Birthday Party (Spring 2013)

Sarah and Bob are dear friends from Wanderers circles, although Glenn and I first met them at Esozone.  Don met them at Terwilliger Plaza, where he was part of an inner circle caring for Doug Strain.

Glenn, Don and I, as an older posse of Wild West types (it seemed) joined Bob & Sarah, her sister Katie and partner Scott, Michelle and Jessie (the later of The Modern Golem, a Portland band) in a reserved room at one of Portland's best Japanese restaurants.  We enjoyed a fantastic time together.  Bob, like myself, is a Bucky Fuller fan and our memories drifted back to the D.W. Jacobs play in 2006, when I got to have breakfast with Allegra.  Bob had come to Esozone in 2008 to catch Trevor's talk on Bucky.

Yikes, first I started entering the special room in giant clod hopper shoes, such that I felt awkwardly like the monster in Young Frankenstein trying to play his role.  Then, upon removing my shoes (exposing big fuzzy white socks) I fumbled the camera, sending her crashing to the floor.

This was my third, count 'em 1, 2, 3, Nikon Coolpix S8200, the best camera ever for me.  Fortunately, a corner of the plastic housing took the brunt, cushioning the delicate internals as she hit the concrete. With an over-abundance of super-glue applied the next day, she is probably sufficiently repaired to last well into 2014 if not longer, InshAllah.

The quality of the pictures appears undiminished.

I posted to dev@democracylab this morning, after breakfast with Steve Holden, emeritus PSF chairman, writing:

"""
I have worked in the voting industry by the way, for Project Vote! aka
Americans for Civic Participation, based in DC at the time (I was support
staff for field people).  That was the Reagan-Mondale contest.  I learned a
lot about electioneering then.  Here in Portland I've been active with
DemocracyLab, which pioneers new forms of social media which might be
considered democracy-advancing.
"""

Kirby, member of Python Software Foundation, to David Mertz, Elections
Administrator, Python Dictatorship

Context:  PSF members recently voted by secret ballot, David Mertz
administrating.  We had record participation via an eVoting mechanism.
However the ballot itself was changing up to the last minute and that
confused some voters as to what they were voting on, such that the members
private list is filled with debate about whether to re-run the election.  I
say "Python Dictatorship" because we use the title "Benevolent Dictator for
Life" (BDFL) with respect to Guido, the guy who got the ball rolling and
continues to guide Python-the-language as a work in progress.

The members list archives itself is private and that's OK. Most of the content would bore those not vested to some nitty gritty level in the future of this group.

Likewise some AFSC lists and meetings are by invitation or come with a role. In government, they use the word "classified" which is short for "restricted access".

Software provides micro-management over readability and writability, such as via the POSIX ownership infrastructure (chmod etc.). At higher levels, within CMS frameworks such as Plone, administrators have all sorts of ways to curtain off and refine views.

The whole idea of "need to know" is the basis for any great piracy (enterprise) as we learn in Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (one of Bucky's).

Speaking of AFSC, the scoop there is I've been circulating some Linus Pauling House research into the roles Quakers played with regard to "Indians" (in the sense of native Americans). I'll share more of that in these blogs at a later time.

Argo (movie review)

I usually like to write my movie reviews without peeking at what others have said.  That's just a game I play with myself.  Put my cards on the table and then maybe read others' stuff after.  In this case though, I did a fair amount of homework reading more background, but not a lot more.

Like many viewers of the film, I knew parts of the movie would be fake as this was not purporting to be a documentary.  This was a Hollywood film poking somewhat ironic fun at itself, with the director being told to his face, as an actor, that old cliche about how any monkey can be taught to direct a film in a day or two.  That's just another way of saying there's an immense gulf between a well and poorly directed film and/or agency and/or whatever needs directing.

I went with a film maker and photographer who plies her trade to some degree.  Her trajectory as a filmmaker had swerved a bit.  She did community access TV after inheriting family property that needed managing.  She was present when the Latino gay bar, which means family friendly in ways you may not get if Anglophone, got bashed by out of zoners and effectively closed by violence and threats, but the news shows didn't want to touch the story.  This was over 10 years ago.  We were having beer in a successor to the space when she told me of these events, partially caught on film.

She also spied in the women's stalls for me at the movie theater and reported they were gushing about Ben Affleck, whose name I can't think of without imagining a duck selling insurance (speaking of which, a friend of my friend Jimmy Lott voices the pig in Geico commercials).  He's both the ham and the director, Ben is, in this friendly look back to the 1980s, with those intensely loud IBM Selectrics.  Good job with the haircuts too, giant glasses, people still smoking on jumbo jets.  You say John Chambers was a make-up artist?  

Arkin and Goodman make a great Hollywood.

The state of the Hollywood sign (in great disrepair) was more than interesting in that they put up a black and white version right next to it, and as the eyes go back and forth, the sense of suspended disbelief is suspended even further.  "Wow it's so realistic!" says the neural nerd, so easily fooled by screen magic, so slippery when wet, "they spared no effort in recreating the past just as it was".  Critics leave the movie feeling hoodwinked at some level, and want to study more, which is good.  I'm getting to that.  Seven Psychopaths features that Hollywood sign, as do many in The Story of Film.

I wanted to know what Iranians thought of the film and whether the Iranian blogs were getting into it.

There's a dialog to be had about which "America" we prefer, the Thirty Dark Zero one [sic], where a CIA director shows his face (Tony Soprano plays Panetta), or this more Get Smart like operation (Kyle Chandler in both), where Stansfield Turner lurks behind the scenes and you see less gun play (Mendez gets through the whole movie without one).

Like in Hollywood:  which movie lots / production companies do you want controlling / orchestrating your projections?  That's a basic question.  Which screenplays to you really want produced?  That's a question governments answer, not just movie makers.  Their job is theater.

The two CIAs collide towards the end, as Delta Force is being scrambled for something more traditionally military, whereas those playing with mirrors and shadows are told to stand down, right in the middle of their setup.  Like when Alan Arkin tries to get back into his office:  the whole fragile plan is about to crash because of some slugheads (ex Delta Force?) making a two star film.   Quality operations go on hold while the brute force crowd crushes in, ruining everything.

Because remember how that Delta Force thing went:  not well.  That's not how the hostages got out.  Rather, something transpired that left Carter out and Reagan in, and then the 444 days were over.  This film helps at least associate a higher level of intelligence with Canadians, not unlike Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine in that respect.  Why are "Americans" being hunted in the first place, and not Swiss?

Iran is strongly into film making and needs to work through karma like any people with in-common destinies.  I'm all for getting Iranian DVDs taking us through a different window.  The same tension will likely prevail:  to what level is it mind over brain and brain over brawn?  Buckminster Fuller lurks in the background of this story, as a backer of Science Fiction Land, a kind of Toon Town, or Wilderness of Mirrors.

Wanderers 2013.3.26

:: joe arnold with friend ::

Joe Arnold delivered a technical talk tonight, posing hypotheses about how humans of our type might have become so prevalent.  Could the lid have come off of something?  They appeared to break out of the box right after a period of 75K years of cold.  Had their number dwindled to where new cognitive abilities might emerge?  Emergence by emergency?

As an example of possible genetic transformations, he was looking at fragile X chromosome sequences, CGG, CGG, CGG... a metaphor for both defects (or lacunae) and self healing.  In one of the videos he shared, it appeared like the methylated CGG sequence got edited out by pinching off, though the literature to back him up was weak in this area.  He admitted his hypothesis was highly speculative.

We were a packed house.  Steve Holden with Julie from London, David Feinstein, Keith Lofstrom, Blueberry and Lynne... Buzz.  A mixed bag.  Terry Bristol was warming up for his talk, we hope not too sneering, as people sense tone over content when it's over their heads.  Lots of good banter I thought.  Terry questioned the dogma that some built in desire to reproduce and have huge families was really a driver, either now or really ever.  Heresy is his middle name.  He questions Darwin the same way some question the Gospels.

I started my day early in Woodstock as a follow-up to encountering the Peace Corps table, lots of vets last night at Lucky Lab, and wanting to chat more with the Sierra Leone guy (later the Balkans, also Peace Corps).  We'd met here before.  After I raised the topic of Quakers and slavery, the US Civil War, he talked about a route some former slaves took, to safer Canada and then back to Africa via Halifax.

Suzanne joined us and helped steer the conversation, which I was happy to have her do (something she's good at).  Then shopping at Trader Joe's, which I'd boycotted for awhile, over some fish issue, but now am happy enough to trade with again (fish issue resolved).

Joe is our psychiatrist Wanderer who lives well outside Portland.  He comes to the lectures and Heathman dinners and we respect him a lot.  We've done retreats at his place.  We come out of the woodwork when he shares his latest thinking.

The canvas he painted included this ultra-shy girl whose grandfather later turned out to have Fragile X syndrome.  Recent breakthroughs in genetic science had allowed identification of this phenomenon, a long piece of methylated X chromosome, of up to 2000 CGG tri-nucleotides.

Joe's talk was about the history of the human species and related models, since Lucy.  He did a cave painting like sketch of forks and branches, hominid types.  How did they spread out of Africa, after a certain bottleneck?  How low did the numbers go when the planet froze that time? He was referencing the mitochondrial record, something David had spoken about earlier, at the Wanderer's retreat (the rate of mitochondrial mutation blurs what seemed a clear picture of "Eve" at one point).

Earlier:  a one frame cartoon that came to me.  Eve handing Adam an Apple iPhone: "it's for you" she says.  Feeding Adam's delirium he's channeling (talking to) God?  Lots of interpretations.  Actually it was the "snake" talking, or some brand of dragon maybe, depending on your mythos (frequency).

I thought Wanderers were on their best behavior.  Joe's talk got us rialed in various ways, like screeching apes but more fluent in English.  His calm quiet manner makes the world safe for us crazies to sound off, and people butted in big time towards the end.  But that's per our model, we expect that in Wanderers.  Terry was not out of place, as I explained to Helen, you just had to know enough history.  She thanked me for the thumbnail.  Good to have such a fun event and venue.

We all seem retarded to one another one might say.  What Fuller called aberrational, aberrations, afterimages of eternity (instant).  Or we seem preternaturally fast on occasion, like circus freaks.  Relativity.  Doppler Effect.  That's how Synergetics deals with it (our relative slowness -- we all have these "sequence defects" somewhere or another).  But these are also our gifts.

Joe's message seemed ultimately hopeful, that small self-repairings could make a big positive difference.  We like it when that happens.

John Dies in the End (movie review)

This is a cheesy self-spoofy movie, just what I needed, and as it happens a spin-off of Naked Lunch in some ways (squishy ugly creatures).

I'd been saying earlier in this butler and maid scene, with a steam cleaner cameo by this other Asian, that I could use some fluff, after more queue and chauffeur duty (PDX for MVPs).

As it happened, I was off by an hour and did have time to join Thirsters after all.  What a fun meeting.  There's a new framed portrait of Bob, a surplus of cash (to be gotten rid of, McMenamins to blame, in a good way, for hosting a couple big occasions).

I hope to make it next week as well, maybe catch up on what Zari's been up to (another Wanderers guest speaker).  Peter Miller was there and we compared notes more.  Turns out we're both Princeton alums who had Walter Kaufmann as a teacher, about a decade apart.

We went around the table introducing ourselves, given 2-3 minutes, including questions we'd hope the group would take up.  People gave polished thumbnail biographies as all were personable and intelligent and used to doing so when called upon.

The story I made up (true, but not much rehearsed) was customized for a Portland audience and focused on my dad the planner, his many stints overseas, my expat upbringing.  I was thinking how, for a different group, my bio could be almost entirely about my mom the peacemaker.  Both parents were strong performers, with sis and I getting a whirlwind ride in some respects.

As I informed my passengers in the ride home from PDX (warmer than London anyway), I was greedy for entertainment that evening and might try both Thirsters and the movie, and thanks to the modern automobile that worked out.

When do I yak about the movie?  If you've ever seen Drunk and On Drugs Happy Funtime Hour, you'll have some sense of it.  I have some episodes of that in my Air, which backs up to the cloud at work.  I'm curating popular culture and keep the terabyte separate.

I should move those to the brick I suppose.  This movie is further into squishy creatures and aliens though, more like eXisTenZ.  The plot is so crazy and "stream of consciousness" in presentation that you know it's just another midsummer night's dream, so to speak.

The underlying moral, if there is one, is admirable enough.  Some physical disfigurement like a missing hand or limb should be no barrier to our deep appreciation of some adorable person, against the backdrop that is life.  It's all a big squishy meat show, no point in being too prissy about it.

Paul Giamatta is good in this, and also reminds me, in this role at least, of Wallace Shawn in My Dinner with Andre.  Another title for this movie might be:  My Dinner with Wong.  One could see the Chinese restaurant as open tribute to eXistenZ in an emerging semiotics of surrealist existentialism.

Pycon 2013 Begins

Loop Like a Native by Ned Batchelder was a talk on "fundamentals" or "primitives" -- I like that he pitched it that way, not as "for beginners".  Experts need refreshers in basics too.  "The ability to loop tall buildings in a single bound -- that joke is the whole reason I'm giving this talk." (applause).  The talk was in Python 2.x instead of 3.x.  Iterators come into their own in 3.x.  "Abstract the iterations more"; good advice.

I also attended Anna Ravencroft's talk on what to do if your talk was not accepted -- not the boat I was in (my lightning talk sailed through on Saturday Morning -- see "bumbling professor" at 9 minutes in) but I like to see how PSF members role model welcoming behavior.  She did a pretty good job I thought.

At the PSF lunch, we all applauded the positive outcome of the trademark dispute in the UK, which had cost us.  I sat at the Texas table (unofficially that), and put a good word in for Austin in 2016 (we're booked for Montreal the next two years, no US Pycons planned or expected as of this writing, other than the smaller state ones like PyOhio).

I don't have any quarrel with people marketing computer services using Python in their name, a practice PSF should encourage.  However, if the trademarking rules in some country are such that there's some winner-take-all model regarding who uses the token "Python" for their services, well then of course PSF should fight to keep its channels free and clear.

We can't afford to have some fly-by-night operation call the dogs on us just because some crazy rule book says one and only one computer company is allowed to hold that token (most rule books aren't that crazy).  We fight to keep the tent big, not the monopoly of any one group.  Even nonprofits can get pretty dictatorial.  Our table at least seemed to agree the OCLC was not a role model in how they took a bat to that New York Library Hotel that spoof-emulated / celebrated library filing, with books pegged to room number.

The New Relic guy did a great job profiling profilers, a world class expert in the subject.

Quaker Men's Group 2013

:: wqm mens group 2013 ::

I've been attending this group off and on for over a decade by now.  I've missed the last two years, so had not been to Bear Camp before, a homestead with yurts, a comfy lodge, off of Rt. 126 about half way between Eugene and Florence, Oregon.

Our theme this year was privilege, with hints of whiteness and maleness weaving through. A bouquet of inter-connected concepts.  As at the AFSC meeting, I expressed some embarrassment over the "race" concept and how quaint it might sound in the ears of the less antiquated.  I'd say most of us translated the theme into expressions of gratitude for lives that had been full, adventuresome, not worth complaining or whining about.

Last time I attended the theme for me personally was dire straits and the difficulty of making some transitions.  That was at another site we've frequented over the years, the Church of the Brethren camp near Myrtle Point, Oregon.

The camp is run by a couple.  We're enthusiastic about their enterprise, as we are supportive of the Brethren and their facility.  We decided to return to Bear Camp next year, but with some discussion of meeting more often than once a year, and maybe in other places in that case.  An interest group or at least a table during one of the meals at North Pacific's Annual Session was proposed.

Even in a room of all white guys, there's likely lots of diversity, just along other axes.  We had quite a few retired military, especially Air Force.  One of our number is ethnically a Brooklyn Jew (a "tribe" he easily identifies with) though a practicing Quaker as well.  We discussed this word "tribe" quite a bit.  One's legal right to identify as a tribal member is a core concern of many NavAms in this part of the world and the result may be "name collisions" (what happens when namespaces step on each other).

I spoke at some length about the AFSC meeting I'd just attended (below), wherein the forced schooling of natives by Euros hell bent on the destruction of their cultures had been a top agenda item.  Oppressing cultures have the luxury of remaining oblivious a lot of the time.  Their thugs (soldiers, but also teachers and social workers) do their dirty work, but they themselves simply enjoy blissful ignorance.  The oppressed, on the other hand, can less afford to ignore their relative loss of freedoms and opportunities.  These statements verge on being tautologies.

Speaking of "tribes", I've been reading Debt:  The First 5000 Years, on my Kindle.  I'm enjoying how the author somewhat mockingly visits the faux anthropology the economists concocted, starting with Adam Smith in particular, to give their discipline more of a basis.  "Money" per the economists' mythology, is all about rescuing a bound-to-fail, barter-based approach, as if some tribes had tried this but the deals were just too complicated after awhile.

David Graeber, himself an anthropologist, finds other memeplexes more compelling, when it comes to explaining the origin of money.  Barter still has a role, even with money in the picture.  The either/or thinking which portrays money as a swap-in and savior for bartering conveniently overlooks debt and its role as a prime motivator in human affairs.  Graeber looks elsewhere to explain the origin of money games.

I joined this group late, having had responsibilities the night before as usher and ISEPP board member.   Gibor Basri, an internationally recognized professor of astronomy and expert on brown dwarfs, was here in Portland to lecture on the findings of the Kepler Project.

NASA's Kepler (a specialized satellite telescope in the sun's orbit, following Earth) has been staring a a small patch of stars, not blinking, looking for the characteristic repeated wavering that would indicate a planet transiting between a star in our viewpoint.  What appears to have been proved is stars with planets are as common as rain and a lot of those are likely Earth-like in size, the even more are likely "super Earths" i.e. the average planet is somewhat bigger than ours.

During closing worship we remembered some of our dear departed, Olin Byerly having most recently left the living.  I brought up Lewis Hoskins and Ed Janoe.  We also spoke of those still alive and not present.  These kinds of remembrances are typically "tribal", to further elaborate on this anthropological term.  I think of the Hash House Harriers, a kind of running club, and their espirit du corps.

I re-explored the coast a little coming back, taking Rt. 126 to 101 to Lincoln City, Rt. 18 back to Portland.  Just north of Florence, I stopped at Sea Lion Caves where I'd not been since a small child, to the best of my recollection.  The sound of being in that cave inspires singing behavior, one might say.  I gather the high tide is what deposits them on such high perches, there'd be no way to climb there built like that.  In the ocean, they're graceful.  Seals are sleek.

From AFSC Corporation Meeting

:: afsc meetup 2013 ::

Friends (Quakers) have gathered from around North America to participate in the annual meeting of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), which is closing on a hundred years old.

Henry Cadbury helped get the ball rolling in the early 1900s, with help from Rufus Jones.  Henry was about 31 at the time, Rufus more my age at 54.  Henry went on to teach at the Harvard Divinity School, having quit Haverford College when he found out he was going to be fired, for speaking out against post-WW1 anti-German sentiments that were going around.

I've been representing North Pacific Yearly Meeting for some time, making an annual trip to Friends Center, also known informally as the Quaker Vatican and/or Quaker Kremlin.  Quakers, for those who don't know, got started in the 1600s thanks to activists Fox, Mott, Nayler and so forth, in England.

I'm one of three reps from our region, even though I laid down my membership in the Religious Society through my Monthly Meeting for various reasons.  Claiming membership through a Monthly Meeting is but one expression of one's Quakerism.  The original Friends of Christ (John 13:13) were not "members" of anything, just as Jesus was never a Christian (Praise Allah).

There's some chance my presence here over the years is in violation of the bylaws, but then we're in violation anyway, since participation of corp reps by YMs is below the bylaw numbers this year anyway.  The bylaws are subject to revision.  That's what the Board takes up on Sunday, when I'll be on my way (I'm not a board member).

In my view, NPYM is entitled to appoint non-members as reps to the AFSC corporation, and has done so in my case.  Sometimes our non-members have strong Quaker values and are higher on my totem pole, as weighty Friends, than those following the practices around membership.  I do serve on the Oversight Committee and have been involved in clearness committees for members, so it's not like I don't appreciate that process.

Cadbury's experience at Haverford reminds me of Linus Pauling's at Cal Tech, when anti-Japanese sentiments were being fanned by its administration.  Japanese Americans were rounded up and sent to prison camps in that chapter.  He tried to protect a friend of his, but the FBI had its way.

After a long day of sessions, we gathered in the meeting room for a presentation about AFSC work in Burundi.  Burundi is a source of many lessons in sociology and anthropology.  The recently warring factions, Hutu and Tutsi, were ostensibly indistinguishable when not acting out their roles (think of Democrats and Republicans).  The differences are more historical and socioeconomic, not genetic so much.

We then had a fantastic presentation by a Wabanaki native on the program of cultural genocide waged against her people in Maine over the years.  The Anglo-Euros were a nasty-cruel bunch.  I'm not unhappy much of their culture is morphing into something else.  Their indefensible ideologies are   self-annihilating, given their shaky basis in non-science and stupidity -- lots of crappy, toxic religion, among other things.

I'm glad the AFSC has been involved in the global process of bringing attention to and of course repudiating the immoral / unethical Christian Doctrine of Discovery, an initiative first brought to my attention by Arthur Dye (a former AFSC regional director).

Maine has started a Truth and Reconciliation process in collaboration with the Wabanakis to help address the truths of cultural genocide and the sins (errors) of the ancestors.  This is called "changing the narrative" (long overdue).

We also heard a first person horror story about some young children (six girls) taken from their tribal setting by some "child welfare" bureau and raised in a pathological household by some monster.  One of these children grew up to tell her story from the podium.

This intensely stressful karma has been multi-generational.  She had a hard time parenting, having been beaten, raped and tortured her whole life (she's closing on 50).  She helps with the healing by telling her story.  It's not about reparations for her, as there's no monetary sum that could restore her equilibrium.  She has to do the work herself, in community, and is doing so.  And so it is for many in their suffering.

From ApacheCon

:: apachecon 2013 ::

Back in hotel space, with choppy Internet.  Not that base has been trouble free.  I'm free to speculate that DSL is over subscribed and random dropping is like a rolling brown out they don't tell us about.  How are customers to know?

You would need whistleblowers, and last I checked Congress was more interested in whistleblowers sitting on whatever.  At the UN, warehouses pile up to the rafters with earnest reports of unfairness.

At least the heat's on.  Base is not arctic.  Portland is 45th parallel or thereabouts and we're creeping around the annalemma.

I'm in no way a full timer at this conference though.  I have a busy day, and choppy Internet only puts me further behind.

Good meeting at AFSC tonight.  Tony Noble joined us.  Afterwards I got more caught up on what's rollicking in this town.  Somewhat embarrassing how much I don't know.

Shirley Q. Liquor was offending people all over the country and The Eagle had booked him.  Local activists went berzerk (paraphrase), but when the Q-Center sought to use that opportunity to broker a Racism discussion, that set off inter-tribal jealousies in other dimensions.  Events were being canceled faster than they could be defined.

The car is on Apachecon and AFSC duty both.  That makes it sound like I pile up receipts for the IRS, and I should probably.  But I'm not advertising to the public as a licensed chauffeur (which I'm not) and don't really see the point.  Anyway, I've got my taxes filed for this year already, and expect a refund (from Feds, not the state).

I've got a fresh Buddha tankha hanging in the Buddha Room (also Bob's).

We talked about QVS some (at the AFSC post-meeting), reminding me of conversations with Robert Cooper recently.  He knew of this house in North Carolina.

Eddy reminded me my next flight was on a different day than I'd thought.  Scary to be that wrong.  I did that in DC and got lucky.

Carol waded deep into the logistics of making it happen for her, and I was encouraging.  Using an oxygenator on plane trips is still somewhat state of the art.  These machines are somewhat new.  I praised her for helping break new ground, with Delta, with other airlines.

Not in the cards in this shuffle though.  She can relax and recover more instead.  Whether that trip insurance she purchased pans out is another question.  More unfairness.

:: new AFSC poster ::

Wanderers 2013.2.20

Not uncharacteristically, I was late this morning.  My thanks to Don for the reminder phone call.  I really didn't know what I was missing.

Alan Weider has recently finished a book looking at the role played by an activist couple, Ruth First and Joe Slovo, in the anti-apartheid campaign that analysts are still grappling with, and will for some time, as the benefits of hindsight keep flooding in.

Alan is not new to this general topic, the resistance against apartheid in South Africa, and what I caught of his talk was deeply informed.  That's coming from my own limited perspective as a member of a Quaker family that relocated to Lesotho in the 1990s and stayed there for about seven years.

I then moved to The Bagdad to hear a presentation from Momentis out of Dallas, an energy company seeking to offer Oregonians more choice as deregulation looms.  By 2016, companies like Just Energy expect to have access to market share.  Some of our Quakers have gotten involved in this venture.

A grass roots marketing campaign is being developed, one that recruits from the consumer base itself to expand its sales force.  Not a new idea in North America, though perhaps not in energy (Amway and Tupperware don't sell you Internet services or household gas).  Wanderer Patrick Barton was my guest, as I value his perspective on matters energetic.

Back to Alan's story:

Ruth was blown up by a mail bomb, placed by unprincipled South Africans who believed they had a mandate to murder (not a new misapprehension).  The monster behind this  atrocity came forward during the Truth Process.  Joe later died of cancer, having served in the Housing Ministry.

The USSR did funnel a lot of money to the anti-apartheid resistance back then.  Remember Cuba's involvement in Angola.  Joe was a Gorbachev fan.

I mentioned our family history during the Q&A.  Urners came to Lesotho after apartheid was officially over and many a diplomatic family was leaving Maseru, which had served as a base.  As Quakers, we learned about recent history through that particular lens, which was enlightening.  But for the accident in 2000, Jack and Carol would likely still be in Maseru, enjoying good times.  They loved that whole area of the world (though not exclusively).

I also mentioned my time at 2 Dickinson Street when the student body was asking Nassau Hall to divest of any stock holdings in companies benefiting from an apartheid regime.  Such holdings would seem antithetical to, and/or hypocritical of, a liberal arts institution, according to these 1970s student analyst-activists.

Madeline Albright, formerly US Secretary of State, is speaking at The Bagdad tonight.  Like last time, I'll miss it, but will hope to read reports.  Portland (PDX) has diplomatic relations with Washington, DC (WDC), as well as non-diplomatic relations.

Reconstruction (Phase 2)

Link to Phase One

Live from DorkBot

We're at Someday Lounge again tonight, though Backspace (two doors down) in the more usual occasion?

What am I up to?  I've been telling the hospital bosses their patient-facing equipment is crap if it doesn't do Kanji, the Japanese word for Chinese ideographs, a core element in several languages.  I've discovered James Heisig's work thanks to this Youtube by a Nipponophile.  One may have many goals in tackling Kanji, one being to cultivate an associational network that cross-hatches one's own.  Plus you know you're tuning in something of the consciousness of billions.  What's the keyword for "tongue" again?  As in "mother tongue"?  I'll get back with the number. 41: 舌.

James isn't teaching Japanese specifically, in this volume, just the Kanji with their imaginative meanings, which he builds using English.  Their pronunciation in any language, their combinations, are left to future work.  This is particle physics, subatomics.  Or is it bacterial phenomenology?  Yes, that's it.  The characters swallow each other, as well as common elements.  There's an assemblage, a kind of molecular bonding.  Study Kanji to learn chemistry, why not?

I using my cell phone as a Hotspot, talking to my cell provider, getting on the Internet that way.

Holden is with me; we took the bus together.  He's in the thick of getting NA Apachecon booted.  The last one was in 2011 in Vancouver, BC (another state of North America, two to our north, Washington in between).  Homeland Security (US) does a lot of its intake in Vancouver, with domestic flights southward.

I was telling Brenda about Alan and Kati getting married in our living room in Thimphu, how he, the good Jew, had to sit on a swastika, though one innocent of Nazi spin.

Brenda is a Wanderer and role model GSM teacher (Girl Scout Math).  GSM is actually an urban nomad wilderness survival skills program that uses STEM math, not traditional / conventional math.  STEM math tends to be quite geographic, lots of geocaching (treasure maps / hunts), GIS, GPS, and geometric.  If your teacher doesn't say what an Icosahedron is at any point, that's likely not STEM.   GSM inherits from Pentagon Math quite a bit, but isn't as violence-prone.  Brenda, Elise, Deb, Lindsey, Trish... Xtine, you could call them "tom boys" I suppose, as they're not afraid of tools or science.  That's an ancient namespace though ("tom boys", お侠), more characteristic of septuagenarians.

I went outside and took some long shots of the very low resolution (but very bright) being shown.  Other dorks had their various bots.  Mine were commercial devices, not homemade.  I'm more the journalist-blogger than the bona fide dork, more the dork wannabe.   Another mixin superclass for GSM I'd say.

Steve is selling a Raspberry Pi.  Last week he showed up with about fifty.

You can place these units, with solar power, deep in the forest, with loggers (meaning log files, chronofiles -- though some loggers with permits to cut might willingly place them).  They don't need to transmit (can't be traced that way).  The GPS locations get saved and the monitors check them later.  Someone is cutting trees?  Does BLM know?  Record something for the subscribers (a snapshot, a reading), data for the listeners.  Sierra Club maybe.

You're not trying to catch the discrete campers or hikers.  It's broad trends in the ecosystems that you sense, and record.  You might be in a plexiglass box in a riverbed, measuring turbidity.  If they do a clear cut in Bull Run, they'll know, and you'll know.

Next time:  Brain Silo.  Stay tuned.

La Casa

Promised Land (movie review)

A delightful fractal of a movie.

I'm biased to think that way, having just attended a John Driscoll lecture at Harder House, PSU's epicenter of Systems Science.  Plus there's a pun.

Everyone does a fine job of acting in this one, going through the motions.  Just what are they voting on exactly?  It's not clear.  The whole idea is surreal, and as we back away from this narrative we realize that none of this really happened.

And yet the companies are real and the leases are real, and people are counting their pennies, reckoning on having some gas in the bank.  Accounting systems make a difference.

Me, I'd pay people a stipend to just act out the small town life, so people could visit and learn how to take it slower.  Make it a theme park kind of thing.  But then that's how I see it anyway, Sun as our sponsor (by which I mean the nearby star, not Sun Microsystems per se, though I respect Sun's engineers and their contributions).

What play is this?  What theater are we in?  It's a really existential film in that way.  Everyone is so sophisticated, not just the city slickers.  I was taken back to another surreal film with Matt.  Funny, to see them together.

Everything is Under Control

I'd been bragging to some Bible studies teacher of food ethics about my FNB connections, so it was fortuitous to have an opportunity to reinforce those ties.  Jay's bike had been ripped from a private stairwell by some bold theft artist, and so he phoned me as he arrived at OTY on foot, hoping to meet up with TA who had vegan chili.

Well, the long and the short of it is I hauled the day's vegetables from point A to point B, got to be the hero at some level in the Global Matrix.  I got some good body core sweat goin' meaning a definite calorie burn, especially when coming back, fully loaded, and up some fairly steep inclines.  It'd be interesting to know how many joules that was.  My Razr showed my I'd turned the wrong way at Williams and Tillamook (I was rusty, I admit).

Trevor was by today with some excess assets. Yes, RAW's anthology of conspiracies, entitled Everything is Under Control.  Indeed that entry under GRUNCH was to my page, as archive.org will disclose.  Some say one of the more successful conspiracies but I'm not really in a position to judge, being in the thick of it and all.

Given a canine is moving in, and an ET, we set it up to have Sarah-the-dog encounter her housemate-to-be on a walk.  No turf to defend, a public space (in front of Laurie's).  Then she came home with us, with both humans clearly OK with it. This was supposed to set the right tone.  Dog psychology ya know.

Given Pirate Party links, quite unofficial given my US citizenship, it's maybe not surprising I've been waving the Swedish flag a lot.  I was telling poor Paul Tanner on math-teach that no matter how right Paul Krugman might be on the macro economics, USAers were just not smart enough to surge in their own interests, prove me wrong why don'tcha.  They confuse democracy with just voting (if even that), as if that were the limit  of their responsibilities. Then today I was like viva Sweden and Finland, compared to the sorrowful goliath.

To a physics list:

Civilizations making it past various thresholds enter an era where the planetary biosphere becomes of concern.  It's not just warming we have to think about, but radiotoxins and out of the cloud mad scientist experiments such as the ones conducted recently by so-called "cold warring" goliaths and their idiot advisers.  They messed with the Van Allen belts. 

As humans, we are aware of no precedent (legal or otherwise) for the current chapter i.e. as we awaken to our biospheric responsibilities, and eye Mars as a possible habitat, at least in science fiction, and as we think about colonizing the under-ocean ecosystem somewhat more, we have no ancestral role models other than we have many examples of ecosystems becoming untenable.  

We know we might mess up.  

I hope to be available to out-of-towners during Apachecon, then have to high tail it to Philadelphia for the annual meeting.

Fooding at Meeting

"Fooding" is not usually a verb, but it is in the Himalayas, so I'm absconding with it for local use.  Today the Junior Friends had a fundraiser, though perhaps not sufficiently announced.

The theme was "Middle Eastern" and extended to include a lamb stew (even if many Friends are individually vegetarian).  I brought the ingredients for Teresina Lentils and cooked the dish en situ, in our "Food Not Bombs" kitchen (as I tend to think of it, private namespace).

Speaking of which, Walker has re-purposed a portion of her wardrobe to practice as "FNB CEO" (one of many in an anarchy).  Not that different from me being in the Education Ministry, sometimes as the actual Minister (rotating position).  Steve Holden and I are watching In the Thick of It (BBC), which is fun.

Keith McHenry is another FNB CEO who has come through.  He's been in Mexico and Chiapas and places.  I've read some communiques.  Walker is meeting with Unitarians today, after their service.  She's droped her urban survivalist look for something more churchy today.

Today is Business Meeting at Multnomah Meeting.  I should ascend the stairs and continue journaling from there.

Was what happened in Connecticut all that different from what happened in Fallujah?  Crazed mad-cow-like humans hell bent on taking lives, and equipped with the tools for so doing.

I'm curious about whom nominating has added to the slate for Oversight Committee (OC).  We lost four Overseers in a short time recently, including the previous clerk (Debbie has been acting clerk).

Walker thinks a Major Payne type character, perhaps more than one, vets, friendly big guy types whom the kids adore, would be a stereotypical, OK way to add security.  They have responsibilities as faculty as well. We had our armed guards in Manila but they didn't get to teach anything.

I'm used to the idea of armed security around me, on base, in the hood.  Should kids be practicing with swipe cards then?  It depends on the school I think.  School is a lot about preparing for the work place, and a lot of work places are locked down to some degree.  Learning the habits of working in secure environments is worth starting early.

Mari, Barbara and I talked about language learning, Arabic in particular.  Mari has been in Egypt recently.  She's finding Arabic hard.  She and Barbara both speak Spanish pretty well.  Mari has noticed Arabic roots in Bantu.  I bought some coffee roasted by Josh, one of our former armed services guys.  I don't speak any Arabic, to speak of, though I've studied it and admire it.

Leslie Hickcox gave the annual report of the FCNL liaison: she'd traveled to DC for the November meeting.  The Friends Committee on National Legislation is a Quaker lobby based in the Imperial City (QUNO represents Quakers to the United Nations).

There's a somewhat slow version of the Countdown to Zero campaign going on around Congress, run mostly by eventualists (not immediatists, i.e. not radical abolitionists).

"Immediatist" is a term from Civil War days, when some people wanted to end the institution of slavery in North America right away. Others, including many Friends, were for ending slavery all in good time, maybe in a few hundred years.  Big wheels turn slowly and so on.

Urban Fashions

"Urban nomad" is not a new concept, yet keeps morphing.

Given Portland's bicycle-centric core youth culture, clothing that won't catch in the chain is a must, but that may mean leg hugging stretched fiber of some variety.  There's no preference for the women's bicycle with the lower bar, as the tunic or skirt doesn't care.   These aren't hooped gowns we're talking about.

Much of the focus in this genre is on accessories, as the ninja nomad needs autonomy within cities.  If you're attending a Food Not Bombs serving, or just wanting to not waste, then you won't need those plastic utensils or paper cups and plates people keep shoving at you, adding to the waste stream.

Your mess kit signals you're a soldier for the environment, on the side of trees and all that is green and good.  In this way, the hippie earth mother tradition is continued, but in a somewhat more superhero vein.  Maybe just chop sticks.  My mom carries those around.

Which brings us to utility belts.  These have been typically worn low on the waste, but there's much to be said for kidney high pouches, or holsters worn high.

The bicycle tools are typically under the seat (of the bicycle) but if you're paranoid or in a paranoid part of town, you need room on your person for small gadgets normally fixed to your steed.

I sometimes wear a money belt around the wrist or lower arm, Cuffka brand by Nirel.

The winterized outfit is the more challenging.  The look derives from EMT work, where the crews need to stay flexible, able to operate equipment, fold and unfold gurneys and so forth.  Para-medical meets para-military:  the place to aim.

The goal is to remain compact, light, efficient, and semi-autonomous.  You may be packing electronics.  You may carry extra glasses, a brief case.

Ideally, this outfit is compatible with the workplace, perhaps a record store or hair salon, some public facing job.  But that's Portland more than some workplaces, in that we're already over tattoos and nose rings.  The fixed image of how the CEO has to look gave way some time ago.

FNB PR Again

The way I see it is as Urban Sport, a lot like GeoCaching, which my friends Chris and Larry play almost every day, at least when in town.  Trevor took me on a geocaching outing a couple times, once to track down the cache, another time to set up a fresh one, or so I recall.

Food Not Bombs as practiced by our chapter is athletic.  Like the Hash House Harriers my dad so loved, mom also a runner, me too when in town.  Not the same meaning of "hash" but you're forgiven if you're confused.  In that one, a small groups lays a trail, with several false branches, all signified in esoteric chalk symbols.  The gang gets unleashed later, and follows the trail like bloodhounds.  The routes may be spectacular as the sport lends itself to all manner of topography.

So here you've got a bike trailer, possibly homemade from a ladder, or bamboo.  You've got artisans in this sector already, with more ideas in the pipeline. Art trailers.  Busking hutches.  Would we allow them?  Curbside trailers are akin to cars, allowed to park overnight, and why not with sleepers?  As usual, the public street and curb are the focus of so many laws, with each "class" fighting for rules perceived to work in its favor.  Yet elegant, high powered shows move around in curbside vehicles.  Why be too biased against small, fuel efficient, cycle-drawn carriages?

In any case, my trailer isn't looking for a place to park.  I got it from the lot.  There's a fleet.  I'm on duty I signed up for, a workout.  This is my time in the "gym of life".  I'm on a mission to rescue perfectly fine organic produce of high quality, just inches from the compost machine, in order to feed an ecosystem of community building food awareness activists who enjoy the challenge of taking what they get.

The values are enough congruent with Quaker values (no outward weapons needed, simple rules, plain speech, egalitarian treatment) to lead me to encourage FNBers to just come by any time, pick up some roles in the meeting.  There's no requirement to profess lifetime allegiance to some religious denomination in order to walk the talk and speak truthfully of one having committee responsibilities, including clearing others for membership (without being one oneself).

Deciding to "wear the tattoo", to advertise publicly one's allegiance, in reciprocal fashion with a Monthly Meeting, is another service or program we offer, called "membership in the Society" (i.e. Religious Society of Friends).  For this role, we don't always self select our most esoteric or nuanced Friends, as their talk may require of them manifold allegiances and obligations, or express itself in principled objections to some status quo among members (slave ownership was at one time divisive).  Be that as it may, participation is encouraged, from members and non-members alike.

FNB is similar in offering dramatic roles.  It's urban theater.  We appreciate our guerrilla chefs, able to turn a combination of dry stores and fresh produce into something delectable.  Would that a noob cook could learn in an apprentice capacity.  This happens.  Many torches to passed.  Had I not lost Ninja David's knife set, I might not be allowing a Cutco salesperson into my home tomorrow.  By now, I truly appreciate the value of a good knife set.  Even if I don't make a purchase, I'll before to remind my fellow urbanites not to "make do" with less than professional cookware, to the extent your budget might afford.  Way more important than beer and cigarettes.

Thirsters Gather

Tonight was a who's who for me in that a lot of my favorite characters were present:  Mark Frischmuth of DemocracyLab, Marianne Buchwalter, Allen Taylor, Bob Bjerre and more.

Thirsters had gathered to celebrate and commemorate the life and times of their anchorman Bob Textor.  These were his salon mates, his chat room, of live, here and now people. Both his adult offspring were there and joined in the speech making, spontaneously emceed by Art Kohn (both he and Allen have cruise ship experience as well as classroom and know how to speak in a group setting).

Wanderers has benefited over the years from our overlap with this group.  Our horizons have been expanded.  Don is our principal go-between, as anchorman for Wanderers.

Thirsters is liberal, academic, and strongly steeped in Southeast Asia.  Roger Paget is another founder and will be anchoring the next planning meeting as this 15-16 year old group seeks its way in the wake of Bob's passing. 

This McMenamins was a tavern and pool hall back when Vaughn Street Park, a baseball park, hosted Pacific Coast League games, with Beavers the home team.  Spectators swarmed through around game time, though the 30s and 40s. The park was demolished in 1956, two years before I was born.

Thirsters took root in a later chapter, in an alcove at the east end, and when McMenamins remodeled the place, their new floor plan encouraged the same growth pattern.  The McMenamin brothers have enjoyed and supported this use of the space and their company footed the tab for the evening, with Thirsters leaving thank you tips to the staff.

A more formal memorial service will be held in March.

I won't try to give a bio of Bob here.  He worked on the original architecture of the Peace Corps, as one speaker reminded us tonight.  He made sure recruits got training in the language and culture of the place they were being sent -- you'd think an obvious need, but Washington DC was still pretty green at outreach via this new form of citizen diplomacy.  He had extensive experience in Asia.

The chatter that developed around Bob and his friends is both erudite and worldly and helps define cosmopolitan Portland, an interesting cross between a world capital (of open source for example) and a frontier town.  Lew Frederick showed up, a regular (and member of the Oregon legislature these days) and Sue Hagmeier, sister of my friend Michael.

A great many other important people were present, but I'm mostly confining my account to characters previously mentioned in my blogs.  Portland is small, but not that small.  Elizabeth Furse had appeared here a couple weeks ago, having spoken at Wanderers earlier.

I talked a lot with Allen, who is as busy as ever writing books and helping a South Africa based company expand its market for substance screening and identity verification equipment.

Bob Bjerre talked about his adventures in Kosovo, Macedonia and like that, in the aftermath of the last Balkan War (the breakup of Yugoslavia).  He helped with home building for World Vision and United Methodists.

Marianne expressed her generic hope in young people and their ability to create a brighter world for themselves (her granddaughter is going to work for Intel). "As long as they don't do something stupid" I said sagely.

@ Thirsters, from 2007 (click for larger view)

Science Pub

I got there early, skipped the beer line, and did some day jobbing using wifi.  The theater filled quickly, yet I still wasn't clear on the topic....

Suzanne tapped me awake.  I'd dozed off, having not slept much.  My finger was doing the "d" key in someone's program ("dddddddd...." over a thousand according to PyCharm).  No real damage, as I could easily refresh with a copy... She was there with a friend.

Chris sat to my left and introduced herself.  We compared notes on culture and music.  She proved quite knowledgeable.   She and Suzanne exchanged greetings.

Then came the quiz, which I was miserable at.

The lecture was all about this neuroscientist's family.  He was doing a lot of the teaching things I advocate, sharing autobiography, telling stories, connecting the dots, but not neglecting to share concepts and findings in STEM.

His slides had plenty of animations.  Larry Sherman, Ph.D. -- hadn't he done a talk here before as one of Oregon's most innovative? Ah yes, It comes back to me now, slowly.  Is it still Deja Vu if you've really seen it (or something like it) before?

The Bagdad's brightest projection bulb had died (exploded?) over the weekend and we were invited to not comment on screen dimness in our OMSI Pub evaluations, as this was a known issue.

Lots of talk about epigenetics.  The animations were of DNA coiling within coils of coils, but still translating, making proteins.  He went over the ultra basics.

Epigenetic factors might include a tightening of some coils, making them less likely to translate, thanks to supporting proteins (animations for this).  This isn't about sequences jumping, but about multiple systems impacting one another, being a part of one bigger process: the passing along of karma.

Yeah, it sounds weird to say "karma" there, so lets say "momentum" which is conserved.  I've been reciting this mantra, "momentum for a distance in a time".  The somewhat blurred picture registers a change in position for the time the film was exposed to the information.

Lights, camera, action.  The units of action are momentum for a distance, whereas energy is action in a time (at a frequency).  I think of cartoons with repeating backgrounds.  Ripple effects, consequences.  "Karma" might sound too judgmental, whereas if you're more psychoanalytic about it then you see most karma as unconscious and not really the ego's affair (unless the ego needs to get heroic and effect some changes -- a new level of "go gettum" in the animal kingdom).

Before the speaker part started, a father and son played miniature ukelele and banjo type instruments.  No singing.  I've already lost the memory of the band's name, which was projected and repeated. The audience was a appreciative, Larry had a good segue into his talk.

Our speaker recounted finding out he'd been adopted and ultimately wanting to know more about his biological parents and siblings.  He was astounded to find his academic career had taken him to his ancestral lands, before he had a clue they were ancestral.

I won't recount the whole story here, as it sounded like, after a couple more presentations, the theater might pick this up.  The neuroscientist is also into theater, music, sports.

His biological mom had been diagnosed with schizophrenia at way too young an age, and given electro-shock treatments.  Her own mother had been traumatized... it's tempting to relate more of the story.

So how much of who we are depends on "free will" and how much on "machinery"?  That seems to be the polarity.  People wonder about automaticity and to what extent they have any choice in the matter.  One has choice in one's level of acceptance.

Chris considerately shared half a Luna bar and cough drop candies.  She even brought me water.   Suzanne was saying I looked really sleepy (she'd awakened me after all).  After listening to the Q&A I stumbled home.

Black Like Me (movie review)

I grabbed this on impulse from Movie Madness.

This film was made in the mid 1960s.  The running joke, if you can call it that, is he continues to look just like himself.  Like Buzz Lightyear out of his bubble.  He's too grumpy for the job of undercover spy.  Waaaay too grumpy. But we can understand, as the audience, that one feels offended.

He's mostly exposed to other men's sexual fantasies, which you'd think, as a journalist, he'd not be unfamiliar with.

The flashbacks are classically inserted.  The jazz soundtrack is emotive.  They smoke all the time, Buzz Lightyear in bed.  The actors are into it.  The Strange-colored Man would be a fun title.  He's having identity problems much deeper than which side of the Civil War he'd fight on.  A deeper nut case.  Fits into America just great.

I used to hitchhike around the east coast, up and down (as they say, we say)...

Scary man.  If that's what white guys are like, line me up for a vacation.  He's properly grateful to that country guy for not being a dick (short ride, hero not on best behavior).

I tell ya, if you're gonna send spies, at least train 'em first.  He was lucky to recruit that shoe polish guy early, but the training in the field seemed to make zero difference.  See this movie in sequence with The Spy Who Sat Next to the Photocopier.

I don't usually write my reviews right as I watch 'em.  This is the hundred and some minute enhanced edition, the 2nd of 2 DVDs.  I'm 99% sure I read the book in Rome, Italy, part of my parents' collection.  But not until now do I see the movie, in 2013.

There's a guy dancing all machine-like, proto robot.  That set of moves went a long way (Michael Jackson a pioneer / popularizer), kept morphing.  007 would have stuck out too, what with those ears 'n all...  just train 'em first, OK?

Speaking of which, I've been brainstorming on Math Future about my rural Oregon school for diplomats, a pastiche / montage of the best from my cullings.  I've got the "math is an outdoor sport" meme going.

A lot of the trauma is more class than race related.  "You're too serious about everything, ruins a fella from having fun" -- yes, girl, your diagnosis is on target.  It's number 3, 2, 1 experiences all the way (invoking est jargon -- appropriate given toilet access is a theme), a bumpy ride.

The business school project where I yak about Yankee types help with the truck fleet twixt Istanbul and Kabul and those:  not a spy ring, just strong STEM, high level training, and risky to some degree, though we hope not from stupid / random acts of violence.  Roads are dangerous enough...

He's being stalked at the moment, prey.  Prays to St. Jude.  Good Catholic, we learned that earlier.  The KKK didn't like Catholics either right?  Uh oh, PTSD melt down.  The Breaking Bad dad, the meth cook, was a little tougher.  "I'd a known you anywhere".  These whites are geeks (meeting up with his friends).

Somalis are having a "black like me" episode in their history these days.  Shelbyville, TN instead of Shelby, TX.  Talking about the documentary, Hawo's Dinner Party.  It's one thing to be black in Somalia, something else to be Somali in the North American south, maybe forced to relinquish at least one of your husbands.  No wait, I got it backwards, at least one of your wives.  You get the idea.

"You might be interviewed on TV".  How do you not offend people?  That's not the liberal's question.  A healthy conscience is worth a high price in Vienna, makes for better music appreciation.  Offend them if you must, with your revelations, be a Freud, a Woody Allen.  Be one of those bleeding hearts.  Be a muckraker if necessary.

Waaay too grumpy (he's strangling his interviewee -- torture is not professional guy).  Yeah, go see a priest, good idea.  You've got problems.  Uh oh, girl on the beach, another bump.  That ticket booth lady at the bus station isn't very professional.  The sets are theatric.  Movie's were still more "on stage" back then, not surprising.  Some are still made that way, classic.  Gas station, Memphis. Uh oh, cover blown, he's in the newspaper.  Reminds me of the Hillsboro, Ohio story.

Nice character review at the end here, a quick look.  The white line on the road again.  Stands for "color line" right?  Yep, the trailer says so.  Thanks to the film restoration people.  I'll check the special features next.