Truth Teller: Percentage

We tend too easily to think in absolutes. The truth is more likely to be fractional.

Not true or false, but more than half true, more than half false.

I propose that the truest speaker at best speaks only fractional truth, that the most abased liar is not 100% wrong. Emphatically I add that the assumption that humans can judge the truth of much, or even will ever be able to judge the truth of much, has enormous problems of verification.

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I was raised a Christian, repeating that for the N^th time. I was told that the church introduced us to the Bible, guided us on how to read it, how to understand, how to be saved, told us that the Bible was true, that God was truth, that as Christians we were allied with the truth. Fill a kid with enough abstractions, the kid'll swallow almost anything as true: For God so loved the world, parallel lines never meet. Was your childhood much different? These days it's our secular indoctrination that marks us the most: we're Americans, we're free, we're educating ourselves ... like nuts and bolts on an assembly line. The propaganda of the school board is the truth.

So. I'm not the first Christian, or the first American, to believe, while In the clutches of the propagandists, that I am associated with the truth. Associate a kid with something and the kid will confuse himself with that something. Jesus said "I am the truth," clearly Jesus had been a kid who had been to school.

It's not entirely my invention that I identify not only with God and the Bible and with Jesus but with the Truth: always have, can't stop me.

So how come I'm not just like you? How come you're so very different from me? Have you spent your life writing about God? Not getting published? Finally publishing yourself? getting shunned? getting beat up>? getting arrested? censored?

When I got beat up my lawyer said, "You invented the internet!" True, but that's not the subject here.

When I got arrested and jailed my lawyer (public defender, the shunned can't hire lawyers), said, "You're a truth teller!" Exactly. (Bravo!) (Both lawyers struck me as smart in those moments (both behaved like morons once addressing the court)!) (Does the court assume that the corpses it failed to defend from lynching in life were truth tellers? all those Christians? all those niggers? all those anarchists?)

As a kid, repeating what the church told me, I was a truth teller. We were all truth tellers. As a student at Columbia I was a truth teller among truth tellers. The University didn't just own race tracks and slums in South America, we were truth tellers (that's why the fed gave us a cyclotron!)

Today, your and your kids sit in front of the TV, read the paper, read the right best sellers: truth tellers all.

Except for my last couple of questions:
Jesus got crucified as a truth teller. I was shunned, beat up, arrested, censored, shunned all the more. How come you live in a nice house? drive five cars? Where are the nail holes in your hands? Where are the nail holes in Columbia's hands.

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These days what tickles truth teller pk, fractionally, all fractions, is the idea of humans, Original Sinners, kleptocrats, robots for compulsory schooling, cannibals of Christ, deluding themselves that humans can know or tell the truth! Newton, Darwin, Einstein ... the Bible. Is any of it 100% true? You mean there's no difference between the map and the territory? You mean the symbol is the thing?!

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Semiotics. We're talking, we're thinking: we're using symbols, our bodies, our brains are processing signals: the matter composing us may be symbols, signals being processed ...

Theo-cosmological morons pretending we're real.

Gregory Bateson showed us that the truth could be reversed, evoking less error if we inverted science and talked about error receding more than truth advancing. What Newton said wasn't truth; it was less false than anything preceding it had ever been. What Einstein said wasn't true, it was less false than what Newton had said.

If we can avoid being 100% false, we've really accomplished something. I believe I have; but remember: I used to believe I was Christian!

More Church Stories

My Pastor story was sort of a foundation church story at Knatz.com, and I just recreated it here ahead of the others. Understand, there are many not yet told. I now forecast a few, told and to be told:

In Hilton Head Island the woman who'd asked to support me while I wrote my first novel was keeping me as a boy toy and not letting me write. She didn't even give me a place to plug in the typewriter. I thought an objective third party might help, she agreed to see a Presbyterian minister with me, but then she must have bribed him, he proved to be very far from objective: another betrayer of Christ wearing the cloth.

In Lamberville NJ, still starving (though then over a third novel), I introduced myself to an anglican priest as a disciple of Jesus, a disciple of Ivan Illich, told him about my writing, my truthful divinity fiction. He introduced me to a social worker, the latter promised to get me fed, get me housed, get me on welfare: go to such and such a motel and wait for her there. That's the last I ever heard from either of them: no food, no shelter, no welfare, just lies. Did they even know they had betrayed me? I doubt it.

Here in Sebring FL the Unitarian pastor, Andy Conyer, has betrayed his ministry with me more than twice. I'll supply details. Another broken promise was the most recent.

Here in Sebring a Jesuit priest at St. Catherine's Roman Catholic Church promised to put me in touch with a priest more likely than himself to be able to get me in touch with the Church in Brazil, where Ivan Illich, my colleague, had had the most divine revolutionary friends, with an aim to getting my political asylum there. Another lie: I think he was just getting rid of me.

What did I expect? He was still with the Church: Illich had been defrocked. I was telling these priests that they had failed both God and Christ. Of course they didn't want anyone to hear me. That's why I'm unpublished, have had few intelligent dialogues, especially since 1970.

The joke has it that all the friars are in hell and up the devil's ass hole. It ain't just friars!

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Knatz.com wove pk stories throughout the modules, then also collected pk stories in the Personal folder, then moved pk's personal stories illustrating the conflict between hierarchical society and the "Christian" goal of conviviality to the Teaching folder, but also had a section in the Personal stories folder of stories about others, stories where pk was repeating some one else's story. One of those yet to be told at Knatz.com I'll forecast here: it's very much about hierarchy defeating conviviality:

When I was assaulted in my residence park by the park manager in June 1997 and the police did next to nothing, a friend suggested that I compare notes with the head of the local militia, David Chapman. I failed to connect at first with David Chapman, later I learned why: he was in jail. Dave headed the militia alright, and also headed his own church, out of his home. Dave was the pope of his religion, his house was his church. The state is supposed to leave churches alone: though they don't have to if the congregation is too small to carry weight. Dave drilled his militia men in armed defense with it understood that the invader could be cops, local or federal, or soldiers, local, federal, or foreign. The cops invaded his church, pistol whipped him, and dragged his bloody body to jail.

Dave seems to be now, the last time I communicated with him, as then, a nut: but so what? How does one being odd license the government thugs to beat one up? Well, of course no one knew that the cops had done it: at least not via the papers, not via the local TV ...

When I was arrested, the arrest was mentioned in the paper, but not as the cops terrorizing and threatening the saint of Christian conviviality, disciple of Ivan Illich, philosopher, writer, inventor of the internet; no: the cops had arrested a mass murderer terrorist: or some such lie: I didn't see the article, only had it reported to me, a year and a quarter later, by my landlord (the current, good, one; not the one who may have had me attacked).

Judas

So much of my biographical information on line quoted admiring support from readers. Billie MacDonald for example called pk his "living intellectual hero." Richard Wall wrote that I had been and was still ahead of my time. See my http://pKnatzQuotes.blogspot.com for those and other examples.

But in 1970 when I offered a cheap now tech internet as an alternative to state-run education a few years of fund-raising efforts by a dozen volunteers failed to exceed two thousand dollars total. I've now used the government's plagiarized internet to tell the story for twenty years. My efforts raised zero additional dollars, and have been been federally censored, me put in jail, my online regular business destroyed. Billie MacDonald for one had promised me to see that Knatz.com was always online, beyond my death. But when the FBI took me, he disappeared. He'd spent years promising to send me money, to find me support. Not one penny ever arrived. None of that was important to me beside keeping Knatz.com online; but he betrayed the ideas there too.

All that pales compared to this:
The human species succeeded well enough to populate the planet, render game scarce, and to max out the planet's agricultural capacity. We managed to continue to grow not because of our individual cleverness but because of of group bonding: family, group, tribe ... But now the super tribes, ruled by nation states, destroy the group bonds that made them possible. As an follower (and colleague) of Ivan Illich (and Bucky Fuller, and others), I said so. The social networking I offered in Illich's wake was intended to strengthen the human species by weakening its coercive rulers: the nation states. The people could have taken their own back, by taking over their own information: state-independent public data bases: voluntary information, unregulated.

But state-run institutions and the allies, mislabeled as free, co-opted our convivial Christian tools. My wife was my only support in 1970. The universities had bled me dry, then abandoned me with no other resources: fired, a pariah, blacklisted. Fine: at least I should have still had my wife and child. But no: Hilary too abandoned me. Hilary kidnapped our son: just as he arrived at school age. Obviously she did it so I could have no say in his "education."

It doesn't matter what the Temple pretends to teach
so long as it crucifies God when he actually shows up!

I'll return to this post to offer additional details of betrayal by my fans, by professors, by my family ... and by civilization's institutions.

God is another matter. But after what happened to Jesus, disciples of Jesus shouldn't be surprised.

pk Stories Update

I've cleared space for my business stories by relocating present and future pk stories to April 2009.

Jail stories I'm locating temporally beginning at 2009 November 15. Church stories I'll locate "here": 2010 November.

Note the common theme of these stories: they all reflect the non-convivial non-Christian nature of our society.

Prisoners of Election Time

Resurrecting Knatz.com / Personal / Writing / Satire

pk's Nixon Election Time:
Like Minds Choose Treason

My first political letter was sent to the Kennedy White House protesting US support of the south Vietnamese government which I understood to be corralling Buddhists into concentration camps. It was a letter about freedom of religion (and international responsibilty). I got back a pound or two of anti-Communitst propaganda. The White House made no attempt to smudge the irrelevance of its response.

Well, I already knew that my reps didn't know how to think, that bureaucrats (including university personell) didn't know how to read ... and that was the last political letter I wrote that said what I meant at all literally. I continued to write — for my and God's (and Satan's) amusement — ironies only. The White House, the UN, Mao's China continued to ignore my messages: until this one! which got back a gold embossed reply! The White House misread my insults as favorable!

Dear President Nixon: I guess it was about last May that there was talk in the senate about having our troops out of Vietnam by December 1971 if our prisoners of war were released. And now you're saying that there's a possibility of having our troops out by election time if our prisoners of war are released. I think that's a great idea: it's important to set a date, especially if you want a chance of being reelected. Well, the other day, the New York Times had an editorial by the famous what's his name, you know, the historian, Dean Memminger, or Henry Comminer? No doubt your state department people have already thought of this for you, but just in case, I thought I'd write and suggest it. He said that maybe the four year term of office is too short for a president to do anything really good and important, like raise the oil depletion allowances, or increase federal aid to ailing industries. And that politicking for another term is all you really have time for in four years, and that that's got to tie your hands from doing anything you really believe in. He said that the presidency should be limited to one term, but that the one term should be lengthened to six years. I think it's a terrific idea and I think you should do it. Surely some way could be found around those who would object. (I myself remember what it was like to wait out Johnston's term.) Anyway, the way it is, you've got a chance for another four years, and you've got a chance for nothing, nada, the goose egg, to miss out altogether. The possibilities are four and zero, and that averages out to two more years, or the six that you'd get with Memminger's way. So why not take the sure thing? Then, without taking a risk, and without suffering the embarrassment that Johnston had to put up with, you could still set the date for withdrawal if your prisoners of war are released, still keep it for election year if your prisoners of war are released, but it would be 1974 instead of 1972. You could keep the war going another two years, really whoop it on the gooks, and still keep your promise. The idea should save you millions of dollars of electioneering money. On the chance that Kissingger hasn't already thought of it, I do think it would be only fair if you'd share some of the savings with me. If it's my idea, that is. Forever yours, Paul Knatz P.S. One thing that's always struck me as curious about the problem over our prisoners of war is why we don't release them whenever we want to. After all, they're our prisoners. We got the key. As for their prisoners of war, on the chance it's their prisoners people are talking about, I don't think you should release them until ours are. Unless it would save money. P.P.S. In the last case I mean, of course, release in the Tibetan Buddhist sense. As for those who have already been released in this holy way, I think you could remind them that it's a good thing for their karma balance. How many human souls are there to be reborn, anyway?

This letter is from 1 Feb 1972. I choose it to lead the reposting of my joke letters because of the White House's gold-embossed reply under the Presidential Seal. I'm as proud of that as I would have been of a six- or seven-figure check.

Critical Timing:
I hope you notice that Nixon's new promise wasn't moving the date closer, but was in fact postponing it. My satiric tempo of indefinite postponements followed his lead.

Malfunctioning Joke:
I'm not sure my last joke of the letter, the one about "karma balance," worked: then or now. Jokes shouldn't have to be explained, even if no one in the (human) audience gets it. (If God doesn't get it either, than an author is really in trouble!) I say a further word here now anyway if only as an indictment pk's perfection as an artist. Some cosmologies imagine the universe as finite, some as infinite. Jesus saying that his father's house had many mansions refers literally to a finite heaven but symbolically with suggestions of endlessness: infinity. Contemporary cosmology is largely unexamined infinity in assumption: there's no limit to growth, to population, to resources. I was playing the idea of finite souls against the idea of infinite souls. In other words, in order to make room for new souls, we have to kill a few old bodies. Don't plant new cabbages in an uncleared cabbage field. In other words: the Vietnamese had no right to object to our killing them by the million! We were clearing the register for them. (Of course our logic would have changed had they been clearing our register.)

Censoring pk:
I "explained" the circumstances and the comedy of my letter more extensively than-ever-previously at my AgainstHierarchy.org [2006 10 11]. The fed arrested me [2006 10 13] and censored that domain [2007 Feb], cascading all my domains, including my business, into Limbo in a domino effect. I'll try to restore those files online, but recreating Knatz.com has been my first priority.

Classification, Background:
Knatz.com organized my "creative" writing as fiction, journal, satire, or letters. The above was a letter as well as a satire: Knatz.com classed it as satire. The White House classed it as "In Favor." That's as priceless a joke as any of mine in the letter!

I repeat Knatz.com's introduction:

My first political letter had been to Kennedy's White House with a similar letter sent to Ambassador Stevenson at the UN. Both bureaucracies ignored the content of my letter and merely mailed back a half-pound of anti-Communist propaganda. By the time I was writing to Lyndon Johnson I realized that I might as well be talking to Santa. Then I heard of his once picking a letter from the pile that was printed in pencil on composition book paper. President Johnson recognized the stamp of the people and replied personally to that little girl.

I decided that from then on my letters would be illiterate. Pat Paulson regularly mispronounced the President's name; I routinely misspelled it. But my principle inspiration was Mark Twain (Swift already present in that American's efforts).

In Sum:
I proposed that Nixon disregard his oath of allegiance to the Constitution and commit an(other) act of tyranny. I proposed that he commit treason. He thanked me on the finest stationary for my "confidence, understanding, and support."
The New Yorker wrote me, Alas, we cannot print your correspondence with the White House, but we sure enjoyed passing it around the office.
There's nothing like a free press.
Dean Memminger, by the way was a long-legged rookie for the New York Knicks that year. I trusted at the time that even the White House might be stimulated by my confusions to think of persons such as Henry Steele Commager or Barry Comminer. I no longer recall which of those two penned the idea of a six year term. A perusal of the New York Times from around 1971 should find it.

British Civil Wars

Today's email (to my son and his family):

references:
Simon Schama, History of Britain
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels
civil wars, wars of taxation, of legitimacy ... since the Seventeenth Century

You mentioned Power of Art, I tried it after a few difficulties with BlockBuster, I loved it, rewatched it: loved it a great deal less. Watched it again with Jan, liked it still less. (Had very nice associations about Columbia's history proffesor James Shenton, who polished his lectures, delivered some in costume: wore a raccoon coat for the 20s.)

Now I'm watching Hist of Britain, more annoyed than ever. (Disk 1 hasn't been available, so I started with 2, 3 ... I'm amidst 3.) But last night I started his British civil wars stuff. Now I'm very glad to be putting up with the over-minute rhetorical style. 17th C. literature was supposed to be my thing, though I never did get too far with the "history" part of it. Now it's crystal to me: it's MY history, its Ivan Illich's history, it's OUR history ... it's US history!!!! And sOOO essential for King George / Pres George, Tea Party, Whiskey, Shay's ... taxation, representation ... stuff. And I see it crystal clear, the reason no one will address what I've saying, especially since 1970: I deny that the government governs me With My Consent!!!! The media, the institutions, can't allow it heard that anyone denies their epistemological crutch.

The Nazis don't like to be seen as Nazis, especially when the shoe fits.
Americans have to pretend that they choose the mold they're forced into.

A duck can't represent a goose, and no Lilliputian can rightly supervise how Gulliver tells Lilliput about London.

PS: Simon also helped me settle a fact I'd slipped on: Liz was Boleyn's daughter! Now I see the resemblance through and through.

And I'd slipped a link: Liz would have gotten syphilis at birth, but not from Katherine, from Anne who got it from Henry who got it from Katherine.

GRE's Top 1%

I've taken the GRE a few times at least. I've never not scored in the top 1%. So tell me (as the old American Express commercial asked boob-land): Do you know me? (The GRE stands for the Graduate Record Exam: an advanced version of the SATs ,which is in a sense an advanced version of the IQ test.)

My church told me as a child that humans exhibited something called Original Sin; but my school told me that intelligence was rewarded, that the educated got a more generous share of the society's resources, and that good work got the most. So tell me: would those latter suppositions stand up to scientific falsification?

Well, the scientists wouldn't have to go any further than me to find counter-examples: evidence that disproves the contention.

I'll develop all that further in a moment, but first: know the target point: Not only has top-1%er pk not shared the society's resources, I accuse my society of making a pattern of excluding the top percent — of anything — from the banquet. Note further that I don't blame the society in particular, we're no worse than others: and we're exhibiting a behavior "explained" by the scientists' principle of homeostasis: as I've been arguing for half a century (no one hearing the argument! least of all my universities! not so far as I can tell.) (See my Knatz.com/Society module on the subject.)

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Let's review vocabulary:

GRE is a conventional acronym for the Graduate Record Examination, administered by ETS (Educational Testing Service, Princeton NJ).
SAT is another ETS product and a better known one. IQ tests are still better known. (SAT is the acronym for Scholastic Aptitude Test. IQ abbreviates Intelligence Quotient.
IQ tests have been given to an awful lot of grammar school children over the decades. Only the supposedly college-bound take the SATs. The GRE is the "SAT" for graduate students: that is, for pre-professionals: law students, medical students, PhD candidates in whatever: science, arts ...

Know that pk has little respect for the IQ test, less for its administrators, none at all for those who impose it, and absolutely none for those who kiss and tell: school boards, universities, corporations ... How is it the state's business to look into your personal laundry and pipe the details to IBM? pk does however believe that SATs are a better measure of intelligence than the old standard IQ test, and that the English SAT is a better measure of intelligence than the math part, and that the GRE is better yet. (The best measure will be 1) how we survive as a culture, as a civilization, as a species; and 2) how we fare at Judgment (where survival may get trumped).

In other words: Look up my IQ, look up my SATs, look up my GREs ... and know that I trust the GRE results far more than I trust the other two. (Know also that in no way do I think that "top 1%" does adequate justice to my uniqueness: I bet I'm in the top 1% of the top 1% of the top 1%: not so easily proved, or disproved,) (though to try to prove it, rationally, someone (actually, more than one) would have to understand what I've been writing and saying: It does no good to dismiss the writing on the wall without knowing what the writing says.)

pk suggests a little research: You may be able to look up pk's GRE claims: at ETS, at NYU ... You may be able to look up pk's SAT scores. If not, be satisfied that they got me into Columbia, and NYU. You may be able to look up pk's IQ scores: maybe even scores since taken by this or that supposedly independent psychologist. Now: how many devisers of the IQ test scored in the top 1% of the GRE? how many devisers of the SAT test scored in the top 1% of the GRE? How many devisers of the GRE scored in the top 1% of the GRE?

Now I ask a different question: how many top 1%ers in the GRE fared well at their universities? How many are with me on the welfare roles?
How many have pursued careers unmolested by bureaucrats no where near the top !%: of anything!?

How many of my professors at NYU who graded my papers without understanding them, or who interrupted me when I tried to introduce my thesis topic, were in the top 1%? The top half: I bet half of them were. The top 10%: I bet one or two were. But the top 1%?

Show me.

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I'll post lots more on the subject at IonaArc (a less personal blog) scrapbook style, getting points made first, worrying about efficiency second. Eventually edited results may work themselves back here. Understand all along how my points all fit into my workings of the theory of homeostasis: any system, certainly any living system, structures itself to preserve what's preserved, and to make slick paths of change. Averages claim to value excellence but what they really value are averages. Thus an individual of "IQ" 200 will barely be able to communicate with an individual of IQ 180, while neither will be understood by the staff at the NYT, The Smithsonian, Harvard ... Though in time, without credit, filter inward to the mean.

God didn't tell me to get credit for offering a cheap internet in 1970, he just told me to offer it: the way he told Jesus to offer salvation. Only enough of what Jesus said penetrated to assure damnation; only enough of my cybernetic public records keeping penetrated to shore up kleptocracy. Still: it's all only temporary.

Neighbors

When I moved into Sebring Gardens in October 1989 travel trailers mixed with mobile homes. The mobile homes are the same, but man, have the travel trailers grown. Space was tight to begin with, now the seasonal visitors in their massive mobile homes and massive fifth wheels with their accompanying towing vehicles are really shoehorned into the same small camp sites.

The Amazing Mr. Ripley
(there's a good novel of that title: very good)

My neighbors used to walk. I and a few others also ride a bike. These days more and more neighbors are obese: and clog the roads with golf carts. One guy I don't think I've seen outside his golf cart in several years: Ripley. His wife too prowls the park in a golf cart. She needs to walk marathons; she doesn't walk at all. Her obescity is not only porcine but bears an appearance of malevolence. Unlike Ripley, Mrs. Ripley does on occasion get out of her cart: to poke her nose where it doesn't belong: as I'll relate below.

On day a year or so ago, c. 2008, I saw Dan, our landlord, on land to the south he's added to his holdings, land he is clearing. I rode over to him on my mountain bike: good gear system, knobby tires, good for off road. The fat guy is sitting there in his golf cart. I talk to
Dan, the fat guy and I ignoring each other as usual. While I'm talking, the fat guy put his golf cart in reverse and backs right into me! He didn't say anything! Neither did Dan!

He didn't ask if I was OK, if my bike was OK, if he'd done any damage!

One time in 2008 or 2009, while I was teaching line dancing at the Highlands Seniors Social, I wanted to practice some dances with my friend Joyce: the widow of a line dancing teacher I'm confident was as great at it as she swears he was. I like to dance with Joyce: both ballroom and line dance. I asked Dan if it would be OK if we used the rec hall some day if nothing else was visibly going on there. Sure, he said.

So Joyce and I are in the rec hall one day, with her boom box, practicing the Singapore Swing. In walks that fat guy's obese wife. Fine, she's a resident: she can walk anywhere she wants, around the common buildings and grounds. But she comes up to us and demands to know what we're doing! She interrupts our dance!

I've lived among moron barbarians all my life, I'm used to it. Still, it rankles sometimes. Especially since I've lived here for twenty-two years whereas she and her husband are newcomers, not to mention much younger than Joyce or I. I never have told Dan how he forgot to inform his gestapo that he'd given me permission to use the common facilities: specifically the rec hall, specifically for line dancing.

Yankee Trap

Since October 1989 I've lived in Sebring Gardens, a trailer camp on Brunns Road in Sebring FL. Brunns Road looks rural. On the east side there's a section of pine flat woods, and another of open meadow grazed by cattle, visited by flocks of egrets. I miss the horse that used to be pastured there. Sometimes in the distance you can see the Spauldings cultivating their caladium farm.

But don't be deceived: a dense population lives tucked out of sight. It wouldn't surprise me if the population density exceeded that of some parts of Brooklyn, or the Bronx. There, it looks dense; actually, many of the buildings are abandoned, house only squatters. Turn into any of the side roads, so innocent looking, and you'll pass dozens of mobile home trailers not visible from Brunns Road. They're all culs-de-sack: Brunns Road is the only access. Some snowbirds dwell in them, but more and more people stay year-rounder. Many non-resident vehicles use Brunns Road as an alternate N/S route, avoiding the lethal Highway 27, one half mile to the east. The posted speed limit is 25, but clowns with cell phones drive fast enough to flip over lengthwise when they put a wheel in the soft drainage ditch the plunges to the side of the pavement.

There are no sidewalks, no bicycle paths. Yet platoons of elderly pedestrians, especially in season, flex by in warm-ups. Bicycle pelotons pedal by. Cars, trucks, come ramming through.

Brunns Road is deceptive: not, I believe, by accident. The illusion of rural sparsity serves the developers who built the trailer parks. Their market is modest retirees from the north. These suburbanites from Detroit, Toledo, Lansing or Toronto wouldn't spend their life saving to move into a Bronx of burglarized low-rents festooned with broken glass and soda can pull-tabs; they do bestow their wad on a dream of woodland with a meadow with horses and cows. Instead of ten cows per person, Brunns Road is more like one hundred Yankees per cow.

Growing up on Long Island I'd heard of highschool kids racing to Fort Lauderdale for Easter vacation and getting caught in southern speed traps. Ticketing New Yorkers may have been the only cash crop of some of those burgs along Route 17. The rednecks and hillbillies with their gun racks in their pickup trucks, behind the driver's neck, don't intimidate by accident either. (When Hilary and I drove to Florida for a quick taste of warmth in the February of 1965 we were intimidated every stop of the way. Huge bellied guys would block the door to the convenience store. One sheriffs car would peel off our tail at the town border, synchro-replaced by another from that next town, radio-warned that the nigger-lovers were coming: we had given a ride to a black hitch-hiker: therefore, we were no more welcome than he!) (In 1965 it astounded this New Yorker how many of these arms-bristling trucks said "KKK" right on the door panels! Weren't there any liberal-assassins around to balance things?) (In another year or so Hilary and I (and our passenger) might have been shot!)

The Sebring locals years ago promised themselves that they could have government services without taxes if they just suckered in some Yankees: the Yankees could then pay the taxes for all.

pk, a veteran victim of the government-managed "education" swindle, would up here because I was too broke, too defeated, too resource-less, to go on: caught in the same trap with the Yankees lining-up-to-be-fleeced by the red necks. (Even had I a wad of my own, I could have done worse than wind up stuck in Highlands County: I do love the famous Hammock: and the waterways.)

(Don't for a second believe that this once-upon-a-time Yankee ever thought that Yankees were innocent — of anything! My comparisons between Yankee and Dixie are accurate, not invidious.)

250 Riverside

There, I've told quick versions of some of my most major landlord stories, all from Sebring Gardens. Now I take an anarchist's vacation by telling a relatively trivial landlord story: possibly my first landlord story: from when I was a graduate student, in the mid-1960s, in my first year of marriage. Hilary and I rented an apartment on Riverside Drive and 97^th Street. I had to pay two months rent in advance: one months rent plus one months rent as security. The security was supposed to be refundable upon moving out.

We moved in, time passed, we moved out: time to get our refund.

I located the landlords (two guys, brothers) in their "office" in the basement. (My apartment had been largely without sunlight, the landlords dwelt wholly without sunlight: the riverside apartments were nice, spacious; ours was not riverside.) I invited the landlords to inspect the place: right now, I'm leaving, Give me the refund. They stalled, said they'd mail it next month.

I forget the specifics, that's the pattern. I demanded, they stalled. While they stalled I decided that they were the type of businessmen who paid promptly upon lawsuit: I'd never get a check short of a court date. I decided I'd better stick it out, become a thorn in their side.

Finally, trembling with fury, the brothers wrote me a check.

I wouldn't bother with the story except for this delicious detail:
The smaller brother hid behind the larger brother, jumped up and down and said, "Let me at him, let me at him!" Then the larger brother took a turn, hiding behind the smaller brother.

I am 5'8". I weighed about 135 at the time, 140 at the most: booze belly and all. But: I'm an athlete, an acrobat: a skier, in shape (except for the belly) (and the booze). These brothers had the same pallor their relatives would have had at Auschwitz. The big one was maybe 5'6", the little one was maybe 5'3". I doubt that the big one went more than 120. So funny: these pale stump fungus Jews threatening pk (windburned and surnamed Knatz!) with violence!

Not Allowed to Speak 2

Tod Bloemsma raised the rent and drove the park into the ground, then sold it to Harry Canfield. Canfield raised the rent more, drove it further into the ground, sold the park to Dan Littlefield. Ah, but Dan is a fairly good guy, has some sense, is actually an excellent landlord: has improved the park in a zillion ways and hasn't raised the rent just to raise the rent.

On taking over he knew I had sued Canfield and had won: not much, my lawyer betrayed his own case rather than let an anarchist (once he realized I was an anarchist) speak before a jury. More on that another time: cut to the cut: Dan called me in to his office on first arriving: get aquainted with the misfit, the trouble maker: show strength, lay down some law.

Dan's wife, Diane, was present. Straight off I told the Littlefields that I am a disciple of Ivan Illich, a disciple of Jesus, that I am the deschooler, that I became the deschooler after failing to communicate with my university: my doctoral committee having interrupted my interpretation of Shakespeare rather than listen to a new reading. I assured Dan and Mrs. that the entire society had refused communications from God, from Christ ... from geniuses, from saints, all along: and specifically from Ivan Illich, my mentor in deschooling, and from me. I told them how Illich and I had conceived of digital librarianship and cybernetic networking to unite Christians in conviviality, protecting us from coercive kleptocracy.

Specifically I told how Ivan Illich, as a Monseigneur in the Roman Catholic Church had told the Church that
If it wished to become Christian
It would have to give upits property
its professional priesthood.
(As an anarchist follower of Illich I wanted Americans to do the same, secularly: give up property, privilege, professionalism, replacing them with conviviality and competence.)

Dan stood up, excused himself, promised to be right back. In his absence, Diane Littlefield, Mrs. Landlord, said, "I don't think he should have been allowed to say that."

I don't think he should have been allowed to say that.

I don't know Diane's religious (or political) practice, if any. But what can she possibly have meant? She didn't believe that monseigneurs in the Church should be allowed to transmit messages from Jesus? Shouldn't be allowed to speak, period?

Who should forbid him?

The Church did defrock him: prevent him from saying additional masses, stripped him of his resources (which he then replaced by private means: writing best-selling books!)

Note: my saying what I say can be seen as a matter of supposedly free speech under the supposed Constitution; but Illich was not an American. I believe he resided in Mexico when he said that about the Church, though he would have said it repeatedly as he spoke publicly on every continent. I heard Illich speak: in Mexico, through his publisher, as a guest speaker at Fordham ... He'd speak in NYC and be back in Cuernavaca the next day. Local politics are silly for a globetrotting philosopher/saint.

---

There are so many details relevant here: not even Knatz.com could get them all said sensibly. Dan Littlefield may have been unclear on a point Harry Canfield would have been unable to explain. Harry had evicted me after Mike beat me up. For all I know Harry incited Mike to beat me up. Mike certainly knew that Harry, fundamentalists Baptist Harry, wouldn't mind if I got chopped in little pieces. So how come I was still in Dan's park?

Harry evicted me from the site Harry had rented to me: in 1997 or 1998, me having lived there since 1989. But years before, in 1991 or so, Catherine, in her eighties, the oldest resident left in the park and the longest-in-residence tenant, blind, deaf, crippled, had given me her trailer. So Harry evicted me from site 43, but to evict me from site 14, he would have also had to evict the old blind woman, the tenant most-senior by any measure.

But Harry will never know what's going on in any of his domains. Killing the messenger does not make the messageless wise.

Assault

1997 I was attacked from behind while in my shed by Mike LaCroix, manager of Sebring Gardens trailer park.

I was washing mildew from Catherine's (and my) trailer. It was summer. Harry Canfield, the owner was away. Canfield had left this thug/manager Mike LaCroix in charge. The grass was knee high, but Mike saw me working and chose that moment to suddenly cut the grass: the grass specifically under where I was standing, working. Mike could have cut anywhere, there are seventy or so trailer lots, all with the grass knee high, uncut for weeks: but he drove the tractor to ten feet from me, demanding to cut where I was standing first, told me to move. I said, "Cut somewhere else, I'm working here." He reved the tractor and launched it right at me. I jumped aside, threw my mildew remover at him. He ran over my hose, shredding it, spraying water.

Mike was forever spraying people with pebbles from the tractor mower's spining blade. I bet I wasn't the only resident with chipped ankles. But I'd never heard of him trying to amputate legs. I gave my job up as dangerous under the circumstances, started putting things away in the shed. Mike attacked me from behind. I curled up, covered my head with my arms. Mike broke my fingers, pounding away at my head.

I'll transfer some of the story from Knatz.com and I hope will tell parts I've still never gotten to.

Not Allowed to Speak

I have landlord stories both earlier and later than this one of people betraying their own interests, but I regard the following as a keystone. First a few background essentials:

Who pk is would be best gleaned from Knatz.com, fed censored in 2007, so, temporarily I hope, you'll have to make do with pk blogs.
I rented a lot to camp on in Sebring Gardens, a trailer park, in Sebring FL in 1989. The rent was $60 / month. The owner was Tod Bloemsma, son of the landlord of a big trailer park here in Sebring. I moved to Sebring Gardens to escape from Highland Wheel Estates trailer park also in Sebring: more of that later.
Sebring Gardens is a park with a few year round residents but mostly snowbirds: the park is full of trailers but few people are present off season.
In 1989 Sebring Gardens had lots of trees. This area had been pine flatwoods, all slash pine. All slash pine had been removed. Very few of the replacement trees were native: that is, frost tolerant. One or two oaks had been planted but most of the trees were fast growing junk trees: Australian pine, melaleuca ...
The winter of 1990 had severe frost. Many of the trees were frost damaged: had dead branches, or the whole tree had died.
In the spring of 1990 Tod Bloemsma was told by the state of FL to remove the dead trees. Months passed.
In the summer of 1990 there was a freak tornado. It began on Brunns Road, swept through Sebring Gardens, ran east toward Highway 27, and disspitated: It swept for one half a mile: all damage was concentrated in Sebring Gardens. Trees, branches fell on trailers, on sheds: the same trees the landlord had been told by the state to get rid of.
Residents present that summer: me, pk; Marty and Hick Hickman, the Georges. Catherine Kaltner had visited Ohio: I had not yet met her. That was it.
I saw damage to snowbird trailers and sheds without looking hard. "Hick" Hickman was hired by snowbirds to watch their stuff, had keys to many trailers. Mr. George was furious, swore he would sue. I had no damage but sympathized. (I had nothing but contempt for the landlord who utterly ignored his property except to collect the rent. He lived in a trailer next door but worked full time and overtime for this father's trailer park. He was seldom present and paid little attention then: just as he had paid no attention to the state order to make the park safe from the dead wood.)

Marty Hickman and I agreed to form a committee in investigate facts and options. I got an appointment with a lawyer, Clifford Able, Esq.

Fact review:
Frost damaged the trees, making them dangerous.
The state told the landlord to take care of the danger. He didn't.
A tornado knocked down dead branches and trees, damaging properties, most of the property owners north for the summer.

Mr. Able agreed to check on the law. Understanding that we could not afford to hire him and that the majority of the residents were absent until October, he volunteered to attend the October tenants association meeting, prepared to answer questions still unhired. If the association then hired him, fine: otherwise his labor was his good deed.

October arrived. The evening before the meeting arrived. At twilight a couple of officers of the association called me over. Rev. Hall was present. They told me that I was not a member of the association and that neither I nor "your lawyer" would be allowed to speak at the meeting.

The following morning I managed to reach Mr. Able and told him not to bother to show up: the tenants had agreed to sabotage their own rights.

Mr. George, who has sworn that he'd sue, said, "Oh never mind, my insurance company paid."

Instead of being shocked at the tenants passivity at being damaged, the legal counselor was mad at me: I was the one who'd wasted his time!

Marty Hickman never acknowledged that we'd formed a committe, that she and Hick had driven me to the initial appointment with Mr. Able. "No one in this park will help you, Paul," she said: especially not since I'd spent my life trying to help them!

---

Months later the landlord told me that he'd heard that I'd gotten a lawyer to try to get the tenants association to sue him. No, no, no: to inform them of the law, of their rights, and to be available if any wanted to take legal action.

Catherine Kaltner returned from Ohio. She became my best friend, and patron. She told me that she had hired her contractor to repair her roof, damaged from the tornado. She never knew that anyone had sought to coordinate tenant rights and damages. She never knew that I had even tried to clarify the law. Typical: Catherine resisted being told such things: just like the association: just like the whole self-damaging society.

Landlords

Landlords, Neighbors

Failures at Convivial Groupings

2011 01 17 I begin to add this section of landlord stories, of kleptocratic failure at community stories, here, pretending that I posted them 2010 August, beginning on the first: so I can control the order to some extent. Stories of neighbors, fellow residents, will also be told, in this grouping.

Such stories originally went at Knatz.com to K. / Personal / Stories / Themes / Community / A revised K. would put them in K. / Teaching / Society / NoHier / HierCon / Community: meaning / / / AgainstHierarcy / Hierarchy versus Conviviality / Community /

Now I'll name the posts by sub-theme. Next is Not Allowed to Speak: Understand the expanded implications: Knatz.com / Teaching / Society and its Pathologies / pk Against Hierarchy / Hierarchy versus Convivial Christianity / Failure at Community / pk not allowed to speak.

Ditto for the stories following this "2010 August."