Back to AtD & Iceland Spar

[Michael Bailey]

 Bled Welder wrote:
> El Lewderino:
>

there's a phrase in Chaucer - "lewed or learned" so I guess the
opposite of learned is lewd?  Anyway, Lew isn't very lewd in AtD,
except that one time...

> ...(snippage of interesting alcohol material)

I was enough of a teenage drunk that I basically ruined drunkenness
for my adult self.
There was this horrible social shift about 1971 or 1972, from
occasional pot and acid and mescaline with body rushes and mystic
visions and laughter, to constant beer and wine with bad driving and
throwing up in embarrassing places and it just wasn't fun, and nothing
since has happened to change my attitude.

(although a couple times a year, a beer tastes good, and a little
brandy in one's coffee can be nice every so often)

> but the Labor
> struggles in Colorado are not too thrilling, mildly interesting, which is
> where I'm stuck.  Webb, Kate's fatehr, was just killed.  I'd love it if
> focused on the anarchists rather than the ever-tedious unions....
>

hmm, actually there's little enough about the unions per se...
lots more about dynamiting, detectives and hired killers and the Traverse boys!

Pynchon's choice of material to focus on in Vineland was IWW, probably
the most extreme union ever, and his choice in AtD is Webb, who is
such an extremist that the union doesn't send flowers to his funeral,
iirc, and has a conniption when his daughter Lake ice skates with one
of the bosses' kids.

but his choice of capitalist is Vibe, who is equally intransigent, so...

anyway, something I would write a book on, perhaps, or more likely
read one, would be Labor Temples - I ran across this phrase last year
and apparently there were a bunch of them.
http://citynoise.org/article/4639 has a picture of the front of the
Seattle Labor Temple, and the comments underneath indicate one person
doesn't even know what it is, and another person gives a description
that hearkens back to the 1919 general strike...