Please stop with the over the top silly comments aimed at creating sympathy for people who break the law.

Another thought occurs to me: if some people would have it that when the law has been broken, the children should pay the same penalty as the parent who committed the crime, our jails should be full of infants and toddlers and kids. For God’s sake, is the law of property and citizenship more important than a child’s well-being and security?

There is a lot that was left unsaid about New Bedford today, and I have to take some issue with Jack Spillane’s comment about there being no symphony when he arrived here. The New Bedford Symphony Orchestra has operated continuously for over 90 years and within the past 10 years has become remarkably good. The city is hosting a growing population of artists and the cultural life has flourished despite the economic troubles, and the Economic Development Council locally is investigating how to leverage this resource into small businesses. The area requires a broader base of skilled, educated jobs mixed with lower skilled jobs in order to convince people that there is a use for education.

One has to also recall that this area of the state was where the original Boston/Massachusetts Bay colonists sent their religious dissenters and political outcasts, and could probably partly account for the blind eye Boston has turned to the fortunes of this area. It is deeply ingrained in the cultural fabric and Yankee memory that New Bedford was a place for up-starts. The city’s highest pinnacle of success was when the Quakers originally banished here by the Puritans shrugged the exile off and went about making this city the richest place on the earth in the mid-nineteenth century. Somehow, the ability to take fantastic risks and to shrug off what others think is in need of taking hold here again, or I fear it will continue to sink down as the dumping ground for the poor and indigent of the Boston area (many of those we have here who are homeless or nearly so have come from “up north”, presumably because it is cheaper to take care of the mentally ill and developmentally disabled in New Bedford than in Boston).

Apologies that this is a bit off-topic. I think Ramsey Clark said it best in an interview a number of years ago before the current Iraq war that the US views its activities in other countries purely on the economic side (what’s in it for us, or, if you will, US?) and this is why we could envision war in Iraq (oil) but not in Darfur (human rights).

Also remember the indians themselves immigrated from across the bering straights, Russia and parts of Asia. So any claim to who really owned the land is nebulous at best. Also many Indian tribes fought and killed each other over land and other percievd wrongs. They were not quite the fun loving peacful people some would have us believe.

$5 a bin is correct. Kids had to pick drops until they were stong enough to climb the ladders and hold the baskets around the neck. Remember you filled the basket then opened the bottom and all the apples fell out. Drops were sold at reduced prices, but most were used in making cider. Of course some were used in making hard cider.

We also had peaches, pears, plums, pumpkins, and many berries. Berries were the worst to pick it took way to long to fill a carton. and black berries were loaded with prickers.

There was nothing like returning to the barn on a cold fall New England night after a day of picking. We always got free food and some hot cider before running home with our 2or 3 dollars.

Re “..no one has any intention of returning their land to the indians. It just makes you feel good to say something negative about the bad white settlers..”-

It’s funny… the Indians that I’ve talked to don’t think of it as “their land”- because, the way they see it, They belong to the Land… like everything else does, that lives on it… not the way we look at it. Their point of view is pretty realistic… they say, “it’s bigger than you- it lives longer than you- someday you gonna be part of it, no matter what you do.” (It reminds me of the farmer who taught me about growing root vegetables, who used to say “Plow deep! there’s a whole ‘nother acre under the one you got, there… and if you could move it someplace else for a minute, you could get at the lower one better.” His point was like the Indians’, that is, if you Could ‘do something’ with that land, why, the land would still be there…)

I don’t “feel good to say something negative” about white settlers… I’m a child of white settlers. I don’t see any reason not to learn something from them, though, beyond what they may have thought I should know. If a better explanation of something strikes your fancy, then it may be a good idea to look into it- even when it gets you in trouble with your elders- (like happened to Galileo) and threatens to change the way people in general see the world. The idea of “ownership” of land- and of divvying it up into rectangles, with no care or thought about the realities of geography- IS kind of a narrow vision of our place on earth. While it may feel good (for some) and enhance a sense of self-importance, it may not reflect some possibly Greater Realities of our situation (which we might prefer to ignore, for whatever reason).

Re “25 cents a box” is about the same as $5. a bin… & we only picked off the tree. I think a box is around 40 pounds & a bin about 800- so the pay was equivalent. Some orchards picked up their own drops- or let us pickers take what we wanted- and I’m guessing it most went into applejack… a lot of mine did… ^..^

I liked your fruit picking storey. I grew up next to 3 big fruit farms mostly apple but other stuff as well. The laborers were us kids from the neighborhood a few adults from the area who were basically farm laborers and the owners family. Remember farmers had big families. The owner had 7 kids also his parents and other relatives, A few Jamacains came up for about amonth during peak season. Pay was 10 cents a box for drops. and 25cents a box for apples picked off the tree. I guess you could say pay was cheap and work was hard. But I fondly remember those days. Unfortunatly with the real estate boom of the 80′s The owner sold the farm. Now rich mostly liberal yuppies live in big houses on what were once orchards.

you can adjust the superficial details all you want..income..whatever..we have slavery around us and we choose to ignore it and you back up that point with your rhetoric

I’m assuming you know the location of YOUR nearest tribe, no? Not many do…

It’s funny… I’ve noticed the same thing, about my redneck neighbors. I guess nobody thinks they owe the leftover savages any more than they’ve already got- unless that includes a casino. A whole lot of club-owners around here think they should get to have one, too- since the Redskins do. I remember back when the 2 nearest tribes were trying to get back their treaty fishing rights, in the 1970s, and there were some Hollywood types (or “big city” types, really) like Dick Gregory & Norman Mailer, out there in boats with the hostiles, taking their chances… and by golly, they ended up in jail, too. Turned out that the Federal courts figured out that the Treaty was the same as a Law- and gave the savages a right to fish- which is what they were getting thumped for doing.

I stopped at the First Av S off-ramp around Valentines Day, and asked the PTSD-addled Nam vet there if he had seen Adam (who is an Aleut with a bum leg who usually hangs out there)… and this guy, Frank, told me that “old Keemo” was covering a corner in town, closer to the men’s shelter (where they both slept)- and that he was doing pretty good, there. I saw Adam about 2 weeks ago, and he said that Frank had moved in on him, and started acting “crazy”- and Adam got worried about getting hurt, maybe- and moved back into the downtown, near the old public dock… and that he was OK- but he used to get more $$ at the off-ramp, from the truckers headed into the port- and now he had to depend on tourists, which wasn’t as steady. Making a living holding a sign & sitting on a 5 gallon bucket isn’t the easiest way to go… even with a bum leg- or a broken mind…

(rc21) “I also liked your statement about slave labor. Please where in the US is this being practiced? No such thing sorry to dissapoint you..”-

I guess I wasn’t too clear about what I said- which was CAPITAL IS LABOR- SLAVE LABOR. I didn’t say anything about prostitutes… I was talking about MONEY. You know, MONEY can go across borders, all over the world, without a passport… even twice a day, sometimes. Your money works for you, 24/7, wherever you send it… Zurich, HongKong, Wall Street, London, Mexico City- doesn’t matter. And it sends home EVERYTHING it makes, and never wants a break, or needs you to pay into some “accident insurance” fund, or Workman’s comp, health insurance- nothin’- it just goes and goes, wherever you send it, with no complaints. It won’t need a retirement pension, either. It is, basically, your SLAVE- and it will WORK for you, wherever you want it to… so, it’s SLAVE LABOR.

Of course, we’ve had other kinds of slave labor in this country- still do, actually- that happen to be people (& I suppose you could make a case for seeing eye dogs & dairy cows and… like that). The people are mostly really poor, and are in the country “illegally”- so they can’t talk back… and even if they could, most of their bosses wouldn’t understand what they were saying, anyhow- which is just fine for both parties.

I picked apples, pears,etc in the ’60s & ’70s… and also drove truck, & combine during the grain harvest… and planted trees for a few years… and logged- and worked in canneries- and killed fish for a living, a few Summers ago- and I know what it costs to live in my part of the country (which I’ve never been away from, except for a couple of years in the 1960s). When I started picking fruit (in the Hood River Valley in Oregon) there were a few latino pickers- and indians- and a few hippies- and college kids- and old drunks- and whole families of rural white people (that some people called “Okies”)- and a few gypsies- and high school kids- and retired people… a pretty good quality stew of the local communities (except there weren’t any black people). In the coutryside, the chance to earn some cash was a big Plus- because there weren’t many “regular” jobs- but the necessities (food, shelter, gasoline, cigarets) were plentiful- and cheap. Firewood was $.50/cord if you cut it yourself. I could live for a month on what some of my friends in the City paid for rent & utilities. But things changed, when the farmers were offered “crews” of pickers, who were brought from SoCal, by these “crew bosses”, who promised to get the fruit off the trees cheaper than ever before. Maybe they did… maybe they didn’t- but the farmer eventually figured out that he didn’t have to worry about Anything to do with the workers- including paying them… their “crew bosses” did that. (A lot of them in the early days got $1/hr, and picked 5 or 6 bins of fruit in a day- for which we used to get $5./bin (and that’s what the crew bosses got, too!)… So, for the price of a Community, the farmers got cheap labor, that he didn’t have to listen to… and that he knew he could make vanish by a Word to the right person… and there were no fruit tramps talking to his daughter, or idiosyncratic neighbors who wouldn’t pick if it was raining, and a lot less upkeep on the worker cabins (if he had any) and a whole slew of other ‘bennies’… And it worked so well that, these days, if I want an ag laborer job anywhere in the State, it’s essential that I be bi-lingual (& wouldn’t hurt if I had a latin surname). In the fruit-growing areas, there are a lot of “nearly-fulltime” jobs to do, through the season… and most of these are held by ‘resident’ latinos (y latinas)… but harvest time still requires a Big Push- and that’s why people are ‘encouraged’ to cross borders… and become wage slaves, for a little while.

I went by the church where I’d first served as an altar boy- over 40 years ago- during the Springtime a few years back. It was “first communion” Sunday- and all the little señoritas were on the porch, in their beautiful white dresses & veils- like a shower of plum blossoms- about 20 youngsters (and their parents, nearby)… & I was the only anglo around. “Blessed are the meek”… ^..^

This article is a bit similar to what Nancy Pelosi did with the latest minimum wage act. she pushed it through for the country but got American Samoa exempted. just by coincidence Big tuna packing companies are headquartered in her district, but the companies main packing plants are all located in SUPRISE-SUPRISE American Samoa. What a coincidence.

Back to my original statement other than illegal activities. There is no such thing as slave labor in the USA. You are grasping at straws.