Author: Anna Daniels

“My girls, my pretty ones, going down through the air. They hit the sidewalk spread out and still.”
~Triangle Shirtwaist Company Assistant cashier Joseph Flecher

At quitting time on a Saturday one hundred years ago, a fire began on the eighth floor and raged through the ninth and tenth floor of the Asch building in New York City where 500 workers, mostly immigrant teenage girls were trapped in their Triangle Shirtwaist Company workrooms. One of the ninth floor exit doors had been locked, the fire escape collapsed, and the elevator, filled beyond capacity with fleeing workers, stopped working. The tragedy was compounded because the Fire Department ladders only reached to the sixth floor, and their safety nets deployed to catch the falling bodies broke under the weight. Yet the fire was quickly brought under control and within a half hour it was all over.

This video news clip is about the unknown Japanese workers who are putting their lives in peril to avert a nuclear disaster. This is a sobering reminder about what workers do.

The right in this country has declared war upon the working class. It is hard for me to imagine the Koch brothers putting their lives in peril to avert nuclear disaster. Maybe that’s worth thinking about too.

This is a shout out to Ragsters Ernie and Judi, and my library loving pal Sandy, and that bright constellation of caring, tough, committed, brilliant teachers who have shaped the human being I am today. Respect!

Click the image to watch the video

Banksy’s street art surprises one. It grabs the eye and attention by juxtaposing contradictory elements that leave some lingering question about what we perceive as inherent reality. His work is a combination of the satirical and subversive.

Off to my wonderful OBcean tax preparer Byrna, with visions of Shepard Fairey dancing through my head. Byrna reminds me that the good news is that My Beloved and I, card carrying union members, have enough income to pay taxes. Hey! We’re middle class- for the moment! Our taxes are generally computed on a short form and last year our Federal and State tax rate was 13%. And the truth is we are ok with that- except for the war funding.

What does democracy look like? Does it look like teachers, police, firefighters, librarians, nurses, the people who remove snow and trash, and social workers who have peacefully and in large numbers turned out to support the right of working and middle class people to participate in unions and in the collective bargaining process?

Caution, may not be suitable for work…

AOL has bought Huffington Post; Sarah and Bristol Palin have both filed to trademark their names. While we watch raw footage of the protests in the streets of Egypt carried out at times with sticks and stones, the click and whirr of mergers, branding, spin and insider knowledge continue unabated. We live in strange times.

Twenty five years ago, on January 28, 1986 the space shuttle Challenger broke into pieces, a mere 73 seconds into…

There are moments which transcend the need for words. Marcos Efron’s short video “Common Practice” reveals one of those moments.

Since I started this column a few months ago, I have concentrated upon the quirky, the intriguing, the aesthetically pleasing….

There is no word in the English language that rhymes with orange. Spiders do not have moveable mouth parts. Defenestration…

Check out this tyger on the prowl through the nighttime streets and hillsides of Sao Paulo. His roars awaken the teeming natural world that exists unseen beneath the surface of the city. This animated metamorphosis is filled with the urgency and power of life pushing, flying and just hanging out.

William Blake’s words “And what shoulder, & what art. /Could twist the sinews of thy heart?” are given a voluptuous Brazilian twist.