At this point, he had been “packing” [...]]]> So, it was Thursday morning. Thursday as in the day that’s after the day the neighbor had said he would be out of the meth house across the street. And he was, of course, still there. The criminal factor in the neighborhood was becoming disproportionate, even for St Johns.

At this point, he had been “packing” for some 30-odd hours, aided no doubt by some kind of uppers. And a great help they had been–the truck, while lamentably still across the street, was piled high with what I can only describe as a a precarious and random pile of rubbish. No beds were yet in sight, which made us think that another night of being neighbors with him + criminal consorts was in store.

7:25 am. I leave for work, my mind filled with fantasies of not coming home to more of this view:

But at this rate, expectations were low.

5:30 pm. I turn onto our street on my way home from work, and broken down on the corner, hood up, a mere block from where it was in the morning, is the now ex-neighbor’s truck. Fail! After all that, the ex neighbor is still within line of site and ear shot of our living room.

6:30 pm. More puzzled efforts and discussion among (ex) neighbor’s peer group. With the boon of enforced residence a block away, they apparently decide it may be worth it, after all, to take the mattresses. Two young ruffians escape from the pack and carry the beds out of his old house, down the street to his new sidewalk.

As the evening concludes, (ex) neighbor and all of his earthly goods that meth could possibly help him load onto the truck are a block away. To say we had an abundance of schadenfreude would be an understatement.

4:05 am. Friends of neighbor begin to arrive.

6:00 am. The increasing volume of evictee’s efforts are an effective alarm clock.

6:00:07 am. Standing [...]]]> We left off the tale of the adventures of our anti-hero as Tuesday night fell. It still felt like Tuesday night when his friends began to arrive Wednesday morning, probably because it was…still night.

4:05 am. Friends of neighbor begin to arrive.

6:00 am. The increasing volume of evictee’s efforts are an effective alarm clock.

6:00:07 am. Standing in living room window, spying on watching the “progress.” So far, they have succeeded in loading the defunct Harley in the FRONT of the trailer. This took no small effort, as merely days before, neighbor had lost a key part to the bike in his lawn. It happened to be essential to starting that lovely piece of…work.

We did not offer to help him find it.

6:45 am. Two bicycles have now joined the Harley in the front of the trailer. I spy a cardboard box on the premises. This is promising. How long can it possibly take to pack a crack pipe and several empty Jack Daniels bottles? And once the 4-year-old’s stuff is packed, dad’s stuff can surely fit into an additional few boxes.

7:25 am. I leave for work. Trailer contents remain unchanged. Evictee + friends huddle on front porch in a scene more than slightly reminiscent of the beginning of 2001: Space Odyssey. You know, the part where the early humans stare uncomprehendingly at each other and long wordlessly for, I don’t know, fire. Ability to walk upright. More freely available raw meat.

3:30 pm. Home from work (I have a late call with some people on the other side of the blue planet, and thus have taken off early to drive home. Plus, I was all agog to find out what the hells was going on). Truck is still there. Harley has now been moved to back of trailer, but contents have not otherwise been much altered. A few boxes are packed.

3:35 pm. Men trying to hitch trailer to truck. This is hard work. Much consternation is obvious on their part, as the weight of the 3,000-pound Harley in the back of the trailer is causing the front to lift up beyond a height where they could conceivably hitch it to the truck. I laugh maniacally.

6:20 pm. Much progress has occurred! There are now possibly ten boxes loaded, the Harley is lovingly swaddled in a sleeping bag, and the boys are contemplating the various options for loading the couch in on top of the load.

6:35 pm. It appears that putting the couch on upside down, on top of the Harley, is the winning choice. We watch from the living room; a small, dilapidated crowd has gathered. Skankiness abounds. Two cross over to our yard and (really, I am not making this up) steal a handful of bark mulch.

6:40-7:20pm. We go for a walk to the St Johns Bridge and back. Brooks bets me a beer that truck will still be there. Ever optimistic, I accept.

7:21 pm. The truck is in fact still there. Numerous meth-y looking people loiter promiscuously about. Motorcycles are of course being ridden up and down the side walk. We note that there are no beds on the trailer.

This is a bad sign. I open a beer for Brooks.

9:00 pm-ish. It is now dark enough to take up our customary seats in the living room and settle in for some more eviction watching. Michelle cannot resist the draw, and abandons her studies to join us. We attempt to decipher the cell phone calls, listen shamelessly to conversations with some of the more mentally ill neighbors, and note that child is running wild, in and outside of the house.

Fortunately, neighbor’s hooker friends are around to keep an eye on him.

11:30 ish. We grow tired, mainly of not being able to make out every word, and head to bed. Pillow talk revolves around the possibility of the truck being gone in the morning.

That’s enough for now. I’d love to say that things are as exciting Thursday morning as they were Wednesday morning, but…you’ll have to wait to hear about the climactic third-act duel.

Read part one of the great eviction

Background: ex-felon who rents the house across the street is a nuisance. He hits on the women in the neighborhood, married and single, and [...]]]> In retrospect, I should have lived blogged this. For that huge FAIL, I will always be sorry. We were, however, very caught up in the memorable moments of the past few days.

Background: ex-felon who rents the house across the street is a nuisance. He hits on the women in the neighborhood, married and single, and doesn’t get the standard social cues of “leave me alone, you freak. I’m not interested.” He rides his Harley on the street (and on the sidewalk, because why wouldn’t you?), at incredible speeds and with incredible amounts of noise, any time of the day or night. He neglects his child. He shouts. He accuses. He has a parade of skanky people in and out of his house, day and night. Some leave so high they can hardly walk and also try to engage in conversation with cars.

He is, in other words, a bad-ass MoFo who is pathetic (and even sympathetic) in his own ways.

But he’s, at last, no longer a neighbor. Here’s how it went down; times are somewhat approximate.

Tuesday evening, 8 pm. We note suspiciously normal older couple at house across the street. They haven’t arrived on loud Harleys, they haven’t driven motorcycles down the sidewalk at 50 mph, and they do not appear interested in either buying or selling meth. They are clean, and it’s even possible that they shower regularly.

Tuesday evening, 8:01 pm. I find Brooks downstairs and ask if he’d recognize neighbor’s landlords, since I think they may be across the street.

8:01:14 pm. Brooks is now in the front yard, innocently watering. Watching from the window, I realize I was right–those were the landlords.

8:02 pm. Brooks waves at landlords, who cross street and engage in conversation.

8:09 pm. Animated conversation continues.

8:15 pm. Brooks comes inside, confirms that they are the landlords, and gives me the GLORIOUS news that the problematic tenant is being evicted for non-payment of rent.

8:15:10 pm. Celebration ensues.

8:20 pm. More details. Neighbor has promised landlord he will be out by the following morning. We prepare for an even longer, louder night than usual.

10 pm. Sitting in the dark in living room, watching neighbor. No packing is happening.

10:30 pm. Still surveilling. Still no packing. Some cell phone conversations. I wonder about installing microphones in the maple tree.

11:15 pm (or so). We go to bed.

More to come, folks…but for now, here’s a preview of what you can look forward to in my history of Wednesday:

4:05 am. Friends of neighbor begin to arrive.

In the rest of the world, remittances are rising, [...]]]> An IHT story this morning discusses the stagnation and decline of remittances from Mexican migrants working in the US. Immigration crackdowns, greater concerns over deportation, and difficulty obtaining work without documentation are among the reasons cited. However, the situation of Mexican migrants goes against the global trends:

In the rest of the world, remittances are rising, up as much as 10 percent a year, according to Donald Terry of the Inter-American Development Bank. Last year, migrant workers worldwide sent more than $300 billion to developing countries — almost twice the amount of foreign direct investment. (IHT)

Two interesting developments as a result of this new environment for migrant workers are noted briefly: migrants in the US are saving more money for emergencies, and their families at home are engaging in more microenterprise, especially related to agriculture, as the flow of money from the North dries up.

International Herald Tribune article

One of the most striking [...]]]> In the July 9 issue of The Nation, Mae Ngai notes that recent immigration reform policies have done nothing to address the inequitable distribution of green cards: current rules give 25,620 across the board to every country, with population and immigration trends ignored. [A New Green Card Deal, article by subscription].

One of the most striking points she makes, at least from my born-in-1978 viewpoint, is the following:

…[W]e could allocate green cards to countries based on the relative size of their population and emigration demand; their ties to American citizens and institutions; and their supply of low- and high-skilled labor that we need. In other words, if we acknowledge that immigration is driven by supply and demand and take into account the needs of the United States and other countries, we might have a system that is more realistic and fair.

…[B]efore 1965 there were no numerical restrictions on immigration from countries of the Western Hemisphere, in keeping with the tradition of Pan-Americanism. When we imposed quotas on Mexico and the rest of the Americas after 1965, we got illegal immigration. (8)

I agree with her point that the quotas are in need of review. However, on the issue of supply and demand, I don’t think that the US market’s insatiable appetite for cheap labor needs to be encouraged. NAFTA and globalization have only increased the flood of undocumented workers into the US, and the trends don’t seem to be improving. Meanwhile, families are separated, villages are dying out, and cultures are undergoing violent and rapid change–for what? To meet the “needs of the United States.”

The issues are complicated. How do you reimburse an indigenous people for their cultural knowledge? Is it even possible? If you, [...]]]> Through recent readings on ethnomedical paradigms of treatment, the ethics of biomedical appropriation of traditional remedies, and the more general issue of cultural mimicry, my thinking on the exchange of knowledge has woken up momentarily.

The issues are complicated. How do you reimburse an indigenous people for their cultural knowledge? Is it even possible? If you, for example, are able to locate an herbal remedy for a disease through the guidance of a remote group, how to you go about remunerating them? What are the implications for their culture? Will the intrusion of a outside economic system have negative effects on their social structures and beliefs?

Other arguments have been made about Native American crafts and other products such as blue corn. Should their culture be protected so that only they derive economic benefits from it?

At first glance, this is problematic for logistical reason, if nothing else. But in the greater context of a world that brings cultures into constant contact and collision, cultural knowledge seems to be increasingly entering the public domain. From Westerners who exoticize the (mythological) East and claim allegiance to Buddhism to Middle Easterners who watch Western television via satellite to Easterners who fawn over Brittany Spears and look to Gap for their clothing needs, our modern world is one that is marked by cultural exchange. Economically, not all of this can be tracked and billed.

The danger that has been discussed increasingly since the 1960s is that of western cultural hegemony; in this view, Western culture spreads and takes over the world. While this is indeed a real danger, what is overlooked is the potential for cultures to seize and transform extra-cultural ideas and recreate them in ways that reaffirm their own values. This would be the most positive reading, of course, but nonetheless, readings of the state of the world must not overlook the possibility for agency among non-Western societies.

Without letting Westerners off the hook for their cultural colonialism, I still believe that the day in which cultural knowledge can be assigned a monetary value is passing, if indeed it ever existed. Information and practices move between increasingly porous boundaries, both international, intercultural, and intersocial. To seek to assign monetary values to cultural knowledge is to completely buy into the values of capitalism and market economy–the very values that are undermining native cultures.

I think this qualifies as a rock/hard place quandary.