R.I.P. JD

Two seemingly unrelated things in the news today:
*MSN Money highlighted a piece this morning on things that may soon be obsolete. Included were newspapers and books printed on paper.
*J D Salinger died.

Salinger, of course, is the author of The Catcher in the Rye, Franny and Zooey and numerous well-known short stories. He was famous for his tragically alienated characters, especially teens and young adults.
He didn't have 51 New York Times bestsellers, like James Patterson. But his impact was huge.
A lot of kids rolled their eyes when teachers handed out the permission slips to read The Catcher in the Rye (because of the swearing!) But I was not one of them. I caught Holden Caulfield's angst like a virus. Catcher, along with Season of the Witch (James Leo Herlihy) were my books. Their characters--both, coincidentally, wandering around New York City--were the ones I came to think of as most like me.
The MSN piece was a list of devices that SmartMoney deemed on their way out. Newspaper and magazine subscriptions and books (the analog kind on paper. Electronic books readers, presumably, will continue to exist) made the list.
[Interesting sidebar: The Wall Street Journal "aggregator" reran part of the SmartMoney piece without the reference to print media.]
I like to think that just changing the format won't make that much of a difference. People will still want to read the news and novels, won't they? They'll still need to feed their souls with good fiction.
But the pessimist in me worries. Another story, in the New York Times magazine last Sunday, was a long look at the best-seller machine that is James Patterson. He so dominates the book scene with his pulpy fare that his publisher has employees dedicated just to him. More electronic books, which are cheaper and may need high volume sales to make a profit, may also mean more Pattersons and fewer Salingers.
That prospect makes me feel all alienated and disaffected.

Another thing...interesting about Salinger was the account in Wikipedia of his reclusive lifestyle and his search for enlightenment. Among the belief systems he tried: Zen Buddhism, Kriya yoga, Dianetics (before it was Scientology), Christian Science, urine therapy (don't ask) and orgone energy therapy.
So I see he was a fellow traveler. The article is not clear on whether he ever found happiness, contentment, or whatever he was looking for.

Bright-sided

Just when I think I'm making progress toward the new Optimistic Me (!) along comes Barbara Ehrenreich with Bright Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America. And suddenly I'm sliding sweetly backwards to my old self.
Ehrenreich says it's okay to be a pessimist and a complainer. In fact it's preferable. She dedicates her book with this message. "To complainers everywhere: Turn up the volume!"
And then, inside, I'm allowed to baste myself in the delicious pan juices of--oh, excuse me. Mike just came back from the eye doctor and told me a story. Apparently our insurer charges $5 extra on our co-pay if you ask the insurer to do it's contractual duty and pay the covered procedure. It's cheaper if you pay it yourself, but then of course, it doesn't get counted toward your deductible.
Anyway, where was I?
Oh yes, the book. Ehrenreich takes us through several aspects of the optimism movement, from her experiences with positive thinking and cancer (one of my foundational reasons to become an optimist. See my mission statement.) through the magical thinking embraced by top business executives, who, like George W. Bush, prefer instinct and gut feelings to hard facts.
She also touched on religions' "gospel of prosperity" evangelists and the movement by psychologists to push positivism as a science.
I found myself thinking "Yes, yes. That's what I've always thought, too!" most of the way through the book. But there were a few things she pointed out that struck me:
*The modern popularity of positive thinking is Calvinism in a rose-colored mirror. The Calvinists spent dreary hours pondering their own sins and unworthiness. Positive thinkers of today spend hours (and lots of money) examining their own attitudes as well. Why did I fail? Why did I get laid off? Is it because I'm not positive enough? Is my bad attitude attracting negative energy?
The result is the same, though. You can actually make yourself unhappy by twisting into knots over every perceived lapse in attitude.
*Positivism had a lot to do with the bubble economies and their crashes the past two decades. Home prices go down? What's wrong with your attitude? Home prices will never go down! We'll never have another Great Depression. Let us purge ourselves of these negative people who warn us of the coming apocalypse.
*The constant insistence on positivity has a lot in common with communists in totalitarian states who insist on happy platitudes from the people. Look at North Korea, then compare it with the insistent sloganeering about "Our country, the best in the world."
I must admit, this last one hadn't occurred to me. This is probably because in those states, it's the governments enforcing the happy talk. Here, it's employers, large and small. But, then, there isn't more than a dime's worth of difference between the two these days. Business pulls the strings of government, after all.
*Ehrenreich also reminds us of a 2006 study from the Center for Economic and Policy Research that shows people in the US have less chance than many European countries of moving up and out of the lower social classes. Here's part of the conclusion. (Read the whole study here.)

The data also appear to contradict the belief that greater economic mobility in the United States can somehow compensate for greater levels of inequality and "social exclusion." Despite popular prejudices to the contrary, the U.S. economy consistently affords a lower level of economic mobility, both in the short-term (from one year to the next) and in the longer-term (across generations), than all the continental European countries for which data are available

Bright-sided, despite everything, was one of the most positive experiences I've had for a while. It was a nice break from all my failings to obtain optimism. Yeah, things are crappy. It's okay to go ahead and admit it.
Maybe I don't really have to become a top-to-bottom positive thinker. Maybe I should just focus on having just enough optimism to keep getting up in the morning.

Moneybaggers

Well, yesterday's post was a bit of a downer, I've been told. So today I'm in a more positive frame of mind. In fact, I actually have a solution for one of the problems that's being talked about re big financial houses and their excessive risk taking with our money.
A little background: Investment banking and securities firm Goldman Sachs, which received taxpayer money from the bailout, has reported stronger than predicted profits and is expected to give out breathtakingly high bonuses to its top executives. In a scramble to prevent bad press, the firm has talked about enforcing a rule that required those executives to give a portion of the bonuses to charity. President Obama also is trying to salvage his approval with an announcement of new banking regulations. (Story here)
Some people are on board with this. And I'll admit, it would be comforting to know that there still might be some crackers left when we eventually take our place in the soup line.
But pessimists (I consider us "realists") know that this is a slap on the wrist. Throw a little money out, sure. And it isn't even your money. Once it's paid, life will go on as usual, because those risky investments are just too tasty a treat to pass up.
In the meantime, America develops more and more similarities to 19th century Britain.
So....What would Dickens do?
Well, he'd take his characters from different social strata and introduce them to each other--perhaps forcibly. And if they proved too reluctant, he might give them a little field trip into each other's lives.
And...I've got it! Instead of requiring a contribution, why not make these executives go on the road for a series of town hall meetings. Just like during the health care debate. They could meet some of the people who've been laid off, lost their homes and health care. Experience some of the anger and despair up close.
Let's face it, these are the people who should have been doing the town halls last summer anyway, not the congressmen. It's the money guys who are pulling the strings in Washington DC. Sorry to sound like my grandparents, but it's true. So why shouldn't they be required to get out here in the hinterlands and see the effects of their lobbying?
It would do us all a world of good.

Where's the Hope?

Question: Why isn't everyone mad? Why aren't we all foam-spitting, fist-pounding, eyes-rolled-into-the-skull apoplectic? Is it the learned helplessness of the times, or have we all succumbed to a strange new type of group mental illness? Or perhaps our corporate friends are putting saltpeter in the water supply.
Two things happened this week.
1) Goldman Sachs--knowing news of its record-high bonuses will ignite the rage of the un- and under-employed taxpayers everywhere--tried out a new PR move. The company suggested it may force its executives to put at least a percentage of their bonus pay into charities. (New York Times story here. Check out the last line, where a recruiter speculates that Wall Street execs will no doubt be told to keep a low profile.)
2)People in Kansas City continue to lose their jobs or to be downsized.
The word was out for the past week or so that the Kansas City Star would do another, smaller, round of layoffs. So our family--and no doubt many others--woke up in dread every day until the ball dropped yesterday.
Sachs bonuses/Kansas City layoffs
Sachs bonuses/Kansas City layoffs
Sachs bonuses/Kansas City layoffs
Clueless executives have to be told to help out the needy and to avoid being seen lighting cigars with $500 bills. Meanwhile good people who did nothing wrong will have trouble feeding and clothing their families.
What does it say about you when you wake up after only 3 hours and cannot get back to sleep because of the song you're writing in your head? (It would be a country song, with space for the bar patrons to shout out rude phrases. Why, oh why do all the angry ones want to be country songs?)
Being angry has become my default emotion lately, and I have the stiff neck and sore jaw from grinding my teeth to prove it. But it's no doubt removing years from my life, and I don't have that many left to give to Wall Street or anyone else.
I've tried to find some positive way of thinking about it all but it's no use. There is no good in any of it. Yes, I've already lived the worst year of my adult life and it's behind me. But where's the joy in that? And how many more "worst years" are ahead?
Something, my friends, has gotta change.

Back to the Garden

Feeling a little down lately? Do you find your circumstances oddly unfulfilling? Do you have a strange restless urge to pack up and find a better place in a land far away?
It may be the new smaller paycheck. Or the drip, drip, drip of serial layoffs. Or the fact that you can't afford your insurance deductible.
Now there's a new suspect to round up when you're looking for the source of your longing.
You may be suffering from Avatar ennui.
Although it hasn't been given an official designation by the American Psychiatric Association, some fans are reporting a feeling of loss and depression after seeing the film. (Here's an article from CNN which, as my son pointed out, seems more like it came from the satirical paper The Onion.)
According to comments on fan sites, some Avatar viewers remain in the dumps after seeing the movie because real life on Earth is so much more disappointing than the beautiful planet Pandora.
I won't go into the whole plot here--because you've probably seen it anyway (but if you haven't, look for the summary on IMDB). So let's boil it down:
Earthlings have discovered an incredibly valuable substance (called, I believe, "youcan'tgetitium") on this planet and plan to relocate the indigenous peoples and destroy their land in order to mine it. If you saw it in 3D, as we did, you feel you are actually walking along with the natives.
Filmmaker James Cameron created an Eden, and you feel you can almost touch it. Hence, when some people leave the theater, it's just too much of a letdown to bear.
I totally get this. We walked out of the movie theater into a driving blizzard, an uncertain financial future and endless television footage of venal politicians protecting the health care industry. It is depressing.
Pandora has beautiful plants that light up as you walk on them. It has a community living in harmony with it's environment, animals you can mind-meld with when you ride, and a mother god and ancestors who talk to the Pandorans (through the trees).
And the Earthlings? We--and it's a peculiarly American-looking representation--have a weasly corporate guy called Parker Selfridge (Really? His name is Selfridge? Well, no one claimed Avatar was a subtle movie.) who just can't wait to destroy the beautiful countryside and people to get to that ore. We have a psychopathic Steve Canyon on steroids who wants, as Arlo Guthrie used to say, to "kill, kill, kill."


What comes back to me most, though is the village. When threatened, the natives got together and acted as one. No one complained about big government or ran a dirty tricks campaign. They understood that they were working for the survival of the community.
Which is why it's probably unrealistic to think that could ever happen on Earth.
But I can dream, can't I?

Shop Small: A resolution

I've been thinking a lot about the dinner table with my grandparents lately. As two people who were young adults during the Great Depression of the 1930s (I've put in the date, to avoid confusion with the current economy) they were completely mistrustful of banks and big corporations.
They didn't like the way bigger companies kept eating up the smaller ones. Or how the service department seemed to disappear the bigger the company became. The word "cahoots" was used a lot.
At the time, I totally didn't get it. Of course, people at company headquarters were going to boss you around. And of course it would be a headache to get your erroneous bill corrected or your money refunded on the faulty toaster. I was a kid, and used to dealing with the bureaucracies of school and the vagaries of adult tempers. That's just how life was.
But sometime during the past decade or so, I've come to understand. You spend your life being a good worker, often to the detriment of your family. You pay your bills on time. You vote. You volunteer in your community.
By the time middle age comes, you expect a little respect. What you get is unreasonable credit card rates, unemployment (or under employment) and long periods of time wasted on automated "customer service" lines when someone screws up your bill or sells you a defective product. And you get the added pleasure of knowing that your own tax dollars are going to support some of this behavior.
The fact that some of the culprits get five- or six-figure bonuses while you're going without regular checkups is just an extra middle-finger salute--a final F** You from the corporate world.
My grandparents were right. Big is bad.

How to deal with the rage? Arianna Huffington has an idea. (here's the video.)




She's urging her readers to take their money out of four big banks and invest, instead, in small community and regional banks with good track records. The hoped-for result is that big banks would lose some of their ability to loot the treasury (or at least be forced to start treating us as human beings). And maybe the smaller banks would do more for their communities in the form of small business loans.
It would be a nice start. But I don't think Huffington goes far enough. Why not take a look at all the rest of our spending as well? True, you won't be able to find a toaster in a mom-and-pop appliance store anymore. But there are all kinds of other small businesses out there. Down the street from us, we have an alterations shop, a pie bakery, a business selling cake decorating equipment, an antiques shop and a bead craft store, to name only a few. Why go to an online warehouse or a massive regional pastry maker when you can help your neighbor make his/her house payment? And know what? These are all people who will be friendly, call you by name and take time to answer your questions.

Think big and shop small. It's worth a try. What else would we have to lose?

Have fun...later?

One interesting thing I read during the holidays was a piece in the New York Times about the wackos who routinely put off pleasurable things.
The piece, by science writer John Tierney, analyzed the odd thought processes of the warped people who, when faced with the prospect of a treat of some kind, put it off and put it off until the food has rotted or the coupon has expired or the spa has gone out of business and its owners have died or left the country.
Say, for instance, you have a gift certificate for a free full-body massage and you're all excited because you've never had one and you're really really tense and so this massage is the answer to everything you've been looking for in life. And you practically leap up in the air when you get it for Christmas it's so good and you put the precious certificate in a special place where you can look at it every day...after day, after day.....until....the masseuse goes bankrupt, sells the table and essential oils and her building goes dark.
Or, maybe you've gotten a gift card to a coffeehouse that will just pay for a large cup full of sweet, sweet caffeine, maybe the kind with little designs in the foam on top that you love. And you put it in your billfold where it will be sure to be handy when you need it. You could stop by any time to redeem it with no trouble. And there it sits, still, until you get it out a year later. Is there any money left on this, you wonder, or is this one I spent all but 50 cents? If I ask at the counter, it will be embarrassing to admit I don't have enough additional money to buy the latte. So...maybe next time.
Or maybe you've bought a book by Nick Hornby, one of your favorite authors and...
Oh My God. This article is describing me. I am one of these hopeless sickos.
But why, Roxie? Why? Why not take the enjoyment offered, when someone else has already done the hard work of shopping and paying for it?
In the Times article, psychologists theorized that people like us are too focused on the ideal moment. We're waiting for later, when we have more time. Or maybe we're waiting to find the perfect moment.
I only wish I had that rosy an outlook.
No, indeed. There's one possibility Tierney and his experts didn't explore. Maybe there are some people out there so far down the pessimism well that they don't dare spend that pleasurable moment. Because once it's gone, there may never be another good thing to take its place.
Tomorrow may bring unemployment. Bankruptcy. Disease uncovered by health insurance. You may never have enough money for a latte or a massage or a book again. That little coupon in your purse symbolizes that last ray of sunshine you may ever experience in post-plutocratic America. Tomorrow, you'll be scrubbing toilets and ruing the day you wasted all that money on a college education. And what would someone in your lowly new social class need with a latte or a massage or a book anyway?
And, if we want to go a bit darker still (and yes, let's, since its the new year) we can dig deeper. A lot of us can't help feeling guilty about some of the things we've suffered the past year. What stupid mistake of mine brought it on? What could I have said that I didn't say or done that I didn't do? Given that, do I really deserve a free sub?
Just reading back on that last paragraph is...well...it's making me a little uneasy about myself and my mental health. Who would put such a thing out there in public like that? What kind of person just cannot stop judging herself? (!)
Indeed, a certain darkness seems to be creeping upon me these past few months, and I've got to rid myself of it before my thinking becomes so fuzzy that I won't be able to see my way out of the coming difficulties.
So maybe Tierney and his experts are right. No more hoarding up rewards for the future. No more saving up til I deserve it.
Screw it. From now on I live like a banker.

It really is all about spending

December 22? Has it really been that long since my last post?
Ahhh. The deliciousness of doing nothing!
The biggest reason I stopped writing over the Christmas break was that I really dreaded Christmas this year and put every Christmas chore off until the last possible minute. Result: No time left for blogging.
Truthfully, I expected the worst of the holidays. Everything I've read about depression suggests that the celebrations at the end of the calendar year draw out the gloom in people who are undergoing difficulties. I expected to be sad that we couldn't spend much getting people what they wanted. I expected to be angry at the events that brought our finances to where they are. I expected to be fearful of what the coming year will bring.
And yeah, there was some of all that. But for the most part, I was able to hold it together. None of those pesky surprise weeping sessions in public places. No outbursts of swearing at innocent family members. No panic attacks (well, OK. Maybe one.)
I thought all the expenses of the season would get me down because, Lord knows, we couldn't afford it.
Surprise, surprise. It turns out all that extra spending actually made me happy. Temporarily, at least.
To understand this, you have to know that even before the big job cutback, I pitched into emotional darkness like clockwork. Every other week. When I did the bills.
The system is this: Pay the bills, look at what's left for the next two weeks and then spend all my time until the next paycheck thinking how to eat less, use less heating/AC, have less fun. I stopped buying clothes and cosmetics for myself. I agonized over a cup of coffee from Starbucks as I waited for my daughter. Can I ever treat myself? Is it ever okay to spend money on fun when the budget is this tight? No. My debit card never comes out of my billfold without an extended self-lecture on my own failings.
But Christmas. I spent some. Then I spent a little more. Then a little more. It came out of our emergency fund, but never mind. It was for Christmas. For a few minutes, anyway, I felt like I was part of society, and it lifted my spirits.
That goes against just about every homey, chicken-soupy thing I've ever read about hard times. "We don't have much money, but we have our health. We have our family. We had better times singing songs around the piano than buying fancy gifts." That's what I'm supposed to have learned, isn't it? But in reality, it was the act of spending that cheered me up. It was all about the money after all.
The real lesson, I guess, is that there's such a thing as too much self discipline. (Hear that, Dave Ramsey?)
The other lesson: Craig's List. Seriously. We found a $35 television that has a great picture. So sorry, newspaper want ads.