Rat Race

A moment this morning that perfectly captured the rat race. I was sitting in my customary seat on the light-rail train. I was facing an eastern window that looked out on the freeway. The train was traveling from Rainier Beach Station to Tukwila International Boulevard Station, and on that leg of the trip it parallels Interstate 5 for a stretch. The train was moving at the same speed as traffic on the freeway. One car would race ahead soon to be overtaken by another. Then the car that was passed would surge forward followed by a truck. It struck me, sitting there on a fast-moving commuter train at 8 AM on a Monday morning, that this is what makes the Western world go around -- the race to get to work. The rat race.

It reminded me of an article I read by Bret Schulte in the New York Times last July. The story, "For Pacific Islanders, Hopes and Troubles in Arkansas," talks about the large population of Marshall Islanders who live in Springdale, Arkansas and work in the Tyson poultry processing plants. The Marshallese, as Schulte explains, "puzzle over the American obsession with time." The kids can't make it to school on time and are absent a lot. So the principal of the local elementary school started giving alarm clocks to parents as presents.

The [Marshall] Islands and the United States have been intertwined since World War II. The United States has detonated at least 67 nuclear bombs in its 750,000-square-mile territory. The radioactive fallout rendered some islands uninhabitable. And United States military operations there are powered by American processed food, beloved by locals but blamed for the explosion in diabetes.

We nuke them. We poison them with our processed Western diet. Then as a gift we allow them to come to the North America without visas and work for minimum wage. What a bargain.

This past weekend I immersed myself in Rastaman Vibration (1976). I think it's a flawless album. The 2002 Deluxe Edition includes a second live disk, which is, I believe, the best live recording of Bob Marley & Wailers. Recorded on May 26, 1976, it was released separately in 2003 as Live at the Roxy, the Roxy being the famous Roxy Theatre on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. Live at the Roxy is itself two disks, the second includes a 24-minute version of Get Up, Stand Up / No More Trouble / War: