Wrapping Up February
A few final thoughts as the longest month ends:
--It’s been said that the human race would never be able to replenish itself were it not for maternal amnesia about the pain of childbirth. Not that living through February is that difficult, but winter giving birth to spring isn’t easy. Come summer, Mother Earth and Father Sky will be at it again, and we’ll have it all to do over again next February. Is there such a thing as fore-amnesia, so I don’t have to think about that?
--Here’s a beaut that my national colleagues in journalism
failed to pick up: a few days before the New York Post drew national criticism
for publishing a Sean Delonas cartoon showing a chimpanzee being shot for
writing a sloppy economic stimulus bill, the paper put out a cover that was
nearly as bad. It featured what another generation called “a bathing beauty,”
only this piece of eye candy had on a bathing suit that went well beyond its
bikini size to suggest, by its codpiece-like placement of fabric, what lay beneath,
so to speak. Above it was the title: “Finally, A Real Stimulus Package.” The
Post’s reply concerned the cartoon was that it “has been taken as something
else - as a depiction of President Obama, as a thinly veiled expression of
racism. This most certainly was not its intent; to those who were offended by
the image, we apologize. However, there are some in the media and in public
life who have had differences with The Post in the past - and they see the
incident as an opportunity for payback. To them, no apology is due.” I would
suggest that an apology is due to about half the planet, political preferences
aside.
--Yesterday, my wife and I had the privilege of hearing a
natural phenomenon so amazing that (we agreed) it ought to have been on
National Public Radio’s series of listener-recorded sounds. I had stopped at a
flooded then frozen cornfield near the Middlebury River to take pictures of the
many ice formations there, and while focusing on something hear a loud “FLOP.”
Then a bit later another “FLOP…..FLOP.” Was some agricultural task I didn’t
know about taking place around the bend in the road, after it crossed the
river? Then I realized: the sound wasn’t up ahead, it was all around me. With
the north wind blowing and temperatures heading from near-freezing in the day
to near zero that night, any water in the field was expanding as it froze, and
any ice was shrinking as it got colder. The result was a symphony of muted
cracking—the main action was probably taking place under the ice—that grew more
intense as night fell. I went back home, invited Irene, and she came, being
like me a connoisseur of natural micro-epiphenomena. We stood and listened in
amazement, until someone who lived in the neighborhood stopped his pickup truck
on the way to town and asked if we needed help. Did I say this took place in
Vermont?
--Speaking of the stimulus and the recession (spring trying
to break through winter again): everybody with the power to do anything is
pussyfooting around the issue that has really frozen consumer credit in this
country: credit card interest rates, which have soared to as much as 30 percent
annually since the usury laws were taken off the books. No one seems to be
seriously exploring why people couldn’t meet their mortgage payments, except to
blame deceptive “adjustable” bait-and-switch mortgage deals. I can’t speak for
foreclosure cases, but look at the details of personal bankruptcy cases (which
I have done at the Rutland court as a business reporter) and you’ll see
evidence of people trying desperately to hold on by using plastic, the one
source of credit available to them. The word “toxic” should be applied to
credit cards, and the change in the Bush era bankruptcy “reform” (written of,
by and for the credit card industry) that prevented many filers from
discharging those debts to get a fresh start should be yanked at the same time that bankruptcy judges are
given the ability to reduce the claimed value of real estate (the Bill is on
the Hill) when it’s based on past assessments rather than real market
conditions.
--Back in the 19th century, taking care of the
colored races was called “The White Man’s Burden.” In the 20th
century, when black dominance in American boxing became evident, a top white
boxer would sometimes be called “The Great White Hope.” Both of these were
Great White Hype. What is true is that for people of all colors, snow is the
Great White Burden.
--The news media finally began reporting on the shrinking of
American grocery sizes: yogurt from eight ounces to six, ice cream from 32
ounces to 28, and so on. Now at least one area grocery chain is downsizing its
paper bags, apparently afraid to charge its customers the extra cents that
ought to be assessed for choosing that alternative. When you hear talk about
Depression and getting by on less, don’t forget that other typical part of
living in that era (which in a sense I did, growing up lower-middle-class with
two parents whose mindset was shaped by those privations): keeping up
appearances. Some families suffered terribly because they didn’t want to admit
they were poor, too. If Obama’s call for responsibility means anything, it
should mean an end to all this folderol of falsification, and a rethinking of
what it means to be poor. It’s possible to be honestly and decently poor, or at
least, with national health care, it would and should be. Or at least that’s
What Jesus Would Say, IMHO.
Comments