8 lessons in handling large insurance claims

Background

A year ago to this day, a tree fell on my house.  It also smashed up my life pretty thoroughly, too.  The developer to the north cut its north-facing “anchor” roots.  Trees grow southwardly.  Lots of rain softens the soil.  Lots of wind loosens the roots.  It almost fell directly on me and some arborists as we were assessing how best to remove it before it fell.

What constitutes a “large claim” for you probably differs from me.  Insurance companies handle multi-million dollar claims.  Mine came in well-under half-a-grand.  It was still the largest single lump sum or concentrated stream of money I’ve ever handled in my life.  I’ve never written checks that big before, whereas I know that others (the 1%) deal with similarly-sized sums on a daily basis, like it’s candy.  Although this experience focuses on house insurance, many (if not all) the lessons probably apply in some form to other (e.g., car, health, etc) insurance.

I’m actually still in the middle of my claim.  I am naively posting this advice now in hopes that by doing so it will confirm that don’t have any more mistakes to make or lessons to learn.  Sadly, that’s probably not true.

The Lessons

Here is what I learned from the insurance part of the experience, consisting of mistakes I made as well as things I actually maybe did right (you guess which is which):

1. Don’t go with a low bid.  That doesn’t mean “don’t go with a low bidder” — go with whomever appears most appropriate for your situation.  But bump the bid up to somewhere near the highest bidder.  Expect and budget for contingencies and extra expenses that occur or get discovered along the way.  This will drastically reduce the number and severity of fights in request for additional money you will need to make.  Insurance companies use two metrics:  first is an absolute maximum reasonable figure, and then an “estimate creep” percentage.  They then use the adjuster and line-item assessments to determine whether to hand out more money.  They always try to hand out less money, whenever possible.  So by submitting a low estimate, you are setting yourself up for a fight later when you inevitably need more money.  Get at least three estimates, and then bump the estimate of whomever you go with up to something close to the highest estimate.

2.  Figure out your priorities.  Do you want the place “back to normal” ASAP?  Or do you want a bit more involvement and control over a more personal and slower process?  This will determine whether to go with the big insurance-based contractors or a smaller (e.g., one or two person) remodeling outfit.  The big “ambulance chaser” contractors primarily only do insurance work.  They fly in, get the job done, and fly out.  It’s a short, intensive, well-coordinated process.  Insurance companies can’t legally admit it, but they prefer such companies, because these companies pamper them, and do their work for them and show them everything they want to see and nothing more (even to the point of using the same software), drastically allowing them to cut their own labor expenses for each claim.  They are often much higher in their estimates.  Expect to do more work to coordinate between insurance and a smaller contractor for the benefit of more control over the project.  You can cut down on that work drastically by asking the contractor to make their initial estimate more in line with a higher estimate.

3.  More transparency is not always better.  Insurance companies operate heavy caseloads.  Keep communications simple, to four items: how much we think it will cost, how much it actually cost, new expenses encountered, and a new total summary estimate.  Document everything on your end, but don’t show them any additional paperwork unless the situation requires it, because your claim rep is already handling a few dozen other cases and is buried in paperwork.  Show them what they want to see:  figures matching up.  They get suspicious when things turn out “too high” (why wasn’t the money we gave you sufficient?) or “too low” (what did you do with that extra money we gave you?).  The Big Contractor software does this automatically.  You and a small contractor will have to do this sort of thing by hand.  If you are doing extra non-insurance work or repairs at the same time, there’s no need to send that documentation to insurance.  That might just confuse them and raise questions that no one really wants to ask in the first place.

4. Adjusters have a lot of discretionary power.  The claim reps in the office do not.  The adjuster is the “eyes and ears” verifying that you are being honest and that the money you need for repairs really is reasonable and appropriate to the situation.  The people in the office have to use simple formulas and can only approve small adjustments.  Be nice to everyone.  They all play important roles in getting you money to get your life back in order.  Being mean or taking frustrations on on them will only hurt that process.  Regardless, if your claim, for whatever reasons, falls outside their internal calculations, rules and discretionary power, you might have to lawyer up to get it resolved.  Just like the “insurance chasing” contractors, there’s an entire industry of “insurance chasing lawyers” who do that sort of work, because it’s such an unfortunately-common need.

5. Get the house stabilized, then decompress and take your time before jumping into the repair process.  It might sound wrong to let the momentum subside. It might make sense to “do it all in one fell swoop.”  By rushing, you risk picking a bad contractor, or a good contractor who’s not a good fit for you or the project.  Assess their honesty.  A mistake in choosing a contractor will set you up for a lot more hurt down the road.  Get estimates from only well-established, highly-recommended contractors.  If anything “feels off,” then trust your feeling and keep looking.  Choose between three solid options (ideally, a high, low and mid).  Decompressing also gives you time to do a thorough job discovering and thus ensuring that all the damage gets repaired.  Yes, technically, you can open reopen a claim within two years for additional discoveries, but it’s a lot easier for them and you if you can cover everything in a single process.

6. Ask the insurance rep or adjuster to keep emergency funds separate from the repair estimate.  Otherwise the insurance company will fold them into the estimate, effectively eating into the startup money that your contractor actually gets, unless your contractor also factors them in.  Likewise, emergency funds can go to you directly, and don’t need to be co-signed by your mortgage company, making it easier to get the repairs done and paid off so you can focus on the bigger project with a calm, clear mind.  Less work for everyone.

7. Work out cash flow expectations with your contractor on the front end.  It can take several months for the next insurance check to arrive.  Several weeks to process it, then send it out to you, then you have to send it to your mortgage company for endorsement, then you have to get it back, deposit it, and wait for the hold on funds to release.  An initial high estimate gives you some additional leeway, but make sure your contractor is prepared to stretch initial funds or work on a delayed payment.  The worst case scenario involves your contractor needing funds to continue work, whereas the insurance company needs work to complete before they hand out more money!  It’s like insurance gridlock.  Break down the project into phases.  You should have enough startup money for the first two or three phases, and should update the insurance company on actual and additional expenses before your startup money runs out, so you can get the next check before the last bunch ran out.  The higher your initial estimate, the fewer times you will need to go through this process.

8.  Be proactive.  Keep your own records in order.  Insurance companies design their record keeping to err on the conservative side.  If you don’t keep your own records in order, you might be leaving money on the table and paying much more out of pocket for repairs.  Track emergency funds separately from repair funds.  Tally all money coming in and going out.  Your contractor should account for all money spent.  Claim early, claim often.  This doesn’t mean submit multiple reports per claim event (e.g., windstorm or falling tree).  Instead, take your time and submit everything all at once per event.  Open the claim and document the damage fairly quickly.  You need to keep proof.  Then submit an addendum after a thorough search for other damage.  Maybe the fence mortally wounded a sapling you planted.  Expect at least two addendums to the initial claim.  Don’t wait for an incident to happen if you can prevent or mitigate it.  $4,000 might sound like a lot to take down a tree that’s leaning, but it’s nothing compared to the emotional and logistical (and often financial) disruption of the tree falling on your house.  Alas, in spite of our most proactive efforts, trees still fall on houses.  That, ostensibly, is why we have insurance.

Lastly, since I’m a tree-huggin’ earth muffin, proactivity means also leaving things on good terms.  I feel thankful that I had a chance to say goodbye to the tree the moment I noticed it leaning.

Why the Salem Food Co-op failed

Ten Lessons from a founding member (steering committee and founding board member 2010 – 2014)

INTRODUCTION
This piece results from reflection on several factors that ultimately contributed to the demise of the Salem Food Co-op (SFC) project. I wrote it first and foremost for myself, to help articulate and clarify my pathway forward. I share it in hopes that it will help others in their community development work, by aiding in the identification and avoidance of red flags to fight self-sabotaging project failure and individuals’ unwitting participation in such self-sabotaging processes, ultimately to better respect and render effective time and energy spent toward building a better community.

10 RED FLAGS

1) First, the food co-op started with limited outreach to white godless middle class liberals. Note that I don’t use the phrase “white godless middle class liberals” as a pejorative. Rather, it is only a very limited demographic group (one that includes me). We might more accurately substitute “secular” for “godless,” as, the initial outreach did not include churches, nor did it include minority or marginalized populations and related local organizations (SKCE, NAACP, SLF, etc).

Such a narrow initial frame for the project compounded later problems. Project leaders assumed that whoever showed up as a result was “the community” and thus (yet again) erased people of color, ESL speakers, and others from the possibility of engagement and participation unless it was completely on the terms of the narrow white, middle class godless liberal frame. I fit that same narrow demographic group (which is probably why I became a founding member), and even I found the space to be unnecessarily conservative and restrictive — to the point of being claustrophobic, with constant subtle and passive-aggressive social norming to separate outliers from the “in-group.”

See Julie Guthman’s “Unbearable Whiteness of the Alternative Food Movement” for more on this topic. De facto discrimination and segregation can look more like passivity than active prejudice. For example, by putting all outreach materials in English only, by reaching out to primarily-white institutions and groups, this projects a coded message to community members who don’t fit that demographic that, “this is another white people project.” It also projects a coded message to white supremacist community members and institutions that the status quo supports their prejudice, which intensifies racism, etc in the community as a result.

2) Second, the core founding group (which later became part of the steering committee and the founding board) started and stuck with a very narrow, naive and inflexible idea of what a food co-op was. They were stuck in the romanticization of the food cooperative movement of the 70s, and wanted to transplant that through time and space into the contemporary Salem economy. They did not do research into the full breadth of cooperative possibilities, and thus could not imagine — let alone communicate — anything beyond, “I want a member-owned version of LifeSource” [the local privately-owned friendly, well-staffed and well-managed “natural foods” store] to the community, which sounded redundant to most folks. LifeSource already effectively fills that economic niche, and does a solid job at it.

In contrast, the founding group did not care to learn what other problems, needs and thus opportunities existed in the community around food issues. They did group work to move the project forward, but their participation in part served to retain control of this narrow vision and prevent broadening of possibilities. Some even said they would leave if the group even considered other possibilities than what they wanted (a brick and mortar granola store). The presence of such manipulative and threatening behavior in the early group formation itself is a huge red flag that I ignored — especially because many of these people stayed on-board!

3) Third, the board did not listen to or follow the advice of experts — such as the Food Cooperative Development Initiative and the NW Cooperative Development Center and local seasoned business owners and the local SBDC. The few cooperative projects that withstand the test of time treat the strategic planning, research and outreach process seriously, whereas key members of the SFC board just dismissed the process as redundant or even threatening to their vision. They payed lip-service to these fantastic (and freely-available) expert resources, but did not actually want to follow through with the planning process, for example, treating the business planning process as a mere “formality.” As a steering committee and board, we did not take the time to understand what the actual community (and all its participants) really wanted or needed, and where, when and how a co-op project might meet those needs, let alone whether it could at all. Other participants did not seem able to see through their narrow blinders in interpreting the information offered (so everything became about building a “brick and mortar” store).

Starting a co-op is a lot like building an intentional community, and it takes a lot of time and energy building and solidifying the (often-invisible) foundations for success. Most successful co-ops (and intentional communities) don’t start operations until several (often 5-7) years of intensive development and planning work, which includes lots of research and evolution and even complete reboots and changes in direction.

4) Fourth, we prematurely started and expanded operations (vs intensive planning and development, which the above factors short-circuited). Unwilling to give the development process the time, energy and respect it deserved, the founding members jumped at the opportunity to just “start doing it,” nevermind that we did not yet have a clear vision of what “it” meant, and that most of Salem did not share the specific implementation of the larger vision that certain members of the board insisted on. This lead to SFC naively taking over a private bulk food buying club (a very different operation than — albeit potentially part of — a cooperative effort), whose founding leaders wanted to step back. Seeing this only as an opportunity (rather than a more complex situation that included significant threats to the project), we just “started doing it” without having a clear understanding of what it is we were doing, or how we were doing it, or what the risks were. The project soon found itself in a vicious operational cycle of paying off its increasing liabilities via operations that reaffirmed the existence of those liabilities. Planning and development work all but stalled.

5) Fifth, we imposed ourselves on the community. Unwilling and unable to research and understand the full scope and potential of this project, we tried to shoehorn a narrow and exclusive vision into the Salem economy, ignoring available economic niches while trying to establish ourselves in highly competitive, well-developed ones. When we took over the buying club, we destroyed it. The buying club emerged to fill a need. Rather than letting it continue or fade on its own terms, we tried to co-opt its membership for our purposes. The SFC board forced the change from a buying club to a co-op, raised the prices, made the process more complicated, and then said it was all “for the best” without even first developing a relationship with the club’s members. It resembled a hostile takeover. Lo and behold, member participation dropped off sharply in a few buying cycles, leaving SFC with a bad public reputation (from people who might otherwise have been our core supporters and membership, no less!) and an operational burden. Such tactics only work with virtual monopolies — and besides, is that really what SFC was going for?

6) Sixth, we exploited participants. By prematurely jumping into operations, we struggled to perform even basic operational tasks. Management each order cycle was a frantic, stressful mess. There weren’t enough volunteers to help, in part because of an over-reliance on volunteers. Board members vetoed any serious consideration of hiring paid staff (at any level), even when we finally had the budget for it. Similarly, board members mired in endless operational obligations every order cycle began questioning the motives and commitment of the few board members trying to stay focused on overall project management, planning, research and development in order to pressure them to “help out more,” as if the development even of operational policies and procedures and critical path planning wasn’t “helping out.” This created more internal board tension. We misused the resources available to us, then ironically wondered why we didn’t have “enough.” The project started to become a black hole for time and energy. Overwhelmed board members began co-opting the time of friends and family.  Cue the burnout!

7) Seventh, we got sucked into pettiness. Rather than fostering partnerships and mutual development with other local and artisan food projects, we saw other local markets and producers as competitors for the same small demographic group of people who buy their food from local producers and markets (or even a small subsection of that demographic group). The local and artisan food movements compete mostly against the industrial food system. Through our passive contribution to and participation in petty infighting instead of active leadership, we undermined our ability to compete and intensified the competition over a small sliver of the overall potential market. This is another reason why SFC struggled financially, and the stress and desperation of the volunteers began to show. In the end, the food co-op even placed blame on the community with a backhanded comment about them not “embracing this opportunity.”

8) Eighth, the board participated in chauvinistic magical thinking. We believed for the most part that if we just started offering a few local products from local farmers and mostly bulk options (creating a market penetration redundant to LifeSource and existing farmer’s markets) that people would just “flock” to the co-op and ask to become members. We thought that the co-op would boom without years of careful planning and outreach and niche research and strategy. Without a carefully-crafted vision that was well-communicated to — let alone shared by — the community. We just assumed that the vision was shared, the need for it “obvious,” and ultimately that the community wanted or needed whatever SFC felt they wanted or needed. We did not even listen to ourselves when “the brick and mortar board members” said they really just wanted “a community space” — something very different than a food co-op (although some overlap can exist). We had no concern for developing management and operating policies and practices and procedures, expecting those to “just arise” out of the process. We also thought that a new software system or website would solve many of these problems and more.

9) Ninth, the project evolved from being passively classist and racist into being actively-discriminatory. Several people who became central founding members of the board even openly expressed insecure animosity toward religion and churches at board meetings, as if open animosity toward and exclusion of religious participation was necessary to maintain the co-op project as a secular space. They even did this when new potential board members showed up, as if to “vet” such potential members. The fundamental fear and insecurity behind such practices also led toward a patronizing and negative attitude toward the Salem community they ostensibly sought to serve.  I believe that much of this happened because those of us who disagreed nonetheless chose to remain silent while others publicly spouted strong negative opinions.

10) Tenth, we did not accept accountability or feedback. We failed to recognize all the myriad red flags and question whether we were doing anything wrong, or whether we had gotten our priorities mixed up. Desperate and disorganized operational concerns for current order cycles pervaded and co-opted board planning and retreat spaces, increasing internal tension. When the project inevitably shattered and broke, the remaining members were so burnt out that we could not even consider a reboot or a change in strategy or direction. We lacked flexibility and adaptability in pursing the vision and mission we claimed to represent. Whatever we did was “right” and “correct” and if it didn’t work, then it wasn’t because we did things wrong or poorly, but because “Salem didn’t step up to this opportunity.” We blamed others for our mistakes — even, ironically, the very people we claimed to be “serving,” e.g., for not “buying enough.”

This isn’t to say that the board did everything wrong, or that there weren’t other external mitigating factors. There were. But those factors always exist — the difference between success and failure falls with whether and how people acknowledge and address those factors, or whether they ignore or dismiss them. Although we can never guarantee success, we can guarantee failure by sabotaging ourselves (regardless of the reason or motives for doing so). While the above list is not exhaustive, it does unfortunately comprise a solid recipe for failure.

CONCLUSION
I had a lot of hope for this project, which is why I began participation early in the steering committee and became a founding board member. Participation in this project ultimate became very stressful and time consuming, which I shrugged off as an inherent aspect of project work. But I refused to ignore many red flags, perhaps due to the sunk cost fallacy (I’ve already committed countless hours, I can’t back out now!). The other red flags I only addressed as isolated issues rather than seeing them as part of a larger pattern of attitudes and behaviors sabotaging the integrity of the project. It’s always difficult to evaluate such circumstances when you are immersed in them, especially when you really want things to go well and you’ve already invested hundreds and hundreds of hours.

Ultimately, I learned a lot from my participation. In addition to the lessons above, I conducted a lot of research, and developed considerable expertise on cooperative structures (even compiling a resource used by NWCDC). Still, I wish I had the clarity of mind to step back earlier than I did. My sin was not in failing to see red flags, but failing to connect them together. My own wishful thinking kept me captive to the belief that I could make a difference if I just tried harder, put in a few more hours, etc. Instead, my continued participation only further enabled the pathological process and delayed the inevitable demise of the project.

Cooperatives are interesting structures. They aim for the best, but can ironically bring out the worst. I still believe they have a lot of potential for community building and economic empowerment, but only in recognizing and addressing two large challenges of our society:

1. The fact that our legal and economic and cultural systems often exhibit open hostility toward — let alone near-complete lack of support for — such projects, and
2. We all bring baggage into cooperative project spaces — both individual and institutional (e.g., colonizing processes and participation in imperialist structures of the larger society).

If the participants can’t acknowledge and deal with that baggage, then it sabotages the project, which can even provide a platform for and amplify the impact of pathological process and behavior. This baggage looks like both structural and internalized oppression: classism, racism, sexism, dogma (including secular dogma!), etc. In the very least, such baggage, left unaddressed, impedes our ability to overcome or navigate the first challenge (lack of support from a hostile establishment). If this becomes people’s experience with cooperatives, then they might actually start seeing cooperatives as a “bad thing,” which is unfair both to the cooperative movement and to them inasmuch as cooperatives, when well-executed, can be fantastic forces of community building and economic empowerment.

I’m not the only one soured on cooperatives.  Austrian agroforestry expert Sepp Holzer wonders out loud of farmers emprisoned in cooperative contracts that hold the market hostage, force financial losses, and prevent both farm and market innovation and evolution in his book, Sepp Holzer’s Permaculture:

How long will it take for farmers to free themselves of the shackles of cooperatives and make their way to independence?

Cooperatives are not inherently good or revolutionary, but are socioeconomic tools.  Like any tool they can be used to exploit others.  Or, ideally, we can use them to create the beautiful human economy of the sort that luminaries such as EF Schumacher envisioned.

I still think there’s room (even need and demand) for an entire network of cooperatives in the Salem economy that truly help people meet currently-unmet or poorly-met needs: childcare, urban food production, affordable housing, food distribution (esp. to food deserts), time banking. But such projects need to start with a fundamentally-different ethic than the status quo: open-minded, inclusive, exploratory, responsive, accountable. Until then I have promised myself the integrity to abstain from participation in projects that exhibit any (especially several) of the above red flags, because doing so ultimately wastes time and energy, enables more oppressive pathology, and harms the participants and the larger community.

Salem, the awkward middle child of urban Oregon

An alienated insider’s guide for those who have never been, those who will never be, and those who will never leave.

written 082915, dedicated to the memory of David Rakoff
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Geographically, the desertifying lump of civil concrete we call Salem sits in between Portland and Eugene, the other two largest concrete lumps of capital accumulation in the once-lush Willamette River Valley of the Pacific Northwest. Neither the largest nor the smallest, Salem seems to disappear comfortably somewhere in the cozy middle of nowhere. People arrive in Salem for two main reasons: 1. They are passing through on their way north or south along the I-5 transportation corridor, and perhaps hope to find a serviceable gas station bathroom and sandwich shop that doesn’t serve as a front for a child sex trafficking operation or 2. They have economic or political business with the State or its minions.

We might call Portland the eldest of three siblings. While New Yorkers call Portland a “quaint little town,” Oregonians know it as the Big City of Oregon. Rose City, Rip City, P-town, Stumptown, PDX, Pornland, it has more nicknames than some of the most renowned narcissists in the annals of history, and wears them with ironic — if solid — pride. Eugene, the southernmost of the metropolitan siblings, serves well as the youngest of the three, right on down to its liberally-entrenched sense of baseless entitlement to everything Portland has and more.

Eugene is the seat of the University of Oregon, the second-largest of six state universities. Eugene finds much of its cultural and economic footing in the College Town trope. Hip, cool, perpetually young. Likewise, Portland houses the most-populous Portland State University, while Corvallis (a fourth, adopted child of Oregon we will not concern ourselves with in this essay) houses third-largest Oregon State University and as such will forever play second fiddle to Eugene.

In contrast, Salem itself has no large university. A malnourished Western Oregon University cools its heels rather quietly on the inconspicuous outskirts of the Salem Metropolitan area, in a suburb known as Monmouth. Instead, Salem houses Willamette University, a small private liberal arts college that every year attracts into the crystal clear waters of its cozy little pond a new school of well-funded (if deliberately under-dressed) “middle class” Big Fish who, as a general rule, throw four years’-worth of their parents’ ample money and misguided attitude at Salem before they inevitably migrate north to the cooler waters of Portland, whereupon they find that they fit in better with others who share their dialectical mix of disaffected optimism disguising a deep-seeded sense of personal discomfort (for all their feigned classlessness, Willamette graduates don’t dare stay in Salem, with its affordable rent, for as every trendy new Portlander surely knows, if you can afford to live there, it’s probably not worth it).

Who can blame them? Whatever the bottomless soul of the consumer-citizen desires, Portland claims to have it (as the kombucha capitol of the country, in some parts of the city you can spy small gentrifying neighborhood collectives cooperatively raising goats and chickens in lieu of children). Portland, in its manic-depressive attempt to be Everything to Everyone(1), sprouts coffee shops at densities approaching one per caffeine-addicted resident (this much-romanticized colonial drug commodity trade manages to avoid a clash with Portland’s self-styled counter-culture couture in large part through enthusiastically ubiquitous ejaculations of signage everywhere proclaiming, “local brew!” which, if we take in their sum totality at face value, apparently means that the coffee plant somehow now grows somewhere in the the Pacific Northwest! Why aren’t there more people talking about this revolutionary breakthrough in plant breeding and post-colonial economic practice?). This constant flood of caffeine mixes with tattoos and irony to provide ample chemical and social fuel for arm-chair politiking and micro-entrepreneurial efforts to further subdivide already severely-dissected market niches: If enough people continually throw themselves at bad ideas, then those of us outsiders who watch with an air of overwhelmed confusion will inevitably miss their stale crash and burn after a few months (normally) or years (for the relatively successful ones), buried somewhere amidst the endless incoming torrent of newly-minted bright-eyed, bushy-tailed micro-entrepreneurs fresh off the printing press. Collective failure starts looking like a grand success in the apparent-absence of unexamined attrition rates. Suddenly, someone’s childhood dream (from three weeks ago, fueled in equal parts by caffeine and disaffected desparation) of opening a Micronesian Tex-Mex “ethnic fusion” grocer catering specifically to smartphone app-wielding ride-thru bicyclists might not seem like such a bad idea after all…A specialty store focusing specifically on salts and chocolates? Sure! What the casual, outside observer might call a grab-bag collective of random mishmash specialty trends, the Portlander affectionately refers to as, “inspiration!”

Portland contains PDX, that is to say, the Portland International Airport (whose abbreviated name the city took for itself during a period of narcissistic identity acquisition). If you, Dear Oregonian, want to fly anywhere else of “significance,” you have to go through PDX first. The bus and train run through Salem, though. Economically, Salem is neither really rural agricultural nor mercantile nor based on the presence of a large education institution nor culturally hip. Not even Burgerville, a local staple of the northwest fast food landscape with the odd outpost in rural Monmouth(!) and Albany(!), will bother with Salem-proper. Instead, Salem possesses the unique political burden of housing the State capitol of Oregon, including many of its State administrative offices (the rest reside deferentially in Portland because…well, “it’s Portland”). That is to say, Salem’s economy depends almost entirely upon the State administrative class, that is to say, upon pedantic rules, their robotic followers, their eery enforcers and the bureaucratic hives they inhabit for the exact equivalent of eight hours five days a week minus vacation and sick days. Lobbyists of both well-funded private and unfunded public interests also play a vital role in the nested parasitism of the State political economy.

While Salem may lack the “higher” (than thou) educational institutions of its younger and bigger siblings, it does not generally lack in the presence of state-run educational institutions per se. Salem serves as the bed and breakfast for nearly half of Oregon’s euphemistically-labeled “correctional” facilities (Mill Creek Correctional [sic] Facility, Oregon State Correctional [sic] Institution, Oregon State Penitentiary, Santiam Correctional [sic] Institution, Hillcrest Youth Correctional [sic] Facility, and Oak Creek Correctional [sic] Facility) as well as the Oregon State (psychiatric) Hospital, housing well over a quarter (27%) of Oregon’s total inmate population.(3) When the convicts and mental patients get released, they find their way into Salem first and foremost, alongside its similarly-disproportionate slice of the growing homeless and discarded veteran populations. Strategic on their part as social outcasts, for in the shadow of the government, they will forever remain the lesser of two evils in the eyes of the general populace.

The anglicized word “Salem” comes from Hebrew/Arabic “Shalom”/”Salaam,” meaning “peace.” So we might accurately (and redundantly) call Salem the “City of Peace.” While I don’t dispute this label, I will probably quibble with the exact vision of “peace” that Salem supposedly pursues.

On the one hand, the municipal corporation of Salem itself exists in the shadow of the State capitol, creating a perennial “mini-me” Napolean Complex for those who, if we wish to believe the bumper stickers, “give a shit about Salem,” and want to “Make Salem Awesome.” If we see the cities as siblings, and the State as their parents, then Salem and her inhabitants become the pitiful Offspring Who Never Left The Nest, remaining intimately mired in all the familiar baggage that drives the other siblings to keep their distance. In return, Salem residents receive the dubiously over-funded services of eerily-reliable, empowered Meter Maids and enthusiastically-zealous Code Compliance Officers who role out of bed every morning with a smile on their face as they start another day of diligent and rewarding work to make the City of Peace the “most compliant place on earth.” The host City, after all, must remain friendly to the State parasite.

On the other hand, when the State collapses, so will Salem’s economy. Call it a co-dependent, love-hate relationship, and you might be right. Nevermind its independent history before the rise of the state — Salem now exists, in large part, as an empty shell, a host for the bureaucratic parasite, although sometimes I question exactly who parasitizes whom.

Both Portland and Eugene have well-established and well-hyped reputations and identities. They have branded themselves: hip(ster), young, trendy, green(washed). “Sustainable.” “Progressive.” Tattoo’d. Spectacled. Unwashed. Gentrifying. Bereft of Adult Supervision. This branding has infected the minds of their youngest, whitest, trendiest inhabitants, many of whom brought the infection with them in the first place. Both cities have proudly developed proprietary rebrands of pseudo-radical politics, something they seem to pull off quite effectively given the glows of admiration and glares of derision they receive from the political left and right, respectively. The ruralites tend to stay away from these places, except to do reluctant business with them, giving only occasional pause to wonder where the money of their more cosmopolitan counterparts actually comes from (nevermind legality or inflation — is it hip and trendy enough for Portlanders to print their own?).

Many people in Salem reject these trends in conflicting fits of ironic jealousy. “We want those things…we just don’t want to work for it.” In all fairness, trendiness entails an awful lot of work — more weekly work than most of us want to do, already exhausted from six days’ worth of oiling creaky gears and hinges and servicing the stiff pistons of the State apparatus all the while feeding its busy (if not necessarily productive) worker bots and bees. The willful self-exploitation of micro-enterprise is sexy right now, and Salem is simply not hot enough to pass muster after a hard day’s work. Instead, Salem’s philosophy of “peace” may rest more in a spiritually-cynical faith than raw, material sex appeal. Those trends that Salem finds unavoidable, thanks to an endemic “Me, too!” chorus of Napoleonic Mini-Me’s, receive a particularly half-assed implementation of the “too little, too late” variety. Food carts? Sure, we’ll do those. Days late and dollars short, Salem and the suckling State will milk a few food carts for all they are worth (or maybe it’s vice-versa) before the trend (and perhaps the economy itself) collapses completely.

A peculiar pathology of a more mundane sort infects the minds of Salem residents, encapsulated in the Krishnamurti quote, “It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” Many of us exist mired in and subservient to myriad State bureaucracies and their municipal minions and Mini-Me’s. Others want to (sort-of) do the awkward “me too’s” of trendy Portland and Eugene. And a well-trained semi-professional militia of yawning mouths stands ever-ready to meet, patronize and sabotage any earnest effort (no matter how small or slight) toward optimistic change, even those of the “too little, too late” sort. Mental patients and convicts take note: the inmates run the asylum. It seems salient that I found some solace in a famous sociology study entitled, “On being sane in insane places,”(2) upon moving to Salem so many sleepy years ago.

Cities entice us through a Mumfordian Magnificent Bribe. As centers of accumulation (in Portland’s case, specifically the accumulation of trends), they offer us the potential of access to copious resources (people and stuff), but only if we accept the myriad shitty downsides as well. The City looks down at us, folds its arms and says, “All or nothing.” When we see cities as bodies of sorts, then we might recognize the Religion of Urbanism as a particularly repressive form of Catholicism treating “that icky stuff coming out the other end” with fear, shame, loathing and disgust. Yes, everybody poops. Cities like Portland and Eugene ignore, minimize and externalize their shit (City of Roses, you say?). Deep Green Navel Gazing and other so-called “sustainability” practices help as cities pimp themselves into positions of ever-greater accumulation in their willing pursuit of All. Show me a city that offers you All the benefits yet None of the drawbacks, and I will show you a perfect marketing lie immersed in the inverse magic of low expectations (How’s your marriage? Is it “sustainable,” as well?). This strategy works for a time but, as every good Catholic knows, it catches up with us eventually. Things seem great, then suddenly you find yourself neck-deep in the mountains of shit (yours and others’) that you can no longer ignore and should have dealt with years ago. While Portland and Eugene make vain-but-valiant Johnny-come-lately efforts to hold their nose and compost their new-found (and growing) backlog of excremental output, Salem takes a different approach to this same problem: As realistics, we take the All or Nothing resolution for granted, and err on the side of Nothing. We don’t want to deal with the shit, so we just won’t eat. Less accumulation, less opportunity, but also, in the long run, less icky stuff comes out the other end for us to deal with down the road. Nutrient cycling be-damned.

A small-but-committed group of Salem residents seem to see opportunity and resilience within this self-imposed austerity. This phenomenon manifests as a mutual refusal to feel well-adjusted to the profoundly sick urbanizing rat race. Many of these people seem to have strong spiritual foundations grounded in the material realities of everyday life. And therein lies the realist promise of Salem: less shit than Portland and Eugene. Salem’s promise lies not in its race toward utopia, but toward the potential it has to avoid dystopia (inasmuch as we can find any meaningful difference between the two). Salem lives not with a longing gaze toward the Heavens of Unlimited Possibility akin to ambitious sister cities Portland and Eugene, but in an abject aversion to Hell, perhaps because those who live here feel like we’re already there. Whether Salem will live up (or down, as it were) to this potential remains to be seen…but if cities must exist, I like the apathetic odds of Salem better than the even fates of Portland and Eugene, cities that thrive in denial even as they drown in the shit they produce while trying to keep their heads above the rising tide of shit (that they produce).

“Salem” may mean “less awesome” when projected through the insecure eyes of her more ambitious siblings, but it also means, “less shitty.” I propose a new bumper sticker for Salem, more suitable to the city’s tendencies: Keep Salem Sleepy. To Hell with Municipal Ambition. I say, abandon the rat race, coddle the state parasite if we must, embrace the awkward self-conscious confusion and get rid of the self-imposed Napolean Complex confining Salem to the lumpy whims of Portland, Eugene and the predictable grind of the State machinery. Salem will survive in some manner and find its salvation in a special form of sloth representing its strategically-cynical resistance to the shitty pathology of Urban Optimism. When cities the world over finally fall apart in the coming years of the apocalyptic collapse of pretense that eventually consumes every civilization, Salem will yawn, pull the covers up and promptly return to the pleasant dream it was enjoying before something so rudely disturbed its peaceful slumber. Salem will not fall into the abyss and break, because it’s already at the bottom. Salem, like The Dude(3), abides.
—
The author resides in an unremarkable place approximately 45 miles south of Portland, where they enjoy spending time outdoors burning large stacks of Portland Monthly magazines in effigy as part of their small effort to make the world slightly less disgusting.
—
FOOTNOTES
(1) Except black people, homeless people, or especially, homeless black people, of course
(2) Rosenhan, “On Being Sane in Insane Places,” Science, 1973
(3) data from Wikipedia
(4) (of the Cohen Brothers’ eponymous Big Lebowski)

So You Wanna Be a Harp Player?

BACKGROUND

From that classic intro lick to the now-iconic and cliched followup, “So you wanna be a harp player?” Scott “Harpo” McCloskey’s “Harpin’ It Easy” taught many of us to suck and blow our way to some semblance of musicality on the harp.  I remember asking the Guy Behind the Counter at my LMS about learning the harp as a preteen.  Without hesitation, he took out the package, ripped it open, threw down the cassette tape and booklet, held up the included plastic “toy” harmonica, and said, “this is crap” then threw it in the waste basket with a clang.  Then he pushed the tape and booklet over to me with a C Marine Band and continued, “But I wish I had this little instruction course when I was learning to play.”  He charged me for the harmonica, which was the more expensive of the two items.  So he basically gave me the tape and booklet for free.

PURPOSE

This package has disappeared from the face of the earth.  But it’s a good tutorial for a beginner or even intermediate harp player to brush up on.  So in the interest of historic preservation, I am providing:

1. The original booklet, scanned and processed for both print and computer display
2. Both sides A and B of the cassette, conveniently broken into short subject-oriented tracks

PROCESS

Equipment: I recorded in stereo mp3 at 192kpbs on a small handheld Sony ICD-PX312, played through an old but fantastic handheld Panasonic Stereo Radio Cassette Player RQ-V164, with EQ set to middle on treble, mid and bass, and XBS set to “off” and volume on full.  No additional processing, except renaming the files on the recorder after splitting them into tracks, which is honestly where I sank most of my time and work in this project.

The tape broke on my first attempt to record.  I had to take the cassette apart and reattach the magnetic tape to the mylar tape with tiny little strips of scotch tape. Fortunately, it held up through recording both sides.

I did the scan work on ElementaryOS Luna (based on Ubuntu 14.04) using open source software Simple Scan at 600dpi from lossless copies using GIMP and LibreOffice Draw.

Get it here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0BwEbnp8jewZdbm5LczRwQ1I0bTg?usp=sharing

C harp not included.

MORE

If you want your mind blown with the potential of the “diatonic” harmonica, look up Howard Levy (“Bela Fleck and the Flecktones”).  He plays the diatonic harp like a chromatic instrument for all musical styles and idioms.  For great blues and extra instruction, look up Adam Gussow (“Kick and Stomp,” Satan and Adam, and his Youtube channel “Modern Blues Harmonica,” full of helpful information for beginner and intermediate players).  Adam Gussow pays homage to his mentors, such as the great early black players his personal mentor, amazing street musician Nat Riddles.

012216 multimediated misery

012216
—
we are people
trapped inside stolen hearts and minds
squabbling over stolen lands on borrowed time
occupy hallowed ground, thieves
take directly from the Source, and
She always comes back around to collect, eventually
by hook, by crook and by force

we are people
baring broken hearts and souls
like smiling rows of snarling teeth
courage didn’t abandon us to grief
we abandoned her first, following
the disintegration of solidarity
expect the worst, watch it unfold

we are people
on parade with emotional implants
borrowed thoughts, tired rants
replacing the inspired action of praxis
like a retired chant relaxes
the realm of the spiritual
material collapses, leaving us alone

we are people without home
without food, without water
without air, without space
without silence, without peace
without shelter, without place
succumbing to the seduction of
trauma-induced, technology-produced
multimediated misery

a well-engineered excess of misguided “success”
transmutes our compliant screams, it seems
while we drown violently, in effect
void of life without ever dying
we are people, anymore…
…aren’t we?
—
A Poem for Ammon Bundy

Elimination Diets and Food Testing Tool

Background

I’ve had some chronic health issues for most of my life.  I won’t get into them.  Recently, in the past few years, they had gotten much worse, and, upon the complete failure of the medical establishment to provide any answers, I started looking into the massive impact that diet and (by association) lifestyle has on our health.  This line of inquiry led me, through grace and by grit, to Sarah Ballantyne’s exceptional (well-written, rigorously researched) labor of love on diet and lifestyle factors impacting optimal human health.

The major process of resolving chronic health issues (whether physical, physiological, neurological, emotional, digestive, etc) involves making health-supporting lifestyle and dietary changes.  Most of the dietary work comes in the form of an elimination diet, which means getting rid of (potentially or confirmed) problematic foods responsible for creating or exacerbating health issues, to cause a permanent remission in chronic health symptoms.  It doesn’t necessarily mean that you “cure” your condition, but it gives you the capacity to live without the negative symptoms (such as allergies, frequent illness, digestive upset, migraines, brain fog, anxiety, depression, fatigue, pain, etc) which is pretty darn cool.  Sarah Ballantyne’s book is by far (note the triple emphasis: bold, underline and italic) the best guide to this process I have found.  I’m not getting paid to write this by anyone (unfortunately).  I just can’t recommend it highly enough.  Ballantyne writes with a rare combination of ethical sensitivity, intellectual rigor, passion and competency.  In my opinion, a rare kind of genius.

By eliminating problematic foods, supporting our health with optimal nutrition and lifestyle factors, we heal the damage done to our bodies over the years, and allow it to recover.  The length of the healing process depends on how effectively we eliminate problematic foods (typically grains, legumes and other seed-based foods [aka, “pseudo-grains” like quinoa and buckwheat], allergens, dairy, alcohol and nightshades) and how much damage our bodies have already sustained.  A consistent remission of symptoms indicates that healing is occurring (for people who got it real bad, a consistent cessation of symptom worsening may be all they can hope for).

Toward the end of the elimination diet and healing process, people who feel better have the option of undergoing a food testing process to determine their food sensitivities.  It’s not nutritionally-necessary, but it can make life in society that dumps problematic foods all over the place a lot easier when we know what we absolutely need to avoid under any circumstance, and stuff we can cheat on every now and then for the sake of social flexibility without too serious of consequences.

When I first started on this journey, the very concept of an “elimination diet” confused me immensely.  What to eliminate?  How?  When?  For how long?  What’s this “testing process?”  Sarah’s book explained all this finally in such a fantastic way, I feel like it’s my turn to contribute some resources to this growing (and I think, very positive) trend of people treating chronic health issues via diet and lifestyle changes instead of through drugs.

Food Testing Tool

After searching and searching, I could not find a tool that

So I created this tool for two reasons:

1. Because I feel, for the first time in my life, optimistic about my long-term health prospects.  I will get to the “testing stage” and when I do, I want to be ready for it, to set myself up for success.
2. I have yet to find a decent, practical resource for oral food challenge tests.  Sarah Ballantyne’s book explains the process well enough (many other books try and fail).

My Creative Commons contribution is a distillation of the practical considerations for the testing process:

1. challenge_chart_instructions:  A short set of instructions written as a 10-step process
2. challenge_chart:  A printable chart to help people track and organize important information through the testing process
3. The Paleo Approach_Reintroducing_Foods:  A short excerpt of the testing process from Ballantyne’s book as an additional reference material, under fair use consideration for educational purposes.  I strongly recommend you just get the whole book, because it provides a lot of very useful additional information.  It’s been worth more than its weight in gold for me, including the emotional support that it has provided through this difficult process.

The Feral Weeds of Civilization

http://www.feraljesus.com/calvin-and-hobbes/

There is no longer anything wild and free over the next hill. All you will find are filthy cities, factories, outlet malls, military bases, judicial centers. Remove your gaze from this monstrosity, and look toward the earth. Observe and learn from the flowering weed that cracks the pavement, so full of power, hopeful energy, creating beauty amid the desolation. Aren’t you a sweet, free spirit, a flowering weed that breaks through the asphalt, a serendipitous encounter who makes life bearable? Keep breaking out of the darkness of civilization. Thrust, reach up, display your beauty and freedom in ecstasy. Expand and expire for all to see, until you are crushed.

I feel my heart breaking and aching and resisting as I pull back from so much in life and take the time and space to heal and rebuild.  Painful.  Necessary.  And, after ten years intensively exploring anarcha-feminist lifeways within the confines of a consummate patriarchy, inevitable.  Each day I feel pieces of me fall away as i peel back the broken layers and rest what remains of my naked, raw self on a more solid foundation.  I look forward to our intersecting fates, my fellow feral weeds, as we continue to question and break from our pathological allegiance to an addictive society and its magnificent bribes.

Onward…What does it mean to leave an empire that has expanded everywhere?  In some ways, I think it makes the process more coherent, because the global expansion of empire has destroyed the illusion that we can simply pack up and ship out to a new place without recreating empire there as well. We must abolish and destroy the empire within us as well as the external forces of coercive control.

Violence Against Women: A Man’s Issue

Yes, violence against women is a man’s issue.  It’s not only a man’s issue (obviously, violence against women affects women and children and non-human animals and, and), but it gets tiring to read all the defensive responses when someone points out that it is also a man’s issue.  This should be non-controversial. Given that

1. societal and intimiate partner and sexual violence/abuse comes mostly from men
2. men are most likely to be victimized by other men
3. women who abuse tend to be taking on masculine gender roles

this is definitely a problem of masculinity that men need to address.  Since gender roles co-exist, this is a problem of patriarchy, namely, the rigid, unrealistic (for most people) gender roles patriarchy imposes on us all.  men need to participate in that conversation about ending patriarchy and replacing it with something more anarchistic — that is, lacking a rigid hierarchy, that is, allowing people to negotiate their gender roles on (inter)personal levels without culturally imposing a bunch of crappy baggage on us all.

In this way, feminism means liberation…for us all!   The only people I hear complaining about feminism are those (usually men) who seem to fear “losing control” over women, and who often seem to view women as inherently narcissistic or sociopathic (and use that as a justification for their behavior).

Ironically, these dudes are also victims of patriarchy, as well, whether its the social shame/victim blaming of being a male victim of sexual/domestic violence or child abuse (though it is high for everyone), not living up to unrealistic expectations of “what it means to be a man,” (which leads to other men/women policing their behavior, shame and overcompensation), developing unhealthy and counterproductive views of women, having to navigate the minefield of homophobia, or any number of other issues.  Feminism brings these issues up, like a societal-scale counselor, or a messenger.   Each time we raise the issue, some men try to shoot the messenger rather than address the actual issue.  Can you imagine how different the US would be today if people decided to shoot Paul Revere rather than heed his warning?  ha!

Women have been asking for men to participate in these conversations for decades.  Each year, more and more men listen to that call, and more and more men express the courage to step up and participate, for a number of reasons:  for their own sake (because they are sick of patriarchy), for the sake of their loved ones, for the sake of their relationships, and for the sake of the social fabric of our society (a fabric that domestic and sexual violence and its patriarchal underpinnings rips to shreds), and others.

James Brown’s wonderful speech is an example of that trend toward liberation.  Let’s keep on it!

somewhere, something went terribly wrong

I love the original, sardonic idea of this graphic. I like dark wallpapers, so I found one that had decent size and quality.

Using GIMP (free open source software!), I

• expanded the size to 1280 x 800 pixels for my laptop
• straightened the main image (it was crooked!)
• corrected the text to read, “Somewhere, something went terribly wrong…” (it previously read “Something, somewhere went terribly wrong” which rubbed me the wrong way)
• I also added a little bit of a point to the spear and broom bristles (I think it used to be a rake)

Somewhere, something went terribly wrong

Assholes, baboons and collapse: The ABCs of human sustainability

Premise: Modern industrial civilization is rapidly depleting the land-base on which most animals depend, even though it has existed for a fraction of the time of past civilizations (which all similarly collapsed).  We surround ourselves with an ever-increasing imbalance of technomass (things of our own handicraft) away from biomass (things we coevolved/were cocreated with), creating an unprecedented and interlocking matrix of metaphorical mirrors.  How could that do anything except breed excessive narcissism?

Waiting for industrial civilization to bring itself down will nearly completely destroy the ecosystems on which we depend. Consider also the fact that the ability of so-called “civilized” humans to make effective, sustainable use of our local land-bases has atrophied (and I think I’m being generous here) to near-complete non-existence. Acorns? Milkweed? Cattails? These are edible? How? What about these berries — they taste sweet…what do you mean they’re poisonous?? You mean you want me to squat and poop where?

Conclusion: The decline if our land-base coupled with our relative inability to subsist directly on what little land-base remains will present us with a perfect storm of effective scarcity. This means that the human herd will need some serious thinning. In other words, the human herd will thin itself one way or another, and we can either be intentional about it or just let it happen.

Implications: If we aren’t intentional about our thinning, then the sociopathic, narcissistic assholes will divide, conquer, dominate and prey on the vulnerable, and we’ll all have a much more miserable time of it than is necessary.