My Heart Goes Out to the Guys Killed in the Mine (and, of course their loved ones)
The summer before I was married in 1957 I worked simultaneously two industrial jobs to earn enough money to support us in Oxford for a year.
I particularly remember one at an aircraft plant as a major parts packer.
The first week the guys hazed me a bit and then we became closest friends as a group working together. They nicknamed me "preacher" as I was studying theology then. They knew I was working two full time jobs 6 days a week, so they would do whatever they could to let me rest -- piling stuff around me when I would nap during a break to let me sleep longer.
Most of the guys had come from working in the oil wells in Texas, so shared much already. One day this huge guy came at me and claimed I was trying to make it with his wife. Suddenly he stopped and left. I looked around and my buddies were putting their switch blades back in their pockets.
Working together in such jobs really draws guys together in special ways -- we had some women in the factory, but working in separate areas.
What a loss to have so many guys blown to hell at once by a boss CEO who obviously gave not a damn about them or their safety.
All this is small instance of an America that is being divided by a global economy which puts profits above the value of people. Pretty obviously our industrial jobs have migrated to China, etc. where workers are treated like dirt compared with most of our workers. They can make it cheaper and Walmart is there to get us to buy Chinese rather than American. It is a new world -- financial -- not military -- and even Obama does not seem to have caught on yet.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent [blind copies]
I particularly remember one at an aircraft plant as a major parts packer.
The first week the guys hazed me a bit and then we became closest friends as a group working together. They nicknamed me "preacher" as I was studying theology then. They knew I was working two full time jobs 6 days a week, so they would do whatever they could to let me rest -- piling stuff around me when I would nap during a break to let me sleep longer.
Most of the guys had come from working in the oil wells in Texas, so shared much already. One day this huge guy came at me and claimed I was trying to make it with his wife. Suddenly he stopped and left. I looked around and my buddies were putting their switch blades back in their pockets.
Working together in such jobs really draws guys together in special ways -- we had some women in the factory, but working in separate areas.
What a loss to have so many guys blown to hell at once by a boss CEO who obviously gave not a damn about them or their safety.
All this is small instance of an America that is being divided by a global economy which puts profits above the value of people. Pretty obviously our industrial jobs have migrated to China, etc. where workers are treated like dirt compared with most of our workers. They can make it cheaper and Walmart is there to get us to buy Chinese rather than American. It is a new world -- financial -- not military -- and even Obama does not seem to have caught on yet.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent [blind copies]
posted by Ed Kent at 10:30 AM
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