Pettiness, perspective, and the new urban threat

In our 21st century world, danger lurks on every corner and even in our own front yards. Actually, as that Chesapeake Virginia guy knows all too well, the danger of politically correct, meddling, small, angry, purposeless and snooping women is prevalent even in our very homes where we can no longer smoke, sneeze, or (apparently) be naked. But for many of us our homes do protect us from most harm. The same can no longer be said of the sidewalks just outside.

A new and urban threat – one that has probably been there all along but that we are now finally beginning to take note of – is accosting our neighborhoods. And it is known, officially, as The Scavenger. Why have we suddenly begun noticing The Scavenger even when we have overlooked or ignored him in the past? Because city officials have begun listening to the politically correct, meddling, small, angry, purposeless and snooping people calling them on the phone. Why have they finally begun listening to these people? Because the city is losing capital. The city, that manages to spend nine months on a project that would take me and a semi-muscular donkey two weeks to complete, has conveniently noticed that it is losing money on peoples’ trash and it would like to inform all worthy, hard-working, trash-producing citizens of the threat that is inundating their communities.

So who is The Scavenger? He is your neighbor, your co-worker, your local store clerk, probably slightly poorer than you, but perhaps slightly smarter as well. I am fairly certain I have been a scavenger, of a sort, before, only I always thought of it as picking up other people’s liter. But this truly dangerous Scavenger is not merely picking up trash thrown onto the street by people lazier and more self-centered than he. We do not call that man a scavenger – we call him a good Samaritan, even when he makes five cents off of the bottle we paid for and left lying on the sand. No, the urban threat, the true Scavenger actually goes into our garbage cans as they sit, innocently awaiting the lumbering, smog-producing, gas-guzzling garbage truck to empty them out. And do you know what this Scavenger does when he goes into your own personal garbage can? He takes stuff! He takes your own personal garbage. And do you know what he does with it? He recycles it. Bottles, boxes, clothes, all of these things that can be turned into other things or worn by people who find a sweatshirt from a garbage can better than no sweatshirt at all. The Scavenger takes all of these things that (and before you call my bluff I admit to being sometimes guilty of this myself) you should have recycled yourself. He steals your garbage. The threatening, thieving, capitalistic Scavenger steals your trash and profits from it. He sells it. He recycles it. And every two dollars here and fifty cents there that he makes, he pockets. That Scavenger grows rich off of our garbage and this is why city officials have decided to step in.

See, the city was brilliant enough to come up with an electronic trash truck capable of scooping up garbage cans and dumping trash at the touch of a button. And the city was brilliant enough to come up with a green program that divided each person’s trash into ordinary, recyclable, and organic. But the city never thought of – or was never willing to employ people to actually sort through trash and remove valuable items. I have brainstormed for some time and have come up with some reasons why the city may have neglected to do this. Here are the best ones:

1. nobody would take the job.
2. health codes prohibited it.
3. it would take too long to get the plan approved.
4. paying people $7.75 an hour to sort trash would cost the city more than it would make on beer bottles and yard sale sweatshirts (although the city perhaps forgot about Saturday nights in college towns).

So the city can’t actually gain anything (or much) from enacting a sort-peoples’-trash-by-hand plan. (The city would, of course, like to employ robots to do the job, but Arnold says we’re bankrupt and I tend to agree). Incidentally, can anyone make me a t-shirt that says “Arnold says we’re bankrupt”? The city would in fact probably lose money on the whole thing (as the city is wont to do). So why are city officials up in arms? Because The Scavengers are making money. Never mind that the reason they are doing so is because they are a one-man show and do not have to pay themselves minimum wage. Never mind that five dollars to a person who is homeless or unemployed or even me is worth significantly more than five dollars to a city fund. The city is resentful that The Scavenger is making money off of what is rightfully its own. Apparently once we place our trash in the city-approved trash bins, it becomes city property.

I suppose I shouldn’t expect much from a government. But why are ordinary citizens up in arms? The only logical and justifiable reason I can think of is because they are concerned, not about the garbage, but about The Scavenger himself who could be anybody and is probably not somebody they want their children playing with. I am not speaking for the lady who says in an appalled tone that she believes The Scavenger walked across her front yard to reach her garbage cans which she had carefully tucked behind some trees in the hopes that he would not find them. I think she is concerned about her grass and perhaps something akin to pride. Nor do I speak for the man who worries that important and personal documents will be pulled from his trash cans and made public knowledge. To him I say, perhaps he should recycle some of his bottles and use the money to buy a paper shredder. Didn’t his mother ever teach him never to throw whole important documents into the trash?

I do, however, understand the concern of people who wish to feel safe stepping out their front doors. But let’s truly consider the threat of questionable people who spend their spare time rummaging through garbage instead of, say, robbing liquor stores. This is not to say there is no threat; it is merely to say that before we stage a defensive attack on the guy with a bicycle basket full of Coke cans, we should perhaps put things into perspective. (Might I also suggest sending a camaradic* smile his direction) To help with the concept of perspective, and because I believe in the parallel between real life and art, I am including a copy of Shel Silverstein’s vaguely related poem “Hector the Collector.” I’m pretty sure Shel Silverstein was smarter than most city officials:

HECTOR THE COLLECTOR
by Shel Silverstein

Hector the Collector
Collected bits of string,
Collected dolls with broken heads
And rusty bells that would not ring.
Pieces out of picture puzzles,
Bent-up nails and ice-cream sticks,
Twists of wires, worn-out tires,
Paper bags and broken bricks.
Old chipped vases, half-shoelaces,
Gatlin’ guns that wouldn’t shoot,
Leaky boats that wouldn’t float
And stopped-up horns that wouldn’t toot.
Butter knives that had no handles,
Copper keys that fit no locks,
Rings that were too small for fingers,
Dried-up leaves and patched-up socks.
Worn-out belts that had no buckles,
‘Lectric trains that had no tracks,
Airplane models, broken bottles,
Three-legged chairs and cups with cracks.
Hector the Collector
Loved these things with all his soul –
Loved them more than shining diamonds,
Loved them more than glistenin’ gold.
Hector called to all the people,
“Come and share my treasure trunk!”
And all the silly sightless people
Came and looked...and called it junk.

*to people (or dictionaries) who would argue that my word selection here is not actually a word, I would direct you to a pin that I once read: “ENGLISH MAJOR: If I say it then it’s a word.”

-R.E.A.

When I was 22 I had a midlife crisis

When I was 22 I had a midlife crisis. (Having now turned an august 23, I can admit this here without...ahem...too much pain). First came the epiphany that I was far, far from where I wanted to be. Then came the crash. And by crash I mean tears. Lots and lots of tears. Endless tears. Big fat sobbing into the pillow, ugly blotchy face puffy eyes the next morning tears. This wasn’t the midlife crisis. This was only the fairly damp process leading up to it. After the tears. No, let me be honest, when the tears had subsided enough to allow the headache behind my eyes to clear up long enough for me to know I had a brain left, I got out. Fast. Like a bat out of hell. Like a man on the run. Like a bullet from a barrel. Like our kitten. Tulare when the bath water goes on. Claws out. Hair sticking straight up. Eyes wide. Out. Fast.

Then came these long, grateful, blustery days of calm. Home days. Tea Days. Prayer days. “Thank God for everything I still have and leaving everything I left behind me” days when the puffy white clouds (I was noticing clouds again) floating across the blue Pacific sky bellowed down “AMEN” so loudly that I kept looking around to see if anyone else on the beach had heard them. This wasn’t the midlife crisis either. This was the period of grace that the blessed Lord above gave me before the midlife crisis came. (Although I admit I am almost always sarcastic, this is not. It was [and is] grace and it was [and is] the blessed Lord above.)

But there is one thing none of us can run from. Not a bat, not a man, not a bullet, not even sweet little Tulare who is so cute she has been able to wheedle three consecutive bowls of milk out of us just by meowing. Certainly not me. The only difference between them and me is that I care and they do not. I concern myself with the answer to the question that every well-intentioned, concerned, loving, sympathetic, single person (including myself) asked after I bolted out of law school and all that it implied: “WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO NOW?” And in that single question, the mid-life crisis was catalyzed.

Doubtless every person who asked the question had a good reason for doing so. Some were practical. My parents had been making my car, insurance, and phone payments my entire life and though, to their extreme credit, they have never even so much as suggested that they would rather make do without extraneous multi-hundred dollar monthly payments, they had, I’m certain, allowed themselves the smallest amount of personal interest in the idea that in three years I’d be earning enough to make my own payments and perhaps a few of theirs.

Furthermore, my father, God bless his over-worried soul, had always assumed that his youngest daughter (me) in all her English-y glory would eventually proclaim her intentions to build a hovel in a field somewhere and make novel-writing her career. He didn’t worry about her now. He worried about her when she realized that the world didn’t have an extreme amount of sympathy for a mediocre writer who lived in a hovel and had no other life experience and when she also realized that despite her most stolid convictions, you in fact did need money to survive after all. When I announced I was going to law school he was cautiously optimistic that perhaps I had finally chosen an actual profession. When I got accepted to law school he allowed himself actual joy at the prospect that one of his very own daughters would be a lawyer.

And then I quit. And further to his extreme credit he accepted this. Never has a single person who has made such a sumptuous mistake as I made ever had more support from the people around her than I have had. And so, the question, when it comes, is not in all capitals, as I hear it when it is asked. It is tentative and gentle and concerned. It says “I love you” even while it stops me cold in my tracks. Even while I stand there tongue-tied, like a prisoner in an interrogation room, it is not accusatory. It’s an open door and no handcuffs. It’s a question that says, “you don’t have to answer me.” But it echoes back on itself, “but eventually life itself will demand that you do.” The echo is all I hear.

The echo, perhaps, is me more than them. Because when I ask myself the question, I ask it in all caps and I mean for it to be answered. And there is perhaps no more frustrating and difficult state of mind to inhabit than the one in which you must look yourself square in the eye and admit that you don’t know. Because you will inevitably wonder, “THEN WHO THE HELL AM I?" And that question is the fuel on which the mid-life crisis runs.

Some people, mostly acquaintances, ask out of what they assume is kindness. They think it will be helpful for me to talk about what I am doing now. They think it will inspire me to remind myself that though I am a failure at law, I can be a success at something else. They want the opportunity to encourage me to follow my dreams. They want the opportunity to tell me that law is not for everyone so that I have the opportunity, since I am clearly one of those people, to explain to them what is for me, what I am if I am not the “lawyer type.” I am extremely adept at foiling their plans. Bless them. When they find out that, apparently, I have no dreams at all, they assure me that I will find my way. It takes all of us time to find our way, they tell me. And I agree. Except that not all of us waste thousands of dollars and nine months, break a few hearts and a couple of contracts, and discover they have no identity in the process. The mid-life crisis snuggles down into the nest she has created in my life and sips a cup of tea. She is not going anywhere.

If a person could make a living out of loving many things, I would banish the mid-life crisis from my life. I would wield my weightless, mud-luscious sword beneath her self-satisfied nose and cry out something profound and wonderful, like, “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” And though she wouldn’t understand what I meant, she would leave. Because a person who has made a living exclusively off of loving many things does not have the doubt it takes to nurture a mid-life crisis.

If I were less fickle, if I felt less like a whirligig beetle and more like an Oak tree, if I didn’t have five million plans for the next five years and a fear of death, if I didn’t want a career that was everything to me and that I could also pack up and leave at a moment’s notice, if I was less like me and more like someone else (a lawyer, perhaps), I would have transitioned from knowing what I was doing to finding something else within a normal spectrum of time and perhaps the mid-life crisis would have passed me by, would have glanced my direction, realized I was a mere 22 years old and still relatively permitted to royally, fabulously mess things up, kindly put me down on her list for 25 years down the road, and passed me by. But instead I am me.

So now that I am 23, you ask (if you have gotten this far, perhaps you still care) – so now that I am 23, has my mid-life crisis passed? As with most questions, I have no answer to this. I have neither shiny red Corvette nor beach-front property to show for my crisis. I have no defined answers to any of my questions: what am I doing now? who am I? can a person make a living off of loving many things?

I have tried yoga (for which I am too impatient) and meditation (during which my legs inevitably fall asleep). These techniques are too sophisticated for me. They are not, it seems, at peace with the philosophy-of-Roya as it is. I still have times when my life flashes in front of me and it is blank with random moments and actions and dreams rolling about disconnected in different directions and it still makes me catch my breath and wonder about San Diego. I still don’t know what’s next. But despite knowing so little, I am extremely happy. Perhaps we have grown more used to each other, my mid-life crisis and I. Like two old neighbors who gossip officiously to one another day in and out but would still miss each other if one of them left. Perhaps she is biding her time. But perhaps I am biding mine as well. This was not, after all, meant to be a story of inspiration.

Finding myself unemployed and now only an echo of a scholar, I have taken time from my busy schedule of battling demons, sketching a map of my brain, and avoiding online application forms to learn an important phrase in six different languages (okay so I already knew it in a couple, but let’s not split hairs). This phrase, my ohm, if you will, is my defense against the unanswerable questions, the mid-life crisis, and, indeed, myself, having several times in the past few months been on the brink of understanding myself and then suddenly finding that I am afraid to know:

peu à peu
chotto zutsu
poco a poco
yavash yavash
nach und nach

little by little.

...goodbye 22; it's been lovely...

Today I’m 23. My birthday always feels rather more like a new year than January 1st does and though I never make resolutions either on the national new year or on my own new year (why set yourself up for depression the following December 31 [or in my case, October 31] when you realize that, after all, you’re only human and the year, though wonderful, was just a year), here is what I hope becomes of me this year:

I hope to delight in getting to know 23. I hope that this new year I am braver and stronger, that I learn how to love better and to be less judgmental but more honest. I hope at 23 that I find the words, whatever and wherever they may be, and that I do many things.

A new age never comes without having to say goodbye to the old one. In some ways, 22 truly kicked my butt. I experienced, for example, my first mid-life crisis (more on that later), discovering, in the mean time, that who I was at 17 is not who I am today no matter how much I loved that girl. I realized also that I still lack any form of wisdom, in its broadest and narrowest senses, officially placing me in the age range of “too old to be wild and free and too young to be over the hill.” Having once been in the age range of “old enough to know better but still too young to care,” I can tell you that reaching this new plateau is, to put it nicely, an extraordinary disappointment. I don’t care how romantic it is to be a song lyric, there is nothing romantic about much of growing up.

Still, 22 is tucking itself away in a corner of my heart and I am sad to see it go. Why? Because 22 taught me something else about growing up. It doesn’t stink as much as I thought it did. Okay so it’s not romantic, but some things still are.

For the first time, at 22, I felt like perhaps I wanted to be an adult, wanted to view relationships and events in my life from that perspective and act accordingly. And for the first time I felt that being an adult may be beautiful in that you never lose the child that you were because it was she who brought you to this place and because you and she are one and the same. The five-year old, big cheeked, enormous imaginationed Roya is still in me, the eternally eight Roya, the wildly happy 11 Roya are too, even the 17-who-I-am-not Roya is still something I was, and so something I am today. Growing up, perhaps, doesn’t mean losing childhood entirely; it means having the strength built up from all those ages you were to create who you have become.

At 22 I began to learn how to slow down, to discover happiness in waiting and stepping lightly and moving forward only a step a day instead of in leaps and bounds. I learned about ties and how to have stronger and better relationships. I have never been more successful, in fact, in the past have failed miserably, at holding up my end of a friendship, or a loveship. I began to grow into myself. Cranberries became my new thing. I organized all the old letters people have sent me throughout my life.

And now, here comes 23 and this is what I have come to realize:

• I now have only five years left during which to acquire a horse and a piece of land on which to put it.
• I am the same age as my mom was when she got married.
• I have yet to learn to play guitar, learn Spanish, or learn to surf.
• This just may be my year to write the next great American novel...but the pressure has never been greater.
• I am still afraid of crabs.

In light of these realizations, and others, I have gathered together some quotes that I hope will guide me through 23 – some profound sayings that remind me that I have never said anything this remarkable, but also that there is always hope...

“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.” ~Matthew 7:7-8

“The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.” ~Blaise Pascal

“President Roosevelt once said, ‘speak softly and carry a big stick.’ I say to you, ‘yell loudly and swing a yard stick.’” ~Jason

“I defend myself against failure in my main design by making every inch of the road to it pleasant.” ~Emerson

“So damn easy to say that life’s so hard. Everybody’s got their share of battle scars. As for me, I’d like to thank my lucky stars that I’m alive and well...And today you know that’s good enough for me. Breathin’ in and out’s a blessing can’t you see. Today’s the first day of the rest of my life and I’m alive and well.” ~Kenny Chesney, Dean Dillon, & Mark Tamburino

“There are instincts for all the crises of life.” ~Victor Hugo

“I heard what was said of the universe / Heard it and heard it of several thousand years; / It is middling well as far as it goes – but is that all?” ~ Walt Whitman

-R.A.

A List Of Things That Very Likely Should Cease To Exist

I have often thought that the city of Los Angeles (although it is arguably more a pit than a city) is really quite worthless after all is said and done. But recent events have started me thinking that there are many other things that the world would most probably be significantly better without. So I have begun compiling a personal list of Things That Very Likely Should Cease To Exist. The list is very much a work in progress. Please feel free to add your own.

A List Of Things That Very Likely Should Cease To Exist:

• Los Angeles, the city

• Obama as president

• The Nobel Peace Prize

• mean people

• in-car video players

• pants with stuff written on the butt

• litter

• anything besides the military that the federal government feels the compulsion to spend money on

• veal

• "presidents" who are actually dictators

My own personal literary and philosophical theory

This is my own personal literary and philosophical theory. Years of higher education and practiced BS convinced me that to be a true intellectual I absolutely must have one. So here it is, complete with hypothetical example and strong bias:

“Science is an art;* art is a science. Everything is everything.”

There it is, guaranteed to explain and interpret any conceivable literary or philosophical ideas, past, present, or future. I like to explain it using the great wall example:

You are in a room with a great, blank wall. Someone hands you a marker and says, “please write your name on the white board,” indicating the wall in front of which you stand.

“That’s not a white board; that’s a wall,” you tell him. But you are wrong. If the wall has characteristics like those of a whiteboard, is it not a whiteboard? It is hard and upright and smoothly white. You can write on it with a marker. And, some way or another, you can wipe it off. If you want to split hairs you can call it a wall. If you want to be specific, pointed, descriptive. If you want to be picky, intellectual, uncompromising, you can call it a wall. If a behemoth, muscular giant approaches you and says walls are life and whiteboards are death and you value life, you may call it a wall. But really, it is just as much a whiteboard as a wall, a science as an art. Everything is everything.

P.S. Some people may tell you this is not a theory, but an anti-theory. Don’t believe them.

*Please note the semicolon, without which my own personal literary and philosophical theory is incomplete.

-R.A.

I woke up this morning and realized there were starving people all over the world

I woke up one morning and realized there were starving people all over the world. So I wrote the White House: “It has come to my attention that there are starving people all over the world and I find it outrageous that no one else has done something about it before this, particularly you, Mr. President, as you are the moral guardian of our nation. Please fix this problem.”

The White House wrote me back one line, “Where do we get the money?”

I found this response disappointing, irrelevant, and downright offensive. These are STARVING PEOPLE we’re talking about; what does money have to do with it? So I compiled a list of facts about starving people and sent it to the White House.

The White House wrote me back one line, “What is the solution?”

It seems surprising to me that a mere citizen like myself should be expected to have answers to problems. What, I ask, is the government for if not to help the unintelligent general public find enlightenment? But I compiled another list because it is my duty as a human to find ways that other people who are also human but less compassionate than I to help people who are also human but more victimized than I. I sent my list to the White House. It looked like this:

Solution to World Starvation

· Provide all starving people all around the world with a balanced diet.

· A balanced diet includes all known vitamins.

· Provide all starving people all around the world with kitchens in which to cook their food.

· Provide all starving people all around the world with good medical care.

This last bullet may seem like a different issue entirely, however I believe it is important so I included it in the list. If the government follows my list exactly, I will have solved not only the world starvation problem, but also the problem of subpar healthcare for all around the world.

The White House wrote me back one word, “How?”

I have spent my entire life dedicated to the belief that money is bad, making people greedy, heartless, and selfish. Marxist philosophy is the closest a human has ever come to truth. But I think you will agree that my Solution to World Starvation list makes it evident that the starvation problem requires money. Lots of it. So I made a list, cataloguing the many uses of money in saving the starving populations. “Take it all,” I prompted, “all the oppressive capitalistic money and give it to the starving populations and they will be fed and the money will be cleansed.”

The White House wrote me back one line, “There still won’t be enough.”

All I have left to say is this: I am fed up with the unambitious, nay saying, skepticism of our government. Apparently, as a private citizen, not only am I supposed to solve the problems of the world, I am also supposed to fund them. I find the government’s utter lack of understanding of the severity of this situation absurd. I have provided them with a clear answer to the WAY THINGS SHOULD BE. Why, I ask, should rationalism get in the way of it?

Talk about not ending up where you started out

You know what phrase I currently dislike more than any other? “Reverse racism.” This phrase is meaningless. There is no such thing. Racism is not this grand golden ticket endowed to minority populations as a defense against the majority. A black man voting for a black president simply because he wants to see a black person in office is just as racist as a white man voting for a white president because their skins match. A Hispanic judge ruling for a Hispanic public servant who is less qualified than his white colleague is as unjustified as a white judge ruling for a less competent white man.

Reverse racism implies that a minority directing racism at a majority is a secondary form of immorality – a more recent form of social injustice based off of – even perhaps a result of the first – racism itself. It is such a disgustingly beautiful way of allowing minority populations – bigoted and otherwise – to remain victimized and to dedicate only a measure of acknowledgement to majority recipients of injustice.

The implication is that I, a white majority, may have been dealt with unjustly based on my race, but only after I – even if only by association – dealt unjustly with others. The injustice dealt to me is – reverse racism admits – still an injustice, but it is, practically if not actually, based off of my own unjust treatment of another and thus less sympathetic and – on the grand scale, perhaps more deserved.

If I were a minority I would be, at my best times aggravated, and at my worst times irate at my fellow minorities' constant attempts to victimize me. How, I would like to know, can I be both an empowered individual and a predestined victim? Injustice is wrong and should be righted by individuals and society as a whole. But playing the victim in order to right the wrong is counter-productive. How can a woman who is attempting to prove to her world that she is as capable of rational thought as her male counterpart do so by portraying herself as the weak puppet of fate? How can she expect to be seen as strong and competent when all she will focus on is her oppression? If I want to impactfully prove to the world that I am capable, I will not ask for fairness from a population that has no faith in me and then attempt to prove myself on the “equality” that they never actually granted me because they do not yet believe I deserve it. I will practice and grow and learn and then I will prove myself, without any of their grace or assistance, against the odds. This is strength.

What happens when a population focuses on being victims is that instead of gaining freedom and respect they gain entitlement and think it is the same thing. This is why politically correctness is so disgusting. A feminist changes women to womyn and believes she has won a victory. But all she has really done is changed a spelling and not the opinions of the people who believe women are inferior to men. John Morley said, “You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.” If a society insists on calling white people Caucasians and black people African Americans, it does not follow that they have expelled racism in that society. I can call a man anything I wish to his face and still vote, speak, and act against him.

Treating people with equality is not the same thing as treating them the same. I am different from both the white woman and the black woman sitting nearby and I am glad of it, as, I’m sure, are they. Please treat me differently than you do the person in the corner who is fascinated by computer engineering; I would much prefer a good conversation on Steinbeck. Equality involves opportunity. It means that I can choose between computers and literature, not that I am forced into the same field as everyone else in society’s attempt to neutralize and to avoid racial, gender, and socioeconomic categorizing.

Equality is also not the same as being on equal footing. It’s like Emerson’s squirrel said to the mountain, “If I cannot carry forests on my back, / Neither can you crack a nut.” If I wish to be a philosopher, but my eyesight is so terrible I can’t read Aristotle, society does not owe me laser eye surgery. Equality does not mean we all get the same thing; it means we all have a chance at these things. Circumstance, character, and work must carry us the rest of the way.

…I have been searching in these past few paragraphs to find some thread of my original topic and I am fairly certain no such thread exists. Nevertheless, I have one more story to tell on the topic. I was listening to some political commentators on TV the other day (please don’t even get me started on commentators…I have no idea who you have to know to get one of those jobs but I cannot believe that I am the chump going into debt for law school when there are people out there who get paid to verbally blog) and one of them said something about how white males in today’s society have more restricted first amendment rights than others. The other commentator actually said, of course they do…they should have more limited freedom of speech; they aren’t a minority. This is not “reverse racism.” Don’t attempt to soften it with modifying adjectives. As Yann Martel says, “Don’t you bully me with your politeness.” The word for this kind of opinion is Racism. Just because society has chosen to be less appalled by it in this form, does not make it any less vulgar.

P.S. A note on my last entry: I received an email today from LSAC (Law School Admissions Committee) which is the avenue through which you funnel all your recommendation letters, LSAT scores, essays, etc. when you apply to law school. The subject line read “IMPORTANT NOTICE REGARDING YOUR LSAC ACCOUNT” (I do not exaggerate, the all-caps were their own).

I think: something is expiring, something didn’t go through, I’m missing a prereq, they lost my LSAT score, USD rejected me after all…

This is their urgent message: “Starting in 2010, the US Department of Education will be requiring significant changes in the way educational institutions collect and report race/ethnicity data. Accordingly, on July 19, 2009, LSAC changed the race/ethnicity designation in your LSAC account.

So I think: Lukas is right; they’re going to make me check Persian/American.

They continue, “Your previously reported ethnicity, Caucasian/White, has been changed to the subcategory Other Caucasian/White under the category Caucasian/White. Please log in to your LSAC account to view/update your race/ethnicity designation. Additional categories have been added, and you may select multiple categories.”

The problem was that classifying people within only one category was too limiting. It turns out that there are too many minorities nowadays. The US Department of Education finally read a history book and realized that only 2% of the population is purely British and 0% is purely American, officially making every single person a minority. They also realized that if you trace things back far enough everyone actually came from Africa, making everyone a majority. Subcategories were the only way to organize all the muck. How else could they know who to send scholarships to? The LSAC people kindly left a number at the bottom of the email for me to call in case I had any questions or concerns. I am calling them tomorrow to ask how much tax-payer money the US Department of Education spent on reorganizing the way educational institutions collect and report race/ethnicity data. I will also ask why, if they have extraneous money lying around, there are so many teachers receiving pink slips and so many students being rejected from the CSU system.

-R.A.

Juror # 866389501 - race: white

I got a jury summons today. Call-in, for June, by which time I will have completely forgotten everything about it and will spend a few gut-wrenching days worrying that the federal government is going to come to my door and take me away to be locked up in a prison for nonconformists because I forgot to call. Recently I had put my contempt for the stupid things written on government forms on the backburner, but I just filled out the jury summons questionnaire and it all came flooding back, began boiling, if you will, to avoid a mixed metaphor. There are so many things wrong with the summons and questionnaire that you will think I am just splitting hairs if I list them all. You would probably be right; I lose more and more patience with both the government and stupidity with every passing minute and am un-inclined to give either one any benefit of the doubt. The icing on the cake is that I, in my civic duty, have been reduced to a number and a barcode – every patriot’s dream.

They make you fill out your race on the questionnaire. Well, first they make you answer whether or not you are a citizen and whether or not you are over 18 which is proof of their incompetence because why the hell would they be sending jury summons’ to someone who is neither a citizen nor over 18. But then they make you fill out your race. It’s a weird policy of mine to never fill out the race section of these bubble-in forms because (I’ll admit ignorance here) I am never certain of exactly what they mean by race (white is a race?), and because it annoys me that they ask this question because the only two things it could possibly be used for are a) their own curiosity which is a waste of my time, and b) some sort of discrimination (most probably to screw over the whites and to give preference to minorities). Usually these sections are optional and so I can go on my way feeling as though I have stuck it to the man in my own small way. On the jury summons questionnaire, the race section is mandatory. Their explanation is this:

“Federal law requires you as a prospective juror to indicate your race. This answer is required solely to avoid discrimination in juror selection and has absolutely no bearing on qualifications for jury service. By answering this question you help the federal court check and observe the juror selection process so that discrimination cannot occur. In this way the federal court can fulfill the policy of the United States, which is to provide jurors who are randomly selected from a fair cross section of the community.”

There is so much wrong with this explanation that I almost give up on it, but let’s face it, this is me and I have to blather. First of all, I cannot fathom what kind of reasoning allows that they have to KNOW your race in order to AVOID discrimination. This is such a perfect example of how the people and the government (which are supposed to be the same thing but have never been farther from it) find a problem and try to fix it by creating an even worse problem. It’s Einstein’s whole “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them” concept, except that apparently we are going to try to until we run ourselves into the ground. Let’s backtrack…wouldn’t it be much simpler, and make much more sense, if they DIDN’T know your race and so could pick jurors based on their actual qualifications and the randomness that is supposed to be involved in the jury selection process?

But no, the government has redefined discrimination. What they mean in saying “to avoid discrimination,” is that they are going to ensure that there are not too many white guy jurors beating up on criminals. What they mean by “to avoid discrimination” is that they are in fact going to discriminate based on race so that they have an even distribution of races within a jury. Why didn’t they just say so? Discrimination is “the act of distinguishing differences,” according to Webster who is, I think, still considered an expert by both liberals and conservatives. So, the government is in fact discriminating in order to have jurors of multiple races. Discrimination is also “a showing of partiality or prejudice in treatment.” By specifically choosing, for example, 1 white guy, 1 black guy, and 1 Hispanic guy, instead of 3 white guys, isn’t the court showing partiality? I’m not arguing whether or not the practice of having an even distribution of races within a jury is the right thing to do. Rather, I am arguing against the way the government and all stupid organizations use buzz words to get away with doing whatever they want. DISCRIMINATION is bad. Thus, if the mandatory race section of the questionnaire is “to avoid discrimination,” it must be good.

Which leads me to my personal favorite buzz word FAIR. I am saddened and disheartened (and I’m not being sarcastic in either of these two words) that our JUSTICE SYSTEM is using the word “fair” as justification for their actions. What the hell is a “fair” cross section, anyway? The implication of a cross section of a population is that the percentage of races represented within the cross section is proportional to the percentage of these races within the entire population. How do you make this fair or unfair? But fairness…we all want fairness, right? Thus it must logically follow that, if the race section of the questionnaire ensures fairness, it is a good thing. This is not just semantics. This is not just me bashing the incompetent, but probably relatively innocent writer of the questionnaire because I am a crazy English major who has spent the last four years dissecting the way people should and shouldn’t write. I honestly believe that misused language supporting faulty reasoning is a technique for pulling the wool over peoples’ eyes and that peoples’ acceptance of this technique leads to the demise of democracy. Do I really care about the race section of the jury summons questionnaire? Not a hoot. It took me two seconds to bubble in “white,” I got over the fact that I hate filling out race sections and I moved on. Please see that that is not the issue, it was only my springboard.

There is a separate box that asks you to check yes or no to the question, “are you Hispanic?” I have no idea why they ask this question. But can you IMAGINE the outrage if they instead asked you to check yes or no if you are white. Even if they were using the question to screw over all the white people, the whole world would be up in arms over such a racist question. Racism in this country is misused in the same way as discrimination is misused, not as it pertains to all people across the board, but only as it pertains to majorities screwing over minorities. When the discrimination, or racism, is in the other direction, everyone averts their eyes.

I have more, but this blog is getting too long. I’m still saving the notice from the tax commissioner to all law abiding citizens that was on my federal tax form this year (and probably yours too, you were just smart enough not to read it). I’ll admit that I almost forgave the jury summons people because the envelope that I had to send my questionnaire back in was one of those ones that tastes faintly of watermelon instead of the kind that makes you think of public toilet seats. But then I flipped the envelope over and saw that I had to pay postage. As a potential juror fulfilling my honorable civic duty, apparently they still see me as a regular old chump who has to pay postage. Big surprise!

A story

The sun was brisk and burning on Jonas’ shoulders as he bent over his work in the clay-ridden soil that consumed this long coastal valley. He leaned up to stretch his sore back, taking in the thirty acres that were his life and had been his father’s life before him.

“A farmer can’t be faint of heart,” his grandfather had once told him, “But the land repays you, boy, if you give it all you’ve got.” Jonas had learned that a farmer’s payment had little to do with monetary wealth, but he had come to consider his grandfather’s words truth. With just he and his wife, Annie, on the farm, their pains were more than enough for them both. As he knelt over his work, Jonas heard a faint breeze toil gently around the tall grasses as though it was speaking to him. It filled his spirit with the strength he needed to finish the field.

Jonas didn’t hear about the plans to build Highway 57 through town until a man wearing a black suit and pasty white skin knocked on his door and asked for the thirteen acres they would require through his fields.

“No, thank you,” Jonas told him and shut the door. But the man returned with more government people in more expensive suits who cajoled and preached and threatened him. Finally when the men were nearly defeated by Jonas’ obstinate refusal, one of them in the back stepped forward waving a paper like a victory banner in Jonas’ face. At the top of the page was printed, in bold, swirling font, “5th AMENDMENT OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.” These were pages and pages of explanation about how and why the government could take Jonas’ land and they gave him a week to read them. Jonas read every word. The government men returned in a jovial mood, willing to be friends now that Jonas had surely come around, even if he had been rude and unaccommodating at first.

“Public good,” the man in the black suit misquoted, and nodded his head, certain that now finally, Jonas understood their altruism. But Jonas still didn’t understand. It hadn’t been for the public good, for example, when Eastern Port had been attacked from without and the government hadn’t sent the military because it might incite war. The bombed wreckage of the three square miles around the port was like a dark hole burned out of the country’s landscape and it whispered across the nation the message that they hadn’t until then been able to convince the public of. It whispered that the government’s modern role was regulation, not protection. And Jonas suspected that the Constitution was as good as lost in the wreckage.

“Your signature, sir,” said the official, clearing his throat, and Jonas’ hand, signing away the deed to his grandfather’s land, didn’t shake.

“Drought,” he told himself. “The drought of ’74 dried up the entire farm, not just thirteen acres.” The only solution then had been to work harder. And Jonas did work harder, now, as he had then, until the exhaust from the motors and the shaking ground from the incessant traffic permeated across the remainder of his land and the crops curled up into black rolls, like ashes, and the farm was ruined.

Jonas was 45.

“Only 45,” he said to his wife when he told her he’d have to get a job in town.

“Only 45,” he told himself the day he left his home and walked onto his first building site. And he put the thirty years he had devoted to the land behind him.

When Jonas was 47, he was allowed to become an equipment operator.

When he was 50, he became a mason.

By 55, he was foreman, and had never been paid as much money before. He tried not to notice the farm, overgrown, and still patched with black from the old ashes, and it wasn’t too painful because hard work was what he had been taught, and as long as he was doing that, and providing, he knew he had everything a man should have.

It was for the debt, at first, the national debt, that they raised the taxes.

And then the schools, because there were more kids now, and they were entitled to college, not just grade school.

The hospitals needed it next, but not the hospitals, really. The insurance companies needed it because healthcare was a right, not a privilege, but some people couldn’t afford it.

And this time, a tax-collector came to the door and waved a form in Jonas’ face.

“Wrong tax-bracket, sir,” he said, “You filled out the wrong form. You’re in the upper bracket now.” And Jonas found that this meant that he paid for twice as many doctor visits for people he didn’t know.

And then one day Annie died. Jonas’ Annie. And he finally knew what heartbreak was. The muscle inside him seemed to be ripping out of his chest like the roots of an ancient tree that has survived hurricane and blight, but finds – at the last – that time itself is more than it can bare. The tears fell down his face in rivulets, running the course of each work-worn wrinkle on each long cheek as he knelt by her coffin. For three days straight. Until, on the fourth day, his forehead resting on his arm against the coffin, he heard the preacher whispering to a sympathetic parishioner.

“They say this kind can be treated, if it’s caught fast enough,” the parishioner said, “But each day counts with these things.”

Jonas knew then that it wasn’t the cancer that had killed Annie. It had taken them eleven months to get her an appointment with an oncologist. When Jonas raised his head, his eyes were dry, even as he watched them lower the coffin into the ground. Foreign ground. Because family burials on private land were no longer legal.

Eventually, business moved away from that bustling city on to another, as business will. Route 57, that ran across Jonas’ thirteen acres, was all but abandoned. He watched people roll out of town. First the truckers and workers; then the homeowners and their families; then the business-owners and public officials. Each parade of cars fancier, shinier, than the one before. He recognized the tax-collector leaving in a convertible.

Jonas was left on what was left of his farm, supporting his countrymen through forced charity what he would have given them freely out of his own hand. And that was how it was. That each good, hardworking man worked for naught. That his neighbor – whom he would have liked to befriend – was ashamed to show him his face, for for each new motion of laziness and ineptitude that he committed, his neighbor worked harder and more futilely than before.

They called it kindness, fairness, humanism, that each man might live unconditionally granted the rights with which he was born. But it was just a more vicious kind of injustice.

Just a note

There are significant differences between the words fairness and justice and a good lot of people would do a lot of good to learn the difference and then choose their words accordingly.

(For the sake of self-betterment, reading the United States Constitution through a couple times - or even once - wouldn't hurt either.)

A new level of low

I disagree with the current administration and the politics that back it on virtually everything. I think the campaigning for this election was underhanded and graceless and I think that the American people are not only being fed, but also eating lies. But I watched scapegoating on TV today and I think this is a new level of low from our current “leaders.” I don’t intend to go off on the AIG “scandal” for too long or to dissect or quote people on the subject. But has anybody been watching Congress tear Liddy apart on the subject of AIG? Congress has turned AIG (and its questionable integrity) into a scapegoat to hide its own huge mistakes which involved:
1) throwing bailout funding (money that, incidentally, doesn’t even exist in America)around like it’s Monopoly money when they shouldn’t have approved any money to go out to begin with, and
2) not explicitly stating what the receivers of the money were and were not allowed to do with it.

AIG’s use of bailout money is not the problem we are facing; the problem is the bailout itself. And everyone (some with excruciating slowness) is beginning to notice. Now, realizing their own horrendous mistake, Congress has decided to find a conveniently big name like AIG and try to bring it down with the support of the taxpayers by framing it to look like it is AIG’s fault that the government stole and negligently used taxpayer money. It’s a beautiful thing: a whole slew of Congressmen against Liddy, asking him obscene questions that he can’t answer because if he does they will tear him (or his associates) further apart for the way he worded something or for some promise he made that he didn’t actually make but that they can make it look like he made. Liddy actually said (okay I am going to quote) “I’m sorry to be so evasive, but…” (and he went on to explain his concern for his associates’ safety if he revealed names and other information). When was the last time we heard a politician or corporate head or any other big shot ADMIT that he was being evasive and then explicitly explain why he was being evasive for good cause? It indicates to me that Liddy is still a human being which is more than I can say for the majority of Congress sitting “stone cold dead” on their high horses trying to make AIG look bad so that nobody will notice their own failures. And the bald guy yells at Liddy (actually interrupts him with), “YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE EVASIVE…” And all I can think is that this guy must have done something really terrible because anyone who is that passionate about bringing someone else (who is not even guilty) down must have a lot of his own hide resting on it.

So President Obama’s stimulus crap continues to fail (Caterpillar is still laying off tractor-loads of people) which is no big surprise to any rational human being; Congress is too stupid to insert a small clause that says, “you can only use this money for the following ten things…;” and AIG gets blamed. It’s very convenient. Because Obama stands up there comparing himself to Lincoln and people keep swooning over him and AIG is the type of Big Bad Business that everybody loves to hate. Well played. This game is a great test of the public’s intelligence.

Maybe this is what Limbaugh means by failure

The headline on CNN right now says: “FIRST STIMULUS PROJECT ‘A WASTE?’” They’re in St. Louis making some enormous deal about how shocking and offending it is that stimulus money in St. Louis is being used wastefully and I think – out loud and to the misfortune of everyone else in the room attempting to have a peaceful evening– how amazing it is that they are SURPRISED by the fact that stimulus money is being used negligently. To think that billions of dollars worth of money being negligently thrown at people by a government that has no respect for fiscal responsibility to begin with should then be used negligently by companies and industries that were irresponsible enough to get themselves in the situation to need the money! To think that people who are fiscally irresponsible have not magically become responsible after having large sums of unearned money thrown at them! To think that billions of dollars worth of money does not make people smarter!

But what I really want to say is: thank goodness for companies like Northern Trust (who, before you call me shortsighted, I fully admit probably has a lot of low, unethical, and wasteful action going on behind the scenes that has no association with their recent “infamy”) and God keep me from strangling the virtual necks of the unintelligent people who comment on these news reports! The story goes (and it is startlingly difficult to get a straight story. “Where the press is free and every man can read…” – Jefferson, right?) that Northern Trust Bank threw a huge appreciation gala for a bunch of their clients and execs after having received federal bailout money. The golf tournament, music extravaganza was the second annual Northern Trust event and, according to some sources, raises large amounts of charity money. According to Northern Trust, they never wanted bailout money to begin with. The company made $641 million dollars last year and didn’t need any federal money, but “agreed to the government’s goal of gaining the participation of all major banks in the United States.” Supposedly, they are more than willing to give the money back, albeit gradually. According to some sources, however, Congress, despite being up in arms about the incident, won’t actually accept the money back. People are even angrier because Northern Trust apparently laid off 400-some employees in December. This doesn’t seem to me to be a particularly large number, but that’s not the most important point. The most important point is that laying off employees that are not needed is one of the ways to keep your business from flopping, as is schmoozing loyal customers. Both of these actions on Northern Trust’s part seem to me well-thought-out business decisions, not extraneous acts of negligence.

But all of this is irrelevant when compared to the fact that Northern Trust never wanted or needed government money to begin with. Furthermore, if their gala cost them less than $641 million, then it is a totally justifiable argument that they were not spending government, but their own money. Besides which, there were no specific directions by Congress prohibiting this type of spending with bailout money. Thus, for the government to condemn Northern Trust is a blatant attempt to exert even more excessive control over the banks. If Congress can arbitrarily proclaim that a company, industry, or individual is not using “their” (i.e. my) money “properly,” then there are virtually no lines at all that they can and will not cross.

I’ve left out another relevant detail. Apparently, Northern Trust signed a contract two years ago that they would host this event for the next five years, well before any bailout money was offered to (or forced on) them. The article on ABC news online by Maddy Sauer ACTUALLY STATES: “Critics say even if the bank has contractual obligations, money could have been saved by canceling concerts or staying in budget accommodations.” So now, a company is free to spend its money as it pleases unless socially moral and intelligent judges like Barney Frank proclaim that they are being (and I quote) “lavish.” I see.

Tom Schatz, some meager human being with the title President of Citizens Against Government Waste (reminds me of the Dr. Seuss book where the watcher needs a watcher!) suggests that, “that’s really the issue more than prior commitments. You can cancel a concert.” Apparently, a contract no longer means anything. This is good news for me as the state is stealing $23 in taxes from me this year and I am glad to hear that the signature I put at the bottom of my tax form is null and void and I can keep my twenty three bucks. But Schatz doesn’t stop there. He is, after all, a concerned citizen. “Firing” (I read a shirt once that defined liberalism as changing the definitions of words to suit their own needs) 450 employees, Schatz says “isn’t great…for the morale of taxpayers.” He’s right! When I heard that Northern Trust had laid off 450 employees, I was on Prozac for weeks, but when Obama raised everybody’s taxes and stole hard working people’s money to give to failed businesses, that was only fair.

Apparently, though, some people agree with Schatz. If the articles on Northern Trust aren't ridiculous enough, people’s commentary on the (this was the favorite word) “greed” of the Big Bad Bank is over the top. Aside from the patriotic citizens like “help this country,” who said things like “the bailout was rewarding bad behavior to begin with,” so many people seem to believe that Northern Trust’s extravagant spending (of their own money) is an insult to hard-working Americans, though stealing our money to begin with was all in the line of duty. “lalibertekai0111” asks “Why was the money taken if they DID NOT NEED IT!!!” (apparently, “lal” entirely failed to actually read the article) and wants to “build some kind of database that every corporation should install therefore tracking exactly where the money was spent” This amazes me! Granted, random people leaving messages at the ends of online news articles don’t have to qualify as intelligent (at the risk of sounding egotistical, random ranting bloggers don’t have to be qualified either), but this person calls himself (for all the politically correct crusaders out there, this is not me being sexist, this is just me being unwilling to write: him/herself every time I don’t know someone’s gender) an AMERICAN and wants a universal database through which companies have to input all their spending for government surveillance. “So this is how democracy dies - to thunderous applause.”

Apparently, “lal” isn’t the only one touting socialism. According to him, “we ALL [emphasis mine] agree that the money should go to the most appropriate places as long as it revives the economy.” In fact, when I wrote 90% of my hard-earned salary away to the feds, I specifically noted that ALL of my money should be used in the MOST appropriate places JUST SO LONG AS IT WOULD REVIVE THE ECONOMY. I trust that Congress will be able to judge what is “appropriate” for me, as I am clearly not competent enough to do so, but I asked for a contract stating that I would receive a refund if the economy was not dramatically improved by Tuesday. They signed the contract, but Tuesday has come and gone and the economy still stinks. I can’t even get two cents on eBay for the signature because this is America and we don’t abide by contracts here.

This other guy (P.C. gal), "pinkpoppies09," says that “the actions taken by Northern Trust were a slap in the face of every hardworking American who is going to have to pay higher taxes down the road for the bailout money they were given.” This represents truly superior thinking because I am sure that, had Northern Trust adamantly resisted the money being forced down their throats to the point of being sent to jail for nonconformity, the government would have taken their allotted money and redistributed it to all of us hard-working Americans, thus reducing the katrillion dollar debt we have already prepared for our children by 0.0000000023%. Six-digit disability money being given to a woman who thinks she is Angelina Jolie and is birthing large quantities of babies without any prospect of acquiring a job is not an insult to taxpayers. Taking more money from rich people who have earned their money through blood, sweat, and tears, and distributing it to people who lack the motivation, ambition, courage, or persistence to do the same is just the American way. Northern Trust using their own money to further their business, now THAT’S a slap in the face.

There’s still hope. IberiaBank Corp. is sending the money back. Based in Louisiana, the bank has filed paperwork to repay some $90 million from the Troubled Asset Relief Program’s Capital Purchase Program (the more words, the more vague and gray appears the evil), because, they say, “We believe recent actions, interpretations and commentary regarding various aspects of the program places our company at an unacceptable competitive disadvantage. Our board of directors has determined that continued participation in this program is no longer in the best interest of our company and its shareholders.” (i.e. lalibertekai0111’s universal database is scaring the need out of Iberia) So what if the companies realize that the government intrusion on their livelihoods isn’t worth the pay? And what if the people realize that the way their money is being spent isn’t worth the working hours? Well, what if America becomes a free-market again? Maybe this is what Limbaugh means by failure.

La liberté éclairant le monde

I went to New York City for the first time recently. It was a whirlwind trip that involved miles of walking and a longer list of things to see coming home than I had going. It was amazing! On the advice of a New Yorker, we went to Frauncis Tavern, the place where George Washington gave his farewell speech to his troops before heading home to Virginia, about a week after the British left New York City, effectually ending the Revolutionary War. He would soon become the first president of the new United States of America, but just then he was "only" a general, a military man through-and-through. The parting with his troops was an emotional one for all of them. They had just won a war and created a nation and it was truly the end of an era. I stood in the room on the third floor where the men had gathered...where George Washington himself had stood.

People call me an idealist and they are unarguably correct. I can't help it. And I'm realistic enough to know that Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, and the others weren't saints or gods or superheroes. But it disgusts, actually disgusts me to compare our politicians of today with our founding fathers. Washington never wanted to be president. He was a general, a military man through-and-through. And I thought of that when I read these lines from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: "perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who...have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well."

I inevitably think (and this is my proof that I am not a pure idealist) of this past election and the shameless, graceless way in which candidates from both parties "fought" for the presidency. Mud-slinging is too subtle a word for what went on, and has been going on for some time. This was downright meanness, lies, and deceit. Not one time in the entire race was I convinced that our current president wanted to win the presidency because he believed he would do great things for America, indeed because he believed in America at all. Rather he, and all the candidates, seemed to be running against the other candidates simply to win, simply to watch the other ones lose, like a "grown-up" version of a high school prom queen election. Who was the prettiest candidate; more importantly, who was the most successful at pulling the wool over the American people's eyes and making them believe that the poor semblance of humanity before them was competent enough to be president? Politicians no longer even remotely act as representatives of the people. Rather, they pose as strong, perseverant, capable leaders who will lead the people blindly around. And the worst thing about it, the thing that infuriates me the most, is that the people buy it! Apparently, at least 53% - and more probably closer to 80% - of Americans no longer even want a representative. They want a protector, an all-powerful presence who will ensure that their lives and livelihoods are safe and comfortable, no matter what the cost.

We didn’t have time to take the ferry out to the Statue of Liberty so, although seeing her from shore was at the top of my list, I didn’t expect much more than I have seen on innumerable postcards. We walked through Battery Park and, to my delight, came upon the harbor. But the sight of the Statue of Liberty left me in awe. I couldn’t turn away. I cried. I sat there in thirty degree weather and just stared. She is beautiful, and graceful, and even from that distance has a presence that I would never believe a copper statue could possibly have. And she defies the tumult and corruption and confusion that currently grips America, that I believe (call me an alarmist) currently threatens the basic principles upon which we were founded. She says, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" And she still believes it.

These days I often think of something Vonnegut wrote in Cat’s Cradle about some character whose name I’ve forgotten: “Sometimes I wonder if he wasn’t born dead. I never met a man who was less interested in the living. Sometimes I think that’s the trouble with the world: too many people in high places who are stone cold dead.” Seriously, I wonder, in our political “leaders”, where intellect, rationale, and righteousness have disappeared to. I hope the Statue of Liberty, and a few Americans, can keep the faith.

isn’t it amazing
the way that right song
just fills your bones
and makes your heart open
up to the crazy world
that beats against you
and sometimes makes you
– dead

the
way
each
curling
windswept
tide-swirled nine-
katrillion-grains-of-
salt-twirled, re – lent – less, pounding wave
comes in to shore and back out
just like
that

that it’s no real feat at all
– but sometimes you wake up
and can’t see the goodness of a day
let alone the strength that makes you

that just one breath
inside your going-for-a-hundred-years
body means
some immeasurable
– unfathomable
– uncoincidental
number of things went right inside and
you’re alive

Okay class…today’s lesson – PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY…

Remember when you were ten and you really, really, really wanted a puppy? And you begged and begged and all you got were lectures about how much care a puppy needed: “a puppy needs walked, and bathed, and brushed, and fed twice a day, and taken to the vet, and trained, and cuddled, and read to, and helped with its homework, and frequent trips on private jets…” and “you don’t even make your bed in the mornings! What should make me think you would take care of a puppy?” and “if you show me that you're responsible then maaaaybe I will begin to possibly consider getting you a dog someday.” So you promised up and down and inside out that you would make your bed every day, and brush your teeth, and go to bed without being asked, and do your homework early…And finally when you were sixteen and your interest in puppies was finally waning in comparison to sports and members of the opposite sex, your parents decided you were responsible enough to get a puppy. “But you can bet,” your mom told you in the firm voice that only years of motherhood can master, “that I will not so much as lift a finger to take care of that thing. It is entirely your responsibility.” And even while you accepted the challenge you knew that if that puppy ever left so much as one single hair on the furniture and you didn’t pick it up, you would go down in infamy as the most irresponsible person to ever defame the family genes.

Remember that? Or maybe you don’t. Because apparently, based on the current adult population, children no longer learn lessons of responsibility from their parents. Instead, they learn entitlement. How much they are owed by everybody else for being alive and how frequently they are viciously robbed of their rights by those who do not appreciate laziness, ineptitude, and corruption. A puppy? You want a puppy? Get a puppy! If you find you can’t take care of it, Washington will certainly bail you out. It is, after all, your right to be negligent in a free country such as ours.

I was raised (yes, actually raised. Not set in front of the TV, or in the alley behind our house, or aborted entirely. RAISED) by parents who not only required us to be personally responsible, but also taught us not to pass the blame on to others, even if they deserved it! Yes, even if they deserved it. If it was a matter of justice, life, or death, it was acceptable to make a case for yourself in defense of something you were accused of doing, but didn’t actually do. But even if you knew who did do it, even if their eyes were burning holes through you, you didn’t, unless it was a matter of justice, life, or death, tell who had done it. My parents never stormed into a room and shouted, “Who threw the paper towels in a puddle of water in the bathroom?” Instead, they stormed in and said, “Somebody better go pick up the paper towels that are sitting in a puddle of water in the bathroom.” If you had done it, you fixed it and the case was closed. If you hadn’t done it, you fixed it and got the satisfaction of knowing you were a bigger person than the one who had done it. It’s a method of deferment. Defer the blame to fix the problem. A shouting match about who did something graceless, obscene, or stupid, would never have gotten the damn paper towels out of the puddle because anyone, if he is human, is going to get defensive when somebody points a big, accusing finger in his face. Don’t demand to know who messed up. Fix it. SOMEBODY JUST FIX IT. Take responsibility for your world. Be an upstanding, responsible human being, even if the whole world is exploding around you. And, most importantly, when you mess up, however small or obscenely huge, accept the blame and do what you should.

It’s a simple lesson, but it is not one that applies solely to deviant ten year olds who leave paper towels in puddles. And that’s the problem, it seems. The majority of American “grown-ups” – those who are in high places and those who are not – seem to have completely forgotten those basic childhood lessons. “I have bad credit because I spent more money than I made and made the assumption that rectangular pieces of plastic would solve my problems. So what do I do? Stop spending money that I don’t have. Why bother? The world owes me money and there are dozens of lawyers and companies that are more than willing to screw around with the numbers and cut me a break I don’t deserve.” “I am a bank giving enormous loans to people with bad credit and pretty soon my funds will run out and people are going to freak out and try to withdraw money, but the money’s not there because I loaned it out negligently.” Should we allow the bank to go under, allow the basic principles of capitalism on which this country was built to prosper and let the incompetent companies fail? Heck no! Socialism is the answer. The government will save us.

There was a little blurb in USA Today the other day entitled “Museum joins list of economy’s victims.” Apparently, Brandeis University in Massachusetts is shutting down its Rose Art Museum because, according to the school’s president “The Rose is a jewel but, for the most part, it’s a hidden jewel. We felt that at this point, given the recession and the financial crisis, we had no choice.” Oh horror of horrors! Call in the troops! You mean this place is actually taking the initiative to manage its finances responsibly? You mean that it is willing to sacrifice something that is a drain on the system in order to make some money and avoid biting the dust? Victim indeed.

If one more person above the age of seven tells me that something or another about his life is not “fair!” I’m going to spit in his face. Is mine the only mother left who taught her children that life is not fair? The world doesn’t owe anybody fair. And the government certainly doesn’t owe anybody fair. Sometimes you work hard and good things come of it. And sometimes, you work hard and crap happens. That’s not a problem, it’s not an injustice, or a tough break. That’s LIFE. And instead of crying about it, or calling for other people more incompetent than yourself to “fix” it, suck it up and fix it yourself. Take responsibility for your life, whether it’s your own fault or not!

Speaks for itself!

"My daddy taught me in this country everyone’s the same
You work hard for your dollar and you never pass the blame
When it don’t go your way
Now I see all these big shots whinin’ on my evening news
About how they’re losin’ billions and how it’s up to me and you
To come running to the rescue
Well pardon me if I don’t shed a tear ‘cause they’re selling make believe
And we don’t buy that here

'Cause in the real world they're shuttin' Detroit down
While the boss man takes his bonus pay and jets on out of town
And DC’s bailin' out the bankers as the farmers auction ground,
Yeah while they’re livin' it up on Wall Street in that New York City town,
Here in the real world they're shuttin’ Detroit down.

Well that old man’s been workin’ in that plant most all his life
Now his pension plan’s been cut in half and he can’t afford to die
And it’s a cryin' shame, ‘cause he ain’t the one to blame
When I look down and see his caloused hands,
Let me tell you friend it gets me fightin’ mad

'Cause in the real world they're shuttin' Detroit down
While the boss man takes his bonus pay and jets on out of town
And DC’s bailin' out the bankers as the farmers auction ground,
Yeah while they’re livin' it up on Wall Street in that New York City town,
Here in the real world they're shuttin’ Detroit down."

"Shuttin' Detroit Down"
by John Rich
www.johnrich.com