Happy Anniversary?

Happy Anniversary?

When I was a child, one of my favorite “sick day” activities was to do “connect the dots” work books…not sure why.  Creating images of animals, buildings or objects out of a mass of numbered dots taught me how to count…but not much else really.  It was odd, though, how the mass of dots on the page did not always reveal what might be hidden there once the herky-jerky lines connected them all.  One actually had to connect them in order for the image to come into focus. 

As an adult, I suppose I still like to connect dots.  And so here it is, September 11^th.  A connecting we will go. 

15 years.  Enough time to pause and consider what happened, and how we have grown or changed.

Like most people of a certain age, the events of 9/11 divide our lives…for me, if I manage to live to be 84, I will rather accurately be able to divide my life into two halves….before and after terrorists awoke us from the slumber that accompanies a sense of invulnerability.

There are many analyses and portraits of heroism and humanity that accompany this date every year.  Rightly so, we honor first responders who risked or gave their lives.  We honor the innocents slaughtered and those they left behind.  We laud praise upon our leaders for extracting some meager measure of retribution.  We proudly remind ourselves how it is we who carried the day, and how we kept going forward, as if we had any choice.

But because we sometimes fail to connect all the dots, it seems we do not spend enough time considering why it happened or if the act achieved its goal.  Oh sure, we can point to cowardice and evil, and those factors were there to be sure.  But such an undertaking had a purpose, and those that hijacked planes were not joy riding….they, and their cohorts in al Qaeda were looking to change us.  To disrupt our comfort…to make us behave differently, and perhaps even ignore our better instincts that make us unique and exceptional.  The terrorists were hoping to derail our way of life, and to force us to turn against the world, and perhaps even ourselves. 

When The Bush/Cheney administration decided to lie to congress, to the United Nations, and in fact to the American people about weapons in Iraq….and when they decided to employ extreme methods of interrogation, we began to become unrecognizable.  We jailed people without charging, arraigning or trying them.  When we began to re-embrace racism, to blame Muslims and immigrants for all of our problems, we further distorted our appearance.  And when a faction of people nominated a hate filled man surrounded by other hate filled people to be the Republican candidate for president, our features have become downright ugly.  The dot to dot image became one we want to avert our eyes from.  The dots now aligned to reach from the vile hubris of one Dick Cheney to the narcissism and contempt displayed by Donald Trump.  It seems inevitable once you step back and see how all the dots aligned, and I wonder if Bin Laden could have ever hoped for such a perfect result. 

Yes, we moved forward.  We licked our wounds, buried our dead, honored our heroes, and consoled those left behind.  We rebuilt, we memorialized, we remembered, and we wept--because we were Americans, and that is how we conduct ourselves. 

But there were some that shook their angry fists at the heavens, and they vowed to seek vengeance, no matter the cost to our humanity.   They cast our better angels aside in pursuit of the devil who wrought hell upon us, and we rallied behind them thinking that killing others would make us feel better about those we lost. 

They are wrong, and frankly, when one begins to connect these dots, there appears an image of America that is troubling.  No longer are we the beacon of light…now we are the sword of vengeance.  I have heard it said, “America, right or wrong”….I think we need to think carefully about what that oath really means. 

The Shame of the NRA

Yesterday, in Colorado Springs, the blood on the hands of Wayne LaPierre and all those that fund, support and rabble rouse behind the NRA got a little redder, a little stickier….a little harder to wash off.  But it will not matter.  They will not be shamed.  They do not care about the children in schools murdered in cold blood because of the ease in which anyone, even crazy people, can get weapons.  They do not care about innocent lives cut short in the middle of a movie, at a shopping center, in a health clinic or simply driving home from work.  Nowhere is safe from those who use our gun laws to make this NRA Enabled Terrorism so easy.

As a nation, we watched in well-practiced horror as gunmen shot up various places in and around Paris…we demanded our leaders do something, blame someone, bomb someone.  Might I suggest we bomb the NRA headquarters?  It would be at least as effective as our bombing Iraq.  Too strong a reaction you say?  Well, if one compares the lives lost via gun violence in the United States versus lives lost via terrorism, it is immediately apparent we are pursuing the wrong enemy.  As usual, we are fighting the wrong war, at the wrong time in the wrong manner.  If we are to truly make our country safer, we need to eliminate such easy access to guns, and shift the blame for our woes from Syrian refugees to the executives of the NRA that make even reasonable gun control possible.

Don’t get me wrong though.  I am not in favor of “reasonable” gun control.  I want it to be unreasonable.  I want to make it damn difficult to get a gun.  Want to hunt a deer or an elk? Better get your application in well in advance so we can check you out from fifteen different angles.  Do you really want to hunt a defenseless animal or are you thinking you might want to take out defenseless teenagers at the mall.  Let’s err on the side of caution, just as Paris and Brussels have done as they declare a state of emergency.  And don’t blame me, or President Obama or anyone else for “taking away your guns”.  BLAME LaPIERRE!  BLAME THE NRA…for steadfastly derailing any attempt to limit guns, ammunition, caliber or lethality in the quest to arm anyone who wants to be armed.  Need an AK-47?…sure, $179.00 please.  What if we had reasonable restrictions?  What if there were limits on the number and killing power of the weapons an individual could purchase or possess?  Would it make a difference?  Some statistics suggest it would.  And if not, it would be a start.   

As all things in this nation, it boils down to money...spineless politicians won’t support gun control because in turn, the NRA and their money will not support them.  Men and women who claim to want to protect our nation…from Syrians, Ebola, taxation, abortion, or terrorism…really only want to protect their political war chests.  So, how can we monetize gun control…turn it in to a profit driven device?  Well here is a thought: what if we simply require insurance policies on each gun purchase…yearly fees with premiums based on the lethal capacity of each weapon…and no discounts for multiple guns…In fact just the opposite…the more guns you own, the more costly each policy!  If you are a rightwing nut job, your premiums will be higher.  An AK-47 will be more costly than say a .22 caliber revolver.  Leave it to the insurance companies to decide if they want to provide a policy…as my Republican friends would say, “Let the marketplace decide!”.  Insurance companies will get rich, gun owners will be poorer, and maybe just maybe, the NRA will lose it’s sway over the political leadership of the country.  Or perhaps they will know a good thing when they see it, and go into the insurance business and sell the policies themselves…how ironic it would be if you got turned down for gun ownership by the NRA?  I can dream, no?

A Most Uncivil War (Act One)

Somewhere in the fall of 2000, the first shot of a war was fired…or in this case, it was not fired. 

It was left in the chamber, where it sits to this day. 

George Bush had just backed into the presidency.  Perhaps he stole it, but that would take foresight and planning that he utterly lacks.  Instead the hanging chads fell his way, and with his legal staff willing to wreak whatever havoc was necessary to gain the victory, he prevailed.  While Al Gore, the popular vote winner, possibly even the Electoral College vote winner, sat with his gun loaded, unused.  He opted, for the good of the nation he loved, to literally hold his powder, call off the legal team’s actions, and concede to the Bush/Cheney regime.  The shot not heard around the world.

And it was at his moment that our nation began its wander toward the situation we find ourselves in today.  A wholly uncivil war.  Gone are the days of political parties negotiating, striking deals, and therefore balance in all things.  A presidency viewed by half the nation as illegitimate was about to be tested in ways that could either heal these wounds or drive the knife deeper into the divide. 

14 years ago, a group of terrorists…religious extremists bent on damaging our way of life, succeeded in planting a destructive seed at the core of our republic.  A wiser, more restrained president…one willing to walk away from a legal challenge for the office that he coveted, might have crafted a better response.  Instead we were left with the very response the terrorists sought from us…instead of adhering to the Christian principle of “turning the other cheek”, we opted instead to follow more traditional Muslim doctrine…”an eye for an eye”. We sought revenge, and that revenge would come against anyone within easy range of our heavily laden bombers….innocent countries and populaces that would bear the brunt of our unbridled anger…our blood lust against a people and religion we lumped en masse with the would be pilots who flew jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.  If Al Gore’s act of patriotism was the lighting of the fuse toward our new civil war, September 11^th marked the explosion that would divide our nation in ways that are only just now becoming apparent.

Lacking any real response plan, the Bush/Cheney administration opted instead to initially pursue a single man and his band of followers across an uncivilized landscape in the Middle East.  Whatever the contagion that exists in Afghanistan is that prevents civilized nations from being formed there, that contagion, in some sense has contaminated our own soil.  This isolated landscape, capable of both bitter cold and oppressive heat, had humbled numerous armies and nations trying to rule over its tribal peoples.  Such attempts, like our own, would come to no avail.  Afghanistan, even following thousands of bombs dropped on innocent people guilty only of being born in this region, remains a nation incapable of being subjugated.  The only mark we have left upon it is hatred and the only nation building we have done will cease to exist the moment our presence ends.  All the lives and treasure lost in the quest for one man and his band of followers….none of whom we actually caught there….was more or les in vain.  The lack of anything like a cohesive plan in response to the events of 9/11 has deprived us of anything like moral authority.  Instead, we behaved like a mortally wounded animal, lashing out, kicking, biting and injuring anything that we could reach. 

Unable to reach the victory we sought in Afghanistan, and still thirsty for as much blood as we could drink, we proposed a campaign against an opponent we had already vanquished once in the last decade.  Our mission to topple a weak despot using trumped up charges and outright lies was no less a boondoggle than our foray into Afghanistan.  Only this time, with the heart of an actual nation removed, and no plan to reassemble it, we created a void…a great vacuum into which those that had grown to hate us raced to fill.  In our lust for revenge, and in accordance with the wishes of those who had originally attacked us, we had strengthened our enemies and provided them fertile ground in which their hatred of all things American grow.  It was as if bin Laden had left a script in the rubble of the World Trade Center…a script we were following to the letter.

Meanwhile, the seeds our nation’s demise, sown at the election of George Bush and fertilized by the attacks of 9/11 were beginning to sprout and grow.  The disunity at the time of the election had calcified our political system, and it lost the ability to negotiate, refine and speak with anything like a unified voice.  An illegitimate presidency was followed by a transformational one…but one in which the opposition leadership declared from the beginning that their primary mission was to thwart President Obama’s every move.  Whether it was politics, racism, or some of both, their anti-patriotic stance began to twist and pry the knife at the wound, and the separation became more visible and far less easy to heal.  We were a nation at war…not just overseas, but here, among ourselves. An uncivil war where some made heroes out of those who derided immigrants as “rapists and thieves”.  Some lauded praise on those civil servants who stood in the way of love.  We protected bankers while letting poor people go hungry, all in the name of good Christian values.  We watched a buffoon who wanted to make a name for himself among his constituents taunt an heroic former president, diagnosed with terminal cancer…a man who has defined what a “good Christian “ really is, and who single handedly set the bar for the manner in which a former president should set out to leave his mark upon the world. 

The extreme right wing feels unheard and disenfranchised, and yet how is it that they will ever be brought into a civilized discourse, spewing hatred disguised as religious doctrine?   They bomb women’s health clinics, shoot up churches while people pray to a god who must be very confused by our actions in his name and vote to wage war with yet another nation while opposing the notion of negotiating for peace.  We deny scientific proof that we are killing our planet, and yet despite the fact that we are killing ourselves, we protect our right to have guns more easily obtained than a driver’s license.  And I wonder why?  Why is the notion that a well-armed civilian militia is so important?….and then I fear that  this “uncivil war”  is about to get real.  Will that bullet left in the chamber 15 years ago finally be fired?

Greed, Part Two

You can start to see the cracks. They are running in the streets, the sidewalks, and maybe across your lawn. The cracks are deep, and getting wider, a bit more so each day. “OK Mr. President....you can bail out the banks...You can bail out the automakers. But damn it, if you bail out the guy across the street....well that is just too close to home”. By all means, give my tax money to weapon systems to bomb third world nations, or to the fat cats on Wall Street. Help out a neighbor, a friend...and I say “no”.

This is the great problem with America. We admire, even adore the successful, the powerful. We worship at their feet, and hope that by rubbing up against them, we can feel important. We want to keep their limousines washed and their nice suits well pressed. But we despise the guy that is down on his luck. We loathe his lack of success, and blame him for not achieving greatness.

Some talking head on TV last week...a guy I have never heard of, but obviously someone who is important enough to be allowed to rant on CNBC, left a mark on our nation’s generosity, as he called out the president for daring to offer assistance to those who might lose their homes, or those folks whose homes had lost so much value they were now worth less than they owed. How dare a nation so great stoop to help those poor fools who only wanted a piece of the pie. No, let’s ignore healthcare, let’s ignore the environment, let’s ignore the energy crisis. Instead, let’s make sure the banks are insulated from their mistakes. Let’s prop up our unprofitable companies. Let’s fund another weapon system or foreign war, but let’s draw the line where it gets personal. If the bank has put up the foreclosure sign in the neighborhood, the government ought to stay out of it. Better to let a family be displaced, and join the ranks of homelessness. Let some child have to leave their school and friends, or quit college...or miss a meal.

This country likes to portray itself as generous....as a nation that believes in God just as much as we do the might dollar. Really? Is there not something in the bible about helping those less fortunate? Is there nothing written in there about charity? About the welfare of our fellow man? About social justice and compassion? I admit I am no scholar in this area, and I am constantly surprised by our ability to thump the bible when it suits our needs, and to ignore it when it does not.

The nation is splitting....and it is not just along party lines. In fact, perhaps the whole Republican vs Democrat thing was a smokescreen for the real divisions. There are those that feel the government, the country, should exist to exert power around the globe, to exploit resources and leave the individual to suck at the teat of capitalism. Ayn Rand would be so proud. The market will take care of everything. And that it should....in a place where there is more to a bottom line than profits. Since profit has become the only criteria for success, though, the teat is running dry, or perhaps the milk tastes sour. But...there is the other camp....and they are growing restless. They are tired of America stomping its way around the planet, consuming more resources than any other nation, like a bloated pig. They admire socially conscious companies, who value their employees, and treat their fellow man with compassion, and lend a hand when it is needed. Instead of buying another bomber, perhaps we should set that money aside in case one of “us” needs a buck or two to make ends meet. Or perhaps we can use a few bucks to buy a sack of concrete so we can fill in some of these cracks.

Greed, Part One

I have not written for a bit. I have been digesting and coming to terms with the various things that have happened to our country over the last few years, few months, and now, few weeks. I am left with one overarching impression. We are greedy. We let that greed go on unquestioned, and now, we wear that greed like great chains around our corpulent bodies as we thrash about trying to swim, or, at least keep or noses above the waterline.

There was that movie, I think it was “Wall Street” where Gordon Gecko uttered the phrase “...greed is good...”. I can only hope it was said ironically, but unfortunately, it describes a national mindset. I am not sure what “greed” is, but “good”, it is not. I think greed is in fact more akin to a virus. It has infected our way of thinking, our way of life, and like so many virulent viruses, it threatens to kill its host.

I feel sorry for President Obama. I hope his efforts are successful, but unless we marry his stimulus packages with a bit of self reflection, I don’t think the problems will be fixed. They may fade from the headlines when factories roar back to life, but they will simmer, just below the surface, and I would venture to guess they will re-emerge more threatening than ever.

How is it that we came to live in a place where baseball players make 25 million dollars a year to play a child’s game? Many of us who played in our younger days would pay for the privilege of standing in Yankee Stadium awaiting a routine fly ball to settle into our glove. Why should a movie star command a similar figure for 3 months of work reading lines written by others? Why should the executives that run our top companies pull down tens of millions of dollars in compensation while they make the bottom line more attractive by sending more and more of the work over seas where there are not such greedy folks setting the bar of compensation so high?

A simple question: How much money does it take to live a good life? Is a good life defined by having 18 cars and 6 houses and a yacht? At what point does it become “too much”. At what point do the hard working folks struggling to make their mortgage payments say “give ME some of that”? I fear we are dangerously close to that moment, and it would be good for those in power to recognize that the difference between the top of the pyramid and the base has gotten too dramatic. Sure, if you invent a computer or build a better mousetrap, you should make more than the guy who is content to build the computer or assemble the mousetrap, but in the end, aren’t both jobs important? Isn’t one job useless---valueless---without the other?

The CEO of a major company gets paid well because he “makes money for the shareholders” (of which he is typically one). Making the shareholders happy means he (or she) should be paid handsomely. But what if all that attention to the bottom line led to behavior that was not ethical, or harms the environment in some way, or eliminates jobs? Wouldn’t a better methodology of evaluating a CEO’s performance be to measure how many well paying jobs they are providing to the economy? Isn’t there some way to integrate a company’s commitment to the environment into their bottom line? Why is the only yardstick “profits”? Can’t profits be dressed up to appear beautiful when they are in fact ugly, or even, non existent? But we are greedy. We don’t want to look under the skirt. We happily cash our dividend check....the CEO cashes his bonus check....and somehow the bills will get sorted out later...sort of like....a Ponzi scheme?

The insatiable thirst for more money has had several subtle impacts. It has driven the cost of everything upward, since things worth owning are expensive, or so it would seem in the California real estate market. Often, there is little connection between the value of something and its cost to purchase. $100,000 dresses. Huh? 2 bedroom houses for $1,000,000. Huh? $10 beers at a baseball game. Huh? I guess the US military started all this when they bought $300 hammers.

We stopped asking why things were so expensive and instead simply aimed to make more money so we could buy the overpriced things we thought we needed. Easier to be greedy, I suppose, than to be smart. And if somehow our ability to earn more money was thwarted by the fact that we are not a CEO, or a left handed pitcher, or a movie star...well there was another way: the Credit Card. The ease of getting credit further separated the price of things from their actual value. Houses, cars, diamond rings, Coach and bags....all can be had now. Price is secondary as long as there is room on the credit card.

But you know what?...we bought a lot of stuff that was not worth what we paid for it. Starting with our houses, but surely $60,000 Hummers and $15 hamburgers qualify as well. Meanwhile, since we hated paying taxes, we let our schools fall apart, so we refinanced the house so we could send our kids to private school. It was like paying college tuition for a 5 year old, and then doing it for 13 years until they actually went off to college...where finally we could qualify for student loans and get the poor kid in debt to start their adult lives. But we do want our kids to go to college so they can get ahead (or at least in debt) and lead meaningful lives pursuing the almighty dollar.

As our government attempts to solve our nation’s problems by tossing money out of the empty coffers of Washington DC, like tossing raw meat to a den of starved lions, we should at least consider how we got here, and how to avoid returning. Are we simply starving carnivores awaiting fresh meat....in which case, if there is not enough meat, when do we start eyeing each other? After all, we are not made of money....

Tell me about your childhood....

No doubt about it....we are depressed...bombarded with a 24 hour news cycle that reminds us, continually, that our houses aren’t worth anything, our retirement plans have shriveled up, and we are making plans to spend our grandchildren’s money just so we can avoid another Great Depression. If it’s so great, how come I feel so lousy?

If you are like me (and since I am so egocentric, I’ll just assume that you are), you are in your late 40’s and have gotten by pretty much unscathed by the cold realities of life on this planet. I am far too young to have served in World War II, and I even missed Vietnam by a few years. I never even had to register for the draft, and though we grew up with the threat of a nuclear holocaust, it always seemed far away, except of course when Reagan got elected. We were too old for the Gulf War, and if we were lucky enough to buy a house, it has appreciated irrationally and provided us with ready cash so we could buy new cars every three years, send our kids to private schools and live lives our grandparents could simply not understand (and likely would not approve of). In summary, we had it pretty good. That, however, appears to have changed, and I wonder how well equipped we will be for survival in the 21st century.

I assume we will learn how to get along without twice daily Double Cappuccinos and weekly pedicures. Most of us will be able to shrug off missing heirloom tomatoes and $150 tennis shoes with the word “Coach” printed all over them. But what about simpler things? What happens if we go to the kitchen sink and there is no water in the faucet. What happens when the price of a gallon of milk is more than we can afford. What if there is no chicken in the pot? Has our past prepared us well for a future that might feature a global financial crisis, a water shortage (at least in the Western US), and a climate crippled by our emissions of carbon dioxide, to say nothing of war, nuclear proliferation, and the rise of terrorism. Any one of these problems is daunting all by itself, but what about the real possibility that we might have to deal with all of them at once?

Perhaps it is simply because it is in the distant past, and we know how the story ended, but it is amazing how well our ancestors dealt with the first Great Depression. They were tough....they stood up against the Nazis, and sacrificed a great deal so that generations like ours could live in a nation of plenty (for the vast majority of us). Maybe if we had a few hard knocks earlier, we’d be better able to weather this storm. Maybe if we spent less and saved more...bought less on credit, opted to do without the latest cell phone, or SUV. Would we be able to live in 2 bedroom houses after living in 4,000 square foot McMansions? On a more basic level, could we grow our own food, cut our own firewood or mend our own fences? Are we well equipped, or simply equipped well?

Happy Endings?

There was a feeling that every high school student can relate to...that moment when the bell rings on the last day of school before summer vacation. All the pages in the notebook can be safely discarded, pens can be left uncapped and pencils can remain unsharpened. All the assignments that were left undone, or under done, were rendered completely unimportant with one last tick of the clock.

As the clock struck noon today, George Bush has tossed his notebook in the air, and left the papers to flutter down with no rhyme nor reason, the pages left for someone else to pick up, perhaps reassemble, or maybe to simply discard. For our 43rd president, he gets an exit with full honors bestowed upon our commanders in chief, popular or not. He can clear brush or sip lemonade from the hammock in the back yard while others try to sift through the scattered remains of his tenure in office and try to salvage what is worth saving, while noting what needs repairing. It will be a tedious process, and it might take half of President Obama’s first term just to make sense of it all.

He can count himself lucky. His “work” is done, and for the most part, he will not be held to account for the damage he has wrought on our nation, and its standing in the world. If one needs reminders of his popularity, how about being booed at the inauguration, or being serenaded to “Na-Na-Na-Na, Hey Hey Goodbye”. Ouch. Or how about the striking pose captured on film as the new inhabitants of the White House waved to the departing helicopter? “....have fun storming the castle!” One can only wonder what George and Laura Bush talked about as they returned to their Texas compound...I am sure the last few weeks have been filled with opportunity for reflection, so this was likely more of an exhale. The weight of the world, quite literally lifted from their backs, as they began the rapturous climb skyward in the military helicopter.

Former Presidents face the new burden of using their status for some good around the world. Jimmy Carter was perhaps one of the most effective ex-Presidents, despite his status as a mediocre chief executive. The elder President Bush, along with Bill Clinton teamed up in a true odd couple sort of way to raise funds on behalf of those impacted by the tsunami in Sri Lanka and Hurricane Katrina. I am hopeful that the younger President Bush finds some cause that will allow him to improve his legacy which at present seems sort of disheveled. However, I will not be surprised if he opts to simply ride off into the sunset. As the inauguration of President Obama grew near, President Bush became a sort of tragic figure...misunderstood, at least in his mind, unloved, and unwanted. They ironically rolled Vice President Cheney out in a wheel chair....they could no longer even limp out of town. As a nation, we take just a moment to wave goodbye. We cannot spare a lot of time, for there is much to do, and not a minute to waste.

Giving Thanks Part One

Wow...some folks want to "thank" our current "president" for giving us 7 years of safe living....I assume this is serious, though in some sense, I canot see how it could be.....but check it out at:

http://www.thankyoupresidentgeorgewbush.com/

I actually dug around and found a place to write the buffoons who set this thing up. Not sure anyone will read it, but I vented at:

info@thankyoupresidentgeorgewbush.com

I wrote:

Really? A petition thanking “President” Bush? I am sure there are more stupid things on the web, but none comes to mind just now. If you are going to thank him for “keeping us safe for 7 years, you ought to “blame” him for allowing the worst terrorist attack in our nation’s history to occur on his watch....can’t have it both ways, I fear.

Put your energy into something constructive, like healing the damage done to this nation over the last 8 years...

jsw

Thanks to Wonkette for opening this can of worms....http://www.wonkette.com/

Wrong Time of the Year for the Holidays?

The American consumer, I have heard, holds the key to stemming the tide of bad economic news. It is simple really. Go forth and spend money like there is no tomorrow...and for once that might be right....THERE MAY BE NO TOMORROW.

OK, seriously. How does this work? Investments have taken a beating, Job security ain’t what it used to be. Many folks are working but are “underemployed”. Money is tight. No credit, no certainty that it is not going to get (a lot) worse. And yet, if we stay at home during the holiday season, and avoid buying the IPods, the Abercrombie and Fitch sweatshirts, and this season’s Pet Rocks that we all need so desperately, the economy will suffer even further, and we will nosedive ever closer to an even worse downturn.

Is there some sort of signal that is emitted when this recession becomes a “depression”? And if not, perhaps we are already there. I am just about ready to stop watching the news, because, frankly, it is depressing. Seems like depression is at hand.

Thanksgiving Day is a week away, and after that, the Christmas shopping season begins in earnest. I am guessing there will be parking near the door this year. A lot will have to change in the next week to reverse the mindset that this year is a time for restraint, if not outright rejection of the end of the year shopping binge.

Perhaps this will be that holiday season where we set aside our materialistic impulses and appreciate our friends and family as the gifts they are. Maybe that starts at Thanksgiving as we appreciate the irony of a huge meal amidst such uncertainty. There will no doubt be more hungry folks this year, as we sit down to carve a turkey...maybe even you, or me.

In seasons past, we have all dutifully reached into our wallets and done our duty as consumers despite the times. That seems all but impossible now. The sting of this season will be felt in the retail stores, and that will surely add to the bad news. But what will be the long term cost as we turn our backs on the retail establishments in our home towns? Will this finally spell the end of the mom and pop boutique? Will Wal-Mart finally take over everything and leave us with no other shopping options? How can we combat the reality of cheap prices at the expense of employees, suppliers, and land use planning. Do we kiss Main Street goodbye once and for all? Before we drive past the small businesses en route to the big box outside of town, perhaps we’ll find “rock star parking” near our local shops...the mom and pop liquor store, the toy store that sells only toys, and the clothing store that might not even have a website. Think of all the cheap gas we will save.

The Economy...For the Birds

I was sitting at my desk this morning. It was a beautiful fall day in the Bay Area...the kind of day you can open the doors and let the fresh air in. As I did just that, I was struck by a sound. Birds--hundreds of them, chirping and twittering and clucking and squawking. I stepped out side to find the source...a large elm tree to the south of my office filled with what seemed like thousands of birds, though I could not see but one or two. I closed my eyes to focus on the sound. It was quite similar to what I imagined the South American rain forest to sound like. It was loud and complicated like an orchestra without a conductor, and amidst the randomness of the sounds and the diversity of types of noise, emerged a sort of swirling pattern. It was wondrous. I have never heard so many birds, making so much noise so near to me. I paused for several minutes just to listen and observe what I could through the foliage. Then suddenly, as if on some prearranged cue, the tree shed itself of every bird as they roared off to the south in a well defined group, soaring at first high, and then swooping downward, before setting off to some other tree, perhaps some miles away. Perhaps they had stopped for a bit of lunch or a rest in the protective limbs of the great old tree and when the break was over, they headed off as if on some sort of schedule. Perhaps an unseen predator was near. Perhaps they had liberated the tree of its surplus bug population and it was time to dine elsewhere. In any event, when the signal was given to go....they did.

How difficult, I thought, it must be to be a bird nowadays. Large trees capable of holding hundreds of birds are few and far between. With vanishing habitat, global warming, and pollution complicating the lives of birds, and other creatures with as much right to be here as we humans, it must not be easy to be a bird just now. And just when there is momentum toward taking the threats seriously, a serious recession, perhaps a global depression, we may, in fact, turn to trying to eat them. Instead of tackling climate change and global warming, we will instead do what ever it takes to keep the economy moving ahead, including lowering the price of gasoline, so that automakers can continue to turn out fuel thirsty cars.

We will assist automakers, to keep them up and running, without demanding that they begin to retool and begin producing cars that respect our diminishing fuel supply, and stop belching greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. We will burn coal instead of erecting windmills. Solar energy will have to wait a bit longer before its day in the sun. And every day of inaction brings us closer to the day when it will no longer matter.

The news continues to be bad in the economic world, and when we speak of the global economy, it appears perhaps more than people around the world are affected. Perhaps the bad economic news spells trouble for the birds as well...and the frogs, and the polar bears, and the fish in the sea.

Its the Little Things

Doom and gloom is hard to ignore on the TV, on the Radio and all over the front pages of newspapers and magazines. We are in for some hard times, and I wonder if we are really up to it. We are out of practice when it comes to scrimping and saving. But when the largest companies in the country are teetering, and the layoffs approach millions, it is hard to ignore, much less be pithy or even humorous.

And yet, there are so many things that we might do without that might make us more efficient. Lots of little things might add up to some big things. And maybe, in the process, we could become less wasteful. Painless frugality to save the day.

First of all...mattress tags. It seems like it has been a long time since the mattress police took their job seriously. I have removed literally dozens of these tags. I believe I have even done so in a store, where clearly, I was not, at that moment, a consumer. What do you suppose it costs to cut print and stitch these tags onto mattresses, pillows, cushions and comforters? If it costs a penny, and we eliminate them, that puts like $6,754, 659.07 right back into the economy (more or less).

And what about ink cartridges for our computer printers? I purchased recently a cartridge #78 for my HP Office Jet printer. It came wrapped in hard plastic shell, and inside that was a cardboard box. Within the box, a plasticized aluminum pouch hermetically sealed with a product that I apparently should not eat, because it says so right on the pouch. Nothing else in the package suggested I should not eat it, so I assume I could, in a pinch, dine on the packaging....but seriously...get over yourselves. One package is enough...there is no reason for three...it is wasteful of resources, money, and it takes a lot more time to open when I get home. Did I mention I carried the purchase home in a plastic bag? Really, if HP eliminated two layers of packaging, I am sure millions of dollars are saved. Trees as well. See, this is easy.

While we are on the subject of plastic bags....let’s eliminate all bags from retail establishments. Bring your own damn bag, and if you don’t, you get to carry the stuff out without benefit of a container. In a very short time, we would all get good at remembering to bring our own bags. I kick myself every time I forget all the reusable grocery sacks we have collected over the years...they sit in the back of my car awaiting use. Today, with the cart almost full, I ditched it in a quiet corner and ran out to the car to retrieve the bags I had forgotten to bring. They are much stronger, hold more groceries, and that means less trips from the curb to the kitchen. I have teenage children, so all the grocery carrying is my job and I am fond of limiting my trips back and forth. I don’t know what the savings here are, but it helps those businesses in the reusable sack manufacturing industry.

As we just passed Halloween, another opportunity I noticed. “Fun Size” candy bars packed in plastic bags. Why not sell the candy in bulk, by pound. As we do almonds, dried apricots and apples. The candy bars are all individually wrapped anyway. They need no additional protection. That way, you can customize your order. Lot’s of Reese’s, not so many Three Musketeers, and we can just leave the Tootsie Rolls to....well...there must be someone who eats Tootsie Rolls....I think my daughter gives them to the dog.

The list could go on. I am sure we all have our pet peeves. I think soap bars are over packaged—some are in cardboard boxes wrapped in plastic shrink wrap. Really? Is that necessary, and I think we wrap too many things in plastic in general. I find it interesting that plastic bags come in cardboard boxes, while a ream of copier paper is wrapped in plastic. Someday, someone can explain why hot dogs come in packs of 10 while the buns are 8 to a bag. Someone missed a meeting.

Anyway, if we pay attention to all these little things, maybe we can save industry enough money to keep the economy from collapsing, and then we can look at some of the more complicated issues. Like why my 19 year old son keeps getting credit card offers....I mean, isn’t that how we all got in this mess to begin with?

No Veteran's Day?

Happy Veteran’s Day. This is a day to offer our thanks to those who have put their lives on the line to fight for the many liberties that we citizens enjoy. The men and women from all the conflicts that have been fought over the last century or so have served with bravery and honor, and have done so by risking their lives. I imagine there are millions of veterans, having served the frequent conflicts of the 20thm and now the 21st century.

I suppose there might be some veterans left from World War I, but they would be quite old, I should think. Many more from World War II. Their sacrifice and bravery in large part is what made our country what it is today. We owe them our very existence, in some sense. We have also veterans from the Korean Conflict, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the invasion of Panama, Granada, Kosovo and no doubt other smaller skirmishes, some perhaps without names. And of course, our nation is churning out a great many more veterans as we fight two wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Wouldn’t it be nice, though, if there was a passage of time where there were no new veterans. Where our nation, and those sharing the planet with us, opted to resolve our differences through negotiation, and we fought no wars for a generation or two or three. What if 100 years passed and we did not fight a war? Would there be any veterans left? Daresay their care at places like Walter Reed would have to improve quite a lot for any current veterans to live another 100 years.

I have nothing against veterans. Absolutely not. I would just like to see their numbers shrink, but instead, the veteran population is growing all the time. Alas, in the process, we are also increasing the numbers we must remember on Memorial Day. Sadly, we do not even have a special day for those that will spend the rest of their life in some sort of damaged state as a result of the wars we have fought. In some sense, those that left a part of themselves on the battlefield are the ones that truly need our help, our appreciation, and our admiration, perhaps more so than any group of veterans. They deserve a day to call their own. Those that have given a limb, or two, or have lost the use of their limbs, their eyes, their ears, or those who have suffered such anguish that their thoughts have turned against them. These folks need a day where we consider their sacrifice. Hero Appreciation Day. Victims of Foreign Wars. Can’t even think of a good name.

The United States military is the finest in the world. When motivated, and fighting a just war, we are pretty much undefeated. When, however, we fight wars that are the result of leaders who have misunderstood their responsibility, the results are a mixed bag. I am hopeful we can end, soon, the ongoing creation of new veterans, and that the future leaders of this country will understand, once and for all, that the enormous might of the United States military carries with it the enormous responsibility of using only when there is no other option. We have become cavalier in our decisions to go to war. Here’s hoping we can go 100 years before fighting, so that we can fully appreciate the veterans we already have, without adding to their numbers.

To those that have served, thank you. Help our leaders understand why your sacrifice should not be offered in haste.