“Can I throw harder than Joe Wood? Listen mister, no man alive can throw any harder than Smokey Joe Wood.”
—Walter Johnson, American athlete, born November 6, 1887
Congratulations to all the Red Sox fans out there!
Walter “The Big Train” Johnson was the hardest-throwing pitcher of his era (with the exception of Smokey Joe, evidently), was one of the first five players inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, and is still considered one of the greatest players of all time.
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Middle-class mean-spiritedness and condescension make being poor even more awful than it already is. Besides, the putative unworthiness of the poor gives the privileged cover to have the governments they control push ever more income upward in the guise of rewarding “job creators.” Income distribution in 21st century America is more unequal than it was in Ancient Rome. What could go wrong?
Kurt Vonnegut wrote: “American humorist Kin Hubbard said , ”It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be“ in ”Slaughterhouse-Five.” This piece from Talking Points Memo is written from the perspective of somebody who understands the nature of social signaling and is too smart to leave it to rich people.
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Today and tomorrow in #westernma
| WEDNESDAY | November 6 | |
| 7:15-9:00AM | Amherst | Chamber Breakfast: Solar Energy and Wind |
| 8:30-12:00PM | Pittsfield | Web-Based Recruiting |
| 9:00AM-4:00PM | Springfield | November 2013 Western Mass Business Expo |
| 11:30AM-1:00PM | Springfield | Western Mass Business Expo Lunch |
| 5:00-7:00PM | Greenfield | Free Information for Small Businesses to Start and Grow |
| 5:00-7:00PM | Pittsfield | Berkshire Young Professionals Networking Social |
| 5:00-7:00PM | Northampton | Northampton Chamber Arrive at 5 |
| 7:00PM | Springfield | Innovators’ Resource Network November Meeting |
| ??????? | Westfield | Westfield Chamber Annual Meeting and Awards Dinner |
| THURSDAY | November 7 | |
| 8:30-10:00AM | Holyoke | Ask a Chamber Expert: Board Development |
| 12:00-2:00PM | Easthampton | Easthampton Don’t Eat Lunch Alone |
| 5:30-7:00PM | Holyoke | Women Business Owners’ Alliance After 5 |
Reading
“…belonging to one group at the right time can mean the difference between unemployment and employment, a good job as opposed to a bad job, housing 
or a shelter, and so on. Someone mentioned on twitter that poor people can be presentable with affordable options from Kmart. But the issue is not about being presentable. Presentable is the bare minimum of social civility. It means being clean, not smelling, wearing shirts and shoes for service and the like. Presentable as a sufficient condition for gainful, dignified work or successful social interactions is a privilege. It’s the aging white hippie who can cut the ponytail of his youthful rebellion and walk into senior management while aging black panthers can never completely outrun the effects of stigmatization against which they were courting a revolution. Presentable is relative and, like life, it ain’t fair.
“In contrast, ‘acceptable’ is about gaining access to a limited set of rewards granted upon group membership. I cannot know exactly how often my presentation of acceptable has helped me but I have enough feedback to know it is not inconsequential….”
Why Do Poor People ‘Waste’ Money on Luxury Goods?
The Last Word
“You see, as I go along, I’ve come to consider bravery as just about the most pernicious of virtues. Bravery is a horrible thing. The human race has it left over from the animal world and we can’t get rid of it.”
—James Jones, American author, born November 6, 1921