AtDTDA: [38] p.1076 What It Means To Be An American

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

The Traversi are continuing on their northwestern vector,
Yashmeen is pregnant again and the family looks more like a 
communal experiment than something stable and nuclear.
Ljubica and Ginger start to toy with Jesse:

          "Ljubica wants to marry you," Yash said, "but don't tell her I told you." 
          "That'd sure give the Sheriff somethin to think about," Jesse muttered, 
          strangely having trouble knowing what to do with his hands. 
          "Oh it'll pass," Yash said. ''Then look out." 
          "Your job, really," Stray added, "'ll just be to keep a quiet eye out when 
          they all start showin up at the door with flowers and smellin like hair oil 
          and bay rum and so forth." 
          "Chores, chores, chores," Jesse snarled contentedly. 

Moving first to the redwoods, and then to the:
 
          . . . .Kitsap Peninsula, up in the last corner of the U.S. map, 
          and after this it would have to be Alaska or B.C. . . .

Jesse brings home the assignment: "write an essay on What It Means 
To Be An American."

Reef, all excited, wants to gets his hands on the assignment but 
Jesse beats his dad to the punch, writing a perfect distillation of 
the preterite code:

          It means do what they tell you and take what they give you 
          and don't go on strike or their soldiers will shoot you down. 

And how is this day different from any other day?

          It came back with a big A+ on it. "Mr. Becker was at the Cour d'Alene 
          back in the olden days. Guess I forgot to mention that." 

From: Gifts for Subversives 
The Protest Organizer
By Michael Mechanic
December 17, 1999

          Protest Organizer

          Lest you forget both your activist history and those important lunch meetings, 
          Berkeley's Slingshot Collective has created a Y2K organizer for rabble-rousers. 
          While some conventional pocket calendars include reminders of significant 
          dates in the past, Slingshot's sense of history is slightly more provocative than 
          the typical "Ben Franklin flies his kite in a lightning storm" fare.

          In addition to traditional holidays like Samhain, Slingshot commemorates 
          strikes and protests, arrests and massacres, dubious military actions and the 
          births and deaths of notable radicals and artists. Don't forget to observe March 
          15 (on which, in 1977, Turkish fascists armed with police weapons attacked 
          students, starting four years of terror), July 11 (the day when, in 1892, Cour 
          d'Alene miners seized mines). . . .

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/1999/12/radgifts.html

Coeur d'Alene miners' dispute, from Wikipedia:

          The Coeur d'Alene miners' dispute refers to two incidents: a strike in 
          1892, and a violent confrontation between union miners and a holdout 
          company in 1899.

          The strike of 1892 erupted in violence when union miners discovered 
          they had been infiltrated by a Pinkerton agent who had routinely provided 
          union information to the mine owners. The response to that violence, 
          disastrous for the local miners' union, became the primary motivation for 
          the formation of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) the following 
          year.

          The confrontation of 1899 resulted from the miners' frustrations with mine 
          operators that paid lower wages; hired Pinkerton or Thiel operatives to 
          infiltrate the union; and routinely fired any miner who held a union card.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coeur_d'Alene_miners'_dispute

And, of course, there's that finale to Vineland, those annual Becker/Traverse
barbeques for Octomaniacs yet to come

          "We should start our own little republic," Yash said one day. "Secede." 
          "Yeah but hell," Stray, who never was much of a sigher, would sigh, 
          "em things never work out. Fine idea while the opium supply lasts, 
          but sooner or later plain old personal meanness gets in the way. 

Just ask Weed Atman.