Good Luck With That

The idea was I would spend the weekend not thinking about our impending financial ruin. I would just take time off from the worry and enjoy myself.
And how did that go?
Saturday morning: "Job Losses Hint at Vast Remaking of U.S. Economy" was the first thing that met my eyes on the New York Times front page. I was down to the part where an economist says the lost job "aren't coming back" before remembering. This is my worry free weekend. By that time I'd also seen the Kansas City Star headline about people foregoing medical care as they lose their jobs, and another one about a bad season ahead for home sales.
Well, at least the stock market isn't open. Hey, it's about time I checked in how it's doing today.
Ok. The DOW is down, but only by 52 points.
To continue: Little bits of info have started to seep out that there will be an announcement about McClatchy and how new cutbacks will be handled at Mike's work. So right now we're like the Ghostbusters in the final battle at the top of the skyscraper. What form will our personal Destroyer take? Will it be a layoff or a pay cut? At least for the time being, it appears a furlough is off the table.
Given those options, I'd gladly take the Stay-Puft marshmallow man.
I suppose a real optimist would not refer to this as a "destroyer." A real optimist would call it an "opportunity," or a "temporary setback." But what the hell, I'm not a real optimist today.
My mom said on the phone this weekend, "We'll just have to pray nothing bad happens." I know she meant well, and I normally accept people's offers of prayer with good grace. So I can't explain why hearing that put me into such a sour mood. Yeah, we'll run to our prayer closets while those Wall Street cheaters decide whether my daughter goes to college.

But then I thought about it. There's a well-established tradition of magical thinking even amongst Christians. It wasn't so long ago I read about various house-flippers burying little statues of St. Joseph upside down on their properties to ensure a good sale.

Surely there is a similar good luck charm for employment, and I set out to look for it.

It turned out to be harder than I thought. There are tons of superstitions about prosperity. Most of them involve eating specific foods or wearing specific clothes on New Year's Day. Black-eyed peas, lentils or pork are all good luck. Chicken and turkey are bad because you'll scratch all year for money like they scratch for food. I even found one web site that says Colombian women wear gold panties at midnight for prosperity.
I realized with a sinking heart that we probably hadn't eaten any of the correct New Year's foods. And I do not own a pair of yellow underpants. So it's too late to save ourselves that way.

Back online, I looked up various combinations of "luck," "employment," "unemployment," and "jobs." I found a website advertising products you consume to have good "luck" with your employee urine drug test.

Then I found something called the Internet Book of Shadows. On it was a long list of herbs and the various things and spells they were supposed to cast. Again, there was tons on "prosperity," but I went right past. Looking for "prosperity" at this point is setting the bar too high.
I found that mountain mahogany and holly are good for "anti-lightning," an herb called honesty repels monsters and skunk cabbage is good for legal matters. Hound's tongue is good for--well tying dog's tongues. And if you can find some thistle milk, it's useful for snake enraging. (Seriously. Snake enraging.)
Three things were listed as voodoo or hoodoo charms for employment: devil's shoestring,lucky hand and pecan.













Devil's shoestring and lucky hand, coincidentally, also are good for gambling. I've never seen them grow around here, so I would have to order them at an occult store. And I don't want to get on that mailing list. Pecan, though. I have some pecans in the freezer right now. We're having them on our salad tonight.

Still, that doesn't seem like enough. St. Joseph is a patron saint of house hunters, among other things. Maybe we could turn away from the occult and look to Christianity for our employment superstition.
It turns out there is a patron saint for journalists and authors. He is St. Francis de Sales.

Sales. I like the sound of that. St. Francis was not a journalist but he was an author and an amiable man, by some accounts. He wrote some things that were, apparently, readable.
Of course, "sales" doesn't mean the same thing in French as English. In French, sales could be a form of the verb "saler" which means "to salt." If a story is "sale" (with an accent on the e) it is salty, spicy or juicy. Sale can also be an adjective that means "dirty." So dirt, salty or juicy--it all works.

Maybe there's a statue of him somewhere I could bury. Or maybe I'll just print out a picture and set up a little table with some dried lentils, bacon and pecans. Hey, maybe that lemony looking Buddha's hand would be a stand-in for Lucky Hand. I think I've seen it at Whole Foods.

Here's hoping it works.