Occupying A Chill on My Liver

"A chill on my liver..." Film buffs will recognize that funny phrase from the delightfully quirky 1953 film Beat the Devil, directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida, Robert Morley (playing the role that Sydney Greenstreet would have played had he still been acting), Peter Lorre and Bernard Lee (who would go on to widespread recognition with his appearances as "M" in the James Bond movies). If you haven't seen it, rent it from Netflix, or better yet, buy it from Amazon. I guarantee you'll want to watch it more than once.

I was out all day Monday at Olympia's Capitol Campus for the massive protest by the Occupy people, many of whom had come down from neighboring Seattle for the event, and I even saw one guy from Michigan there. It was a cold day and I stood outsideway too long, with the result that I caught a chill on my liver and haven't felt good since then.

I did of course manage to miss the arrests -- some 40 in all -- that took place, having been on the steps of one of the legislative office buildings some distance away from the excitement while many of my cohorts stormed into a revenue meeting being held by some legislators. I didn't go in myself because of some residual claustrophobia which I brought back from Vietnam and which rears its ugly head whenever I get surrounded by a large number of people in a confined space, like a hallway, even if they are largely people who are on my side. Hiding for your life while hunkered down in a very narrow sandbagged bunker full of fat and hungry rats while mortar rounds and rockets are landing next to where you are can do that to a guy...

Our issues? The usual things, the banksters, the 1%, the disparate income and wealth distribution, etc. etc., but there were also a massive number of teachers protesting the proposed cuts to education, home health care workers protesting the proposed rollbacks to their programs, union workers protesting calls by Republicans to do an Ohio-and-Wisconsin-like dismantling of collective bargaining, and many more, including a bunch of others like me, who don't have any particular dog in the fight (I'm retired and the state can't really do much to me over my retirement pay or my non-existent working conditions...) but who wanted to stand up and be counted anyway.

It was a long day and I got tired and, as I say, chilled by being outdoors in the cold when I wasn't used to it. I can't imagine those poor people having to bear up in it while they are living in those flimsy "occupy" tents down by the water.

Anyway, I'm not feeling so good now; I think I am coming down with something. I'll likely take some more time off to rest and recuperate. See you back here in a few days.

In the meantime, keep up the good fight! Find an Occupy event near you and join it. Make your voice heard against the deafening roar of the Police State pepper cannons and the inane prattling of the bubbleheaded cheerleaders on Faux "News".