The It's Not Worth It Advisory Freeway Sign Philosophy

You know those electronic signs they have on the freeways now that flash up Code Adams or tell you the wait time for getting to specific destinations? Well, lately, along the 22 and 405, when there is nothing better to flash up on the electronic signs, they say:

HANDHELD CELL TICKET

$159+

IT'S NOT WORTH IT

And every time I see that message it reminds me of another issue I’ve been going over in my brain regarding healthcare and how to get people to lead healthier lives. I’ve been going off of a very specific example and analyzing why it bothers me so much and in this message on the freeway signs, I have found at least part of my answer. Let me give you a brief rundown of the healthcare issue I’m referring to. A particular public health school of thought supports the use of monetary incentive to induce people to lead healthier lives. For example, excess consumption of soda has been linked to increased risk of type 2 diabetes. The thought, then, is that if we place a tax on soda, people will be less inclined to purchase (and thus consume) as much soda. Furthermore, the tax money could be used to educate people about why soda is bad for your health. The resulting decrease in life-style induced type 2 diabetes, extrapolated, would allow medical resources (which – despite the heroic argument circulating around the country these days – remain limited) to be used toward unpreventable diseases. Now, I am all for a redistribution of how healthcare funds are spent, trust me! But this tax idea really irks me, and it’s not even primarily because taxes in general irk me. I have determined that it is all in keeping with my views on this electronic freeway sign message and how upstanding societies are built – a strain of ideas I have coined the It’s Not Worth It Advisory Freeway Sign Philosophy. (You heard it here first.)

I’ll start by saying (as you’ve probably already surmised) that I abhor these signs; they make me cringe every time I pass by them, which is about a hundred times a week. Not because they call it a “handheld cell,” which is vaguely redundant and cannot be attributed to common usage and which, worst of all, misrepresents the word “handheld” as meaning “something that you are, at this exact moment, holding in your hand.” And not because it so kindly informs me, without really giving me any useful information, how much I will be charged when my civil liberties to use my own damn cell phone on my own damn time are shamelessly inhibited by superfluous laws. (Not useful because, let’s face it, all it really leaves me wondering is under what circumstances will my fine actually be on the + side of $159.) The reason these particular signs really excite my gag reflex is because of the fabulously condescending third line: IT’S NOT WORTH IT.

Now call me paranoid, but when a random sign who doesn’t know my little silver Mazda from the random silver Mazda two cars away, much less me from the other random Mazda driver, on a random freeway tells me that something is or is not worth my doing, it necessarily makes me mildly suspicious. The reason being, of course, that besides the fact that the sign is inanimate and thus can’t actually formulate its own advice, it also fails to take into consideration the thirteen million different things that may be going on in my life that would make a handheld cell ticket of $159+ worth it to me. I know, in this country, we are very eager to join everyone into one beautiful and disgustingly unvaried mass of “color blind,” “non-sexist,” socioeconomically “equal” sheep, but let me suggest that we are all, in fact, very different. If you will – at least momentarily – accept this premise, then it is possible to suppose all sorts of situations in which the ticket would indeed be worth it to a given individual. What if I am a pregnant millionaire about to go to into labor and I couldn’t get in touch with a single person I know before I left the house? My water has broken and I am driving myself to the hospital because I know it will be quicker than waiting for the ambulance to get there and because, more importantly, my 89 year old grandfather is dying of lung cancer at the very same hospital toward which I am headed. What is $159+ really worth to me then? What if my friend of 25 years is suicidal and I am attempting to talk her out of jumping off of a high-rise building while simultaneously driving to her house to see if I can bodily save her life myself? What if it’s something smaller? What if I am on the phone with the love of my life and my best friend after an exhaustingly depressing week and it is the first time I have laughed the entire day? To hell with drinking on a Thursday night, I’ll spend my hundred bucks talking on the phone on my way home from work. What if I am some delusional, transcendental idealist with some ridiculous ideas of nonconformity and I want to disobey the law and I want to be pulled over so that people will understand the plight of the politically oppressed? Don’t tell me, oh-ye-sign-of-great-presumption that you know what $159+ and a cell phone conversation are worth to me!

Okay so it’s not the sign I’m mad at. It’s the bureaucratic force that decided it would be a good idea to look down from a high seat of grandiose power on the peon citizens who pay their paychecks and imply to all the supposedly adult and responsible people (responsible enough, anyway, to be given driver’s licenses) that they are school children who need to be instructed on how to make judgments for their own lives. Instead of informing me that there will be a fine for breaking the law and then having the decency to allow me to weigh my risks and benefits in this regard, they instead instruct me – in what they pretend is a sort of witty and helpful commentary – to follow their rules for my own benefit. (Instead of informing me that excessive soda consumption causes increased risk of diabetes, they force upon me what they pretend is a generous and helpful incentive, to follow their rules for my own benefit.)

What if instead, they treated me like an intelligent, reasoning being? (Now, I know it’s a big step to attach those characteristics to human beings as a whole, but if we don’t use that assumption, then it follows that they are just as akin to chimpanzees as I, and thus we are still on equal footing). What if they told me straight, “Hey, Roya, we don’t give a rat’s ass that you think this law is unconscionable. It’s a law and if you break it, we are going to delight in pulling you over and we probably won’t even help you scrape out the spare change from under your car mats to pay the $159+ that you now owe the state.”? (What if they told me, straight, “Hey, Roya, we don’t care that you love soda so much that you can’t pull your fat ass together enough to refrain from drinking it at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And we don’t care that you now have diabetes. We’re not paying for you to get fixed, because, frankly, there are people who deserve medical care more than you do.”?) Is it possible, that if we as a society, made the assumption that people were going to be responsible for doing the right things for their own selves, instead of being connived into doing what we as a collective think is best for them as a collective, is it possible that people would then find it necessary to actually take responsibility for themselves? We all complain about dumbing down American schools. Why are the schools being dumbed down? Because we don’t want to tell the kid who doesn’t learn math as quickly as the Einstein sitting next to him, “I’m sorry life is harder for you kid, but suck it up, embrace who you are, work your ass off, and be a good person anyway.” We don’t want him to feel this vast unfairness. So we take care of him for him. We say, okay, you only have to know as much as the dumbest kid here. But who are we really crutching? As always, the people who are going to take advantage of the system. The ones who would be amazing and brilliant if they took responsibility can now slide by on nothing and populate our world with dopes. Because that’s all we expected of them.

What bothers me is this idea that people who have more knowledge or power in a particular aspect of life are so quick to insult the intelligence of the people who, for many different reasons, lack that same knowledge or power. But that is not what knowledge and power are all about. People who we put in charge of our government – people who have the education to be our healthcare leaders – should not be persuading us to believe certain things. Rather, I argue, their job – if they are indeed public servants – is to help bridge the gap between the vast amount of knowledge they have acquired from devoting their lives to a certain subject and the understanding of those of us who have devoted our lives to other subjects. Thus allowing us to place as much trust in them as our own intelligent and rational brains suggest that we do; thus acknowledging that the difference between us is not intellect versus stupidity, or superiority versus inferiority, but rather expertise versus novice. And I really think if we can make that distinction, citizens will become more involved in their own lives because they will realize that society and community are not sociological concepts that ebb and flow around them, as though disjointed from their opinions and actions, but rather that they themselves are society and community and they must make it what they will (dumbasses driving people off the road, life-style induced diabetics, or healthy, resilient, considerate individuals).

Will there be casualties? Most definitely. Will there be innocent casualties. Unfortunately, but inevitably, yes. But at some point we have to recognize that a society that artificially crutches people’s weaknesses in order to “protect” them nurtures individuals who become too lazy, apathetic, and irrational to make their own responsible decisions. And in that society, the number of casualties - innocent and otherwise - will be vastly greater.

-R.E.A.

Camellia February

February must be camellia month in Sacramento. There may be other camellia months here, but February is the one I have been witness to and thus the most special to me. I have always loved camellias. Loved them for their sweet, ruffly bursts of voluptuous color. Opal and crimson and blush and so large and moonish and perfect that they make you wonder why roses get all the credit when they exist in a world with camellias. Loved them for their round marble buds with just the faintest tips of petal showing at the edges, hinting at what they might be, surrounded by soft coats of gentle spring green. Loved them for the two in particular who stood gracefully by the front door at our Birchwood home and for the way they look, bobbing charmingly in shallow bowls of water. And so, I thought, I loved the camellias as much as a person could love them. And then I met February in Sacramento. Here, in February, the camellias are in bloom on nearly every front lawn and in hedges along the side walls of apartment buildings. They are covered, covered in blooms, their strong branches hanging heavy with flowers and scattered about in the grass are the fallen petals of flowers left long and glorious on the limb. Camellia trees resound. If you have ever loved a camellia, you should see them when they are trees. Not cropped into unhappy square hedges of awkward heights, camellia trees are resplendent in their low, exuberant grandeur. Until the camellia trees, I had thought of my drive through the grapevine this trip with a small hint of sadness that I had come too early yet to see the lupines scattered among the poppies on the mountains. But if I had made it for the lupines, I may have missed the February camellias and so I know that the timing was right after all.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about muses. It may seem like muses have nothing to do with camellia trees or camellias with muses, but for me, they most definitely do. Writer’s block, the opposite of the muse, I don’t believe in. I suspect that any person staring at a blank page covered endlessly in empty blue lines, or an empty computer screen with a lethargically blinking cursor, must necessarily find her stream of thoughts and words strained in the face of all that expectant potential. But that’s not writer’s block, that’s just distraction. Like how sometimes at night when the silence is so complete in the darkness that it pounds in your ears and you can’t fall asleep, so tense are you, listening attentively for any faint sound of proof that you haven’t gone deaf and that the world is still breathing around you. And I know some people have a fear of putting words down on paper if they are not polished and complete and wise. Indeed, I ken that fear well. But that is not writer’s block either; that is a nervousness to commit and an insecurity over the relevance of our own intelligence. I don’t believe in writer’s block because there really is no actual block. Not even in our frightened, unintelligent, inarticulate brains. Just the whole world going around and around and waiting for us to write it. Besides, I have a cure (yes, I realize that I can’t believe in a cure if I don’t believe in the problem. “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.”). But I have a cure, nevertheless. The cure for writer’s block is a word. What word, you ask? Any word. The first one that comes to mind. The last one that comes to mind. Whichever one you put down on the paper. It doesn’t even have to be a real word. It could be something like scklerge. The cure for writer’s block is scklerge. That’s it. Just write scklerge down on your paper, or type it down on your computer, and voilà, writer’s block is banished. It never existed. If you find scklerge less than inspiring, follow it up with another, better word. Something like clarf or ricochet or malarkey. Malarkey is particularly fitting in meaning as well as pronunciation. So maybe when I say I don’t believe in writer’s block, what I really mean is that I don’t waste my time with it.

But muses I will waste my time with. Muses, I believe in. (In the spirit of: if not the con, the pro; if not the yang, the yin), I don’t believe in a something that keeps me from writing, but I believe in a something that facilitates it. Why? I don’t know. Maybe it is an obstinate hope that even when I’m feeling my most droll and un-unique, there is something that can raise me up before I lose myself entirely. Something that reminds me of the beauty and rapture in the world around me, that reminds me of God and grace and love and freedom and nostalgia and heartache and tragedy and sadness, and long, lingering, humid summer twilights, and fireflies.

The original muses lived on Helicon and Parnassus, mostly, when they weren’t rendezvousing with the gods on Olympus, and there were three or nine of them, depending on whom you ask. Actually, it’s silly to say they were the original muses because I suspect that as long as mankind has existed, so has the muse. Certainly Adam and Eve found something to inspire them: the God who created them, the great blue sky, the bounty in the garden in which they lived, even perhaps, in the whisperings of a beguiling serpent. So I don’t think the muses of classical Greece were really the originals, but certainly they are the most famous.

If those geniuses of yore ever graced us modern-folk with their presence, I would hope most for a visit from Polyhymnia, of the nine younger muses. Polyhymnia is the singer of songs to the gods, and though I am far from presuming that I may follow in her shoes, I think that she embodies what I aspire to in life and in art: a grateful recognition of all that has been offered me by the Powers That Be and a rejoicing through the way I live and work. Also, Melete, (of the three older muses) the muse of practice. For me, that is precisely what my writing is born of. I lack the natural gift that would enable me to sit down and weave the truths of light and darkness into an impeccable story in a day or a heartbeat. If I wait a month before I write again, I am as rusty as an old garden latch, the strings of my story partly unraveled, loosened, and all but lost from my grasp and it takes time for me to find them again and put them back together. For me, practice makes up for the natural talent that I lack, and if it weren’t for the ragtag pages of my journal, I would hardly be able to call myself a writer at all. If Melete deigned to visit me here in the 21st century, she would doubtless come through the pages of my journal. Melete is also reported to be born from the movement of water. And certainly, my greatest lone inspirations have come to me out of the crashing waves, when I have sat, my toes buried in sand, watching the sea gulls and the vast freedom of the sky mingling into the ocean on the shores of my hometown. After all, if Melete was ever to come to me, it would probably be there, up out of the sea at Seal Beach, and indeed, maybe she has.

Mona Lisa was also a muse, from what I hear, and her great tragedy is that she sits now in a museum behind a glass wall and a velvet rope where people can admire her only half-heartedly from a distance without ever getting close enough to feel all that she once inspired. And what about Poe’s raven? Creepy, to be sure, but if anyone were to have or create a creepy muse it would be Poe. Keats’ Fanny Brawne, though he seems a bit melodramatic (but whose to judge one man’s muse from another?) Shakespeare appealed to the muses so frequently that they may almost have become tired of hearing him call, but apparently not tired enough to forsake him entirely.

How many times a day does a person need a muse? I suppose it depends on the person. Maybe the muse comes naturally to some people. So much so that they no longer notice its whispering in their ears and only think that that is the way life is, perpetually inspiring. And then maybe there are those who are so unfamiliar with the muse that they don’t even miss it, and inspiration to them is only an unreality, something that other people talk about, that doesn’t touch them. But I suspect most of us are somewhere in the middle and we find our muses here and there, along the roadsides and scrappy byways of our lives. Sometimes they are people, sometimes mystical, sometimes neither. Sometimes they are great and poignant, like the muse we find in a brilliant sunset. Sometimes we must recognize them where they lie, neglected and murky in the gutter somewhere, and we pick them up and wipe them off, tenderly, because we suspect they are more than what they appear to be. Sometimes they are not; sometimes they are merely pieces of sewage-y tumbleweed. But sometimes they are a muse disguised, the lyric in a song that hits us with shocking fierceness, uplifting and motivating in all its honest simplicity; or the color white, splashed unmarred on a large surface, that makes us think of vibrant brush strokes and potential and reminds us of the great, blinding gift of sight. I once had a muse in the shape of a small grey mouse who ran across my path for a fleeting moment and then disappeared forever from my sight...but not from my vision. I have found more muses in raw wood than I can probably count. And also a hundred million muses that dwell in fire. And there is a special kind of muse I find only in the smell of old book pages, and another in the new ones. I don’t think you have to be a parent to have found a muse in a child’s laughter. And there is a muse, for me, in a February camellia tree.

I don’t take any kind of Calvinistic view of the muses. I don’t think they are divinely sent to a chosen few who, effort or no effort, are graced with their presence and all the diversity of wealth it invokes. No, to me, a visit from a muse is as hard of work as the art she inspires. Muses do not come to those who sit lazy and self-satisfied on the sidelines of life, waiting for the desert to which they believe they are entitled. In fact, it seems to me, that muses must find entitlement nearly as abhorrent as apathy. A muse will not come to you for nothing. You must find her. Wherever she is, on any given day, at any given moment. Through listening or guidance or a long-overdue adventure. Through curiosity. And it seems to me that it is worth it to try forever and ever, whether you mostly strike out or your hard work is oft rewarded, to find inspiration in things that are yours to see and hear and feel and think. Muses come to those who seek, and sometimes you find them in wayside places and unexpected forms, waiting for you to notice. And you know they are there because of the gentle but indelible way they grace your life, and everything, at least for a moment like the beat of a hummingbird’s wing, changes.

-R.E.A.

Oh, Wisconsin!

Over the past few days, as things in Wisconsin escalate to atrocious levels and I read the protest signs in the videos on TV with growing irritation and think again that protesting is all well and good as a Constitutional right, but it sure doesn’t bring out the best in the individual, I feel a growing self-induced pressure to develop an educated opinion on the topic. For one thing, I am going to be a teacher. Those are my future colleagues out there and no matter how badly modern-day unions heighten my gag reflex and make me lose faith in American humanity, I would like to understand the situation as it relates to them, and also as it relates to me as a citizen. I also would like to form an educated opinion because I have an interview for a teaching credential program in a few days and Jonathan so kindly brought to my attention that they may ask me about this. Oh great. Chalk one up for absolutely not getting into this school. And thank God I had some interviews before this whole thing started or I would really be in the fire.

My problem is, that as I continue to research this current event, I keep getting hung up on the most basic moral issues I have with the entire process taking place in Madison. I have an enormous problem with people blatantly NOT doing their jobs and being legally ensured that they will not be fired for it. I don’t care who you are or what you do, if you are not doing your job, you shouldn’t be getting paid for it. I read an article once about the government offering agricultural subsidies to some Amish farmers. The farmers agreed to stop growing the crops, but they refused to take the proffered government money. They said that they would not take money for work they did not do. I was fairly young, but I can remember having such a profound respect for the integrity behind the Amishmen’s decision. It has always stuck with me and I think of it from time to time, when questions of work ethic come up in my own life. Though I would not have blamed the farmers for taking the money under those circumstances, I would want to be the type of farmer who did not take the money, despite the burden it might place on me.

The point is that if we want to hold our teachers or any other workers to high standards, if we claim that we want them to be competent and diligent, we must expect a level of professionalism and work ethic. And yet, unions nurture an utter lack of any of these positive characteristics. If people cannot motivate themselves to have these qualities (which, I have to say, I would greatly hope my children’s instructors would be able to do), there should at the very least be a risk in the workforce of losing your job if you lack them. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think people shouldn’t be allowed to protest. But if they want to protest under the circumstances that they are protesting, it should be a choice between going to the picket line and keeping their jobs. If they are adamant enough about their cause; if they truly feel that a vast injustice is being done and it needs to be stopped; if they can afford to hold staunch principles over the need to make a living, they will risk their jobs for the cause. And who knows, if it really is such a terrible wrong being committed, if the conditions really are unbearable, enough people will protest to make it dangerous and unlikely for their employers to actually fire them. This is the basic premise of a protest as it should be. But the inherent risk is a necessary part of the process. Otherwise, picketing simply becomes a platform for whiners.

I also have a problem with people who are in any of the “caring” professions going on strike when they should be with the people who need them. I’m not saying that a teacher’s altruism should outweigh his desire to make a decent living. Trust me, that is the last thing I’m saying; I don’t put a whole lot of faith in the common altruist. But if you want to convince me that teaching is an important profession, necessary for our children and our society and thus deserving of good pay and good benefits, first show me that you care more about your students than your special interest groups, and, more importantly, that you believe that your job is so important and necessary that you would not dream of missing days of work if it is not directly benefiting your students.

Furthermore, when people get into a group like this, it truly brings out the very worst in them. The signs people hold up at these sorts of fiascos are embarrassing at best and ignorant, fallacious, and disgusting at worst. I understand the need to make your voice heard. But then let your voice be intelligent and rational. Strongly support your opinion instead of coming up with angry tag lines that insult opposing opinions without actually proving that yours are superior. Don’t blindly repeat the ranting coming out of a nearby megaphone, like a bunch of Hitler-Jungend. Say something of value and convince people that you are right. If you tell me that it is impossible for a group to cause a stir in this way, I will tell you that you are wrong. What you really mean is that it is easier for a group to cause a stir the other way and I do not think this is a legitimate or convincing reason for doing it.

And don’t even get me started on unions. The modern-day union is as far from the original American unions of its ancestry as I am from Xerxes the Great. The risk of getting your arm ripped off by an unruly, poorly built textile machine is not the same thing as having to work an entire four hours straight without a fifteen minute break. Wake up and smell the coffee, people, just as it is your right to quit a job whenever you want to, it is an employer’s right to fire you anytime he wants to. Does that make life more risky? Certainly. Does it lower your job security? Perhaps. Or maybe it effectively balances out the job market. If you are good at your job; if you are competent and qualified, and financially and professionally “worth it” to your employer, you will get a good job. If you want a raise, because you need it and you think you deserve it, it is up to your employer to decide how “worth it” you actually are. Are you so good that they can’t afford to lose you, even at a heightened cost? Or maybe they can afford to lose you. Then it’s up to you to decide how much you need the raise. Do you need it because you want to take an extra vacation in June? Is that vacation worth the inherent stress and risk in finding another job that will pay better? Or do you need it because you can’t afford to survive without it. If you can’t afford to survive, the inherent stress and risk in finding another job that will pay better is probably worth it. There is a balance here between employer and employee needs. And a company that consistently mistreats employees, through poor working conditions, low pay, or any other way, will lose qualified employees to companies who are willing to take better care of their employees. Maybe if the education system was run this way, we would not have so many problems with the quality of our teachers and our curriculum.

Now enter the almighty Union. Why people who have a good thing (with a few unfortunate side effects) are willing to scrap it all for a bad thing (with a few hundred unfortunate side effects) is beyond me. Capitalism...gone. Democracy...gone. It’s all very inspiring. What used to be an attempt on the part of the working class to avoid being abhorrently taken advantage of, has now become a success on the part of the American privileged to have the “perfect job” (one in which they get an inflated salary, other people paying into their retirement funds, an inability to be fired regardless of competence level, and as much opportunity to get paid for not working – or working poorly – as for working at all) without having to have any qualifications or put forth any effort (besides, of course, the effort it takes to march around carrying pre-made signs and clamoring about unfairness).

So that’s how I feel about the situation in Madison. It has nothing to do with Walker – who I suspect is a jerk – and very little to do with the specific grievances of the specific people picketing in this specific circumstance. It is difficult for me to separate their problem out from the greater more general problem under which they are functioning. Do I want good things for workers? Yes. Do I support peoples’ right to assemble? Absolutely. But I neither support nor respect the manner or the pretenses of these protestors...or indeed of the senators who left the state. Lord help me when I have to join the Teachers’ Union!

-R.E.A.

I challenge anyone to tell me one thing that is innately wrong with being rich

I am the type of person who has never once in my life expected to grow up to be the kind of person with a whole lot of money. Okay, okay, I’ve fantasized about winning the lottery (although I’ve never bought a lottery ticket in my life). And it’s true that I never wake up in my imaginary grown-up house without looking out onto my imaginary 60,000 acres covered in imaginary trees and gardens and horses – and all those things, unimaginary, cost money, to be sure. But when I boil myself right down to reality, I have always been able to face the fact that my career choices (and yes, I have gone through several hundred) have never inclined even slightly toward the path of making-me-a-lot-of-money. So this is my disclaimer to anyone who will try to overturn my upcoming argument by saying something like, “the only reason you say that is because you have a lot of money/will have a lot of money/come from a lot of money/etc./etc./etc.” Do I know rich people? Yes. I even love a few of them. I also know and love some poor people. What I’m trying to say is that this argument is not a personal one for me. I am not defending “my people” or the “people I want to be.” I am simply trying to draw attention to what I consider a grave flaw in our developing American social mentality.

The other day I was watching some news commentary show and Roseanne Barr was on. (Now, as a side note, I would like to know how it happened that every Tom, Dick, and Harry Hollywood entertainer is suddenly considered to be an authority on politics simply for having an opinion. Just because the world knows your face [okay, the whole world might be a little bit of a stretch for Roseanne Barr, but at least anyone in the country born between 1952 and 1992], doesn’t mean you are magically validated to have a relevant argument. And yes, if you’re wondering, this DOES have to do with my pent-up aggravation over not being able to get paid to rant MY political opinions on national television.) Okay, so I am not going to insult liberals by grouping them all in with Roseanne Barr, because any rational human being of any political persuasion would only need to watch her speak for about two minutes before realizing that, regardless of the righteousness of her opinions, she is, in general, an irrational and inarticulate type of creature. But she did touch on something (over and over and over again) that I think is in keeping with many of the opinions in today’s America. Somehow, “Rich People” have become synonymous with “bad people.”

Now, I don’t know exactly how this came about, but I have some guesses. To begin with, most of the schmucks in Washington and New York and other places who are messing up our government and our lives are rich. And many of these schmucks are also bad people. I think we’re all in general agreement about that. But to group the two characteristics together is fallacious. (To say that somebody = A + B is not the same thing as saying he = B because he = A) Are they scumbags? Yes. But trust me, it wasn’t the money that made them that way. There is a concept we talked about in my domestic violence training class when we were discussing alcohol abuse. The general point was that, although alcohol may incite somebody to be violent toward someone else, it is not the cause of the violence. Id est, if a dude’s the type of person who hits his wife, he’s going to hit her with or without the alcohol. The alcohol just may make him feel more free to do it. I think this is exactly the case with politicians. If you’re a scumbag, you’re going to be one with or without the money; money just may make you more likely to pull a really scumbaggy move. So we can’t blame the corruption in our government and other areas of society on the money itself. Money just makes the corruption easier.

So what else is wrong with richness? Well, it makes poor people feel bad. And let’s face it, human nature being the way it is, even those of us who are not particularly poor always seem to find it extremely easy to list all the people who happen to be richer than we. What I mean is that Americans are privileged. Even people who are in America illegally are privileged. Before everyone gets their panties in a wad, let me explain that by privileged, I don’t mean that they are necessarily treated justly or rightly or that they have everything they want or need. What I mean is that, if you walk up to a person in, for example, the “Democratic Republic of the Congo” (which I put in quotation marks because it is neither democratic nor a republic), any person, – besides maybe some piece-of-crap government official or drug dealer – and give them the opportunity to leave the Congo and instead become an illegal immigrant in America, I bet you at least 9 out of 10 would take the opportunity. Why? Because for all that everybody loves to hate America for all her issues and inconsistencies (which I fully acknowledge she has), this country still has the highest standards for human rights of anywhere else in the world. That, my friend, is privileged.

I concede that you may be able to find some impoverished Americans who are on par with impoverished people in the rest of the world. But I suspect that the number is significantly, significantly lower than anywhere else. America also has an incredibly wide spectrum of incomes. Here you are not necessarily “rich” or “poor.” You can also be “middle class,” as well as “upper middle class,” “lower middle class” and any number of classes in between. And if you ask people what income “class” they are in, they consistently answer lower than the actual numbers imply. Maybe it’s because somewhere along the line, the concept of the American Dream changed to a delusion. Instead of America being the place where everyone has the potential to be wealthy, it became, in the minds of hopeful people, the place where everyone is entitled to be wealthy. So anyone who notices his neighbor has a nicer car (when I think about this, I am always reminded of the commercial where the guy is riding on his lawnmower in this pristine front yard in front of a nice house and he’s wearing this fake smile and he says, “I’m in debt up to my eyeballs...please help me.”) suddenly thinks himself poor and feels crappy about it. It does feel crappy to not be able to buy everything you want (obviously), but more specifically it feels crappy to not be able to buy the things you know would enhance the quality of your life. Here’s what I mean: it stinks to not be able to go to the store and buy the upgraded Apple iphone 4G with an eco-friendly sage green rubber case and $13 plastic screen guard to protect against any and all possible disasters that may occur on land or at sea. Everyone knows that stinks (okay, I’ll admit that I don’t even remotely want the upgraded Apple iphone 4G with or without eco-friendly protection, but you get my drift), but everyone also knows that you can’t always immediately have everything you want exactly when you want it. (Well, not everyone knows this. There was a little boy shopping with his mother at work the other day, carrying around a 40 dollar deluxe Lego set despite the fact that I personally heard his mother tell him eight times that she was not buying it for him. I’m pretty sure he didn’t know this lesson, especially gauging from his shrieks when she finally pulled the inevitable plug and physically pried the box out of shaking fingers. We all have our lessons to learn. Trust me, little kid, it’s still better to be young than to be old.) But most people know this lesson pretty well and they can come to terms with it. C’est la vie. But the line gets foggier.

I think everyone envisions a certain style of living for themselves. I don’t just mean, “oh, yeah, I want a nice car!” I mean, we all picture the ways we want to live our lives. As an example, I’ll paint you something similar to my personal picture: I’m somewhere rural. Somewhere with fields and trees and horses. I have a huge garden and I can things in the summer to eat in the winter. Every now and again I have a glass of wine with dinner. I drive a crappy old car, but it has four wheel drive and can take me wherever I want to go. I just toss my dogs in the back seat and jet. I run and hike a lot. Some weekends, I drive into town in my fancy pants and heels and go dancing. I write. In my grown-up picture, there is also a man (presumably my husband) and several children in my painting. (I’m not there yet, but I still have the picture). That’s it in a nutshell. But only the surface. What do these things really mean to me? They mean that I lead a healthy, active life: good food, good exercise. They mean that I work at a job that I love (writing). They mean that I feel good: physically, mentally, and spiritually. Those are the things I really want: health, happiness, security, peace of mind. My picture is probably vastly different than yours, but I bet a lot of our things mean the same thing to us. Do health, happiness, security, and peace of mind cost money? Not necessarily. But does my picture cost money? Absolutely. Money for land and seeds and wine and gas and dog food and running shoes and hiking boots and fancy pants, and high heels. (Wow, do a remarkable number of my things have do with spending money on shoes? I might have a problem. But that’s another topic.) My point is that it is much harder to accept the fact that we do not have enough money to purchase the things that give us the lifestyle that we desire, because they are so closely linked in our minds with the intangible things that we really yearn for (health, happiness, security, peace of mind). And we deserve these things. And we need these things. Do you see the fuzzy line between “things-we-want” and “things-we-need?” Running shoes are not imperative to my existence, but yet in my mind they are so closely linked with good health that they are practically the same thing. I want running shoes; I need good health. That’s the distinction. But even writing it down makes me feel awkward. Because, somewhere in the back of my mind, I am under the conviction that I need those running shoes as I need good health.

And right now, I am poorer than the guy down the street who can afford new running shoes anytime he wants them. Hell, he could even afford to buy me new running shoes along with his own. And his richness makes me feel bad. Or if not bad, at least frustrated, keenly aware of what I am unable to do. But does that make him bad? Is it his fault that I can’t afford my own running shoes? Is he undeserving of his running shoes simply because I can’t have mine? I would argue that his money situation and mine are mutually exclusive. They have nothing to do with each other and thus my feelings about my own situation cannot be blamed on his situation. Thus, the fact that the existence of rich people makes poor people feel bad also does not seem a valid argument for making “rich” and “bad” one and the same.

So what is so wrong with being rich? Ms. Roseanne Barr is not the only reason that I know we have this mentality against the rich in this country. For one thing, what is the deal with not having a flat tax system? If we are so eager to be “fair” and equal in this country, this seems highly hypocritical. I don’t care what you claim the purpose of having separate tax brackets is, what it ultimately does, besides everything else it may or may not do, is punish people who make a lot of money. Okay, maybe you will say that “punish” is not the right word. But at the very least, it is detrimental, discouraging to those who are “rich,” those who have, quite probably, worked just as hard to earn their money as the poor guy down the street worked to earn his. Take me, slaving away in a big bookstore with crappy pay. Do I work my butt off? Yes! (Did you not hear me tell you about the shrieking Lego kid; my job is exhausting!) But do I need any advanced skills to do my job? Not at all, really. My job could just as well be given to a reliable middle school student. How about Boeing’s IT guy? Could a middle school student do his job? Certainly not. Could I? Heck no! He’s working his butt off, just like I am, probably, but he’s got skills and his skills earn him money. So what? We tax the hell out of him for having skills? We call him bad? We assume he is corrupt and greedy and undeserving simply because he has paved a way for himself that makes him more money than we make?

President Obama thinks that “at a certain point, you’ve made enough money.” And Nancy Pelosi says that not only should we “equalize income,” but we should also, “limit the amount the rich can invest.” Now, I can understand people wanting to assist poor people, but what is this obsession with doing it by bringing down the rich ones? You know what a rich person becomes when you take away all his money? A poor person. If you keep up at that rate, you’re going to have used up all your rich people and then what will your poor people do? (None of which, of course, is even the point.) What I’d like to ask all the people who think that being rich is so terrible is: what characteristics should a person have to be a good member of society? It seems to me that, as a society, we should be targeting the types of people who are not upstanding society members, whether they be rich or poor, instead of targeting people off of the over-generalized assumption that because they have money they must have done something wrong. I challenge anyone to tell me one thing that is innately wrong with being rich. It does not behoove us as a society or as individuals to condemn someone based on jealousy or spite. Is there, then a good reason for condemning our rich, or has wealth merely become a scapegoat?

-R.E.A.

Meanderings of a musing bibliophile

Ever since I was little, I have been slightly in awe of librarians. I’ve always suspected they have the most secretly joyful and subtly enviable profession out there in the world. Imagine, sitting all day in the middle of a room packed full of books. Old, brittle, well-read books that are perhaps outdated but none the less beloved. Books worn by curious hands, careful and uncareful, but yearning all the same. Yearning for something, whether they find the answer between the books’ pages or not. Yearning until they are satisfied and a new yearning takes its place; or yearning always unsatisfied in star-crossed happiness. The library is as much about the people who read the books as it is about the books themselves.

When I was little, I was also slightly in awe of librarians because my particular librarian, the one who checked me in and out when I came and went with my mother and our armloads of books, was stern and dower with a set scowl on her face, disinclined to talk or to smile. In my beautiful, young world, I had never met a grown-up who disliked me so I didn’t quite believe this could be the case with her, but certainly she didn’t appear to like me very much. In fact, what scared me a little bit was that I suspected that she was actually mad at me, for some past offence I didn’t know I had committed and for which, being unaware of what it was, I could never atone myself. The librarian never hesitated to tell people to hush up when they were being too loud, even when they were only little children, littler than I, there with their mothers. If you forgot to get your library card out before you set your books on the counter to be checked out, she just stared at you without saying anything until you realized your grave mistake. My library card, of course, was always ready, perched obligingly atop my book stack and I would stand on my tip toes and set the books down gently on the counter to avoid a reprimand.

The same lady is still my librarian and I wonder every time I go in if she remembers me growing up there. Year in and year out, I have tiptoed into that library, read, checked out books, studied, paid late fees. Sometimes months go by before I go in again. College studying and responsibility and a more expendable income make me a less frequent visitor of the dear old place. She never seems to change at all, though I’ve known her without knowing her for twenty one years.

But something is different. I’ve seen her laugh with some of the other librarians a time or two. And the other day when I went in I noticed that she got cold and had to put on her sweater – a very human action for someone I once suspected of being slightly supernatural. Also, I love her now, which always sheds a kinder light on people. I love her because I have known her almost all my life and I love her for what she represents to me and I love her for being slightly scary but good at her job just the same. I love her for all the things she must know and I love her for being the type of person I wish I knew better. And I’m not scared of her anymore.

The other day I took a walk to our new library to return a book. I love that I can walk to the library in less than five minutes now. Love that it’s tucked in right next to our puny city hall in what I think is the only shopping center belonging to this town. It is just a wee slip of a library. One small room with a handful of bookshelves lined up and a desk off to one side behind which the two librarians were standing. Two young, chatty, laughing librarians, eager to give us a tour of the room whose every corner we could already clearly see from where we were standing. They were nothing like my librarian. And yet, as I looked at them, standing there behind the library counter, I realized that the course of twenty years and the new, unfamiliar demeanors hadn’t changed anything. I am still in awe. Born of good-natured envy and heartfelt curiosity, and this great longing to spend my day sitting among these benevolent books. To walk around the little room and touch every one. To keep them shelved and organized; to hold the hand of a bright-eyed young reader and pull just the right book off the shelf and place it into his eager little arms. To make sure the bindings are crisp and the pages un-dog-eared and to tend to the old, worn tomes with glues and threads and presses. To be a keeper of books. To linger in the soft, dusty smell of them.

If my little corner bookstore ever comes into fruition – red brick mortared in, wooden bookshelves built up, small purring cat sprawled in a patch of sunlight. If I ever find myself behind an unassuming wooden counter, sipping hot tea, facing a little red door with a small bell eagerly anticipating the tentative entrance of some precious, curious customer, I hope that it will feel just like a library, warm and rich and full of the histories and heartbeats of the books and their authors and of the people who come to run their searching fingers along the shelves; old and young alike (books and customers), where money is only exchanged to keep the roof up and the cat fed. The kind of place that inspires fancy, and sagacity, courage. And awe.

-R.E.A.