05 July 2007
Pollo Loco
I rallied briefly on Monday to complete the paper for the Aussies, fresh off the airplane and running on fumes. The effort disrupted my body's attempt to get back in this hemisphere. I sent it and then collapsed, barely coming out of the fog until this morning. I am not sure the travel is worth it anymore, and I suppose that is why action and danger, or even long periods in the sub-stratosphere are a young person's game.
I had been working on a piece on Sacco and Vanzetti, the two Italian bombers, trying to get it to line up with the Bombs-Bursting-in-Air thing, and link the latest Muslim madness to the anarchist bomber tradition of the not-so-recent past to the recent (and unlamented) Baader-Meinhof-style gangs of Europe.
The Dog got completely in the way. He is no student of history, though if he could talk, I'm sure he would remind me that bombs are not a new phenomenon in our social lives. They were commonplace only two decades ago in Europe, and common enough in America only a century ago.
Then, it wasn't the Muslims who were throwing them, but that was a function of immigration.
I happened on a fine new translation of Alexandre Skirda's history of European anarchy by Paul Sharkey that lays out the ideology of terror bombing across the 19th and 20th centuries. Skirda does a fine job of tracing anarchism across the 19th and 20th centuries, and linking the rhetoric with the orators, and the factions they inspired.
He is remarkably even-handed in his treatment of the bombers and the states that sought to squash them. Maybe it was easier with some temporal distance. He argues that the core problem for anarchists has been creation of a revolutionary movement in the furtherance of a future society in which the individual is not compromised, which is an internal contradiction.
The Muslims appear to at least be consistent, and have that martyrdom thing going for them. In my mind, that puts them on the fascist side of the scale, wanting to bring on the triumph of the commune of faith. That makes me even more nervous than the anarchists, who I suspect would at least have the good grace to leave you alone after destroying your society. Still, the whole thing makes me nervous, and the mechanism is precisely the same.
That they have a thousand splinter groups and have adopted the tactics of the Bakuninists is no an aberration, but rather a celebration of the empowerment that high explosive gives to the individual. That accounts for the why it was so attractive to Sacco and Vanzetti, who felt disenfranchised by the views of the American majority of post World War One.
Nicola Sacco was a shoe-maker born in Foggia, Italy, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti was a fishmonger from Cuneo. The two were followers of Luigi Galleani, a Continental anarchist who advocated social bombings as an instrument of change. At the time, Italian anarchists ranked at the top of the US government's list of dangerous enemies, and had been identified as suspects in several violent bombings and an attempted mass poisoning that sounds suspiciously modern.
Galleani and eight associates were deported in June of 1919, while those who were not swept up went deep underground.
Sacco and Vanzetti were accused of the killings of a shoe factory paymaster and a security guard in the course of appropriating around $15,000 from the payroll of the plant in South Braintree, Massachusetts on an April afternoon in 1920.
The trial was spectacular, and even included an O.J. moment when the prosecution forced Sacco to try on a cap found at the scene, which did not fit.
The two were executed after due process, of course, and everyone seemed to be pretty happy about it, though there has been some lingering doubt as to whether they actually did it. The weight of the evidence appears to suggest that they did. I support summary execution of terrorists as a general proposition, but prefer for those executed to actually have committed the act. It seems more elegant that way.
I think the dog agrees. He has been my faithful companion while the ex is traveling, in fact, waiting patiently for me to get off the airplane at midnight on Saturday. My older boy picked him up and dropped him at Big Pink while he went on to the Pentagon for the nightshift, looking out for terrorists.
He woofs softly at first light when he is ready for his first constitutional; quite the gentleman, and one almost forgets their common heritage with the Wolf.
I was reminded of that this morning in the conduct of what has become known as the case of the Pollo Loco, or the crazy chicken, and act of domestic terror.
The dog is getting on in years, and I always hold my breath to see whether he will keep walking and sniffing, or suddenly sit down on his haunches, announcing that he is done with it. He was pretty active this walk and we were on the grounds of the Culpepper Assisted Living Complex, which has nicely manicured grounds and no abandoned Styrofoam lunchboxes from the immigrants as many of the other streets do.
I considered it safe, but it is adjacent to one of the garden apartment complexes that are filled with far too many people. We were strolling along the fence line when I realized to my horror that someone had thrown a well-gnawed charcoal-chicken carcass over the fence. The Dog was on it before I saw it.
The only time he had ever bit me was during a difference of opinion over a dead bird some years ago, and regardless of age, he was committed to that dead chicken and all those sharp bones.
I was committed to not getting bit with sharp teeth and old grease, and to get it away from him without having the sharp splintery bones jam in his throat in his haste to dispose of it before I could outfox him.
I got him moving on the leash so he did not have time to start gnawing- thankfully he wears a harness and I did not have to worry about snapping his neck. I kept him moving and part of the carcass fell away, since it was big. There was still the breastbone and about six inches of other associated parts of avian sternum in his mouth, but happily I was well prepared with other treats for bribery, and he is nothing if not a greedy old fellow.
I got him to take two other treats as he remained fiercely attached to the chicken. It was a little amusing to watch him drooling around all the stuff he was trying to keep in there, but I kept him walking briskly so he would have no time to chew.
I finally got the last piece as he attempted to sort out the two doggie treats and the carcass and tied the leash up to the ornamental bench at the back entrance to the building so I could go back two blocks picking up chicken bones so no one else would have to freak out about their dog.
I probably should have picked up the beer bottles over by Culpepper, where men from the apartments camped out last night, but I contented myself with the chicken parts, since they were the clearest and most present danger.
The gentrification of the neighborhood that is in progress will probably take care of things and force the charcoal pollo-eaters elsewhere. It is one of those ironies that the global warming is bringing the rich back to the city from the suburbs to save money, which has the practical effect of driving up the real estate prices and forcing the poor out where they have to drive further in their older cars.
Besides, chicken bones and beer are not problems in the same league as Sacco and Vanzetti or the new Doctor's Plot.
Still, it does remind you why people get a little nervous about the new people in the neighborhood, you know?
Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com