Tangiers Boutique, located at 45 Main Street, in downtown North Adams, is happy to announce that we are not closing. We are celebrating by having a Staying -In-Business Sale.
An announcement less than two weeks ago that we would be closing prompted many people to come forward with excellent ideas and suggestions and to express their support. We went back to the drawing board and with a lot of help, found ways to change our approach and methods and keep Tangiers open.
After a rollercoaster couple of months, we are very relieved to have made the positive decision to keep going. With kind assistance, we were able to renegotiate with our landlord. Sadly, in these difficult times, we will have to lay off several, but not all, of our wonderful employees. Our eyes are on the future, with the hope that those jobs can be reinstated.
We have really been overwhelmed by the support and encouragement, not only of our regular customers, but by the North Adams community in general. We’d like to thank every person who expressed their concern and those who extended proposals to help us keep Tangiers open. This has made me very hopeful for the future, and very grateful that I live here. Thanks to all, and to the North Adams Transcript! Like all small local businesses, we need you! Think globally, shop locally!
"The USA's actual welfare queens can usually be found clad in gray, three-piece pinstripe suits. And they don't drive anything. They have people for that."lol-from a comment thread today
The dilemma is essentially this: the consumer economy we all knew and loved has died. There will be pressure from nearly every quarter to keep it hooked up to the costly life support machines even though it is dead. A different economy is waiting to be born, but it is nothing like the one that has died. The economy-to-come is one of rigor and austerity. It is not the kind of thing that a nation of overfed clowns is used to. Do we even have a prayer of getting to it, or are we going to squander our dwindling resources on life support for something that is already dead?
"It's the materialism, who can make the bigger buck, overnight fast money that caused the problems," said Phurb Dorji, a doctor who works in a Thimphu hospital and is a big fan of the official national philosophy.
"The whole world is going towards materialism, and the more they get the more they want. But they're still not happy. They don't need to copy us, but they should take a look at other ways."
Bhutan has been pursuing GNH for the past few decades: it was conceived by the country's last king, and the new monarch -- 28-year-old Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, who was crowned on Thursday -- says it will remain a policy centrepiece.
"What is important to me and my family is education, health care, spiritual well-being. Anything materialistic should be sustainable. There should be respect for others, respect for the environment," said Dorji, explaining the main tenets of the concept.
"If everything was about material things, then we'd run out of money. It would not be sustainable."
Officials here say pursuing GNH does not mean ignoring GDP -- in fact on that score, the country is doing rather well, clocking an average of about eight percent growth a year for the past few years.
Rather, they say, it is the type of growth that is important -- hence policies of providing free education and health care, a clean mountain environment and making sure the country's religious and cultural traditions are preserved.
"We as human beings need more than material goods," said the country's prime minister, Jigmi Thinley.
"We see ourselves as a member of a globalised society," he said, but added that the aim in Bhutan was "to continue to develop economically and spiritually."
And as a result, he said, the country of steep valleys and snow-capped peaks "is becoming happier and happier. We are happy people."
(snip)
"My duty is not only to ensure your happiness today but to create fertile ground from which you may gain the fruits of spiritual pursuit and attain good karma," he said in his coronation speech.
"Even as more dramatic changes transform the world and our nation, as long as we continue to pursue the simple and timeless goal of being good human beings... we can ensure that our future generations will live in happiness."
But let justice roll down like waters
And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself but I have a confession to make.
I'm in my fifties and I never thought that I would see an African-American elected President of the United States in my lifetime. I just didn't think we had it in us but it appears that we have most assuredly come a long way.
I remember when I was nine years old, sitting in the back of my parents car getting ready to leave Torrey Pines State Beach when they announced on the radio that the authorities had found the bodies of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwermer; I remember it as distinctly as I remember when JFK was shot. The announcer called them "civil rights workers" but I didn't know what a civil rights worker was. I thought he was calling them "civil service workers" which, to my nine year-old mind, was like a postman or the guys who picked up the trash. I couldn't understand why anyone would want to murder them. Later, when I understood who they were and what they were doing, I understood it even less. Murdering someone just because they were trying to help people register to vote? I couldn't comprehend the hatred of a people who could think that way. I just knew that they were vicious and they were stupid.
Later, when I was in the eighth grade, I read Les Miserables in class and I came across this:
There are souls that, crablike, crawl continually toward darkness, going backward in life rather than advancing, using their experience to increase their deformity, growing continually worse, and becoming steeped more and more thoroughly in the intensifying viciousness.
...and I realized that I knew exactly the type of people Victor Hugo was writing about.
Now, forty-four long years later, I will have the opportunity to vote for (and more importantly, so will my daughter who has already cast her vote in this, her first election) an African-American for President of the United States. The same type of "person" James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner lost their lives for; not so they could become president some day, but simply because it was their right to participate and have a voice within their own country.
I won't say 'what took us so long?'. I'll just say that I'm glad to be here to see this day come.
The collapse of centrally controlled commerce and currency simply creates an opportunity for local commerce and currency to revive. For people to learn to work and live together on a human, local scale - as the original free market advocate, Adam Smith, actually suggested. Admittedly, this would be a painful transition for many - but it's better than maintaining dependence on a fiscal system designed from the start to turn people and communities into extractable corporate assets. (Think about that the next time you're called up to "human resources.")
What up, RNC!
(cheers)
You white motherfuckers!
(laughter)
This conference so white, Helen Mirren tried to snort it!
(laughter)
Y’all the whitest white people in the history of white people. Even Barbara Bush sitting here right now going: ‘These are some white motherfuckers.’
(laughter)
You’re so white, your vice presidential nominee got the word ‘pale’ in her name!
(laughter, applause)
Look at this place. I can’t believe this shit! Y’all couldn’t find one single brother?
(shouting)
There is? Where?
(shouting)
Yo, what up, brother! Looks like you the only chocolate chip in the cookie.
(laughter)
You look like a fly in a glass of milk, yo. Swim! Swim for your life!
(laughter)
Alaska in the house!
(Cheers)
Where the baby daddy at? Where he at?
(crowd noise)
You knocked her up, man? That’s cool. That’s cool.
(silence)
You know that word ‘abstinence’—you know that mean ‘no fucking,’ right?
(laughter)
I guess they didn’t make that clear at the seminar.
(laughter)
‘So I just use this abstinence, that mean we can fuck all we want, right?’ No!
(laughter)
But you know I feel you, man. I do. Because the fact is, you live in motherfucking Alaska! What else is there to do but fuck?
(laughter)
Just fuck! That’s all there is to do! Just fuck!
(laughter)
That’s all Alaska is. Just a bunch of crazy white people fucking!
(sustained laughter and applause)
And you know he got to marry that girl, too. Because … her momma done shot a moose.
(laughter)
She shot a motherfucking moose! Put its head up on the wall and everything. That’s cold, man. That’s like Al Qaeda shit. Post that shit on the Internet as a warning to other moose.
(laughter)
’Cause when a girl’s momma shoot a moose, that’s, like, a red flag for me. I take that shit into consideration. I do! It’s like, ‘Yeah, you fine. No doubt. You real fine. And you got a great personality. And you drunk. But … ain’t your momma the one done shot a moose? I’ll be seeing you later on.’ I practice abstinence with moose-shooting-momma-having bitches.
(laughter)
But it’s time to bring out the white man you’ve all been waiting for. This man is so white, he makes y’all look Mexican.
(laughter)
He spent five long years locked up in a POW camp, and returned a national hero.
(applause)
And fucked every white woman in America.
(sustained applause)
’Cause five years—that makes you horny. And women, they looove to fuck war heroes. Basically, if you were white and female in 1973, you were fucked by John McCain.
(“USA! USA! USA!”)
And then he married a fine rich white girl whose daddy owned a beer company.
(laughter, applause)
And he wants to be president? Sheeet, you already got money, beer and pussy! What the fuck you want with the presidency? Quit while you’re ahead! You’re 72 years old—just drink, fuck, and play golf, you dumb white motherfucker!
(raucous laughter, applause)
Ladies and gentlemen, the next President of the United States of America, John McCain!
jbines@observer.com
What a wild ride following this drama! Stayed up way too late, and when I woke up it was still crashing into the coast! My heartfelt prayers and good wishes go out to everyone who has to live through this disaster. Reading real-time posts by weather-nerds and people in the thick of it is way different than watching news reports, and so much more interesting ( to nerds like me!).
President George W. Bush was scheduled to visit the Episcopal Church outside Washington as part of his campaign to restore his pathetic poll standings.
His image handler made a visit to the Bishop and said, “We've been getting a lot of bad publicity because of the president's position on stem cell research, the Iraq war, hurricane Katrina and the Veterans Administration. We'll make a $100,000 contribution to your church if during your sermon you will say that the President is a saint.”
The Bishop thought it over for a few moments and finally said, “The Church is desperate for funding ~ I'll do it.”
Bush showed up for the sermon, and the Bishop began: “I'd like to speak to you all this morning about our President who is a liar, a cheat, and a low-intelligence numb-nuts who can't put a compound sentence together.
“He bugged out of combat service during the Vietnam War and went AWOL to avoid a drug test, then had all reports on the sordid event destroyed.
“He is the spawn of a Nazi loving great grandfather who smuggled anti-Americans into this country on his shipping line.
“He took the tragedy of September 11 and used it to frighten and manipulate the American people.
“He lied about weapons of mass destruction and invaded Iraq for oil and money, causing the deaths of tens of thousands and making the United States the most hated country on earth. It is a three-trillion dollar folly.
“He appointed fund-raiser cronies to positions of power and influence, leading to widespread death and destruction due to government paralysis after Hurricane Katrina.
“He awarded no-bid cost-plus contracts and tax cuts to his rich friends so that we now have more poverty in this country and a greater gap between rich and poor than we've had since the Depression.
“He has headed the most corrupt, bribe-inducing political party since Teapot Dome .
“The national surplus has turned into a staggering national debt of 7.6 trillion Dollars.
“Oil rose from $18 to over a hundred per barrel, leading to transportation costs which the people of America cannot afford, with low minimum wages, part time jobs, no health insurance and outsourcing.
“Vital research into global warming and stem cells is stifled because he's afraid to lose votes from religious kooks.
“He is the worst example of a true Christian I've ever known, but compared to Dick Cheney . . . George W. Bush is a saint.”
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