comments from paula

[Greg Nowell]

Before I became a professional--I use the term
advisedly, because when I was in retail I knew what I
lacked (health care, paid vacations, holidays like the
4th of July and Labor Day)--I spent a number of years
as a waiter, among other things.  Probably my worst
stint was on the night crew at Sears.  I was the guy
who put on the rubber gloves and pulled butts out of
the urinal.   And when I'm in the airport and I see
"the suits" tossing butts or what-have-you into the
urinals I always want to kick 'em.   It was disgust
with being a waiter which drove me to grad skool.  So
I've kicked around in the underclass.  When I was a
janitor I referred, among my friends, to the
distinction between the "lifers" and those of us that
were passing through.  I was on foodstamps for a while
and posted earlier on this list about the difference
between being poor and having no money.

My best friend of 30 years is owns a bar in Oakland and
before becoming petty bourgeois tended bar for others.
He's brilliant and well read.  My stepfather never went
to college and is also better read than most, certainly
better read than the passles of college grads that
prefer beer to their reading lists.

So, to list participants who are smart and struggling
in crappy jobs, I am sorry if I gave cause to offend.
But, but, but.  You kick around in some of the diners
around the Albany area and you quickly realize that
there is a huge number of people out there without the
slightest idea of Zapatistas, Green Movements, or what
have you.  In my experience the alienated
intellectual/thinking types in retail tend to migrate
to the cities like Boston where the general atmosphere
keeps them more amused.  Even if you're not in
college,  you pick a lot of stuff up.

One most assuredly doesn't need a college education to
be smart, or educated.  Alexander Pope decried the
"intellectual lumber" in the brains of well-educated
dummies.   Not to mention the outright falsehoods that
are taught (e.g., political "science") as revealed
truth.     In the world there are smart people with no
discipline (which leads to a kind of hedonism) and
disciplined people with no smarts (who are tedious, but
it's hard to figure out a reason to get rid of them,
since they jump the required hoops).   And it is
entirely possible to be smart and disciplined and
grinding away as a waiter/waitress to earn income.
But I'll tell you, you don't find many of those around
here.

-
Gregory P. Nowell
Associate Professor
Department of Political Science, Milne 100
State University of New York
135 Western Ave.
Albany, New York 12222

Fax 518-442-5298