I spent last evening and all day today involved in judging a debate tournament. Before anyone rushes to commiserate with me, you should probably know that I asked for it by volunteering, and that I really enjoy it. A lot. I think high school students, the smart, dedicated, hard working ones, anyway, like those involved in debate, are a lot of fun to be around and listen to, and I love to hear their ideas. It challenges me, and keeps me current, and they have a lot of interesting thoughts and ideas which I like to toss around in my head.
The topic for this year is alternative energy, which in my opinion mostly gives the negative side the edge, which they already have to begin with, at least in my judging book. So the affirmative side, the side that has to present the plan and make it so viable that it can overcome all objections, has an uphill battle. And yet, I have heard some pretty interesting solutions to the energy problems we are facing, and quite a few affirmative plans made the cut.
Sometimes, the need to justify the affirmative plan or to prove the negative leads to some fairly outrageous statements. I have heard the death knell sounded for the earth in half the debates I judged this weekend. It's a little hard to take that seriously when I can glance out the window and see the sun shining and the green grass and the trees and the cars and the new building going up.
Humans faced extinction a few times as well, as well as all animals and the entire eco-system. I heard about the death of the US as a nation, the death of capitalism, the death of nationalism - they were all discussed as though the world was coming to end tomorrow, and we had best be prepared for it. Personally, I'm prepared to meet my maker, but I'd sort of rather it not be tomorrow.
Over the course of the seven rounds I judged this weekend, (I think it was seven, they start to run together in my mind after awhile,) I heard some pretty creative ideas for dealing with alternative energy and resources. Two of them really intrigued me, and I think may well be a part of our future.
One of the proposals was to have the federal government provide tax incentives for cars that use alternative fuels. While I heard several variations on this theme, the one that most interested me was the proposal for a hydrogen powered car. It is clean, it is efficient, and the only environmental impact is the water vapor that results from its use, at least as presented today. I don't think the whole program was outlined quite as completely as I would like to see, but I am very intrigued by the idea, and think it is one whose time will come. We must reduce our dependence on foreign fuels, and fossil fuels generally, because they are not an infinite resource. It seems this idea of hydrogen powered cars is one that will be fruitful somewhere in the future.
Another proposal had to do with reducing waste in our landfills, primarily through a machine that would burn up the trash with a laser. This would leave, as a resulting product, a sort-of sponge that could actually be used to clean up oil spills in the water. The whole process seemed to be environmentally friendly, and in fact, according to the debaters, was already in use on Carnival Cruise line to reduce the waste that they must haul with them. I am in favor of anything at all that would reduce the need for landfills, as I do not feel we are being good stewards of the land by filling it full of trash, which then leaches into our water and our air through the aftermath of the decomposition.
The level of expertise varies widely among the debaters, as does the ability to present their plans or their rebuttal position. But throughout, they are earnest and dedicated, and it is a lot of fun to listen to their passion and their enthusiasm for sharing their knowledge.
They are funny, sweet and vulnerable at times, as when we were waiting for one young man to get off the cell phone on which he was talking to his mother. They get flustered, and they chew their nails, and they kick off their shoes, and don't realize, I am sure, just how young and innocent they are to those of us who are jaded and cynical about the political realities of our country. It is good for me to go out into the world of youth and see their perspective, and hear their thoughts, because they are the leaders of the future. It's good to know they are thinking about the serious stuff of life sometimes, and not just who is dating whom.
I was thinking about how the high school kids of today have never really lived in a world without the Columbine massacre or Tim McVeigh's bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, and they almost don't remember pre-9/11 times, either. The major events that have shaped the last part of the 20th century are more facts in history that they have to learn, rather than events they remember living through.
When I taught, oh so long ago, it was shocking when I realized that Watergate wasn't real to most of those kids sitting in my classroom. There was a divide between us drawn by life and experience and maturity, and even though only a couple of years divided us, I was an adult while they were still kids - mostly unfulfilled dreams. And yet, what I consider to be one of the greatest innovations of the last 50 years, the Windows operating system, started in the garage of kid who was still living at home while his parents prayed for him to find a "real" job. Kids can impact their world and change it for the better, precisely because their inexperience doesn't tell them they can't.
Like most American adults, I haven't given a lot of thought to alternative fuel sources, because the problem seems overwhelming. I think I will write to my Congress-people and suggest they come home and attend a debate tournament some weekend soon. Maybe they can take the fine ideas they hear, and give them as a gift, not to Congress, but to the American people. Because we deserve the best that America can give, and alternative fuels are on the cutting edge of better. I feel sure that some of the kids I heard from over the last couple of days will be inspired to be a part of the R&D that will be powering us along the roadways of the future.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Friday, October 17, 2008
Odds and ends, updated, but not any better....
DO NOT READ THIS POST. It is very badly written. It is so boring, I fell asleep writing it, and it makes no sense. It has absolutely no point, and was an exercise in futility. If you have already read this post, I am very sorry that you did. I was extremely tired, and when I reread it this morning, it didn't even make sense to me. I had a point, but I cannot remember what it was, so I'm guessing it wasn't very good to begin with. I probably should have just called it a day on the front end, but instead I persevered, and the end result was exactly what you would expect in such a situation. So now, without further ado, I have tried to fix it, which has succeeded in making very little out of nothing. All I can do is throw it out there to the winds, and hope for inspiration later today when I try again! :(
It's late on Friday night, and yet, I still have a post to create. I am falling further and further behind in my goal to produce a post a day. But I am finding that I have now gotten a lot of stuff off my mind, and it's harder to be topical without being insulting. The things I thought I wanted to write about when I started have lost their importance to me. In the very act of taking control of my story, I realized that I wanted a whole new one told instead.
So tonight, I am thinking about a lot of different little things, and I will mention a few. First, you know the sound when someone scratches their fingernails on a chalkboard? In years gone by, everyone knew what that sounded like, because every classroom had chalk boards. Now they all have "smart" boards instead, where teachers can write and then project it up on the wall for the students to read, or copy, or ignore, as the case may be.
These days, every classroom has a computer and a television, and every student in it has their own computer at home, many of them far nicer than what their teachers have in their own homes, I might add. Kids are getting computers at an increasingly younger age, which is not surprising, but I'm not sure it's a positive thing. What happened to the world of make-believe, where we had to make everything up?
Maybe that's where I went wrong on the whole marriage thing.... I always made up the husband character when I was playing house as a little girl, so when I finally had one for real, he was still more or less a figment of my imagination. Or a nightmare. I'll let you choose the viewpoint, depending on whether or not you know him personally.
Anyway, getting back to the whole young computer guru point, I was at MicroCenter today, giving them one last opportunity to redeem themselves in my eyes. Next to me at the help desk, where I was standing around waiting for service with my son's broken and very pathetic looking computer, was a little girl, about four, I would guess, with her dad. This little girl had gotten a computer of her own, and her dad was paying someone else to get it all set up for her.
Now, I am of the opinion that if you are not old enough to set up your own computer, then you are probably not old enough to have that computer in the first place. Maybe it's just me, but shouldn't she be out playing, instead of inside on the computer?
Getting back to the fingernails on a chalk board, though, there is a politician whose voice is worse than that, and I cannot stand to listen to her. I know she can't help her voice, it's just part of who she is, but to me, it's a perfect metaphor for her personality, as well. Sharp and a little grating, irritating to listen to, and mostly, you just want it to go away. I am not talking about Sarah Palin, nor am I talking about Hillary Clinton, both of whom have public speaking voices that some people find to be irritating beyond belief. I am talking about Eleanor Roosevelt, whose Eastern accent earned her the label of elitist all those years ago.
My point? Women in politics are not a new thing, although their highly visible role may be somewhat a novelty. But I prefer to focus on quality of thoughts, rather than the sound of a voice or whether or not they have cool hair or too many pant suits. A surprisingly similar method to how I evaluate men in policy making positions, not ironically. In the content of your public statements, you reveal the kind of person you are, and I am less interested in your looks than if you tell the truth, or you spend your time wiggling out of it on technicalities or forgotten moments. Maybe that little girl with the computer had the right idea, after all. Maybe girls really do need to start at four to be successful when they are 50.
Okay, really, I have no point. This post is empty and devoid of anything meaningful. It is my way of keeping my promise to myself, that I will write every day, no matter how tired I am, and no matter how few thoughts are rattling around in my brain. But until I have an actual thought in my head, I urge everyone to remember that elections are sort of like weddings. You plan and wait for it for months, and then it's all over in a moment. When it is, all you have left are the memories, and whatever feelings were generated through the whole process. The country is the family, waiting to see if we will be forced to continue taking sides, or if, somehow, we will be happy its over and move forward together as a family once again.
I don't think it's odd that this is the end of my discussion.
It's late on Friday night, and yet, I still have a post to create. I am falling further and further behind in my goal to produce a post a day. But I am finding that I have now gotten a lot of stuff off my mind, and it's harder to be topical without being insulting. The things I thought I wanted to write about when I started have lost their importance to me. In the very act of taking control of my story, I realized that I wanted a whole new one told instead.
So tonight, I am thinking about a lot of different little things, and I will mention a few. First, you know the sound when someone scratches their fingernails on a chalkboard? In years gone by, everyone knew what that sounded like, because every classroom had chalk boards. Now they all have "smart" boards instead, where teachers can write and then project it up on the wall for the students to read, or copy, or ignore, as the case may be.
These days, every classroom has a computer and a television, and every student in it has their own computer at home, many of them far nicer than what their teachers have in their own homes, I might add. Kids are getting computers at an increasingly younger age, which is not surprising, but I'm not sure it's a positive thing. What happened to the world of make-believe, where we had to make everything up?
Maybe that's where I went wrong on the whole marriage thing.... I always made up the husband character when I was playing house as a little girl, so when I finally had one for real, he was still more or less a figment of my imagination. Or a nightmare. I'll let you choose the viewpoint, depending on whether or not you know him personally.
Anyway, getting back to the whole young computer guru point, I was at MicroCenter today, giving them one last opportunity to redeem themselves in my eyes. Next to me at the help desk, where I was standing around waiting for service with my son's broken and very pathetic looking computer, was a little girl, about four, I would guess, with her dad. This little girl had gotten a computer of her own, and her dad was paying someone else to get it all set up for her.
Now, I am of the opinion that if you are not old enough to set up your own computer, then you are probably not old enough to have that computer in the first place. Maybe it's just me, but shouldn't she be out playing, instead of inside on the computer?
Getting back to the fingernails on a chalk board, though, there is a politician whose voice is worse than that, and I cannot stand to listen to her. I know she can't help her voice, it's just part of who she is, but to me, it's a perfect metaphor for her personality, as well. Sharp and a little grating, irritating to listen to, and mostly, you just want it to go away. I am not talking about Sarah Palin, nor am I talking about Hillary Clinton, both of whom have public speaking voices that some people find to be irritating beyond belief. I am talking about Eleanor Roosevelt, whose Eastern accent earned her the label of elitist all those years ago.
My point? Women in politics are not a new thing, although their highly visible role may be somewhat a novelty. But I prefer to focus on quality of thoughts, rather than the sound of a voice or whether or not they have cool hair or too many pant suits. A surprisingly similar method to how I evaluate men in policy making positions, not ironically. In the content of your public statements, you reveal the kind of person you are, and I am less interested in your looks than if you tell the truth, or you spend your time wiggling out of it on technicalities or forgotten moments. Maybe that little girl with the computer had the right idea, after all. Maybe girls really do need to start at four to be successful when they are 50.
Okay, really, I have no point. This post is empty and devoid of anything meaningful. It is my way of keeping my promise to myself, that I will write every day, no matter how tired I am, and no matter how few thoughts are rattling around in my brain. But until I have an actual thought in my head, I urge everyone to remember that elections are sort of like weddings. You plan and wait for it for months, and then it's all over in a moment. When it is, all you have left are the memories, and whatever feelings were generated through the whole process. The country is the family, waiting to see if we will be forced to continue taking sides, or if, somehow, we will be happy its over and move forward together as a family once again.
I don't think it's odd that this is the end of my discussion.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
On that note...
I am a very bad band parent. After 13 years of listening to the bands of other people's kids, while waiting to get to my own son's band at the end of the evening, I have gone on strike. Tonight, for the very first time, I simply did not go in into the performance hall for the first band of the evening.
I heard the strains of music out into the lobby where I was sitting and reading the news on my computer while I was waiting, and it was, to be completely honest, better than I expected. I don't know if it was the distance, or if, in fact, they are better this year, but they sounded reasonably good, and I was sort of sorry I picked this particular time to take my principled stand.
Because there is a principle involved, one that I have fought for more years than I can remember. From fifth grade forward, every concert starts with the lowest band, and then you work your way up to the best one. The theory, I am told, is that this way, the younger children won't be demoralized coming after the best band, but instead will realize how much they have to look forward to.
Not a bad plan, if only that is how it worked. But this is real life, not life in theory, so it doesn't work that way at all. Instead, as soon as the lower band is done playing, their parents scoop them up like so many scattered marbles and run away, leaving them completely unenlightened and uninspired. Even in college, parents have no concept of respect for the other performers. They have done their part, they showed up for their kid, and there is nothing more required.
I have heard all the arguments about the younger siblings, and the homework, and that they get tired, but we all know that isn't the real reason at all. The truth is, the only band they want to hear is their child's band, because they aren't really interested in the music, they are only interested in their child.
Tonight, I joined the "My Child" crowd, although I was sitting right outside the door, and certainly heard the entire early portion of the concert. When the first band was finished, the doors were flung back as parents fled the hall, just as they always do. One would think, having come to listen to a college band concert, they would stay for the top band at the university, but I guess they have other priorities, because they could not get away fast enough.
Which tonight proved to be their loss, because it was, quite spectacularly, the very best band concert I have ever attended. There is a moment, whether you are the performer or the listener, when you know something transcendent has occurred, and it is a special moment, because it doesn't happen every day.
For the young adults in the Symphony Band at my son's university tonight, that transcendent moment happened for them. It is something that they will never forget. As a member of the appreciative audience, it leaves you spellbound and breathless, so impacted by the perfection that you can barely clap, so in the moment that you forget to move past it and back into reality. As a member of the performing ensemble, it leaves you weak with the thrill of having achieved the pinnacle. It is a dance for two, the performer and the audience, because each requires the other for the experience to be complete. And tonight, my son had the thrill of being on the stage and feeling it happen.
As I drove home, it was impossible not to spend some time thinking about the day, 13 years ago, when he first picked up his cheap starter alto saxophone, and tried to make music. Even at the very beginning, it was evident that there was talent hidden beneath the honking and tooting and screeching. He had a special something that was evident even when he didn't know what he was doing; something that made him stand out from the crowd, even when they were still playing "Twinkle, Twinkle," in fifth grade.
I have heard the idea proposed that talent is not really required to be a musician. Rather, goes the theory, you can learn everything you need to know - the notes, the timing, the volume - from a teacher, and that is all there is to it. I consider that idea to be nonsense, because it leaves out the single most important part of being a musician. Musicality, an ability to feel and emote that is an inherent part of performing the piece, cannot be learned. It is a gift, every bit as much as the ability of a true artist to draw a figure with only a couple of lines, or a master craftsman to take a piece of wood and make a fine piece of furniture from it.
A band of people making music can be technically correct, and still be inadequate. A band of people who are musical will create something special, even if every note isn't right. When they reach that moment when it all comes together at once, every note in tune and the director leading them all down the same musical path, it is the kind of magic that makes you want to play forever.
A lot of schools are cutting back in these treacherous economic times, and music programs are often early on the chopping block, because they are a so-called frill, something that everyone doesn't do. I would argue that everyone doesn't play football or basketball, either, but schools wouldn't think of getting rid of those activities, because they are considered important for school spirit and pride.
I answer that with the reality that the band kids are probably your national merit scholars, and your top students in the class. They are often valedictorian and salutatorian, especially if you add in all the musical disciplines. They tend to have among the highest GPA's for all activity groups in a school, and they also learn about leadership, self-discipline, and group ethos.
For every administrator who wants to cut their school music program, I wish they would come to a concert and stay until the end. Perhaps it will change their mind about how important music really is, because when it is done well, it weaves a picture and tells the story, all while touching our souls.
The next time I attend a concert, I will go in for the opening act, not because I expect to be wowed, but because those kids are striving to achieve the pinnacle, and I don't want to let them down by not doing my part. In the musical dance, I am now content to be the listener, and I will acquit myself well by showing up.
Congratulations to the Kansas State University Symphony Band on the best concert I have ever attended. That was a job spectacularly well done.
I heard the strains of music out into the lobby where I was sitting and reading the news on my computer while I was waiting, and it was, to be completely honest, better than I expected. I don't know if it was the distance, or if, in fact, they are better this year, but they sounded reasonably good, and I was sort of sorry I picked this particular time to take my principled stand.
Because there is a principle involved, one that I have fought for more years than I can remember. From fifth grade forward, every concert starts with the lowest band, and then you work your way up to the best one. The theory, I am told, is that this way, the younger children won't be demoralized coming after the best band, but instead will realize how much they have to look forward to.
Not a bad plan, if only that is how it worked. But this is real life, not life in theory, so it doesn't work that way at all. Instead, as soon as the lower band is done playing, their parents scoop them up like so many scattered marbles and run away, leaving them completely unenlightened and uninspired. Even in college, parents have no concept of respect for the other performers. They have done their part, they showed up for their kid, and there is nothing more required.
I have heard all the arguments about the younger siblings, and the homework, and that they get tired, but we all know that isn't the real reason at all. The truth is, the only band they want to hear is their child's band, because they aren't really interested in the music, they are only interested in their child.
Tonight, I joined the "My Child" crowd, although I was sitting right outside the door, and certainly heard the entire early portion of the concert. When the first band was finished, the doors were flung back as parents fled the hall, just as they always do. One would think, having come to listen to a college band concert, they would stay for the top band at the university, but I guess they have other priorities, because they could not get away fast enough.
Which tonight proved to be their loss, because it was, quite spectacularly, the very best band concert I have ever attended. There is a moment, whether you are the performer or the listener, when you know something transcendent has occurred, and it is a special moment, because it doesn't happen every day.
For the young adults in the Symphony Band at my son's university tonight, that transcendent moment happened for them. It is something that they will never forget. As a member of the appreciative audience, it leaves you spellbound and breathless, so impacted by the perfection that you can barely clap, so in the moment that you forget to move past it and back into reality. As a member of the performing ensemble, it leaves you weak with the thrill of having achieved the pinnacle. It is a dance for two, the performer and the audience, because each requires the other for the experience to be complete. And tonight, my son had the thrill of being on the stage and feeling it happen.
As I drove home, it was impossible not to spend some time thinking about the day, 13 years ago, when he first picked up his cheap starter alto saxophone, and tried to make music. Even at the very beginning, it was evident that there was talent hidden beneath the honking and tooting and screeching. He had a special something that was evident even when he didn't know what he was doing; something that made him stand out from the crowd, even when they were still playing "Twinkle, Twinkle," in fifth grade.
I have heard the idea proposed that talent is not really required to be a musician. Rather, goes the theory, you can learn everything you need to know - the notes, the timing, the volume - from a teacher, and that is all there is to it. I consider that idea to be nonsense, because it leaves out the single most important part of being a musician. Musicality, an ability to feel and emote that is an inherent part of performing the piece, cannot be learned. It is a gift, every bit as much as the ability of a true artist to draw a figure with only a couple of lines, or a master craftsman to take a piece of wood and make a fine piece of furniture from it.
A band of people making music can be technically correct, and still be inadequate. A band of people who are musical will create something special, even if every note isn't right. When they reach that moment when it all comes together at once, every note in tune and the director leading them all down the same musical path, it is the kind of magic that makes you want to play forever.
A lot of schools are cutting back in these treacherous economic times, and music programs are often early on the chopping block, because they are a so-called frill, something that everyone doesn't do. I would argue that everyone doesn't play football or basketball, either, but schools wouldn't think of getting rid of those activities, because they are considered important for school spirit and pride.
I answer that with the reality that the band kids are probably your national merit scholars, and your top students in the class. They are often valedictorian and salutatorian, especially if you add in all the musical disciplines. They tend to have among the highest GPA's for all activity groups in a school, and they also learn about leadership, self-discipline, and group ethos.
For every administrator who wants to cut their school music program, I wish they would come to a concert and stay until the end. Perhaps it will change their mind about how important music really is, because when it is done well, it weaves a picture and tells the story, all while touching our souls.
The next time I attend a concert, I will go in for the opening act, not because I expect to be wowed, but because those kids are striving to achieve the pinnacle, and I don't want to let them down by not doing my part. In the musical dance, I am now content to be the listener, and I will acquit myself well by showing up.
Congratulations to the Kansas State University Symphony Band on the best concert I have ever attended. That was a job spectacularly well done.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Motherhood is the hardest calling
I have been known to say, on occasions of great frustration, that dogs are easier than kids, because when you are mad at them, you can just put them in their kennel and go take a walk. The people to whom I have uttered this statement always know where I'm coming from, and know that I would never do such a thing to a child, no matter how angry or frustrated I felt. [It is ridiculous that I feel required to offer this disclaimer, but given the situation I'm discussing, I thought I should make it clear, just in case someone who doesn't know me happens across this post and gets the wrong idea.] I believe in the inherent dignity of a human being, in addition to the obvious wrong inherent in such an act, and doing such a thing would violate everything that I believe in and stand for in my life.
But it seems we live in a world in which mothers commit much more horrendous acts on an ever increasingly frequent basis, and I am dismayed and disturbed and very distressed to observe the degeneration. How did we get to a point where a 22 year old woman could "lose" her own child, and then party for a month, before suddenly being all about finding her, coincidentally at just the moment that her own mother called in the police?
In a press conference, her attorney defended his client, telling us that she is a child herself, as though, even if it were true, which at 22, is ridiculous, that fact would somehow excuse the 30 days of irresponsible behavior that preceded her sudden interest in her missing offspring. If that is her defense, she had best make her peace with the world, because she won't be seeing the free light of day again in this lifetime.
Motherhood has been called the highest calling, but personally, I consider it the hardest calling. It is a 24/7, relentless assault on your entire being, affecting the very core of your selfness. In a single moment, that moment you find out your life is forever changed, it is an overwhelming, bewildering, euphoric, unaccountable feeling, one that exceeds the ability of words to describe. Suddenly, where nothing existed before, there is another life that you are charged with protecting, nurturing, rearing.
For most of us, that powerful moment forever changes our perspective on everything. And we are thrilled beyond words about it. All those years of playing house with our dolls has now come true, and we couldn't be happier, whether we planned it right then or not. And let's be real here, most of us happen upon parenthood by accident, whatever our dreams for the far-off future. I think that might be the first lesson in parenting, actually. Never plan on anything going the way you think it will, because kids have definitely not read the manual, and they never do what you think they will.
We no longer see the world as it affects our own lives, we evaluate it as it will affect the tiny life that is within. We stop drinking coffee, and we watch what we eat. Suddenly, world peace is personal, and you worry about chemicals in the water and pollution in the air. While we complain about the aches and pains and annoyances of pregnancy, we also revel in the outfitting of a nursery and enjoy the fuss and pampering to which we feel our blessed state entitles us.
When we hear of someone like Casey Anthony, I cannot help but think of people I know who would have literally done anything, sacrificed everything, given up whatever was asked of them, in order to have a child of their own to love and care for. I imagine how great the hurt must be, to see another woman toss away their child like a piece of trash.
And the tremendous support Casey has received from her obviously grieving parents is amazing to me, also. They clearly miss Caylee desperately, even as they love their own daughter and try to give her support and comfort in the midst of the pain that she is obviously feeling now. That is the heartache and heartbreak of parenting, that desire to protect and defend, even when you know they are dreadfully, criminally wrong. Casey evidently had good role models, and a lot of support, which should have been enough to at least ensure her own daughter's physical safety, if not her emotional well-being.
I won't be on the jury, so I feel I am not out of line in having the opinion that Casey Anthony clearly murdered her own child, because Caylee was a nuisance to a young woman who thought partying was more important that nurturing. And I feel angry that Casey Anthony was allowed to keep a child she clearly did not want and refused to accept as the life changing event that in fact, having a baby is.
Where have we, as a nation of compassionate people, gone wrong? Because whatever else you say about Americans, we are a compassionate people. Although we may gripe long and loud about welfare programs and government give-aways, when it comes down to the human level, we also support food shelves and homeless programs with donations that reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars a year. We look into the face of a homeless child and we hurt and want to help.
And yet we have been forced to pass laws allowing women to dump their own offspring at hospitals without fear of being charged with a crime, because otherwise they may end up in tomorrow's trash. How does that happen in a society where help is always available a click or a phone call away?
I don't honestly believe that young women who commit those acts don't know or are so afraid that they can't make any other decision. The information is out there, available everywhere, and they have nine months, or realistically, at least seven, to come to grips with it. I think there is a lot of denial, of course, but mostly, I think in our throwaway society, where life is increasingly cheap, we have failed to instill the message in some of our young people that you do have to be accountable for your mistakes, that you don't get a do-over in life, that being young and irresponsible is not an excuse for being criminal, and that if you cannot accept the natural consequences of your actions, you had best not act that way.
I don't know whether it's national news or if it has gotten our attention more locally because it's happening fairly close by, but Nebraska passed a law this year that allows parents to drop their child at a hospital without fear of retribution or criminal charges for the act, if they no longer want to be parents to that kid. While the law was clearly aimed at mothers of newborns, it has not worked out that way. Instead, I believe there have been 17 kids dropped off to date, only two of them infants, and almost half of them from one family ranging in age all the way up to 17.
All other issues aside, and parental reasoning not being taken into account for the moment, what would it do to a 17 year old to be dumped off like so much dirty laundry on the side of life's highway, as though a soul was no more meaningful that an unwanted pet? To say that I am dumbfounded by the act is not strong enough. And while there were some genuine reasons for that father to be overwhelmed, for certain, why were there no services available to help him get through his family crisis before it got to this point?
And yet, he didn't abuse his children, he didn't murder them in cold blood, he didn't abandon them on the street to face unknown dangers. He was wrong, but at least he protected them physically from danger, the very minimum one could ask for in a parent. I don't give him much credit, he should have looked for help and support sooner, and in a more practical way, before things got so out of control, but you have to acknowledge that at least he took care to get them somewhere safely.
What then, do we say about someone like Casey Anthony? She is the reason that Kate and Gerry McCann were immediately tarnished as murderers when their daughter, Madeline, disappeared in Portugal. It wasn't a random selection in any way. It was based on the statistical reality that when a child disappears, most of the time, the parent or step-parent or significant other of the biological parent is at fault.
We, as a nation of compassionate people, MUST learn from these cases, and we must put some sort of check or balance into place that will keep these events from happening. It is not only for the sake of the child involved, it is for the sake of us all. Jesus admonished us to care for the sick and the weak and the hungry, and that by doing so, we were caring for him as well. What have we done, when we have allowed a Casey Anthony to happen?
I don't have the answers. I am not an expert in child issues, I am just a single mom who cares, deeply, about what this event says about us as as human beings. Wherever you stand on abortion, I wish we could focus a little harder on the children who are already here and unwanted, those who are considered a nuisance, those whose own parents literally wish them dead.
Murder is as old as Cain and Abel, and lying about it started one moment after Abel was struck down. But I believe the dignity of a human being requires us to answer for the murder of a three year old by her own mother. I believe that ultimately the worth of a society is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. I wonder how we will be judged.
But it seems we live in a world in which mothers commit much more horrendous acts on an ever increasingly frequent basis, and I am dismayed and disturbed and very distressed to observe the degeneration. How did we get to a point where a 22 year old woman could "lose" her own child, and then party for a month, before suddenly being all about finding her, coincidentally at just the moment that her own mother called in the police?
In a press conference, her attorney defended his client, telling us that she is a child herself, as though, even if it were true, which at 22, is ridiculous, that fact would somehow excuse the 30 days of irresponsible behavior that preceded her sudden interest in her missing offspring. If that is her defense, she had best make her peace with the world, because she won't be seeing the free light of day again in this lifetime.
Motherhood has been called the highest calling, but personally, I consider it the hardest calling. It is a 24/7, relentless assault on your entire being, affecting the very core of your selfness. In a single moment, that moment you find out your life is forever changed, it is an overwhelming, bewildering, euphoric, unaccountable feeling, one that exceeds the ability of words to describe. Suddenly, where nothing existed before, there is another life that you are charged with protecting, nurturing, rearing.
For most of us, that powerful moment forever changes our perspective on everything. And we are thrilled beyond words about it. All those years of playing house with our dolls has now come true, and we couldn't be happier, whether we planned it right then or not. And let's be real here, most of us happen upon parenthood by accident, whatever our dreams for the far-off future. I think that might be the first lesson in parenting, actually. Never plan on anything going the way you think it will, because kids have definitely not read the manual, and they never do what you think they will.
We no longer see the world as it affects our own lives, we evaluate it as it will affect the tiny life that is within. We stop drinking coffee, and we watch what we eat. Suddenly, world peace is personal, and you worry about chemicals in the water and pollution in the air. While we complain about the aches and pains and annoyances of pregnancy, we also revel in the outfitting of a nursery and enjoy the fuss and pampering to which we feel our blessed state entitles us.
When we hear of someone like Casey Anthony, I cannot help but think of people I know who would have literally done anything, sacrificed everything, given up whatever was asked of them, in order to have a child of their own to love and care for. I imagine how great the hurt must be, to see another woman toss away their child like a piece of trash.
And the tremendous support Casey has received from her obviously grieving parents is amazing to me, also. They clearly miss Caylee desperately, even as they love their own daughter and try to give her support and comfort in the midst of the pain that she is obviously feeling now. That is the heartache and heartbreak of parenting, that desire to protect and defend, even when you know they are dreadfully, criminally wrong. Casey evidently had good role models, and a lot of support, which should have been enough to at least ensure her own daughter's physical safety, if not her emotional well-being.
I won't be on the jury, so I feel I am not out of line in having the opinion that Casey Anthony clearly murdered her own child, because Caylee was a nuisance to a young woman who thought partying was more important that nurturing. And I feel angry that Casey Anthony was allowed to keep a child she clearly did not want and refused to accept as the life changing event that in fact, having a baby is.
Where have we, as a nation of compassionate people, gone wrong? Because whatever else you say about Americans, we are a compassionate people. Although we may gripe long and loud about welfare programs and government give-aways, when it comes down to the human level, we also support food shelves and homeless programs with donations that reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars a year. We look into the face of a homeless child and we hurt and want to help.
And yet we have been forced to pass laws allowing women to dump their own offspring at hospitals without fear of being charged with a crime, because otherwise they may end up in tomorrow's trash. How does that happen in a society where help is always available a click or a phone call away?
I don't honestly believe that young women who commit those acts don't know or are so afraid that they can't make any other decision. The information is out there, available everywhere, and they have nine months, or realistically, at least seven, to come to grips with it. I think there is a lot of denial, of course, but mostly, I think in our throwaway society, where life is increasingly cheap, we have failed to instill the message in some of our young people that you do have to be accountable for your mistakes, that you don't get a do-over in life, that being young and irresponsible is not an excuse for being criminal, and that if you cannot accept the natural consequences of your actions, you had best not act that way.
I don't know whether it's national news or if it has gotten our attention more locally because it's happening fairly close by, but Nebraska passed a law this year that allows parents to drop their child at a hospital without fear of retribution or criminal charges for the act, if they no longer want to be parents to that kid. While the law was clearly aimed at mothers of newborns, it has not worked out that way. Instead, I believe there have been 17 kids dropped off to date, only two of them infants, and almost half of them from one family ranging in age all the way up to 17.
All other issues aside, and parental reasoning not being taken into account for the moment, what would it do to a 17 year old to be dumped off like so much dirty laundry on the side of life's highway, as though a soul was no more meaningful that an unwanted pet? To say that I am dumbfounded by the act is not strong enough. And while there were some genuine reasons for that father to be overwhelmed, for certain, why were there no services available to help him get through his family crisis before it got to this point?
And yet, he didn't abuse his children, he didn't murder them in cold blood, he didn't abandon them on the street to face unknown dangers. He was wrong, but at least he protected them physically from danger, the very minimum one could ask for in a parent. I don't give him much credit, he should have looked for help and support sooner, and in a more practical way, before things got so out of control, but you have to acknowledge that at least he took care to get them somewhere safely.
What then, do we say about someone like Casey Anthony? She is the reason that Kate and Gerry McCann were immediately tarnished as murderers when their daughter, Madeline, disappeared in Portugal. It wasn't a random selection in any way. It was based on the statistical reality that when a child disappears, most of the time, the parent or step-parent or significant other of the biological parent is at fault.
We, as a nation of compassionate people, MUST learn from these cases, and we must put some sort of check or balance into place that will keep these events from happening. It is not only for the sake of the child involved, it is for the sake of us all. Jesus admonished us to care for the sick and the weak and the hungry, and that by doing so, we were caring for him as well. What have we done, when we have allowed a Casey Anthony to happen?
I don't have the answers. I am not an expert in child issues, I am just a single mom who cares, deeply, about what this event says about us as as human beings. Wherever you stand on abortion, I wish we could focus a little harder on the children who are already here and unwanted, those who are considered a nuisance, those whose own parents literally wish them dead.
Murder is as old as Cain and Abel, and lying about it started one moment after Abel was struck down. But I believe the dignity of a human being requires us to answer for the murder of a three year old by her own mother. I believe that ultimately the worth of a society is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. I wonder how we will be judged.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Freedom of speech
I learned today that freedom of speech is under attack, and I, for one, am pretty appalled by it. The news came to me via the local paper, in the form of an article on a new type of insurance being sold specifically to cover bloggers, who are now apparently at risk of being sued for everything they own.
This insurance is dual purpose - it will provide some relief for two main problems - in the case of a lawsuit for copyright infringement, which is apparently a serious blogging problem; and it will cover some costs if the blogger is sued for defamation. For those who do not have a dictionary handy, but have never really been clear on the difference, defamation is called slander when it is spoken, and liable when it's in print, but in either case, is supposed to refer to making a willful false claim against another person to their detriment. [Technically, then, it is slander when you tell your girlfriend she looks good in that dress she is currently wearing if she then decides to go out and be seen in it, when, in fact, she should immediately donate it to charity and never admit she even owned it, but that's probably another issue.]
To continue. As you can well imagine, the notion of being sued for the silly drivel being posted each day by people like me rather took me aback. I mean, seriously, I am sympathetic to the copyright problem, but liable? I had better sign up now, before anyone who might theoretically be named Dave gets any ideas in his head.
Have we lost our collective sense of humor? Or more likely, our collective ability to reason? Because if you take bloggers seriously enough to sue them, then you simply do not get out enough.
The most dangerous part of it, at least according to the article I read, is that you can, in fact, be sued, even if the information is correct. I had no idea. Since when does it put you in the wrong to tell the truth? If people are afraid of being exposed for who they are, perhaps they should think a little harder about their behavior in the first place. I'll tell you what I always told my kids. If you don't want the world to know the stupid stuff you have done, don't do stupid stuff. Because public disclosure is a consequence of your own actions.
In the case of people simply making up lies to destroy the character of another person, I have sympathy, of course. I am sure it happens, and there are some pretty powerful bloggers out there who have a daily audience of millions as a forum from which to spout their untruths. If, for example, a blogger says something about a presidential candidate, that doesn't make it so, but the campaigns are still forced to spend millions in advertising to combat the false impression. In all fairness, the media does the same thing, especially the party apologists on both sides, who seem to spout lies and half truths as a matter of course. Whether you lean left or right, I'm pretty sure you could find plenty of examples in your own version of the media to illustrate my point.
But I don't think that is the source of the lawsuits that are being addressed with the blogger insurance. The blogger world is full of people setting the record straight with their own version of the truth, and evidently, there are some people so afraid of what might be said, they feel their only recourse is to file a lawsuit. You wonder if they have considered simply telling the blogger that they are wrong. Perhaps write their own blog in response. I, for one, would always welcome correction, and will give fair rebuttal space to anyone who wishes to throw darts in my direction to something I have written.
But we are not a society that communicates. We are a culture of instant action, most of it actionable. Which was the point of the insurance. Most of the cases will not be successful. But the nuisance factor of having to hire a lawyer to deal with the fallout, the time involved and the other annoyances, is what the insurance policy is protecting against.
I had better get signed up. I suspect sarcastic people such as myself are the main targets of these nuisance suits. While I tease in good fun, and the targets of my arrows are typically the people I like the most, because I count on them to take it all in good fun [after all, they already know me, they know I'm really harmless,] you just never know when I will say something that goes too far. It happens. In the words of a certain little boy I know, who makes some mistakes but is always regretful, "I was GONNA be sorry." And to clarify, no, it is not my little boy. Don't need to have him filing suit against me.
As I said, I have a fair amount of sympathy for the copyright infringement issues, which are apparently rife in the blogging world. Sometimes I think the schools have entirely missed teaching the unit on ethics and responsibility in print, because in my teaching days I saw work that was entirely lifted from another source, with nary a mention that the thoughts and ideas and words belonged to someone else. [Please note that no names were used, and any resemblance to any student I ever taught is purely coincidental. Whew. Close one there.] I would be concerned about the same thing, what with being in print now and all, except that I can't imagine having anything I've ever said being interesting enough for anyone to bother.
To hare off on a brief tangent here, though. Recently, I did have the rather interesting experience of hearing that something I wrote, obviously not on this blog, but in a real printed publication of sorts, was used in a sermon in a local church (properly credited, I'm pleased to report.) I felt an odd mixture of pleasure in knowing that my words reached someone and spoke to their heart, where it really matters, and embarrassment that anything I have ever said was worth repeating in any context whatsoever. It all left me feeling a little confused and humbled. I am not used to being taken seriously, so it was a little overwhelming to hear that I was cogent enough to be used in a sermon, and not even as the bad example.
To get back to my point, though, I do have sympathy for the person who has truly been defamed by someone who is angry and out to diminish them publicly as a way of inflicting damage on their reputation, or more likely, on their heart. I can certainly understand why that would be a dangerous tool, if you have a wide audience that can affect the opinions of a lot of people.
But the truth is, most of the bloggers out there have a pretty limited audience, consisting mainly of their spouse or a few close friends, and the worst damage they might inflict is on the world of words itself, rather than another individual. I have seen some rather tortured blog posts, that surely can't threaten anyone, no matter how vitriolic they may be. How seriously can you take someone that can't even write in complete sentences? I suspect the popular view of the blogger sitting in their parents' dark basement is probably not all that far off from the truth, in many cases.
But, the risk is still apparently out there, so it must be addressed. Therefore, from this point forward, I will append all my posts with the following disclaimer:
"Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental, and nothing I say is intended, in any way, shape or form, to offend, enlighten, amuse, entertain, or encourage. There is no point, there is no reason to read this, and whatever you do, under no circumstances should you form any opinions about anything I have said, because it is all meaningless drivel best left unsaid."
There, don't we all feel so much better now?
This insurance is dual purpose - it will provide some relief for two main problems - in the case of a lawsuit for copyright infringement, which is apparently a serious blogging problem; and it will cover some costs if the blogger is sued for defamation. For those who do not have a dictionary handy, but have never really been clear on the difference, defamation is called slander when it is spoken, and liable when it's in print, but in either case, is supposed to refer to making a willful false claim against another person to their detriment. [Technically, then, it is slander when you tell your girlfriend she looks good in that dress she is currently wearing if she then decides to go out and be seen in it, when, in fact, she should immediately donate it to charity and never admit she even owned it, but that's probably another issue.]
To continue. As you can well imagine, the notion of being sued for the silly drivel being posted each day by people like me rather took me aback. I mean, seriously, I am sympathetic to the copyright problem, but liable? I had better sign up now, before anyone who might theoretically be named Dave gets any ideas in his head.
Have we lost our collective sense of humor? Or more likely, our collective ability to reason? Because if you take bloggers seriously enough to sue them, then you simply do not get out enough.
The most dangerous part of it, at least according to the article I read, is that you can, in fact, be sued, even if the information is correct. I had no idea. Since when does it put you in the wrong to tell the truth? If people are afraid of being exposed for who they are, perhaps they should think a little harder about their behavior in the first place. I'll tell you what I always told my kids. If you don't want the world to know the stupid stuff you have done, don't do stupid stuff. Because public disclosure is a consequence of your own actions.
In the case of people simply making up lies to destroy the character of another person, I have sympathy, of course. I am sure it happens, and there are some pretty powerful bloggers out there who have a daily audience of millions as a forum from which to spout their untruths. If, for example, a blogger says something about a presidential candidate, that doesn't make it so, but the campaigns are still forced to spend millions in advertising to combat the false impression. In all fairness, the media does the same thing, especially the party apologists on both sides, who seem to spout lies and half truths as a matter of course. Whether you lean left or right, I'm pretty sure you could find plenty of examples in your own version of the media to illustrate my point.
But I don't think that is the source of the lawsuits that are being addressed with the blogger insurance. The blogger world is full of people setting the record straight with their own version of the truth, and evidently, there are some people so afraid of what might be said, they feel their only recourse is to file a lawsuit. You wonder if they have considered simply telling the blogger that they are wrong. Perhaps write their own blog in response. I, for one, would always welcome correction, and will give fair rebuttal space to anyone who wishes to throw darts in my direction to something I have written.
But we are not a society that communicates. We are a culture of instant action, most of it actionable. Which was the point of the insurance. Most of the cases will not be successful. But the nuisance factor of having to hire a lawyer to deal with the fallout, the time involved and the other annoyances, is what the insurance policy is protecting against.
I had better get signed up. I suspect sarcastic people such as myself are the main targets of these nuisance suits. While I tease in good fun, and the targets of my arrows are typically the people I like the most, because I count on them to take it all in good fun [after all, they already know me, they know I'm really harmless,] you just never know when I will say something that goes too far. It happens. In the words of a certain little boy I know, who makes some mistakes but is always regretful, "I was GONNA be sorry." And to clarify, no, it is not my little boy. Don't need to have him filing suit against me.
As I said, I have a fair amount of sympathy for the copyright infringement issues, which are apparently rife in the blogging world. Sometimes I think the schools have entirely missed teaching the unit on ethics and responsibility in print, because in my teaching days I saw work that was entirely lifted from another source, with nary a mention that the thoughts and ideas and words belonged to someone else. [Please note that no names were used, and any resemblance to any student I ever taught is purely coincidental. Whew. Close one there.] I would be concerned about the same thing, what with being in print now and all, except that I can't imagine having anything I've ever said being interesting enough for anyone to bother.
To hare off on a brief tangent here, though. Recently, I did have the rather interesting experience of hearing that something I wrote, obviously not on this blog, but in a real printed publication of sorts, was used in a sermon in a local church (properly credited, I'm pleased to report.) I felt an odd mixture of pleasure in knowing that my words reached someone and spoke to their heart, where it really matters, and embarrassment that anything I have ever said was worth repeating in any context whatsoever. It all left me feeling a little confused and humbled. I am not used to being taken seriously, so it was a little overwhelming to hear that I was cogent enough to be used in a sermon, and not even as the bad example.
To get back to my point, though, I do have sympathy for the person who has truly been defamed by someone who is angry and out to diminish them publicly as a way of inflicting damage on their reputation, or more likely, on their heart. I can certainly understand why that would be a dangerous tool, if you have a wide audience that can affect the opinions of a lot of people.
But the truth is, most of the bloggers out there have a pretty limited audience, consisting mainly of their spouse or a few close friends, and the worst damage they might inflict is on the world of words itself, rather than another individual. I have seen some rather tortured blog posts, that surely can't threaten anyone, no matter how vitriolic they may be. How seriously can you take someone that can't even write in complete sentences? I suspect the popular view of the blogger sitting in their parents' dark basement is probably not all that far off from the truth, in many cases.
But, the risk is still apparently out there, so it must be addressed. Therefore, from this point forward, I will append all my posts with the following disclaimer:
"Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental, and nothing I say is intended, in any way, shape or form, to offend, enlighten, amuse, entertain, or encourage. There is no point, there is no reason to read this, and whatever you do, under no circumstances should you form any opinions about anything I have said, because it is all meaningless drivel best left unsaid."
There, don't we all feel so much better now?
Monday, October 13, 2008
Turns out my mom is a genius. This is not all that surprising, really, since she grew up during the depression, and was weaned on hard knocks. Pshaw. To hear her talk, you would think her pacifier, if her family could only have afforded one, would have been whittled from wood taken from a tree in their own back yard. But in these days of the credit crisis that has evidently swept the world, I find that my mother's words my whole life are coming back to me, and she was right all along.
My entire financial education at my mother's knee consisted of exactly one mantra - live within your means. Do not spend more than you have. Eschew credit, except for a mortgage, and even then, make sure it is sensible, because, and this is the important part, You Just Never Know. Like I said, she is looking like a genius now, isn't she?
I heard on the news just this morning that we are going to have to learn to live without the easy credit that Americans, and people across the globe, have learned to count on. Is it just me, or is it a little ridiculous to imagine that you can go on indefinitely buying everything you own, or to be more accurate, everything of which you are currently in possession, on credit?
The morning anchor, about my own age, was breathlessly explaining the situation, with the major illustration of this new reality being that you will no longer be able to "buy" anything, like a car, without any money down. We won't be able to buy furniture today that we don't have to pay for until two years from next spring, and Christmas is going to be a little more sparse under the tree. The credit card offers which have inundated our mailboxes will be forthcoming no more, and the days of borrowing more than the value of the item, like home equity loans for 125% of value, are over.
Now that is a concept that leaves me shaking my head, I have to be honest. I never could make sense of how taking out a loan for 125% of the value of anything made sense in the first place. Isn't that sort of like having a dish of ice cream that is 125% full? Everything above the rim of the bowl doesn't really belong to you, because it runs out as soon as it melts, and you can only eat so much before that happens. And then where are you?
Credit seems to me to be very similar, but what do I know? I have a 30 year conventional mortgage for which I am, according to the so-called financial experts, paying way too much in interest. Never mind that my payments, even with insurance and exorbitant property taxes because I live in the very special Leawood, Kansas are still less than the rent in most apartments around town. [By the way, that would be sarcasm you were reading there. I don't think Leawood is special, I think it's silly, mostly, but it's where I landed, and I'm not in the mood to sell out and move at this particular juncture.]
Funny story about house buying. A few years back, well quite a few, now, I admit, but anyway. I was perfectly content living in my little starter house in Overland Park, and would happily have stayed right there until removed by the coroner when I was dead and gone. Overland Park was the original compromise with my then spouse, because I started out looking in Olathe, which has some of the least expensive territory in the county, but he refused to consider living there. Olathe wasn't quite good enough for him. Too blue collar, and working class, it seemed.
My ex-husband, Mr. Pretentious, simply HAD to live somewhere swankier, because it's all about the look, you know. He never was one to look beneath the surface of anything, as long as it looked good on the top. So anyway, that little house in Overland Park wasn't quite good enough, and since Leawood was the most upscale [read hoity-toity] city in the metro area, he insisted, over my objections, that we move to Leawood.
Fast forward a few years, he leaves me for his new life, and ultimately buys himself a house. Imagine my mirth when I learned said new house was in, wait for it, Olathe. That's right. Suddenly, in another hilarious twist of fate, I am living in Leawood, which means nothing to me, [I usually tell people I live in Stanley, the little burg that Overland Park swallowed on its quest to gobble up everything between here and the Oklahoma state line,] while he is living in Olathe, which wasn't good enough for us, but apparently is just fine with him. How the mighty have fallen, right?
Anyway, getting back to my point. Does any store still have a layaway department? I'll bet my kids don't even know what it means, or how it worked. To them, layaway is a sign at the back of WalMart that helped you locate the rest rooms in the back of the store.
But when I was younger, planning my wedding and my grown-up life, I used layaway to buy everything that I needed to stock my first kitchen. I got dishes on a blue light special at K-Mart, then put them on layaway and paid for them over many weeks, until that exciting day when I made the final payment and took them home. Do kids today have any idea of the thrill of having saved and scrimped and waited for the moment when the thing they have wanted is finally theirs? There is a lot to be said for having to wait for what you want.
My first nice camera was purchased the same way. Made the last payment the week before my wedding, in fact. I had timed it just right so I would be able to take pictures at that once in a lifetime event. I wonder what would have happened if I had missed a payment? Do you suppose I would have delayed the wedding, thereby giving myself a little more time to come to my senses, and then it might never have happened at all? Of course, then I would be without my own personal version of Abbott and Costello, and the world would be a much less friendly place for me, so perhaps it's best that things happened as they did, after all.
My mother would never approve of a loan for 125% of the value of anything. She would look at me in disbelief if I had been so stupid, and would get that disappointed look with her lips pursed sort of tight, and I would know I had blown it. It's not worth it to disappoint your own mother, so I was never even tempted, even if I had the proclivity, which I didn't.
I didn't win many arguments in my marriage, but one of the few I did win was to buy a house within my means. And when I refinanced after my divorce a few years ago, I once again went conservative, because that is in my nature, even though I had a lot of pressure from the mortgage brokers to throw caution to the wind and jump in with both feet.
I had one guy telling me that I could cash out all my equity and then I would have the tax deduction, and I could live on the cash. When I tried to point out that there is a price to be paid for that maneuver, which is definitely more costly than any supposed tax benefit I might have received, he was bewildered, because he hadn't encountered anyone who thought that way, I guess. Needless to say, I did not go with Mr. Countrywide for the ultimate mortgage.
I am somewhat confused, to be honest, why the concept of living within our means is so revolutionary. Should it require talking heads and pundits on every channel to walk us through it? Surely there is someone outside of my own extended family who lives on their actual income, or lack thereof. My mother and her siblings cannot be the only ones to drum those tough lessons into little skulls that depended on them.
I do know the dark side, though, to be completely honest. I was married to a materialistic junkie, someone who never saw an offer for cheap credit that he couldn't embrace. He bought everything on credit, and couldn't see the connection between payments and interest and being broke, mostly because he was not in charge of the family budget. But I saw it, and it used to keep me up nights. He would spend, while I tried to save. He would get credit cards without telling me, to buy stuff he hid in the trunk of his car or at work or somewhere that he spent more time than he did at home. He wasn't a shopaholic, he was a social climber, but the net result was too much credit for too little income.
He also abhorred banks, because you weren't making enough on the deal if you put money into them, and every time I set up a savings account, he found a way to spend three times as much. It was frustrating to me, having been raised on the concept of never owing anyone for anything, to constantly be in debt to everyone for everything. Especially since rainy days are the norm in my life, and I never go anywhere without an umbrella.
But it does give me some insight into the current situation, and why people who have never lived any other way are panicked at the idea that they will no longer be able to buy anything they want on the whim of the moment. If you are used to having everything the second you think of it, it's tough to wait, to wish, and to save.
The good news, and there is some, is that tightened credit ultimately enhances both solvency and character, and this country could use a little of both. I am watching the transformation in my own household, and I think if our experience is any indication, the country will be okay. My kids, especially my daughter, grew up with too much easy money available. Every wish could be fulfilled the moment it appeared, and nothing was ever out of range. They both had too much stuff, and as always in such situations, the level of appreciation was commensurate with the lack of effort in the procurement.
These days, my son goes to school and has a job that takes up any free time, and he pays as much of his own bills as he can. My daughter went out looking for a job on her own last weekend, because she wants to be able to help me out with her own fun money. While she is doing it for me, I don't think she realizes that the long term benefit will be for her. Once you start to work, you learn the value of money, because you associate the amount of work with how much a thing costs. When you weigh that against the importance of your whim, it teaches you real values.
It is value that has been missing in our fast moving culture, I think. We have the stuff, but have no idea of the value of much of anything, because we haven't worked for it, we have just charged forward. I believe, in the end, we will be better off for being more fiscally conservative, although there will be a lot of pain in the meantime, and I realize it's not going to be much fun. I wonder if my children will save twist ties and bread bags, to the amusement of their children some day? Because my mother does, and she is obviously a genius, so perhaps I'd better clear some space in my drawer myself.
My entire financial education at my mother's knee consisted of exactly one mantra - live within your means. Do not spend more than you have. Eschew credit, except for a mortgage, and even then, make sure it is sensible, because, and this is the important part, You Just Never Know. Like I said, she is looking like a genius now, isn't she?
I heard on the news just this morning that we are going to have to learn to live without the easy credit that Americans, and people across the globe, have learned to count on. Is it just me, or is it a little ridiculous to imagine that you can go on indefinitely buying everything you own, or to be more accurate, everything of which you are currently in possession, on credit?
The morning anchor, about my own age, was breathlessly explaining the situation, with the major illustration of this new reality being that you will no longer be able to "buy" anything, like a car, without any money down. We won't be able to buy furniture today that we don't have to pay for until two years from next spring, and Christmas is going to be a little more sparse under the tree. The credit card offers which have inundated our mailboxes will be forthcoming no more, and the days of borrowing more than the value of the item, like home equity loans for 125% of value, are over.
Now that is a concept that leaves me shaking my head, I have to be honest. I never could make sense of how taking out a loan for 125% of the value of anything made sense in the first place. Isn't that sort of like having a dish of ice cream that is 125% full? Everything above the rim of the bowl doesn't really belong to you, because it runs out as soon as it melts, and you can only eat so much before that happens. And then where are you?
Credit seems to me to be very similar, but what do I know? I have a 30 year conventional mortgage for which I am, according to the so-called financial experts, paying way too much in interest. Never mind that my payments, even with insurance and exorbitant property taxes because I live in the very special Leawood, Kansas are still less than the rent in most apartments around town. [By the way, that would be sarcasm you were reading there. I don't think Leawood is special, I think it's silly, mostly, but it's where I landed, and I'm not in the mood to sell out and move at this particular juncture.]
Funny story about house buying. A few years back, well quite a few, now, I admit, but anyway. I was perfectly content living in my little starter house in Overland Park, and would happily have stayed right there until removed by the coroner when I was dead and gone. Overland Park was the original compromise with my then spouse, because I started out looking in Olathe, which has some of the least expensive territory in the county, but he refused to consider living there. Olathe wasn't quite good enough for him. Too blue collar, and working class, it seemed.
My ex-husband, Mr. Pretentious, simply HAD to live somewhere swankier, because it's all about the look, you know. He never was one to look beneath the surface of anything, as long as it looked good on the top. So anyway, that little house in Overland Park wasn't quite good enough, and since Leawood was the most upscale [read hoity-toity] city in the metro area, he insisted, over my objections, that we move to Leawood.
Fast forward a few years, he leaves me for his new life, and ultimately buys himself a house. Imagine my mirth when I learned said new house was in, wait for it, Olathe. That's right. Suddenly, in another hilarious twist of fate, I am living in Leawood, which means nothing to me, [I usually tell people I live in Stanley, the little burg that Overland Park swallowed on its quest to gobble up everything between here and the Oklahoma state line,] while he is living in Olathe, which wasn't good enough for us, but apparently is just fine with him. How the mighty have fallen, right?
Anyway, getting back to my point. Does any store still have a layaway department? I'll bet my kids don't even know what it means, or how it worked. To them, layaway is a sign at the back of WalMart that helped you locate the rest rooms in the back of the store.
But when I was younger, planning my wedding and my grown-up life, I used layaway to buy everything that I needed to stock my first kitchen. I got dishes on a blue light special at K-Mart, then put them on layaway and paid for them over many weeks, until that exciting day when I made the final payment and took them home. Do kids today have any idea of the thrill of having saved and scrimped and waited for the moment when the thing they have wanted is finally theirs? There is a lot to be said for having to wait for what you want.
My first nice camera was purchased the same way. Made the last payment the week before my wedding, in fact. I had timed it just right so I would be able to take pictures at that once in a lifetime event. I wonder what would have happened if I had missed a payment? Do you suppose I would have delayed the wedding, thereby giving myself a little more time to come to my senses, and then it might never have happened at all? Of course, then I would be without my own personal version of Abbott and Costello, and the world would be a much less friendly place for me, so perhaps it's best that things happened as they did, after all.
My mother would never approve of a loan for 125% of the value of anything. She would look at me in disbelief if I had been so stupid, and would get that disappointed look with her lips pursed sort of tight, and I would know I had blown it. It's not worth it to disappoint your own mother, so I was never even tempted, even if I had the proclivity, which I didn't.
I didn't win many arguments in my marriage, but one of the few I did win was to buy a house within my means. And when I refinanced after my divorce a few years ago, I once again went conservative, because that is in my nature, even though I had a lot of pressure from the mortgage brokers to throw caution to the wind and jump in with both feet.
I had one guy telling me that I could cash out all my equity and then I would have the tax deduction, and I could live on the cash. When I tried to point out that there is a price to be paid for that maneuver, which is definitely more costly than any supposed tax benefit I might have received, he was bewildered, because he hadn't encountered anyone who thought that way, I guess. Needless to say, I did not go with Mr. Countrywide for the ultimate mortgage.
I am somewhat confused, to be honest, why the concept of living within our means is so revolutionary. Should it require talking heads and pundits on every channel to walk us through it? Surely there is someone outside of my own extended family who lives on their actual income, or lack thereof. My mother and her siblings cannot be the only ones to drum those tough lessons into little skulls that depended on them.
I do know the dark side, though, to be completely honest. I was married to a materialistic junkie, someone who never saw an offer for cheap credit that he couldn't embrace. He bought everything on credit, and couldn't see the connection between payments and interest and being broke, mostly because he was not in charge of the family budget. But I saw it, and it used to keep me up nights. He would spend, while I tried to save. He would get credit cards without telling me, to buy stuff he hid in the trunk of his car or at work or somewhere that he spent more time than he did at home. He wasn't a shopaholic, he was a social climber, but the net result was too much credit for too little income.
He also abhorred banks, because you weren't making enough on the deal if you put money into them, and every time I set up a savings account, he found a way to spend three times as much. It was frustrating to me, having been raised on the concept of never owing anyone for anything, to constantly be in debt to everyone for everything. Especially since rainy days are the norm in my life, and I never go anywhere without an umbrella.
But it does give me some insight into the current situation, and why people who have never lived any other way are panicked at the idea that they will no longer be able to buy anything they want on the whim of the moment. If you are used to having everything the second you think of it, it's tough to wait, to wish, and to save.
The good news, and there is some, is that tightened credit ultimately enhances both solvency and character, and this country could use a little of both. I am watching the transformation in my own household, and I think if our experience is any indication, the country will be okay. My kids, especially my daughter, grew up with too much easy money available. Every wish could be fulfilled the moment it appeared, and nothing was ever out of range. They both had too much stuff, and as always in such situations, the level of appreciation was commensurate with the lack of effort in the procurement.
These days, my son goes to school and has a job that takes up any free time, and he pays as much of his own bills as he can. My daughter went out looking for a job on her own last weekend, because she wants to be able to help me out with her own fun money. While she is doing it for me, I don't think she realizes that the long term benefit will be for her. Once you start to work, you learn the value of money, because you associate the amount of work with how much a thing costs. When you weigh that against the importance of your whim, it teaches you real values.
It is value that has been missing in our fast moving culture, I think. We have the stuff, but have no idea of the value of much of anything, because we haven't worked for it, we have just charged forward. I believe, in the end, we will be better off for being more fiscally conservative, although there will be a lot of pain in the meantime, and I realize it's not going to be much fun. I wonder if my children will save twist ties and bread bags, to the amusement of their children some day? Because my mother does, and she is obviously a genius, so perhaps I'd better clear some space in my drawer myself.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
A laundry list of thoughts...
I hate laundry. I would do nearly anything to avoid doing my laundry. I am not sure where this particular aversion comes from. In years gone by, I never used to hate it like this. In fact, I remember when we came out of the stone age in our household, that old wringer washer finally went away, and we got the new fangled, modern washing machine. It was a big day, very exciting, because for the first time, we could wash clothes without the accompanying danger of losing our limbs to the arm eating wringer.
Now? Well, I hate the whole thing. I hate sorting. I hate moving them from floor to washer. I hate moving them from washer to dryer. And I especially hate moving them from dryer to wherever they belong, which explains why I have laundry baskets sitting on my bedroom floor that are older than the dust bunnies having grandchildren under the glass shelf I keep in the corner to put all my junk on that I can't live without. I am like a college student in a dorm room, living out of my clothes hamper because I'm too lazy to put anything away.
I could, without a doubt, remove 85% of the clothing I own from my closet and never miss it, because I am quite certain that I will never wear most of it again. There are a variety of reasons for this, but mostly, I'm changing, and my clothes aren't.
Some of them are teeny, purchased during my divorce, which is self-evidently the last time I'll be ever on the right side of thin again. I can barely get some of the pants over my thigh, to say nothing of zipping them up. And the skirts and suits are clearly more suited for someone with an anorexic build, not the current over-fed look I am sporting. It's a shame, because some of those outfits are pretty nice, but I should just give it up, because that was another time. And on balance, I'd rather be in the here and now, so I guess that's the trade-off.
Some of them are simply out-dated, rather like their owner, and don't fit the current life I"m leading. I have my wedding dress, for example, hanging in my closet, and I'm feeling caught between a rock and hard place with it. On the one hand, it's a beautiful dress, and would, no doubt, look lovely on some bride that may like it better than a modern offering, especially if the price was right.
On the other hand, I don't feel quite right about allowing someone else to wear a dress that was used for a marriage that was ill to begin with, and fated to fail. Somehow it seems that I would be spreading my own bad luck around, and I can't quite feel good about that. So there it hangs, too good, not to mention expensive, to throw, but no good to me, either.
It is suspended on that hanger like a reproach, reminding me every day that I failed at the single most important thing I ever undertook in my life. If nothing else, it's a great humility inducer, because there is no way to get above myself with that daily reminder, so perhaps it's not a bad thing after all.
I have clothes that I wore in high school, and they fit me still, so I have a hard time getting rid of them, just when I have finally grown into them. My strategy back then, when I was thin by nature, was to buy everything ten sizes too large, and maybe people wouldn't notice that I only weighed 90 pounds. I got tired of the comments and the questions about my weight, which seemed to be the thing that drew people's ire and attention. Now, I fill them out nicely, so it seems a shame to get rid of them just as they finally fit. Although I do a look a little silly in elephant pants, I will admit, and polyester is not really the "in" thing right now.
My dislike of laundry is not exactly a new development. Although I didn't mind it in high school, by college, I had developed a definite distaste for the whole thing. Perhaps it was related to the idea that you were stuck in the dorm for the entire time period to keep watch over your belongings, lest someone else get there before you and remove them to take the appliance for themselves. When that happened, you would find your garments laying around in soggy piles on the dirty folding table, giving everyone an opportunity to notice the holes in your underclothes, which is embarrassment personified. Commitment never was my thing, and committing to laundry was out of the question.
I didn't have that many clothes to begin with, I was poor then, just like now, and so I had to wash my clothes a lot. I would usually wait until I was out of underclothing, using that as my cue that the time had come. One time, I am sorry to say, the time came and went, and I still had not made my way into the laundry room. That year, the washing machine was in a room literally a few steps away, so it was pure laziness at play in the situation, leaving me no excuse at all.
That morning, as it dawned on me that there was not only none of the good stuff left, but even the back-ups were gone, I felt a little desperate. [You ladies in the crowd know what I am talking about when I say back-ups, so you know that when they are gone, you really have gone too far.] I searched through every drawer and nook in my closet, hoping against hope that I had misread the situation, but there was no joy in the sainted world I inhabited, and I was truly up a creek without a clean pair of undies.
Hm. What to do, what to do? While I realize that most people would simply hand wash a pair and get on with their day, I was not as practical then as I am now, and I felt the only answer was obvious. So shortly thereafter, I was on my way to the store to purchase some new ones. I justified it by telling myself I needed new ones anyway, and now the old ones could become the back-ups, and the back-ups could be held in abeyance for such moments as this, so I would never have to face the humiliation of going all the way to the store just to find clean undies for the day.
My roommate, who is still my friend, is still shaking her head over the foolishness of the whole thing, because she never allowed such situations to develop in the first place. She was the early bird in the room, the organized one, the one who always did her homework on time. I was the original flake, of course. Distracted and distracting, it appears, since she just informed me recently that she has problems paying attention, and can't abide noise when she is studying. It's too bad I didn't learn that when we were in college. I just thought she didn't like television. But at least I gave her a few laughs for the troubles.
I still employ the same system to determine when the crucial moment has come to break out the laundry detergent, and it's still not fail safe. So obviously I did not learn the practical life lessons I hope my son is learning in college. Which does not bode well for the future of my basement, I fear, but I digress.
All this laundry talk does make me wonder about something, though. Did you ever consider what Noah's poor wife and daughters-in-law did on that ark for clean undies? I mean, they are surrounded by water, it's true, but if the entire earth was flooded, then surely the water was pretty salty, and then there is the whole flotsam and jetsam problem. I don't know about you, but I certainly wouldn't want to pull out a pair of undies only to encounter scratchy seaweed or a dried snail hiding therein.
I think that would be quite the problem. Of course, if you have spent the last 30 years building an ark on dry land, taking the abuse of your neighbors the entire time, and then don't even have the satisfaction of saying, "I told you so," I suppose the issue of clean undies is less pressing. I dunno.
Speaking of boats, I find something very curious. We keep talking about being in the same boat, we're all in this boat together, we sink or swim together, and so on. Have you ever noticed how many allusions there are to water in the colloquial language? Anyway, here is something I have been pondering some recently.
Say you are building a boat. You build the frame, and then you spend most of your money on the captain's cabin. You put every conceivable convenience in it, and when you are finished, you have very little left to spend on the rest of the boat. So you cut corners on the bottom, because no one sees it anyway. Would you be surprised if that boat sinks? Because I wouldn't. Just ask the third and fourth class passengers in the Titanic how that worked out for them.
Houses are the same way. You can build the most fabulous mansion on earth, the Taj Mahal of houses, but if the foundation is a failure, you will ultimately end up with a pile of sticks and stones with which your neighbors will hurt you, for having been such a lame brain.
Henry Ford was a genius. Not an auto genius, although he may have been that, as well, I don't really know. But he was an economic genius, because he understood, at a fundamental, gut level, that when your own workers can't afford the product they are making, then you cannot succeed. It should have been intuitive, but it seems where the national economy is concerned, we are always approaching it from the other direction. I personally cannot think of a single situation in life where you can float the boat from the top, no matter what kind of shape the bottom is in.
And yet, for the last 25 years, we have been told that the economy should work from the top down. Trickle down economics, Ronald Reagan called it. If the top is healthy, goes the theory, then they will create jobs and provide benefits and the whole kit and caboodle of us will see the positive results. Happy, wealthy people leading the way to riches for us all.
From my vantage point, it hasn't worked that way at all. The more money the wealthiest people in this country have accumulated, the larger the bottom class, and the smaller the middle class. I am not making this up, these are statistical facts, and can easily be found in a few seconds on Google. Whether you agree with me about the reasons, the reality is that the wealthiest people in the country have gotten richer while the lowest 85 percent have gone backwards.
Not unlike a banana republic, I would point out, which is what we are increasingly emulating, what with the voter fraud and the out of control economy and the out of touch leadership telling us what's good for us while we are all shouting about being ready to take our medicine, but I digress.
This country was built on the concept that anyone can move upward economically, and yet, the policies of the last 25 years have promoted exactly the opposite movement, that the movement of money goes from the top down. I say, if you have dry rot at the bottom of the financial pyramid, the whole structure is unsound and doomed to failure.
I rarely wear my political heart on my sleeve, [literally everyone I know seems to be on the other side, and I hate it when people are mad at me, so I just don't talk about it much,] and I have no pretensions to being an economist. But I believe in this case I can see more clearly than the successful people I am close to, and who clearly have made far better choices in their lives, what is obvious to those of us who are bottom dwellers - the national economy doesn't work the same way as a family. What benefits the top tier isn't making it down to the small business owner, to say nothing of the waitress at the local Denny's. Wages are not like giving your kids an allowance; you get a raise, you give them one, too. There is a complete disconnect between those at the top and the people doing the grunt work, and the people on the lower end are becoming increasingly disenfranchised.
I saw this demonstrated in the company where my ex-husband was employed a few years back. When he started there, the entire company was in one large room, with the guy in charge sitting at a desk inside an office that didn't have a door, four steps from where my my ex-'s desk was located. He was not only aware of all the business operations, he was aware of their personal affairs as well. He knew when someone had a sick kid or car problems or when an employee was buying a house. He was connected to the people who worked for him, and because that was so, he was a popular and fair boss.
Over time, the company grew, and eventually, he was in an office that not only had a door, but was on an entirely different floor from the rest of the workers. Only a few people ever made their way into the rarefied air of the upper level of the management, and he was completely sheltered and hidden from the workers at the bottom of the food chain.
I will never forget the moment that I really knew the change had come. We were at the annual Christmas party, an event which he had always enjoyed hosting, and at which he announced every big event that had occurred in the lives of his employees. He would recount the new houses, the marriages and the new babies. He knew when someone had gotten an award or did something special in the community. All these positive things were brought out, so that the employees could revel in everything that they had collectively enjoyed and accomplished in the previous year, and celebrate their successes together.
Then, one year, the boss stood up and started to make his remarks, giving the names of the new employees that had been hired that year, and he said something along the lines of, "I don't know all of these people, and I'm not sure what they do, but we sure are glad that they are on board, and I welcome them to the company." It was a defining moment for me, the moment I knew that the company was forever changed.
His compensation soared after that, while the salaries of the lowest paid workers in the office remained static. The health insurance cost went up while the benefits went down. The intimacy of the early days was replaced with cubicles where each person hid behind an ever movable facade, which occurred every time someone was hired or moved on. Loyalty, which used to go both ways, no longer went in either direction, and people came and went within months, where previously, the turnover was less than one person a year.
I see that as a microcosm for the economy as a whole. The top is so divorced from the bottom that they no longer see each other as real, and thus, it doesn't matter what happens to them. Ultimately, the boat will sink, because the dry rot has caused a huge hole in the floor, and we are taking on water faster than the Titanic. I hope that the Carpathia is closer than it appears, because otherwise, we are about to have a lot more casualties. And speaking as a fourth class passenger, I have tasted the water. It's salty and it's making me sick.
Now? Well, I hate the whole thing. I hate sorting. I hate moving them from floor to washer. I hate moving them from washer to dryer. And I especially hate moving them from dryer to wherever they belong, which explains why I have laundry baskets sitting on my bedroom floor that are older than the dust bunnies having grandchildren under the glass shelf I keep in the corner to put all my junk on that I can't live without. I am like a college student in a dorm room, living out of my clothes hamper because I'm too lazy to put anything away.
I could, without a doubt, remove 85% of the clothing I own from my closet and never miss it, because I am quite certain that I will never wear most of it again. There are a variety of reasons for this, but mostly, I'm changing, and my clothes aren't.
Some of them are teeny, purchased during my divorce, which is self-evidently the last time I'll be ever on the right side of thin again. I can barely get some of the pants over my thigh, to say nothing of zipping them up. And the skirts and suits are clearly more suited for someone with an anorexic build, not the current over-fed look I am sporting. It's a shame, because some of those outfits are pretty nice, but I should just give it up, because that was another time. And on balance, I'd rather be in the here and now, so I guess that's the trade-off.
Some of them are simply out-dated, rather like their owner, and don't fit the current life I"m leading. I have my wedding dress, for example, hanging in my closet, and I'm feeling caught between a rock and hard place with it. On the one hand, it's a beautiful dress, and would, no doubt, look lovely on some bride that may like it better than a modern offering, especially if the price was right.
On the other hand, I don't feel quite right about allowing someone else to wear a dress that was used for a marriage that was ill to begin with, and fated to fail. Somehow it seems that I would be spreading my own bad luck around, and I can't quite feel good about that. So there it hangs, too good, not to mention expensive, to throw, but no good to me, either.
It is suspended on that hanger like a reproach, reminding me every day that I failed at the single most important thing I ever undertook in my life. If nothing else, it's a great humility inducer, because there is no way to get above myself with that daily reminder, so perhaps it's not a bad thing after all.
I have clothes that I wore in high school, and they fit me still, so I have a hard time getting rid of them, just when I have finally grown into them. My strategy back then, when I was thin by nature, was to buy everything ten sizes too large, and maybe people wouldn't notice that I only weighed 90 pounds. I got tired of the comments and the questions about my weight, which seemed to be the thing that drew people's ire and attention. Now, I fill them out nicely, so it seems a shame to get rid of them just as they finally fit. Although I do a look a little silly in elephant pants, I will admit, and polyester is not really the "in" thing right now.
My dislike of laundry is not exactly a new development. Although I didn't mind it in high school, by college, I had developed a definite distaste for the whole thing. Perhaps it was related to the idea that you were stuck in the dorm for the entire time period to keep watch over your belongings, lest someone else get there before you and remove them to take the appliance for themselves. When that happened, you would find your garments laying around in soggy piles on the dirty folding table, giving everyone an opportunity to notice the holes in your underclothes, which is embarrassment personified. Commitment never was my thing, and committing to laundry was out of the question.
I didn't have that many clothes to begin with, I was poor then, just like now, and so I had to wash my clothes a lot. I would usually wait until I was out of underclothing, using that as my cue that the time had come. One time, I am sorry to say, the time came and went, and I still had not made my way into the laundry room. That year, the washing machine was in a room literally a few steps away, so it was pure laziness at play in the situation, leaving me no excuse at all.
That morning, as it dawned on me that there was not only none of the good stuff left, but even the back-ups were gone, I felt a little desperate. [You ladies in the crowd know what I am talking about when I say back-ups, so you know that when they are gone, you really have gone too far.] I searched through every drawer and nook in my closet, hoping against hope that I had misread the situation, but there was no joy in the sainted world I inhabited, and I was truly up a creek without a clean pair of undies.
Hm. What to do, what to do? While I realize that most people would simply hand wash a pair and get on with their day, I was not as practical then as I am now, and I felt the only answer was obvious. So shortly thereafter, I was on my way to the store to purchase some new ones. I justified it by telling myself I needed new ones anyway, and now the old ones could become the back-ups, and the back-ups could be held in abeyance for such moments as this, so I would never have to face the humiliation of going all the way to the store just to find clean undies for the day.
My roommate, who is still my friend, is still shaking her head over the foolishness of the whole thing, because she never allowed such situations to develop in the first place. She was the early bird in the room, the organized one, the one who always did her homework on time. I was the original flake, of course. Distracted and distracting, it appears, since she just informed me recently that she has problems paying attention, and can't abide noise when she is studying. It's too bad I didn't learn that when we were in college. I just thought she didn't like television. But at least I gave her a few laughs for the troubles.
I still employ the same system to determine when the crucial moment has come to break out the laundry detergent, and it's still not fail safe. So obviously I did not learn the practical life lessons I hope my son is learning in college. Which does not bode well for the future of my basement, I fear, but I digress.
All this laundry talk does make me wonder about something, though. Did you ever consider what Noah's poor wife and daughters-in-law did on that ark for clean undies? I mean, they are surrounded by water, it's true, but if the entire earth was flooded, then surely the water was pretty salty, and then there is the whole flotsam and jetsam problem. I don't know about you, but I certainly wouldn't want to pull out a pair of undies only to encounter scratchy seaweed or a dried snail hiding therein.
I think that would be quite the problem. Of course, if you have spent the last 30 years building an ark on dry land, taking the abuse of your neighbors the entire time, and then don't even have the satisfaction of saying, "I told you so," I suppose the issue of clean undies is less pressing. I dunno.
Speaking of boats, I find something very curious. We keep talking about being in the same boat, we're all in this boat together, we sink or swim together, and so on. Have you ever noticed how many allusions there are to water in the colloquial language? Anyway, here is something I have been pondering some recently.
Say you are building a boat. You build the frame, and then you spend most of your money on the captain's cabin. You put every conceivable convenience in it, and when you are finished, you have very little left to spend on the rest of the boat. So you cut corners on the bottom, because no one sees it anyway. Would you be surprised if that boat sinks? Because I wouldn't. Just ask the third and fourth class passengers in the Titanic how that worked out for them.
Houses are the same way. You can build the most fabulous mansion on earth, the Taj Mahal of houses, but if the foundation is a failure, you will ultimately end up with a pile of sticks and stones with which your neighbors will hurt you, for having been such a lame brain.
Henry Ford was a genius. Not an auto genius, although he may have been that, as well, I don't really know. But he was an economic genius, because he understood, at a fundamental, gut level, that when your own workers can't afford the product they are making, then you cannot succeed. It should have been intuitive, but it seems where the national economy is concerned, we are always approaching it from the other direction. I personally cannot think of a single situation in life where you can float the boat from the top, no matter what kind of shape the bottom is in.
And yet, for the last 25 years, we have been told that the economy should work from the top down. Trickle down economics, Ronald Reagan called it. If the top is healthy, goes the theory, then they will create jobs and provide benefits and the whole kit and caboodle of us will see the positive results. Happy, wealthy people leading the way to riches for us all.
From my vantage point, it hasn't worked that way at all. The more money the wealthiest people in this country have accumulated, the larger the bottom class, and the smaller the middle class. I am not making this up, these are statistical facts, and can easily be found in a few seconds on Google. Whether you agree with me about the reasons, the reality is that the wealthiest people in the country have gotten richer while the lowest 85 percent have gone backwards.
Not unlike a banana republic, I would point out, which is what we are increasingly emulating, what with the voter fraud and the out of control economy and the out of touch leadership telling us what's good for us while we are all shouting about being ready to take our medicine, but I digress.
This country was built on the concept that anyone can move upward economically, and yet, the policies of the last 25 years have promoted exactly the opposite movement, that the movement of money goes from the top down. I say, if you have dry rot at the bottom of the financial pyramid, the whole structure is unsound and doomed to failure.
I rarely wear my political heart on my sleeve, [literally everyone I know seems to be on the other side, and I hate it when people are mad at me, so I just don't talk about it much,] and I have no pretensions to being an economist. But I believe in this case I can see more clearly than the successful people I am close to, and who clearly have made far better choices in their lives, what is obvious to those of us who are bottom dwellers - the national economy doesn't work the same way as a family. What benefits the top tier isn't making it down to the small business owner, to say nothing of the waitress at the local Denny's. Wages are not like giving your kids an allowance; you get a raise, you give them one, too. There is a complete disconnect between those at the top and the people doing the grunt work, and the people on the lower end are becoming increasingly disenfranchised.
I saw this demonstrated in the company where my ex-husband was employed a few years back. When he started there, the entire company was in one large room, with the guy in charge sitting at a desk inside an office that didn't have a door, four steps from where my my ex-'s desk was located. He was not only aware of all the business operations, he was aware of their personal affairs as well. He knew when someone had a sick kid or car problems or when an employee was buying a house. He was connected to the people who worked for him, and because that was so, he was a popular and fair boss.
Over time, the company grew, and eventually, he was in an office that not only had a door, but was on an entirely different floor from the rest of the workers. Only a few people ever made their way into the rarefied air of the upper level of the management, and he was completely sheltered and hidden from the workers at the bottom of the food chain.
I will never forget the moment that I really knew the change had come. We were at the annual Christmas party, an event which he had always enjoyed hosting, and at which he announced every big event that had occurred in the lives of his employees. He would recount the new houses, the marriages and the new babies. He knew when someone had gotten an award or did something special in the community. All these positive things were brought out, so that the employees could revel in everything that they had collectively enjoyed and accomplished in the previous year, and celebrate their successes together.
Then, one year, the boss stood up and started to make his remarks, giving the names of the new employees that had been hired that year, and he said something along the lines of, "I don't know all of these people, and I'm not sure what they do, but we sure are glad that they are on board, and I welcome them to the company." It was a defining moment for me, the moment I knew that the company was forever changed.
His compensation soared after that, while the salaries of the lowest paid workers in the office remained static. The health insurance cost went up while the benefits went down. The intimacy of the early days was replaced with cubicles where each person hid behind an ever movable facade, which occurred every time someone was hired or moved on. Loyalty, which used to go both ways, no longer went in either direction, and people came and went within months, where previously, the turnover was less than one person a year.
I see that as a microcosm for the economy as a whole. The top is so divorced from the bottom that they no longer see each other as real, and thus, it doesn't matter what happens to them. Ultimately, the boat will sink, because the dry rot has caused a huge hole in the floor, and we are taking on water faster than the Titanic. I hope that the Carpathia is closer than it appears, because otherwise, we are about to have a lot more casualties. And speaking as a fourth class passenger, I have tasted the water. It's salty and it's making me sick.
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