WRAPPING UP MARCH, 2011

 

 

       The “surreal” images from the earthquake and tsunami in Japan should remind us that the devastation caused by a nuclear weapon would be unimaginable. Unfortunately, the use of such a weapon is not unthinkable. One of the least attractive parts of the Tea Party suggestions for slashing the size of government was reducing the funds for assisting with the control of nuclear weapons material around the world.

 

 

       The world has adopted a Japanese word, “tsunami,” for what used to be called, inaccurately, a “tidal wave.” There are tidal waves, such as the tidal bore that races up the Severn River in Britain (nifty videos exist), but the length of the wave is much shorter. No one surfs on a tsunami. It’s more like the storm surge of a hurricane.

       Now the world needs to adopt Japan.

 

       I wish I knew more languages, and one of the languages I’d like most to learn is crow. Not Crow Indian, but the language used by the troupe of hundreds of crows who arrive in Middlebury en masse every spring—quite the sight if you happen to be outdoors when they arrive—and after much talking divide up the town between different groups. In the fall, they regroup and have another long discussion, which I suspect has to do with which ones will stay behind and keep an eye on things through the winter.

       Today, the last day in March, a lone crow flew east to west overhead, from the outskirts of Middlebury toward the center, calling in a way that made me think of the French and Spanish rolling their r’s—not a simple caw, but a distinctive call I’d never heard before. He or she would make it four times, all the while flying toward where the sun would set, then after a break would do it four more times, then four again. No other crows in sight or within hearing range. Maybe it knew something about the snowstorm due to arrive with April.

 

       I will have more to say about this, but after spending the fall in frustration and desperation at being unable to lose the weight I gained while recovering from two total hip replacements, I have now lost 25 pounds, from my peak weight, by following the principles of physician and nutritional researcher Dr. Joel Fuhrman. My sleep clinic doctor had recommended his “Eat to Live,” saying he’d lost 15 pounds in a month by following Fuhrman’s advice. I was skeptical, but ordered the book, digested it, and lost 15 pounds in the first month. This isn’t some fad diet, and he doesn’t neglect to emphasize the importance of exercising. So don’t give up—there’s hope yet.

 

 

Time to Grow Up Politically

Most of what I write for this blog goes out to a general audience, but this is written especially with my classmates at Otter Valley Union High School in mind, particularly those who were tracked into classes that did not include me, and to people like them around the country-the good-hearted, hard-working people who in a thousand little ways keep everything going, and who have seen their incomes dwindling and their lives becoming more and more uncertain regardless of how hard they have kept trying.

     For readers elsewhere, let me introduce myself. I'm the kid in your class who always got top grades, won awards, and senior year got scholarship help to attend a "good" college. The kid who liked books even back in graded school, who liked to learn things because it was a pleasure for him, and often talked like something out of the encyclopedia.

     Now, for my classmates in the OV Class of 1966 especially, I want to tell you something you DON'T know about me.

     Senior year, some of my teachers who were convinced I had the makings of a writer and had connections elsewhere persuaded Phillips Exeter Academy, a notable pipeline to Harvard, that I ought to be given the chance to go there at no charge. Faced with a tough choice, I thought long and hard about it, but decided in the end to stay at OV (and went to Harvard anyway).

     That last year of public high school, something happened that changed me forever. Some of you, the weakest students academically, were visibly proud of the honors I was bringing to the class (state debating champion, winner of the Voice of Democracy speech contest, delegate to a United Nations Club conference on racial relations in London, the statewide Elks Youth Leadership Award-I could go on). There was a look in your eyes that said, more strongly than words, "We can't. You can. You'll have to." By the end of college, I had determined not to seek money and power, but to use my abilities to protect and defend you and others like you--some of you appearing again and again in my dreams as the years went by. Searching for answers and solutions, I would be a serious, independent writer.

I've stayed true to that mission, and have paid a price for it. Chances are most of you high school classmates have out-earned me: as a poet and journalist, mostly freelance, I've never made more than $25,000 in a year.

     Meanwhile, ever since the Sixties, I have witnessed the onset of what I call The Cold Cruel. Decade after decade, it's become harder for people to make do, harder for them to be part of the clubs and organizations and teams and groups that create true communities.. I know I can't convince my readers of this-don't people always idolize their youth and complain of things getting worse?-but I insist that it's true.

     Here's an experiment, a way to get beyond all the rhetoric about this being the Greatest County on Earth with a special mission to teach the rest of the world how to live: go to an airport and watch the crowd of people embarking from an airplane and ask yourself "How many of them are smiling?"

     A lot of people share the feeling that in the surge of young people's interest in the Obama campaign, and afterward in the Tea Party movement, a profound discontent has taken hold. Could there be fundamental, pivotal mistakes that we are making, so that the harder we strive in those directions the worse things will become? I think so, and for your sake particularly, I want to say that I think some of them are.

     First, we have been scared away from talking about the power struggles in this society. Anyone who brings up the subject is accused of promoting class warfare, which of course the Communists emphasized, so of course it is UnAmerican. Nonsense. Class conflict is as American as apple pie, and the reason the right wing accuses people of talking about the subject is that they have been DOING it. Year after year, the amount of the country's wealth that is held by the top 1 percent has grown-during the 2002-2007 boom times, 65 percent of the gains in income went to that group. It's reached the point where the wealthiest 74 people make as much as the bottom 19 million. We have income inequality comparable to that of Ivory Coast, Jamaica, or Malaysia. The imbalance is the greatest since the 1920s, when it helped to create the Great Depression, according to some economists.

     It's time to grow up politically, to realize that power exists and there will always be a competition for it. Whenever you hear laments that there is a lack of "bipartisanship" in Washington, hold onto your wallet. There are real conflicts over real issues that won't go away. If there are a few issues where legislators can work together, that's all to the good, but don't ever expect that to be the norm. Real bipartisanship in Washington amounts to one thing: the majority rules, and those who lose the votes don't start rebellions because of it.

     Another grave mistake we've made is to equate a person's worth and work. It's as mistaken as tying health care to employment. Currently we have a situation where all over the country, people are sitting up and begging like dogs for A JOB, as beggars used to beg for alms. In other words,  people are saying the number one priority is for everyone to be dependent on an employer, which means being so beholden that it's impossible to exercise rights to political independence. Is Government the enemy? Government won't terminate your rights as a citizen if you write a letter to the editor criticizing its policies, but if you do the same thing about a company you work for, you can be fired. One of my criticisms of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, which said corporations are persons with the same free speech rights as other citizens, is that they should be required to allow free speech before they have the right to exercise it.

The main reason for a public education system is to create good citizens, not to prepare people to look for jobs. And the day must come, for the sake of the planet, when people are guaranteed a sufficient living simply for being responsible members of society. We don't need ways to make more people competitively rich, we need ways for anyone to be happily poor.

     I think this quickie civics course has gone on long enough, but I want to make one more point before I finish, having to do with the idea that government of the people, by the people, and for the people SHOULD perish from this earth because it is Government, which does nothing but take and waste your money. Here it is: corporations ARE governments. Again, because this is so important: corporations ARE GOVERNMENTS. And again, because I am so serious about this: CORPORATIONS ARE GOVERNMENTS.

 

 

PARABLE OF THE 11th HOUR

 

 

 

       One of the most discouraging aspects of what is happening in Wisconsin and other states taking aim at public sector unions is the way private sector workers resent the benefits those unions have negotiated in the past. Rather than hold up such contracts as a standard to which the private sector should aspire, they want to drag down their fellow workers to their own level. It’s the obverse of the lack of shared sacrifice that has made this era so different from that of the so-called Greatest Generation. The lack of belief in shared rights (consider the way “entitlements” are now targeted as a major budgetary problem is yet another example of how successfully the rich and powerful have been able to employ the strategy of “divide and conquer.”

       Jesus said there would be times like this.

       Consider his Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, known also as the Parable of the Eleventh Hour. The owner of a vineyard needs workers to help harvest his crops. He goes to the marketplace in search of laborers, finds men in need of work, agrees to pay them each a denarius for a day’s labor, and the harvest starts. But as time goes on, he sees he needs to hire more help. He goes to the marketplace in the third hour, the sixth hour, and the ninth hour, each time hiring more men.

       Though the Bible does not say this explicitly, it seems to be the case that the 12 hour day was normal back then.

       Finally, in the 11^th hour, the vineyard owner hires still more workers, their pay also to be one denarius. When the workers he hired first learn of this, they are indignant.

       I will let the words of the Bible tell the rest.

       “"These men who were hired last worked only one hour," they said, "and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day."

       But he answered one of them, "Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?"

       This story gets interpreted in various ways; for instance, some say it refers to the way newcomers to the church are considered to be just as much a part of that group’s spiritual life as those who have kept the faith for years. I bring it forward in this context to show that the problems of sufficiency, justice and fair treatment are perennially difficult, and unlikely to find a solution that can be safely applied in the long run. But I believe we can agree, once and for all, that envy and resentment should not be part of the debate; rather, we need to work toward a sustainable, steady state way of life that will keep people satisfied at the same time that it avoids problems of excess, waste, and accumulating secondary consequences such as climate change.