I'm buying a hard hat

I was thinking about it for Halloween, but it'll go further than that.

This weekend, starting tomorrow, is the Oklahoma LaborFest, in the Plaza District, of OKC. Celebrating Labor Unions and Labor Day.

Never been a union member. Don't want to be. But.

Anybody who has the guts to organize such a thing in right wing Oklahoma deserves a nod.

I first learned about it thanks to Jeanetta Calhoun Mish, poet and publisher, http://www.jeanettacalhounmish.com/jeanetta_calhoun_mish/Welcome.htmlwho won a National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum Wrangler award for her book, Work is Love Made Visible--poetry combined with black and white photos of her Oklahoma family  background.

She sent me more poetry books to review on this blog, and I've half-obliged (more to come). One of them is Ken Hada. http://vacpoetry.org/hada.htm She said she'd be "personing" a table at the Labor Fest, and reading poetry tomorrow night, along with Ken, at the Labor Fest. You can tell she's a liberal by the use of that word, but she lives in Norman, so what do you expect? Owner of Mongrel Empire Press. Anybody who names something after a Mongrel has to be an American. http://www.mongrelempirepress.com/Welcome.htmlWe're all mongrels.

I'm going. I might buy a hard hat tomorrow just for the fun of it. $9.98 at Home Depot. My uncle E.T. Culp, Momma's baby brother, was a big union man and Democrat in Nacogdoches Worked for Ma Bell. Union dues and wages helped set him and his lovely wife Lamerle, up for a comfortable retirement, and provide for my two cousins, David and Chalres, Lindy--whose photos you've seen in earlier posts). Of course those two renegades are now right-wingers much to their parents loving chagrin. "There are things," LaMerle told me in my last visit, in her soft East Texas accemt, "that we just don't talk about."

Is this boring you? I'm finding stories everywhere these days, and they're fun to hear and tell.

Back to the Labor Fest, on 16th Street , just down the road from some right-wing friends who live on Carey Place. Think I'll go buy and ring their door bell, just to irritate them.

I'll wear my pre-Halloween decorated hard hat.

Wait till I tell you the decals I'll put on it...Palin, Unions, Infidels, NRA, Arizona, Confederate flag, A Texas flag with Secede on it, WWJD (What would Jesus do), next to Nuke Iran, you get the picture. More on that later.

Anyway, come to the Poetry reading at Coffy's cafe between 7 and 9 tomorrow. These are Oklahoma poets writing about Oklahoma people--not sicky rhyming stuff, not political, just about real people.

Look for me in my hard hat.

http://www.redflagpress.com/oklahomarevelator/laborfest/