RISE, Magyar! is the country's call!

The time has come, say one and all:

Shall we be slaves, shall we be free?

This is the question, now agree!

For by the Magyar's God above

We truly swear,

We truly swear the tyrant's yoke

No more to bear!

Opening stanza of Sandor Petofi's "National Song"

I thought about marking the beginning of the uprising a couple weeks ago, but seeing as how today was the beginning of the end (the second Russian assault on Hungary) it seemed more appropriate for this to be the day to mark. For her birthday this year I got my wife a illustrated book of essays about the revolution and the aftermath. The cover of the book and my favorite photograph is of a man in the smashed storefront of a Soviet bookstore. As Soviet propaganda is burning in the street he recites Sandor Petofi's "National Song".

The uprising or revolution or whatever you call it was a muttled affair at the time and has not become any clearer within the shrouds of history. So I'll keep it short and leave the last word with the resistance fighters themselves.

"We shall drag the blood soaked Hungarian mud on to the carpets of your drawing rooms.

In vain do you take us into your homes-we still remain homeless. In vain do you dress us in new clothes-we remain in rags. From now on a hundred thousand question marks confront you.

If you wish to live in the illusion of a false peace do not heed us. In our streets there are still cobblestones from which to build barricades. From our woods we can still get stout sticks. We still have clear consciences with which to face the guns.

But if you will heed us, listen. And at long last understand. We not only want to bear witness to the sufferings of the Hungarian people in their fight for freedom. We want to draw the attention of all the people to the simple truth that freedom can only be achieved through struggle.

Peace is not simply the absence of war. No people have longed more passionately for peace than we. But it must not be the peace quiescence. This involves complicity in oppression. We promise the world that we shall remain the apostles of freedom.

All workers, socialists, even communists, must at last understand that a bureaucratic state has nothing to do with Socialism"

Nemzetor. January 15, 1957

(as Malcolm notes the correct date to be marked is the 4th of November, but I put it up last night instead)

That was quick*

Well my unemployment came and went within two weeks. I took the first week off, worked on the house, went fishing and even once slept in until 9:30am, drank coffee until noon and then switched to beer. I couldn't do that one often but that was a nice change of pace after getting up at 4:00am for years. After one week I couldn't put my friend/old foreman off any longer and I had to go to work for him doing non-union insurance jobs. I worked for a whopping two days before my union superintendent called me back to the job I got laid off from. As Vonnegut said, "so it goes"...

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* The only thing I've ever seen that's been more ironic than this post was a myspace posting by a friend who posted a fake piece on being pregnant only to actually get prenant shortly thereafter. I started this post last night and was laid off today after only being back to work for three weeks. The super was decent about and at least was honest. He explained that my work and attitude were great but that other guys had seniority and they had to take care of them first. What happened was that another job had been postponed for a redesign. Now they had fifteen or so foremen and badass carpenters hanging on by a thread and pushing brooms across decks that had been cleaned multiple times before just waiting for the other building to start. When this didn't happen they laid off some really good hands and transferred others over to our job. So my old foreman got my job and my new foreman apologized and was genuinely a decent fella about it all. It helped him that I saw it coming and took it all in stride. Such is life right now. I see this period of "unemployment" lasting a little longer than the last one. I'm comforting myself with some country music and Budweiser, but mainly consoling myself with the fact that I got laid off with some guys who truly were great concrete hands and who to be honest could smoke me doing this shit.

I suppose I'll split my time between finishing some things around the house (believe me when I say that there's years of work here), maybe go back to school and build some militant anti-capitalist unionism while I'm at it. Perhaps I'll post some more on that at some point in the near future but for now we'll leave well enough alone with a decent country song.

How Fucking Hard Is It To Get Fucking Laid Off In A Recession? Part II

Actually really easy, as it happens. I knew it long before it happened, construction workers are worse than a sewing circle when it comes to gossip. Not only that but one only had to look around to see that there were too many carpenters and not enough work to go around. So they fished us out to other jobs where there was no work and then laid us off in small groups as opposed to one big one. I sometimes think that I should be grateful for the extra two and half days, which I am, but I am also annoyed at the habit of fishing guys out just to lay them off. Personally I'm happy to be laid off. This last weekend I thought about it alot and the fact that I hadn't been laid off since I came back to work when I was 22. There was the temptation to be pissed and just show up for my last job (which was interior work) with my concrete harness and bags on. In the end I went and bought a new tool belt and leather suspenders (occidentals, fuckin' sweet). I knew I was getting laid off, but I wanted to go out like I came in, with my head held high and giving them the best I had. Fuck them, that was for me.

There can be no question that there has been both in terms of quantity and quality, something lagging for quite some time from this blog and even from my comments on other blogs. I remember back to when I was 21 and working on my first dam. I worked with a Texan named Rex who was also an apprentice at the age of 56. For the majority of his life he had worked in factories in Texas. We carpooled together about an hour each way everyday. I asked him one day why was a man who should be looking at retirement eyeing a new career, in construction of all fields. I don't remember why he chose construction but I will always remember what he said in terms of why he left the factory. He said something about the fact that in the factory he felt like an onion where everyday they took another layer off him. He felt that they would just keep taking until there was nothing left and then simply throw him away. So he fled while there were still a few layers left. I don't think I've ever respected a man so much just for running away.

These last few months I've felt like that proverbial onion. So while I've never been unemployed I think I can manage, we'll see.

Don't Wait by the Phone

I was recently sent an email about joining twitter. For obvious reasons I declined this invite, but let me take a quick moment to reflect on this. My life is boring, I don't even care what I'm doing most of the time and when I do care it's not anyone elses business as to what I'm doing. Every so often and now less than ever I get a hair up my ass and write a post for this blog. So just in case anyone was ever wondering what I get up to I thought I would post a normal day for me twitter style.

3:30am Baby cries, I'm tired

4:00am Alarm goes off, I hit snooze, still tired, everything aches

4:05am Alarm goes off again, I loathe humanity

4:10-4:30am Take shower, get coffee, I still loathe humanity and my job

4:30-5:00am Read book, right now The Serbs (h/t chekov) or Blood and Soil

5:00-5:30am Get dressed, eat breakfast, now either cereal or grits, miss days when my wife used to make steak and eggs for breakfast (yes, on weekdays!)

5:45am Leave for work, smoke cigar

6:00isham Arrive at work, finish cigar

6:00-6:30am Read book in car, right now Official Irish Republicanism, 1962-1972

6:30-6:45am Bullshit with guys from my old crew in the parking lot, complain about work

7:00am Start work, parking structure for Botanical Garden

9:30-9:45am Take break, Hungarian salami, cheese, and triscuits dipped in coffee

12:00-12:30 Take lunch

5:30pm Get off work, smoke cigar

6:15 pm Get home, kiss wife, do dishes, stare at my kid and marvel

6:30-7:00pm Eat dinner

7:30pm Put baby to bed

7:30-8:30pm Read books, blogs, socialize with wife, ie actually behave like a human being

8:30-9:30ish Go to bed, renew vow to abolish wage slavery...someday

Repeat six days a week except add a six pack of Budweiser on the sixth day and that's my life. Nothing to phone home about, let alone twit.

Study reveals that babies kill marital bliss

Well no shit, I wonder how much they had to pay to find that one out. I'm trying to get something real out soon, but it may just be a coronary coupled with an aneurysm, we'll see.

How Fucking Hard Is It To Get Fucking Laid Off In A Recession?

First it was supposed to be Christmas, and lo and behold December 20th saw 75% of the crew laid off. Mid January came I was certain that once I told them I was taking a week off for my baby's birth that it was done for me. But nooooo, they said, don't worry about it we'll see you in a week. And then finally, finally, when they said that they were pulling the trailers and we were gone from the job I was sure that I would finally have my lay off. So when my senior superintendent called my foreman to send me into the rotunda to get my check I figured okay, a week early, but okay. And did that lousy bastard give me my second check*? Fuck no! He told they were transferring me up north to strip forms for a couple of months. Of all the nerve!!

Perhaps I should explain. My wife has one month left (roughly speaking) of maternity leave. With the economy in the state that it is and construction being particularly hard hit I assumed (with good reason) that we would all be laid off when the job was done but that there were other jobs coming up in the summer (hopefully). So I was hoping that I would get to spend awhile with my wife and baby son in the coming months/year (as long as my a unemployment lasted). I should note that this was an understatement for my wife who was estatic at the idea of not being cooped up all day with the baby. This put me in the very akward situation of probably being the only man ever, who was afraid to go home and tell his wife that he wasn't being laid off.

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* In construction we're paid once a week for the previous week. So the day you are laid off you're given a second check. Hence the saying, "give me two checks and a road map", "I never had a day where I couldn't use a second check" etc, etc.

In Memorium: The Rocky Mountain News

1859-2009

So much has already been said and written by people so much more eloquent than me that it's almost a crime that I even dare comment on the the passing of the Rocky Mountain News, but it was my paper for my entire life. So losing it came as quite the blow, especially less than two months shy of its 200th birthday. Notable among its achievements of having not only the better comics section of the two Denver papers (the other being the Denver Post) it also had one of the top ten sports sections in the entire country. On top of that it frequently won pulitzer prizes for its stories and special reports that dug deeper and went further than most. Of these, the stories Final Salute, Colorado is Burning, Deadly Denial, and The Crossing come to my mind. I also remember with fondness the many columns by Gene Amole, the comics of Ed Stein and Drew Litton. In fact it it's quite pointless to point out what I'll miss as I'll miss it all. So on this sunny yet dark Saturday all I can think to say is...