Professionalized within an inch of your life

Rufus F.

Rufus is a likeable curmudgeon. He has a PhD in History, sang for a decade in a punk band, and recently moved to NYC after nearly two decades in Canada. He wrote the book "The Paris Bureau" from Dio Press (2021).

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11 Responses

  1. Doctor Jay says:

    I have heard of Hamilton, because of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats!

    My wife’s uncle, whom we all loved much, was always noodling around with wood carving. I have some of his work on my wall. We often told him he could sell that stuff, but his response was always, “That’s too much pressure”. However, he loved doing it, and he loved giving his stuff to people and he loved how they loved it.

    Sometimes arranging your life to be self-actualized separates work and meaning. The meaning of work is to supply the money to do the thing. Whatever that thing is. I have no solution to gentrification, though. Things change. We can’t stop it.Report

    • Richard Hershberger in reply to Doctor Jay says:

      I have heard of Hamilton for the very me reason that it had professional baseball teams at various times in the 1800s.Report

    • Rufus F. in reply to Doctor Jay says:

      Well we can’t hold back the tide, but I do think gentrification can be directed to better ends. Here, it’s been a pretty aggressive campaign by developers to push out the people who have lived here for decades, often through quasi-illegal means, and make way for their social betters, who may or may not arrive in sufficient numbers for it to pay off. Of course, if you read the local papers, you’d think it was all about cupcake bakeries and craft brewers!Report

      • Doctor Jay in reply to Rufus F. says:

        That sucks. To me, you would definitely be the right sort of people to have in my neighborhood. I wince when I hear an upper-middle-class friend of mine talk about “sketchy” people.Report

        • Rufus F. in reply to Doctor Jay says:

          Here we hear pretty noxious talk about “cleaning up crime” when entire apartment blocks get evicted, renovated, and doubled in rent. I have a sense though that we all will still be here in a few years. The IMF has issued warnings about Canada’s dangerously overinflated housing markets here, in Toronto, and Vancouver and the “correction” seems to have begun already.Report

          • Doctor Jay in reply to Rufus F. says:

            I think what will help is the fact that it’s a college town, as you so ably describe in other posts.

            I spend a lot of time in Bellingham, WA, and while it has upscaled in some neighborhoods, the college still imparts a very funky vibe. People who don’t like it live somewhere else.Report

          • dragonfrog in reply to Rufus F. says:

            Slightly relatedly, a friend of mine had her bike wheel stolen a week or so ago (a one-off custom build, no way there’s another one like it in the city – bright pink rim on an 8-speed internally geared hub).

            That same week she was stopped and carded by cops no fewer than three times for the suspicious activity of riding a (different, still two-wheeled) bike after dark. She took advantage of those interactions to mention the stolen wheel. On at least one occasion the cops offered to help by harassing homeless people, since knowing “stolen bike wheel” obviously led to “homeless people did it”. She tried to explain that his was probably not an opportunity theft by someone homeless, since it takes non-standard tools to remove the wheel, and it can’t be installed on a bike with a regular derailleur.

            She since found video of the theft taking place – sure enough, the thieves don’t look homeless at all.Report

            • Rufus F. in reply to dragonfrog says:

              There’s a really perverse policy in our city whereby panhandlers are given tickets by the police. Almost none of the tickets are ever paid, of course. But the same 20 or so homeless men get the majority of the tickets. As a result, they owe too much to even move into subsidized housing and get off the streets.

              As a friend put it “Okay so asking for money is bad and taking it by the threat of force is good. Got it.”Report

  2. Richard Hershberger says:

    I have no notion that I’ll ever do this for money. I feel comfortable with my abilities as a writer

    Testify, brother! Researching and writing about baseball is my hobby, not my job. If it brings in beer money as well, great! But make it how I pay the bills? Then it becomes a grind.Report

  3. Joe Sal says:

    I like it when you write about your life. It has a honesty, very real, context.
    Good stuff.Report