vtlozano.bsky.social
Writer. 59. AF kid. Pub/Corp librarian. Sysadmin @ UT In ATX (‘83-‘24) A new life in PDX w Alyssa.
Ages 14-18: 60 miles daily bw a cotton town of 600 & a bougie Cath high in Corpus. Escaped to local segregated graveyard, read “Time” mags. Remember it all
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See you later, alligator.
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Institutions in the federal government come and go, no matter how many times they were mentioning the federalist papers. They can also shrink into very tiny mushrooms, as well it’s tiny mushroom season.
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Farmers market chicory. The year round produce in the PNW is in a whole different league from the annual hot sauce festival in Austin TX. Each great, each different, of course. But, even in January—wow.
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Number three. The ejaculation will come from a 78-year-old man who will be 80 in two years. And who hasn’t had a real unassisted erection since the first bush administration.
This I believe. And I believe that Jack Handy probably does too.
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Not especially friendly comb-over weather.
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Thank you, Carole. Portland is the perfect place to be. Sending hugs to you and your wonderful family.
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22. P.S.: Please re-watch every season of “Arrested Development” as well. Take care. Peace out. Vince. : )
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22. I have been and am very very fortunate and privileged as someone who has always had the kindness of strangers at my side. I wish each and every person their necessary angels. And with that, my first long thread at BlueSky is done.
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21. I am clean out of fucks to give as a 60 year old Latino man of color who has seen his fair share of …well, of having to clap along to the “Lawrence Welk Show” that is this country. And “Lawrence Welk” has turned into Nashville, and Branson MO.
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20. I like that anyone can interact on the BlueSky platform. But I won’t be responding to, or reacting to any reactions here. I simply don’t have the bandwidth right now. And I’m not sure I care to, honestly. I’m about to turn 60, and am clean out of fucks to give.
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19. Much of the environmental damage of the 70s was ameliorated. & it will again, but with the very real difference of climate change. So: dwell with care in your communities. Connect with other communities. And turn yr grief & anger and rage into something mutually and collectively self-preserving
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18. In conclusion, stay well. Dwell in the communities that offer you loving, sanity preserving self worth and self care. And collective protection. There are many of them. Because the physical, spiritual and psychic violence of the U.S.—that *is* its late capitalist product.
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17. The next phase of the American Experiment. The US tends to sweep its collective traumas under the rug; and then, about 10 years later, to memorialize them in Oscar winning films. The early to mid 1970s is a golden age of cinema because of this.
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16. So, yes. Please watch “Soft White Underbelly” on YouTube. And then purchase the iOS app and support the project. Because it is, simultaneously, a roadmap of late capitalist damage, ruins, survival and grief. And more survival. This project will be archived as foundational in the next phase
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15. Even collective grief and rage are metered. I say this as someone who just survived a very sloppy medical system where almost any medical provider—even if they’re unskilled or dumb as a rock—the ability to prescribe feel-goods. “Dr. Spaceman” from 30 Rock is not fiction. : )
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14. Watch, in small doses, the interviews conducted under the project “Soft White Underbelly.” It’s an astonishing, heartbreaking series that humanizes the cost of all of these amnesiac polices we’re asked to live under; so that we can cope by escaping to our favorite cafe, bar, or winery.
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13. One day the homeless encampments were there, under every freeway overpass. The next day, they were gone. The difference in the PDX, it seems to me, is that it’s harder to forget; and public policy argues about what to do about such an entrenched problem. But it doesn’t try to sweep them away.
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12. Because it was a typical busy night for Portland Street Response. And everyone in the PDX has seen so much homelessness for many years. As a new transplant here, I do see a difference. Governor Abbott used his emergency powers under COVID to sweep homeless encampments out of sight.
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11. Americans have always lived in the ruins. The poor and the working class have always had to figure out ways to live in the ruins. 4 nights ago, for the first time, I had to say with a homeless person in mid 30 degree weather—as it took an hour and a half for Portland Street Response to arrive.
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11. They’ve all been burned to the ground before. Repeatedly. And, like the devastating forest fires in the Pacific Northwest, the pines always up first. Helped by the Matsusake mushroom. ( Please, please read “The Mushroom at the End of the World.”
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10. Used as remembrance, used as necessary grief, used as collective psychic mutual care and mutual self-care. Remember that as this hollowed out ceremony we approach will happen in 2 days. It’s all theater—bad theater—of American institutions that have been hard won. They’ve all been burned to the
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9. Violence has been a feature, not a bug—the entire existence of this nation. Even as it’s made astonishing course directions that remind everyone the arc of history, long, bends toward…not inauguration speeches. But something like a long memory that can be tapped into, and used.
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8. It will be helpful to remember that the U.S. has been a volatile experiment its entire life. The Haymarket Riots. Cuba. The Rosenbergs. McCarthyism. Kennedy, MLK, Kennedy, Nixon, Vietnam. Philadelphia. The spate of pipe bombings in the early 1970s. On and on and on.
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7. Everyone has lived through a decade of rotting out, online silo’ing, and more loss than anyone can process. Or fully face. The hope, however, is in that very cataclysmic grief, which turns to anger, and then to rage. And which can then be channeled into resistance.
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6. So. Yes. Chaos can cut both ways. But everyone is exhausted. And filled with unacknowledged grief. And unacknowledged Long Covid deficits. No judgement. Everyone has lived thru more deaths than WW1, WW2, and Vietnam—combined.
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6. But. Chaos can cut both ways. The far right may be good at inciting chaos. But they’ve caught up to the bumper. &, till Midterms, they’re going to be digesting a metric shit ton of bumper breakfast, lunch, & dinner. & chaser. & midnight snack.
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5. All of that is what many people will face as the country enters a second Trump Administration. Only this time, there is the hope of, we’ve seen this movie before.
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4. All of that unprocessed grief that’s been normalized & weaponized as social pressure to get back out to restaurants; to movies; to awards ceremonies; to every space that capitalism has metered. ( You pay, we give you a space to park yourself & your car.)
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3. Zuck and Meta are pushers: no different at all from the Sacklers, and opioids.
With the same comforting self-delusion that the companies are healers and community builders. Absolute bullshit.
On top of the collective trauma of 3 million COVID dead in the US
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2. I’ve just survived a fairly severe case of Seratonin Syndrome. ( You can Google.) And it’s been one of the most awful experiences of my life. You can understand, then, why it’s awful for Zuckerberg’s platforms to slow kill online identities someone has gotten addicted to.
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…and insomniac Ketamine chaser. After chaser.