Remember to give thanks...if you're allowed

"All I know is that first, you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a human being, goddamnit. My life has value." - "Network," 1976

It's no secret that if you're a regular working man or woman in America these days, you've taken one body shot after another for a long, long time.

Why? Because we're at the bottom of the ladder. The lowest brick in the foundation. We live, and until we climb out of that class, nobody cares. If we never rise, nobody ever cares. And it's getting worse.

We've all read about major corporations posting record profits as the stock market edges ever higher, but that doesn't change the fact that most of us haven't seen a raise in years. Prices continue to rise while products shrink, and our pockets seem a little emptier than they used to be.

On top of all that, there's still that trembling ghost of organized labor that manages to rattle enough chains that the more sharp-eared among us can't help but realize that this wasn't always our path.

Yea. This game is rigged. It always has been, always will be.

But there's one thing that we - the people who wait your tables, tie your Christmas tree to your car, pack the shelves at your favorite store - always had, and that was the prospect of a couple days off this time of year, no questions asked. (I believe they're called "holidays.")

When I was growing up, TV portrayed them as those few days when the things that perennially haunted us, the concerns over race and color and creed and social status, didn't matter. We could all come together, at least for Thanksgiving dinner or on Christmas morning, and no matter how rough-and-tumble our lives were, things were lovely for those few hours. You spend your time with family and friends, celebrate life, and thank God you have the good fortune to still be breathing.

More and more, though, this is becoming a thing of the past, and it appears that closing a business on a holiday is simply too great a sacrifice for those black-hearted bosses whose compulsive pursuit of profit would be almost admirable if it wasn't so repugnant.

It's the new fad, you see. Instead of just making workers come in incredibly early on Black Friday, open up on Thanksgiving, too.

The Staples on Route 23 in Riverdale will be open from 8 p.m. to midnight on Thursday, which is awesome if you just can't wait until 6 a.m. the next day to buy your legal pads and $9 pens at super discounts.

Maybe their workers will be able to catch a late dinner with the people manning the Sports Authority down the highway - they'll be there from 6 p.m. to midnight, before catching a six-hour respite and coming back in.

All of them have it better than those at Walmart, which will open at 8 a.m. on Thursday and stay that way until midnight Friday. I'd hate to have drawn the short straw at that place.

These aren't the only stores doing this, of course, but they were the first three I called. And although I'm sure the corporate masters have some way of justifying the new practice to themselves and the public, it doesn't change the fact that what they're doing is a kick in the teeth to everything we believe Thanksgiving to be about. Plus, it's awfully hard to look forward to a good turkey dinner knowing you've got to cut it short to go back to Walmart.

I'm no fool, though. This is the United States, and there is nothing that won't be laid down at the altar of the almighty dollar, especially if it's just the happiness of the working people. But it's more than a little ironic that we are losing this uniquely American holiday in such a uniquely American way: by giving it up for some extra cash.

But hey, screw it. This is it. Welcome to the new world order. No raises, no unions, no worker protections, no holidays, no mercy. Don't like it? We'll fire you. Cling to someone else's bootstraps and convince them to sign your paycheck.

After all, as one manager at a store I called said, they do have some incredible deals that day.

Well. Thank God for that.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/news/233019371_Remember_to_give_thanks___if_you_re_allowed.html?page=all

Tags: Black Friday, Business, Greed, Holidays, Thanksgiving,

Tools of the Trade

Tags: Boxing, Sports

Cajun fiddler Michael Doucet to play Ringwood Public Library

It might seem odd to hear the strains of a Cajun fiddler emanating from a library in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. But then Michael Doucet and his band, BeauSoleil, have always made a habit of bringing the sounds of southwestern Louisiana to the places you’d least expect.

It wasn’t always the 62-year-old musician’s intent to carry the torch for Cajun music. Like so many of his generation, he started playing folk and rock as a kid after watching the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. Yet there was always an allure to the native style that soaked the very fabric of his home state.

Pianos and fiddles were always present at family get-togethers, he said, and he learned the songs and their French lyrics in the same fashion that those from another background might learn Christmas carols. But it wasn’t until he was a high school senior that he noticed that the older generation of musicians was beginning to die off, and he realized that when they did, their music and history would go with them.

He made the choice to take music more seriously, and in the years since, he has become a sort of "semi-anthropologist" on Cajun music and culture, studying, taping, and recording the great fiddle masters of years gone by.

And although he started his band, BeauSoleil, in 1975, he never thought that, 38 years and some 35 albums later, he would be a two-time Grammy winner who has reached the highest of the music industry’s heights.

"We did that for fun. But we never thought it would sustain us… nobody thought about making a living doing this," he said with a laugh.

All the while, he’s kept true to his roots. The songs are still sung in French, and, with their slow, deliberate moods and the natural rhythms, reflect the swampy climate they rose from. There’s a mix of cultures present in every note, and the Spanish, Native American, and African influences can be heard with varying degrees of prominence.

While some might think of Cajun music as simply "party music," he said, songs like "Carencro," which chronicles a tale of lost love and murder, reflect the darker side of his writing style.

"The rhythm represents the cadence of the environment… I think that really affects it," he said.

And although most listeners outside of Louisiana and France might not understand the lyrics, they won’t have a hard time gleaning the meaning of the songs from fiddle and voice alone

"Sometimes, you don’t actually need to know what the song is about," he said. "It’s about a certain visceral feeling, an understanding, that we all share. And I learned it in French, so I think it’s good to keep it in French… I’m too ornery to change it."

That orneriness appears to run in his blood, and Doucet, who graduated from Louisiana State University with a degree in English literature, said that the band’s name derives from a nickname given to one of his relatives, Joseph Broussard, who led an eighteenth-century rebellion in Nova Scotia against the English.

Captured and later deported, he eventually led other French-speaking countrymen — the Acadians — to the Louisiana territory that Doucet still resides in.

"It’s been kind of a family battle cry for a long time," he said of the word. "And we were asked to play in France in 1976, and they said, ‘[Your band] must have a name! So I said, ‘Yea, BeauSoleil.’"

There won’t be a setlist for the show at the Ringwood Public Library, which is slated to start at 2 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 17, but that’s okay. The band never has one anyway, and he treats every audience differently. Once the place fills up, he said, he’ll figure out what they need to hear.

"It’s all serendipitous," he said.

For more information, go to ringwoodlibrary.org/newlegacy.shtml.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/arts_entertainment/music/231854291_Cajun_fiddler_Michael_Doucet_to_play_Ringwood_Public_Library.html?page=all

Tags: BeauSoleil, Cajun fiddle, Louisiana, Michael Doucet, Music,

Halloween musings in a sleepy cemetery

There was no more perfect place to be at midnight on Halloween than on a lantern-lit tour of the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Yes, it was just as creepy as it sounds, and even though the walk isn't meant to scare, the atmosphere alone makes it not for the faint of heart.

Still, the place is absolutely remarkable. Opened in 1849, it was built around what's called the "Old Dutch Burying Ground" - the same one where the body of Washington Irving's restless horseman is said to reside. There seems to be no end to the gravestones, and they are here, there and everywhere, 40,000 scattered over 90 acres in clusters and rows and rectangles, under ornate monuments and broken slabs and weeping angels.

Revolutionary war officers lie next to painters and poets, and the gargantuan mausoleums of Gilded Age industrialists like Carnegie and Rockefeller sit just across from the low, sturdy grave of labor leader Samuel Gompers. It's a cross-section of America's finest, and a reminder that no matter how much we accomplish in this life, we all end up in the same marble-toothed fields.

Part of the cemetery was actually constructed on an old Revolutionary War redoubt, and from that vantage point high on a hill, one can see not only the ancient trenches threading their way through the earth, but also the section of ground the headless horseman rose from before his midnight gallops.

Irving's own grave is not far away, and his tombstone stands just a little higher, a little straighter, than those littered around him.

Sleepy Hollow has changed mightily since the writer's heyday, of course, and although some landmarks from his famed story remain - most notably the Pocantico River, which was the supposed safe haven for the hapless Ichabord Crane - it looks more like a run-down college town than a place of historic significance. Like acid rain on granite, the years have worn away its charm, and what remains is not always pleasant to look at it.

And, fascinating though the tour was, I could not help but gaze at the stones with the same measure of dread I always feel when in a graveyard. After all, it's a glimpse into your own inevitable future, and that disconcerting truth is one we'd all prefer to ignore until our final hours (and even then, not so much.)

But at the same time, visits to these places can be both humbling and motivating. It's good to realize now and again that there actually is an "end of the line," that the four-digit number at the receiving end of that dash is hurtling towards us with every waking hour, and when it arrives, it will not care whether or not we feel our chapters are finished.

Therefore, I concluded, it must be our job to pack that dash with as much as we can, enough so that if there is some way for us to look back on the lives we've led, we'll be able to say that we missed out on nothing.

Chuck Palahniuk once wrote that "All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring." I disagree. He kills us anyway. But as long as there's that chance that someone can one day look upon my grave, as I looked upon Irving's, and say, "This was a man who made a difference - this is a man whose work lives on!" - it won't seem quite so intimidating.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/community/230936441_Halloween_musings_in_a_sleepy_cemetery.html


Tags: Halloween, Headless Horseman, History, Literature New York, Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving,

Boston, we love you madly...