Will the real William Hicks please...

Feb 13

My sixty-three year old Father lives with his wife of 25 years in a semi-rural, sleepy enclave west of Providence RI. In the fall of ‘08, he was diagnosed with cancer, and is now undergoing treatment. While taking the extremely uncomfortable step of an extended leave of absence from her job, his wife now accompanies him on the daily trips to and from the treating hospital in Bristol RI. She alone is responsible for paying, through her tenuous hold on current employment, the health insurance without which they both could possibly lose everything or at the very least have to declare bankruptcy. Listening to her nervously described, well-founded fear of the possibility of losing her job at such a juncture, I feel the sense of powerlessness many of us share at this time.

It is at this very place in the history of this young country, these stories seem all too plentiful. Hard working men and women looking down the golden path to retirement, suddenly facing the prospect of not simply economic hardship, but virtual total destruction, begs the question, “Exactly what type of middle-class prosperity do we really want for now and future generations?” Ordinary Americans need to speak up in far greater numbers, now more than ever if realistic changes are to be made… we can’t rely on out-of-touch policymakers and powerbrokers to form the basis of our economy any longer. In this age of socio-economic turmoil, it’s just not an option.

Photo: My father pre-cancer in treatment about a year ago… procuring treatment for another ailment, which eventually led to the cancer discovery. C.2008 WHP

Dec 20

What the hell just happened????

Could some one just tell me what the hell is going on with this bleeping country? What the hell!? Seems as though everyone is sitting on their arse, wondering when and if they too will get the axe. We all need to wake the bleep up! We don’t have to take this shit laying down! I don’t care what they tell you you have to do… we need to organize and start marching… it doesn’t have to “get worse before it gets better”. If we don’t start doing something soon, things will not only get worse, they may well be catastrophic. Everyone check into www.moveon.org for more info unless you like the way things are going, in which case, keep that sand around your head nice and high.

Sep 4

Quick email…

I have been keeping an eye on US foreign policy for years but never really had the wherewithal to do anything other than long to get out, move to that incredibly exceptional country that doesn’t exist, and criticize it from outside… I have always felt particularly anxious about living with the most globally repressive regime on the planet, especially when it comes to countries like Haiti. And yes, Haiti is not the only one, nor is the USA the only bad guy…. Certainly, what we are experiencing is the reverberative effects of 19th century colonialization, slavery, (the Racism and everything that goes with it…) and an international arena that always favors the guy on the block with the largest guns.

This country needs to grow up and stop lying to itself, but I fear things will only get worse. If we could all spark a movement to get americans to see that which occupies the underneath, instead of only what they see on the surface, things would start to change. In this country, more perhaps than any other, almost everything we assume to be face value is based on some type of slight of hand, to put it mildly. Is there a solution? All I can do is keep wishing.

When I lived in Cambridge MA back in the late eighties I found many people willing to speak out, and work toward uncovering the truth about such subjects as Haiti. Having spent many years living in and around the area, I started to find myself forgetting that places like Boston are NOT the rest of the country, and people like Noam Chomsky are rare birds indeed!

I can not and will not pretend to be any type of scholar on the subject, but yes, I do care, and like many of us, want to do what I can to make Americans see truth. One of the things I cannot stand at this point is watching all the absolute unequivocal BS spewing from the mouths of the Republican talking heads… it makes my skin crawl…. but on a more positive note, it reminds me we all need to take action.

See you soon,

-Will

This is a nice couple from a recent wedding. Married in Mattapan MA with a large contingent of bridesmaids, ushers, and groomsmen. Whew, that was quite a party!

C.2008 WHP

Mar 25

Net Neutrality

Want to read some zingers? Try this: http://www.handsoff.org/blog/ . Wow, I really didn’t know how far the bullshit meter was red-lining these days. Amazing… This is a site set up by the huge corporate communications utilities industries masquerading as a dot org to dupe the common-folk into thinking they are all about keeping the internet ‘unregulated’. The spin doctors are hard at work on this one. You have to read it to believe it. Pure, unequivocal BULLSHIT… All of it.

Yes, we the people WANT the government to “regulate” the Internet. In other words, the government needs to continue to represent, corporate bribery notwithstanding, the interests of the people, not corporations, which are NOT people. They are lying, cheating, ruthless, greedy, anti-democratic organizations out to rule every last collective brain cell of the mostly idiotic masses. They have and continue to maintain a most pernicious control over the populace, mostly through this very type of obfuscatingly brutal attack on unsuspecting citizens. They, the corporations, such as AT&T, Condux, Quest, and other ‘telecoms’ are making it very hard for some poor folks to comprehend the difference between the Wolf and the sheepdog.

C’mon people, get together and learn the truth. If we wait too long to keep these companies from getting their way with things like the internet, soon its going to be too late… our hands will already be handcuffed to the chair… and then what are we going to do? Live the rest of our miserable lives with our heads in that perpetual state of making concessions for corporate interests just because they lied to us, saying it must be so? When the hell will enough ever be enough?

Ever see that movie “The Island”, you know, the one with Ewan MacGregor and that hottie actress Scarlett Johannsen? (she is hot!) That is what I feel like this fucking country has become. We do whatever they say, because, well, they say it; no other fucking reasons; obey, we do, almost blindly. They slow cook us until we can no longer climb out of the pot, like a lobster placed in a pot of cool water about to become a boil. That’s us, loosing our right to a free and open internet because a bunch of rich, powerful lobbyists backed by rich, powerful interests have a great career to uphold… because THEY have a supported voice in Washington, and we do NOT… not because we can’t but because we just simply will not, or think we can not. WE CAN. WE MUST.

Mar 20

This is PPAC in Providence on my way home from another wedding last summer. Looking forward to wedding season once again! Love Weddings…. when the Bride is nice. Message to all Brides… be cool, and all will be at peace in the world.

I remember PPAC when I was a kid. My Elementary (this is what we called it back then…) school set up a trip for us kids; we were in maybe fourth or fifth grade, which would put the date around 1975. We went to see, if my memory serves me correctly, the Providence Philharmonic, or whatever they called themselves. It was Providence’s version of the Boston POPs… I can’t remember what they played, but there was this one guy that stands out in my mind… it was mostly, if not all men. He had black hair, looked like Randolph Mantooth of Prime-time 1970’s television fame. I think he played the trombone, or the trumpet… one or the other. Managed he did, to stand out, his playing was tight. How he somehow smiled while he blew, with the instrument stuck so close to his lips, I didn’t know. They played, and played well… the red material of the seats and lights burned into the scattered confines of my still developing brain more than even the sounds from the stage. I can remember, but it’s like a dream.

Is my age suddenly making my childhood memories dream-like? All I know is I can still hear, see, and almost smell that day…like it was sometime in the not too distant past. Was it all that long ago?

Image C.2008 WHP

Mar 11

Carbon Dioxide sucks

American Gas: There are a couple of companies that supposedly don’t import oil from Saudi Arabia or …. What the hell does it matter? Its freaking OIL people… Time to unhook the IV… time to get electric cars…Hey, electric motorcycles too! I am converting my Honda to an EV. All I need to do is win the lottery so I can pay the 25,000 dollar price tag. Shouldn’t be a problem, should it?

Antarctic ice is going to melt completely in perhaps 20-30 years. Oh, but that includes Greenland, and everything else up in the arctic region as well. New York is going to be under 20-30 feet of water along with Providence and every other coastal city in the world. Florida will go from excitedly erect to frustratingly limp in a geologic blink of an eye. It ain’t gonna be pretty.

There is a giant deisel-electric locomotive parked outside my bedroom window and I can’t seem to make it go away, no matter how long I chant. It’s making a lot of noise, and the floor is shaking as a result. The shaking part I can deal with… it’s the noise, that damn incessant sound like a mega-collosal tornado brewing next to us… I guess we should be grateful there are never any twisters in RI, or none like the ones in Kansas, at least. Oh, but I forgot to mention the worst part. The plumes of deisel emmisions pouring out of the top of that thing out there…. Man it stinks, literally.

Feb 25

Just another WTF…

I don’t want to rant, but this is one of those places where we, the small, insignificant crumbs of the earth need to take a stand. Health insurance needs to be socialised… we need a national program with a fucking conscience, for justice, for Christ’s sake… I have gone uninsured for about eleven years… yeah, count ‘em eleven… which, I am told, will only significantly decrease my chances of ever getting a decent plan, rate, or premium on ANY type of health insurance program from a major provider. It doesn’t matter that I go uncovered simply because I find the premiums too high, or that my general opinion of the business is it’s just another of fuckyouhardintheass capitalism’s ways of keeping people down… or in my case just out.

Yes, I am at an age where I really could use some looking after from the medical establishment. Will I get the care before its too late? Can I afford to just walk into some place and pay out of pocket for stuff like hernia surgery, colonoscopies, prostate exams, etc, etc, etc?

Yeah, its a great world we live in… but, on the bright side, I am looking into some alternatives, such as group plans, and anything else that may take a different approach to tackling the problem. Most of the programs I have seen so far are loaded with caveats, and limitations so severe, it renders them all but useless.

Stay tuned… colon cancer

Feb 20

Whoa! I am 35 pounds overweight, and nothing I do seems to help. I can’t keep the stomach happy and lose any weight at the same time. Damn! Like Dad said, “it sucks to get old, don’t it”. Yeah.

While pedalling away at least once a day for a minimum 30 mins… I am determined to sideline the fucking weight. I will get down to at least 170 lbs or else… What, you might ask? In order to really enjoy the sport of cycling, you need to get the weight off… it just ain’t fun with all the lbs wrapped around your middle. I feel it, because I know what its like to ride lighter. The eating will have to lessen… the winter has brought on a polar bear size appetite, which I cannot seem to diminish. I never thought I would live to see the day when 200 is an average weight for me. That’s just crazy.

Jan 11

East Providence, RI, June of 2005. My Father is a contractor foreman. He leads other men into the trenches of asphalt warfare. The last time I heard from him, he spoke of being laid up with bad arthritis of the lower back. “It is severe” he said, with heavy emphasis on the ‘severe’.

C.2005 WHP