Sunday, Grey Sunday or Our Chinese American Shopping Excurtion.

I was awoken this past Sunday by a text from a friend who needed support in her mission to go shopping. It read “Wake up and & come be American with me. Going to Keene to support the economy of China :-)” I slept through that first text and the subsequent text read “Come onnnn! Don't make me be American alone!!”. I appreciate someone who uses proper capitalization in their texts.

Shopping is nothing new to her but on this particular occasion she was off to what she called “Box-store Hell”. Like many people she tends to shop local and supports small businesses but even the most conscious shopper has to, once in a while compromise their beliefs and their morals in order to satisfy that nephew or niece that wants the latest toy that's been shoved down their pre-consumer throats or maybe just a big box of Crayola crayons. Our rational is that “sometimes you have to live in the gray”.

If black Friday is the day that everyone shops and businesses in effect are in the black, and White Saturday is the day that all the white collar criminal businessmen in their white picket fenced houses and their, most likely, white skin, count their white profits in their white hands , then Grey Sunday is when well-meaning, conscious people compromise their morals and dive into the Box stores and Starbucks en mass.

She picked me up on her way to Keene for what we dubbed our Chinese-American Christmas Excursion. Our slogan: “Be an American, buy Chinese”. I had no shopping I needed to do but I was needed to be there as a sounding board. One that would listen and reaffirm her anti consumerism rants. However, I was in need of underwear and while I could have gone to a local shop and paid three times as much for the same product is was practical for me to give in to the convenience and value that the big box stores offer.

We arrived at our box-store destination and immediately dove into the muck by going to Starbucks and ordering ourselves a mocha. She was feeling particularly festive and got herself the Christmasy peppermint mocha. We determined that there was likely no Peppermint, or mint of any kind for that matter, in the drink. We also determined that this drink (and the entire shopping experience) would be much better if we added some rum to it. To our dismay, and that of our server, Starbucks does not stock rum. But in spite of that it was the perfectly artificially flavored drink to go with our artificial shopping experience.

Her next challenge was to overcome her germophobia and place her hands on the shopping cart that would guide and buffer us through the store packed with holiday shoppers. With Christmas musac blasting through the isles we made our way to the Men's section to get my small task out of the way. Men's sections in stores like these are almost invariably near to the doors. This is so men can go in and do their shopping and get out without getting lost, which they most assuredly would if their clothing were somewhere in the back. We played a quick guessing game as to where my underwear was manufactured. My initial guess was Thailand. I was close. It was Laos. The inevitable and irreverent joke could not be contained. “Little Laotian hands all over my drawers, Some people pay good money for that.” We were lucky that we had only ourselves to offend which is close to impossible.

We continued on and found an array of gifts, the crayons, colored sharpie's and other sundry items. I was struck by a lovely over-sized Batman coloring book and thought of my friend Scotty, who is both literally and figuratively the biggest Batman fan I know. I made the comment that the line art was too nice to ruin by marking them up with crayons. Me shopping partner jumped to a famous line form the film 'Chasing Amy', “Your mother's a tracer!”. I replied with “I'll trace a chalk line around your dead fucking body”. We were so lucky that we had only each other to hear ourselves and if you've never seen 'Chasing Amy' and don't know Scotty, this last paragraph is meaningless to you.

We made it out of our first stop with relative ease and made our way to the next box. Upon entering we were greeted with a painfully overwhelming scent of clove accompanied by terrible jazz remakes of classic Christmas carols. I think it was intend to induce holiday cheer but it only induced a headache. Two headache actually as my shopping partner immediately said “I just want to stab my fucking brain.” We searched for the one item she needed from this store. We couldn't find it immediately but neither of us were willing to interact with anyone else, not even to locate this item. The burn of clove was getting worse and the carols were now driving us from the store like Eddie Van Halen's 'Eruption' drove Manuel Noriega from the Vatican embassy.

Just before our senses collapsed under the weight of their psychological warfare she found her item had we made our way to the crowded check out lines. We assessed the lines based on number of people, the items they had. The last factor, and always the hardest to determine, was the intelligence of the cashier. We don't know what their educational and vocational background. I tend to believe the ones the you would guess are less intelligent would likely have more retail experience. All factors seeming to add up to the same we the less cramped line. We found our selves behind one customer that was struggle with an 18' artificial evergreen garland that was frosted with some sort of white powder that simulated snow. As she contended with the faux decoration the faux snow began to flake off creating a small faux snow storm on and around this customer. as the airborne faux flakes lingered I ask my companion "What do think this shit's made of?" She turn her head and answer in the sweetest matter-of-fact voice "The dreams of Chinese babies."

Soon after getting in line the register next to us opened up and we found ourselves first in line. The Oafish cashier looked to be the simplest of the lot and I found myself feleling confident in his abilities. In a deep polite voice he asked “Did you find everything you needed?” My shopping partner relied “Everything except hand sanitizer”. Then to her extreme pleasure the sweet oafish cashier gave her 50% off her purchase. At this point I would have said "sêntê khuâloq" (except I hadn't looked up "merry Christmas" in Chinese until just now to write this sentence) but I settled for "Merry Christmas".

We do our best to support our local economy. We know the owners and workers of our local stores on a personal level. We have options for quality fair trade coffees in our town. But you can't usually find the right Crayons or the game system that everyone wants, and at times you just need to get socks and underwear without breaking the bank. When you make these purchases we can at the very least pay homage to the Chinese, or Laotian or Bangladese child is counting on our purchase to make what little living they have. And while we'd all love to be able to dictate the terms of our shopping, sometimes you just have to bite the bullet, buy at the box stores, drink your corporate coffee and shut the fuck up!

This Also Brattleboro

[The following piece was written on August 10, 2011 in response to two murders that occurred and the various reactions and attention they received. Written origianlly as a "note" on facebook it was subsequently picked-up by the Brattleboro Commons and ran in the August 24, 2011 issue. http://www.commonsnews.org/site/site04/story.php?articleno=3954&page=1#.Tk6kHu9bQiQ.facebook
I'm posting this here now primarily to boost my blog activity and in an attempt to consolidate my writing into one location on the web.]


A Few Words on Brattleboro:

Brattleboro is my home. I was born at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital on December 21 1973. I've lived here for the great majority of my nearly 38 years. I attended Brattleboro schools, played for its sports teams, been involved in its arts, and have remained an active member of the community. In Brattleboro I've seen unspeakable beauty as well as horrific ugliness. I've experienced every exquisite pleasure, and devastating pain. I've fallen in love and have felt heart break. Here I've reached my highest peaks of achievement and fallen to the lowest depths of my being. I've watched it grow from the rural, working-class town that it was in the early 80's to the lively arts community that it has become. Its proximity to nearby major cities has made it destination for those seeking a slower pace and many from all over have adopted Brattleboro as their home. SIT and world learning have help to spawn a fairly visible international community as well.

Brattleboro is often known for its progressive forward thinking and acceptance (beyond mere tolerance). At any given pub or coffee shop you're likely to see doctors and lawyers chumming it up with construction workers and bartenders in a free exchange of ideas and opinions. Lines of class, gender, age and race become obsolete in this setting.

However there is also within Brattleboro a less publicized, but fairly well-known, culture of poverty, drugs and violence. It was there when Brattleboro was still the rural town I knew as a child. Some elements of my upbringing brought me into these dark places often quietly hidden on small side streets mere blocks from downtown. I've seen some of the worst behavior and acts that one can do to another human being and have known many people who have lost their lives to this environment. This is also Brattleboro. It's part of a greater community. I've seen both sides and at times have had to teeter on the edge between the two.

I'm writing this piece in response to the shooting at the Brattleboro Food Co-op on August 9, just over one week after a drug related shooting near Brattleboro. The murder of Michael Martin took place in the hub of (for lack of a better term) gentrified Brattleboro while the murder of Melissa Barratt took place on a quiet back road outside of town. Both shootings were “execution-style” but for vastly different reasons of which we'll never know all. We know that Barratt's murder was in part drug related and the details of Martin's murder are still being uncovered.

My reaction, the community's reaction, all of our reactions to these events vary greatly. While it is often easy for people to accept (not to be confused with condone) a drug related murder, we have trouble understanding a white-collar or working-class murder. Make no mistake that the shock was felt equally in their respective communities. Both of these people had friends, family and community and the men who performed these heinous acts have robbed us all.

In all of this I'm reminded of the image of the Yin-Yang in its simplest interpretation. The dark encompassing the light and the light encompassing the dark. We have seen in the “light” of Brattleboro a dark element that is not often encountered but surely is there. With that in mind know that within that darkness of poverty and drugs there must be some light. It's a balance that can't be undone.