Calvin: When I grow up, I’m not going
to read the newspaper and I’m not going to follow complex issues and
I’m not going to vote. That way I can complain that the government
doesn’t represent me. Then, when everything goes down the tubes, I
can say the system doesn’t work and justify my further lack of
participation.
Hobbes: An ingeniously self –
fulfilling plan.
Calvin: It’s a lot more fun to blame
things than fix them.
That was written more than 25 years
ago. It fits the world I see around me now. It’s tempting to ignore
it all. Income Inequality, Corruption, Racism, Cruelty, and Hatred
seem to be everywhere. The sight of them is always sickening.
People argue about the science that tells us that the climate of the
earth is changing and represents a threat to our survival. They
attack 16 year old girls who want to try to avert that catastrophe
before it’s too late, and they invent covert motives for her.
They’ve made Science into a partisan issue, as though Gravity were a
left leaning lie. We search for dubious facts to support our
preferred beliefs instead of accepting the reality that Science shows
us. I want to turn away from it all and just read old comic strips.
But even those alert me to the fact that, if I’m going to be here on
Earth, I have a responsibility to try to make things better.
And, I am trying.
I write a blog that’s been viewed just
short of 3,000 times. I was proud of that for a time. Sometimes,
when my depression lets me up off the mat for a moment, I still am.
I have started a podcast in which I discuss issues of the day and
read the occasional short story. I comment on posts on Facebook. I
talk with my roommates. I try to spread my Idealistic ideas
everywhere I can. And… very little changes.
The little voice in my head
whispers, “You’re wasting your time, Fred. Go smoke a bowl, read a
book, watch a movie, take a nap, teach your classes, and hope that no
one hurts you. It’s enough just trying to make rent every month.
Remember that “…just surviving is a noble fight,” as Billy Joel
taught you 43 years ago.”
That
seems like the thing to do. I can’t seem to make a difference
anymore. Few people read what I write, and an alarmingly few listen
to my podcast. (I have only 2 plays on my last episode, and one of
them is my best friend who hasn’t even finished it. Even my roommates
don’t listen to it.)
How
can I make a difference? If I can change just one mind, or even get
just one person to consider things from a different point of view,
maybe, just maybe, I have not lived in vain.
If
I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If
I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one
fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain.
—Emily
Dickinson
If
you read something of mine that makes a difference to you, please
share it with someone else. Discuss it. Why am I right? Where am I
wrong? What is a better way to think about the issue? This way I
don’t have to feel the futility of shouting into the darkness of an
empty cave. You encourage me to keep trying.
These
are the things I believe, and the things that I would like to see
everyone believe.
Everyone
deserves the basics of a decent life. Which are the people who
deserve to die for lack of money?
We
must eliminate human suffering in all the ways we can.
Love
and Kindness, born of Empathy, are the Highest Form of Humanity.
If
you believe those things, too, perhaps you could help to spread those
ideas among your friends, and we could become what a Republican
President once suggested, “… a kinder, gentler America.”
Captain
Kirk told me that the three most important words we can say to
someone are not, “I love you,” but “Let me help.” I’ve done
what I can for the moment. I hope to find the courage to keep
trying. I hope you will do the same.
How good can she be? She doesn’t
have any money. She never earned any money. She just stayed home
and took care of her kids all her life. She’s worthless.
Is it really just your ability to earn
money that determines your value? There are good people who earn
little or no money, and bad people who earn vast sums of it. The
reverse is equally true. So, why are we obsessed with it? By
itself, it has no value. You can’t eat it. You can’t make a shelter
out of it. You can’t grow food in it. You can’t wear it. You can’t
use it to make you well when you are sick.
It’s because money allows us to be more
free than a lack of money does. Freedom isn’t just absence of
coercion. It’s not enough that you’re not in jail, or that no one is
ordering you to do this or that and forcing you to comply. That’s
undoubtedly a necessary, but not sufficient, condition of freedom.
But, it’s also the ability to choose for yourself. If I have
billions of dollars, I can choose to visit the Pyramids of Egypt at
any time. If I don’t, I may be lucky to visit Wal Mart for
groceries. There are more choices available to some of us than
others. I think that is clear.
Now, is it right and fair that some
people have more choices than others? Frankly, it feels unjust to
me. We are, all of us, human beings on this planet for a very short
time, and, it seems to me, we should all be able to enjoy our time
here to the greatest extent possible. There are always restrictions
to our doing this. That’s a part of Nature. Some of us will never
see the top of Mt. Everest. Some of us will never utter a complete
sentence. This is unavoidable, and those are restrictions with
which, whether we like them or not, we must live. And, working
together, we could probably find ways to lift some of those
restrictions.
But, what about the restrictions we
impose on other humans? We have decided to grant nearly unlimited
choices to some of us, and almost no choices at all to others, and we
have agreed to do this, and to measure how many choices one can make,
based on how many little pieces of green paper they have.
I’m reminded of this moment from The
Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy:
“Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich. […]
“But we have also,” continued the management consultant, “run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one ship’s peanut.”
Why
is money any different from leaves? It’s the peanut that has value,
not the leaves.
It
is certainly true that one of the things human beings do in order to
survive is to work together to accomplish some shared goals. We
built all of our civilizations by working together. We would then
trade one task, or service, or item for another. Essentially, it was
barter. There has been trade since we developed enough intelligence
that we were capable of thinking of it. It has occurred in every
civilization and every culture on Earth. It is a useful part of our
shared humanity. It has allowed us to grow to the point we have now
reached.
But,
we have lost touch with what the point of all this working together
was in the first place. The idea was that we could create a better
world in which we could all live. Someone invented the wheel, or
discovered it, as the case may be (I wasn’t there at the time, so I’m
not sure how we ended up having one), but suddenly life became
exponentially easier for us. Heavy things could be moved more
easily. We could travel more effectively. In time, the distances we
could traverse in our lives was expanded. We had many more choices
than we had before. This was an increase in Freedom. And we have
had many more since then.
We
learned to build houses because someone built some primitive version
of one. We found that helping each other to build shelters was
better for everyone. We all needed shelter.
Now,
of course, we don’t do that very often anymore. We pay someone to do
it for us. There are people who are experts in this field. They
know how to draw plans, how to implement the plans, how to get the
pieces, how to put them together properly, and how to ensure it’s
safe to live in this shelter. And it’s almost always a large group
of people who have expertise in each of these and many other fields
who work together to create the house.
I
can’t build a house, myself. First, I can’t cut down a tree. I also
don’t know how to make the tree into usable lumber with which to
build the house. I can’t work out how to put the pieces together,
and I couldn’t pound a nail straight, even if I could do all of the
other things. I have to have people do it for me. And, today, that
means I have to have many little green pieces of paper. Those are
sign of my value, of my right to have something. If I have enough of
them, I can get someone to do all this work for me. If I don’t, I
can’t.
How
did we go from working together to becoming paper obsessed?
Again,
there is a value in trade, but the point of trade is to make life
better for everyone. We have worked 200,000 years to get to the
point that we can now grant everyone the basics they need for
survival. We have the materials and the skills to build more than
enough houses for all human beings to live in one. We can grow
enough food to ensure that every human being has enough to eat. We
can fight diseases sufficiently to keep people alive much longer than
we once could. We can provide enough clothing to keep everyone warm
and safer from some of the elements than we were without clothing.
Why
can’t everyone have those things, then? Well, they don’t have enough
pieces of green paper. That means they don’t deserve them. Wait…
what?
I
see a value in trade even now. Obviously we can’t all live in 10,000
square foot mansions, or have wheels that are attached to the best
vehicles, or the most artistic clothing, or the most tasty food. We
should trade for those. That makes sense to me.
But,
should we really have to trade for what our 200,000 years of growth
have made possible? Shouldn’t everyone have a place to live?
Shouldn’t everyone have enough to eat? Shouldn’t everyone have
medical care, and clothing and some ability to make some choices in
their lives? In short, why should we limit some people’s freedom so
much while granting so much freedom to others?
Is
there a way we can make sure everyone has enough freedom to live? Is
that an unreasonable goal? How can we get there? I welcome your
thoughts.
You and I are, at this moment, as
intimately connected as two human beings can ever be.
What? You’re deluded, dude. We
don’t even know each other!
That’s
quite probably true. Nevertheless, the connection we have, which you
can sever at any moment you choose, is more intimate than any other
connection you can have as long as you continue it.
How is that possible?
Right
now, I am inside of your mind. My voice is as you choose to hear it,
but you do hear it. It’s inside your brain right now. As long as
you leave it there, I am as deeply inside of you as it is possible to
be. A sexual connection is an exterior one. Some part of my body
would be connected with or, depending on how bizarre you’re getting,
to, your body. That’s going on outside of you. You may be allowing
all sorts of parts of me to enter into your brain, because of that
physical connection, and that would be lovely, but at this moment, I
exist only and completely in your mind. If there is a deeper part of
you, I don’t know what it is.
What about the Soul? That’s
deeper than my brain.
I’m
not entirely sure what a soul is. Are you? Descartes, and,
subsequently The Police, called it “The Ghost in The Machine.”
The idea is that there is some You that exists independent of your
physical body. It’s what makes movies like
Freaky Friday
possible. What ever it is that is Me gets transferred into the body
of another person. In other words, whatever it is that makes me, Me,
is movable. It exists.
The
problem, of course, is that I can’t point to it. I can’t show you
what that part looks like. I’ve never seen it. It’s been said,
although I don’t know that the evidence is sufficiently compelling,
that when one dies, the body becomes something like 7 grams lighter.
This is supposed to be the Soul leaving the body. There are even
those who claim to have captured the event on a video. I have no
idea whether that’s even true. For the sake of argument, however,
I’ll assume it is.
If
there’s a soul, it is influenced by the brain. The brain I can show
you. I know that exists. And it’s because you have one that you can
be connected with me in this way. Absent a brain, you would be
unable to read, to think, to control your body, to have an awareness
of your own existence. The brain is the whole ball game when
determining who you are.
And
that’s the part to which I’m connecting right now.
When
you’re reading, you experience events, emotions, sights, sounds, and
often even tastes and smells that are not exterior. You can
absolutely experience physical sensations you wouldn’t have felt
without the words that are coming into your brain to tell it what
they are. This is deeper than simple contact. It is entirely
willing. Consent is not an issue because all you need do is look
away from the words and you have severed our connection. Because of
that, I will also argue that it’s not only the most intimate
connection possible, but the most valuable. If it weren’t of some
value, you would end it at once. But, when it makes you think, or
feel, or experience something you want, it has power that no other
connection has.
Okay… Yeah… That’s kind of
cool. But what about my connection to you? You’re inside my brain,
but I’m not inside yours. If it were physical it would also be
mutual. Here’s it’s one sided. Where’s the intimacy in that?
I
am more closely connected to Shakespeare, Salinger, Harper Lee, and
Aaron Sorkin than I ever was to either of my ex – wives, and none
of those people ever heard of me. Shakespeare was dead more than 340
years before I was even a twinkle in Dad’s eye. But, they put their
words into the ether for me to consume at will, just as I am putting
my words into the world for you to read whenever you wish. They are
giving themselves willingly to me. I am giving myself willingly to
you. It is both consensual and mutual. It’s intimate.
And,
to be honest, you do
exist in my brain. I have no idea who you are. I don’t know if
you’re male or female, I don’t know how old you are, and I have no
clue what you look like. But I am giving the deepest part of me to
you. How much more intimately can we be connected?
So… what… are we dating now?
That’s
entirely up to you. You can read my words whenever you want me
inside you. I have these, and I have lots of others that are there
for you whenever you want them. I have my thought of you, The Gentle
Reader, and I can talk to you whenever I wish. That said, I’m a
writer, which means I’m broke. If we’re going to dinner, you’re
buying.
I have
always wanted to live in a world where we work to improve ourselves
and the rest of humanity, instead of working 40 hours or more a week
just to survive. I want human beings to live a life in which they
can actually experience Freedom. Freedom is not simply absence of
coercion. It is the ability to examine choices, the education to
select the choice most likely to lead to the desired outcome, and the
ability to act on the choice. And the Freedom Dividend can be a step
down that road.
The
Freedom Dividend is a proposal under which every American over the
age of 18 would receive a check for $1000 a month. There is no means
testing. If you’re an American, whether you are the homeless guy
hoping to panhandle enough to get a pack of cigarettes, or you’re
Jeff Bezos, you get the check. If you’re anywhere in between, it
increases your Freedom by adding to the resources necessary to make
your best choices.
Why
is this such an extraordinary idea?
It will
change lives in unimaginable ways. If you’re among the wealthy, and
you don’t need it, you’re welcome to donate it to anyone or anything
that does. If you’re among the poor, this gives you a chance you
never had before. But it does much more.
Its
benefits are not only economic. It affects the quality of life for
millions. It helps to reduce the despair and hopelessness that leads
to increased stress. That stress increases domestic violence and
suicide. I have little doubt that it also contributes to mass
shootings.
When people are poor, it just keeps spiraling downward. You can’t afford a good car, so you buy a cheap one. But that car requires constant repairs. That’s more money you spend. As Yang once said, “Poverty charges interest.” Let’s see if we can start paying down some of the bills of poverty.
There are as many reasons for poverty as there are poor people. Is it the fault of the impoverished individual? I don’t know. I’m not nearly wise enough to decide who is “deserving” and who is not. I don’t believe anyone else is, either. With The Freedom Dividend, we don’t need to make that judgment. It goes to everyone. I can’t speak for all people; neither can you. I can, however, confidently speak from my own experience, and that’s why I believe in the Freedom Dividend. A minimum wage job isn’t enough, by itself. For more on that topic, see below.
I
really can’t work very much anymore. I’m 56, my body is shot, and my
diabetes lands me in the hospital with startling frequency, almost
invariably from trying to push what’s left of me too hard. If you
paid me $15.00 an hour, that would be a reasonable wage, and while I
couldn’t survive well on it, even at 40 hours a week, it would
make it possible for me to find some decent roommates and have a shot
at making ends meet. I couldn’t live alone on that. I don’t know
many people who could without government assistance.
I quit
teaching 3 years ago because both physically and psychologically I
was no longer capable of doing it. I teach Defensive Driving now,
and I’m getting 4 to 5 classes a month. I make good money, at $200
per class, but it’s clear $1000 a month is all I have to live on. If
my means testing works out, I might get disability. I’m too young
for Social Security. I have, quite fortunately, state funded medical
care and food stamps. That’s the whole ball of wax.
I have
a roommate who is on disability, and she gets a monthly check that
doesn’t quite cover rent for the three of us. My other roommate
makes 15 bucks an hour, 40 to 50 hours a week, at Amazon. Between
the three of us, we just barely survive. And that survival is by no
means certain.
If
there were a Freedom Dividend, my monthly income would double. If we
see the three of us a family unit, the additional $3000 a month would
cover all of our rent, utilities, and gas. All the money we bring in
other than that would be to pay for groceries, vet bills, insurance,
gas, and car repairs. We might even be able to afford to go to
dinner sometimes, or perhaps see a movie.
A person who is too
lazy to work deserves nothing from anyone else. I had to work hard
for what I have; so should they!
I understand that feeling too. But I disagree with it.
I believe all people, whether I agree with their life choices or not, are deserving of the basics of human survival. This means all of us should have food, shelter, appropriate clothing for the climate in which we reside, medical care, a decent education, and the opportunity to communicate with others. What would that look like? You can see here:
Many people make important contributions to society for which there is no financial reward. This doesn’t make them lazy. It makes them unpaid. Instead of raising our own children, many of us need to pay someone else to take care of them while we’re at work. Wouldn’t it be nice if Mom or Dad could stay home and raise children for $1000 a month? Add to the Freedom Dividend the money they’re saving on childcare, and suddenly it starts to add up. Caregivers for their elderly parents have to find other means to survive, or spend money to put their parents into homes. They also profit from the Freedom Dividend.
What
if people waste it, though?
I don’t want to pay for someone’s drug habit.
This is their money. If they choose to waste it, that’s up to them.
They can either use it to move forward and up in life, or not.
That’s true of any money anyone gets. It’s a Dividend in the same
way that Microsoft pays a Dividend to their shareholders. You’ve
invested your life into this country. You’re entitled to get
something back from us. You’re not paying for it. You’re
getting paid by it.
Fine,
but how are we going to pay for this?
First, I would like to point out that the only time… the ONLY
time… this question is asked is when the money is going to be used
for programs that help ordinary people. No one asked how to pay for
a war that has lasted, with no idea of “winning,” for more than a
decade. We decided it needed to be done, and we did it.
Having said that, he does have a plan for it that makes sense. To
understand the point of the plan, it’s important to understand why
this is necessary: Automation.
As Artificial Intelligence (AI )improves, and it will, there will be
more and more jobs lost to automation. We’re only a couple of years
away from trucks that drive themselves. We are already checking out
our own groceries at Wal Mart. Telemarketers and customer service
agents will be replaced by software that is so convincing it sounds
like you’re actually talking to a person. Malls are closing all over
the place because we order what we want from Amazon. Those are more
people without jobs.
Instead
of watching homelessness skyrocket as people lose their jobs, we’re
providing everyone a safety net. The Freedom Dividend gives them
time to find a job that is fulfilling, pays well, and is free from
harassment. It puts the job applicants much more in the driver’s
seat than the employers. They don’t have to take the first job that
is available because they have to pay rent next week. They have that
covered. Now, they can spend their lives doing something they like
instead of working themselves to death for pennies.
To pay for it, Yang will introduce a Value Added Tax for corporations
like Amazon. There are those who hate this idea.
That will only make things more expensive.
I suppose that’s true. However, unless you’re spending over $120,000
a year, you’re coming out ahead. Only about 6% of the population
will pay more than they get.
That
won’t be enough money to pay for all of it. What about the rest of
it?
He’ll also make use of the end of much of Welfare. I would have to
choose between my food stamps and my Freedom Dividend. I get $177 a
month for food. That’s enough for almost two weeks. Take my food
stamps, and give me my $1000 a month. The government will be making
fewer decisions for us.
Money will be going back into the economy, creating more jobs. We’ll
make more in taxes because more people are working. That pays for
part of it.
You
Democrats want to give everyone Something for Nothing. This is just
Socialism, and Socialism never works.
No… it’s not. Socialism is when the government controls the means
of production. That’s still controlled by the Private Sector. This
is Capitalism that doesn’t start at $0. It just levels the playing
field. And we’re not giving Anyone Anything for Nothing. We’re
giving it to everyone who has helped to make us among the wealthiest
and most powerful nations on Earth. This is Human Centered
Capitalism.
We have been trying the Trickle Down Economy since Reagan. What have
been the results? Where once a single person working 40 hours a week
could earn enough to support a whole family, today full time work
isn’t really enough to support even one person. Giving more money
to the wealthy “Job Creators” (who don’t actually create
jobs at all… that’s done by supply and demand and consumers)
obviously didn’t raise the standard of living for the rest of us.
They didn’t invest it into their employees, and therefore into the
economy. They kept it for themselves.
The Freedom Dividend is an effort at a Trickle Up Economy. Instead
of raining only on the top branches of the tree, we’re watering its
roots at ground level. The economy grows because the money is
injected immediately back into it. Those who have more, spend more.
People can now patronize little stores that are more expensive,
instead of being forced into Wal Mart where the prices are lower and
most of the employees need government assistance even to buy Wal Mart
groceries. This keeps small business running and it encourages
entrepreneurs to start their own. The Arts, which are for me the
most valuable part of any civilization, will grow because artists can
now afford to do their work. This isn’t Socialism. It’s a means of
saving Capitalism.
So…
what’s your point?
I
would like to live in a world that is concerned more with people than
with little bits of green paper. We have spent 200,000 years getting
to the place where we can now feed, clothe, and house all of
humanity. But our path here led us to believe we never have Enough.
We don’t have Enough Money. We don’t have Enough Food. But, you
know what? Yes… we do. We’ve made it, folks. We’re standing on
the shoulders of 200 millennia of human beings struggling for
survival. We’re their crowning achievement. Instead of wage slavery
of the past, we can have fulfilling lives. We have invented machines
to do the most tedious and dangerous work. We don’t have to hunt for
food or cut down trees to build our shelters anymore. We are a
remarkable species who have cause to be proud.
We’re here so very briefly. Let’s try to make a world where we can enjoy the ride.
Author’s Note: I wrote this essay in October, 2003. I’m publishing it now because, it seems to me, we have arrived at the Destination described herein. If you disagree, please leave a comment and tell me why. If you agree, you’re welcome to leave a comment telling me what you think about that, too. I’ll probably even answer you. — Fred Eder
Leaving
no child behind is an honorable and achievable goal. Teachers are
accustomed to overcoming the enormous challenges put before us every
day. Where once we were responsible only for the students’ academic
skills, we are now in charge of teaching them the values of cultural
diversity, sexual responsibility, and drug awareness. And just as we
have met these challenges with overwhelming success, so, too, will we
meet the challenge of getting students to reach the destination of
our President’s Educational Train, leaving no child behind.
Arriving at the Station
The
first requirement for learning to take place is that the students
must attend school. Following the president’s metaphor, this would
mean that the child must first arrive at the station. I feel sure
that my school is not alone in its ever- increasing population of
students who miss in excess of 40% of the standard school year.
Sometimes students are chronically and suspiciously ill (especially
on Fridays), sometimes they are suspended, and, all too often, they
simply tell their parents they don’t want to come today, and they
stay home and play video games. There is little the school can do to
combat this problem. At more than one Pupil Evaluation Team (P.E.T.)
meeting I have heard the Team recommend a bus be sent directly to the
child’s doorstep to help her get to school. The bus is sent, but
the child never boards the bus. A child who never makes it to the
station can not help but be left behind. Nevertheless, leaving no
child behind is an honorable and achievable goal.
How,
though, are we to teach students who don’t attend school? As
Mohamed might tell us about mountains, if the students won’t come
to the school, the school must go to the students. We could hire
teachers who travel from home to home to teach these students between
sessions of Tony
Hawk Pro Skater 4 for Play Station 2.
The
cost of these extra teachers could come from school bake sales, or
perhaps from having students go door to door selling candy, since,
evidently, the funding will not be coming from the federal and state
governments that promised it to us when they increased our
responsibilities. The students might even sell some of their candy to
the teachers who are working in the homes they visit.
On
those days that these students do attend school, we can assign some
of our Educational Technicians to assist them in catching up on the
work they have missed while they were playing video games. To leave
no child behind is clearly an honorable and achievable goal.
Boarding the Train
Assuming
the child arrives at the station, it is next necessary that she
actually boards the train. If I understand the metaphor correctly,
this would be the equivalent of actually engaging the work that
teachers set out for the students in order to help them learn. While
many students do come to class regularly, there is among them a
population which does no more than breathe the air in the room.
Certainly, modifications can be, should be, and are made to assist
these students. Educational Technicians work with them individually
when the staffing makes it possible. Special procedures are put in
place to help spark the student’s interest, encourage
participation, and reward effort. For many students, these
interventions are indeed effective, but not for all of them.
There
are those students who, regardless of the best efforts of the
Teachers, Educational Technicians, Administrators, Counselors, Social
Workers and Parents, simply will not make an effort. There is, in the
final analysis, nothing that can be done to force
someone to try if she doesn’t want to. While the student may arrive
at the station, she won’t necessarily get on board the train.
Nevertheless, leaving no child behind is an honorable and achievable
goal.
In
order to meet the needs of those who won’t make any effort, we must
determine why
they won’t try. They may have lacked success in the past. There may
have been emotional traumas which make it more difficult for them to
put pencil to paper. In order to solve this problem, it is only
necessary to conduct a thorough and searching investigation using all
the tests we currently have, developing new ones, and bringing in
Social Workers, Psychiatrists, Psychologists, Family Doctors and, if
need be, Psychics who will determine what needs to happen in order
for the child to begin to engage the work.
The
funding for all of these professionals could be found in school
dances, talent shows, or bottle drives, since, again, we can be sure
the government that imposed this program on us will not be paying for
it. I have also recently observed that the students’ learning time,
which is a valuable resource, can be sold to professional basketball
teams, who represent a valuable source of funding. For a mere $1,000,
the Boston Celtics got a captive and adoring audience for purposes of
an hour long commercial for their team. The educational message,
which lasted, in a generous estimate, for two and a half minutes, was
admittedly important: you should always work hard.
While
it’s true that the teachers at my school deliver this message to
their students almost daily, we’re not as important as professional
basketball players, and the message is much more powerful coming from
Jo Jo White, while the Celtics mascot runs around slapping students’
hands, and the team’s Public Relations executive is passing out
free tickets to kids who know Celtics trivia.
It’s
hard to blame my principal, my superintendent, or even my governor,
all of whom attended this “very special” assembly, for their
choice. If the money can’t be found in any other way, they need to
do what they can. The only commodity they have to sell is time with
the students. If it seems to be to the students’ detriment to
sacrifice class time for commercials, the case can be made that at
least their students may have a few more books or supplies. These are
important to the students’ education, too.
If
this won’t pay for all the professionals we need to get the
students to engage the work given to them, we can assign some of our
Educational Technicians to assist them, because, as we know, leaving
no child behind is an honorable and achievable goal.
Making the Train Safe for All
There
is an additional population that keeps our train from moving safely
toward its destination. This group is made up of those who do attend
school, and who can often learn, but feel the need to disrupt. It is
difficult to blame most of these students for their behaviors. One of
my colleagues recently made the observation that he would, under no
circumstances, trade lives with some of our students.
We
have an ever-increasing population of those who are frequently
arrested. We have some who are using drugs. There are others who are
dealing with different forms of abuse at home, and whose parents are
too drunk or too stoned to give them any sort of guidance or help. If
parents do impart their values to their children, the values thus
imparted are frequently in direct conflict with those we are called
upon to instill in our students. It is all but impossible to convince
a student whose father is in prison and whose mother is usually
unable to communicate through her drug or alcohol induced haze that
the multiplication tables have any relevance to her life, or that
putting a period at the end of a sentence is an important part of
communication. One student, whose father is currently serving a
lengthy prison sentence for dealing drugs, told me education was of
no importance to him since he would simply take over his father’s
business. His intimidation and assaults upon his fellow students is
much better training for his chosen future than is anything I can
teach him.
Our
train, however, being a public train, is required to transport all
those who board it, and we will find a solution to this problem as
well. After all, leaving no child behind is an honorable and
achievable goal.
For
the students who are on board the train only to disrupt its travels,
it is possible simply to send them out of the classroom, so that we
can teach the rest of the students. Of course, these students will
miss out on what we are trying to teach, and the test scores that our
government has decided will determine our school’s future will show
that.
Since
this won’t do if we are to leave no child behind, we could have
special classes, made up exclusively of these students, with a highly
trained and qualified set of teachers who work just with this
population. Although my school’s current staffing makes this
impossible, our Special Education Director has assured us that these
students are
manageable if only we will use the staff we now have more
effectively.
Since
there is neither the funding for specialists to deal with these
students, nor the space for them to have a classroom if such teachers
could be found, what we really need to do is just what the
President’s plan suggests: replace the teachers who are not being
effective. If a veteran teacher can’t handle students who yell out
in class, bully other students, sell drugs in the hallways, or stand
on the desk singing, then we need to get rid of that teacher.
Teachers with many years of experience cost way too much anyway, so
the obvious answer is to replace them with the vastly superior first
and second year teachers that are coming out of our colleges in
record numbers.
After
all, with all of its rewards, many students in college today must
certainly aspire to enter the teaching profession. Surely, teachers
with no experience, but well armed with all that can be taught in
modern Methods Classes, will be perfectly equipped to handle the
problems that students in this population present.
If
these teachers require additional assistance to help with these
students, perhaps we can have our Educational Technicians take these
students in the hall and help them to learn there. See what an
honorable and achievable goal it is to leave no child behind?
Serving Our Passengers
Having
made arrangements for those who rarely attend, those who make no
effort, and those who are a threat to the learning and safety of the
rest, we are left with a smaller population who show up on time to
meet the train, get on board, and are ready and eager to travel down
the tracks toward our destination. Among this population are those
who, despite their best efforts, can not seem to grasp some of the
material. These are the students that most of us want most to help.
Teaching is, after all, a “helping” profession. We are, all of
us, here because we want to help others. We are all more than willing
to do anything and everything possible to help those who really want
to learn. All that is necessary for the success of those students who
do not qualify for a Special Education program, but who still can’t
quite figure it all out, is some time and attention.
The
solution for this group is simple. In Middle School, we have
Educational Technicians who are experts in serving just this
function. Although in a class of thirty, with 47 minutes to teach
them all, a single teacher may not be able to spend the appropriate
amount of time with each of these students, our Ed. Techs are ready,
willing, and able.
Of
course, there is the difficulty of locating our Ed. Techs. Many of
them are working with those students who are way behind because they
have missed school so often. Others are assisting those students who
won’t put a pencil to paper. The remaining Ed. Techs are being used
in the hallway to assist those students who are only here to disrupt.
What does that leave us to help the students who really want to
learn, but just need that helping hand?
Well,
perhaps these students aren’t all that important anyway. After all,
they’ll probably pass the high-stakes test, even if their scores
aren’t as high as they might be. They can read, write and do basic
calculations. They’re here in school, they try their best, and they
behave well. These students are by no means achieving all that they
might, but they certainly aren’t being left behind. And, of course,
what is most important is our honorable and achievable goal of
leaving no child behind.
Final Destination
Finally,
we need to see where we will arrive, once we have gotten all of our
students there. It would seem we will arrive at a place in which ALL
of our students have at least some minimal skills. They can read, if
by this we mean that they can decode words and find at least a
superficial meaning in written language. They are certainly capable
of comprehending the pop-up ads on the internet, and the advertising
in magazines and on billboards. They are probably not ready to
comprehend great literature, but, after all, what difference does the
writing of a lot of dead white guys make anyway?
They
can write well enough to send e-mails and conduct online chats. They
know that the word “you” is more properly spelled “u.” It
saves time, after all, to write it this way, and we need to have as
much time as possible so we can use our writing skills to send
vitally important messages, like, “Sup,” (which I am told means,
“What’s up?” – a vitally important message itself), and to
communicate with others on the same intellectual level.
Certainly
they can solve simple mathematical problems, and probably balance
their checkbooks. They may not have the ability to do any real
problem solving, or to examine alternatives and choose the ones most
likely to bring about desired results, but how important is that
really anyway? Our students can now get jobs, respond to advertising
and use the money they earn to buy the products advertised on TV, the
internet and in magazines, and keep our economy healthy enough for
the millionaires whose tax cuts are creating the low-paying jobs for
which our students have been successfully trained.
Certainly
these are the intended outcomes of public education. These are the
lofty goals to which I, like all teachers, aspired when I became
certified. We should all be proud to have met such an honorable goal.
Congratulations, fellow educators. We have left no child behind.
You can’t change the world; only your corner of it.” — My father, Alan Eder, quoting my grandpa, Enno Schuelke, September 12, 2001
“We’re on track for a million illegal aliens to rush our borders. People hate the word ‘invasion’ but that’s what it is. It’s an invasion of drugs and criminals and people. You have no idea who they are.”
Donald Trump
Invaders,
by definition, need to be stopped. They are almost invariably met
with violence.
Look
at the examples of the usage of the word.
“To enter forcefully as an enemy; go into with hostile intent: Germany invaded Poland in 1939.” – Dictionary.com
If
we believe the mythical “Others” are invaders, the logical
response is to kill them, isn’t it?
This
is the leadership we have. We are told we are being invaded. How
can an American who believes this President be expected to act
differently?
We
can argue about gun control, but it’s a blind alley. We’re never
going to make meaningful changes in those laws. If we didn’t do it
after children… CHILDREN!…
died at Sandy Hook, we certainly won’t because of a few “others.”
But,
why do we have to accept the idea that those whose skin is darker,
whose national origins are different, or whose sexuality, or gender
identification, or religious beliefs are other than the majority are
somehow bad? I’m sick to death of the argument that Mexicans are
welcome if they come in legally. That’s bullshit, and the person
making the argument knows it. It takes years to become a citizen, if
you can do it at all. The first step is to determine eligibility for
naturalization. That step alone can take 3 to 5 years. There are 9
additional steps.
What
they really have in mind is keeping America filled with people who
are like them. We want only white people. If that’s not true, why
are we building a wall at the Southern border, but not the Northern?
We don’t seem to mind Canadians coming in.
My
plea is really to give up our hatred. The most important question is
who is better off for this?
I
am better than some people. I am not as good as others. This is
determined by my abilities and my behaviors. It has nothing to do
with my race, gender, sexuality, religious or political views. The
same is true for everyone else.
If
you want to hate me, and there are many who do, then hate me for what
I do. Hate my liberal opinions, but not the fact that I’m straight.
Hate my Idealism, but not my religious views. Hate my speaking out
against Hate. Hate my writing. Hate my reaching out for help.
Those are all choices I have made. They are open to scrutiny. I was
born male. I had nothing whatever to do with that. I was born in
America. I deserve no credit for that.
Why
should I hate someone because she’s female, or because he is
homosexual, or because her children were born in Guatemala? Who is
better off for that? How is my life better because the lives of
others are worse? I don’t become taller by pushing someone else down.
I don’t become richer by denying wealth to someone else.
We
don’t need to be told to hate.
Hate
leads to fear.
Someone
else is going to get something that should have been mine. I know
that these people are bad because they weren’t born in America. It’s
because of them that my life is no good. I am afraid of them
invading and taking what is supposed to be mine.
Fear
leads to violence.
I
can’t let them invade. I have to protect what’s mine, and what
belongs to the rest of my tribe. They don’t belong in my country any
more than a cockroach belongs in my house. The only thing to do when
you’re invaded, is kill the invaders.
Violence
leads to suffering. My
mother, my son, my wife, my best friend… someone… is dead. I
won’t see them again. No more laughing together at jokes that aren’t
really funny. No more hugs and love. No more of the joy of seeing
their eyes light up when I walk into a room. No more breathing for
this person I love. And this hurts like a bitch.
Haven’t
we had enough suffering yet?
What if we realized that a person had no choice about being born? No one chooses where or when to enter the planet. No one chooses the color of his skin (beyond tanning, I suppose). No one chooses her sexual orientation. No one chooses his gender. Is it reasonable to hate someone for things over which he had no control?
Hatred
can be useful. I hated Osama bin Laden, not because he was from
another country, not because his religious views differed from mine,
and not even because of his sexual identity. I hated him for
stealing my sense of security by slamming planes into buildings and
killing thousands of human beings who were every bit as deserving of
their next breath as I am of mine.
But
I didn’t generalize that hatred to include all people who shared his
religion. As it turns out, there are millions and millions of
perfectly nice Muslims in the world. I have no cause to hate them.
And it doesn’t do much to make me feel better to hate anyone. Do you
enjoy hating others? I find it’s kind of a burning sensation in my
chest that I would rather not have.
Again,
it’s worth asking, before you do anything, “Who is better off for
me doing this?” Sometimes, it’s something small. If I make a
burrito, I’m better off for doing it because my blood sugar won’t
drop, and I won’t be so hungry. But when it’s something that has the
potential to hurt someone, it becomes a more serious question.
I
understand, to some extent, the need to blame someone else for the
conditions of our lives. I certainly don’t like mine. There’s at
least a 70% chance I’ll be homeless on September 1. That makes me
afraid. I would love to blame someone. But… who will it help? I
still have the same problem to handle whether it’s the fault of
President Trump, “The Others” (whomever you may choose), myself,
my roommates, or the landlord who is selling the house in which we
live. Blaming someone won’t get me a new habitation. Since I don’t
like being angry, I don’t see any point in wasting emotional energy
on hating someone else. I’m no better off for it. Neither is the
subject of my blame.
If
we can stop looking for scapegoats and start looking for solutions to
our problems, we are more likely to be happier. It is intellectual
cowardice to decide that someone else is responsible for our lot in
life.
I’m
told that there are websites called 4chan and 8chan that are
dedicated to promoting Hate Speech. They have the absolute right to
do this. I would never want to take away Freedom of Speech from
anyone. Since I can’t stop them from spreading their message of
hate, what can I do? I can fight their words with mine. I do what I
can to spread a message of Love and Acceptance. Just as those sites
incite violence, so I hope to incite peace.
We
can legislate all day and into the night, and we won’t end the
problem of gun violence because its root – Hatred – can’t be
killed by laws. If we want to end this we have to stop the hatred.
Martin Luther King, Jr. said it better than I can, so I will leave
you to ponder his words in the context of mine.
The
ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending
spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy Instead of
diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may
murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the
truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do
not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it
goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding
deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness
cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot
drive out hate: only love can do that.
Will
you join me, please, in advocating Love over Hate?
“Keep away from those who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you believe that you too can become great.”
Mark Twain to Gay Zenola MacLaren
I was originally going to
title this piece My Relationship With Sara Niemietz, but the word
relationship is too often misunderstood to imply a more intimate
connection, and I didn’t wish to mislead anyone. I have no such
relationship with her. I thought of changing With to To, but that
sounds like the relationship I have To the keyboard on which I’m
writing or To the chair on which I’m sitting, and that seems rather
cold. I don’t wish to sound that way either.
I thought a bit about how I
know her, and I find that instructive to me, and I suspect it might
be interesting to you if you like Music, or poker, or stories of
wildly unlikely circumstances that change one’s life. Those things I
can deliver for you.
Who
is Sara Niemietz?
She’s
the most popular singer of whom you’ve never heard. She’s utterly
independent, and her music is unique. It can be called many things.
There are elements of jazz, pop, blues, and even a bit of dance to be
heard in it. She’s the most well known artist in the group
Postmodern Jukebox. Her videos have millions of views. She’s just a
very quiet, unassuming genius.
Well,
how DO you know Sara Niemietz?
To
answer that, you have to go back to 1988, before she was even born.
That was when I first saw The Wonder Years.
If you’ve never seen it, the show is about a young boy growing up in
the 1960s, and it is told in first person from the point of view of
the protagonist, 25 or so years later. The Narrator is the Adult
Kevin Arnold telling us about his childhood. Particularly in its
first few seasons, it was a brilliant show. I watched it
religiously. And it changed not just my writing style, but it moved
me toward writing about my own childhood from the same era.
One of
the most powerful aspects of the show was its music. The theme, by
Joe Cocker, “A Little Help From My Friends,” was fine, and
popular. Everyone loved it. And I didn’t care nearly as much about
that as I did the way the music felt behind the dialogue. The music
helped me to feel the words. It snuck inside of me, and it guided my
heart in the direction the writers intended it to go.
A few
years later, I’ll Fly Away, arguably the greatest series ever
on network television, arrived. The music in that show was also
properly applied. There are scenes I have never seen with clear eyes.
The music sees to that.
And then
in 1999, we had The West Wing. The show was incredibly
popular, and the writing is beyond compare.
What
does all this have to do with Sara Niemietz?
Snuffy
Walden.
He was
the genius behind the music that had moved me so deeply. His work
was hard to find. He appeared now and then on a Christmas CD for
Windham Hill or something, and he did finally release a CD of his own
called Music By… but that was about it.
Snuffy
Walden was my musical hero. He has been for over 3 decades.
Fast
forward to 2015.
I begin
playing Facebook Poker. I get to be good at it.
And one
night I play a particularly rare and interesting hand. I’m told that
technology exists that would have allowed me to record the hand, but
if it did, I didn’t have it, and if I would have had it, I wouldn’t
have known I was about to experience a life changing moment that I
would love to have recorded.
I played
against an opponent whose icon was an older man playing a guitar. He
was an amazing player. He was, in fact, the first player I had seen
in a long time who was better than I was, so I began to pay
attention.
We
started talking in the little Poker Chat. I told him how impressed I
was with his performance, and he was equally impressed with my play.
After a
few minutes I mentioned he shared a name (Snuffy) with one of my
favorite composers, a guy named W.G. Snuffy Walden. And he told me
that was him.
Wait….
what??
I had
just met someone who had been my hero for nearly 30 years. It was
unbelievable.
And we
talked and played, and played and talked. And soon enough, we became
friends on Facebook.
A few
months into it, he mentioned he had a band called Babylon Social Club
that would be playing in California over Thanksgiving. He suggested
I come out from Arizona to see them. I not only got to know my hero
over messages on Facebook; I was going to get to meet him. This was
unbelievable.
I borrowed $500 from one of those neon sign loan places, at about 239% interest, which was a financially stupid thing to do, but I couldn’t possibly have cared less. I was going to California to meet my hero. And I did.
I got a
room at the hotel at which they were playing, Westlake Village Inn.
I got there the night before they were going to play because I wanted
to be well rested so I could enjoy the moment as much as humanly
possible. And I got to the venue, a place called Bogie’s, a good
hour before the band was scheduled to start. I wanted to make sure I
got the best seat in the house.
And in a
little while, in walked a man whose music had brought me to tears and
sent me into pure Joy more times than I could count. He recognized
me from my Facebook pictures. And he came and gave me a hug. He
bought me a beer. We talked a few minutes, and he had to go set up.
I was floating in the air.
In our
conversations on Facebook, he had mentioned that he had been
mentoring a young singer. He had even sent me one of her videos. I
looked at it, but I didn’t pay much attention. I was distracted by
life. It was just a video.
And then, she took the stage. And when she sang, I was completely overwhelmed. Her voice owned the room. The venue was packed to the gills, but it was utterly silent when this band played, and when they finished, the bar erupted with deafening applause. Who the hell was this girl?? I had never heard anything like her.
Everyone
in the band was a significant musician, recorded on albums with
artists like Kenny Loggins, Tower of Power, and Bonnie Raitt. This
wasn’t some cover band from Phoenix. This was a group of
professional musicians playing at their prime in a small intimate
venue, and I was right up front to hear and experience every blissful
note. I felt like my father, listening to Miles Davis in a smoke
filled bar before I was even a twinkle in Dad’s eye.
By the
end of the evening, I was emotionally exhausted, and I was floating
in catharsis. Snuffy introduced me to everyone in the band,
including Sara Niemietz, and her mother, Cheryl. I wanted Sara’s
CDs. She had two out, by then, and Cheryl had them both for sale.
Fountain and Vine was the latest. Push Play had been
released earlier. I bought them both, and Sara and Snuffy
autographed them for me. I took pictures with them. And I was the
luckiest man on the planet.
Greatness
Because
one believes in oneself, one doesn’t try to convince others. Because
one is content with oneself, one doesn’t need others’ approval.
Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her. –
Lao Tzu
When I met Sara Niemietz, she behaved precisely as though she were an
ordinary person. There was no barrier of Greatness, as one might
expect. I was talking to someone infinitely more talented, more
successful, more famous, and quite possibly more intelligent than I
will ever be. And that made no difference to her. She was just
Sara. She was just a young woman, just the same as someone to whom
you might say hello in the grocery store. It was almost as though
both she and Snuffy were entirely unaware that they inhabited a part
of the universe to which we mere mortals have no access.
I saw them again after I had quit teaching. After a time, Sara knew I was pursuing my hopes of writing a successful screenplay. I bought myself a little blank book somewhere in LA, and I used it as something to have Sara and Snuffy sign. And she quoted one of her songs in her autograph. “Find that dream!”
Snuffy and Sara create Art that reaches tens of millions and touches
most of them. They do this without pretense. They do it without a
sense of superiority.
I create Art that reaches hundreds and touches dozens. It’s just me
sitting on my Front Porch.
The
Beatles weren’t particularly great musicians. Their singing was
average. Neal Peart is never going to be made nervous by Ringo
Starr. But, the songs they wrote were unbelievably
good. They are so much a part of the world that it’s now impossible
to imagine a universe in which “Yesterday” doesn’t exist. It’s
as basic to Music as “Over The Rainbow” or “Jesu Joy of Man’s
Desiring.” It simply has to be.
Sara
Niemietz is a demonstrably better singer than Paul McCartney or John
Lennon. But, she could never write “Imagine.” And that was how
I felt about her work when I first heard it.
It’s
grown on me to the point that I can’t remember a time I didn’t have
it inside me. It’s as though it was always there, right between The
White Album and Aja.
The songs which seemed like light pop became more profound when I
listened more carefully to “On Your Way.”
When the clock strikes twelve When they’ve gone away When you’re all alone with nothing left to say When you walk upstairs And you comb your hair And you get ready to go on your way To go on your way
They’re all simple images. But, when you put them with Snuffy Walden’s delicate piano that is so adept at opening musical passages into the soul through which words can pass to touch places in us that we didn’t know we had, and Sara’s understated, heartfelt performance, they take on a cumulative effect. It felt as though a girl half my age had written a song about my life from a time before she was born. She touched something both personal and universal. It feels as though it must be about me. It feels as though this happened. That’s the value of Art.
Whether
it’s music, or painting, or literature, or film, or dance, or
television, it can answer questions we’ve never been brave enough to
ask ourselves. It puts us through the experience we need. Through
Art, we’ve all been in the court room with Tom Robinson and Atticus
Finch. We’ve all made him an offer he can’t refuse. We’ve all
figured out that we can’t always get what we want… but if we try
sometime, we might find, we get what we need. Its unifying feature
is that it feels as though it was just for each of us.
The music of a girl half my age asks, and sometimes, but not always, answers questions I have never allowed myself to consider. It does it with words joined with a melody that allows the soul to feel that universal connection. It is as spiritual as it is musical.
Members of my extended
family seem to believe you are wrong to be my friends, because, if
you knew the worst of me, you would never talk to me again. They
seem to want me to confess all of the most horrible things I have
done such that all of you will leave, and I will be left,
essentially, alone. I’m granting their request. Should you choose
to leave, I will understand, but I will be at least disappointed,
and, quite probably, sad.
Your value to me is greater
than for many people since I have a complete terror of seeing people
in person.
So…
what is in my past that is so horrible that I need to confess it to
The World (at least as I know it)? I don’t know, with absolute
certainty, which offense my family means, (“I
am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck
than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape,
or time to act them in.”) but I’m guessing it’s that, when I was
taking care of Mom for a while, I accepted money from her.
How did we get there?
My father died in October, 2009. My mother was, obviously, depressed beyond imagination. She had been with him for nearly 50 years. Her entire life was built around him. Stevie Nicks would understand the Landslide.
By
April of 2010, Mom really couldn’t make it on her own, anymore. She
was barely feeding herself, and it was time that someone take care of
her. I was appointed by the family. Mom moved in with me.
We did well for some time. She was not necessarily happy, but she was certainly less depressed. She and my dog, Melanie, became best friends. Melanie would lie on the bed with her every night. They loved each other.
At
47 years old, I could still function. I was teaching 6th
Grade, and on weekends, teaching Defensive Driving. Mom paid her
bills. In the beginning, she made us both dinner every night. By
the end of our Time Together, she couldn’t cook anymore.
I
wasn’t quite done with my poor attempts at a Social Life yet, and
it’s difficult to be successful with women when your mother lives
with you. As even in the best of circumstances, my success with
women was all but nil, carrying extra weight against it wasn’t really
the best thing for me. I had been married and divorced twice, and I
had hoped to find just one more woman who could tolerate me, and who
I might love. That simply wasn’t going to happen. And I learned to
be okay with it. I have, in fact, given it up entirely now.
After
54 months, our situation became too difficult. Mom had broken her
hip, and while she had the necessary surgery, and the best rehab
facility in The Valley, she never managed to walk again. She was in
her wheelchair for months longer than the doctors thought necessary.
To this day, she has to have a walker. And, as she became
increasingly depressed, the first signs of dementia set in. It
wasn’t just that she forgot things. Her personality was changing, as
well. She really didn’t like me very much anymore. I couldn’t
please her.
I
asked my brother if he could share some of the responsibilities for
our mother. Sometimes, he would take her for a weekend or something.
If I wanted to have him care for her for more than that, it wasn’t
the time. He was too busy. We fought about it.
My
own depression was now in full force. I found no joy in anything.
Mom and I were miserable. I finally told Jon that I would just bring
our Mother to Flagstaff and drop her off, and he could deal with the
job. He wound up having Mom move in with his girlfriend. I got a
new, cheaper, place. I never charged Mom rent, or utilities, or any
of that, but she often paid for groceries, she helped to keep my car
running when repair bills came up. We kept each other afloat. And
she could still remember to pay the bills she had left.
It
wasn’t long before it failed to work out for Mom at her new home.
Her money was suddenly gone. Her bills were unpaid. She had been
paying much more than her share. It appeared she was going to sign
her money away. The family and I engineered a kidnapping to get Mom
out of there. We showed up around 8:00 PM, unexpectedly, and took
Mom away to the beautiful home of my former sister in law. The plan
was she would live with my sister.
That
lasted less than a week. Mom couldn’t be left alone anymore. It
wasn’t safe. My sister found her a Group Home. She’s been in one
since.
A
few years ago, my Mother started begging me to let her come live with
me, again. By now, my career was reaching its end. I was physically
exhausted, my diabetes was kicking into high gear, putting me twice
in the hospital in my final year as a teacher, and I thought we could
work it out. I was ready to quit. We could live off of my
retirement and Mom’s. She wouldn’t have to pay all her money to the
Group Home anymore.
The
entire family rose against any such plan. When I discussed it with
them we reached an agreement that if I could show I could take care
of Mom every weekend for a few months, I could have her come live
with me. My sister had power of attorney, and she could prevent it
otherwise. I agreed. I failed to call my sister on time one night
about the arrangements for Mom for the weekend, and that meant I had
failed. Mom couldn’t come live with me.
Every
time Mom heard about the arguments, she got more depressed. The more
depressed she became, the more her dementia accelerated. It was
incredibly bad for her.
Finally,
I had Mom give me power of attorney so I could let her come live with
me. I did everything legally. My sister’s response to the news was
fury, and the entire family rose against me, again.
I
had a room ready for Mom. My previous roommates painted it, and we
put her favorite pictures in it. It had a low enough bed that
Melanie, now too old to make the jump to a regular height, could
still get on Mom’s. We were ready for Mom to move in. This was met
with threats of legal action from the family, and it was clear that a
court proceeding of any sort would fry completely what was left of
Mom’s brain. Mom and I decided not to do it.
After
I quit, I found I couldn’t really earn much money anymore. Mom gave
me money. I shouldn’t have taken it. It was wrong. So… my sin is
this: I took money from my mother when I had power of attorney. She
never went without anything she wanted. I had not just her
permission, but her insistence. Nevertheless, I was wrong to accept
it.
My
family convinced Mom to sign power of attorney back over to my
sister. It has remained there ever since.
Where
are we now?
I’m
not allowed to take Mom out of her Group Home anymore, even to lunch.
I can still call her, however, and I do, every night, at 7:37 PM.
Each conversation is nearly identical:
“Good
evening!” I say happily. “I’m calling to check on my Mother,
because, you know, I never really get around to it, so I thought I
should see how you are. So… how are you? What kind of day has it
been?”
By
now, Mom is laughing as though it were the first time she’s heard the
joke, or that it was actually funny. “Oh, it was fine. Just the
same, you know. I’m just so glad you called.”
“Well,
it’s what we do. I have to make sure my Mother is all right. Did
you get good naps today?”
“Oh,
yes. I always get a good nap.” Now she talks about the TV I got
her, and how that’s her life saver, because she can watch what she
wants, and she doesn’t have to sit in the living room with other
people. “But
now tell about your day.”
And
I will go through the basics of my day, without any detail, and then
she will ask again, at least two more times in the next few minutes.
Finally,
I get around to, “Now there are a couple of things you need to
remember.”
“All
right.” (She knows what’s coming, and this is her favorite part of
the conversation.)
“And
the first one is, no matter WHAT happens…”
“I
always have you.”
“You
ALWAYS have me. And I never want you to forget that. It would be too
easy for you to feel lonely and disconnected over there, so I need to
remind you every night. You can call whenever you need me.” (She
never does.)
“You
don’t know how much that helps me.”
“And
the second thing you need to remember is that you and Dad put
together this great big family. And, yes, they’re spread all over
the damn country now, but you’re still connected to them, because, as
it turns out, I’m still your son, and I love you very very much.”
“And
I love you very very much, too.”
“Well,
I like to call you every night before you go to bed because I heard a
rumor once that it was just
possible you might worry about me a little bit, and just in case-”
And
by now Mom is laughing again. “Boy, have you got that
wrong. Don’t you know that your mother worries about you all the
time?”
“But
now you don’t have to worry about me because you know I’m okay, and I
know you’re okay, so we can both relax and get some sleep.”
“I
know. And that’s so important. If you didn’t call one night, I’m
sure I would never get to sleep.”
“I
know. But, now you can. And I know that when you go to sleep,
you’re going to be talking to Dad, and when you do -”
“Tell
him Fred says hey. I do that every single night.”
“I
know, and it’s really important, because I’m doing so much writing
these days, and I can’t have him annoyed with me. I can’t write
without him.”
“You
learned a lot from him. We were lucky to have him.”
“Yes
we were. Now, I’m going to let you go to sleep, and then I’m going
to write a little more, and then I’m going to bed, too.”
Sometimes,
she’ll still ask about Melanie. Melanie died on June 14. I told Mom
a week or so later, but it upset her, and my sister told me never to
mention it again, or she wouldn’t let me talk to Mom anymore. So…if
Mom asks, I just answer as honestly as I can (“She’s fine.”), and
move on immediately to anything else. I despise lying to my
Mother, but, having twisted it around into a pretzel, the logic is
undeniable. I have to lie.
And
then Mom and I remind one another of our love, and we say good night.
I
have admitted my worst sin.
It’s
a part of who I am. I am not all good. I am not all bad. If my sin
is sufficient that you believe me unworthy of your friendship, I
understand.
I’ve never written a review
before, and this will probably be unlike any you have ever read. I
will be unconcerned with the technical aspects of the film, and I
don’t know, nor do I care enough to research, the names of the
actors. That’s not the subject of the film or of this review.
The movie has a simple
concept: Almost everyone in the world has forgotten The Beatles ever
existed. It’s not clear why, but it has something to do with a power
outage. The fact is, it doesn’t matter. We’re willing to suspend
our disbelief because we’re interested in the idea: What if some
third rate pub singer was the only musician who had ever heard a
Beatles song?
Aaron Sorkin teaches that
the key to a movie is having a strong intention and difficult
obstacles to overcome in fulfilling that intention. The intention,
here, is that the protagonist, Jack, wants to become a great
musician. The obstacle is that he has almost no measurable talent.
He overcomes that obstacle by being the only musician in the world
who knows any Beatles songs. He is shocked that no one on the planet
knows John, Paul, George, and Ringo. And he begins to play their
songs.
The movie is really, for me,
about the need for Great Art. I conducted a singularly unscientific
poll among my Facebook Friends, and I found that the majority of them
are significant Beatles fans. I’m old. This is to be expected. I
found a few who weren’t, and I was more surprised by that. Why?
The Beatles are the
Shakespeare of Pop Music. And just as there are people who don’t
like Hamlet, there are people who don’t live for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely
Hearts Club Band. “Something” has been recorded by more than 200
artists. Why? It’s an objectively great piece of Art. Sinatra,
whose opinion is pretty well informed, called it the greatest love
song ever written.
Now, there are many things
that are a matter of opinion in Art. But, there are some things that
are simply objectively demonstrable. For example, it’s not just my
opinion that Miles Davis was, or Chuck Curry is, a better trumpet
player than I am. I can’t play it. If you give me a trumpet, I know
enough to get a noise to come out of it. I can’t play a single note,
let alone a tune. So… it’s really not a matter solely of opinion.
To reach a different conclusion would be to deny any meaning the
terms Music or Art could ever have.
Was Miles Davis a better
trumpet player than Chuck Curry is now? We could debate that. I
would be willing to bet all of this week’s allowance of Diet Pepsi
that Chuck would be the first to say Davis is his superior. And
Chuck knows much more about the Art of Music than I ever will. His
opinion is more valuable because it is better informed than mine.
But there are undoubtedly those who prefer Chuck’s playing to
Miles’s. I prefer it, from time to time. Otherwise, I would never
listen to my Chuck CDs. I would play only Miles Davis.
My point is this. Whether
you prefer one thing to another is not the same as determining what
is great. You may not like Hamlet, but Shakespeare was, demonstrably,
a better writer than Stephen King. I swear to you Stephen King will
agree with that assessment. He knows the Art of Writing, and he
knows his place in it.
In the same way, the work of
The Beatles is, in fact, demonstrably, some of the most beautiful and
powerful music ever written.
The movie explains it
beautifully. A singer who I believe I’m supposed to know, but
didn’t, named Ed Sheeran, challenges Jack to a songwriting contest.
10 minutes, and they’ll both come up with their best song.
Sheeran plays his. It’s
perfectly nice. It’s also entirely forgettable. I can tell you
because I’ve already forgotten it. There was not a thing wrong with
it. I remember sort of liking it. I just don’t remember anything
else about it.
Jack performs “The Long
and Winding Road.” The small audience watching is stunned into
silence before first Sheeran, and then the rest of the crowd,
applauds. Someone says something about taking a vote. Sheeran
declines it. He says something along the lines of, “No vote. It’s
not necessary. You’re better than I am. You’re Mozart to my
Salieri.” I love that because it’s the artist recognizing Art.
Stephen King would say the same about Shakespeare. Chuck would say
the same thing about Miles.
Art improves the world. It
makes it more beautiful. It gives you access to feelings you never
knew you had. It helps you to understand the indecipherable. It
builds empathy.
There’s a love story that is
fine, but, mostly, for me, irrelevant. Other reviewers will disagree
with me. They may well be right. The girl that played his love
interest was cute and sweet and entirely deserving of love, but that
portion of the story was the least explored, probably because it was
put in at the insistence of some producer somewhere who thought it
wouldn’t make any money without a love story. (They might want to
watch “A Few Good Men” again!)
And the movie does a fine
job of attacking the monetization of Art. The manager is wonderfully
evil. She’s also a simple caricature. But that’s all she needs to
be.
This movie isn’t any
exploration of people; it’s an exploration of an idea.
If the Beatles had never
existed, our lives would be less enriched. This is true of all Art.
That was the point of the movie. It made its point well.
What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards…
Jean Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism
I
wrote an essay recently about being referred to as an Online
Panhandler. I expressed that I don’t know whether I fit the
definition of Panhandler, but I see nothing wrong in being one.
The essay is here, in case you would like to read it.
…Regarding panhandling, “there, but for the grace of god, go I”. (Could substitute “rank good fortune” for “god”.) There too, but for the grace (of) god, goes your friend who passed judgment on you. You seem to feel the pain of the world and you don’t question the only sane response, which is compassion. You seem to share what little you have with others, and want to do more. You seem to draw your circle of inclusion far beyond your immediate environment. Your friend draws his/her circle of inclusion very close to himself, hoarding what he/she has, and condemning those who by choice, necessity, or circumstance find themselves in a very different place. On more than one occasion I believe that I have told you I think, although you and I have never met, that you are a good man (not perfect, but a good man). May I suggest that you write an essay/analysis of MY “judgment” of you? I think it might be a more challenging exercise, but one that might be quite illuminating. You don’t even need to post it, but by posting it you might get feedback that might also be illuminating for you. Take care Fred. I still think you are a good man.
Ross hardwick
To
answer him requires a bit of philosophy. Not too much. Don’t worry.
I
was first exposed to the idea of Existentialism when I was 15 years
old. I had returned from Iowa, where I came perilously close to
becoming a confirmed Lutheran, and my father, a confirmed atheist and
Professor of Philosophy of Education, had me audit his class. I
wasn’t old enough to get credit for it, but I paid attention. And,
while Dad rejected Existentialism, as did one of my heroes, Charles
Frankel, I found it seductive. Frankel called it cosmic despair. I
suppose he was right, but I found much in it that I loved, not the
least of which were most of Monty Python, Cool Hand Luke, Butch
Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, and The Graduate. I also loved
Sartre’s The Wall. (Long before Pink Floyd had any ideas on the
subject.)
While
there is much to reject in Existentialism, such as the idea that
there can be no certainty, and, therefore every choice is a Leap in
the Dark, (it’s really not… yes, anything can happen, but one has
experiences upon which to rely for making choices. It’s possible the
Sun won’t set tonight, but I’m proceeding on the assumption it will,
and not to do so is foolish.), there is also one part that has stayed
with me into my old age.
When you choose, you choose for Every Man.
When we say that man chooses himself, we do mean that every one of us must choose himself; but by that we also mean that in choosing for himself he chooses for all men. For in effect, of all the actions a man may take in order to create himself as he wills to be, there is not one which is not creative, at the same time, of an image of man such as he believes he ought to be. To choose between this or that is at the same time to affirm the value of that which is chosen; for we are unable ever to choose the worse. What we choose is always the better; and nothing can be better for us unless it is better for all.
Jean Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a humanism
When
I make a choice, for myself, I try to ask what I would want anyone to
do in my position. If I choose Cruelty, I am endorsing it. If I
choose Kindness, I’m advocating we all make that choice. To say I
believe in Kindness is meaningless if it doesn’t influence my
behavior.
My
irritation with many Christians is that the best of their beliefs do
nothing to guide their behavior. They use the bible as a weapon, and
a cause for hatred. I don’t really believe that was Jesus’s
intention. To quote from Harper Lee, “You are too young to
understand it … but sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is
worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of – oh, of your father.”
– Miss Maudie
I
know Christians whose beliefs guide them toward Love, Compassion, and
Kindness. These are people I like. I may disagree with the path
they chose to arrive there, but I like where they’re standing, and
that’s what really matters.
So,
what does it mean to be Fred, from the point of view of someone
outside of Fred, like my friend, Ross, who is quoted above? He
observes my penchant for Kindness and Compassion, and he finds them
admirable. I see them as the only reasonable default position. I
try to be what I think all men should be, but I have no doubt I fail
from time to time.
I
openly discuss both my Kindness and my Poverty. They are parts of
who I am. They are parts over which I feel no shame.
I
don’t generally discuss the parts of my character of which I’m
ashamed. Do you? But, I suppose it’s important to be as honest
about my flaws as I am my shining palace built upon the sand. What
are they?
I
should bathe more often than I do. A shower is out of the question
for me, because it’s not a question of if, but when, I am going to
fall and hurt myself. So, I take baths when it’s essential, but not
with nearly the frequency I should. If you saw me when I was sitting
at the computer writing, I would look mostly homeless. I could
change this about myself, but the advantage of being alone is that I
have no need to concern myself with the opinions of others about
this. The fact is you can’t see me. My lack of hygiene is doing
nothing to hurt you.
I
think many things about which I’m not proud. I have all sorts of
ideas and fantasies and dreams that are entirely inappropriate. On
the other hand, those are mine, and, as it turns out, I may think
what I wish. You’re not allowed to attack me for my thoughts. My
words and actions are open for discussion. My thoughts are my own.
Though
I believe Trust is the basis of every relationship, I lie sometimes.
I loathe that in myself. And, sometimes, it is beyond my ability
to control. That, however, doesn’t excuse it. I’m endorsing lying
in everyone, and I’m eroding the Trust that makes society work. I
haven’t decided, yet, what to do about it.
I
rely too much on the Kindness of Relative Strangers. I should be
able to support myself, now, but if I were on my own, I would be
done. I don’t make enough to live alone. I have no retirement
left, so I will work for what remains of my life. I’m not proud of
my inability to support myself, but it’s a part of who I am, and to
deny it is to lose a part of my identity.
That
pretty much makes up my faults. I’m sure others find me arrogant, or
think that I’m too much of a Grammar Nazi, or that I am selfish. I’m
sure others could add hundreds of items to the list. Those, however,
are the ones of which I’m most acutely aware.
But
those who see me as Kind and Compassionate are seeing the parts of me
I like best, and that I try to make my defining characteristics. I’m
sure I’ve mentioned it elsewhere, but you’d be surprised how few
people have read all 44 of my posts. So, it bears repeating.
When I was in High School, my AP English teacher debated Shakespeare with me. She was wrong, and I was right, but that’s beside the point. (I’m kidding. She was brilliant, even if she didn’t love Hamlet enough.) One of the things we discussed in her class was Marc Antony’s words about Brutus.
This was the noblest Roman of them all. All the conspirators save only he Did that they did in envy of great Caesar. He only in a general honest thought And common good to all, made one of them. His life was gentle, and the elements So mixed in him that Nature might stand up And say to all the world, “This was a man.”
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
I’ve
always been slightly suicidal. I loved the way Brutus died. “Great
Caesar, now be still. I killed not thee with half so good a will.”
Beautiful!
And
from the time Mrs. Julien brought it up to me, I decided I wanted
Marc Antony to be able to visit me, in the final five minutes of my
life, and say about me what he said about Brutus. He has to know
everything I’ve done from the moment I was a fertilized egg up until
his arrival, and he has to see the elements mixed in me such that he
could say, honestly and without equivocation, This was a man.
I
would like to be Atticus Finch. I’d like to be Hemingway’s Santiago.
I’d like to be Capt. Kirk. I’d like to be my Father, who was a
mixture of all those men. He would be pissed about the Capt. Kirk,
but that’s all right. He had Kirk’s ability to reason morally. He
had Kirk’s courage.
I can’t be any of those men. I have to be me. And when you’re old, diabetic as hell, broken, broke, and more than normally unattractive, you would be a fool to reject someone for being different from you. I will reject someone for behaviors I can’t tolerate: Cruelty, Insensitivity, and Unwarranted Selfishness are on the list. For an explanation of Unwarranted Selfishness, you can read this…
But
someone who is a good person is a good person even if their beliefs
differ from mine. She’s still a good person if her sexuality differs
from mine, or if his politics differ from mine, or if his taste in
music is so different from mine that he doesn’t even like The
Beatles. (Although, to be fair, I’m going to have to have a LONG
conversation to figure out what’s wrong with him!) If you’re a good
person, I’m proud to call you my friend. How you got there is
irrelevant to me.
And now I think of Kermit.
He
tells me it’s not easy being green. And, I understand. I’m much
like him. I don’t stand out. I’m not colorful. I’m not attractive.
I’m not wealthy. I’m not strong. I’m not capable of a lot of
things. But… this is who I am. And I’m okay with being this guy.
I think the world still needs a Fred. I can handle that part.
I
suspect the world needs you, too, but I don’t know, yet, exactly why.
I hope you can find out and tell the rest of us.
U.S. Border Patrol agents conduct intake of illegal border crossers at the Central Processing Center in McAllen, Texas, Sunday, June 17, 2018.
“The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border and that is exactly what they are – they are concentration camps – and if that doesn’t bother you…”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Right
off the top, people are disagreeing. Concentration camps are where
the Jews were held by the Nazis during World War II. What we’re
doing at the Southern Border doesn’t involve gas chambers pretending
to be showers. We’re not murdering six million people. The language
is inflammatory. It’s divisive. It’s offensive to Jewish people the
world over.
Right…
why, exactly, is that?
Frankly,
I don’t care if you want to call them Concentration Camps, Detention
Centers, Holding Facilities, or Holiday Fucking Inns. The fact is
that they exist in The United States. Today. Right now. These
aren’t the Japanese Internment Facilities of the past, before most of
us were alive. These exist in America today. They are morally
wrong.
“Well, you liberals want to blame Trump for everything. These were started under Obama, and where was your outrage then? You’re just a Trump Hater.”
Okay.
Fair enough. We won’t blame President Trump. You may blame
President Obama if you would like. You may blame Hillary Clinton.
You may blame Nancy Pelosi. You may blame AOC, Santa Claus, The
Tooth Fairy, or me personally. Whose fault it is doesn’t matter in
the least. What matters is that it’s happening.
Let’s
look at some facts. The following is from the Inspector General’s
Report on one of the better facilities located in Newark, New Jersey.
These are their recommendations from February, 2019.
Recommendation: We recommend ICE conduct an immediate, full review of the Essex County Correctional Facility and the Essex County Department of Corrections’ management of the facility to ensure compliance with ICE’s 2011 Performance-Based National Detention Standards. As part of this assessment, ICE must review and ensure compliance with those standards addressing: 1. Unreported security incidents; 2. Food safety; and 3. Facility conditions that include ceiling leaks, unsanitary shower stalls, bedding, and outdoor recreation areas.
Those
are the conclusions of the Department of Homeland Security, not the
conclusions of liberals, democrats, or socialists.
Facilities in Texas are worse. “Many of them are sleeping on concrete floors, including infants, toddlers, preschoolers. They are being given nothing but instant meals, Kool-Aid and cookies — many of them are sick. We are hearing that many of them are not sleeping. Almost all of them are incredibly sad and being traumatized. Many of them have not been given a shower for weeks. Many of them are not being allowed to brush their teeth except for maybe once every 10 days. They have no access to soap. It’s incredibly unsanitary conditions, and we’re very worried about the children’s health.” –
A law professor who recently visited the facility, Warren Binford of Willamette University
These are children. They are no different from your son or
daughter, or your niece or nephew, or you and your siblings. They
cannot possibly be guilty of any crime.
If their parents didn’t want them in this situation, they should have stayed in their own countries. It’s the parents’ fault, not ours!
Again,
I couldn’t care less about whose fault it is. It does nothing to
excuse the atrocities of the way we are treating human beings. We’re
kidnapping children from their parents’ arms. They can’t be traced
later, so reunification is exceptionally difficult. The children are
housed in areas intended for adults, and the overcrowding is such
that children are sleeping on top of one another on cold cement
floors.
“Gialluca and a slew of other lawyers have been meeting with children and young mothers at facilities across the state this month as pro bono attorneys. At the McAllen center, Gialluca said, everyone she spoke with said they sought out Border Patrol agents after crossing the Rio Grande so they could request asylum. Gialluca said the migrants, all from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, told her they aren’t receiving proper medical care and children don’t have enough clean clothes. Unable to clean themselves, young mothers reported wiping their children’s runny noses or vomit with their own clothing, Gialluca said. There aren’t sufficient cups or baby bottles, so many are reused or shared.”
These are not
conditions under which any human being ought to be living. We are
experiencing this crisis in this country at this moment. It needs to
end. It needs to end now.
Okay, Mr. Bleeding Heart Liberal, how would YOU end it? We have borders for a reason, or do you think we should throw open the door and let everyone in? Is that what you do at your house, or do you lock the door every night?
First,
in my Ideal World, we would be done with Us and Them. We would
recognize that every single one of us is a human being. We would
recognize that all human beings should be allowed to live some form
of decent life, and that one’s country of origin does nothing to tell
me if one is a good person or a bad person. Neither does one’s race,
gender, religion, appearance, economic security, or political ideas.
To determine if one is a good person, I need to observe that
person’s behavior.
Well, their behavior was to break the laws of the United States. That makes them criminals, and they deserve NOTHING from us!
I’m
afraid adherence to laws does nothing to tell me about a person’s
value. Harriet Tubman, for more than a decade, was breaking the law
by guiding people along the Underground Railroad. She was breaking
the law. She was also doing the right thing.
If
an immigrant does something to hurt someone – if an immigrant
assaults someone, kills or rapes someone, or steals from someone –
that’s a reason to remove him or her. But stepping across a line
does nothing to hurt me. It does nothing to hurt you, either.
The
arguments against immigrants are generally an effort to dehumanize
them. How could you do this to a child? Well… if they’re not
really children… if
they’re not my
children… then it’s okay to treat them badly because they, you
know, deserve it somehow.
But I think,
deep down, we all know that’s not true. We have to find a way to
make this normal so we don’t have to feel appalled. And when this
becomes normal, Death Camps aren’t far behind. And, it won’t be just
immigrants. They’re first, but others will join them in coming days.
We’ve been
doing this for centuries. We did it with black people. They were
obviously different. Their skin was a darker color. They were Them.
Good people, white people, were Us. We have to subjugate those who
are not Us.
We did it with
women. We did it with those whose sexual orientations were different
from the majority. We did it with those whose religious beliefs were
different from the majority.
Why?
Who is better
off for deciding that one group of people needs to be treated better
or worse based on their membership in that group?
I’m a straight,
white male. That makes me better than absolutely no one. Your
membership in whatever groups have been assigned to you makes you no
better than anyone else, either.
You’re better
or worse than other people based upon your behaviors.
The behaviors
of these immigrant children don’t earn them the hell we are giving
them.
I’m not a
politician. There are many very good reasons for that. I don’t have
solutions to America’s problems. But I can certainly recognize a
problem when it’s staring me in the face. We are moving down a road
we should all be able to recognize by now. Let’s stop where we are
and turn around and go back.
Can we afford
to give these people the help they need? I submit, if we want to
call ourselves human, we can’t afford not to.
In my Ideal World, there are no
borders. No, we don’t let strangers in our houses, but my house is
not the same as my country. My home contains my private property,
and a stranger inside it may represent a danger to me.
The country, however, is made up
of nothing but strangers and immigrants. I’m perfectly content for
them to find the best life they can here. In my world, everyone has
shelter, food, medicine, and sanitary conditions in which to live.
We all have a fair chance to make our lives better. We’re all
willing to give each other a helping hand. We all get a good
education, and we find joy in our lives.
Why is that world impossible?
Because you’ve been taught it is.
Let’s learn something new. Let’s
learn Love for All Humans. Let’s learn what a friend taught me when
I was 16 years old: “One planet, one people… please?”
I feel like I’m one of those
hosts who annoy me during Pledge Week on PBS. I’m watching something
I really enjoy, on a station devoid of the commercials that can
destroy any work of Art, and in they come with their tote bags and
coffee mugs trying to get me to send them money so they can keep
airing fantastic programs like the one that I was enjoying… until
they interrupted it. I hate those guys.
Sadly, though, I understand
why they do that. People love what PBS is doing. People love that
they can watch it without interruption. And, yeah, it costs money to
create the Art I enjoy. Since they don’t make money from the
corporations who destroy Art in order to sell soap, they have to make
it elsewhere. They can’t do it for free. People need to get paid.
And I would like you to be able to enjoy the blog commercial free.
I was forced, recently, to do a Go Fund Me to pay for the expenses for my dog’s passing. And when I did it, I was called an Online Panhandler. You can read about that, here.
I would prefer not to think
of myself in that way. I would like to believe I earn money for the
things I do.
One of the things my former
friend told me was that I should “…get a job! ANY job!” To be
clear, I have a job. I teach Defensive Driving. I’m good at
it. I recently got a raise. I’m doing training next month that will
allow me to teach it to corporations all over the country, and I’m
likely to make a little more money doing it that way. Whether my
health will permit this, I don’t know yet. If it won’t, that will
create brand new problems.
I taught Elementary School
for 29 years. Prior to that, I worked at Day Care Centers, grocery
stores, and even had a paper route when such things still existed. I
have worked hard in my life. I have contributed. I have made a
difference.
My health is now shot. If I
work more than 2 days in a row it is a near certainty that I will
wind up in the hospital. (I teach between 4 and 6 classes a month at
the moment. I had as many as 10 in a month, but I wound up
hospitalized. If they gave me more classes, I would teach them. I
have no control over that.) I’ve had Diabetic Ketoacidosis more than
a dozen times in the last five years. It turns out that once you’ve
had DKA, the likelihood of a recurrence increases. Each case of it
weakens your body and your resistance to the outside conditions that
can cause it. At this point, a common cold can wind me up in the
hospital. I’m extremely careful to avoid any situation which
increases my odds of illness.
I’m applying for Disability.
I have no idea if I will get it. I’m told it usually takes forever.
If I get it, that would be helpful. If I don’t, I will get by as
well as I can on the money I make.
But what I would really like
to be able to do is to make money for writing. I’m told I can be a
Copy Writer, which means writing ads for people. I could do that, I
suppose, but everyone who says it can be done wants me to pay money
so they can show me how it’s done. Why don’t I trust them? Barefoot
Writer, AWAI, and the others that show up all over Facebook sound
wonderful at the outset, but upon further investigation, turn out to
be disappointing. If someone offers me a job writing something for
them, I will almost certainly accept it. But, that’s not where I am.
I’m no sort of promoter. I
don’t ever plan to be. I write. I teach. I make videos. I try to
be nice to people. I am cuddled by cats. That’s pretty much it.
Those are all the things I do well.
If you enjoy my writing, and you would like to contribute to my being able to continue doing it, that would be helpful. I’m told that the first thing I need to do is explain what is called my Mission Statement. In brief, what is it I want to accomplish? How do I plan to accomplish this? What do I need in order to be able to do so. I have been giving this quite a bit of thought.
What Do I Want to
Accomplish With This Blog?
I want to make a
difference. I want to suggest a kinder, more compassionate world.
I would like to increase the number of people who share my
admittedly Idealistic picture of the world. Perhaps someone with
more power than I have will read my words and find a way toward a
better world. My core beliefs include the following:
We are all one
People. The Idea of Us vs Them has no place in a civilized
society. There is no Them. We are all Us.
All human beings
deserve The Bare Necessities of Life. These include food, shelter,
clothing, basic safety, sanitary living conditions, genuine
education, and healthcare.
We need to base our
policies and practices on facts, well supported by reliable
evidence. Science is an effective method of determining facts, and
not simply a Western Prejudice.
We must all be aware
of, and guard against the ill effects of, our own cognitive biases.
Wanting to believe something is true or false has nothing to do
with whether something is true of false.
I want to entertain
people. I want to make them smile, or laugh, or feel a deeper
catharsis. When we get to know fictional characters, when we learn
to care about them, we increase our abilities to empathize. I think
this a key portion of being human. I have a nice post on Empathy,
here: frededer.home.blog/2019/03/27/empathy-and-art/
I want to express who
I am. I suspect all artists, of any sort, are trying to do the same
thing. It’s a part of us.
How Will I Make a
Difference, Entertain People, and Express Myself?
I will write. I will air my thoughts here, on Facebook, and in discussions with anyone who is interested in them.
I will make videos that express my feelings, almost always connected to music that I find moving. (Most often it will probably be Sara Niemietz and Snuffy Walden. Their music, which most people don’t seem to know, is incredibly powerful.) You’ll find most of them on my very quiet little YouTube channel.
3. I will read and learn from all the places I find useful. I don’t like to express an uninformed opinion. I will do the research necessary to provide reliable evidence for any claim I make, particularly if it is relevant to how I reached the position I’m advocating.
What Do I Need in Order
to Accomplish These Goals?
I need ink, paper, time, and a decent blog. I also need a computer with a legible keyboard, a phone, and internet access. (I’m using Mobile Hotspot now. It’s cheaper than a separate internet connection.) It would be great if I had the money to remove the evil advertisements from my blog. You don’t want to read them. I don’t want you to be submitted to them.
I need to have enough money to sustain my existence. I make well below the poverty level in this society, and if I didn’t have food stamps and free health care, I would simply be dead. My roommates help to keep me alive and well. I’m grateful for that.
I need people who are willing to support my writing, not only by reading it (which is, for me, the most valuable way), but also by contributing money so I can keep doing it.
There are successful bloggers in the world. I can’t name any, but I’m sure they exist. I’m told they’re good at marketing. I don’t want to do marketing. I don’t want to work out strategies to improve my online presence, or whatever it is I’m supposed to do. All I am interested in doing is sharing my thoughts with anyone who may be interested in them. If you are an expert in marketing, and you would like to do the marketing for me, I won’t say no. I just don’t have the money to spend on it. And I have done enough research to know that I don’t want to do all of those things, myself.
I
would just like to share thoughts, quietly, with people who want to
read them. I’d like my blog to be a front porch in a little town
where people like to come by and sit for a spell. I want no neon
lights. I prefer sunlight and moonlight.
My Grandpa Schuelke told me once, when I was very, very little, “Fred, you can’t change the world, only your corner of it.” Welcome to My Corner of The World.
This week has been a
difficult one for me. I had to put my dog to sleep. It was
incredibly expensive to do it the way I believed it needed to be
done: at home, surrounded by everyone who loves her, feeling as happy
as I could make her.
I found I couldn’t pay any
of my bills after I spent all that money. I set up a Go Fund Me. I
asked my friends for help.
And then I was accused by a
friend of being “an Online Panhandler.”
Obviously, that hurt me. We
don’t talk anymore. But, it also got me to question my own identity.
My first step was to see if
there was any truth in the accusation. The best place to start was
with the definition of the term. I looked it up.
To
approach strangers and beg for money or food.
v.tr.
1.
To approach and beg from (a stranger).
Now
it’s worth questioning if that’s what I did. In how many ways do my
actions fit that definition?
I
left a message on my page. I wrote the following:
I suppose no one was
thinking rationally last Friday when we had to put my dog, Melanie,
to sleep. We didn’t question the cost. It had to be done; it had to
be done immediately. It had to be done in our home where she was
always her happiest. I couldn’t bring myself to take her to a Vet’s
Office where they would lay her on a cold table. And I know I
couldn’t have driven in the first place. I’m not sure whether my
roommates could.
At Home Euthanasia turns out
to be incredibly expensive. We paid it. We paid to get her ashes
back. That was extra, and, from a financial point of view, it was a
selfish choice. We made it. And now, as was entirely predictable,
we can’t pay any of our bills. My paycheck came that day. So did my
roommate’s. So we just spent the money. Perhaps it was foolish. I
believe it was the right choice.
I did this to myself. I
admit that. I am the one responsible for my decision.
Now, however, I’m reaching
out for help. If you could help me offset the cost of the tragedy, I
would be beyond grateful.
No one owes me a thing. I
have asked for too much, too often, and I have no business whatever
doing it again. And if no one chooses to help, I completely
understand and respect that choice.
I made a financially
irresponsible choice, when I decided to spend the money to bring
Melanie’s life to the end I believe it deserved. It was peaceful.
She was happy. She wasn’t afraid. She left this Earth feeling
loved. That was worth more to me than any amount of money, and I
would do the same thing again, even if it meant being here again.
She meant the Universe to me.
Most of you have already
given me the most valuable support I can get. You have been kind,
you have offered advice, and you have sent love, hugs, condolences,
and empathy. Those are infinitely more valuable than any number of
the Little Green Pieces of Paper the world has decided determine
one’s value.
But, if you’d like to help
us exist a little while longer in the Green Pieces of Paper World,
and you would like to send us a couple of them, it turns out we need
them.
Thank you for all you have
already done.
Love,
Fred
I
also gave the link to the Go Fund Me campaign, and to my roommate’s
PayPal account.
I
didn’t approach anyone individually. I’ve done that before,
though, too. Those who saw this message were either friends of mine,
or they were people who were, for some reason, interested in what was
on my page.
Having
said that, I suppose in a wide enough reading of the term, I met the
definition. I was, essentially, begging.
And
that brings me to the more important point. Whether or not I’m a
Panhandler, I would like to suggest that to be one is not always an
insult.
When
we were at Wal Mart last week, we saw a woman standing outside. She
told us she was homeless, and she needed help. We invited her into
the McDonald’s inside of Wal Mart, and we got her breakfast. She
told us she was glad we helped her with food instead of money,
because she’s an addict, and money represents a greater temptation
for her to do things that will make her life briefly more pleasant,
but in the long run will make her life somewhat briefer than it might
have been otherwise.
It
was hot. We have an extra bedroom. We have an old mattress since a
friend of mine recently got me a new one. We could have invited her
to come stay with us for a while. My heart desperately wanted to do
that. She’s a human being. She needs some very basic help. We
couldn’t, of course. That’s not the way the world works anymore.
And I’m deeply sad about that. That’s a topic, however, for a future
essay.
I’ve
been thinking about her quite a bit since then. She never told us
her name, but she looks like she might be an Erin, so that’s the name
I’ll be using to refer to her.
How
must it make Erin feel to be in a position that requires her to do
that? I’m familiar with the contempt people feel toward Panhandlers
and The Homeless. They should pull themselves up by their boot
straps. They should get a job. They should never have done drugs.
They shouldn’t have euthanized their dogs.
I
don’t like that way of thinking. It runs counter to logic, facts,
evidence, compassion, and decency. Why?
Logic
There
are more job seekers than there are available jobs. For any position
in America, there are a minimum of 3 applicants. That means, by
definition, 2 people won’t get the job. What follows logically from
that? There will be unemployed people. If people are unemployed,
they have no money. Without money, they can’t provide the basics of
living for themselves. If they can’t provide those basics alone,
they have only 2 options.
They
can ask for help.
They
can die.
The
logical choice is to ask for help, although it runs counter to our
feeling that we need to take care of ourselves. After a certain age,
we are supposed to be able to survive independently. If we can’t,
people see us as somehow “less than.” To ask for help is
logically correct, and emotionally devastating.
Facts
It takes longer to find a job than it once did.
In 2009, the Wall Street Journal noted that job seekers took longer to find work than since the Department of Labor began tracking in 1948. Now in 2013, the average job search takes 38 weeks or 60% longer. According to the Department of Labor there are over 3.9 million open jobs nationally. Why are so few jobs being matched to workers, if there are a record high number of open jobs?
“98% of job seekers are eliminated at the initial resume screening and only the Top 2% of candidates make it to the interview”, stated Robert Meier, President of Job Market Experts. “Fixing the employment market requires helping job seekers become Top 2% Candidates who can meet employer’s rigorous requirements and easily hit the “bulls-eye” of employer needs to ensure they don’t make bad hires,” continued Meier.
If
one can’t get a job, and one can’t get help from the government, one
is forced to ask help from others. 38 weeks is a long time to go
without a job.
Evidence
“In 2014 , 1.49 million people used homeless shelters and 578,424 were recorded as being without shelter: sleeping on the streets, in tents, in cars, and other exposed places. Cities completed the 2016 point-in-time count in January.”
How
many of those are Panhandlers? I honestly don’t know. I searched,
but was unable to find, a reliable source for the number of
Panhandlers in America. If someone has such a source, and wanted to
share it, I would be grateful.
I’m
going to assume that, at some point or other, at least 500,000 people
in America become Panhandlers. Some of them may do it
professionally. I’m told that, in rare cases, some of them make as
much as $80,000 a year. That’s a hell of a lot more than I make.
It’s probably more than you make. If it’s not, send me some money,
please. (Yes, that was a joke.)
But,
the evidence suggests there are a large number of Panhandlers, and I
don’t believe the vast majority of them are doing it because they
want to.
There is the anecdotal evidence of those we encounter. My experiences with them have mostly been nice. I’m sure others have had negative experiences with them. There are good and bad people in any group.
Three
Fast Facts About Panhandling
1. Only 3% of panhandlers don’t want some form of permanent housing that would help to get them off of the street. 2. 48% of panhandlers are African American. 3. 1 out of every 4 panhandlers in the United States has served in the military at some point in time.
The
quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain
from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed: It
blesseth him that gives and him that takes
The Merchant of Venice
Previously,
I have argued that The Value of a Person cannot be calculated by the
number of little green pieces of paper that person is able, in
whatever form, to collect.
If
a person is alive, that person has a human right to certain basics.
All living people deserve food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, and
the means to explore this life. This is an opinion that I hold
deeply, and it would be difficult to convince me to change it. There
are examples of people who may deserve to die because they have done
something so heinous that they have forfeited the right to breathe.
But such people are few and far between, and none of them makes the
list simply for having an insufficient collection of money.
So…
Am
I an Online Panhandler?
This question reminds me of one Jimmy Smits had to answer in an episode of The West Wing. Alan Alda asked him if he was an Unthinking Liberal. He asked it in the same smug sort of way that the question about me being a Panhandler is asked. It assumes that being a Liberal or being a Panhandler is necessarily and obviously evil. This is their exchange:
Congressman Matthew Santos (Jimmy Smits): I know you like to use that word ‘liberal’ as if it were a crime. Senator Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda): No. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have used that word. I know Democrats think liberal is a bad word. So bad you had to change it. What do you call yourselves now, progressives? Is that it? Santos: It’s true. Republicans have tried to turn liberal into a bad word. Well, liberals ended slavery in this country. Vinick: A Republican President ended slavery. Santos: Yes, a liberal Republican. What happened to them? They got run out of your party. What did liberals do that was so offensive to the Repubican party, Senator? I’ll tell you what they did. Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those programs… every one. So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, ‘Liberal,’ as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won’t work, Senator, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor.
– The West Wing from the episode “The Debate” written by Lawrence O’Donnell
I’m
not going to claim Panhandlers are as heroic as liberals, but I still
see the same nobility in them that Billy Joel found when he was done
being an Angry Young Man. “I’ve found that just surviving is a
noble fight.”
I
know that when someone calls me a Panhandler, they don’t mean it in a
kind way. They are not being friendly toward me. I don’t feel
insulted by the epithet, though.
I’m
supposed to trade what I have that is of value in order to collect
little green pieces of paper. I maintain I did. What I have that is
of value is kind, loving, and compassionate people in my life. I
wouldn’t trade them for anything. But I don’t believe any of you are
in my life because I forced you to be. It’s a choice you made
because there must be something in me that you value. There is
certainly something in you that I value, or you wouldn’t be reading
this. It may be your sense of humor, your ideological bent, the
interests we share, the ideas we debate, or just that seeing your
name popping up on my page makes me smile. It could be any of a
billion or so things. But, I value you. And I believe you value me.
Decency
No
one insists you donate your hard earned money to a Panhandler. You
have every right to decide to ignore them completely. They have done
nothing of any value to you. And, you may even resent them for not
appearing to you to be working, and you know how hard you worked for
what you have. You don’t need to pay for anyone but yourself.
What
I would ask, though, is that you spare them your contempt. Please
don’t give them your unsolicited opinion.
“Keep
away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people
always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can
become great.”
Mark
Twain (mostly)
Making
someone else feel small does nothing to make you taller. It just
makes you cruel. Let’s be Kind to one another whenever we can. It
matters.
Macbeth
was a villain, but he was right about that…
We’d known it was coming for
months. She was getting weaker all the time. She was just plain
old. There was nothing more to do. The details are irrelevant. It
was simply time to let her go. I’m confident in that decision.
Life is a clock; it finally winds down. While I was waiting for the vet to come this morning, every minute was a year. And the ten years Melanie and I had were only a minute.
Now, I am alone…
Hamlet
I have plenty of support.
My best friend, Stephanie, who gave Melanie to me when Melanie was 6
or 8 weeks old (we bought her from an ad on Craigslist), and her
boyfriend, Tim, who has the distinction of being the only man she’s
dated in the last decade that I like, came to sit with me.
I cried a few times while I
was waiting. Then I would sigh, put out my cigarette, and then go
sit by Melanie again. I didn’t want Melanie to see me crying. She
didn’t. She was as happy as she could be.
This morning she couldn’t
get up. She couldn’t get off the floor. I had to move her food to
her. She was done.
And, in the end, she made sure I got lots of kisses to take with me forever. One of our last is in the picture above. While I was petting her, she looked curiously around the room, as though she’d never really seen it before. She seemed to absorb it all, as though she knew… and I think she did… that she would never see it again.
Melanie was simply Love.
She was nothing more, and nothing less. She never knew a single
trick. She used to leap across the kitchen floor to cover me with
kisses when I came home from work. She cuddled with me every night,
until she couldn’t get on the bed anymore, and I could never get her
to use the steps my old roommate made her that would have helped her
up there. She slept on the floor in my room.
Since we moved here, she had
been much happier. There were no more stairs for her to climb. She
had a huge backyard. And she got her own couch, and her own blanket.
And in the end she got to the place where she couldn’t get off of
them.
I’m about to discuss my restroom habits. If this is too personal, please skip to the next paragraph. “There is little or no offensive material apart from….” oh never mind. If you aren’t a complete Monty Python Geek that joke will fall flat… but… I got up to pee just now. I walked from my Library to the bathroom. And I walked past Melanie’s couch. Her fur is all over the floor from where she was lying at the end and everyone kept petting her. And she wasn’t on the couch. And she won’t be again. And that sucks. That’s what I have to say about my restroom habits…. except that Melanie is still on the couch for less than a second whenever I walk by. And I can hear her claws on the wood floor whenever I go to the door.
The girls had evidently been
preparing for this for the last several weeks. Hilary had done the
research, and she knew exactly who to call. They came out to the
house. Melanie left being completely loved. I believe she was
thinking about Lenny’s rabbits.
When it was over, I went
outside. When I came back in, the room was emptier than it’s ever
been, regardless of the fact that I was surrounded by people I love
and who love me. It will be that way for a long time.
I cost us a ton of money,
today. It’s not cheap to get people out to do this, and I spent the
extra to get Melanie’s ashes. I can’t justify it financially, and I
know I hurt the family, but it was emotionally necessary. We were
almost going to be even this month…
And, of course, there is the
difficulty of deciding whether to tell my mother. She’s 88, has
almost no short term memory left, lives in a group home she’s not
allowed to leave, and she would never really have to know. She loves
Melanie as much as I do. I nearly hyperventilated this morning. I
can’t imagine how this will affect Mom. There is also the
possibility of not telling her at all. I don’t feel right about
keeping it from her, but I don’t see the Good in hurting her this
badly. I haven’t decided what to do yet. It will require thought.
Melanie was the best Love
I’ve ever had. I have three cats, one of whom insists on cuddling me
whenever I go near my bed. I have roommates who are family. I have
friends all over the place who are here to support me. And I am
grateful to all of you for all of that. And none of you, and none of
the Love I get, as incredibly valuable as both you and your Love are
to me, can be Melanie. There never can be another Melanie.
She made my life better for
more than a decade. She helped me through the worst times, and she
celebrated the best with me. Her fortunes rose and fell as mine did,
but she never complained. She just gave me kisses.
When I brought her home, she
fit in the palm of my hand. I put her on the bed with me that first
night, and it was way too far down for her to consider jumping off,
so she bounced around the bed all night long like a tennis ball on
crack. I remember wondering if I was ever going to get to sleep with
her in the bed.
Over the years, I learned to
sleep without her in the bed.
But now I have to sleep without her in the world. I don’t know how
well I’m going to do.
What
I am going to do is,
I’m going to keep going. I sat down to write this less for you than
for me. I have to get some of this out, so I apologize that I am
speaking too personally. I have to know I can still write. I think
I can.
Melanie, you were the best. You’re never really gone, as long as I remember you, as someone once said. Here’s lookin’ at you, kid. I love you.
Don’t tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.
The life of man in this world is, for the most part, a life of work. Every man worth calling a man should be willing and able to work. How can one be idle when others are busy? How maintain social respect, honor and responsibility? Work is the best of all educators, for it forces men into contact with others, and with things as they really are. If we consult biography, it will be found that the worthiest men have been the most industrious in their callings. Labor is the price set upon everything valuable. Nothing can be accomplished without it.
Samuel Smiles, Life And Labor (1887)
“…and Brutus is an honorable man…” — Marc Antony
In The United States, in
2019, there is a prevalent attitude that everyone should be required
to work. Simply enjoying life is inexcusable. The idea is that if I
had to work hard to survive, everyone should have to. Laziness is
also sinful. I know because in about 600 A.D. Pope Gregory the First
said Sloth was in the Top 7 Deadly Sins.
Another argument in favor of
Hard Work is that society will break down without people working. If
everyone just sits around watching TV, or more likely, Netflix or
something of that sort, how will we ever do anything? SOMEONE has to
work.
Finally, I’m told no one
owes anyone anything. There is a blank piece of paper shown on
Facebook frequently that depicts what the person posting it evidently
believes anyone owes you. It’s terribly clever, albeit not terribly
persuasive.
I’m going to address each of
these arguments, and then I’m going to recommend that we pay a Living
Wage to anyone who works full time. You’re welcome to disagree with
me, but at least read my arguments before you do.
Is Sloth a Sin?
There may have been good
reason for Pope Gregory to suggest that Sloth is sinful, from his
interpretation of the Scriptures, and certainly, in the culture in
which he was living, it was essential that everyone work hard. One’s
survival was often dependent on one’s ability to grow food and create
the homes in which they lived. There was no time to dawdle. The
Roman Empire had fallen, and Trade was all but destroyed because
roads were no longer safe. Lying around reading or watching a sunset
were recipes for disaster. Sloth was, from that point of view,
sinful. In Poor Richard’s Almanck, Ben Franklin told us, “Sin
is not hurtful because it is forbidden, but it is forbidden because
it is hurtful.” Sloth was hurtful in 600 AD. It fit Franklin’s
definition. Is that still true?
Most
of us now have at least SOME leisure time. It’s why I can write
this. It’s what enables you to read it. Is it sinful that we’re not
“working” right now? I don’t have a field to cultivate. I can
go to the grocery store to get my food. So can you. We don’t need
to grow our own food to survive. That’s a significant advancement.
We
produce more than enough food to feed the world now. That can be
shown over and over in a brief Google Search. Here are facts
gathered from my search. I picked worldhunger.org because they had
plenty of data. You’re welcome to check yourself. The link is
included below.
“The world produces enough food to feed everyone. For the world as a whole, per capita caloric availability and food diversity (the variety of food groups in a diet) have increased between the 1960s and 2011 (FAO, 2017). This growth in food availability, along with improved access to food, helped reduce the percentage of chronically undernourished people in lower-middle-income countries from about 30 percent in the 1990-92 to about 13 percent two decades later (FAO, 2017). A principal problem is that many people in the world still do not have sufficient income to purchase (or land to grow) enough food or access nutritious food.” https://www.worldhunger.org/world-hunger-and-poverty-facts-and-statistics/
It’s
not that we don’t have the resources; it’s that people don’t have the
money. And that’s because they don’t work hard enough, right? I
think you already know that’s not true. If it were, the little girl
pictured at the beginning of this essay would be among the wealthiest
people on the planet.
We
all know plenty of folks who work 40 or more hours per week, but
still can’t feed themselves or their families. And we also know
people who hardly work at all, but have obscene amounts of wealth.
Congressmen and women, for example, who have great power over all of
our lives, work 138 days a year. They have 227 days off every year.
They make a low average of $175,000 a year. That’s well more than
$1000 a day. I don’t know anyone who makes that kind of money. But,
of course, it’s because the people I know didn’t work hard enough to
better themselves. They should go get a degree so they can get
better jobs. You know, they could be teachers or something.
I
did that. I have many many friends who did that. None of us ever
made $1000 a day. There were times my monthly pay was little more
than that. Today, it rarely gets above that figure.
But,
hang on… isn’t the argument that we need to be working harder?
That doesn’t seem to follow, does it? Those who work less, make
more, in many cases.
So,
can we dispense with the argument, please, that failing to work hard
enough means a person doesn’t deserve a decent living? If you really
believed that, you would have to accept the conclusion that follows
from it: A person working 40 hours a week deserves a decent living.
It’s about hard work, right? So… they’re working hard. They
should be able to afford the basics. If you don’t buy into that,
it’s not because you believe in hard work, it’s because you believe
in Capitalism. A person’s work is worth what the Market will bear.
That’s a different argument.
Will
Society really fail to function if no one ever works?
Yes,
I suppose it would. We need someone to grow our food. We need
someone to ship it to us. We need someone to sell it to us. This is
true of all commodities. We need people to work. But we’ve already
established we don’t need everyone to work themselves to death. We
are now capable of doing what they call “working smarter, not
harder.” Hard work guarantees nothing in a Capitalistic Society.
But,
let’s remember the words of George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful
Life.” He’s explaining why Bedford Falls needs a Savings and Loan.
The evil Mr. Potter wants to get rid of his bank’s last competition,
Bailey’s Father’s Savings and Loan, because otherwise we’ll have a
discontented, lazy rabble instead of a thrifty working class. “This
rabble you’re talking about, they do most of the working and paying
and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have
them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a
bath?”
This
is the function of a Minimum Wage. Since our world no longer
requires all of us to work so hard that we can’t enjoy the Moments of
our lives, it seems to me we would be remiss if we didn’t avail
ourselves of the opportunities. When you spend a dollar, you can go
to work and make another one. When you spend a minute, there is
nothing you can ever do to get it back, even if you’re Jeff Bezos or
Richard Cory. You get each one exactly one time. You may have
millions of them left, or you may have only one more. But they’re
irreplaceable. You sacrifice some minutes in exchange for improving
other minutes. Make those leisure moments worth the lousy ones.
I’m
told that the Minimum Wage isn’t intended for people to make a
living. It’s meant for teenagers who still live at home so they can
have some spending money. In other words, we don’t need to pay
people a living wage just because they work full time. They need to
do more to deserve that.
First,
that argument is factually incorrect. FDR, in his Statement on The
National Industrial Recovery Act, which became the basis of the
minimum wage, told us, “No
business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages
to its workers has any right to continue in this country.” And
just to be sure there was no misunderstanding, he defined his terms.
“By living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level – I mean
the wages of decent living.”
If
you want to use Capitalism to defend the fact that there are those
struggling even to survive, while at the same time, others have more
than they could spend in 50 lifetimes, then let’s see what Capitalism
really is. The basic dictionary definition is “an
economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry
are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the
state.”
That doesn’t shed a whole lot of useful light on the issue. I would
want to go farther, and say that it is based on what markets will
bear. If someone produces goods or provide services that are highly
valued, at the best price, and at a higher quality than one’s
competitors, someone will profit. The rest is good business sense.
The
most conservative estimates put small business failures in the first
year at 20%. 30% fail in the second year. Half are closed within 5
years.
Capitalism
offers no guarantees for business owners. It’s the competition
within Capitalism that is often touted as its greatest asset. If a
business fails, it’s because someone else is doing the same thing,
better and/or more cheaply, or simply because the goods or services
they provide are not in demand. If a person can’t make a living,
it’s for the same reasons.
Why
is it unreasonable to require business owners to pay a living wage to
their employees? If a business can’t afford to do that, the business
is not yet successful enough to afford employees. They have to do it
themselves a while longer. They’ll have to work hard and be patient.
If
“work hard and be patient” seems unreasonable when directed at a
business owner, why isn’t it unreasonable when it’s directed at an
employee? The employee is not yet successful enough to deserve…
what?…a living wage? So, for a certain amount of time, they are
expected to work for less than they need to earn to have their basic
needs met. Why? And for how long?
Small
businesses are job creators. If they fold, it causes unemployment.
Unemployment is worse than not having enough money. It means having
no money at all. Small business owners can’t afford to pay a living
wage. Neither, as far as that goes, can giant Corporations. This is
the argument against paying a living wage? I don’t buy it.
All
right, but do you really think, Fred, that a guy who works at Circle
K deserves to make as much as a paramedic? A paramedic earns, on
average, $36,700 a year. That’s three times the federal poverty
level. They can live on that.
Can
they? Maybe it depends on where.
“…the
average cost of a two-bedroom in New York is around $3,789. This
means that New Yorkers would need to earn a minimum of $162,386 in
order to spend no more than 28 percent of their annual income on
rent. If you head to Brooklyn or Queens, the average rent prices of
two-bedrooms are slightly less at $3,200 and $2,660, respectively,
however you would still need a substantial income to be able to
afford a two-bedroom in these boroughs.”
A
person who works at Circle K earns about $23,000 a year. That’s
twice the federal poverty level. They should quit whining. But did
you notice? Neither the paramedic nor the Circle K employee is making
enough to afford a place alone. They’re working 40 hours a week.
They’re working hard. And they can’t support themselves effectively.
It’s
not that the Circle K employee is paid too much; it’s that the
paramedic is paid too little. Both should be paid at
least
a living wage. If you want to make the case that the paramedic
deserves more, I won’t argue with you. The paramedic deserves more
than a living wage. This worker should be able to have a nicer car,
a nicer house, eat better food, or enjoy life a bit more. But why
shouldn’t the Circle K employee make a living wage? The answer is
that businesses can’t afford to pay that much.
In
deciding between the need for sub par businesses or human beings to
thrive, I’m going with human beings.
And,
how many jobs do you think those poor people create? We need
businesses for that.
Oh,
no, I’m so sorry. You’re mistaken. Jobs are created by a thriving
economy. When people, particularly those just barely making it, have
money, they spend it. When they spend money, they create jobs for
those businesses they patronize. When the Wealthy have more money,
they put it somewhere else. They don’t inject it back into the
economy because they don’t need
to. Poor people do. The more money people have to spend, the more
jobs will need to be created to help them spend it.
But,
no one owes anyone anything. Remember?
If
people can’t make it on their own, that’s their own fault. I worked
my ass off all my life to have what I have, and I’m not paying for
someone else to sit on her ass and watch talk shows all day!
First
off, oh, of course you are! Your Congressmen and women have more
than 200 days a year to do that. You’re also paying for the
President to play golf. We’ve spent in excess of $100 million on
that. That’s one HELL of a lot more than you’re paying for welfare
for those that can’t afford to eat even though they live above the
poverty line.
The
idea that because you had a horrible experience, everyone else should
also be required to have it, is just childish and mean. I have
friends who were raped, and I promise you, not one of them wants
anyone else to have to go through that.
Did
it suck to have to work and sweat and strain? I feel certain it did.
I’m sure it was even harder for generations preceding ours. It
certainly sucked for me. Why do others have to face that horror? If
we can do better, isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?
I
would really like it if everyone had a few minutes to enjoy being
alive. I would like them to be able to watch a movie, or read a
book, or listen to a symphony, or do whatever it is that makes them
happy. I would prefer they not need to spend the few hours they’re
not working, sleeping, so they have enough energy to go to work
tomorrow.
But
what about the business owners?
A
Modest Proposal
If
we really want to help business owners, we could eliminate the need
for them to pay a wage at all. Slave labor is much less expensive.
We can always find a way to get slaves. We can invade a country, or
we can lock up more of our citizens than any other country on Earth,
and we can use the convicts we make as slaves, or we can just decide
one group isn’t as good as the rest of us, turn on them, and make
them all slaves. My suggestion would be Straight White Christian
Males. Others may have different ideas.
Or,
in the alternative, we could move toward automation, if you’re
opposed to slavery. Then they don’t have to pay anyone, except the
manufacturers of the machines they use. This is already happening in
many places. We’re becoming our own cashiers, we use ATMs so
commonly we forget they took the jobs of many many bank tellers, and
talking to a human being on the phone at a business is becoming
nearly impossible. There will be more automation, not less, and I
don’t think it’s an unmitigated evil. Machines are eliminating jobs,
but they’re working smarter, not harder. They are removing some of
the burdens from human beings. This gives us time to do other
things. Technology has always done this.
My
mother used to have wash my diapers. She had to hang them on a
clothesline. This took a lot more of her time than Pampers do.
Pampers are probably more sanitary, too, although they’re arguably
worse for the environment. We have dishwashers. We have cell phones.
There was a time when sending a message across the world would take
weeks or months, if it were possible at all. Now it takes seconds.
Automation makes human lives easier.
The
Need for A Living Wage as the Minimum Wage
But…
as long as you’re going to employ human beings, I submit you need to
pay them a living wage, as a moral imperative. If you can’t do that,
you have no right to the employees.
It’s
wrong to make people take jobs that pay subsistence wages. We can,
and we should, have a minimum wage that accomplishes FDR’s original
purpose. Let’s pay workers enough for them to have the basic
necessities of life. Let’s let them have a life that’s worth living.
We can afford it.
If
we can agree on nothing else, I think we should be able to agree that
life is agonizingly brief. Few of us get a single century. None of
us gets two. Why can’t we have a little while to enjoy ourselves?
If we’re working full time, we shouldn’t need to hope we can put
enough gas in the car to get to work tomorrow. We shouldn’t need to
worry about eating this week.
It
took us roughly 200,000 years to get to the place that we can take
care of everyone. We can support the entire population, now, and not
just the few. Any advanced civilization would take care of its
population. Aliens will think us childish if they ever get around to
visiting. Let’s try not to embarrass ourselves.
Fred's Thoughts 