPW crew at all) when I saw that all 15 or so of the guys in the work crew were wearing shackles on their ankles.  An honest-to-God chain-gang.  I guess using detainees to do repairs is one way to get things running again.

I didn’t press my luck and ask questions.  The Guardsmen standing around looked like someone had replaced their coffee with vinegar and fish-sauce.

I was just glad to see the guy was in one piece.

 

Monday, June 29, 2009

Boston is under a general strike.  The call is to shut the city down all this week.

Not a huge difference in my life since I don’t have a steady job to show up at, but it does mean that we’re going to have to use a bit more reserves here and there to get through the week.

So far, the strike seems to be pretty hit-or-miss.  A lot of the poorer folks are going to work regardless of what Radio Free Boston or CoL flyers tell them to do.  More middle-class folks are calling this their vacation week, thus having it both ways.

The place that seems to be having the biggest effect, at least according to the radio, is construction.  Over the past week a bunch of the major boulevards, bridges, tunnels, and rail-lines in the city have been damaged.  Sometimes it seems to be little fire-fights that happened to take place in strategic spots - other times it’s just that things are suddenly broken.  For most Boston locals, this is annoying, but we just go around on our scooters or bicycles or our feet.  It’s the BackWater Hummers and National Guard deuces that can’t get through.

Now the local construction folks, both public and private, aren’t rolling.

Neve is still busy though.  The network of soup kitchens and emergency meal centers that she was plugged into have stopped being emergency.  In Boston today, those church basements are the communal kitchens for the whole neighborhood.  Nobody can afford to eat alone anymore.

 

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Well shit that was depressing.

April and I went out to the playground this morning after breakfast, trying to get in some quality run-around time before the heat locked us down. It’s always pretty quiet at the park in the early hours — I mean 7 a.m. early — especially on weekends. Most mornings, if we’re there that early, we’re the only ones there.

This morning I bumped into Emma and her mom. I don’t know the mom’s name, it’s just one of those playground acquaintances. I’m April’s Mom, she’s Emma’s Mom. Anyway, I asked how she was doing, we talked about the tense times, how it’s hard to see other moms when all of the regular activities are canceled due to high heat and no electricity.

I mentioned that I hadn’t seen Max’s family in several days. Max, his sister Little Emma, and his moms are one of the few families that is often out and about as early as we are. Max is a month younger than April and Little Emma (one of ten Emmas on the playground at any given time) is about four month old.

“Didn’t you hear?” she whispered in those hushed tones that auger ill news.

“Obviously not. Is everyone okay?”

“Sort of,” she shrugged. “Apparently Little Emma got some bad formula and was in the hospital for a week.”

“Bad formula?” I blinked. “What?”

Turns out that formula — dried, mixed, concentrate, whatever — has been getting harder and harder to come by in the city. Especially the quirky special formulas — soy and whatnot. When Max’s Mommy was running low and couldn’t find anything (like the great sugar kerfuffle a few weeks ago) she bought from the Baby Formula Black Market.

“The WHAT?”

There are people selling stuff at ridiculous prices out the back of their cars. The buy it in the cities that aren’t so locked down and bring it in past the checkpoints, saying it’s a personal supply. (And, of course, hoarding makes perfect sense, since it’s so hard to come by. Of course it’s probably so hard to come by because of hoarding….)  And then they sell it at astronomical profit. Max and Little Emma’s Mommy apparently paid more than $75 for a 30 oz. container of powdered Similac soy.

(For non formula users like myself, I asked Big Emma’s mom and she said that’s about twice what it usually goes for.)

Anyway, you can imagine the rest. It was cut with something unhealthy and Little Emma wound up in the hospital.

I twas touch and go there for a while, but she’s okay now. But Max, Emma, and their mommy have packed up and moved in with the grandparents. The other mom — the Momma — is staying in the city because she has to work, and she wants to keep the house safe. But with gas prices they way they are, she doesn’t know when she’s going to get to see her kids. So the family has been effectively  broken up. Apparently a lot of families with infants are going that route because of the formula difficulties. The city has started a formula distribution center where you can get formula — but only one can at a time, there’s no choice of brand or type, and you have to wait in line for hours.

For a mom with twins, that means standing in line half a day once a week. Just to get food so her kids can eat.

I think this is the end of civilization.

 

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

It’s been one of those brutally hot weeks here in Boston. Everything slows down to Southern City speed. The electricity has been more or less consistent, but we’re still losing seniors at an alarming rate. Paul has taken to knocking on neighbors’ doors during the longer outages, dragging some of the limp looking older folks into our one air conditioned room at the condo.

The bike generator obviously can’t keep up with A/C demands so we’re using diesel. We’ve all pooled our money to keep a supply on hand.

In the early part of the heat wave — Sunday and Monday — we kept hearing sirens and ruckus, but at a great distance. High tensions and high temperatures don’t mix well so we figured it was just the Allston Boys shooting off their mouths. Or even little skirmishes between the BackWater Thugs and the Colonel’s boys. But nothing made the news so we thought maybe it was just accidents. Not that anyone is driving a whole lot.

Then suddenly we started seeing “1290 AM” written in chalk all over the square. And people started talking about “Radio Free Boston.”

Of course we came home and turned on the (hand-crank) radio to that station and… hey! The Children of Liberty have set up a radio station.

I guess the broadsides were getting too dangerous to distribute.

Turns out that the ruckus we’ve been hearing has indeed been scuffles between The Colonel’s men and the BackWater Thugs. And the Children of Liberty and the BackWater Thugs. Why haven’t we heard about this? Well, it seems that the government has threatened the journalists with “aiding and abetting a terrorist organization” if they talk about it. And have hauled away some reporters for violating the “security ban.” Those reporters haven’t been heard from again.

Why do I believe what could just be so much propaganda? ‘Cause I recognize the folks doing the reporting. I used to work for a very big, important, one might even say GLOBAL paper in the area. (Forgive my subtle attempts to thwart the Carnivore program.) And I used to listen to WBUR every day before they got shut down “for security reasons.” I know those voices, even if they are using some singularly silly noms de guerre. (Though I have to admit that I think Joe Cronin would be proud to have his name being used.)

Apparently, the MIT lads and lasses have gotten involved and we can expect regular broadcasts from Radio Free Boston on the “real truth.” Just scan through your AM dial to find them. They keep moving.

Turns out that some of the ruckus has been some pretty pitched skirmishes. (Can you have a pitched skirmish? Or does it necessarily become a battle? Am I just reluctant to use the word ‘battle’ in conjunction with my city? Is fire-fight better?) Mostly they’ve kept it to places where the civilians aren’t. (”Civilian” — there’s another tricky word with unpleasant implications if you think about it.)

Some of the biggest fights have been on the MIT campus — mostly shut down for the summer. Apparently some of the handful of “authorized” students working on the classified projects objects to the way they were being treated and one thing lead to another.

I imagine, now that you know about the news, you can go online and find a more comprehensive source. I don’t have enough battery power to repeat all the stories. But there are few points about the station that I find really interesting.

First, someone did their homework. With the power wonky, I wasn’t surprised when I started seeing those hand-crank radios more often. But suddenly I’ve been seeing them everywhere! I mentioned it to a friend and she said, quite casually, “Oh, yeah, there’s some guy with dreads been giving them away in the T stations every morning.” Clearly, the Children of Liberty have their act together.

Second, it’s terribly depressing that I have had to explain to three different people where the name came from. Apparently, if you’re under 30 and don’t read LeCarre, you’ve never heard of Radio Free Europe.

Finally, I think we’ve turned some kind of a corner. Everyone is listening to the Radio Free Boston. Everyone is talking about the news that’s showing up. The BackWater Thugs get sneers and jeers and cold shoulders and people just flat out leaving when they show up to an area. The entire staff of the local Starbucks just walked out the door when two off-duty but in-uniform Thugs walked into the front door.

Maybe it’s just the unbearable heat dripping down the back of my neck, but I feel like a storm is coming.

 

Saturday, June 20, 2009

I was talking about the price of gas and the spiraling food costs over some (herbal) tea with a friend of mine last night and said something to the effect of, “America is getting what we deserve.”

She got kinda pissed at me about that. “No one could have predicted this!”

Au contraire, I replied. It’s been predicted over and over again over the past fifty years. Anyone willing to think a little ahead could have predicted what’s happening right this second. Oil is a finite resource. If you build all your infrastructure around cheap and plentiful oil, eventually you’re going to have problems when oil runs out.

Ergo, anyone building their lives around this fragile system made a stupid choice.

Now, everyone was doing it and it was really hard not to. But it was still a choice. We’ve arrived at the point we’re at through the accumulation of a million-billion-trillion stupid choices by a whole lotta people. Many of those choices made sense — in the short run, for an individual. But as a collective whole, looking at the long term, they were purely stupid.

What’s more — lots and lots of people predicted this.

M. King Hubbert used the “peak oil” theory in 1956 to predict when U.S. oil would peak. Accurately, as it turned out.

Admiral Hyman Rickover warned against dependence on fossil fuels in a speech in 1957.

Certainly Michael Pollan had a good grip on the coming food crisis in Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006). But I know that the theory has been around a lot longer. The amazing and irascible Joel Salatin certain has seen it coming. The folks at Mother Earth News have seen it coming. The foodie folks in Berkley have been talking up the loca-vore stuff for twenty odd years. It was mentioned in West Wing episode for the love of God.

But what really struck me were the parallells between this situation and the political situation. A lot of what the Bushies are doing was utterly predictable. The administration wasn’t even subtle about its steady erosion of our rights. But the hue and cry was desultory at best and nonexistent at worst. Even in Cambridge the “Impeach Bush” signs were mocked a little, even through the PATRIOT act, the FISA thing, the habeus corpus thing, all of the warning signs were there. We just ignored them and bought iPods.

The problem with government for the people is that the people get the government that they deserve. And we deserve this, I think.

 

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Holy crap!

A little news nugget during a BBC World News Broadcast today, buried so deep I can’t even find you a link, was a stunning little drop of news. The food blogs I read are all chortling with ill-concealed glee. Hell, they aren’t even trying to conceal it.

The CEO of … well, they have some really powerful lawyers, so we’ll just call them MonSucko, the brand-new, two-month old CEO of MonSucko is being questioned by the EFSA in conjunction with the black stem rust outbreak late last year.

For you non-foodie types, black stem rust is one bad-ass fungus. It wiped out about 40 percent of the country’s wheat during the last major outbreak in 1954. Since then, we’ve bred wheat that’s resistant but a super-duper bad-ass strain — the Vin Diesel of black stem rust — started popping up in Uganda a few years ago. A strain that’s totally resistant to everything we’ve got to kill it.

As we all know, in late 2007, wheat prices started to skyrocket. Then came the droughts and the giant Mississippi flood of the summer of 2008. Wheat prices went stratospheric. Then came that black stem rust outbreak in Europe in August 2008. It was smallish, quickly contained, terrifying. It sent prices up just on the fear-factor alone. Hence the $12 loaf of bread at my local bakery this summer.

Still, for late winter 2009, some folks started getting suspicious when Monsan… I mean, MonSucko started marketing one of their trademarked strains of wheat — one that was resistant to the Vin Diesel black stem rust fungus. Apparently there’s some concern about the very coincidental outcome of this particular release.

Now, in the foodie world, MonSucko is about as evil as you can get. Most of us would rather French kiss Bush than shake hands with a MonSucko type. Why? Read Michael Pollan’s “Botany of Desire“, Barbara Kingsolvers “Animal Vegetable Miracle“. Hell, do even the most glancing research on MonSucko and you’ll find a very scary world.

We haven’t been able to do much about them in the US. Why? Well, a whole lotta ex execs from the firm wound up working in the Bush administration — including positions in the EPA and Dept. of Agriculture.  Oh, and Rummie. He used to work for them, too. They’ve got pull. When Paul litigated against them (back when he had a job), he really found out just how deep their pockets go. They also have a long view — they can delay actions for decades.

Anyway, Europe has hated MonSucko for a long time but never really moved against them. I think the disarray of our current “government” is encouraging them to take bolder action against the Evilest Empire.

What I’m really worried about is this: if MonSucko has little vials of Vin Diesel b.s.r. spores and they are willing to let them loose in Europe and Africa, what is to stop them from wiping out this year’s harvest in the U.S.? Especially since the Bushies have proven that they have much much more important things on their minds right now.

 

Wednesday, June 17, 2008

There’s no sugar to be had in Cambridge or Somerville.

Yesterday, a bunch of the strawberries at my community garden plot came up ripe all at once so I picked and picked and picked. After baking all afternoon in the hot sun, I was in no mood to make jam or even to make dinner so we went out to Chipotle’s and got that rude shock from the National Guard.

This morning, I called a handful of women who are also into canning and also had strawberries — and rhubarb — ripe. We all had enough jars after last summer’s canning madness, but we needed extra sugar and lemons and some pectin. I figured lemons would be hard to come by; it’s a bad time of year for lemons when gas prices and civil unrest are at normal levels.

We met up at Starbucks in Davis and mostly ordered black tea or coffee because the milk-based drinks are so pricey. Then we started down the street to Star to buy sugar.

A female National Guard soldier — slim, petite, black — sauntered up to us and explained, very politely but firmly, that groups of more than three people were not allowed to gather on the street today and that we needed to break it up.

I took a moment to assess my group: slightly overweight 35-year-old mom in sandals and big straw hat, slim 32-year-old mom with flowered dress and similarly floppy straw hat, very tall and very overweight mom with her son’s Elmo sunglasses (she had grabbed the wrong pair that morning and it was really bright!), and finally, slim tan athletic looking twenty-something wearing Birkenstocks. All of us carrying string grocery bags, with streaks of white sunblock still glistening on our bare arms.

Oh yeah, we bad.

Now, i get that they have to enforce the law equally or else it’s a bad law. But what if my friend with the Elmo sunglasses had been out with her husband and her three kids? Or her four sisters? That’s simply ridiculous.

The Guardswoman was very polite and after some discussion we determined that we could simply walk in two pairs ten feet apart. Wow. Clearly the measure improved the safety of everyone in the city.

That wasn’t the scariest part of the day, though.

No, the scariest part of the day was arriving at Star and finding no sugar. I have a diabetic uncle and they did have some of the no-sugar pectin, which can be hard to find, so I bought the whole case. Thank God I did. Because we then walked (two-by-two again) to Pemberton Farms. No sugar. We climbed into Juliet’s car and drove to Market Basket. No sugar. The other Shaw’s up the road: no sugar.

To save gas we all broke out our cell phones and started calling around. The Store 24: no sugar. Costco: no sugar. Foodmaster: no sugar. The Harvest Coop: no sugar. Tader Joe’s on Mass. Ave.: no sugar.

Finally we found sugar at the Trader Joe’s in Burlington. About 15 miles away. That’s a lot of gas but we decided we could manage it.

But I had the sense to pull the car over and ask the nice National Guard (who, again politely, pointed out that the four of us in one car, constituted a violation of the curfew laws) if there were check points leaving the city? He said yes, there were, and the wait was only about 90 minutes to get out.

The four of us decided that we could use the no-sugar pectin for strawberry jam. No one wanted to drive that far and spend that much money on gas just idling.

The sun is about to go down. I’ve got five dozen jars of jam put up — mostly half-pint but a few 4-oz. for gifts. I just finished cleaning up the kitchen and April is tucked into bed. A large truck that Paul calls a “deuce” is creeping down the street very slowly, announcing through a bullhorn that everyone needs to be off the streets by 8:30.

Now I’m going to get to work on another heavy wool quilt. It seems absurd, with the temperatures in the high 80 degrees, but after last winter, I suspect we’re going to need lots of heavy wool quilts come December. In New England, you have to start thinking about winter in the spring.

 

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

We just received a polite, if insistent escort home from a National Guardsman.  The sun was starting go down as we left Chipotle and started to amble home at a toddler’s pace.  A couple of Guard trucks showed up and started to deploy check-points in the square.  A soldier, a kid really, saw our little blonde moppet and offered to help get us home before the curfew went into place.

We’d missed that there’s been a sun-down to sun-up curfew placed on Boston tonight and tomorrow.  The guardsman was polite and informative about the rules…but he couldn’t tell us anything about why.  I wish I was more up on military insignia to say what unit or rank he was…MA Nat’l Guard was all I could decipher off his uniform.  After the paramilitary thugs we’ve had swagger around, this earnest kid was a nice change..and April didn’t freak out at him.  Now I just wish I knew who he was working for.

My best thought is that someone in the Feds’ camp has wised up and looked at a Massachusetts state calendar.  MA and Boston in particular have a bunch of weird holidays that are all our own.  Tomorrow is one of them — Bunker Hill Day.  Seeing as how the Battle of Bunker Hill was one of the major events of the siege of Boston and one of the bloodiest days for the British in the whole American Revolution, I can see how our current crop of Hessians might be worried about the Children of Liberty and other ‘malcontents’ stirring up trouble tomorrow.

I wonder if imposing a curfew and flooding the city with National Guardsmen will be enough to tamp things down.  Or maybe the CoL will just wait to ’see the whites of their eyes.’  If so, I hope that kid keeps his head down.

 

Sunday, June 14, 2009

I made a comment calling Boston a war zone a few days ago here. One of my friends called ‘bullshit’ on that assertion.

OK, Boston in 2009 is not Sarajevo circa 1994 or Stalingrad circa 1942.

That said, people are fighting. People are dying. And the rest of us are trying to figure out what to do and who to believe.

The crap-storm that was Memorial Day weekend seemed to be mainly an attempt by the Federal troops (mostly Backwater mercs but I think there were some FPS, FBI, DHS, and even Army grunts) to roust the veterans (following the Colonel and including some non-vet supporters) from the Esplanade. Rumor is that Gov. Patrick and the State and City signed-off on the plan, especially since the Esplanade is a city park, not a Federal one. Tactically, it was a victory for the mercs — there are no more vets camping on those islands.

Strategically, I think the government has lost control of this city. The vets are still out there, they just aren’t staying in large groups (these guys learned urban guerrilla tactics the hard way in Baghdad and Fallujah). Meanwhile, they’ve earned the help and respect of other groups who were harassing the Feds.

The Children of Liberty are asking folks to open their homes and help the vets any way they can. Internet videos (and circulating DVDs and CDs) show the vets sabotaging Backwater vehicles and leaving CoL tags. I don’t think these two groups were communicating a month ago.

Some of the ‘insurgent’ videos show guys using some pretty-high-tech equipment too - little robots rolling under Hummvees to cut fuel lines at night. Mercenary communications suddenly blaring out “Dirty Water” instead of orders from on-high. To me it looks like the MIT hackers have entered the fight.

Governor Patrick has stepped-up his rhetoric against ‘unwarranted Federal intrusion into Massachussetts’ and Boston’s affairs.’ This is pretty two-faced if he did agree to have the mercs kick the vets of the Esplanade, but it also sounds good to folks who just want to be able to sleep through the night without hearing bull-horns, sirens, and gunshots.

The real wildcard is what I think of as the Allston Boys. There are a lot of college-age men crammed into the run-down two-family houses and apartments in Allston, just across the river from Harvard Square. They are rowdy, irreverent, and often dangerously smart. It used to be that when they organized, it was to create a new sports or bar memes - to sell “Yankees Suck” T-shirts or make “Girls-Gone-Wild” video knock-offs. When they got a little more serious, they had fights (occasionally violent) with the local slum-lords or city officials. Now they are using their brains and wit to tear-down the Feds anywhere and everywhere they can. I don’t move in Allston Boys circles, but these guys (and similar folks in Southie and East Boston) seem to be defining what it means to be a Bostonian right now.

 

Friday, June 12, 2009

I’ve been leaving the posting to Neve for a while. Too busy. Too angry.

I suppose I ought to edit the ‘who am I’ page. As of two days ago, your author is no longer employed by the EPA or the government of these here United States.

The initial decision to can me came…hell I don’ know. I got into my shared cubicle last week and found that the system wouldn’t let me log in. The IT folks just said that ‘it’s not our fault’ and to talk to my manager.

Administrative review he called it. Since I was gone for more than 3 days without a good excuse (fearing for my family’s safety doesn’t count), they felt I had broken my employment contract. The voice-mails and e-mails I had sent didn’t mitigate things or allow me to use vacation time because they were never received by EPA (what with the wonky internet connectivity).

It took the bureaucracy and union a week and a half to decide that my career was not worth salvaging in their minds. Pissants.

We’re paid a few months ahead of time on the mortgage and we’ve got some money saved. I’m spending more time April-sitting and helping Neve with her new bag-lunch business. I’m hopeful as well on some lawyer contacts who may be able to throw some work my way. It’s not easy. The Globe is saying unemployment is in the mid-teens in the immediate Boston area. Sometimes I wonder how 80+ percent of people can still make it to work and get anything done while living in what sometimes feels like a war zone.

 

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Written Monday, June 8 at 2:something a.m.:

Turns out that one of the guys who lives at the other end of the condo complex is a MIT geek of old and has a smallish workshop set up in his storage space. He’s managed to rig up a generator that runs on an exercise bike so we have some power, even when the electricity is down. Which is pretty much all the time lately. Some of the women have actually taken to signing up for time on it — they miss the gym, which is closed due to lack of electricity. So there was enough leg power to juice up my laptop battery — I have no idea when the internet will be up long enough to upload this, but I’ve got some time to write, anyway.

Where the hell was I? Usually I just check the old entries on the blog, but … anyway….

I think I’d gotten through telling you about the checkpoints. We drove through the backroads and small towns to get to the cabin. And what we saw was pretty damned scary.

About half of the gas stations were boarded up. Way more than just a few months ago. I remember last year, around Memorial Day, hearing that gas stations were closing down and feeling like it was a spooky moment. Driving through NowhereVille, New England, was much spookier. Of the gas stations that were open, about half had “no gas” signs out front.

There weren’t any lines, though. I didn’t think about that until Paul pointed it out. That was pretty scary, too.

As we got closer to the cabin, towns thinned out and Paul and I had a worried conversation about making sure we had enough gas to get there and back to the next filling station. Turns out that the little town we’re outside of had a working station, so we breathed a sign of relief.

The work had actually gone really well on our little cabin. Apparently the fact that we kept the money coming — and the fact that there wasn’t much other work — really inspired these guys to do a good job. It was livable, believe it or not. I mean, it’s a simple little one-room cabin with a loft, so not complex or anything. If I remember my “Little House on the Prairie,” Ma and Pa Ingalls built one in a week with a hand axe and logs. So our guys with their back hoes, power guns, and tables saws were way ahead of the game.

Sorry, I’m rambling a little. It’s the heat, I think.

The really complicated stuff is yet to come — the turbine and the spring house. There’s a little brook that runs fast and cold down the slope that the house is built into. We’re going to put a turbine in there to generate electricity. We’re also going to build a stone spring house — the cold water running over the stone will keep it cool as a modern refrigerator. Well, according to the book I read, it will. I’m not sure when we’re going to get that done. The blueprints for the turbine caused our foreman to scratch his head, but he says he knows a guy who is good with weird-ass yuppie crap (his words, not mine) and he’ll get it up and running by the end of July. The solar water heater went in while we were up there.

God I hope so.

I haven’t gotten to what actually happened in Boston yet. Personally or on a larger scale. I’m not avoiding it… oh, hell. Yes, I am. It’s ugly and it’s depressing.

A thunderstorm is rolling in — I can feel the breeze and smell the rain in the distance. (We’re all out on the deck, sleeping on mats, to keep cool. April is out like a light but I haven’t been sleeping well.) I’m going to shut down and put up the tarp. I hope that a storm means things cool off. Everywhere.

*****

Okay, it’s now Wednesday and we’ve had power all day! And internet for some of it, too! Now that I’ve finished charging anything that takes a battery, I’m going to post this. I mentioned the gas station thing… I can’t find a link from Memorial Day weekend last year, but here’s a link from the L.A.Times about gas stations closing from the high prices! Doesn’t $4/gallon sound heavenly right now?

 

Friday, June 6, 2009

The electricity is still wonky as hell. I’m just going to write briefly, so not the whole rest of the story. Sorry to break it up like this…

Anyway, we grabbed our bug out bags and all piled into the car, headed North. Because it was Memorial Day weekend and because the Thugs were showing the colors, we had the good sense to not take the major highways out of the city. Instead we took what we call “The Super Secret Route,” though it’s not all that secret. Basically, instead of taking interstates, we take little state routes and backroads. I couldn’t do it without a GPS — I wonder if those were working? We don’t have one — but Paul has the route memorized.

We still hit a checkpoint.

There are only so many ways past 128 — you need to go under or over it somewhere. Well, I guess we could have taken the ferry but that’s neither here nor there.

Not too many cars were on the road. Gas being what it is, almost everyone was staying home this holiday weekend and the radio was all about that. But as we came up 38 North through Woburn, we noticed that there were a lot of Hummers and other military-esque vehicles along the side of the road and that traffic stalled to a crawl.

Finally it dawned on us — it was a check point. I’d read about them in books and papers but never actually been through one myself. Paul, of course, has. Disastrously.

Paul and I talked for a couple of minutes in low, carefully calm voices. We didn’t want to upset April who was still on edge after Starbucks. We debated turning around and trying to find a new way across the highway but decided that it would be a bad idea for two reasons: First, there likely wasn’t any unmonitored way across and B., it would look suspicious and the Thugs would write down our license plate in some database that we really really didn’t want to be in.

Since we had obvious camping gear in the back, we decided to stick with a version of the truth. We were going camping — though we decided to say we were going to the White Mountains. I don’t know why we decided to lie — just a reflex, I think.

At the last minute, as our car inched up to the head of the line, I slipped in April’s favorite CD, “Philadelphia Chickens”, and the thug found the whole family singing, loudly, to the song “Remarkable Cows” when we rolled down the window.

“Hello, Officer,” Paul said, doing his whole ‘aw shucks’ act, which works really well in court. “How are you?”

The guy was not a kid — big, burly, bad porn star mustache, I’d guess mid-30s. He didn’t smile, despite the carefully cute image we presented. Instead he nodded, curtly. “Driver’s license.”

Paul handed it over without a quiver, though I know it bugged him. This guy had no authority to ask — he wasn’t a cop, he wasn’t army, he wasn’t anything. Mustached Thug took out a scan gun and zapped Paul’s license and peered at the readout with a frown. Then he looked up at us.

“Where you headed?”

“Camping,” Paul smiled, jerking a thumb at the gear in the back. “The White Mountains are beautiful this time of year.”

Thug frowned again and opened his mouth to say something. But suddenly, April’s enjoyment of the song wore off and she noticed we were surrounded by guys in black fatigues and started screaming, loudly, hysterically, ear-piercingly.

“Hush hush hush, baby,” I crooned, unbuckling my seat belt and climbing in the back to soothe her. I could barely hear Paul explain that it was nap time. Clearly the guy never had kids — 4 o’clock is no toddler’s nap time, ever — but the Thug winced as April hit one of her high, sustained wails and motioned for us to go on.

By the time we pulled through and got April calmed down, everyone was exhausted and shaking. I grabbed some iced chamomile tea from the cooler (moms should never leave home without it) and April sucked it down and did actually take a little nap as we wended our way north.

I suggested we hop on the highways — surely the roadblocks were just around the city? — but Paul insisted on taking back roads. Good thing, too. We did hit another block at the New Hampshire border, but it was late in the day and well into the 90s by then. The Thugs at this checkpoint were clearly hot, tired, and and clearly on the B-team and they wanted to go home. They looked at us, our camping gear, didn’t bother scanning in Paul’s license, and away we went.

I’ve been thinking about those little hand held scanners, though. If the Checkpoint 2 Thugs hadn’t been drinking beer and shooting the shit, if they had actually scanned in Paul’s license, they would have had a good idea where we were going. Certainly they had a record of the fact that we’d left the city right after the convoys had rolled through. I don’t know why, but that they had that information bothered me.

We found out later that they were stopping people on all the major highways. I don’t know if Mustache Thug entered our alleged destination in his little computer, but if he had and we’d gone on the highways, it would have become obvious that we lied to the guy.

Happily, they just don’t have the manpower to blockade every little podunk highway, byway, dirt road, trail, and bike path in New England. Especially since they apparently aren’t using the cops for this exercise. But it was a chilling moment, nonetheless.

Okay, the generator is the only thing that’s been keeping this going for the past ten minutes. I’m going to save, shut down the computer, and go to bed to save diesel. More later.

 

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Well, we’re back. Back in the city, back online, back to (the new) normal.

My friends in N.M. tell me that the news of what’s been going on has been sketchy at best, misleading at worst. (Paul suggests that non-existent might be worst, but I’m not sure.) So let me start at the top and work my way down. It may take a few posts since we’re still having some issues with electricity.

Last Saturday, you may recall, I was going to spend the day planting a green roof with some other folks from the condo. It went really well — I will post photos later, if I remember to take them. The work took longer than we expected — doesn’t it always? — and we had to work into Sunday to get it all done, even with ten of us doing the hard labor. FInally, about noon on Sunday, we declared that we were done and all congratulated ourselves on our ecologically minded practicality. I went in, took a long cool shower, and once April woke up from a nap, we decided to celebrate with an ice cream cone from J. P. Licks in the Square.

It was a glorious perfect early summer day — high blue skies, birds singing in the trees, flowers everywhere, a nice cool breeze to lift the heat from the bright sun. We weren’t the only family with toddler or infant camped out on the benches in the square, listening to a busker play Dylan tunes on an acoustic guitar, eating our ice cream.

The first thing I noticed was that guy next to me started cussing, loudly, because his phone shut off. I noticed because of the cussing — we’re trying not to swear in front of April but she’s got a two-year-old’s knack for picking up those words. Anyway, he was dialing and mutterng and swearing and shaking his phone and unable to get a signal.

Then I noticed that there were others in the area doing the same thing. Anyone on a cell was suddenly dead in the water.

The bottom fell out of my stomach and I felt icy and hollow inside. Paul was looking at me oddly. He said later that my face went white — and when I suggested that we go inside, anywhere, just indoors, he thought I was having a heat stroke or something and we all hustled into Starbucks. (J.P. Licks was mobbed.)

Inside,  Paul got me a glass of ice water while I held April. He apologized that it took so long — there was someone in front of him complaining about the wi-fi conking out.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I downed my drink and tried to tell myself that it was just a cell tower going down, maybe the Children of Liberty had done something. Maybe a satellite had conked out. Then I thought that that was actually scarier than anything else I’d thought. Paul could tell something was wrong but I didn’t want to say anything… as if saying it would make it so.

I’d just finished my glass of water and convinced myself that it was nothing when April started making small panicky noises and clambering into Paul’s lap. She’d spotted them first — a phalanx of BackWater Thugs in all black fatigues, high boots, smoked glass helmets, jogging down Holland Ave. Inside the ‘Bucks, I couldn’t hear the crowd’s reaction, but the silence rolled across the interior like an ill wind. By the time the first of the Hummers rolled into the view, the only noise was April’s whimpering.

Outside, most people just stood and stared, ice cream melting down their knuckles. Then, as more squads of Thugs jogged through the streets, and more Hummers rolled down Elm, everyone started whispering and muttering. A few yelled insults. A few took off running.

There was a guy standing in front of Mike’s, taking pictures. At first I thought he was really brave — taking photos of this mercenary army tearing through the heart of Davis Sq. Then I noticed that he was wearing a blue blazer — in 80 degree weather — and seemed mostly to be taking pictures of the people running away. I looked around and there were other guys — same damned blazer, same camera, even the same Sox cap — taking more pictures.

Then I noticed there was one in the ‘Bucks. He had a call phone camera instead of a Kodak, but he wasn’t being subtle.

When Paul opened his mouth to say, “We should go,” I grabbed his hand to cut him off and said, “Go get April a vanilla milk. It will help her calm down.” (It’s a special treat for her, being both heavily sugared and about $4 a carton.) Paul, Lord love him, looked at me weird but got up and did what I asked while I cooed to April. Being a smart man, he spotted Mister Camera Guy and figured it all out before he returned with the vanilla milk.

While the parade of doom passed by we talked quietly to April about nothing in particular and only when Camera Guy left did we get up and leave.

Whereupon we scurried home as fast as our feet could carry us and piled into the car and headed out of the city up to the cabin. Well, first we hit a check point. More on that later. Tomorrow.

 

Friday, May 22, 2009

I don’t cook on Fridays.

We don’t eat out a whole lot but on Friday nights (and Sunday mornings), we partake of the plentiful restaurants in Davis and Porter and Harvard. Lately I’ve been on a Japanese kick so we go to Wagamama or Porter Square Exchange. I’ve also been into barbecue — spring makes me want slow roasted meat, I don’t know why — so we order delivery from Redbones.

None of the Japanese places deliver — you have to go there. And Redbones delivers via special Bones Bike. Which is why tonight came as such an abrupt shock.

I called the local pizza joint for a small white ‘za, a calzone, and a meatball sub, our usual pizza-joint order. The total is usually about $20 plus tip, so I had $24 in cash at hand. The guy showed up and said, “$30 please.”

WHAT?

Apparently there’s been a hike in prices — okay, I could have anticipated that, what with wheat still skyrocketing and cheese as dear as gold. And, with the TV full of images of food riots in Asia and Africa, I’m not going to complain if I have to pay a little more. But it was more than just that — now there’s a $5 delivery surcharge on every order!

I called a friend to kvetch and she says it’s become standard. Even Wang’s does it! (Wang’s makes the best dumplings in the state.) Some places are no longer doing delivery at all, in fact.

Suburban types may shrug. I understand you don’t have delivery pizza or that a charge is normal out there in Patio Man Land. But in the city, free delivery on orders over $10 is the like a civil right, up there alongside our right to cross Mass. Ave in Harvard Square and complain about the Yankees. It was a rude shock.

It’s the small changes that are really hitting me lately.

 

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Sally and her daughter, Emma, and April and I were down at Pemberton Farms doing some advance scouting for the Big Dig this weekend. (That’s what we’re calling the Green Roof Project. It’s only funny if you’re a Bostonian.) Several of our gardening friends mentioned that we should go early. We’re not the only ones responding to the food prices with a garden and, as the only local gardening center, Pemberton Farms is running low on everything.

As Sally and I puttered around, marking things to be held for us until the weekend, I noticed a guy in those oddly pixelated fatigues that the army is wearing these days. At least his pants. He was wearing a khaki t-shirt, despite the chill. He was middle aged and broad across the shoulders with short short hair — dunno what color, it was that short — and a deep tan. The tan — and I guess the posture — caught my attention. It’s May in New England. No one has a tan.

He wasn’t handsome, per se, but he had a sort of charisma that made my attention come back to him again and again. Even April, who has been spooked by uniforms, smiled at him and waved.

He was marking many of the same sorts of plants we were — food plants. I figured he was just a local vet with a green thumb until three guys — all in the late twenties — walked up to him and snapped off lazy salutes. He nodded at them and they started going back behind him, picking up everything he’d marked off and carting it up to the cashier.

They were also tanned, with short hair, wearing pixelated pants and t-shirts. One guy had a c-leg, one guy had a metal arm, and the other guy walked slowly and stiffly. And suddenly it all fell into place.

That was The Colonel.

Apparently he’s planting a garden. The implications of that are staggering, and not just because the Parks Department is going to have kittens. He’s planning on keeping his little tent city at least through the summer and he’s putting down roots. He’s going to feed these folks from the land on the Esplanade. (And let me tell you, the landscapers are going to be pissed off beyond measure!)

They had just about gotten through their purchases when one of their cell phones rang. The guy with the c-leg talked for a second, said something, and just like that, they were all gone gone gone, speeding off on bicycles, the plants waving in the wind on the back of a trailer.

About five minutes later, a convoy of BackWater Thugs pulled up in big black Humvees with tinted windows. April, naturally, spazzed and Sally and I sort of hunkered down in the apple tree section, cooing at April and hoping they would leave. A couple of JBT (jack-booted thugs) jogged through but they didn’t stay long in our corner — a wailing two year old is no one’s idea of fun — and then they peeled off again, quite dramatically, only to come to an abrupt stop half a block later at one of the fourteen lights on that section of Mass. Ave.

We paid up and left pretty damned fast after that.

 

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

There was a whole article in Slate today predicting that gas will hit $10 by Labor Day. The pre-Memorial Day spike in Boston has broken the $8 a gallon mark already — not that anyone is going anywhere.

Vacations are canceled for just about everyone. I’m not sure how much of that is gas prices. Josh and Becky tried to do a romantic weekend up in Portland, Maine last weekend and got caught in 4 different traffic jams caused by the checkpoints at the state lines and major bridges (I told Josh to take the Downeaster train).

But besides the security thugs, most people don’t have the money to spend on luxuries like a vacation. I know some folks who are worried that if they leave work for more than a weekend, they won’t have a job to return to. Down in some of the rougher parts of JP, people are probably afraid that if they leave their house for more than a weekend, they won’t anything to return to either.

There’s a general ‘wait it out’ attitude going on right now. I’m not sure that waiting will cause anything to get better. Gas prices aren’t going down anytime soon, especially with the troubles in the Mid-East, Venezuela and the Niger delta. Inflation isn’t going away either as long as Mr. Bush and the Bushettes in Congress keep spending money on an Army abroad that we can’t afford. Heck, food prices are still going up and nobody knows if the bees are going to come back this year to help the harvest. So how is it going to get better?

Neve and the folks in our building are making plans to rip out the grass on the green roof this weekend. Time for a WWII-style victory garden.

 

Thursday, May 14, 2009

A week since Neve posted about getting a recruiting note from the Children of Liberty and nobody has broken-down our door.  I guess this blog is running under the radar.

Most likely, if we even are on some list of subversive publishers, there are plenty more folks to get squashed before us.  At this point the most of the weekly and monthly alternative papers (The Phoenix, Weekly Dig, Bay Windows, etc.) have stopped publication here in Boston.  Barstool Sports is still publishing, but you never know which version you will find in any given newspaper box, either the government-approved edition (which seems to have a lot more NASCAR news than it used to) or an edition that looks almost the same, but includes editorials from pseudonymous writers listing the most recent stupid moves by the security forces in town.

The more mainstream papers, the Globe, Herald, and even local Metro, are all following the party-line pretty closely.  I guess that gets balanced-out by the more brazen flyer circulations (stuffed into door-frames on the T and waiting in your grocery bags).  There are also plenty of other blogs out there.  I don’t know if any of these are trust-worthy.  It seems like every time you find a reasonable source of information on the Web, the site either gets a dead-link or just stops updating.  A few blogs have seen 180-degree changes of opinion overnight as well, suddenly supporting the squatter-in-chief instead of complaining about mercs in humvees patrolling our streets.

In short, Neve and I (and April) are still here and still writing when we can think of anything useful to say.  To all four of you out there reading, thanks.  I hope your little part of the American Dream looks nicer than ours.

 

Thursday, May 7, 2009

What a day it’s been.

I wouldn’t post this if I thought anyone out there was reading this. Or if the guy hadn’t been so damned smart about it — I don’t actually know anything. Clearly he’s thought about this.

I’m getting ahead of myself.

On Thursdays, April and I usually go to the library. But the past few weeks, I’ve missed my usual Thursday visit for a variety of reasons: rain, April had that cold, sheer laziness. So, with a slightly sheepish look on my face, I arrived with overdue books (”I Stink!” and “The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog” chief among them) to return.

Usually, after the book part of the visit is over, I gossip for a while with the librarian, Annamarie, while April plays with the trucks. Today, Annamarie had just started telling me about how she and Rick found out that their cruise was summarily canceled when she got a phone call and then excused herself to go upstairs to the “grown up section.”

As she was going up the stairs, a youngish bearded man came down them. The bathroom is located down in the kids’ section, so I didn’t think anything of it until he walked up to me and dropped onto the chair next to me.

“Genevra McNeil.”:

“Yes?” I have a terrible memory for names, this guy looked kinda familiar…. I wasn’t worried, just embarrassed that I couldn’t remember him.

“Call me Sam,” he put out his hand and I shook it, my manners overriding any sense of urgency. Then he said, “I’m with the Children of Liberty and we want you.”

I snatched my hand back pretty damned fast, let me tell you.

He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket — he was wearing a windbreaker — and handed it to me. “Let us know if you’re interested in joining the fight. We love your blog.”

And then he got up and went out the back door just as Annamarie was coming back down the stairs, muttering about something.

It was all so fast that if I didn’t have a piece of paper with an email address on it, I could have believed I fell asleep and had a weird dream. But I had the email address in my hand — it’s a gmail account, I won’t reveal it here, but there’s nothing incriminating.

But this little slip of paper is a huge moral conundrum. And a risky game to play, either way. I don’t begin to know what to do.

 

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Since I can’t work at my office anymore, I’ve been trekking up to my alma mater to do some work in the relative calm of the Tufts Library (Having a 2 year-old around is not conducive to getting legal briefs written.  Besides they have most of the case law books I need to reference and high-speed internet for alumns.)

Wow do undergrads look young when you’ve been graduated for a dozen years.  Mostly I try to tune out any chatter these children engage in around m