Mark Knopfler

We can have ourselves a party before they come:::
In the meantime, I’m cleaning my gun

http://americandigest.org/being-prepared-you-can-still-get-gas-in-heaven-and-drink-in-kingdom-come-in-the-meantime-im-cleaning-my-gun/#more-5967

The California ignored by news until fires begin

Chico is leaving it all on the field

By Vanderleun, on November 14, 2018

Near closing time in the men’s Clothing Clearance Corner on the first floor of Penney’s at the Chico Mall, a young girl is replacing the piles of tossed clothing left by the numbed shoppers from Paradise frantic for cheap basic clothing. Some of them are camped in tents somewhere close by the mall; for how long nobody knows. But this young, quietly lovely girl is putting the Clothing Clearance Corner back in apple pie order as the store’s dismal day closes. I take my few finds from the Clothing Clearance Corner and, leaving, say, “That seems like a thankless task.”

“Not at all,” she replies. “Not at all.”

“Really? Why the hell not?”

“Hey, I do this job every day in this store. It’s my assigned task and usually its okay but I only do it for the money because it gets really monotonous, meaningless.”

She’s a student, I perceive.

“But today those people really needed these clothes in this corner because of the price. And tomorrow more people like that will really need them too. And so I want to make this the best I can for them. So I’m going to put it all back on hangers and arrange them by size. It will be right by the morning. You better go. We’re closing. Thank you for coming in.”

Just a young girl working late in the Clothing Clearance Corner. Doing one of those little jobs; one of those jobs that actually make the world turn. She was leaving it all on the field.

At the ends of the neighborhood streets, I see people setting up tables and I see the people of the neighborhoods coming out onto the main streets and putting out whatever they have to give there for the taking if needed. They are literally leaving it all on the field.

At the Elks Lodge after I picked up some bedding and a few new pillows and looked out over acres of goods being laid out for the taking, from flats of pet food to cribs and playpens (someplace safe to rest your baby that is not on your hip). As I was leaving to see the East Avenue Church scene an Elk (My late father was a member of this lodge up until his death in 1972); a brother, I say, of my father waves me over and opens the back seat of my car and puts in two cases of one liter bottles of San Pellegrino . The Elks are leaving it all on the field.

In the 24-Hour Walgreens Pharmacy on East Avenue, the pharmacists have been working overlapping shifts since the fire swept over Paradise last Thursday. These people and their back up staff work seemingly rock solid for hours on end. They fill and file and dispense medications which people from Paradise do not have with them. This is a demanding and thankless and exhausting task. And yet — I am the witness — they have been doing this without letup. Many have come in from surrounding towns, from Redding, to help and to keep the medications needed by a town of 30,000 displaced into a city of 80,000. Yes, the Walgreens pharmacists are leaving it all on the field.

Today, after the banking holiday of Monday, there was what can only be described as a run on the banks. Not a hostile or panicked run on the banks but just an overwhelming number of people needing to get their money straight in one way or another… such as “My ATM Card and My ID were melted in my wallet when my pants burst into flame.”  Please understand that today in Chico that is a  reasonable statement. And the bankers all showed up looking cool and formal and professional and competent and moved the vast lines of people through with all hands on deck and cleared up a myriad of money crises. One banker I spoke with came up from Santa Rosa on his day off to help the team. He was a sharp dressed man. He and the other bankers were leaving it all on the field.

They all were leaving it all on the field everywhere in Chico. From Penny’s in the Mall to the Birkenstocks Store downtown on Broadway. In big jobs, and in small jobs, there was a long train of people working at the top of their game no matter what their game was. It has been days of this now in Chico; days of there being no big jobs or small jobs but only the unremitting effort the people to help their fellow citizens no matter what.

And since none of the Acronym Agencies have really shown up yet, this has all been done without any real government organization. Instead, it has been like watching a spontaneous Humanitarian Olympics rise up out of the town itself; and once started it has become as self-organizing and self-sustaining as the fire itself. Today as I moved around Chico I saw a town, untouched itself by the flames, rise up to restore and rebuild the lives of their fellow citizens of Paradise; lives that the fire had stolen. And by the end of the day, you could feel, palpably feel, that Chico knew it would win. Chico was leaving it all on the field.

Tomorrow? Chico will do the same.

http://americandigest.org/wp/chico-is-leaving-it-all-on-the-field/

(Note: Vanderleun’s home was burned in the fire.)

Surviving the Gulag

No guarantees, of course.

§  Your best chance to escape is before you get to the Lubyanka. You’re healthy and you’ve got no walls and fewer guards than you ever will again.

§  Lie to your interrogators. Remember nothing at all. If you build them a story you’ll get tripped up in the details.

§  Sign absolutely nothing that they give to you.

§  Don’t trust the thieves.

§  Spend what time you have in the transit prison sleeping. You’ll be thankful for it after a tour on general labor.

§  If you want to survive your ten-ruble note then do whatever you can not to get out on general labor.

§  The thieves are going to get all the trustee positions.

§  It’s not the short ration, but the long ration that kills you. (The bonus ration is given to shock-workers who overfulfill the norm. You spend more calories earning it than you get from eating it.)

§  Don’t bother petitioning Stalin to release you. He wants you right where you are.

§  Don’t believe the rumors of a general amnesty either.

§  Gorky won’t tell the world about your prison conditions. Gorky depends on praising the state to maintain his livelihood.

§  Gorky will end his days in the camps anyway.

§  Tukhta: A word for the difference between the work you do and the work you tell your commissar you do.

§  If you get your Tukhta past the commissar then he’s going to be invested in maintaining the illusion to his bosses. He doesn’t want to end up behind the wire.

§  When the godfather recruits you to inform on your comrades laugh in his face.

§  Knife stoolies.

§  To escape requires constant observation, meticulous planning, and a willingness to immediately seize whatever chances fortune throws your way.

§  Study up on geography now; you’ll be thankful when you’re trying to cross the Kazakh steppes.

§  When you’re dying of thirst in the desert it doesn’t help to stab your comrade to death to drink his blood to survive a little longer. He’s also badly dehydrated and won’t bleed much at all.

§  Lie to the commissars. Tell them what they want to hear.

§  When they let you out they aren’t actually letting you out. They’ll arrest you again and slap another tenner on you.

As a rule, it’s better not to live in a country that maintains a gulag. 

https://ricochet.com/549015/on-finishing-the-gulag-archipelago/

Link at http://americandigest.org/wp/escaping-from-the-gulag/

The part about “Stalin…wants you right where you are” reminds me of a book about Cuba published in the early 1970s. Many Cubans, faced daily with corruption and inefficient officials said, “If only Fidel knew this sort of thing is going on.” Those Cubans would not have believed it if told, “Fidel does know. He set up the system.”