Yes, Victoria. There is Still an America

The Right Wing had a massive shock on Tuesday.  Their pundits and media had built a lovely castle in the air and were shocked — SHOCKED! when it turned out to be an illusion.  Some of the reaction was bitter, but some was oddly poignant.  Victoria Jackson tweeted, “America just died.  I can’t stop crying.”

This has bothered me for a few days now.  Victoria, I don’t believe you’re much older than me, so I want to ask you a few things.  I know the sort of country you say you want, Victoria, and I can’t figure out why you keep calling it America, let alone want to live there.  We fought hard to bring it out of being a place like that.  Why do you want to go back to a time when your entire worth was judged on who you married?  What he did for a living?  A time when that husband made all of your decisions for you because women were considered too silly to understand anything important.  A time when something as simple as driving a car supposedly challenged a woman’s intellect — remember all of those jokes about women drivers?  Women like you and me were considered too feeble-minded to vote, understand a checking account, or have any profession other than being a secretary.  Being a teacher might be an option for a while.  Until you got married, at which time you were expected to quit.  A prospective employer was allowed to ask you if you had a boyfriend and whether you planned to get married.

If, however, you were not married by the age of 25, you were a failure.  There was something wrong with you.  You were expected to live at home with your parents and maybe have a meaningless job — the men, of course, needed the meaningful jobs.  Ask Sandra Day O’Connor how it felt when she tried to apply for a job as a lawyer and law firms kept insisting on interviewing her for secretarial work.  You made your living for many years as a comedienne.  That was not an option for women fifty years ago, and I think you know that.  Why would you want to deny ANY opportunity to those who come after you?

It is probably easier to understand society when it is not homogenous.  When everyone has their assigned “role”, and “place”.  The problem is with that, Victoria, is … who assigns the roles?  How is that decided?    There are hundreds, maybe thousands of types of Christians.  None of them are truly “just like you”.  They all seem to feel that they know God pretty well.  God’s word is amazingly adaptable, Victoria.  It has remained relevant even though we’re not all shepherds in the desert or fishermen in the Sea of Galilee.  It is still relevant through many interpretations, translations and adaptations.  Nobody knows precisely what God is thinking.  That is what makes Him God.  The Bible is a good tool, but it is not the entire mind of God.

We have been told to love one another.  Who we may or may not love was not specified.  Nobody was given permission to hate, even if you are positive that God hates someone.  The instruction was to love.   There is no multiple choice – we are to love one another.  We can both still remember a time when society limited who we may love by skin color, economics, religion and gender.  America thankfully outgrew some limitations; it is about to outgrow another.  This may be bittersweet for some, but growing up usually is.  Maturity is accepting new ideas and adapting to new things.  If you cannot change and adapt… ask a stegosaurus how that works out.

America was always meant to be the land of freedom and opportunity.  Freedom is not living within strict guidelines.  It is living according to your beliefs and conscience and allowing others to do the same.  It is admitting that some people think differently from you, that those people also may vote, and allowing them to do so gracefully.  Freedom is not imposing your beliefs on others and insisting that you and you alone are right.  Freedom is accepting that some questions have many answers.  That life is not a true and false quiz; it is an essay test.

No, Victoria.  America didn’t die.  We just grew up a little more and moved closer to our potential.

Sticks and Stones

  Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.  That is probably one of the most nonsensical and potentially damaging sayings that we bring with us from childhood.  To adopt this as a personal credo means that you dismiss the most pernicious abuse of all.

  Maybe words don’t break bones or draw blood, but what they DO is lay in the psyche and fester.  Broken bones and other physical injuries will heal.  Words never go away.  Being hit with words is like being injected with slow-acting poison with no antidote.

  As much fun as “brain bleach” is on the internet, there is no such thing in real life.  Once said, nothing can be unsaid.  You cannot un-ring a bell.  Words once heard will play in the mind of the recipient in an endless loop forever.

  I’m Sorry is not an effective bandage.  The words have still been said.  All that has changed is that people know you’re sorry that you said them now.  After the fact.  After facing consequences.

  Words have power.  The pen is mightier than the sword, and the spoken word is more powerful than that.  If you defend someone who thinks nothing of taking their rage out on someone else by demeaning them or manipulates with the threat of “making me mad”, then you are every bit as much as abuser as they.  You are helping them inject that poison.  If you question or try to silence the victim or accuse the victim of manufacturing evidence, you are abetting the abuser.  If you think that saying “I’m sorry” should make everything “all better” and turn your back because you don’t want to see; if you deny that your “friend” would do or say such things, you are not being a friend; you are not loyal.  You are, in fact, hurting the very person you think you are defending.  Encourage them to get help.  Tell them you love them, but using words as weapons is never acceptable.  Words leave wounds that will never heal.

Truth, Justice, and Instant Gratification

Americans are the Veruca Salt of the world.  Veruca Salt was the horrid, spoiled little girl in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory who got whatever she wanted and usually immedately.  Americans are no different.  Why are there so many different kinds of diets?  Why is plastic surgery so popular?  How do otherwise intelligent people fall for all manner of “get rich quick” schemes?  Because Americans want what they want and they want it immediately.

The healthy way to lose weight is to eat less and exercise more.  Simple enough.  But it takes a long time, work and patience.  It took a long time to put the weight on, so logically it will take a long time to take it off.  Americans will try anything to shorten this process.  There has to be a magic pill out there somewhere that we can wake up one morning as thin as we want to be.  We have no patience.

TV shows come and go, sometimes vanishing before they have a chance to build an audience.  Because there’s always something else; something that looks brighter and shinier.  So shows move around the schedule and eventually disappear, but nobody notices because nobody really has the patience to stick with something, and the networks know that.

Politically, the economy did not suddenly become horrible.  We didn’t wake up one morning in 2007 or so and all of the jobs were gone along with our savings.  There was a budget surplus in 2000 when President Clinton left office.  So logically, it took America eight years to get into this mess.  But being Americans, we expected that all we had to do in 2008 was vote for the right guy and all of our problems would be solved.

The right guy has worked hard over the past four years, but of course being Americans, we just can’t understand why our problems are still here.  Didn’t he fix that yet?  Why not?

President Obama is not a magic pill.  We are not going to wake up one day and suddenly have a glorious new economy and jobs for everyone.  It took eight years to get into this mess and it’s going to take time and work to pull out of it.    Eat less and exercise more.  Support the guy who’s been making steady progress as opposed to the new guy who showed up offering another version of snake oil; another get-rich quick scheme, another fall schedule.  We need to stick with what we have for once and have the patience to see it through to the end.  America will be a better place for it.

He Called Us “Overhead”

I commented to a diary on Daily KOS, and it got me thinking (Diary here:  http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/07/1128977/-Shocking-no-one-Mitt-Romney-is-a-dick-to-our-troops).

In the 1990’s, I worked for a small service company.  I worked an average of 10 hours per day and there were no lunch breaks.  You ate food at your desk and continued to work.  If you were lucky, you were the one who went to get the food.  Otherwise, you were in that building from 7:30 to 5:30 every day.  We had meetings either before 7:30 or after 5:30, when the business was closed so that no work time would be “wasted”.

Most of the meetings involved the service techs, and would educate them about new technologies and procedures.  The one meeting I recall involving the office staff was a lecture that began, “You are all overhead”.  The speech didn’t get any better from there — a long list of mistakes we’d made and things that he didn’t like.  We wondered how he would react if we would all walk out — nobody would answer his phones, order his parts, schedule the service techs.  Overhead.  We were that unimportant to him.

This is, unfortunately, how corporate America sees workers.  It was just starting in the 1990’s, but is an epidemic now.  The payroll is overhead.  The fewer people you have on it, the higher your profits.   An automated system can answer your telephone.  People overseas can follow a script to take calls for a fraction of what Americans would cost and you don’t have to give them health insurance or sick days or vacations.

This is, unfortunately, how Mr. Romney sees our troops and our population as well.  Overhead.  Needing things like food, healthcare, shelter.  All of these things subtract from the all-important bottom line and keep him and his corporate friends from maximizing their profits.  This is a view that he learned at Bain Capital and I haven’t heard him say anything to indicate that he has changed.  He is looking to maximize his gains in every way.  He does not care about making things better for other people because there would be less for him.  In the Romney-Bain world, you do not spend money to make money.  That does not make sense to them.  You do not invest in people because people cost too much.

I do not want to be so cynical as to speculate why he’s so in favor of war with Iran and Syria and staying in Afghanistan.  He has already stated that he supports the “Military”.  Not the troops.  He did not thank the troops for their service, and even now does not think that it was important.  He said it himself: “You talk about the things that you think are important”.  The troops are “overhead”.  The “Military” — with its huge budget — will maximize the bottom line.  His.

If he is elected, do not forget that you are overhead.  An expense.  I hope we are better than this.

Monkey Gold

When I was a kid, there was gold in the streets.  It would sparkle and glitter in the sunshine.  It broke our hearts when it was part of the street and we couldn’t get at it.  We would spend hours sifting through the stones on the shoulders of the road and collect the pyrite as though it was real gold.  It was a pretty, sparkly rock.  Funny — for all quartz can look like diamonds, we weren’t very interested in that.  We all went for the gold.  Monkey gold.  It had value to us – some intangible child-value that couldn’t be explained yet we all understood.  And of course we liked to think about what if this one wasn’t monkey gold?  Maybe this one is REAL!

Asphalt pretty much ended all of that.  In asphalt, all of the stone is uniformly coated in tar.  Asphalt holds stone together so that there is no longer a treasure trove of rubble on the shoulders of the road.  Asphalt is smooth so that bicycles and roller skates don’t have to struggle and I’m sure that road rash isn’t as severe as it was on tarred and chipped roads like we had then.

Still, it’s sad to think that there’s no longer treasure right outside by the road and all you need is a few hours of an endless summer day to find it.

Liberty

The Emma Lazarus Poem:  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.

How it’s interpreted by self-described “good Americans” and “Christians”:  Keep your tired and your poor.  Keep your muddled asses and don’t even think about breathing our air.  Let’s get this straight.  Your shores are teeming because we don’t want you.  We have our own homeless or so we’ve been told.  We don’t see them.  That’s all we NEED in this country – more wretched refuse here taking our jobs.  We’re turning off the lamp, people – trick or treat is over.  Stay in your own country.

Oh — and about that door?  We’ve melted it down and we’re selling commemorative coins.  Have a nice day.

New Medication

I have arthritis.  A few weeks ago, the doctor put me on a very good anti-inflammatory.  An oral anti-inflammatory that actually worked very well.  Other than a few twinges now and then, I had almost no pain.  Trouble was, I didn’t get any refills with that prescription.  So I made an appointment hoping to correct that.  Instead of giving me a refill for the medication that actually worked and was simple to take, he prescribed something else.  The new medication had rules.  Lots of rules. 

Take 1 capsule 2-3 times per day.  May cause drowsiness.  Alcohol may intensify this effect.  Use care when operating dangerous machines.  Take with food.  Do not eat dairy products.  Do not lie down for 1/2 hour after taking medication.  Do not feed after midnight.  Never get it wet.  Your mileage may vary.  Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate.  Void where prohibited.  No stopping, standing, or parking.  Keep left.  No part of this medication may be reproduced without the permission of Major League Baseball.  Do not taunt the Happy Fun Ball.  If you live in a glass house, dress in the basement.  Objects in the medication are closer than they appear.  Taking this medication and wearing a cape does not enable patient to fly.  Genuine placebos.  If your pain lasts more than 4 hours, call your doctor. 

Not only does it have a lot of rules — it doesn’t work.  At all.  So hopefully I can get this straightened out and just get a refill on the other stuff.  That actually works.  Like I wanted in the first place.

Civilization, Manners, and Other Things We Forgot

  This post is going to make me sound old.  So be it.  Something has happened just over the last few years.  I’m not sure whether it is related by cause and effect to the deep political divide in this country, but it seriously has not helped and has definitely widened the rift. 

  First, we are overly familiar in this country.  It irks me when people I’ve never met in person call me by my first name.  Even worse is when they shorten my name.  Nicknames are affectionate and intimate.  If I don’t know you, I feel violated.  Sarah Palin used this to look “folksy” at the vice presidential debate.  “Can I call ya Joe?”  It made her look lazy and unprofessional.  “Folksy” is not something that should have a place in politics.  “Folksy” and the press agents and marketers who have convinced America that this is somehow acceptable brought us eight years of a President who was elected because he was “someone people wanted to have a beer with”.  Somehow, professionalism has become about as valued as education.

  Someone said that “Profanity is the crutch of the inarticulate bastards”.   Although meant ironically, there is some truth to this.  Sometimes there just are no words that are not profanity.  The problem is, most people don’t know when that is, or just don’t care.  There really are no “bad words”.  George Carlin was right about that.  But there are bad intentions, even if you may not be aware of them.  A use of profanity is usually interpreted as a lack of class, education, or just disrespect for your listeners.  Even if you don’t respect the subject matter, you should care about your audience.  This is a part of being “politically correct” that no one seems to grasp.  There are certain words we would not dream of using because they would offend people’s religion, race, sex, or orientation, but we don’t think about other words that hurt.  In fact, we look down on those who are offended by profanity.  We tell them “it’s only a word — grow up”.  And this is the rush to intimacy again.  Like the over-familiarity, we use whatever words we want to.  “They can take me as I am!”  We do not have the courtesy to get to know someone and their sensibilities.  We act and speak selfishly.  Who knows what opportunities we may miss because we were “foul-mouthed” or “wrote that filthy thing”?

  This “so what?” attitude also extends to behavior.  Like it or not, society judges credibility by language and behavior.  Language and the use of it are how we know how educated someone is.  Behavior is how we judge a person’s respect for others.  A politician who does not bother to find out whether the woman he’s pursuing is of legal age and does not care apparently has no respect for the law.  “But he didn’t break any laws!”  Maybe not.  But he didn’t know that and he didn’t care. 

   In 1993, Peter Steiner published a cartoon in the New Yorker.  Two dogs are sitting at a computer, and one says, “On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog”.  We have taken this anonymity as license.  We can be as rude as we wanna be.  Use whatever words we want.  Courtesy, professionalism, respect are no longer required. 

  I don’t know about you, but I’m going to use them anyway.  So I will now very courteously, professionally and respectfully tell you kids to get off my lawn.

The Middle of the Road

If you watch what people do, you’d think that traffic laws are pretty bizarre. For instance, I could swear that there’s a law somewhere that says that you can park anywhere you like as long as your emergency flashers are on. This includes being able to block a whole lane of traffic in a snowstorm if you’re visiting someone and can’t find a parking space. Have your flashers on? You’re parked! One of the most nerve-wracking, though, is “pedestrians have the right of way”. Nobody seems to understand what this really means. Pedestrians think that it means they can do anything they want. Cross against the light? Sure! If someone almost hits you, well, just flip them an obscene gesture. You have the right of way. Stand in the middle of the road? Sure. Why not? If you have nothing better to do, cross the street halfway and then just stand there for a while. Streets are wide. It’s exhausting to cross the whole thing at one go. And it’s SUCH a long way to the corners. I have actually seen — and MORE THAN ONCE! — people doing handsprings down the middle of the street. There’s an arrogance to people who do this that’s really hard to stomach. Especially the high school kids who just walk into traffic in large groups, weaving in and out of moving cars. For a while, the city police were giving $200 tickets to the kids for jaywalking. Of course, as you might imagine, the parents put a stop to that really fast. I have to say — crossing guards are annoying. But since they’ve all been let go due to budget cuts, I have to say that I miss them. At least there was SOME order in the chaos.

Wind Chimes

It’s been very windy here. Nothing unusual for this area at this time of year, but this morning I was listening to a neighbor’s wind chimes. They were almost playing a coherent tune. It reminded me of a musical instrument thought up by children: “It’s like a glass jar full of safety pins, only you can play real tunes on it”.
Wind chimes sound very different in winter. The lack of humidity makes the sound clearer, and I believe that wind direction and force is more favorable. It’s really a shame that in summer when we spend more time outdoors, wind chimes don’t sound as nice. The air gets heavy with heat and humidity and wind and breezes that could move the chimes are scarce. People are outside, there are lawns to be mowed, weeds to be whacked, and kids enjoy their freedom. In the winter, when there’s a virtuoso wind chime performance going on with no distractions, we’re all inside and don’t get to hear it.
Every year I tell myself that I am going to get wind chimes of my own, but I don’t. The only ones worth having are too pricey for me. It isn’t worth it to buy something that’s only going to fall apart after you’ve gone to the trouble to put it up. Today, I am thinking about it again. And thinking about spending more time outdoors. To listen to the chimes.