Haiku 2

Recently I sat in on an open mike ukulele session. Just as a listener, but since I'm learning to play the uke, maybe some day Ill join in. Anyway, here's a haiku I wrote while I was there. The house "band" was playing a funny variation of the classic cowboy song, "Ghost Riders in the Sky." Their version was called "Ghost Chickens in the Sky."


ghost chickens clucking
flea-jumping ukuleles
Hawaiian shirts laugh

The Return of the Bomb-Throwing Anarchists?

There’s one facet of our western history that I’ve never really understood and that’s the bomb-throwing anarchists. Anarchists were around in Europe, England and the US in the late 19^th and early 20^th Centuries. Mostly what I remember of them are seeing old political cartoons that depicted them as bushy-bearded madmen dressed head to toe in black and poised in mid-throw holding a round “bomb” with a burning fuse. What were they so mad about? Why did they throw bombs?

The image of the bomb throwing anarchist was cemented in the public’s eye in 1886 during the Haymarket Riot in Chicago. Labor Unions, socialists, and anarchists had organized a nationwide strike in support of an 8-hour workday. When the police arrived at the rally to disperse the crowds, someone threw dynamite at the policemen. Eight policemen and an unknown number of civilians were killed in the ensuing riot. Prior to this event, anarchist newspapers had been calling for the use of the newly invented dynamite to kill police. The Haymarket Riot made the public’s fears about anarchists a reality.

These anarchists were brought to my mind by the recent burning of a “Street of Dreams” subdivision in Seattle. It’s still way too early to know exactly what happened, but an eco group has claimed responsibility and the government is calling it an act of domestic terrorism. Anyway, an entire brand new deluxe subdivision was burned to the ground. Is it terrorism? A political statement? What were they hoping to accomplish?

I guess that these kinds of actions have been a part of western culture for a long time. The original Luddites were textile workers in England whose jobs were lost by the rise of industrialization. Before industrialization, textile production was literally a cottage industry. People made textiles, cloth, and fabrics in their homes. These displaced workers tried to sabotage the factories and machines that put them out of business. Even those American patriots who caused so much trouble for the British with the Boston Tea Party were making a political statement through violence, property damage, and loss. Both of these groups resorted to violence when other recourses weren’t available to them—much like the anarchists.

So I wonder. Are today’s eco-terrorists just the latest incarnation of this sentiment? When people can no longer stand what is happening around them, is it part of our cultural disposition to destroy the objects that represent the source of our unhappiness? Are the eco-terrorists today’s incarnation of the bomb throwing anarchist? I think they probably are just that.