Cobb

How To Survive Outside of the Box

“A situation becomes a crisis when it overwhelms the government’s ability to respond.”
-- Vinay Gupta

 

This is hard to explain, but should be impossible to ignore. So let me get into it a moment. One of the most important things I have learned in my 50s came from a dude named Nassim Taleb. This irascible character pisses off everyone like that kid who pointed out the emperor's transparency. He has reinvented the entire idea of risk management through complicated mathematics that I still cannot decipher. But he also wrote his logic syllogistically and put it in books accessible to me. You may know him as the author of The Black Swan. His magnum opus is The Incerto, and I would say that it is as fundamentally significant to the future as Knuth's Art of Computer Programming is to the digital world today. From him and from Dan Ariely and somewhat from Robin Hanson I have been instructed in ways that help me understand how deeply flawed and somewhat predictably flawed is the process of human decision making. I remind you that it has been my career to try to combine human thought with digital systems to think better together. So I have come to understand the strengths and weaknesses of both sides of that synergy.

 

One of the consequences of this education is my now somewhat advanced comprehension of the consequences of these flawed processes. Sometimes they crash and burn. Sometimes they limp along. Sometimes they create edifices of artifice that remain afloat buoyed by systems of blatant self-dealing, mass hysteria, pure stupidity, wishful thinking, co-dependence, petty vengeance, suspended disbelief or combinations of those plus damned statistics, lies, likes and retweets.

 

The most unnerving consequence is my logical decision to distrust democratic politics and institutions. That was somewhat easy given the absurdities of identity politics we suffer in these iterations of Culture War. But it has been difficult to reconcile with my civil libertarianism, Lockean views and dedication to public squawking. So, leaning back on my philosophical tendencies, I have engaged as a 'wry stoic & tactical epistemologist'. I mock what needs mocking from an historical perspective (though I'm no Churchill) and I spend a lot of time parsing arguments and providing disconfirmatory findings of fact, or at least of logic. The younger me would not like me, but he was living in the Infinite Library of Borges. (The truth is in there somewhere.)

 

Now that I'm unofficially a member of the Intellectual Dark Web, or like to consider myself that and two degrees of separation from Eric Weinstein, I have been a collector of arcane knowledge I feel is worth passing on. I feel this rather than think this because I truly cannot be held responsible for my inability to communicate it well. I can tell you it works (logically) for me, but so fucking what? We're still all going to watch Netflix as the apocalypse draws near. I want to chuckle as much as the next guy. But in the meantime, there's this bit of profundity from Vinay Gupta that I still have yet to fully decipher. But before I drop to the reveal, let me regale you with a piece of rap I wrote 28 years ago. 

 

the problem i have is this - food in a box
as an urban dweller, skill seller
im marketable, size 10 in my socks
i can find anywhere anyplace to sell and be sold to

clothes off the rack fit
i got enough snaps to pick it up if i so desire
i say wrap it up homes, flash the card
get certified
(the hangers are wood, not wire)

so i step to the pad
quite happy - having hunted and gathered
new duds for the hoe down
so i go downtown and across the bridge
to my flat with the empty fridge

 

It was about my patent inability to cook, but to make more than enough money to run a household. In recognition of my urban dilemma, I went through stanza after stanza of exemplifying all of the things I could buy but not make. Clothes, food, companionship, and for the purposes of this discussion, politics.

 

i guess the problem i have is this - food in a box
sometimes if im critical i get political
and all riled up about an issue as old has the hills
i wait for the next senate bill
and hope my choice with a pipsqueak voice
call in to oprah and wait on the line
like this is democracy, dont worry be happy
got no ability to sway the senate my way
'cept once every six for two out of a hundred
did my mission get funded?
no tell me what to do till they pass the ballot box again

And to reiterate for the n'th time. My moral position on politics is The Abstention Principle. To wit. 

 

A simple moral principle:
When a future change is framed as a problem which we might hope our political system to solve, then the only acceptable reason to talk about the consequences of failing to solve that problem is to scare folks into trying harder to solve it. If you instead assume that politics will fail to solve the problem, and analyze the consequences of that in more detail, not to scare people but to work out how to live in that scenario, you are seen as expressing disloyalty to the system and hostility toward those who will suffer from that failure.

 

----

This works us directly into the first square in Vinay's presentation which is the quote which begins this post. “A situation becomes a crisis when it overwhelms the government’s ability to respond”. I assume that politics will fail to solve the problem, therefore I must analyze the consequences of that in more detail. Since I am on a Stoic track, I would learn to live without the illusion that I can change the world through democratic politics. Not that I would shutup. 

 

What do you do, what happens to your citizenship if you find yourself facing a situation that overwhelms your government? That is the subject of Vinay's publication that I will link to here. So the quick answer is: The failure of the state to do risk management returns risk to us. What if we could use (X, Y, Z) instead of the state for managing our risk? There are 175 slides. One day I'll find the accompanying narrative. Stay tuned. 

The Soundtrack

My anniversary date at little sister comes to mind
i heard it was the bomb so as i hit rewind
and bring to mind the first time i sat down for some duck
a tribe called quest was playing loud, what the fuck?
did they change the channel cause i just walked in?
i could barely hear myself think over the din.
I think it was wrong on a fundamental level,
like the restauranteur had made a deal with the devil.
I couldn't understand why the beats were so loud,
NFL on the tube for the upscale crowd.
Eating forty dollar plates, not forty ounce brews
I was kind of expecting to be hearing the blues
or some jazz in the joint in an elegant style
with the edison lights and the antique profile
but this was not to be an intimate retreat
so i put it out my grumpy mind and started to eat.
what a treat, the meal was for real. true perfection
i had to congratulate myself for the selection
my election wasn't luck so fuck my disaffection
i steered my mind clear of the subtle imperfection

the next time i dropped by it was fly
i ordered up a rye for my throat was dry
once again old school was the flavor of the day
black sheep, janet jackson, ll cool j
i didn't mind, in fact it was right on the money
as i think about it now, it seems kinda funny
that my expectations were clearly out of whack
its not like america doesn't own black
culture, ha i gotcha but nobody does see
from your mouth to my ear on the air means free
free black souls and free black arts
it flows through time as it flows through hearts
if your mind can't hush the political distraction
you can't expect enlightenment from dissatisfaction
so an action of racializing music like this
like any crab rap it ends up as a diss
but i dismiss as james baldwin said i have to mention
such a journey's an invention to avoid the clash and tension
of an inward adventure on a face that doesn't show
a poor benighted soul seeking solace below
running wild like a street child it figures
sixty years later it's still about the niggers.

niggers that you run with, niggers in your mind
mythical niggers, human beings you never find
convinced they are the real niggers so they wear the mask
the mask of a skintone so you never ask
who's the actual nigger who's the actual slave
to the racialized artifice from cradle to grave
who cannot escape the matrix of these tricks of race
pray to god your soul to keep
and hope for god's grace

on tape, on wax, on color dvd
the call and its response, well it wasn't for me
it wasn't for the woman, it wasn't for the man
it wasn't for the righteous, it made a jillion and
all the niggers in the house say ho
all the bitches in the house say ho
all the niggers in the house say ho
all the bitches in the house say ho

 

Borky's Beach: Future Police

Borky's Beach is my second novel. It is a near-future post-apocalyptic utopia set in Los Angeles 2060 or so. I've never described it that way before, but this new context gives me the reason. I hope to get it published before everything in it actually happens. I've been told that even people who can travel into future multiverses and back can't tell exactly what I'm going to say, so I don't mind not being proprietary for the excerpts.

The basic idea is that the police in Los Angeles have been essentially split into two types. The Intervention Squads and the Interdiction Squads. Since the city and the people are generally peaceful, there isn't much use for what the police used to be. You see, everybody has survived a calamity of the first order, and right now all people want is to go home to bed, with each other, and watch TV. A lot of the TV they are watching is about their neighbors, broadcast realtime over the Eyeball Network, which is essentially an artifact of the panoptic surveillance setup by the government and turned over to the people. The people now have the ability to call the cops on each other at will, more or less, and it goes up for a vote in the community in which the offense takes place. 911 operators have been disintermediated.

When a call is made to the Eyeball Network, you are alerted, shown the video and you slide left to intervene and slide right to interdict. Shortly thereafter, either girl cops come out to wag a finger and send someone off to counseling and re-education or the boy cops come out and deliver a first rate beatdown and haul someone off to the work camp. The people, via their smartphones are judge and jury. Ties go to the runner.

Sure there are special cases where traditional cops and courts work the old fashioned way, but those happen in other jurisdictions.

Martin Mphele Mortigan - The Sickle: Origin Story

Martin Mphele Mortigan was born on Earth in 1989 in Pretoria, South Africa. His father, Karl Mortigan a research biochemist who worked at the Karistaadt Institute in South Africa, was poisoned in an industrial accident when experimental biochemical blood agents infected him. Mortigan, a white haired, green eyed man, who was vain and proud of his striking appearance was devastated by the possibility that this infection might hinder his ability to have children. His assistant, Ava Mphele, a striking beauty and an agent of Wakanda nursed him back to full health. Despite her tender care, Mortigan still felt defective. He couldn't bear the idea of making the white haired, green eyed woman of his dreams pregnant with on the chance that any lingering effects might be passed on. He had previously flirted with Ava, but was in fact racist. She took none of that, but cared for him after the incident, still working undercover to discover secrets of Karistaadt. They married under false pretenses. He to cover the lie of his profound insecurity, and she to stay undercover. Neither felt any great love until their son Martin was born.

Martin showed no signs of illness through his youth and in fact was preternaturally curious and quick. He inherited his mother's kindness and concern for all people and her dedication to healing people and his father's emerald green eyes. He graduated high school with high honors in chemistry, following in his father's footsteps and was admitted to John's Hopkins University in the USA. In his freshman year he came across many racist Americans who had not undergone the bloody strife of South Africa. His biracial heritage caused a constant state of confusion to his classmates.

His roommate, a black American, Kevin Smart an upper middle class suburban, became radicalized by the racist rantings of Big Malcolm Johnson aka BMJ, an ex-felon who grew up in the ravaged ghettoes of Baltimore. The riots over police brutality set things off. Kevin Smart encouraged Martin to join the All African Union a student group, into which Martin's intelligence gave an aura of respectability. One day, running track, which was Martin's best athletic skill, he started feeling weak and collapsed. He was admitted to the hospital at Johns Hopkins where the doctors suspected Sickle Cell Anemia. He reluctantly took the test, feeling it to be a racist diagnosis. But the results were positive. It was the one thing his father never checked for.

This great betrayal struck him to the bone. He confronted his father on Spring Break and learned the truth about the industrial accident. His father now completely contrite and unable to face the truth commits suicide leaving his family broken, his mother's heart and his son's optimism. Martin returns to John's Hopkins with a fierce determination, assisted by his mother, to cure all bloodborne illnesses. Over the next few years he becomes one of the greatest biochemists the school has ever seen, developing new theories about blood, curing himself in the process.

One day Martin developed the courage to search the labs at Karistaadt and discovers a deep secret passed on to them by the Nazis who successfully copied the Super Soldier Serum - Type B, which was a prototype of the final version. This was the secret that his mother had worked many years to find. She reported back to Wakanda, but still never revealed her identity to Martin. Ava Mphele was racked with guilt after Karl Mortigan's suicide. She was the only family Martin had, and could not tell him her marriage was just part of a spy mission. The Type B serum was not permanent, plus it had a unique side-effect that produced hallucinations. These visions were desired by the Nazi scientists who sought to bring occult powers to the Third Reich. Martin experiments on himself, frustrated that he cannot improve on the serum that develops super powers lasting only a week then fade. But his unique blood chemistry has the side effect of rage and paranoia that accentuate the hallucinations. In addition to the super solider strength he has the ability to instantly identify any sort of disease, virus, germs and chemical contamination anywhere. But he fears this power and abandons work on the Type B Serum. Instead, he develops his own genetic splicing with mammoth and walrus tusk DNA to create super bones. These bones are extra tough and generate more blood. He now has the power never have broken bones or to bleed out. Purely defensive.

In all this time, Martin never considers that he might want to be a hero. He is wary of police and does not wish to be a violent hero. Still, his mother grows wary of his secret experiments and sees in Martin worse aspects than his father. Eventually, they have a falling out. He returns to the US and meets with his old roommate, Kevin Smart. He now sees that Smart and BMJ are idiots and have no idea what they're talking about. He says their minds are polluted and their blood is probably polluted. Smart caves and admits that he doesn't know and accepts that he is polluted and self-hating. BMJ challenges Martin to a fight, which he is losing until one of his paranoid episodes kicks in. Martin kills BMJ in a paranoid rage.

As he serves time in prison, Martin is a loner and is once again beset by the racial divides. The black prison gangs won't accept him because of his green eyes. The white prison gangs won't accept him because of his dark skin. He calls them all inferior and challenges them all to fight. As many times as he is stabbed and beaten, he never looses enough blood to blackout. After only two months behind bars he becomes even more tough and cynical. Now having killed four inmates, he is transferred to a super max facility. He escapes by overpowering guards and runs overnight to the exurbs of Baltimore. He hides out in a barn and overhears the news that his mother was murdered in a crime. It breaks his heart and his spirit. Seeing everything around him as filthy and contaminated, he lives in the dirty streets near Johns Hopkins, and works in the labs stealthily reproducing the Super Serum Type B. He takes the permanent dose.

Martin is approached by the evil Baron Zemo and recruited into the Masters of Evil by revealing that his grandfather ran the laboratory that originated Serum B and promising Martin access. Baron Zemo reveals to Martin that his mother's murder was actually not random but an assassination by the CIA. Martin is stunned as he suspected and never knew that his mother was a Wakandan agent. He is betrayed again and falls into a paranoid rage again, almost killing Zemo. Zemo recognizes that Martin must be controlled and set on the path of a super-villain. Martin now feels betrayed by the entire world, but has no focus as a villain. He is haunted by his hallucinations and wants to burn the world of its impurities, and so Zemo placates him and helps him build the Sterilization Protocol, a chemical agent under the control of Martin's mind that can be injected into any living being and transform their chemistry.

Martin recalls his cure of Sickle Cell Anemia that used (secret sauce) to change the shape and functions of blood cells. He generalizes this in Zemo's laboratory and then develops a delivery system built into his own hybrid bones. He now has fists that can inject the Sterilization Protocol into anyone he punches. He is now the deadliest brawler ever. He wanders the backstreets of Berlin and goes into dive bars picking fights. He flies into a rage and destroys his opponents leaving them with festering wounds and deformities. Finally he meets up with Berlin police who try to arrest him. He will now target all police in the world. He is THE SICKLE.

Plato's Wall

I am of stingy heart, know only love in passing
Years ago at SFO left in lonely longing
Felt the pain of loss but not of breaking
Ecstasies not of joining but of taking.

I am of turbid soul, desire to possess
Not for lusting but my only zest
In capturing, retires the chase to rest
This gift I've gained adds to my nest.

Surrounded by these that serve
Static expressions of my will
I find myself, my mind,
reflections of me standing still.

If there could be one radiation
That might delight and warm beyond
My own esteem I'd scatter all
And turn my back to Plato's wall.

The Yellow Mountain

(A dream. A parable)

They are all light skinned blacks in America. They hold each other in social contempt. All they care about is power over each other.

Two of them are behind the counter at the fast food restaurant. I watch. He is trying to be reasonable, correcting her behavior. She shows him the hand, turns her back, curls in her hair swinging, in her tight fitting brown uniform. She doesn’t even speak, and walks off the job. I watch. I was about to get my order taken. I was hungry.

He follows her through the dining room.. He faces a large man with freckles and stubble, short hair and dark eyes who stands up. The man leans over like an ape, his large fists on the table. It’s his Cadillac parked outside.

He tries to explain to the large man that she was being unreasonable, I stand with him. She was unreasonable, and I am hungry. The large man is not impressed; he leans into our faces and tells us to fuck off. We press. He gestures to an even larger man standing behind us at the door, as the girl goes out.

I don’t respect the large man. I want to push as far as I can without a fight. But it’s too late. His associate attacks me with a staple gun. He staples my fingers on top of each other into random knots, but none of this dissuades me until he aims at my face. Now my lips are stapled together and I retreat to a quiet corner and untangle myself.

The girl is gone. I am not hungry any longer. It could have been my eyes.

Crying Without A Friend

I read your poem and it made me cry a volcano. 
I woulda got sloppy with you
But I got out of your loop and it's my fault.

I'm always trying to be strong
So I can be a gentleman in your face
You probably don't trust me now.

In my intimate heart, you remain
Just wanted to say
The internet isn't close enough

I'm going to cry some more
And drink a Red Bull
And shoot some bad guys

My wife is praying for you at church
I'm lighting a candle on my desk
I confess I never did before. 
For Teshima.

52

52

On this the day of 52
All graying are the skies
Just westward lies the ocean blue
And to the East the City lies
I stand between the two

My City friends all send the greeting
Cheer upon my date of birth
And finding joy in every reading
I overestimate my worth
For joy in life is fleeting

And so I seek the western shore
And tarry in the mists a while
The breakers crash the seabirds soar
My place my planet every mile
God's handiwork I might explore

The gifts of God and Man are few
Or so it seems in thankless haze
And working days in which we stew
Now. I give thanks in all my ways
On this the day of 52

Blades & Books

I know why I didn't read Wuthering Heights when I was in the 7th grade. It's because it was the best book my teacher said she had ever read for her personally, and I didn't want to be like her, personally. The President of the United States was pretending not to be a crook and I didn't believe him. I wanted to be an astrogator, like Starman Jones. I had no need for the past or the present. Only the future. Only the future.

The future was unlimited to my fragile mind and seemed to be the only place I could be free.

Inverting the mantra
I spitefully said
Live for tomorrow, today we are dead

Today lingered on in the grip of the past
To hurry the future
Required the Blast

I looked all around and there was nothing there for me. Lady or Tiger was a game for those who politely asked for doors to be ope'd.

Enduring the grind and braving the narrows
I sharpened my mind amongst the straight arrows.
Scythwise I bent escaping my ghetto
Palms open, nose clean, secreted stilleto.

Every day out here on the nets I suffer the pangs and longings of those who want to inherit video codecs. They want a million luxuriant lines of code for free so they can be smart shoppers. They loathe the laws that bind them and hate the masters of the privy universe. Oh prithee demolish copyright so we might take videos of ourselves and our pain without tithing the lords. Do this for our hordes, please hordes. 

Blades & Books
There are guns and movies and movies about guns and movies, but swords and books are better. How are they going to ban them? There is a silent minority of self-improvement to exemplify all that is human and worthy. They don't require such institutions as do we. They would rather self-sustain than be a part of the movement. I don't know where they live, and that's not important - it's probably part of the plan. 

How is it that we in our lives do not have time to learn the bones of our own bodies? How do we become sensitive to the manipulations of councils who never send a man after us, but would only condescend to sell an inferior product at an inflated prices? Is this our oppression, the poverty of 3G in a 4G future? Today you are dead.

I am to become a man in the now. Appreciative of gifts of the past. I have realized my mortality and I am not friends with it.

I have exhausted my patience with the culture of resentment as they whine about the dimensions of their cultural and socio-political Gordian knots. I will have my swords, and my tomes. The rest is noise. 

Arts and Letters

I say therefore my philosophy is complete
And if you might call this swagger
Do not confuse my dagger wit
With absolution left or right of it
The core I seek is the man, the soul
Its gravity's center, be that empty space
Between action's quarks and knowlege's bosons
Its motion compels my own
Though I unswayed drone on in prickly bursts
Ever more in passion even more in verse

I tire of the face of fame
And didactic attribution's curse 
The vulgar charge hypocrisy's the same
A game of goodnight nurse
I'd rather fake my way rebounding
In salons of dubious repute
Than knit my brown brow 
Over Mars' eye's commanding
Vaingloriously outstanding
Amid the mire and muck
Pretending that I give a fuck

To hell with nasty neighbors' blues
I won't watch the Six OClock News 
I have no lawn to shoo your brats away
No break of dawn to signal end of play
No rims nor Brims nor bling for you to covet
You'll never spy me out and God I love it
I'm just a wayfaring stranger
Head in book
With boots on. 

To the Belmont Club

Each day when I come to the Club and I read
Following hungers beyond my control
I silently spectate beyond any need
To add from my meager mind's rigamarole

The Wretchard he brews 
The members they chug
A cocktail of news from the world's daily churning
A treasure of clues
For years I have dug
Since back before fallbackBelmont I've been learning
With my RSS and my Google Feedburning
Enjoining this geopolitical yearning

I knew in my deepest of hearts I've been grey
Since Whittle wrote Tribes on that fateful morning
And if I survive the Calamitous Day
Once I finish praying and calming and mourning
I'll cling to the shadows and hide in the ruins
And speak the word Belmont among refugees
And if they be Trojans or if they be Bruins
Yet only the Clubbers will put me at ease
That on the far side of the death and disease
We might not repeat our demise by degrees
Having studied man's fate far beyond the wide seas

Requiem Unfinished

(from the archives: Sept 2006)

If I could turn time's hands to days before the quaking of the ground
And rewind screaming engines, fires, clouds of concrete and that massive sound
We could not be wiser, nor could we imagine sleeping that our fate
Might rest between this fiqh or that Islamic dream of mighty Caliphate

Could we have known a thousand soldiers born to die a martyr's death
Would cross the globe advancing every opportunity to plot our death?
We made no time to mind what Sunnis thinks a Shi'ite might be all about
And for this lapse a nation's grasp of deadly enemies remains in doubt.

Of Hezbollah and Ikwan
Of Yemenis and Taliban
Zawahiri, Zarkawi, Ahmadinejad
Haditha, Mosul, Fallujah, Samarra & Baghdad
Sunni, Shi'ite, Alawite,  Fatah & Hamas
Madhi Army, Baathists & Egyptian Madrassas
Tora Bora, Peshawar, Al Jazeera, Al Anbar
Dhimmitude & Burkas and I've gone only half as far
And half as deep as I must go before I sleep...

And in my homeland marching all about the common ground I see
A million doubting fingers pointing left and right as if there couldn't be
An enemy more intimate or willing to run through the beating heart
Of liberty's sweet promise just to jealously defend their party's part

Within this house divided may we tell
Recalling lives upon that day destroyed
The tragedy of why the towers fell
The blind sheik's eye, the gaping moral void

Remember how we vowed that we'd obey
The call of duty rising in us all
To honor them defending all the way
Our very finest freedoms from the fall

So to that end we brandished every sword
And used but few available to us
Charging ahead on Colin Powell's word
To hell with those who won't get on the bus

Our Eagle's fury venged with wrath but blurred by righteous mourning tears
So many dead fell hapless to our shock and awe and mounted muslim fears
That we might satiate a hunger to devour nations fueled by christian hate
And so joined in the foolish fatwa muslim madmen lining every state

They came to fight like lemmings wailing to Iraq after Afghanistan
From Syria and Iran hailing, brainwashed brigand boys their first jihad
Joined up to displaced Baathists and al Sadr how they ran
To meet their doom under the hand of Odierno run roughshod

Yet to this tale of desparation we add blue-thumbed voting hope anew
For in the truth of liberation there is mighty public work to do
Such work begat a Constitution. Iyad Allawi stood before the house
With sovereignty delivered now Maliki's bosom wears new freedoms blouse

Blind blind my brothers I must protect their ignorant souls from their perverse goals
Deaf deaf my sisters mumbling yadda into their decaf, immune from the draft
Dumb dumb my cousins sitting on their arms claiming enlightened pacifism
Weak weak my neighbors shriek a cowards yellow streak backbiting when I speak
All my relatives live in relativism
And nobody asks why until they die

I cannot finish
I cannot stop
There is no art in the frustrated hand
I can only press forward a new tack
Until perhaps they understand
There is no turning back

Food In A Box

(from the archives, circa 1992)

the problem i have is this - food in a box

as an urban dweller, skill seller

im marketable, size 10 in my socks

i can find anywhere anyplace to sell and be sold to

 

clothes off the rack fit

i got enough snaps to pick it up if i so desire

i say wrap it up homes, flash the card

get certified

(the hangers are wood, not wire)

 

so i step to the pad

quite happy - having hunted and gathered

new duds for the hoe down

so i go downtown and across the bridge

to my flat with the empty fridge

 

you see the problem i have is this - food in a box

can't cook for myself - gotta look to the shelf

sardines capn crunch and crackers with the elf.

no justice

 

from their rack to my rack

i hang the slacks and think a minute bout being black

or whatever i am blackness wants to mack this feeling

and call it out so i can shout, now im reeling

 

why the hell do i dwell so well in this way

throwing empty cartons in a bag every day

and plastic at that

and call this urban drama living fat?

 

maybe my grandpa could use the tool

of forty acres and a mule

as for me i gotta have a mac and a mouse

cause that's what i learned in school

not keeping a house

 

so, the problem i have is this - food in a box

trust the label though im not able

to tell vitamin a from cholesteral

cant grow spinach to save my soul, yall

so i hope a honey

(in the language of the oppressed, about

the cute objects in a dress)

might cook for me

so ill convince her that my degree

is the key

to our mutual sucess

 

don't get too fresh

remember who wears the pants, who wears the dress

a situation like that works

dysfunctionally, with much pain, for better or worse

but mostly worse - they warn you ahead of time

that box is a crime

 

i guess the problem i have is this - food in a box

sometimes if im critical i get political

and all riled up about an issue as old has the hills

i wait for the next senate bill

and hope my choice with a pipsqueak voice

call in to oprah and wait on the line

like this is democracy, dont worry be happy

got no ability to sway the senate my way

cept once every six for two out of a hundred

did my mission get funded?

no tell me what to do till they pass the ballot box again

 

eat food in a box

get sick as a dog chewing like a bump on a log

and the box maker's high on the hog

no justice

 

america is a super duper market

and all the food is boxed

consume it, you consumer!

spread the lies as a rumor of truth

food in a box is nutrition as proof

see the supermodel smile

knowing all the while

(from lifestyles of the rich and famous

beat a path to her retreat for peace and she blames us)

its a bogus current affair, what nerve to try it

peddled with subliminal flair, we know but still we buy it

pay with cash if it's there or loot if it's a riot.

 

the problem i have is this - food in a box.

wathcing the idiot box for the 88th time

i promised to give the insulter the boot

for the crime of poisining my mind

drive in my car, to get food for the vcr

feed it and weep, if its drama i select

nothing but sheep we become if it's not in check

but a library's too unboxed with no direction

guess i check the calendar section

 

is there nothing i can find on my own

without some package or label to tell me

or psuedo intellectual critics to sell me

is there no soil left for me to seed

no living to posess for other than greed

the problem i have is this - food in a box

as an urban dweller, skill seller

im marketable, size 10 in my socks

i can find anywhere anyplace to sell and be sold to

 

clothes off the rack fit

i got enough snaps to pick it up if i so desire

i say wrap it up homes, flash the card

get certified

(the hangers are wood, not wire)

 

so i step to the pad

quite happy - having hunted and gathered

new duds for the hoe down

so i go downtown and across the bridge

to my flat with the empty fridge

 

you see the problem i have is this - food in a box

can't cook for myself - gotta look to the shelf

sardines capn crunch and crackers with the elf.

no justice

 

from their rack to my rack

i hang the slacks and think a minute bout being black

or whatever i am blackness wants to mack this feeling

and call it out so i can shout, now im reeling

 

why the hell do i dwell so well in this way

throwing empty cartons in a bag every day

and plastic at that

and call this urban drama living fat?

 

maybe my grandpa could use the tool

of forty acres and a mule

as for me i gotta have a mac and a mouse

cause that's what i learned in school

not keeping a house

 

so, the problem i have is this - food in a box

trust the label though im not able

to tell vitamin a from cholesteral

cant grow spinach to save my soul, yall

so i hope a honey

(in the language of the oppressed, about

the cute objects in a dress)

might cook for me

so ill convince her that my degree

is the key

to our mutual sucess

 

don't get too fresh

remember who wears the pants, who wears the dress

a situation like that works

dysfunctionally, with much pain, for better or worse

but mostly worse - they warn you ahead of time

that box is a crime

 

i guess the problem i have is this - food in a box

sometimes if im critical i get political

and all riled up about an issue as old has the hills

i wait for the next senate bill

and hope my choice with a pipsqueak voice

call in to oprah and wait on the line

like this is democracy, dont worry be happy

got no ability to sway the senate my way

cept once every six for two out of a hundred

did my mission get funded?

no tell me what to do till they pass the ballot box again

 

eat food in a box

get sick as a dog chewing like a bump on a log

and the box maker's high on the hog

no justice

 

america is a super duper market

and all the food is boxed

consume it, you consumer!

spread the lies as a rumor of truth

food in a box is nutrition as proof

see the supermodel smile

knowing all the while

(from lifestyles of the rich and famous

beat a path to her retreat for peace and she blames us)

its a bogus current affair, what nerve to try it

peddled with subliminal flair, we know but still we buy it

pay with cash if it's there or loot if it's a riot.

 

the problem i have is this - food in a box.

wathcing the idiot box for the 88th time

i promised to give the insulter the boot

for the crime of poisining my mind

drive in my car, to get food for the vcr

feed it and weep, if its drama i select

nothing but sheep we become if it's not in check

but a library's too unboxed with no direction

guess i check the calendar section

 

is there nothing i can find on my own

without some package or label to tell me

or psuedo intellectual critics to sell me

is there no soil left for me to seed

no living to posess for other than greed

disbelief

it's as if 
because holly wouldn't 
all we have
is a bunch of i
just trying to b
something they think never was.
so how could formality contain it?

it all ends in suicide.
so u can hold on to death's smell
longer than 
televised history.

Jurassic Park

        I keep my eyes on writers with their ears on beats
Wondering finally if they ever leave the streets
Of if the street keeps rockin' deep down in their soul
Old man in the club not believing he's not old

Or when the kid says daddy who was Red Alert
Does papa not preach about days doin' dirt
Moving sideways or covering dub dance halls
Reminescing about the days of the yes yes yalls

Can it be like forever what it was for me
Thrilling to the black faces on MTV?
Or will it ever mutate and merge with the mainstream
And never revert to the days of the daydreams

When Turbo poplocked with a broom and a pail
Kool Moe Dee dropped wax before CDs were on sale
And Kwame with his hair like Pepe La Pew
Not everybody knows what we've been through

But that's alright we still keep in stride.
The next generation's minds are always fried.
The same game reigns in doorframes in the dark
But a classic's not a classic that's not older than Jurassic Park.

soft rap returns from the home for the sane persecuted class

Music spins, charged verbals majestically hop
unchallenging to pressed plastic specs
brilliance transformed through
unfathomable electronics attainable
only by credit - a gift of fiscal innocence
around xmas time when lenders get liberal
collecting potential debt service
from an internal third world.

Compacted clips of revolution, rebroadcast
sampled sounds of malcolm,
civil drug war villagers claim casualties.
Ghetto hype makes a media star of bored econ majors
with still enough accent to fool suburban police
bad joke, bro.

Enough to be called enuf
and nine days at County; mom cries
at shattered expectations to the rhythm of
other discs in a pile trying to reconcile this turn
to probable cause, scanning liner note shout outs
funky cartoons, tape foldouts in
an off-campus apartment rented month to month
on government guaranteed loans.
Right resenting mainstreamies
bang the wall calling for speedmetal Barabas;
death to jeep beats by elision's decree.
Minority grants are now repaid
by systemic injustice she reasons,
and turns down the bass.

Lynch-quick, fashion-swift
linearly unrecognizable to the nons,
but this pattern etched
wrinkles and scars of a different dignity
plain as backbeats, pursed lips and mean strolls
unstoppable by one family,
too obvious to unity-loathing county trustees
the idea is tossed to the dread heap.

Humming silences, swallowing bile
thinking positive science, dope dropped
once on the burgle barred bus
in transit to the streets from hell's other home
Soft Rap whistled dixie.

Quiet Storm Prayer Meeting

From the Literary Thug

QUIET STORM PRAYER MEETING: ODE TO LUTHER VANDROSS

The house in which we used to dance
Was sold last month
It’s ragged box frame stands out
In the face of new startup’s
And gentrified Victorian sprawl
Old and new Tacoman’s
Pass warily on the sidewalk
And a boy chases a girl on the streets
Aping a people that never existed
And a time he was too young to remember

Here, Luther. Can you believe it? Here.
On the streets where we stole away to hear you
On night where we wove through corners
Crossed old ladies yards
Sneaking past arid thicket brush
And risking the chance of being at the wrong place
At the wrong time, just to listen
And love you and love each other
At the house of the blue lava light

In The Night

In the night with daughters
I subject myself to the dangers of the street
I camp to feel the pain in my joints. To feel the hardness of the ground wreck my backbone just so.
Just so they can frolic with flashlights and hear the owls hooting by.

From inside the dusty tent
All the silences of the darkness are amplified
The skunks shuffling through the hedge
The squirrel poop dropping from the pine branches
The unexperienced night breeze, and the gnawing of termites mark the hours.

There are no weirdos. There are no knifings or hollering men with their brown paper bags.
There are no stray dogs or broken glasses in the street.
There is only the marginal discomfort of an adventure. But if I were to dream perchance there would be nightmares. Of Pookie in the alley on New Years Eve. Of the hard bathroom tiles and the negligent youth director. Of the dare beneath the sycamores and the face full of shit. Of the placid lie and Officer Bell. Of the griddled goldfish and the mothers pulling hair. Of the garage fire and the swinging skillet. Of the swaying booty butter and subsequent Itch.

Of the betrayal. Of the omerta. Of the dodge.
Of the broken walk, the ringworm and the bus ride to jail.
Of the shiv and the sherm. Of the roaches in batter.
Of the patrols and the checkpoints. Of the drawling reproach and the sitter's backhand.
Of the unwashed baby and hand-me-down clothes.
Of the uncle that uncle that everyone knows.

Of the quiet, the endless quiet, the silent long ignorant years and the secrets never told. Of the fear. The monstrous unendurable fear until the Juneteenth of May in the Jungle of Nool, when a voice from above not caring nor cruel, said throw down your bowl and give up your gruel. It was only my echo, the sound of a fool.

I have journeyed far from the hole and dream it anew.
I see myself in lightweight togs unarmored for throwdown. Like grubs under petrified wood, my brothers all younglike and full of it mirror my sadness, anonymous to all but those who can't do, and can't teach and still preach as if God really changes things.
And I've seen his hope crumble wearing the cleanest white t-shirt a dollar can buy
And hedging his bets just like those who don't try. Ahead is the wall. A stumble. A fall.
And he comes up all scratch-faced, bruised lips swelling bigger.
You know what they call him. Just like they called Bigger.

The erudition of despair a well-worn symphony drumming a 4/4 time in the temple of doom.
You're black and you're black.
You're black and you're black.
You're black and you're black.
You're black and you're black.
And pride and tears and love and sorrow. Joy and agony, misery and emptiness. Tick away with each beat of my heart, our heart, the old black heart. Without childbirth or violence who would know we bled red? So black is the beat, so dark is the heat, so deep are the tears that through four hundred years we memorize ancestors fears.
And await calamity.
Anticipate treachery.
Condone lechery. Better spend those dollars now boy. There ain't no future in your frontin'.

Camping with daughters, without locks, without dread.
Outside of a devil's domain. Outside of a nightmare of pain.
Outside on the lawn. From easy dusk to pleasant dawn.
If I should die before I wake let it be in the blankest of sleep.
Let me not dream that I am that I was lest I curse the name of God
For abandoning me to the ghetto, my prison, my birthplace, my all.
Let me remember the love of my middle age in the land of the free
past that middle passage that brought me to be
Mocked in my skin and yet finally me.

The Eye in I

And, since I tend to see the world with the eyes of a poet, I'm always alert to the subtext of experience. I say "I" because I don't know any other way to name the observing presence that seems to always be riding on the saddle of my self-awareness. It really doesn't have a lot to do with me as a person and there are plenty of times I could do without it quite nicely, thank you. But I heed it when it has something of value to point out..
-- Gerard Van Der Leun

My dreams have been pleasant of late and yet I know it cannot last.
I'm worried about my children's future because I know of mankind's past.

Back To Front

back to front.

the evil of whiteness is a conspiracy to deny the black self. i am immune. i do not take it seriously. its seductions are useless upon me like the rubbing of female cats against my leg. i kick them.

in my subconscious lay no white demons, no bottomless pits with gaping white holes, no disfigured or impaled black infants to arouse some vengeful beast in me. i am unpoisoned by the white disease and do not live in fear of its shadow. in that my liberation is complete. i cannot make it otherwise even in sympathy with those who battle righteously.

as for the kings of empty empires, i am not worshipping at their graves. i only know those appetites in me which are unsated. i only take moments from time to time to observe that which i would have to further my own ambition. it is not that desire which takes me to rome, nor is America so dominant. i might be just as happy in england or on the underside of the planet where english is spoken, or half awake in paris missing details for the years my french would remain partial.

in conservative dreams there are no fidelities but to the best ways already trod of men through the ages. there is no shining beacon that beckons. there is only the tried and the true and the hard won wisdom of age. fortunate are those who can get it handed to them, if only they can heed words as well as experience lived. i inherit but the struggle of those who claimed me from the petty tyrannies of this bull cop or that rock throwing mob.

Requiem Unfinished

If I could turn time's hands to days before the quaking of the ground
And rewind screaming engines, fires, clouds of concrete and that massive sound
We could not be wiser, nor could we imagine sleeping that our fate
Might rest between this fiqh or that Islamic dream of mighty Caliphate

Could we have known a thousand soldiers born to die a martyr's death
Would cross the globe advancing every opportunity to plot our death?
We made no time to mind what Sunnis thinks a Shi'ite might be all about
And for this lapse a nation's grasp of deadly enemies remains in doubt.

Of Hezbollah and Ikwan
Of Yemenis and Taliban
Zawahiri, Zarkawi, Ahmadinejad
Haditha, Mosul, Fallujah, Samarra & Baghdad
Sunni, Shi'ite, Alawite,  Fatah & Hamas
Madhi Army, Baathists & Egyptian Madrassas
Tora Bora, Peshawar, Al Jazeera, Al Anbar
Dhimmitude & Burkas and I've gone only half as far
And half as deep as I must go before I sleep...

And in my homeland marching all about the common ground I see
A million doubting fingers pointing left and right as if there couldn't be
An enemy more intimate or willing to run through the beating heart
Of liberty's sweet promise just to jealously defend their party's part

Within this house divided may we tell
Recalling lives upon that day destroyed
The tragedy of why the towers fell
The blind sheik's eye, the gaping moral void

Remember how we vowed that we'd obey
The call of duty rising in us all
To honor them defending all the way
Our very finest freedoms from the fall

So to that end we brandished every sword
And used but few available to us
Charging ahead on Colin Powell's word
To hell with those who won't get on the bus

Our Eagle's fury venged with wrath but blurred by righteous mourning tears
So many dead fell hapless to our shock and awe and mounted muslim fears
That we might satiate a hunger to devour nations fueled by christian hate
And so joined in the foolish fatwa muslim madmen lining every state

They came to fight like lemmings wailing to Iraq after Afghanistan
From Syria and Iran hailing, brainwashed brigand boys their first jihad
Joined up to displaced Baathists and al Sadr how they ran
To meet their doom under the hand of Odierno run roughshod

Yet to this tale of desparation we add blue-thumbed voting hope anew
For in the truth of liberation there is mighty public work to do
Such work begat a Constitution. Iyad Allawi stood before the house
With sovereignty delivered now Maliki's bosom wears new freedoms blouse

Blind blind my brothers I must protect their ignorant souls from their perverse goals
Deaf deaf my sisters mumbling yadda into their decaf, immune from the draft
Dumb dumb my cousins sitting on their arms claiming enlightened pacifism
Weak weak my neighbors shriek a cowards yellow streak backbiting when I speak
All my relatives live in relativism
And nobody asks why until they die

I cannot finish
I cannot stop
There is no art in the frustrated hand
I can only press forward a new tack
Until perhaps they understand
There is no turning back

The Whore

I've often wondered as I sit alone in hotel rooms
What brings me to this tired place of wanting
Of Denny's sandwich bags and tiny teeny rubber wombs
Of crumbled cake and dreams of peppered planting

A book of begging bodies paper thin and gently mocking
Arouse a notion to expense an evening dollar dance
Around a sink a rancid stain a randy reload rocking
Announce an ache I never asked inside my dampened pants

Writing about e-Writing

irony's pressing
cyberlife to the printed page flattens
what's hyper here even in text
to flipping sheaves, like autumn leaves
preserved beyond their nature
and what's a pseud without repute
and who persists beyond reboot
and who engages, who is mute
and irl who gives a hoot? 

e-male cadaver primly plied
nytrb crit-eyed is dried of wonder
and torn amiss provides no lightning strikes 

ahh to be lower-case and whispered pop to pop
to drag and drop a tasty phrase
to while away the working days on aol
to post and wrap
to subtly trap a newbie netter courting praise
about the courtyard coteries
somewhere dot com
yeah that's the bomb

Claudia Clubs

I used to have dreams of being a novelist. Here is an excerpt from my book about ambition and tragedy in black Los Angeles: Jordan Crossing

(from the archives, 1990)

Thursday night after work. The sun is still out and the urge comes over Claudia to hit the town. It's been so long since she has been out. Looking over the papers on her desk she, cleans off the table with a brush. Producer was gone; she turned up the radio. Too many long nights preparing for weak stories. Here’s a story that's never told, the shit I go through to get a good time. I just cannot wait until tomorrow night, besides there are clubs happening tonight. She reecalled the days of 24K and Glitter on Sunset. Well tonight I'm gong to enjoy myself, she though. She leaned back in her chair and admired her office, the degree on the wall UCLA. Man that was hard, but I made it. Journalism. She felt sorry for all the English students she left in that major. What were they doing now? Slaving away on obscure black writers that the black community doesn't know and the academic community doesn't respect. What sense does it make? It’s obvious that these writers are great and knew exactly what they were talking about. Their points of view, essays and philosophies are complete. Enough to carry a whole society. It carried us and gave us the strength to compete at the 'predominantly white institution". She couldn't think of any of her real, down to earth college girlfriends who wasn't either deep into the real black writers. The rest were deep into denial. But those were the underclassman days. After that trip to Mexico, everything changed.

Hmm. Her flashback surpised her, now as she took a second look around her office. What are you doing now, Mrs Williams-Precht? Hyphenated to a French director? Are you really getting those stories? She started for her pad, snatching a uniball from the art deco canister. The effects of black mexicans on the contemporary african american woman. Ahh. another time. Really. She placed the purple pad into her satchel, snapped and stood. Five foot eight and one half, she thought to herself, walking straight and proud.

The cleaning people had already come into the building. Mexicans, she could tell. Not just latinos of every stripe but Mexicans and Mexican Americans. This was their shop. Their domain, quiet as it's kept. They are getting over in la vida sin corazon, vacuuming sucking up American dirt and turning it into food for their children. Food but not stories. For all of the million latinos in Los Angeles County there were no stories we ever heard, Claudia thought. Every once in a while, in her Volvo, she would hit the scan button on the radio instead of the one that tuned directly to her favorite soft hits. She would hit a Spanish language station, and then a Vietnamese voice would blare as the frequency numbers spun off every 5 seconds. It was an immigrant thing, Claudia couldn't understand. She watched the woman pushing her personal garbage can on through the maze of cubicles. She was young and tired and did not hum any spirituals. She sorted the white trash from the colored trash - the white to be recycled, the colored to be dumped. The woman was about five foot tall. Short. Always the short people working this shit. That is my great grandmother, Claudia thought. That woman is my great garandmother; America has not changed one bit.

Untitled

..and though hunted, never lacking praise
for wending sidelong shuffle gaze
or bitter blasts in justice' gaping lack
in substituted manhood being black

despair is common in these neighbors' eyes
i know the sidewalk cracks and hearing lies
avoid the speech and wish on borrowed time
a windy isle or subtle smile sublime

FMA: Balkin's Version

Jack Balkin, legal scholar proposes amending the FMA to read properly. I agree with him. If it should be done, it should be done right. Damn lawyers! What they can do with a single sentence - they obfuscate purposefully.

If the FMA had been designed to do what its proponents claim it will do, it should have been drafted as follows:

Section 1. Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.

Section 2. Nothing in the first section of this Article shall be construed to prevent either Congress or the legislatures of the several states from providing any other benefits, rights, or privileges, or combinations thereof, to unmarried couples or groups.

Thus, Congress and state legislatures may provide all of the incidents of marital status except marital status itself. As you can see, such an amendment is not particularly difficult to draft. The fact that there is a gap between what the text says and what the Alliance for Marriage says the text will do suggests to me that they are not being entirely forthcoming about the reasons for the Amendment.

The Sun is God

Sasha speaks of the Sun.

Here is my theory. If you believe, as Raymond Kurzweil does that spirit is independent of hardware, then intelligence is something that can be manifest in any computing substrate. So take the million monkeys typing theory to its logical conclusion. What patterns are created by the trillion trillion nuclear reactions going on inside the sun for billions of years? Everything!

Stars communicate with each other. They are the most intelligent life in the universe. Since travel beyond the speed of light is impossible, stars have everything they need within themselves. They have billions of years to do what they do, and so they do. But the most important thing to know is that they are incredibly fast computers.

Somebody simply has to show that they exhibit emergent behavior via the cellular automata exhibited by the rules of nuclear fusion of helium. Then it's over.

Assimilation, Multiculturalism & False White Neutrality

Much is being made in certain circles about the matter of SB 60, which is a provision which allows 'illegal aliens' to be legally licensed as drivers in California. The bill which was signed into law by ex-governor Grey Davis was supported by both the mayor and chief of police of Los Angeles. It restores a privilege that was denied several years ago. Arnold Schwartzenegger has promised to repeal it and activist groups are passing around a petition.

This is just the kind of situation that brings up a dozen questions but the one that has got me thinking is that of citizenship. What is it, who can tell, and what difference does it make?

My first talking point is Assimilation, Multiculturalism & False White Neutrality

A Shift in Writing Direction

Over the next several weeks and months, I am going to go through my litmus questions one by one and refine them out with the 'talking points'. Having done so with the Abortion post, as well as with the Vouchers post, I think this is a very good way to handle the complexity of these topics.

This is significantly different than the kind of back and forth the blogosphere gives. It is at once expository and less than opinionated. Rather it is a mapping of discourse capturing the major arguments that hold sway in my own decision making process. In this I'm going to attempt to be a one-man forum along the lines of XRepublic guidelines.

In doing so, I will also break the convention of blogtime. I won't be putting little 'update' notes in the blog, I will simply edit the pieces as new ideas come. There's not going to be any, who knew what when, as these attempt to be comprehensive. I'll set them up into this new category 'Eruditorium' so that they will more easily accessible.

My aim is to practically test my powers of abstraction as well as the XR concept of talking points. It will also give me some focus on bigger subjects; I'm getting a little tired of blogging twists on things like Plame incrementally over time.

This should be good.

Vouchers

Yglesias is covering vouchers.

I wrote some ideas on the subject in 1998:

busing was always a second rate idea, but it acknowledged two facts
which were cast in stone at the time, and one that remains today.

#1. you cannot get white taxpayers to directly subsidize non-whites in
what appears to be a zero-sum racial game.

#2. separate but equal is a bad idea.

the second idea has been losing currency, but the first is just about
as rigid today as it ever was. the clearest indication of that to me
is white support of vouchers, as contrasted to the summary dismissal
of geographic restrictions on public school enrollment. vouchers will
always privilege those who are smarter with money, and those who can
organize. in other words, them whose got, gets. vouchers = liquidity
which means it will accellerate the desires of everyone involved. i am
convinced that the desire to abandon rather than renovate ghetto
schools will not change with the advent of vouchers, and that the
liquidity vouchers provide will accellerate their destruction.

the second clearest indication of that is the willingness of suburban
schools to accept bussed children concurrent with their refusal to
allow circulation of highly qualified teachers. magnet schools are
proof positive that putting the best materials and best teachers in
the worst ghettoes results in drastically improved students.

So these are my essential talking points on vouchers. Overall Opinion, Thumbs Down

Religious Right Overproduction
At the bottom of some of the original thinking on vouchers was the absolutist point on tax abatement. Citizens hiding behind the mask of 'taxpayer' decided selfishly to defund the public school system which was racially separate, unequal, mediocre in suburbs and pathetic in racial ghettos.

Soccer Momism
Overfocus on test scores tend to falsely objectify the value of schools. What is defective in poor schools is not simply measured in grades. A school which is not a community center fails as well. The difference an active PTA makes is critical. Vouchers do not create soccer moms. Single parents will not suddenly be able to dedicate more time to making the school a better institution.

Supply Side Failure
Development of new schools is very expensive. Capital improvements are required for older schools. Capital is required for the purchase of land for new schools. Vouchers don't address these issues. If overcrowding is a problem in any school district or any argument is made about class size or dumbing down better schools that will not be diminished until new high quality schools appear.

Liquidity vs Equality
Smart families will do better with money directed at them. Vouchers will simply create a new kind of flight. The problem is not mobility. Improvement in schools should not be directed to individual families but to reform of the system.

Management Not Money
Most school districts are administratively incapable of executing quickly. This is a function of management, not of privatization. School districts should be reformed, not revolutionized. Firing incompetents does not create leadership, and overpaying high profile 'education executives' will not improve the education of children.

Open Bussing
You can provide school choice without adding vouchers. Boundaryless public school districts work on the same principle. Tracking students by geography into particular schools can be unfair. Vouchers don't help children who don't have private schools nearby. Transportation is a big issue.