Roxie the Cockeyed Optimist

How to make your own checkbook register

2011-10-25T11:47:00.000-07:00

I decided to take a little break from writing about optimism and think about the direction of this blog. More than two years seems a long time to keep writing about our struggles (and they do continue) while we wait to see optimism coming over the horizon.
There are signs, though. The Occupy Wall Street movement. The public opinion polls.
So while I ponder, I want to share something I learned that makes me happy.
A homemade checkbook register.
Now that most banking we do is online, we hardly write checks any more. But we do still use the registers to keep track of our accounts. And it always galls me that buying a register from the bank-approved printer costs $2.50-$3.00, plus another $2.00 shipping.
Five dollars? Really? I think we can do better than that.
So I came up with a way. Here it is. Enjoy.

First, get a blank Excel spreadsheet on your screen. You can personalize the columns any way you like, but since I'm used to the old-school registers, I used a standard check log for reference.
In the column headings, type: Number, Date, Transaction Description, Payment, the check mark symbol (you get this by changing the font to "webdings" and typing in "a."), Deposit and Balance. Remember to leave an extra blank "cents" column after Payment and Deposit.

You'll need to put your cursor over the lines between the letters to drag the columns to the right width.

When you think you have it, it's time to draw the interior lines. Select a column or a row and go up to "borders" at the top. Choose whichever border will make the lines you want, running between columns or rows. You can also make some lines fatter or double to set them apart from others. Just go to the bottom of the "borders" menu and choose "line style." This gives you a pencil, which you can drag over the existing lines to change them. My old Deluxe register had 27 rows, so I made lines for that many, with the rows in groups of two.

You'll need your register to be a specific size. Once again, this is your choice. I went with 5 and 3/8 inches tall by 6 inches wide, which is the size of the original one. To do this, find the page layout view box in the bottom right of the Excel page, next to the "100 percent." Click on it and adjust your cell widths again until you get the desired dimensions. Remember, you're looking at the last cell, not the margin--yet.

Okay, now you can select every other row and fill it with a light gray color, if you want. I went with a somewhat dark looking gray because it always comes out lighter in copies.

Now you have a reasonable facimile of a check register. The next part is trickier. To get this to print, you're going to have to make a double-sided master copy that is lined up so the headings are rightside-up on one side and upside-down on the other. This way, the headings will always be at the top when you turn the page.

To do this, you have to first center your image exactly on the page.

Go to the page layout heading at the top of the page and choose "print area." Then select the part of the Excel sheet you have filled out. Then find the part of the sheet--stilll in "page layout" view that looks like a ruler. Hold your cursor over the place on the left where it turns from white to blue. It will tell you how wide the left margin is. Click and drag the left and right margins until you have them both the same. Then do the same thing for the top and bottom margins (the ruler marking where it goes from blue to dark blue).

When everything is exactly centered, save your spreadsheet. Then save as a pdf and print the rightside up copy.

Now go to the top of the pdf page and find the "rotate" button. Or you can just click "control, shift, +." Rotate until your copy is upside down. Flip your printed page side to side, put it back in the printer and print again.

Voila. You'll have back-to-back copies, one upside-down.

You can print 10 more on your own printer, or take it up to Office Depot or Kinkos and not run yourself out of ink. (You might need to adjust the darkness for the gray fill, though). Use the paper cutter to trim it up, add a blank for the front and back cover and then staple it (from the outside) twice in the middle.

How much did you spend on the copying? A dollar or so? Compared with about $5 for the same thing from your bank and the check printing company. And best of all, you have the file in your computer and can print up more any time you want, without the wait.

Now there's a reason to be an optimist.

Pinch me

2011-08-03T05:24:00.000-07:00

When you've been in crisis mode long enough, and then suddenly the crisis goes away, there's some mental weirdness that comes along with it.
It's like you've been running in a thicket and you abruptly stumble out into a clearing, blinking in confusion. What just happened? Where is that puma that was just behind me?
What am I supposed to think about now?
The news was finally in the Star today with Mike's farewell column. He's being promoted back to full-time. He regains all the benefits he lost--eyeglasses coverage, paid vacation, long-term disability, life insurance. And he gets a good raise. Not as much as we were making before, mind you. But we can once again pay our bills.
For two years and four long months I've been fantasizing about this day (or days like it, involving other employers). In my daydream, I would put on some raucous music and dance giddily. I would buy a bottle of champagne, which we would spend the evening drinking and toasting our good fortune. Perhaps I would even cry a little with gratitude.
So far, none of that has happened. Instead, I find myself at the Walgreens cosmetics counter with my daughter, looking at fingernail polish. I've been wanting nail polish for two and a third years. I could buy it now. But I don't. In fact I have a long list of under-$10 things too impossibly boring to itemize here that I can now buy. But yet I somehow can't.
When the big layoffs came, our income was cut by one-third, not including the value of the benefits. With a little skillful cutting and renegotiating, that gave us just enough to pay our everyday living expenses--the house payment, gas, food, utilities. Anything beyond that--for example the nearly $300 it takes to register your kid for public high school--had to come from a savings that had been depleted to put two kids through college. Or we raised it by selling lumber, bunk beds and whatever else we could part with.
Today, many more things are within reach. Tires for the car, shots for the cat, new glasses. Yet here I stand at the counter, strangely paralyzed. We've had a couple of weeks to get used to it, but somehow I can't quite believe we're coming back to the middle class.
Mike is getting a new job that will allow him a breath of fresh air and more room to grow professionally. He is getting showered today with kind words from his readers who will miss him. Elsewhere on the Internet, his conservative detractors are no doubt looking at it as a big humiliation for him. Perhaps some are even giving themselves credit with bringing him "down."
Maybe what is needed is a pricey cup of coffee. I should finally have that latte the financial advice columnists are forever telling me to skip. And as I sip it, I will consider our newly rightside-up world and try to make sense of it all.

Three days

2011-07-12T12:13:00.000-07:00

Okay. I'll bite. Why is it that Kansas City is now considered the most positive city on the planet?
Yes. This planet. Earth.
The half-time of the most recent Sporting KC match was devoted to this bit of shocking news.
Normally, I don't pay much attention to what comes on the big screen during half-time breaks. This is my time for puling about the bad calls, drinking beer and just generally saving energy for the next 45-minute bout of standing and screaming. But this caught my attention because it started out just like one of those fake commercials they do on Saturday Night Live. Here, have a listen:

I won't lie. That video was terrifying. It starts with the menacing, almost sarcastic way the voice-over says, "You won," and continues through several horror-filled minutes while happy pod people and their families play and enjoy outdoor activities. When it was over, I felt my mouth go dry. Had some indescribable thing happened to my brain from watching this? Could I expect to get an anonymous call ala "The Ring" announcing I had but three days before I, too, would become insanely positive?
"Believe it. You're number one on the planet." While we were all so ecstatic about our good fortune to be living in Kansas City, a secret vote was being taken. "It's possible you didn't even know that a vote had taken place," the announcer said in gentle mockery.
Who are these shadowy forces that talk about us behind closed doors?
The United Nations NGO Positive Peace Awards, apparently. From what I gather on the Internet, the NGOs (Non-governmental organizations) voted on this at some point. NGOs would include groups like Rotary, Sister Cities, etc. Although the award bears the United Nations name, it's not mentioned on the UN home page. (To be fair, you could spend hours wading through the UN site trying to find it).
Judging criteria were also a bit of a mystery. Most things point to a group called Celebrate Positive LLC, which is dedicated to that always-hard-to-pin-down-but-I'll-know-it-when-I-see-it positivity. This is a group led by Scott Pederson of Atlanta. And this group is focused on finding the warmest and fuzziest from other areas of entertainment and sports as well.
If I were a real media person, I would click on the media relations link at the bottom of that page. But I am only a blogger with not much time. So I'll be stuck with my own imagination on what separates Kansas City from the pack. Doesn't every city have families and cultures and "amazing events?" Okay, so maybe Las Vegas doesn't celebrate the small town values like we do, but I bet Minneapolis and Milwaukee do. And without the bilious hatred that northlanders, Kansas Citians, Kansas City Kansans and Johnson Countians exhibit at random moments.
But then I...ca...can't...ahhhhg
We're number one! We're number one! We're number one!
Save yourselves people. Erase that video.

Just sharing

2011-07-06T13:20:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite cartoon songs ever:

Or you can watch the whole cartoon by following this link: http://youtu.be/D9b7PEj3fR0

Trash picking: Part II

2011-06-27T15:38:00.000-07:00

After more than two years of an extended "rough patch," it's nice to once in a while get a little break. It seems this summer the patron saint of garbage picking--whoever that may be--has crooked a greasy fingernail our direction and delivered upon us a second-hand blessing.
Because we are now two for two on fantastic finds in our local outings. Like the newb at the slot machines, it's just taken a little good luck to make me hunger for more information on local big trash days. Get me some more quarters, stat!
So there we were, with sun setting on big trash day in the wealthier western part of town and absolutely no time for curbside shopping. We had tickets to the Wi--Sporting KC and family obligations up til it was time to go.
Let's just take a quick turn around a couple of blocks on the way there, Mike said. We probably wouldn't find anything anyway.
Around corner one. Nothing. Corner two. Nothing. Corner three...wait, what's that?
At the end of one driveway was a pile of cushions and some wicker-looking outdoor furniture. We looked at each other. Outdoor furniture was, in fact, our only objective in this entire hunt.
I got out. The two wide chairs and settee were solid and heavy. A little bleached out, but with very few broken weaves. We could get new cushions and replace the horrible (really horrible) white wicker stuff that has been shaming our front porch the past two years.

After a brief discussion, Mike stayed behind to defend our kill from the other predators while I sped back for the big van. When I got back, he said, "We're taking the cushions, too."
And now voila! New porch furniture that makes us feel human again. Best of all, it's plastic wicker and heavy enough that it shouldn't blow off the porch like the old stuff.
Here's our old, dog-chewed stuff:
And here is the new, improved furniture, fresh from the garbage!
Who says life isn't good?

Respeck

2011-06-18T15:11:00.000-07:00

You just get so used to the rich guys taking everything. They back their trucks up to the US Treasury to load up with your tax money. They take bonuses while their workers are getting salary cuts. They ask to take money out of your kids' school in one breath yet insist on getting tax money for their own private schools in the next.
Firefighters and teachers are dumped on in Wisconsin, the long-term unemployed are looking at no benefits at all in Arizona--over philosophical differences on the role of government, no less. If you want to be an optimist in the middle of this, the daily news will take you out to a deserted wheat field and forcibly beat the hope out of you.
That's why going to the Kansas City Wizards'--er, excuse me, Sporting Kansas City's--shiny new stadium is such a mood lifter.
Yes, it's beautiful and state-of-the-art and on par with Europe. And the seats offer a great view of the action no matter where you are. And yes, they won last night. But that's not what puts me in such a good mood.
It's something more simple and maybe even a little meaner-spirited of me than all that.
It's the fact that the priciest tickets cannot get you in to enjoy the best section of the stadium. My section. The cheap seats.
In a decision that upends the usual order of the world, the Sporting KC fans who pay the least for tickets gets some of the best advantages. The closest parking. Prime seats behind the goal. It's the first place triumphant players come to be congratulated after a well-fought match.
And---and!-we have a nice, enclosed, air-conditioned concession area close by filled with big screens. So far this season, while others are paying stadium beer prices for a Bud, we've been getting a somewhat smaller plastic cup of craft beer for $2.
Can the CEOs and fancy suits get in? No ma'am they cannot. We checked multiple times.
It goes without saying that this is the equivalent of reversing gravity in the world of American sports capitalism. Mike and I are so filled with wonder that much of our game night conversations go like this:
"Look at how far out this parking lot is. They have to ride a shuttle bus. Who parks here?"
"People who paid more than we did."
"Want a beer? It's $2! I bet all the guys behind that barrier over there wish they could have some."
"But they can't."
There is nothing like this that we can find in any other local sport. The Royals rebuilt it's stadium recently. Ask where the former "bleacher" sitters are now, and if they're bringing binoculars. But they have plenty of luxury boxes.
There are cheap seats at the T Bones. On a steep grass embankment. In the outfield. Facing the western sun. And the Chiefs? Aw hell no.
Of course we work for it. The Members area (aka the Cauldron) is what makes it a soccer event and not just an ordinary sports snooze. Members wear the colors. They stand for the whole game. They sing. They put up with big drums beaten with a sawed off piece of PVC pipe and constant flags and streamers. (Except for a little dogleg of seats facing the long edge of the pitch. Apparently this part of the Members area has not caught on about what's expected. We ended up in this section last night and were told by a lady near us that anyone who wants to stand for the game should just "go over there," pointing to the more animated area behind the posts.)
You have to give credit to On Goal. They know what a contribution the Cauldron makes to the atmosphere of the game. Without it, you'd have a bunch of people chattering amongst themselves and only cheering for the bold attack or good save. Or to do the wave. There would be no "12th man" bolstering the team when things aren't going well.
Maybe I'm naive. Maybe the Cauldron will be sold out one day and I'm a fool.
But for now, I'm enjoying the respect. And the $2 beer.
And if you're a six-figure company manager who got a bonus and free seats from your company to the match--well good for you. But you can't come in my section.
Sucka!

Dear Santa...

2011-06-12T12:20:00.000-07:00

There's nothing like a little garbage scavenging to lift your spirits.
Friday was Big Trash night, or Curbside Christmas, as I like to call it. It's an event we look forward to eagerly every year.
We started trash when we were still making decent money--back in the heady days of the Clinton surplus and the dot.com bubble. Before there ever was an economic meltdown or a television show called American Pickers. Back then, we garbage picked because it was fun. Now, of course, we feel a little more in tune with the Joads and do it to give ourselves a treat we wouldn't normally be able to afford.
We've gotten quite a few good things over the years. A servicable, if ugly, long table. Plastic outdoor chairs. A bathroom sink with the old-fashioned brass fixtures still intact.
This year we went out with a plan to be selective. Two sons have moved out of town since last year, so we didn't have enough room for any extra stuff, no matter how fanciful or fun it may be.
Specifically, we needed outdoor patio furniture.
I should stop and say here that we have had a deck since the '80s, but we have never ever paid for outdoor furniture. The round table, chaises and chairs we have now are the same ones a friend of mine gave us when she updated her own set. In addition, we have a bunch of various plastic and metal/plastic chairs picked up from garbage nights past.
That was probably 15 or 20 years ago, though, and even though we've replaced the cushions and the umbrella, the hardware is beginning to fail. Too many plastic straps have broken. One chaise is all done and had to be tossed.
So we took to the side streets. We drove. And we drove. And for blocks...nothing.
I don't mean nothing as in not the things we were looking for. No, people were putting out real garbage this time. Rotting plywood. Tatty, moldy looking and obviously broken recliners. Sketchy plastic children's playsets.
For block after block, the only competition we had was the guys with flatbeds picking up lawnmowers and scrap metal. I became more and more glum. In my head, I began writing about how the recession has lasted so long that even the quality of the garbage has declined.
We passed a flatbed guy going over one of the more promising piles. We talked about how much further we'd go before calling it an evening.
And then...Paydirt! Three very nice deck chairs. Black metal frames with plastic straps in good shape. (The fourth one had broken seat straps. We left it for the other picker, who caught up with us just as we were loading them up.) All we have to do now is paint the metal on our table to match, and get new cushions and an umbrella (again) and our deck will no longer seem so much like a hobo camp.
As an extra plus, I opened up a horrible-looking guitar case at the same place and found inside a three-quarters sized six-string guitar in great shape. Mike put new strings on it today and it's fine. Now to learn the chords to "Brandy."
The only sour note was just before we got home. We spied a small leather (or maybe faux leather) couch that would have been a great replacement for the one in my daughter's room (which was also secured from someone's curbside). She and Mike were enthusiastic about getting it. But alas, it turned out to be a sleeper couch and they couldn't even lift it into the van, let alone get it up to the third floor. Oh well. Easy come, easy go.
So Big Trash Night becomes, once again, my favorite part of the summer. I can hardly wait for next weekend, when it's garbage night for our wealthier neighbors to the west who, presumably, can still afford to buy new.

Pops redux

2011-05-05T06:33:00.000-07:00

Ok, I think I'm finally done with cake pops.
After spending pretty much every free minute learning how to make the things last winter, I had decided that there was just no way to charge enough for them. To do the really cute ones, you have to spend a lot of painstaking time getting the tiny bunny features just right. That's a lot more fine work than you'd have on a cake or a torte. Yet somehow, the size of the cake pop makes it hard to come up with a reasonable charge.
To make it worthwhile, each pop needs to cost at the bare minimum, a dollar. I've seen big slices of cake go for $4 in a coffee shop. If you crumbled those slices, you would not get 4 cake pops. Yet when I look at a little cake pop on a stick--well, it seems like $1 is a lot to ask for basically two bites of cake. I guess this is just the "super size" mentality.
So I put them away. Then I saw that Starbucks now sells cake pops for $1.50 each, and there's nothing fancy about them. They are just round orbs in a colored chocolate shell with sprinkles. "Are these selling?" I asked the woman at the counter. "Oh yes, very well!" she replied.
So maybe...
But then, two local coffee shops would not be enough. I'd need to develop some kind of online ordering. And wouldn't that involve shipping?
From what I've read at other blogs, shipping is a cake pop problem. First, you have to come up with a way to pack them that won't jostle off your cute decorations. Sadly, there is no ready-made cake pop packing box.
And then there's the weather. Most sites that sell them recommend freezing them and sending them next-day air to avoid them melting in the box. That means the customer would pay a HUGE shipping fee on top of the already high cake pops themselves. Given the way things have been going, are there enough people out there who have the money for this kind of thing?
So I'm back into the research again.
Then I notice that to sell any kind of food, Kansas law requires you use a state-approved kitchen and it cannot be the same kitchen you use for your own family.
In my case that would mean renting out someone else's approved kitchen. All before a single cake pop has been sold.
Ok, I accept it. There's no way to make money at this--at least not right away. Which is reasonable, I guess. Most small businesses don't make any money at first. Some never make any money at all.
So the plan would have to be: Put some pops out at volunteer things for free, and give out some cards and donate a bunch to get your name going. Then parlay that word of mouth into advanced orders.
And so round and round I go. On one side, solving the problem is fun and so is making the pops. On the other: I just don't have money or more time to risk getting myself out there.
There has to be a better way...

Tips from a Dip

2011-03-01T08:21:00.000-08:00

The idea was to try and have cake pops perfected quickly. After which, I'd bring them by a couple of coffee shops in my neighborhood that also sell locally-made sweets.
I thought it was a pretty good plan. It should have worked. Here's what happened instead:
I made several trips to the Baker's Rack, a locally owned baking supply shop that is--as fortune would have it--just a short block away. Several trips were necessary because I kept having new problems with the chocolate dyeing, dipping and writing.
Because you see, there are apparently an infinite number of small details that can cause problems with cake pops.
Firstly, the design. Check Google "Images" for cake pops and most of the shapes you see are spherical. My Valentine design, though, is flat--like those Conversation Hearts your kids give out in their Valentine boxes.
The problem with flat is that the cake/frosting innards of the cake pop are not evenly distributed around the lollipop stick. Hence, sometimes half the heart will break off under the weight and heat of the chocolate dip.
So to the drawing board. My first pops were made with cake mix and canned butter cream frosting. For the second go-around, I did a from-scratch cake and homemade cream cheese frosting, in hopes that the cream cheese would be a little more solid.
But that wasn't all. I also froze the pops, to give them a better chance against the heat. That worked pretty well, I thought, until I noticed that the chocolate coating cracked on several after they dried.
Then I decided that the chocolate dip needed to be thinner. Thinning chocolate is tricky. Everyone knows water would make the chocolate seize up, but cooking oil is also problematic, because it doesn't mix in as well. So back to the store, where I was told lecithin flakes are the best and easiest way to thin.
Now I needed a good color. Conversation hearts are generally pastel, but despite a big selection of darker colors, pastels were a rarity. I didn't even consider grocery store food coloring, whose main ingredients are water and propylene glycol (alcohol). They don't give enough color anyway. I had some cake decorating gel, but it was ancient.
So back to the store again. for some dye especially made for chocolate.
I now had the dipping down. But Conversation Hearts need written witticisms. Food grade markers would be easiest but are hard to find here. The big craft stores sell one brand, but it gets uniformly nasty reviews online. And there was no time to wait for a mail order.
I would have to pipe on the comments with a pastry bag.
Now here's the thing I found out about piping chocolate: As you work, it hardens in the tip until you can't squeeze anything out. I had a little plastic tube of chocolate for this purpose (bought, once again, at the Baker's Rack). I thought at first I'd been ripped off and that the tube was mostly empty. Until I cut it open and found it still full of usable chocolate. It's just that the tip was completely hardened.
So I went back to my own pastry bag, worked quickly and put the whole thing--metal tip included--into the microwave on low every so often to keep it moving. (Yes, I put a paper towel over the metal tip.)
And voila! Success at last.
Then one more trip to the baking supply store for little plastic hoods.
I nerved myself up and dropped off my free samples and my phone number at the two coffee shops (neither owner was in when I came by). But I didn't have too much hope because by that time, Valentine's Day was less than a week away.
A good salesman would have been back and followed up with the owners. I know this. But by this time, I was in a crunch to get ready to be a presenter at a garden show (to sell and promote our gardening book) to practice for an accompanying job, to prepare an audition for a job I didn't get and to help our son move. And oh, yeah, to get my own piano students ready for their upcoming events.
I figured if I'd gotten a dollar apiece for the cake pops (after the stores' cut) I would have made about $28.
So what, ladies and gentlemen, have we learned today?
When the big career job stops paying, you have to fill in with a bunch of little jobs. On Planet Conservative, this character-building, nose to the grindstone workout rewards you with enough to live on. And if it doesn't, well you're just stupid I guess.
In real life, though, all the little jobs take way more time than anyone on Planet Conservative can even imagine. And they usually pay about $28.
Unless you own the Baker's Rack.

So far, so...

2011-01-23T14:13:00.000-08:00

Okay, so we're almost a month into the new year and this is the first post since December sometime. Yes, you'd be right if you think that Means Something.
It means I'm beginning to think I may never become an optimist.
Now two years into this project, I'm just this close to giving it all up. I've gained exactly zero new insights into optimism and positive attitudes since December, as my oncoming extended whine may illustrate.
Like everybody else, I usually start the new year with some good intentions. I don't like to think of them as resolutions. They're just some sticky notes on my mental refrigerator. "You're too angry too much. You need to spend time every day meditating. Just learn to let the bad things go. Get back in the habit of blogging. And exercising. And composing. Something's gotta change for the better this year."
Stuff like that.
So how's it gone so far, you may ask.
First thing: A huge fight with my daughter. I'm not kidding. It was only, like, Jan. 3 or 4. Angry? Yes. Have I meditated? Not even once. Composing? No. Blogging? You can see for yourself. In fact, exercising is the one horse I've been able to get back up on.
So in the spirit of politicians everywhere, I've decided not to change myself at all. Instead, I'll spin it. This year, instead of trying to change my thinking, I'll be concentrating on doing. Specifically doing something that will bring in some desperately needed coin.
I have two things to report so far:
1) I've been trying to learn to make cake pops to sell...somewhere, somehow. Cake pops--basically, chocolate covered cake on a stick--are the rage on at least one coast, I've read, but no one seems to be doing them here.
People who know me may scoff. I can cook, sure, but I've never been much of a one for fine presentation. So the painstaking decorative hand that cake pops demand may prove to be too much. But I vow to have mastered the art by Valentine's Day or die trying. Here's an early attempt.

I'm still learning how much to thin the chocolate melts and the best way to get the writing on the front, which I haven't yet tried.
2)Now that I think about it, I can't really say much about the second project. It's just bad luck. But it's definitely a really real project that would (theoretically) bring in really real cash. Some day. Maybe not as soon as the cake pops, though.
Sadly, blogging is not something that has brought about any extra money, so I'll be cutting back my time on that. See how neatly that fits in with my sloth of late? Talk about expert spin.

We'll meat again...

2010-12-15T11:24:00.000-08:00

Nothing like the holidays bearing down on you full speed to whip up the stress. With less than 10 days to shop and with nothing bought and an austerity budget that would make British PM David Cameron wince, I'm feeling it, baby, I'm feeling it.
So today I'm taking the only logical approach--a post dedicated entirely to meat.
We'll begin with news of a recent study that has found that apparently, looking at cooked meat causes men to relax. The authors started with the opposite hypothesis--that the ingrained competitive nature of men and the ancient hunter reflexes would cause them to become tense, possibly sizing each other up as to who would win in a squabble for that rib-eye steak. (Well, that last part was just a little imagineering on my part. But they did expect the opposite of relaxation.)
Here's Stephen Colbert's hilarious take on it from a few shows ago:

The Colbert Report: Cheating Death - Calming Meat Goggles & the iThrone
Uploaded by ComedyCentral. - Click for more funny videos.

There seems to be a weird obsession going on with meat right now. On the Food Network, which used to be all about cooking, we have instead a parade of portly guys touting the biggest greasiest meat piles they can find. Guy Fieri routinely hunches over mammoth burgers and pronounces them "money." And over at Man v. Food, the host (whose name I forget) pounds down every gross restaurant eating challenge he can find, including one called a "Manimal" in Maine that consisted of an eight-patty cheeseburger, two hot dogs, fries, coleslaw, large soda and a milkshake with coffeecake mixed in.
Apparently the hunting reflex has vanished, but they're still trying to symbolically dominate when it comes to eating.
Then there's this:

Yes, just in time for the holidays, a bacon and sausage creche, with the mini-weenie Baby Jesus lying in a bed of sauerkraut. This is...well...yeah.
Then again, if you're worried your child might grow up to be a dreaded vegetarian, you can start him/her off right with this product:
No, this is not a joke. It is--or was--a real product that, according to the Internets, boasted four slices of bacon per scoop. It was introduced by J & D's, makers of Baconnaise and other bacon flavored items. The company quit selling the baby formula, according to the Huffington Post. But no matter, they got the desired publicity.

Meanwhile, there's meat as fashion.
Lady Gaga got all the attention for her meat dress, but she's not the only one. It took only a couple of clicks to find these and other interesting meat clothes. Add to cart?

Feeling relaxed yet, guys? Because I think it's time to RUN for your LIVES.

Dream, dream, dream

2010-11-17T08:31:00.000-08:00

The New York Times ran an interesting story on happiness the other day by John Tierney. Apparently there's a study now that suggests that if you let your mind wander while you're doing a task, you're more apt to be unhappy later.
The study, conducted by Harvard psychologists, used an iPhone app called "trackyourhappiness" to randomly call people around the globe and ask them how they were feeling. The results: People who reported stray thoughts and daydreams were less likely to be happy a few minutes later and the stray thoughts caused the unhappiness, rather than the other way around. (Read Tierney's account here, and also in Science.)
And okay, I guess it makes sense that if you start fantasizing about finally having that loan paid off that you took out against your 401K so your kid could get through the last semester of college, that the thought might lead you to unpleasant other thoughts such as: Why did tuition go up by double digits at the state university for each year beginning when my kid enrolled and why didn't student loans cover everything and why won't time go faster so we can stop paying $50 a paycheck?
Wait. Hold on....Trackyourhappiness? Really? A stranger will call you up, ask you what you've just been doing and then how you felt about it. And people willingly signed up for this?
Maybe it's just me, but doesn't that kind of put the science in question? First of all, these are people who have iPhones. Secondly, they are paying a monthly charge for the connectivity, so they are likely fully employed. And third, they are extroverts who would willingly discuss deeply personal matters with an anonymous someone taking notes.
I've seen iPhones. If I could afford one, I'd buy it and then spend the rest of the time skipping around and laughing with glee. Rrrring..."This is a Harvard scientist. What are you doing right now and how do you feel?"
"I'm just bagging up a pile of warm dog poop. And I feel FANTASTIC! I have a job and an iPhone."
So probably, the results are skewed because of the sample.
But it might be interesting to see what the survey would look like if a different population was sampled.
Rrring..."Hello. This is Harvard calling. What are you doing right now and have you had any daydreams lately?"
"I've just robbed a convenience store. Daydreams? No, can't say my mind wandered. Gotta go..."
Rrring..."Hello, Harvard University here. We're doing a study on daydreams and happiness. What have you got for us?"
"Sorry, I've got six craft in my sector and five waiting in a holding pattern. Can't talk now, man."
"Ok, only just tell us, have you had any daydreams in the past half hour?"
"Look--no--I--well, no. But...'
"And do you feel happier than a half hour ago or no--"
"Oh yeah, yeah. Sure, great. I--oh s**t!/ (connection lost).
If the results hold, then these non-daydreamers would also be the happiest.
Me, I'm a die-hard daydreamer, and that's never going to change. I'll never be Zen enough to focus only on brushing my teeth. In fact I've had at least six daydreams just while writing this post. They're like little vacations you take inside your head. Vacations I desperately, desperately need. I will never give them up on the elusive promise of a slight increase in happiness.
So sorry, Harvard. Tell the positive thinking industry they can take my property and my dignity. But they'll take my daydreams only when they pry them from my cold, dead brain pan.

Recession Zen

2010-11-14T14:05:00.000-08:00

So here we are. It's been a year and eight months since the big income cutback. We've tried various ways to make money--selling stuff in our garage left from the previous owner, writing a garden book, etc.--and sometimes we've been successful. We've slashed our household spending to the bare minimum (ask us about our front tires) and then spent a lot of it in a fit of rebellion this year because, dammit, we need a life, too.
And now our second austere Christmas is looming and there is no indication that our situation is anything but permanent.
So how's my positive attitude coming along?
That's hard to say. I suppose the best way to track something like that would be to somehow put all my emotions on a chart, and if it were possible to do something like that on Blogger, I would. But since I don't really feel like working out a lifetime emotion chart, I'll just have to describe it.
I'll skip past childhood and adolescence, and go straight to adulthood. Graduation from college and getting that first job--euphoria. Finding out how hard it was to live on a reporter's salary--the Dumps. Getting a better job--euphoria. Getting married--euphoria. Having kids--daily euphoric highs followed by Dumps, lots and lots of dumps. Finding out how hard it is to live on basically one salary--well, you can see how this is going. My chart would look like just about anybody else's on the planet.
Now that we're approaching Christmas, have added a 16-year-old driver (but not a car) to our insurance and are looking ahead to college, I really should be in the dumps big time.
But I'm not. My emotional chart has flat lined. No elation. No dumps. It's just hard to get excited about anything.
(I identify a lot with author TM Shine, who wrote this really funny piece recently in the New York Times.)
Is this a good thing? Maybe. Back when I thought I had control over anything, I was always getting upset and unhappy because I should have done better. Then I'd get out a legal pad and start making lists. When things went well, I'd be flying high.
What I have now sounds a lot like resignation, but I don't think it is. It's more detachment. I haven't stopped wanting the nice stuff that goes with money. The new clothes, the respect, the occasional movie, the feeling that your car isn't going to shake apart at speeds over 60 mph. It's just that I'm exhausted from caring anymore.
This is how I imagined Buddhism. Detachment. Why care about a world you obviously cannot control?
And I'll say this: It certainly does protect me from scraping along the desperate bottom as I did a year and a half ago. It doesn't exactly feel like happiness, though.
But I'll need a lot more than Zen detachment to make things better.
Now where's my legal pad?

Ironically, we were unafraid

2010-11-01T12:22:00.000-07:00

By now the pundits have weighed in on the Comedy Central Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. Either he wasted an opportunity to engage middle-of-the-road folks who are turned off by politics and do not vote. Or his rally was simply an exercise in irony and too-cool-for-school self awareness. On the one hand, the rally didn't do enough to stir people to action in tomorrow's election. On the other, nobody really watches cable news, so why get so worked up about his media criticism? Yet the press, obviously, was annoyed.
We watched almost the entire rally live, giving the house a sedentary vibe so weird for a Saturday that my daughter said it felt like Thanksgiving Day and the Macy's Parade. I would have gone if I could have. But alas, not enough money. (Although I briefly considered hopping a freight train chugging slowly past our house.)
Apparently no one knew what to expect. Some news organizations wouldn't let their reporters attend (on their own time off) out of fear of being partisan. Yet the very non-partisan appeal to reason and moderation also kept it from getting huge amounts of prominent space.
And they all have good points (she said, reasonably.)
But it's too bad that no one talked about the opposing force of the rally, as personified by Stephen Colbert. It's too bad nobody mentioned the fear.
Because that is what I think the rally was really about. How can any of us maintain that go-get 'em American spirit in the face of seemingly overwhelming fear about every possible thing, 24 hours a day?
I don't mean just the fear you see hyped on the evening news--the child predators, avian flu, carcinogens in the drinking water. The heartbreak of psoriasis. I'm talking about the very real fear many of us have now, of waking one morning without a job, or health insurance, or a home because of forces beyond our control.
Colbert, in character as a faux conservative TV host, made a pretty good opening, supposedly cowering beneath the stage in an underground bunker. I've felt like that, after looking at our budget and counting the days until my daughter looks toward college. How can you get up the guts to spend the money on night school, or invest in your own business or apply for a new job when you're worried you may get thrown out of the house you've paid on for a decade? How can you dare to take the risks involved in improving your station in life?
It's fear, plain and simple, that is the paralyzing force that hobbles us and keeps us from being the great nation we used to be. FDR had it exactly right. Right now we have the realistic fears about joblessness. And on top of that, we have all the other fears pumped up by people who want to sell us something or force us into an ideology.
So yeah. If you wanted the rally to be a call to action against certain political parties, then it probably was a failure. But me, I looked at all those people on the mall--250,000 by some estimates. Out of that many, a lot are probably as scared as I am right now. And yet here we are, able to enjoy a sunny Saturday, laugh at a few jokes, forget about our troubles for a couple of hours.
Some say that's irony.
I say it feels like optimism.

So on with the laughs. Here's the latest, an Auto-Tune send up of Stewart's closing speech:

Busy, happy, or both?

2010-10-22T11:47:00.000-07:00

Wow. Has it really been two weeks since my last post?
I guess I just lost track of time. Because I was so busy.
And, as we all know, busyness equals happiness.
At least that's what a recent psychological University of Chicago study claims is true.People are actually more happy when they have some task to do, even if it's a somewhat meaningless task, according to the study, which you can read about here.
I wasn't exactly thinking of my future happiness when I signed on to run a two-day music event in which 770 students would perform for a critique. It was just a lucky combination of extreme need on the part of the music teacher group I'm in and extreme guilt on my part. They were in desperate need of someone to run this festival. I hadn't volunteered to do anything of substance in quite a while. Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner.
That was back in early March. In the intervening months, I noticed the effect I was having on my fellow teachers. I would mention the festival and some would wince. Or pat me sympathetically on the shoulder. Some were overly solicitous of my feelings, carefully approaching as one would a suspicious device at the roadside that could yet explode. I began to hear about how this festival had "eaten people up alive." Ha ha!
The event was last weekend. Somehow, I managed to come out on the other side.
No doubt about it, it was a lot of work. A whole lot of work. I keyed in entries, did books, made the schedule and answered incessant email questions. I barely saw my family for a couple of weekends. But it was completely doable--mainly because people before me had set things up so one person doesn't do it all. I had way more experienced people taking care of the judges, the food and the printing issues that I certainly couldn't have done on my own.
It went smoothly, I am told. We had a couple of dramas here and there. But none of the apocalypses that could have derailed things and scarred me for what's left of my life.
So, has the whole experience made me happier and more optimistic?
Well, yes and no.
The "yes" answer is mostly in retrospect. I like it (in retrospect) that I was able to contribute so much to such a great event. Kids got to learn to play pieces from the foundations of Western music (this year's theme was Classical Era music). Teachers got feedback on their teaching. Parents and everyone else got to hear some fine playing and exposure to Western musical heritage.
But there is a little "no" mixed in with all of that. No one likes the full-on stress of something like this while it's in progress, especially if they're feeling as new and green at the job as I was. And there were so many, many pieces of paper to lose.
Back to the good side--the extreme busyness has made it easy for me to take time off this week. Watch a soccer match or a movie in the middle of the day? Hey, I earned it! Best to enjoy that entitlement before it wears off, though.
So yeah, I guess overall the experience did make me happier. At least on a temporary basis. We'll see if it lasts.
Let's end on something silly and sad. First the silly:

Now the sad. Sad to see a good piano get destroyed. But it is an interesting concept for a piece.
Read more about it here.

A little whimsy

2010-09-28T08:25:00.000-07:00

I'm still feeling the strain of putting together a two-day piano festival coming up in three weeks. So rather than fill today's post with what undoubtedly would be gibberish, I'll give you something fun.
Here are a couple of things I ran into while looking for the money tree clip I posted earlier. Apparently, there are people out there who are being creative with money--and I don't mean financiers and their bizarre investment creations.
Here's an example of what people can do who look at a dollar and see it for what it really is--a piece of paper.

Or how about these fantastical fish? It's so satisfying about seeing dollar bills tamed and brought into submission to make something beautiful.

Then there's always this idea for a home decor replacement of the piggy bank. It's fun, once you get past cheesy production values.

We've had a lot of ups and downs the past couple of weeks. But the garden has been one thing that definitely lifted our spirits in spite of hard times elsewhere. To see a bigger post on that, check out Mike & Roxie's Vegetable Paradise here.

They look a little green yet

2010-09-21T12:10:00.000-07:00

Reading economic stories has been a bit surreal this week. Take the New York Times. One day, people over 50 are worried that they've been involuntarily consigned by their layoffs to an old age of cardboard shoes and shopping carts.
The next day, experts tell us the Great Recession is officially over. (But the "non experts" in real life say hell no, it isn't.)
I should feel vindicated that someone is saying the same thing I've been saying since the recession started--that it feels like people in their 50s have been dropped off on a desert island while the party cruise line goes on without us. We'll have less income to put our youngest kids through school, less to take care of our own parents and less in our pension funds to support us though we'll live longer (unless the rampant age discrimination makes us all so depressed we just decide to end it all.)
And then, the second story about how on paper, the recession is already over, yet most people are still so miserable they don't see it that way.
That should make me feel good, right? Someone agrees with me. You can't say the recession is over until people start getting their jobs back.
But it doesn't. It doesn't make me feel good or optimistic at all.So instead of fixating on those two downers, I'm looking at a bright and happy film that was promoted today on my web browser home page today.
It is a film about a money tree.
Filmmaker Amy Krouse Rosenthal and friends hung $100 of folding money in a little tree in downtown Chicago and then filmed the reaction. Here is the clip from YouTube:

As you see, an amazing number of people walked on by without noticing. I blame this on the fact that many were talking on cell phones. Damned electronic devices. What we need is a phone with an app that is like a money alarm. It would detect the loose $20 blowing in the wind and alert you with a happy song. Like maybe this one from Looney Tunes. (Just ignore those guys in hats. I have no idea who they are.)

But I digress.
Amy's project took place just last summer, when people were plenty hard up for cash. So I can only assume Chicago must be the land of plenty and we should load up our possessions on the old pickup truck and move there.
But wait! Apparently Amy was not the first to come up with this idea. Someone in Australia did it too, and then used it for a commercial.
Here's theirs:

I can't help noticing that the Aussies put their money on a little more of a challenging tree, so people had to hop and climb to get it. Michelle Obama, there's an idea there for you and your efforts to curb obesity.
So could this become a film-making trend? Could it happen here in Kansas City? I'd like to end with a plea: Oh filmakers. Oh, behavioral scientists. Please, please come to our neighborhood with your magic money trees. (And not that Australian money, either, but real American dollars. )
I promise I'll look up. I promise I'll notice.
Until then, I'll just tend my apple and cherry trees, grape vines and home garden. It's not quite the same as picking a bushel of money.
But almost.

I wanna be a hundred-thousand-aire..So frickin' baad...

2010-09-14T08:45:00.000-07:00

I've heard a lot of suggestions about how to be more happy. one of my grandmother's favorites was to "just keep busy."
I've been trying that one out in earnest this fall, by signing on to run an annual festival for piano students. The past week and a half has been spent almost entirely in front of the computer, entering, scheduling and re-entering 770 some students and 85 teachers to play and work shifts.
I don't know yet whether this has made me feel happier or more optimistic about things. But at least I can use it for an excuse for just now getting around to a post that should have been done a week ago.
The news was that--surprise--money can buy a little happiness. The study, done by Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School, explains income's effect on two kinds of happiness--day-to-day and the overall feeling that your life is working out.
Yes, people. The science is finally in. As to the former kind of happiness, the magic number is $75,000. The farther below that figure you make, the less happy you are day to day. And on the overall feeling that life is working out (which is how I'd describe optimism or positive attitude) well, money has an impact on that, too. If your income keeps going up above that $75,000, it turns out you have much more of that warm glow of satisfaction with your life. (Accounts of the study here and here.)
So if your life was chugging along fine before the recession, if your family was making at least $75,000 and you kept getting raises then...you were more happy. But if during the past year, you were driving along at highway speed and the car suddenly shifted into reverse? Hmmm.
A lot of people could have told us this a long time ago. I know we certainly can attest to the impact on happiness of a family income well below $75,000.
Somehow, though, it was a surprise to others, who apparently believed until this study the bromide that "Money can't buy you happiness." Wha...You mean it can?
I blame the mythology that's sprung up about the "Greatest Generation." According to a certain segment of pundits, the generation of the Great Depression and World War II all pulled together and sacrificed with smiles on their faces. They all just gritted their teeth and raised themselves up without any help. Not a soul secretly cheered on the Bonnies and Clydes of the day. They were truly saints.
If you ask some of them, it sounds true enough. My grandparents certainly had a lot of heart-warming stories about sharing and good deeds during the Depression. If you said, "Money can't buy happiness," Gram would have heartily agreed.
But I also notice they were both scared--scared to death--of even the slightest blip in the economy. When that cloth-coated Republican President Richard Nixon called for wage and price controls (yes, a Republican. Wage and price controls. You can Google it.) they were all for it.
Any thought that we might be about to return to the Depression brought visible shudders. Yes, there were a few good times.
But go back? Not on your life.

Who indeed?

2010-09-01T09:00:00.001-07:00

Who is John Galt?
I've been thinking about that classic question, from the Ayn Rand novel Atlas Shrugged quite a bit lately.
In the book, Galt is a super capitalist genius, a Gulliver sort of hero who is being tied down by small-minded parasites who want to redistribute his wealth for the public good. Contemporary conservatives started talking about this fictional hero shortly after the last election, and there was a lot written about how all the talented "John Galts" of the country would be tempted to just quit--go on strike--if they were going to be taxed and regulated.
Then how would people who were not captains of industry--all those mere employees--get along? Ha ha. They'd be barely able to feed and dress themselves.
Every so often, you'd see a sticker "Who is John Galt?" And there were plenty of people who would suggest that, of course, it is the nation's richest one percent, because obviously they have all the brains. No one had better tick them off, or we'd be in big trouble.
Because it will take a lot of creativity to get us out of the mess we're in.
So I've been thinking. Where are the creative ideas? As far as I see, this creme de la creme is not being tied down. They still have their jobs and incomes. No one's stopping them. Yet here we stay, in the same fix as ever.
I bring it up because of a piece in the New Yorker about the Koch brothers, whose Wichita company Koch Industries is one of the richest in the nation. (If you haven't already, drop what you're doing and read it here.)
If ever there were John Galt characters, it would be David and Charles Koch, who built up the family business inherited from their father, and now use their billions to thwart any attempt at business regulation.
But if you look a little deeper at the family itself, as portrayed in this article, it also says something about the state of creativity in this country.
Fred Koch, the family patriarch, started things pretty much from scratch. He was a chemical engineering graduate from MIT who invented a more efficient way to convert oil into gasoline, and the company was built around this invention.
The company was successful, but when his sons took it over, they boosted it into the stratosphere.
Note here, that the father was the one with the bright idea. He actually created something--a tangible product for sale. His sons have no inventions to their names, however. All their mental genius has been directed at business deals and at rebuffing attempts to regulate them.
In a way, I think that's why we're in all this trouble as a country. We're too many generations away from the inventors. They've never been hungry. They've never felt the sting of being rejected by a higher authority (Fred Koch's invention was not accepted by American oil companies. He had to get his start working with Joseph Stalin in the USSR.) All that one percent have done is create money--for themselves mostly.
This is why we're not seeing the expected answers to our problems. This top one percent have grown too soft and complacent.
It's too bad, because at the same time, we're also worrying about a "crisis in creativity," as written about in a recent Newsweek.
So the question begs to be answered. Who is John Galt?
Maybe it's us.

Optimism on my foodie agenda

2010-08-26T12:30:00.000-07:00

I sometimes feel guilty, on grocery day. Times are hard and money's tight. Yet in my cart I have brown eggs, hamburger and chicken from Good Natured Family Farms--a regional company. Clinking around in the cart is my empty, returnable milk bottle from Shatto, which I'll return for another half gallon of skim that isn't much less than a whole gallon in a plastic jug.
Despite our big pay cut, I haven't been able to let go of these vestiges of better times. But sometimes I hear a nagging voice. "Spoiled. Selfish. Pretentious. Rich and silly." And let's not forget "elitist."
I started buying these products gradually. First came the ground meat. There had been an E coli outbreak and also some talk about mad cow disease. The smaller supplier would be less risky, I decided, because the ground meat would come from fewer cattle.
I started buying the milk because it was fun to buy in a glass bottle, but continued as I read more on bovine growth hormone. The chickens just tasted better. But then I started reading about conditions in large factory chicken farms. The free range eggs followed.
I didn't mind paying a little more. We had the budget for it then.
Now, though, I beat myself up a little each time I put one of those items into the cart. We decidedly don't have money to splurge on higher grocery bills. We need tires and a front-end job. What kind of a sissy would sacrifice her budget because of unfounded worries about food safety?
Then came the recent egg recall, and suddenly my concerns don't seem so unfounded and my higher-end groceries seem like money well spent.
The past decade has brought a steady stream of bad news from the food companies. I started buying these products to regain just a little control over what we eat. We started gardening long ago for many of the same reasons. Except gardening saves you money. I always figured the savings offset the higher price of meat and dairy.
But it got me thinking: Does this response make me an optimist or a pessimist?
I always came down on the pessimistic side before. All that thinking about food safety. The recalls and poisonings are just temporary aren't they? Just fleeting blips on the radar field of an all-wholesome food system.
But today I'd argue the opposite. Buying better quality makes me an optimist. I am following the manly man American tradition of solving my own problems and guiding the invisible hand of the marketplace with my own God-given pocketbook. Buyer beware. If more people join me, the food supply really will get safer. And maybe the earth will get a little cooler.
So I'll continue to spend a few dollars more on more wholesome locally grown products, because today it doesn't seem so much like a frill. In fact, quite the opposite. It's a whole lot less expensive than the doctor.

Those were the days

2010-08-20T09:46:00.000-07:00

I remember giving a speech back in ninth grade on inflation. (Yes, I was that type of nerdy student. A partner and I later did a project on the gold standard. This was all for an English class. Lucky I'm a girl or I surely would have been beaten up regularly.)
The speech is still pretty clear in my mind because I hated giving speeches and because this one went well with the use of a visual aid to keep my hands busy.
Since this was before the days of PowerPoint, I made a poster with a circle on it. It was really pretty simple. As my little taped man moved around the circle, I'd talk about supply and demand, wages and prices. As wages went up, demand went up, and as demand went up, prices went up until supply caught up. If it didn't, then there'd be pressure on wages to go up again.
It was the first time I thought that I got how the economy worked.
I look back wistfully on that day, because if one thing is clear, I'm completely at sea in the new world of global economics.
In early 2009, I used to watch the stock market, hoping it would be a predictor of how things might go for my family. Surely, if there were jobs and a healthy middle class with wages steady or rising, then this would be a good thing for demand and for business, right?
But I found that the stock market seems to be an entity to itself, operating in a planet on the far side of the sun from where I sit. When jobs come back, that's a bad thing because business will have to pay more for labor or treat their workers better. Good consumer confidence, or a surge in retail sales--that's a good thing, right? Well, maybe, but a stronger dollar ruins everything.
In fact, nowadays the stock market only seems to affect my life if it's on the downswing. The big crash of '08? We felt that right away. The big rebound of the ensuing months? Not so much. True, our savings were regained, But then we weren't doing anything with that but trying to save for old age and college. Our everyday life didn't change like it did when we took the pay hit.
So I've been hitting the books. Recently, I read three economics books back to back: The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations?, by Ian Bremmer; Diary of a Very Bad Year: Confessions of an Anonymous Hedge Fund Manager by Anon, N+1 and Keith Gessen; and IOU: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay, by John Lanchester.
Result: I understand a bit more about state capitalism and derivatives, but I don't like them any better.
Other result: It's becoming increasingly clear that--just like global warming scientists--the people who know the system best are not going to be listened to, and we'll all suffer for the stupidity and short-term greed of the majority.
Harsh, I know. But the more I read, well...
Lanchester, an English novelist whose book is both as fun to read as Diary, but still manages to explain the complicated financial terms, was the most dour.
"Looking back, it turns out that we've just lived through an economic golden age. It turned out to be a fake golden age, one based on debt and on an unsustainable credit bubble and underpinned by a financial system which was, it turned out, taking crazily miscalculated risks--but we didn't know that at the time. In fact, most of us had no idea it was a golden age; we didn't know that we were living through what for many of us will turn out to be the best economic times of our lives. I wish someone had told us...."
In the time right after the first big corporate collapse, he says, Westerners had a chance to reflect on why ever increasing riches don't seem to make us any happier. "We in the West can do something that no people in history have done: we can show the world that we know when we have enough."
But he also says he doubts that will happen, because we don't really feel all that rich, even though by world standards, we are. And we are all about to start to feel poorer, because we're getting the bill now for the excesses of the past.
Sad, but true. But, when you've spent all your life as an outlier, paying off your credit cards, living in an older home that you can afford, shopping from the used and unfinished furniture stores (and sometimes the trash bins!) to keep from overspending, this assessment is a little hard to take.
But oh well. There's very little we can do about it. Except maybe quit playing the worker ant and saving for a happier tomorrow that will never come.

It's all in the branding

2010-08-18T11:16:00.000-07:00

When a scientific study can be summed up with this opening line--"People think they're more liberal than they really are"--well, I just can't resist.
Where? Where are these people who find the liberal label so irresistible that they have to claim it, even when they aren't? Certainly not at any gathering I've ever attended in the states of Kansas or Missouri. Most people I know are scared to death to use the L-word, even if it does fit them. Who would be crazy enough to identify as a liberal when the shoe doesn't fit?
Nevertheless, that is the lead of a recent story in the New York Times about a British study of political attitudes worldwide.
The researchers asked 136,000 people over the course of 20 years to rate themselves as righties or lefties, on a scale of 1-10. Those answers were then compared with how well people agreed with the statement, "Incomes should be made more equal."
The result: People thought of themselves as more left-leaning than their answer to income distribution indicated.
The researchers theorized that the more educated people--who identified themselves much more inaccurately as left-wing--were in fact, fiscally conservative. They were liberal on social issues, yet voted with their pocket books as fiscal conservatives.
Well, okaaaay....I guess the fact that this was a study of people in 82 countries makes it more understandable. It's far more accepted to call yourself a liberal elsewhere, where there's a more live-and-let-live approach to social issues than in the US. At least in Europe. Perhaps "conservative" just doesn't have the same cache there and elsewhere as it does here.
But you have to wonder about a study that's been going on for 20 years. In that amount of time, the popular definitions of liberal and conservative have changed.
It's kind of like Sarah Palin now calling herself a feminist because she believes in woman power to enact all kinds of restrictions for women on abortion. You see, right-wing feminism means seeing your gender as equal and rising up to recognize the power of life. This has startled some of us who've taken all kinds of verbal abuse for years over this very term. If there's one thing we've learned, it's that being a feminist is the same as being an anti-Biblical, scaly demon who is an abomination to nature and God. Now it's okay? What next?
This from a wing of the Republican Party that has spent the past three or four years debating whether people who disagree with them are "true Republicans" or just pretender in-name-onlies who need to be purged.
Hmmm....Does this mean we'll soon see Karl Rove and his ilk lobbying to be called liberals because they believe in liberty from taxes and regulations? Will Rush Limbaugh suddenly stop talking about "femi-nazis" and start schmoozing with the "femi-nicies?"

But back to the study. Apparently one other thing researchers found was that people who think of themselves as lefties, and who really ARE lefties, also were happier than their right-of-center counterparts.
Happier about what is not clear. But yeah, I can see it. Maybe they're just happy not to be so confused.

Things seem better. They do.

2010-08-10T13:11:00.000-07:00

Having a birthday is always a good time to look back a little and assess where you are.
My birthday was last week. And all in all, I've got to say I'm feeling a lot better about just about everything.
This is not because of any recent economic news. We've been bombarded with warnings about a double-dip recession and deflation. The newspaper industry isn't in any better shape than it was. Unemployment and age discrimination remain prevalent.
And, honestly, our family outlook hasn't improved that much, either. We're still living with a huge income cut for the foreseeable future. Our savings are still down. And our daughter--who still hopes to go to college--gets older each day.
So my feeling better doesn't have anything to do with outside events. It's because we're still here. In our house. With at least part-time employment.
Yes, there's a lot to be said for survival.
And a lot to be said for remembering how bad things were. We are at the point now, where I can look back to last year and say, "Wow. Compared to this time last year, we are on Easy Street."

Last year I spent many sleepless nights wondering whether we could possibly survive on 33 percent less money. What would happen to college loans we couldn't repay? How would we deal with those super high utility bills in the heat of summer and cold of winter?
For one thing, we were blessed with only a moderately hot summer last year. By the time the cold weather hit, I had learned the tricks of the new budget. So we never had to blow off the utility company.
In fact, our hard-core resistance to spending for even the smallest of life's pleasures kept us from frittering the lump cash sum we got when Mike had to go part time.
Of course, it gets tiring, always having to look at the unraveling and threadbare bathroom towels and never getting to eat out. Among other things. It gets tiring, always having to tell your daughter no.
So we took a chunk of that money and went on a big trip last month. Because we earned it. No apologies.
And it felt great.

This time last year Mike was being mercilessly pummeled from the right-wing blogosphere in a very personal way, and I had to watch as these people kicked him when he was down. Believe me, fury is not a pleasant emotion. Now, though, the fun has apparently gone out of it and they've moved on to other targets.

Last year, I was consumed in fear. The thing I was mostly afraid of was what would happen to my daughter's future if we became insolvent.
I'm no longer so afraid of that--not because we're any less likely to become insolvent, but because I've realized how short-term a problem her future is. Only three years until college. Come what may, we have the resources to hang on that long. And on the bright side, our reduced resources may make it easier to get the grants and scholarships that are a matter of course for most of us in what used to be the middle class.
We've just got to get her to college. And once that happens, we'll have some more options as well.
So it's been a better year. Dammit, I might even say I felt optimistic about the months to come. But I don't want to jinx it.

Speaking of economic good fortune, last week's birthday makes it possible for me to now get into the city swimming pool for $1.
There's a brighter tomorrow ahead. Happy birthday to me.

The Happiness Project

2010-07-31T11:28:00.000-07:00

A year ago, I discovered what I thought was my non-evil twin--a woman named Gretchen Rubin who is from Kansas City and happened to be writing a book on happiness. Only instead of endlessly carping about things, as I usually do, she fills her blog with advice on how we can improve our outlook.
The Happiness Project: or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle and Generally Have More Fun (HarperCollins 2009) hit the shelves last December.
The lengthy subtitle pretty much sums it up. Rubin's idea seems to be that if you just change yourself enough--if you stop nagging, remember everyone's birthday, start exercising, organize your closets, make more time for your kids while at the same time getting to bed earlier--you will feel happier.
She knows it works because in the end, she does feel happier. She backs that up with anecdotes written by readers of her blog who have followed her plan, which includes charts in which you grade yourself daily on how you're doing. (I'll go out on a sexist limb here. It seems really unlikely that many men would take all this trouble.)
You see, Rubin recently lost her job and is recovering from a serious illness and...no wait. I've got that wrong. Rubin was editor of the Yale Law Journal and clerked for former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor but now writes books and lives in New York with her husband and two children, whose two sets of doting grandparents visit often.
Then one day on a bus, it hit her. She just wasn't happy enough. She should try to do better. The huge list of new chores and duties was not really an expression of guilt and self punishment for her success. It really wasn't
Okay, okay. I won't go down the sarcasm road. Rubin is well aware that there are plenty of people worse off than she is. She makes that point early on.
So I want to give her the benefit of the doubt. But I have to point out that she doesn't always make it easy.
The cocktail party on page 13, for instance. An acquaintance attacks her idea.
"And anyway," he persisted, "you're not a regular person. You're highly educated, you're a full-time writer, you live on the Upper East Side, your husband has a good job. What do you have to say to someone in the Midwest?"
Yes, the Midwest. That hellhole where regular people live who don't have good jobs or a lot of education. And they also don't have cocktail parties.
I can never imagine this conversation without turning it into a little movie. After that line, the camera would weave through the living room, past the canapes, picking up bits of conversations along the way. Some well-dressed men are gathered in a corner. The punch line: "...and we were selling those things, and I mean they were hot. But all they were was worthless paper. What are you gonna tell the people in the Midwest?" (Fade to sounds of uproarious laughter)
There's also this sentence: "But when my clerkship with Justice O'Connor drew to a close, I couldn't figure out what job I wanted next."
Why does that irritate me so much? It's not an unreasonable thought. I guess I just can't help applying it to people I know. "When I was laid off after 20 years, I couldn't figure out what job I wanted next."
Which brings me to the central point. The Happiness Project is the victim of horrible, horrible timing and questionable editorial judgment.
The research and blog were started back in early 2006. March of that year is the first entry in Rubin's blog archives.
The biggest recession in our generation's memory started, by most accounts, in 2007. The stock market went into crisis in fall of 2008.
At that point, someone should have said, "maybe we ought to rethink this. It seems like the obstacles to happiness right now are bigger than cluttered closets and lack of exercise. People are losing their homes. If we print this, people are liable to say your projects are just icing roses on your wedding cake of a life."
Toward the end of the book, Rubin does try to address that. She says she wants to develop happier habits now, so she can fall back on them when something bad does happen.
I'm skeptical about that. The mild discontent she's dealing with now will have no relationship whatever to severe loss that could happen in the future. And if the bad thing is something financial, it will be harder still, because many of her projects involve buying something--a spot in an exercise class, a file box, bluebirds for her collection.
I just don't have the faith that these things will make her better able to ward off the blues in bad times. Because I know it doesn't work.
I used to do this sort of thing, but in reverse. As a kid, I'd imagine in vivid detail all the very worst things that could happen to me and my family, and how I might deal with them. I thought of this as a sort of vaccination against the schizophrenia that struck my mother in her 20s. In my child's mind, I thought she must gotten sick because she was not prepared enough for bad things. My mental constitution was going to be stronger.
Did it make me less neurotic as an adult? You can ask my friends. But I sorta doubt it.
Her more compelling argument is that she wants to be able to say she appreciated the good times while she had them. That, I can't argue with.
Rubin had a great opportunity in The Happiness Project. She had the ear of a book publisher and an agent. And she had a historic moment in history--a time when we all could use some happiness.
What we needed was something more.
What we got was a bestseller.

Excuse me while I become starry-eyed for a moment

2010-07-28T13:52:00.000-07:00

I know this is going to make some people nutso, but I never feel so American as when I'm watching the MLS.
I'm not talking about the wealth and world domination that causes so many to chant "We're Number One!" This is not the chest-thumping pride that comes with having things our own way across the globe for decades, with having the biggest military or being able to boss small countries about what form capitalism should take. None of that feels all that good to me anyway.
This is more the American feeling from the turn of the 19th century into the 20th. It's the feeling that everything is grand and new and possible, with a little elbow grease. It's the wide-eyed enthusiasm for new inventions and world's fairs.It's the same feeling I used to get at House on the Rock in Wisconsin, with its rooms full of mechanical marvels.
It's optimism. And it feels great to just succumb to it.
There aren't many chances to do that in America these days.
For the most part, we've done our building and growing. Our best inventing days sometimes seem to be behind us.
Traditional American sports are larded with money and fans. But the MLS is still an exciting frontier. Attendance is on the rise, youth players are sticking with it into their teens. They're adding teams and building stadiums.
And best of all, it's still a small enough sport that your season ticket can get you in to numerous events where you can talk to players and get autographs. I've shaken hands with Kansas City Wizard Jimmy Conrad several times. Try saying that about an NFL star, or any Premiership player in England for that matter.
Speaking of England, when I was there a few weeks ago, I had a chance to observe how they reacted to the terrible spanking they got at the hands of Germany in the World Cup. Here's the Sun:

Other papers were only marginally more restrained. In fact, there was endless carping, despair and calls for firings.
I'm not saying Americans aren't capable of the same vitriol. If there was an NFL world cup and the American team lost that badly, I'm sure the columnists would have been comparably irate.
But there isn't an NFL world cup--or a baseball world cup or a basketball world cup. And that's just the point. By taking the risk of competing in a sport where we have a disadvantage, we become American again. It's not about the winning. It's about believing.
My family watched the US's last game--against Ghana--at Ye Olde Cock in London. (Yes, that's really the name.) The bar was packed with American ex-pats. When the final whistle blew, the crowd spontaneously broke into The Star Spangled Banner.
It was the one and only time I've ever felt moved by our national anthem.

This is Soccer Week

2010-07-26T14:28:00.000-07:00

Forget the Rolling Stones' refrain. Sometimes you can get what you want--and a little extra besides.
Not too many days ago, I lamented that some publicity-seeking faux streakers were more fun to watch than the Kansas City Wizards lately. The Wizards had just lost to Chiv....well, let's not talk about it.
Because the Wizards have redeemed themselves. And then some. What did they do?
*They got a record crowd of over 50,000 to come out to Arrowhead to watch a match.
*They convinced one of the top sports franchises in the world to make an appearance in Kansas City. Manchester United, of England, has also been our family's favorite English team for years.
*They got us all in to see the newly refurbished Arrowhead before any of the Chiefs season ticket holders. (Sorry, Chiefs fans who are not rich. Your area does not look that much different. But I hear the luxury boxes are nice.)
And, oh yeah, one more thing.
They won! It was 2-1, with the Red Devils' only score coming from a penalty kick. That same penalty forced the Wizards to play one man down for the entire second half. But they won anyway.
Which caused one more good thing to happen: It shut the mouths--momentarily, anyway--of all those soccer haters.
You know the ones. "Soccer will never catch on here because Americans need high scores, they can't pay attention long enough, the game's boring," and yap yap yap.
Well, here's a look at the crowd we saw yesterday:

The north side stands were just as full. And while this wasn't a sell-out, it was the biggest crowd ever to watch a match in Kansas City. It keeps this city in the running for a future World Cup game, if the World Cup does end up in the US again. (For more, check out the Star's soccer blog The Full 90.) Just for that extra little dollop of goodness to put things over the top, the Wizards became the first MLS team to beat Manchester Utd.
Yeah, sorry haters. But the beautiful game is catching on here (check out this story in the New York Times about that.) And personally, it feels good to be on the winning side of a trend for a change. Lord knows, it gets frustrating when your favorite TV shows and food flavors are always getting discontinued for lack of sales.
And so, because I am optimistic about the future of soccer in this country and the Kansas City Wizards in particular, I declare this

SOCCER WEEK

Go Wizards!

If you already read Monday's post, please be sure to go back and read the post script.

2010-07-19T18:46:00.000-07:00

Risky Business

2010-07-19T14:13:00.000-07:00

"Sometimes you've just gotta say, 'What the f***.'"
True when the Tom Cruise said it in Risky Business.
And true today.
Here's the situation: We've been living for over a year with a huge reduction in pay. We've denied ourselves. We've cut back. We've jiggered and re-jiggered our spending. We've looked for other sources of income. Yet somehow we managed to keep the "severance" money and even add to it a little bit. It's been a long, hard slog.
Financial sages would tell us to keep at it, to save and save because we in no way have enough of a cushion for the next time the big boys in Wall Street decide they need an infusion. Keep living small, lowering our expectations and dreams. Adopt the attitude of a hunted gazelle.
And it is at this point that we must reply, "What the f***."
Because I'm tired--we both are--of the feeling that someone else gets to tell us how to spend our money. And of the feeling that, now we've come down in the world, we shouldn't expect to own nice things or take nice trips.
And so a plan was hatched. We'd plunder a huge chunk of that cushion money we should be fearfully clinging to. We'd take a vacation--a big one--to visit my brother and his partner in Sweden. With a week's side trip to see the sights in London.
Crazily irresponsible? Maybe. But Irene is only with us three more years. Life is short. I don't want to spend it like a hunted gazelle (ala the advice of Dave Ramsey). I want to be living and doing.
So we went.
And it was so, so worth it.
We used to take vacation car trips all the time when the boys were little, but years of middle-class erosion have made us cut back on those. I'd almost forgotten how great it is to get the family (in this case, the three of us. Our oldest son came on his own dime, and the middle son was not able to come because of other commitments.) all together on a great adventure--seeing new things, eating new foods, learning about a different part of the world.
For a while, we could enjoy ourselves in happy denial of what's proved to be a dismal year for income. For a while, we didn't feel like people being cast aside.
And it did shake a few things loose for me, creatively. So who knows? Maybe I'll find a way to make that money back.
In the meantime, we're carefully paying back the credit card (yes, the credit card) out of the remainder of that slush fund. Hard times could come again. There could be layoffs.
But what the f***. No one can repossess our memories.

Post script: In my haste to get this post done quickly, I left out one very beautiful thing about this trip. After we got to Sweden, Mike (my brother) and Faith insisted on paying for most of the biggest expenses while there--hotels, tickets to London, etc. It was so generous...I get choked up even now thinking about it. So thanks, Mike and Faith, for your hospitality and your generosity.

Forget the Starting Eleven Girls. This was better.

2010-07-11T15:01:00.000-07:00

One streaker at a ball game: A little unusual, yes. It may get a mention on the evening news. But it's not unheard of.
But four streakers? All wearing matching flesh-colored thongs? And not one news outlet speaks a word?
Something is up, my friends.
The streakers provided the only entertainment an otherwise dismal match Saturday evening between the Kansas City Wizards and Chivas USA.
It happened near the end of the half-time break. A few players--possibly reserves--were out on the field, kicking the ball around when suddenly this guy rips off an obviously tear-away outfit and starts running. After watching him for a while we notice there's another nearly nude guy sprinting from another part of the pitch, and then another one at the far end. I think there were four in all, but there may have been just three. Honestly, it's hard to concentrate on the numbers when there's a bevy of jockstrap-clad fitties capering like wood nymphs just in front of you.
Here's the YouTube video, from a vantage not too far from where we sat in the Cauldron.

As streaking goes, one is pretty much the usual number in 2010. And loincloths? Pfft. Exposure is the whole idea.
So an apparently organized streak with such consideration for children in the stands is unusual. It should have merited at least a couple of words from the local news. But nothing on the channel we checked. And no mention in the Star. Very strange unless...
The whole thing was a stunt for an MTV show.
That's the buzz on the web-o-sphere and it does make sense. Apparently streaking at a sports event is on the to-do-before-you-die list at The Buried Life--a show which, coincidentally, has a cast of four young men. Here's a link to their Facebook page, where their friends congratulate them.
It also begs the question: How much did the Wizards front office participate in this? Did they seek it out for the publicity when the show airs, or were they as surprised as everyone else?
In any case, it was an evening brightener as Kansas City slogged through the match against Chivas, who hadn't won a game in two months. The score? You don't even want to know. The Wizards are going to have to tighten it up to keep from being humiliated in the friendly against Manchester United on the 25th.
But I forgot. This is an optimism blog. So forget the depressing score. Thanks, MTV.

PS Yes, I have been gone for a while. More just as soon as I get caught up from a great trip.

U S A! U S A!

2010-06-12T16:51:00.000-07:00

There isn't much gloom and doom that a little summer can't fix. Or if not fix, then at least make palatable.
After a week of worrying about the outward rippling of the oil spill and the headed-in-the-wrong-direction stock market, I looked up from pitting cherries and saw the World Cup ahead. And it beckoned like a platter overflowing with pork bacon.
Ahh, football. Nothing soothes the pain like football.
And this has been a particularly good weekend for it.
Let's start with the Wizards. They hadn't been exactly a source of joy the past few outings, after a two-month string of losses and ties. But things were looking up Thursday when we went out to see them against the Philadelphia Union.
They stomped the Union 2-0. And it's a good thing, too, because if they hadn't, we'd have been really screwed.
Philadelphia is an expansion team that's only been playing since March. Needless to say, they haven't had much time to get it together. Add to that the fact that they have--hands down--the ugliest kits ever. Vomit- (or maybe Boy Scout-) colored khaki with a dark stripe up the front shows every least bit of sweat. Amazingly, I could not find a picture of a player in uniform on the net. But here's one from a merchandise web site:
They'd have to be dispirited. But we'll take the win, anyway.

Then the World Cup. Three games per day for a couple of weeks, until the group stages are over. And I could watch every one of them. I really could.
We watched the US tie England today with a raucous crowd at the Power & Light District. (And are happy and relieved to come away with 1-1, after a very, very lucky mistake by England's keeper.)
I'd never been to the P&L before, and I was, frankly, a little worried about going. All I'd ever heard to this point was about how strict the dress code is, and how the area has a whole list of deportment dos and don'ts. It sounded a little like going to Sunday school. What would happen if I accidentally swore? (A definite possibility.) I pictured a security guard propelling me by the elbow, telling me never to come back. (It turns out I needn't have worried. On our way out, McFadden's was pumping a song out onto the sidewalk with the refrain, "F**k, yeah!.")
It all got me thinking how we've come a long way since the last World Cup. Four years ago, when we attended a watch party, it was at the Chief's Arrowhead indoor practice facility. At the time, Mike and I bought jerseys, convinced it would be our last chance because the Wizards were for sale and we'd soon lose them.
This year, we're watching at the Power & Light and celebrating progress on a new soccer-specific stadium in KCK.
Four years ago, few of our daughter's teammates parents paid much attention to professional soccer or the World Cup. Today, most of them went to parties all over town to watch the match.
A lot's been wrong the past couple of years. Layoffs, oil spills, hazardous products, greedy corporations.
But today I'm thankful that appreciation of football is on the rise.
For a change, something is going in the right direction.

Ugh. Tired.

2010-06-08T18:50:00.000-07:00

Too tired to post today or yesterday. If you're wondering why, come visit at Mike & Roxie's Vegetable Paradise.

Gloomy Boomies

2010-06-03T15:09:00.000-07:00

Ahem, as I was saying...
Yesterday I was distracted by the YouTubes as I sat down to write about an article on baby boomers and happiness that I saw in the Kansas City Star. Today, I'll stay more on point.
The story, written by Amy Sheridan, attracted my attention because of the headline: Come on, baby boomers, get happy.
Sheridan marvels that the so-called Baby Boom generation has a gloomier outlook on life than other generations, as measured by the Pew Research Center. What followed was the newspaper equivalent of a hearty slap on the back and a "Smile, why dontcha?!"
Her words: "Happiness and satisfaction can be yours today, right now. All you have to do is decide to be happy." Then she peppered us with the usual claptrap from the happiness industry. Learn to laugh at yourself. Treat yourself to fun clothes. Get involved!
I've been reading this stuff from so-called happiness experts for months now. Are others benefiting from it? Because it doesn't help me a bit. It's a little like the doctor who tells you to lose weight after you've been trying and trying, but doesn't offer any ideas on how. Or the financial adviser who says "You don't have enough income. You need to make more money."
So I looked up the Pew Study and found:
A) That it was taken in early 2008, a few months before the big economic panic.
B) That despite our supposedly high incomes, we are worried about finances.
C) That we've been gloomy since our 20s and that the folks at Pew seemed genuinely puzzled by it all.
All I can say is that if baby boomers were more worried than the rest of the population back before even Bear Stearns folded, then that proves we're smart. We totally called it.
And we've been reading other indicators right as well. Maybe more younger people are getting laid off, but don't tell me we shouldn't worry until we see who gets hired back. A lot of people in their 50s have dependents still at home, mortgages, elderly parents and a long life ahead of them. And they're spending more time out of work. Each year they spend unemployed makes them one year older and less hireable, because of the ageism that is rampant in this country. (If you're still unclear, read this letter from the Kansas City Star.)
The Pew researchers spent some ink wondering why a generation that supposedly has had it so soft would have such a low expectations. I'd like to take a crack at that one, too.
The 60s weren't only hard on the "greatest generation." They were hard on us, too. Just as we were reaching adulthood, our president lied, cheated and resigned. Our older brothers were dying in a murky war we didn't understand. People were screaming at each other over race. And we knew the world expected no less than that we'd somehow top the feat of putting a man on the moon.
And after the 60s? There hasn't been a single year that our generation wasn't blamed for something. The coming Social Security fund crisis. The increase in household debt. The bubble in home prices. Low productivity. Mouthy latchkey kids. Loose morals and teen pregnancy. Coarsening of the culture. All the Baby Boom's fault.
Given all that, I'd say gloominess is a perfectly reasonable reaction.

There's more that bothers me about this piece, though. It's the source. The Star's tag line mentions that Amy Sheridan is the founder of The Baby Boom Network, an on-line group dedicated to the well-being of this generation.
So I looked up the web site. What the Star's tag line failed to include is that Sheridan is also selling us something. A book, (on stress-free aging) an online course on optimism and of course, her services as a presenter and motivational speaker. Her "articles" are just a way to draw in business. Here's a quote from one of those "article" ostensibly about baby boomer statistics:
"Your goal is to be aware that there are many different options open to you and that you should take advantage of the services and products specifically being developed for you." (italics mine)
This is sneaky, very sneaky, because it so subtly crosses the line between a genuine news story and an ad. It's an article of dubious value in the space usually reserved for features, in the same font and headline style as FYI's other features. But it's written by someone trying to draw in customers.
Here's why this is a bad thing. Let's say you're a reporter and your father owns a large department store in town. And you want to write a story about something department-store related, say, pricing policies. No matter how fair you are or promise to be, most papers will not let you do it. It creates a doubt in readers' minds. You could be soft on your dad's store. You could be trying to drum up business. Doesn't matter if it's true. The doubt is all that matters.
Exactly the same thing is going on with Sheridan's piece. This is ethically wrong and I'm very disappointed in the Star for running it.

A case of the Mondays

2010-06-02T13:12:00.000-07:00

I was all set to write about an item I read in the Kansas City Star today headlined "Come on, baby boomers, Get Happy." I have all the links tabbed across the toolbar, ready to go. Because if there's anything that makes me want to bring the caustic, it's a rah-rah headline like that.
Sort of reminded me of that Office Space line, "Someone's got a case of the Mondays."
And it's here I veered a little off course. I went to YouTube, and typed in "case of the Mondays," to illustrate my point.
And came across this:

Have I been regretting the fact that I left cubicle land (which is increasingly what daily newspaper offices look like) to be at home with my kids? And that I now feel stuck and poor because there are no jobs and I've been out of the office workforce too long and nobody wants to hire anyone over 50?
I apologize. These films, apparently from security cameras, really bring back the memories. The desk pounding, the wastebasket kicking, the obscenities. We never had any actual fighting, though a couple of guys had some finger-poking-on-chest action over semantics. (Are you calling me an a**hole? No, I said don't be an a**hole.)
Ah yes, I remember the anger. It's funny to look back on, but was absolutely no fun at the time. That part, I don't miss at all.
So, despite my intention to blast away at Amy Sheridan's piece on baby boomers, I ended up feeling better about my life's choices.
But don't think I've forgotten, miss "licensed mental health counselor and trainer." Meet me here tomorrow, and we'll finish our business.

I crow, you crow, we all crow for escrow

2010-06-01T13:54:00.000-07:00

My mission to control the nonstop freaking out over financial issues continues. It has not been easy, let me tell you. But I do find that the teachings of the Dalai Lama about taming one's mind have something to offer me.
Example: Two things in the mail today. First, a notice from ACS, which handles one of our college loans, saying we're overdue by a month. This despite the fact we've had no notices that the newly negotiated payments were starting back up again. Or what date they were due.
I went straight to anger, as usual. What do they mean overdue? Where was our paper or electronic notice? What do they think they're trying to pull?
Then despair. How will we ever get out of this black financial hole? We're stuck. We don't deserve a trip this summer.
Later, though, we found ACS was glad to correct the situation, send us a notice and restart the payments so we wouldn't start a month behind. All my emotions were unwarranted. Fail.
The second was a notice of telling us we have a $500+ shortage in escrow.
I will be as a stone. I will be as a block of wood.
$500? Really? But yes. According to Wells Fargo, our payment will go up by $30 a month if we pay it as a lump sum, or $74 a month if we use their 12-month plan working the shortage into the payments.
This is perplexing. Last year's escrow shortage was just over $250. I can't remember ever having a shortage of more than $350. What gives?
I can't imagine taxes went up by that much. So maybe it's the insurance. And what's insurance doing with increases by that much in such bad economic times?
I will be as a quiet pond. I will be as a granite statue.
Ahhh. I guess we'll just have to do some digging and find out.

What They Need's a Damn Good Whacking--Boycott BP

2010-05-26T13:07:00.001-07:00

I've been keeping the TV on today, checking in every so often with CNN for news of the "top kill" plan to deal with the oil leak that got underway a couple of hours ago.
It's not often that I turn on TV during daytime, except possibly to check in on the markets. I think now I remember why.
As I waited for British Petroleum to get things going, I heard the following:
*Q and A with a financial guy on whether the USA could become the next Greece (not that likely), along with another story wondering if Italy will be the next Greece.
*A leaked BP memo that explained a cost analysis on worker housing to find the cheapest dwelling structures acceptable. The on-site trailers chosen allegedly put the workers at higher risk for injury if there was an explosion. Incredibly, that's not the worst part. The worst part is BP used the Three Little Pigs as a twisted analogy to decide "which type of houses should the piggy build?"
*The investigation into plant conditions that led to a recall of children's name-brand medicines widens. This one has been off my radar because we no longer use children's medicine at our house. But people have complained of becoming ill, smelling an odd odor in the medicine, small black flecks that are possibly metal, and an unnamed bacteria contamination.
*There's some kind of drug war starting in Jamaica now. The one in Mexico has border people so scared they've convinced President Obama we should put up a wall and have National Guard troops patrolling the border.

Every so often, someone writes a beard-scratcher asking why Americans are so fearful.
Well, ahem....
Maybe it's because we realize we're hooked into a type of capitalism so extreme that it is immoral. This type of capitalism doesn't care about your sick children or the ecosystem or whether the products are good for you. It doesn't care about the long term. It exists only to earn the maximum profit for business owners or stockholders. And it had a part in every one of these horrible things that have happened.
In this type of capitalism, government (in other words us, the people) has no will to regulate the financiers who brought down economies, or raise taxes to enforce drug laws or inspect medicine plants. Ideally--for the corporations--we'd have no control at all.
Proponents of this type of capitalism have been working a long time to get things to this point. Some of them will tell you that the free market will take care of itself. In this world of unicorns and waterfalls, business will not behave badly because they won't want to be shunned by customers later when they're found out. Right. Excuse me, hippies, while I go bake some hash brownies.

Now we see that those boys and girls in suits need some tough cops on the job just as much as anybody else. Trouble is, we aren't showing any signs of a backbone yet.
So how to be empowered, as an optimist?
Well, yesterday I signed the petition to boycott BP. I know, I know. It's largely symbolic. (In fact, CNN also ran a story today about the many invisible arms of BP and how we're powerless against them.)
But then, I am a consumer who knows how to hold a grudge. Remember Rely tampons? The ones that caused all the deaths from toxic shock syndrome in the early 1980s? I held a personal boycott against Procter and Gamble--widely mocked by my co-workers--for two or three years. I got a list of products. I bought only Lever Bros. soap. It wasn't all that undoable.
The Internet has made it much easier to get that same product information. Maybe my pocketbook voting won't do anything. But it will make me feel good.
Now, off to check on progress on the oil leak.

Mixed news: Can I be optimistic?

2010-05-25T10:50:00.000-07:00

"Used to be you talked about IN-flation. You didn't have to worry so much about DE-flation," my friend Myron said as he stepped up to the spin class bike next to mine.
Actually, I'm not all that worried about deflation. In fact, I'm quite enjoying it. Deflation is my friend.
I know this is not the politically correct attitude. Economists and people with a larger view would tell me I should root for prices to go up. The assumption, I guess, is that business owners and executives would share those profits with me in the form of more jobs and raises. Trickle down economics.
But if there's one thing I've learned in the past year, it's to value my own short-sighted personal economics first, just like the big boys do. In my micro-economy, anything that helps me end a bill-paying session without tears is a good thing. We can all gather around and sing kum-ba-yah later, after I've eaten.
That's an example, though, of how confusing optimism can be. Lower prices...Good! No, bad! The sinking value of the Euro...Good! Maybe we can sell more goods over there. No, bad! The stock markets are in a swoon. Oil prices down...Good!! No, it means we're worried about China. Consumer confidence up...Yay! It means people think there will be hiring soon. But what's that voice I hear whispering, "Yeah, and they're going to be hiring 20-year-olds, you dope."
[Insert Neanderthal scowl here. Optimism hard. Brain hurt.]
Meanwhile, we continue with our plans to move ahead on the assumption that things will get better. We're long overdue for a trip out of town, and our daughter isn't going to be living at home that much longer. So we sucked it up and bought tickets for a vacation--one that involves staying at a relative's house, true, but it's a big trip nonetheless. Yes, the money's scary. It's already reduced that security cushion I so treasured by quite a bit. Things could still get worse, so it's a risk.
But then again, it's amazing how much more optimistic you can be when you know there's something good on the horizon.

Optimism sneaks into my reading list

2010-05-19T08:21:00.000-07:00

Piano recitals, Keyboard Merit, gardening emergencies, job applications, end-of-school events. They all add up to one thing: Not enough time to post about my optimism efforts. (And, evidently, not enough time to ruminate on worries and bad people.)
So I find myself on an even keel for a week running. Read a depressing story in the New York Times about how many jobs will never come back and how baby boomers laid off will be replaced by younger workers, resulting in a destruction of personal wealth beyond all imagining. Well, actually, the story was only about the jobs never coming back. My imagination skills added the rest.
Looked out my window at a garden full of food growing (notable exception: Sugar Snap peas.)
Applied for a job and wasn't ruled out immediately (still waiting for that call, though).
But although I have been too busy to think about my thinking, I haven't been completely oblivious. Optimism has walked up and slapped me in the face a couple of times, in places I wouldn't have thought to look.
Exhibit A: The Coming Population Crash : and Our Planet' Surprising Future, by Fred Pearce (Beacon Press, 2010).
The first pages of this book, before the table of contents, are a world map with countries distorted to reflect how the population is growing or shrinking. At the top left, "How the boom is turning to bust. Half the world's women are having too few babies to sustain present populations."
The inside is filled with stories and statistics about how economics and lack of social support are causing women in many countries to choose to have fewer children--to the point that the present population will not be replaced.
Clearly, this is not something I picked up with hopes of finding...hope.
But Pearce is very optimistic. He believes innovation will prevent us from disasters caused by climate change and post-peak oil (not so sure about this myself). And then he makes an interesting prediction about the future. Because fewer children are being born, and because women generally live longer than men, the world of the future may be one in which older women have more power, because of their higher numbers.
I am so completely on board with that! Now, if I can just get to that golden time, where old women will be queens of everything! Bwa-ha-ha.
The second book (yes, I do like to keep up with my reading) is Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche, by Ethan Watters (Free Press, 2010). Watters' premise is that US drug companies and psychiatric researchers have held sway over the definitions of mental illness to the point that they've overriden the differences between cultures in how the diseases present themselves. And that this has been, in part, planned by the drug companies to increase their profits.
Again, not the place you'd normally look for something on the effects of "positive thinking." Strangely, I found just that in a chapter on schizophrenia.
Watters quotes studies that have shown that people with schizophrenia in developing countries do better over the long run than people in wealthier countries like the US. Researchers have focused on the reactions of family and society to the disease in each type of country, and they've come up with this: Family members in places like the United States seem to be more critical and anxious about the patient's inability to get better than they do in more "fatalistic" countries of the Third World.
All that hyper, macho "we can do it if we put our minds to it" attitude the positive thinking industry is so fond of? It's actually harmful when it comes to the mentally ill. One researcher quoted said this: "Because our culture so highly values self-control and control of circumstances, we become abject when contemplating mentation that seems more changeable, less restrained and less controllable, more open to outside influence, than we imagine our own to be."
So then, to help these people get better, we need to embrace suffering as an inevitable part of life. Hmmm. Sounds like Buddhism.
I'm not sure if I can draw any grand conclusions from any of this. Except, maybe, that it's time for a trashy summer novel. Where can I find one without a hidden lesson on positive thinking?

Mantra a la carte

2010-05-10T08:15:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a couple of weeks and I can't say I've made a whole lot of progress yet on the Buddhism.
I checked out a couple of books from the library. First, Buddhism for Beginners by Thubten Chodron (2001; Snow Lion Publications). Then, the intriguingly titled Without Buddha I could not be a Christian, by Paul F. Knitter (2009; Oneworld (!) Publications.) [exclamation point, mine]
The second book interested me more, since it is written by a Catholic theology teacher. Unfortunately, it is very, very dry going and I have not made it through more than a couple of chapters.
The Chodron book has been more useful, supplying the basics for people who know nothing. The whole thing is a book-length FAQ. The opening question: "What is the essence of the Buddha's teachings?"
The answer is contained in this often quoted verse, says Chodron:
Abandon negative action,
Create perfect virtue;
Subdue your own mind.
This is the teaching of the Buddha.

The line that caught my attention was "Subdue your own mind."
To be able to do that would be...awesome. Because if there was ever a mind that needed subduing, it's mine.
It's been more than a year since the big market meltdown, the cutback and all the other bad things that have been flung our way. Things have evened out. Yet I still find myself stuck in a sort of cyclical panic mode, with some horrible mood swing dips.
Layoffs rumored--stomach churning anxiety.
Layoffs pass us over--whew, now I can move on.
Fight with my daughter--no sleep for me.
Warm fuzzies with the family on Mother's Day--wow, I feel good.
Later that night--Oh look. Here's a rerun of the Tom Brokaw piece on boomers. Here's a guy who had a $200,000 job, got laid off and can't find another, and now he grinds his teeth and there won't be any money left in Social Security, cut to expert saying we don't have an answer and--for God's sake please turn off this channel!
So yeah, subdue this thing. Pronto.
The main thing I get from the Buddhism book, so far, is that you have to get rid of your desire for control and accept that bad things are going to happen, but they won't change who you are. Or maybe you have to be centered enough to not let them change who you are. Because clearly, people do change as a result of bad thing happening to them.
To stop that happening I guess you need to somehow stop the excess empathy. I think I'm going to be a while figuring out how to do that.
There's a lot of other stuff about Buddhism I'm not so sure about, though. For instance, the whole thing on rebirth. I'm not sure why all religions have to be so concerned with the afterlife. But it seems to be a central tenet. I wonder if I can just accept the things that help me and leave the rest.
If you try this with Christianity, you'll get a lecture about being a "cafeteria" Christian. I don't know if there's similar scorn about being a cafeteria Buddhist. I do know that it's a belief that, like Judaism, seems to encourage questioning.
So on with the questions.

Someday, yeah

2010-05-05T09:57:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, when pain and suffering are all around you, there's just nothing adequate to say.
More layoffs today. I'm supposed to be an optimist. But today I don't feel like trying.
It's times like this that I'm grateful for music--specifically my favorite comfort song of all time, "Ooh, child." I've put together a little sampler from the YouTube. Let's hope that someday we really will walk together in the rays of a beautiful sun.

First, the Five Stairsteps. Whatever happened to them?

Nina Simone

Hall & Oates. Wait...Hall & Oates did a version?

And finally, Cundi Lauper and Destiny's Child

It helps. But only a little.

Full Lotus

2010-04-30T07:01:00.000-07:00

Every so often, someone runs a story titled "(Choose your number) steps to a happier life," or "X things you can do to improve your attitude," etc., etc. They usually say the same things, so I skim over them, searching for anything that seems especially true that I might be able to apply to my life.
MSN Health and Fitness ran such a story this week, promoted on my home page because, face it, they've been watching what I click. They know.
The 5 Paths to Happiness by Steven Melemis, contained the usual stuff: Expect change, prepare for change, identify things to change. All predictable advice in this layoff-crazy era.
But there, embedded in the section about "making room for change" was an something that struck me. Melemis said learning to relax was perhaps the most important coping technique.

When you’re tense, you tend to do what’s familiar and wrong instead of what’s new and right. Stress is an obstacle to change because when you are tense, your ego and fears get in the way....
There are many coping skills you need to be happy. If you learn them all but don’t learn how to relax, you will still find it hard to change, because when you’re tense you will continue to repeat what’s familiar and wrong.

On the other hand, if you learn only one new coping skill—how to relax—you’ll still be happier, because everything is easier when you’re relaxed. If there is anything else you need to change, you’ll see it more easily and deal with it more effectively when you’re more relaxed.

And it's true, as any musician who's ever dealt with stage fright knows. Once the nerves kick in, it's like white noise in your brain. Muscles knot up, you can't hear yourself and back you go, straight to the very thing you've worked months to correct.
So it's true, yes. But the trouble is, what do you do about it.
How do you fix something like this? When your life resembles a series of 40-foot waves and you're riding an inner-tube, how do you not feel panic? Panic, I'd say, is the only reasonable reaction.
Sadly, the article doesn't provide an answer to that.The author just trots out all the usual things we've read before about retraining yourself to think positively, letting go of the past, using breathing techniques, yoga and meditation. Sigh.

So what can I use out of all that? I do yoga. I try hard to be positive and not dwell on bad things. I meditate. But hmmmm. Maybe I'm doing it all wrong.
Usually, when you listen to a yoga instructor or meditation tapes, there's a huge emphasis on calm, quiet images to quiet your breathing and heart rate. Maybe that's backwards. Maybe what I really need to do is imagine something dreadful and then try to breathe and relax to it. That way I can practice how to relax under pressure.
So all right. This week, I'm going to imagine myself in full lotus on the tracks, with a six-engine Union Pacific coal train bearing down on me. And I'm going to breath in...breathe out.....

Beat up little seagull...

2010-04-28T09:09:00.000-07:00

What is it about the Randy Newman song, Baltimore? Is it that relentlessly descending inner voice, the heavy minor sigh of those first four chords? Is it the piano fill that keeps repeating, obsessively treading water in the same three notes, going nowhere? What is it about this song that gets in my ear and stays and stays and stays?
Baltimore and I go way back. In fact, I think of it as my own personal meme. Hearing it instantly transports me back to my first job out of college, at a daily newspaper in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
That alone should tell you all you need to know about my life back then. But for those unfamiliar with that corner of journalism, I'll elaborate. My typical morning went thus:
Wake up in my new apartment, which was a former motel (a 1940s cabin-style, furnished). It was winter. Since this was a morning-deadline newspaper, I got up hours before daylight.
Drive through the empty streets in the town, which had fallen on hard times.
Snap on the lights in the newsroom and sort through the piles of girly pictures the overnight wire guys amused themselves by sending. Then begin a job I was in no way sure I was suited for.
Nine mornings out of ten, Baltimore would be on the radio at some point. And...it would always cheer me up.
Because, come on. I was already stressed out and depressed. Hearing Baltimore just pushed it way over the top. It was like a joke, like someone at the radio station was mocking me. Suddenly it all seemed silly. Maybe Randy Newman should visit Council Bluffs, I thought at the time. Give him something to sing about.
I only bring this up because after years of not thinking about it or playing it, Baltimore has come back into my life. Lately it's playing in my head before I'm awake in the morning. It comes back during moments of idleness. Today, I found myself wanting those dark chords even as I was listening to the upbeat pop I run with.
What is my subconscious trying to tell me?
Who knows. So I've decided the only appropriate thing to do is share it. Here's a version from a 2006 concert in Germany.

As a bonus, here's Laura Nyro singing Stoney End. For no other reason than I like her music and this song was a crossword answer a couple of days ago.

An Earth Day Bit of Fun

2010-04-22T12:16:00.000-07:00

I wanted to do a different post today, but instead I'm rerunning the one from Mike & Roxie's Vegetable Paradise. Why? Because it's raining and I'm tired and the piano tuner is here plinking the same keys obsessively as raindrops (hey, it's his job and I'd never complain about a much-needed piano tune. But it's hard to think.) And also, because this Eco Elvis guy is a hoot. So, sorry if you saw the other post. I'll try not to do this in the future.

Here's a little something fanciful for Earth Day. Mike and I were invited out to the JC Penney Logistics Center with our garden book as part of an early Earth Day promotion for its employees. Toward the end of the session, as things began to wind down, we went downstairs in the cavernous warehouse to check out someone called "Eco Elvis."

At stage center, amid energy-efficient cars and a bicycle display, was a guy in a green spangly Elvis suit and completely over-the-top wig. He played his own guitar (hey, and he was pretty good, too) and sang Elvis tunes that had been "repurposed" with environmental lyrics. It was all the usual environmental urgings (recycle, install fluorescent bulbs, save water) but in a lighthearted, un-preachy totally hilarious way.

Other web sites have identified Eco Elvis as Matt Riggs from Bridging the Gap, a group promoting sustainability in Kansas City. (And Matt, if that was your real hair--sorry dude. Apologies.)

He did "Burnin' Love" retitled as "Burnin' Globe" and laced it with global climate change lyrics. I couldn't find a video of this particular song, but here's one called "Let's Go Organic" from a performance in Parkville. Enjoy. And Happy Earth Day.

Dream weaving

2010-04-19T08:16:00.000-07:00

Ahh, Microsoft. How you make my life better. Dare I count the ways?
Last week, for instance, I was in danger of being overwrought with earnestness, when along you came with the "Dream Dictionary," advertised on my home page.
The Dream Dictionary is an offshoot of the "Dream Central" folder. It's alongside horoscopes, fortune telling games, numerology, Chinese astrology and tarot on a site called "MSN Astrology."
Which proves two things: 1. MSN will one day rule the world and 2. There's no end of interesting ways to waste time on the Internet.
Now my dreams are legendary for being fantastic and complicated. Some are like old friends, I've been dreaming variations of them so long. But I also have a bad habit of waking up the family with shouts during some of the more intense dreams. If I find out what some of them mean, could it help me settle down and stop screaming?
I don't know. But let's open up the Dream Dictionary and see if it's any help.

First up, the UFO dream. My typical UFO dreams are not scary. They're awesome. Usually, I am outside and look up to see a kind of sky circus of weird and brightly colored craft of all kinds of fun and nonthreatening shapes. They're always flying crazily, zig-zagging, hopping. In my most recent one, a yellow UFO put its nose down in a parking lot and did a graceful pirouette before flying off.
I usually yell out for people to come see, but of course they're all inside and can't hear me.
So what does that mean, Dream Dictionary?
Let's see...alien, no entry; UFO, no entry. Spaceship? Ah, here it is. "Dreaming of a UFO acting strangely is a warning that events lie ahead that will require caution, clear-headedness and stealth."
Well, yesssss....I suppose that's true enough. In fact, I can't think of a time in my life that didn't require caution, clear-headedness and stealth. Thanks, Dream Dictionary.
OK, let's try another. The crazy travel dream. I must get to a destination, which involves travel on every conceivable thing. A plane trip of at least 20 hours (or, sometimes, I must fly a little Cessna that keeps sinking dangerously close to power lines) on top of a train, on an ice-breaking ferry over a frozen channel. That kind of thing. When I get there, I will be someplace very remote but beautiful because it's so snowy.
Hmmm. Airplane is in there as a search for higher existence or freedom from the mundane. OK, but that doesn't convey the anxiety that goes with it. As for snow, that's good, good, good. It means success in business, unexpected happiness or something "wonderful and surprising." I should be looking out the window for the people with the Publisher's Clearinghouse check, apparently.
So far, so good. But I was disappointed that I couldn't find an explanation of my weird physical ailments dreams--like when I needed surgery because my head was literally on crooked, or when I woke up in one dream with legs a different color than the rest of me. What heading do you look under for something like that?
It doesn't matter. Maybe if I can figure out what some of these things are about, it will help the dream of my family members, who would like me to stop dreaming so much and shut the heck up so they can get some sleep.

A Green Kind of Day

2010-04-15T11:56:00.000-07:00

Maybe what I need is a little indicator light above this blog, as a quick way to show the mood swing du jour. Gray could be for a depressed day, vibrant green for optimism and maybe blinking fuschia for a crazy episode.
If I had that, today would be pretty close to a bright green. Maybe it's the beautiful warm weather, the green grass and trees in bloom, the half-planted garden.
Then again, it could be the steady trickle of good news that's been coming over the wires. Retail sales--improving. Unemployment rates--improving. Just a couple of days ago, New York Times columnist Andrew Sorkin asked, what if the bailouts are working? Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal says Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke predicts, with caution, a moderate economic recovery.
Whatever the reason, things just seem better. There seem to be a few more jobs out there. As a result, I'm beginning to feel some of my fear melt away. A year ago, I felt the need to squeeze hard on the "bridge payment" money we got after the downsizing, knowing it was all the cash we had for financial emergencies--the only thing separating us from bankruptcy, should there be further downsizing or a medical problem.
But the emergencies never came. And we've cut our spending even further to the bone. The result is we still have all of that money, plus a little more I've managed to save from teaching.
So maybe it's time to spend. This week we started on a long list of overdue projects. A new bathroom vanity to replace the decrepit one upstairs (it has to be stained and varnished, but still, it's new.) Flea medicine for the dog, which we've been putting off until outdoor season. I even went out to see a movie (Alice in Wonderland, 3-D. It was great.)
We're a long way from Easy Street. But just spending a little made me feel great.
If repeating things helps you believe, then I guess I'll keep repeating: The worst is behind us. The worst is behind us. Forward to a better tomorrow.

Now...how do I bottle that up for use on one of those gray or flashing fuschia days?

It may be time for a change

2010-04-12T08:21:00.000-07:00

I've been at this self-improvement plan for a year and to be honest, I don't feel all that much more optimistic. At least not in the long-term, change-your-life feel-good-movie-of-the-year way that I was hoping for.
The most hopeful signs for me, so far, have been occasional bursts of good moods, wedged between long spells of ennui (see last week's posts).
Clearly, it's time to step up my game. It's time for something of a world-outlook overhaul.
As luck (or maybe something more?) would have it, PBS came to the rescue last week with a special on Buddhism, which I taped.
Much of it was a history of the life of Buddhism's founder, Siddhartha Guatama. But the brief rundown of Buddhism's tenets struck me as appealing. (Watch the special here, if you're curious.)
Mainly, I like the idea that this is a religion (philosophy?) that doesn't dwell on blaming yourself for every bad thing that ever happens. In the religions I'm most familiar with, there's a constant drumbeat of blame. Why aren't we living in happy harmony with each other and with nature? Because we're bad, bad, bad. Women especially.
I don't know about you, but most women I know don't need anyone teaching them how to blame themselves. It's something we do very nicely all on our own. If you take it too far--as I've sometimes done--it makes your life unbearable. In fact, blaming myself for every misfortune that's befallen us is one of the top things that occasionally makes me miserable.
The usual Christian way of dealing with this is to pray more and think more about Jesus dying for us and about a rewards in heaven. I've gone along with this most of my life.
It isn't doing much for me now, though. When I look at what's been happening in Christianity (religion as power in The Family; the scandal in the Roman Catholic church) the religion of my youth seems more like a weapon to control people with. As a way of dealing with life's hardships...not so much.
So here's Buddhism, and after looking at an overview of it's central ideas, I think right away this is going to be something that might help me. I'm not so sure I can go along with rebirth or vegetarianism--even Buddhists disagree on that, apparently--but as a philosophy, it bears investigation.
And so I shall.

Some things are better

2010-04-07T06:44:00.000-07:00

There are days when exercise and busy-ness just doesn't do the trick.
Yesterday was one. I did my morning 3-miler. I completed a list of chores before my work afternoon began. Still, I couldn't quite keep the dark thoughts from coming.
And come they did. It started the night before, when for some reason, I couldn't turn off my brain at bedtime. Instead, I sat in the review stands for a parade of the worst moments of my life. The embarrassments. The betrayals. The stupid remarks that cost me friendships. The remorse.
I did my best to make the daytime hours better. (Even to the point of planning a dinner that starred gravy!) But it didn't make much difference.
Today is off to a better start. But clouds and cold weather aren't helping.
So it seems like a good idea to meditate for a bit on some good things.
The college loans, for instance.
I've been worrying for the year since the cutback about college loans that we put on forbearance. Forbearance means you get a limited time off from paying on the loan (either you pay nothing or just the interest. If you pay nothing, the interest accrues and your loan becomes larger.) Forbearance is not the same thing as deferment. Deferment is just for people who are laid off completely. Not part-timers.
Our forbearances were over last month. Yet our financial situation is still very strained. Would the banks insist on returning us to full payment? If so, would we have to default? I held my breath.
But the story has a happy ending. We were able to work out a new payment plan that--though we're still strapped--will at least start decreasing the capital.
And, as long as we're on the subject, the federal health care bill may make things better for our daughter, who goes to college in three years. Instead of letting banks siphon off loans, the government will begin making them directly. Direct loans and grants were what put me through college, and the debts were easy to pay off, even for an entry-level worker.
There's the most recent Labor Department report, which shows the country added 162,000 jobs. While there are still plenty of caveats about that, it is at least some encouragement that maybe the worst really is behind us.
Here's another good thing: We will be able to replace our daughter's stolen cell phone with no extra cost to us except the activation fee because we can transfer the upgrade credits from other, older phones. So no more whining.
And then, there's the fact that we're still above water. It's been a crazy year, with plenty of late-night tears and deep-in-the-pit-of-my-stomach fear. But we've been able to make it thus far, so maybe we can hold out a little bit longer.
As long as the car and appliances hold up and gas stays low and we don't slip on a banana peel...

Adventures in Capitalism

2010-04-05T07:52:00.000-07:00

As I may have mentioned, one of the emotions I've had the most trouble dealing with in the Big Recession is the feeling of helplessness. Bad things happen to big companies hundreds of miles away and--through no fault of our own--we suffer.
It's not just the financial industry, though, that makes me feel helpless. We also have recurring issues with the large and expanding church that is now our next-door neighbor.
So today's story is about my journey from nice person to someone who would charge people for parking on Easter Sunday.
First, the background.
We live next to a large church/school that has been in expansion mode. Before we moved here, the church had already torn down much of the neighborhood to put in a new building and parking lot. So yes, we went in with eyes open. But it seemed that there were adequate landscaping and traffic rules in place to protect us for however long we choose to stay here.
And they largely have. We never minded the noise from the school kids and the playground, when it was next door. Church chimes and bells don't bother us. The increased traffic flow at school beginning and end is a pain, sure, but we put up with it as long as no one blocks our driveway.
Lately, though, things have deteriorated. Despite the economy, the church embarked on another building plan--one that temporarily does away with a large amount of its parking space. It purchased and knocked down a couple more houses (again, we didn't mind. One was an uninhabited eyesore). It tore out several mature trees at 30-50 feet tall. Our understanding was that this would be open to parking. However, the lot remains muddy grass.
So parking has become a crisis. Every Sunday morning, cars line both sides of the streets around our corner house (this despite the church asking for and getting "no parking" on both sides of one of the streets). Cars pack the unoccupied gas station lot across from us (they got permission from the new owner who's trying to fix it up, didn't they?). Here are a few pictures from yesterday. Despite it being Easter, this is not in the least unusual.

Bottom line: If we have a heart attack or a fire at our house on a Sunday morning, we are SOL because there's no way an emergency vehicle can get through.

I'm sure there isn't any malice in this. It's just general thoughtlessness. Just like the large canvas portrait that went up in the window of the new building next door. It seems to be a picture of a Bible character glowering out over our back yard, dominating our view. We've gone inside to reposition it from time to time, but someone always moves it back. If you click on the pic below, you might be able to make him out. He's quite visible to us, I assure you.

For years, I've been largely tolerant of this, only complaining when things got really bad (garage full of garbage in yet-to-be-torn-down house; rowdy wedding reception guests littering our lawn with cups). And no, we've never complained about the angry Jesus picture.
I guess the turning point came a couple of weeks ago, when I looked outside and saw someone had parked in our driveway. Not just halfway across, like people have done in the past (including one evening when we all had to be somewhere) but in the driveway. Like she lives here.
She was parked politely to one side. Not blocking us in. I was so amazed I waited around to make sure it wasn't someone I knew.
But no. She came running out at the end of the service, admitted she didn't know us and then offered the time-honored excuse of countless churchgoers before her. "Oh...Was this your driveway?"
Really? I guess she couldn't see it because the dog ate her glasses.
And then I heard a voice in my head. It said, "You chump! People are doing this kind of thing and all you're getting is angry? Obviously you have something they want. Why not put capitalism to work and make up some of your losses for the year at the same time? People pay for close-in parking at sporting events, don't they?"
The idea's occurred to me before. When you watch five, six, seven in a row use your drive for turn-arounds (once, while our kids were playing hackey-sack there) you begin to think it should be a toll driveway. But up until this month, it was just passing whimsy. When someone puts her car there and goes away for an hour...well, I just lost my sense of humor. Time for a new approach.
So out went the sign. "Parking $5. Honor system." We left a little box out, beginning with Maundy Thursday. The drive is big enough for several cars. I figured we could make enough money to pay for our recent trip to see my mom in Des Moines. And honestly, wouldn't it also be good to get some of those cars off the street?
I didn't do this without some serious thought. There's always that chance someone will be insulted and accuse me of carrying on some kind of war against religion. But in the end, I figured it had to be done.
We waited. Cars lined both sides of the street, risking tickets. They packed in the gas station lot. But not a one wanted to pay us to use the driveway.
That's okay. People passing by saw the signs. They'll think twice about violating our driveway in the future.
I made my point. And I didn't have to be the ogre who calls in parking violations on Christendom's holiest of days.
For once, I wasn't angry.

Blowin' in the Wind

2010-03-31T11:44:00.000-07:00

Random thoughts on a day when I really should be outside, enjoying the warm sunshine:

We should rearrange our economy (and our work ethic) so that no one has jobs anymore. How much better would life be if all we had was hobbies instead?
Well, yeah, you'd obviously have to make money some way. Like maybe charging people from the busy church next door to park in your driveway, or whatever. But you'd only do it enough to just get by. Then you'd go on to your hobbies.
Hobbies are just so much more fun. Cooking, for example. I'm not enslaved in an endless run of meals and dishes. It's a hobby! Writing? It's not hours of slogging on--forward and backspacing--to the inevitably unsatisfying end. It's a hobby!
There's just something about a hobby that makes anything more bearable. So why not switch to an all-hobby economy? It wouldn't matter so much about the pay, because everyone else would be in the same boat.
Music, nursing, teaching, physics, commercial fishing, even day trading. All interesting hobbies. And I'm sure someone somewhere will want to indulge in his telephone soliciting hobby, or the interesting pastime of analyzing and adjusting insurance rates. As a way to kill some time.

I got onto this subject because it's occurred to me that the reason I don't get more accomplished in my life is that I like to do too many different kinds of things. So then I have trouble settling on the thing that I should get done because--there are so many things. And only so many hours in a day.
If I spend all my non-paying time trying new recipes, say, then there's none left for reading. And there's certainly not any time left over to expand into the things I've always been interested in, but neglected to study when I had the chance. Like chemistry or acoustics. And when am I going to find time to design the "smart" solar oven I've been mulling over during my morning runs?
How did earlier people solve this? In Victorian times, gentlefolk just hired droves of servants to do the menial labor, so they could work out the details of the orbit of planets and Calvinism.
But even if I had enough money to have servants, I'd start to envy them the chance to hang out clothes in the morning air.
See what I mean?

Yesterday, in fact, I was feeling a little down, a little sad that I have done very little music composing lately. Despite the fact I have a degree in it.
So I got out my old manuscript paper notebook (itself an anachronism, now that I have Finale notation on the computer). I looked back at my sketches for a suite for late intermediate piano I started a couple of years ago. One of the pieces is done, and I'd written some ideas for following pieces. There, beneath the first piece was one tentatively called, "The Hen Takes Flight." Apparently it would contain something I called the "dammit motif."
I cannot recall now, what exactly the "dammit motif" was. It must have been something that was running through my head so much that I didn't see a need to write it out.
All I know is, this is too irresistible. Anything called The Hen Takes Flight with a "dammit motif" must be finished.
I will get back on it for sure.
Just as soon as tonight's piano lessons are over.

Sure, why not

2010-03-23T07:54:00.000-07:00

When I was a teenager--a surly, unresponsive, depressed teenager--my grandmother used to give me a lot of advice that I never heeded.
One of her main themes was: Just stay busy. It doesn't really matter doing what. Just create some busy work to keep your mind off your troubles.
I never much cared for that idea, though, mainly because I didn't want to look back on a day spent in trivial tasks of the kind she usually suggested. I didn't want a lot of hobbies. I wanted my life to be so much bigger.
Now that I've lived longer and find myself somewhat stuck in a pessimism pattern I don't know how to get out of, I'm willing to take a second look at busy-ness as an attitude adjuster.
I've been busy before. The years I was working on a music composition degree while teaching and raising kids were busy. And I was so, so glad when things finally began to let up.
But to be honest, there are good points to busy-ness. You get the satisfaction of having accomplished a lot. When it's over. You get the exhilaration of the deadline push and the feeling of being needed by others.
Maybe that's what was going through my head when I agreed to take on not one but two big tasks for music teacher organizations this fall. Then again maybe it was just good old-fashioned mental illness.
Whatever the subconscious reason, I find myself heading up the directory yearbook for Federated Music Teachers and coordinating Fall Festival for the Kansas City Music Teachers--two volunteer jobs at which I have no previous experience. Fall Festival, in particular, gets unusual and amusing reactions from most other piano teachers when I mention I've signed on (ducking down, covering the face, the index-finger sign of the cross).
As advertised, Fall Festival doesn't happen until fall. But already I've had one mini-heart attack crisis having to do with the venue.
It's funny how the events of the past year have loosened me up and reset my personal bar of crazy. In the past, I might have been too terrified to take on the festival. But you know what went through my head when they called me this year? "Fall Festival? What's the worst that could happen? Would it be worse than a pay cut? Worse than the erasure of our college fund? Fall festival? This is nothing."
So, yes, by all means, let's test this idea. Let's keep my idle hands from becoming the devil's keyboard--er--playground.
Perhaps it will end in disaster. But it couldn't possibly be worse than the year we've just endured.

Paint It Black

2010-03-14T13:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was an anniversary of sorts. One year ago yesterday, Friday March 13, was the day our family joined the growing number of un- and under-employed--the day Mike was called in to find he'd been cut down to part time and would lose a third of his income, not including benefits.
It was a cataclysmic event for us, and we both lost a lot of sleep over what would become of our family. Over the months we've had some crazy highs and lows. But although nothing has changed employment-wise, and although there's not much budgeting room for things beyond food and housing, we're still here. Still in our home. Still healthy. Still out of the clutches of pay-day loan sharks.
How do you mark an anniversary like this one? I think the only way is to mock it.
Hence Black Supper, 2010. But it's not what you think.
Yes, black has traditionally been the color of mourning. And true, the guy with the black hat in old westerns was usually the bad guy. But lately people have been messing with color symbolism. Take the Democrats and Republicans, for instance. For all the time I was growing up, Democrats were represented by red and Republicans by blue. In my young mind, that meant Democrats were wilder and hot blooded (like Communists!) and Republicans were rich blue bloods. But somewhere along the line, it switched. Now Republicans are represented by the wild color red and Democrats are the cool blue.
So messing with color significance is what I intended to do with the Black Supper. Instead of mourning and feeling loss, black will mean the same for us as it does for merchants on "Black Friday." That's the day everyone starts making a profit because it's the biggest shopping day of the year.
So yes. Profit. Money. In The Black. I'd do it with food to celebrate the fact that we're still eating.
To commemorate Black March 13, the meal would be entirely of black food. And hey, it turns out some foodies say black foods are healthy, too. So there's an extra plus.
Anyway, the appetizer was black sesame rice crackers with black olive tapenade or grocery-store grade caviar left over from New Years Eve, take your pick. For a salad, I boiled some black rice, added a few cut-up Black Mission figs and doused it with raspberry vinaigrette. The "vegetable" was black beans with onions, cumin, garlic and some home-canned salsa I needed to finish off. The main dish was a grilled sandwich of Black Forest ham and cheese (regular colored, sorry) on pumpernickel. I stayed with the Black Forest for dessert, with a trifle made with some instant dark chocolate pudding, some cherries from our tree cooked with sugar and thickened to pie filling consistency, topped with chocolate wafer crumbles. The drink was Point Black Ale (which was pretty good.)
And the after-dinner drink? A Black Russian, of course.
Where we raised our glasses: To full employment. To more fun. To less fear. To better times by March 13, 2011.

Frugal Fatigue

2010-03-04T10:15:00.000-08:00

Does my family have symptoms of Frugal Fatigue?
I've been mulling this over after coming across the term on the Colbert Report this week. Actually, Frugal Fatigue entered the popular lingo a while ago. Back in the run-up to Christmas shopping season, there was much excited talk among retailers hoping against hope that the average shopper was fed up with cutting back and ready to go crazy with the credit card again.
Did it happen? Well, there were a few reports of improvement in the Christmas sales figures. But MSN Money reported today that Wal-Mart is a little freaked out that it's same store sales are a bit down this quarter. Apparently, ever lower prices have not been enough to boost the buying power of the average customer.
So is Frugal Fatigue real, or is it just wishful thinking by retailers? Everyone knows the job and wage outlook hasn't improved. So are people like us just going to snap and spend into debt as a backlash against all that bean soup we've been eating?
Early stories made it sound like a sort of neurosis brought on by the steady drumbeat of layoffs, downsizings and pay cuts. This story describes it as an emotional response, a throwing up of the hands, maybe even a psychological disorder.
But if you've lived it, as our family has, you'll understand that the slight uptick in spending--against all wage and unemployment figures--is not emotional at all. Nor is it just more evidence that our generation is selfish and unable to control its impulses to overspend.
For most of us, the recession didn't start when the stock market fell in 2008. That crash was just the thing that made powers that be take it seriously. Here are a few other things driving small spending upticks that have nothing to do with hysterical self indulgence:

Things break, don't they... Our family, like many others, has been cutting back steadily for most of the 2000s. Pay may have gone up a little, but it's been offset by the fact that we're paying more out of our own pockets for benefits like health insurance and for sending our kids to college.
For us, that means driving our cars until the cost of fixing them exceeds the cost of a new one. When one car was towed off to the Salvation Army, we just didn't replace it. As appliances and furniture aged and wore out, we made Band-Aid type repairs that cost the least. When glassware broke, as it inevitably does, we replaced it at the church garage sale.
But you can't go on like this indefinitely. Sooner or later, it will just be stupid to call the repairman again for that major appliance with the ominous smoke coming out of it. You could do all the dishes by hand, sure, or take your clothes to the laundromat. But you need that time to be finding paying work.

Frugality is not the same as scrimping...although the two terms are often interchangeable in news stories. Frugality is a choice to live within your means. Scrimping, on the other hand, is something you're forced to do to get by. Not even my grandparents, who lived through the Great Depression, expected they'd always have to make clothes out of flour sacks. They were scrimping until times got better. Once that happened, they spent with a vengeance, disdaining things like canned tuna and macaroni.
In either case, though, you expect a reward of some kind, otherwise what's the point? You get by on a little less so one day, you can afford that sparkling new toaster oven, or the new DVD player. It's that little reward that, oftentimes, keeps you going.

Your not getting any younger, and neither are your kids...When you've been cutting back as long as we have, you wake up one day and realize your kids are only going to be at home for a little while longer. Maybe you believed a sport or music lessons would help your kids do better in life. You can't tell them to wait until the economy turns around in 10 more years. They need the sports camp or the upgraded instrument now. Unless you want to be remembered as the parents who made empty promises.
Or, let's say you're in your 50s, worked hard and lived without the things everyone else enjoyed because you didn't want the debt. Then you suddenly find yourself with a 50 percent pay cut or even unemployed. With ageism as rampant as it is, can you hope to ever make up what you've lost in the time you have left on earth? You could continue to scrimp, I suppose. But if you dip into your savings once for a little fun, does that make you a selfish Boomer brat? I don't think so.

So Frugal Fatigue? Well, we're fatigued, definitely. And we're frugal.
But that doesn't make us silly.

Now Git!

2010-03-02T10:39:00.000-08:00

Today I'm writing a post that will be upbeat and positive despite the fact that this is the opposite of how I feel.
Normally, this would be called dishonesty. But I'm calling it "beating back the demons," because they are out there, pounding on the door and demanding to be let in.
Let me explain. Last night was one of those nights where you wake up for just a split second too long. In your head, you snap on a little light above the bathroom sink. Outside, one of your personal demons is driving by (because he's stalking you) and pulls in the driveway. You talk on the step for a sec, then go to answer the phone and when you come back, the demon and his buddies are in the kitchen pulling stuff out of the refrigerator. They've texted their friends that there's a buffet and an open bar, and soon your head is full of your personal demons--fears, regrets, bad memories--and they've put on the rave lights and the thumping Euro-pop music and it's now 3:30 a.m. and good luck getting any rest.
Trouble is, when the new day starts, I'm not ready. Some of them have passed out on the couch and will not leave (just like this sad analogy, unfortunately).
So, rather than dwell on them, I will think about the very good weekend Mike and I had sitting in a booth talking to people at the Johnson County Home and Garden Show.
I know that sitting all day for hours on a weekend doesn't necessarily sound like a good time. But after this one (and the one two weeks ago at the KC Royal) I just came away feeling...grateful.
This is an expo filled for the most part with local small business people--home remodelers, hardware store and garden store owners, people with interesting inventions (have a look at Jacket for Two, a Kansas City business).
We're newcomers to all this, and writers, to boot. And everyone was way nicer to us than we had any right to expect. Show bosses Pat and Kate Riha kindly set us up at the last minute (we signed up late) and even stopped by to chat and introduced us around. Patricia Lanza, Lasagna Gardening author and superstar, even took an interest in us, stopping by our booth and offering us tips and advice about the book business.
The cutthroat nature of business gets a lot of press. And I'm sure there's some truth to the stereotype. But at the risk of over-romanticizing, I have to say that what we saw was just the opposite. People were nice, through and through. They reached out and helped us and seemed genuinely interested in our success. And as long as I'm thinking about that, the world isn't such a bad place.
There now, demons. Scat!

Forgiveness Part II

2010-02-25T11:38:00.000-08:00

So I've finally finished the forgiveness exercise. Fi-------nal------ly!
Just to bring you up to date, the forgiveness exercise is offered by spiritual adviser and empowerment coach Iyanla Vanzant as a way to deal with anger and bad self esteem and, well, mostly anger. At least that's how I viewed it.
The advice comes from Vanzant's best-selling book, Tapping the Power Within....When I wrote about it last time, I was exhausted and convinced I would be too tired to try many of the ambitious spiritual exercises she proposed. I made an exception, though, for forgiveness because--it's just been that kind of year.
So I embarked on the 7-day-long project. In the morning, I would write sentences forgiving as many as 35 different people (but often, the same people many times. We'll get to that later.) In the evening, I would write forgiveness for myself 35 times.
I'll admit to being a pretty angry person. But all that anger is wearing me down. Mostly, I just didn't want to relive all the outrage (along with the flushed face and increased heart rate) each time I thought of a particular person.
Here's how I imagined the experiment unfolding: I would write and write and write, and at some point, I would have a catharsis. I would wander into a vivid daydream of previously inaccessible memories, pause my cramping left hand over the paper and weep. Yes, yes, Mrs. Peterson (my first grade teacher) I forgive you.
Of course, reality proved to be a bit different.
At first, it was fun. I had a long list of grievances with people going back all the way to childhood. For a day or two, there was nothing more fun than dredging up the outrageous and sometimes embarrassing memories and flinging those names down on paper. Yeah, butch. You're on my list.
But by day three, I was becoming bored with some of the names. To fill out the 35 required lines, I started putting in all kinds of people--celebrities, elected officials--who I feel I have a beef with but who've never heard of me. And corporations? Are corporations allowed? Doesn't the Supreme Court think of them as people?
By day five, I dropped this as too cute and possibly not in the spirit of the exercise. I began to think of magic patterns with the numbers. I would repeat certain offenders at certain intervals, according to lucky and unlucky belief systems. By the final day, I just picked my top five. These were people who I still feel anger at more than anyone else. I repeated their forgiveness sentences seven times. Not recommended by Vanzant, but it's Biblical.
All through this, my husband was trying hard to conceal that he was sneaking looks at my list. One day he just broke down and asked me, "Am I in there?" No, of course not.
Who were the offenders? Surprisingly, by the end of the exercise I'd dropped everyone who'd done me some personal wrong. The ones who remained were all people who'd made people in my family suffer. Because I hate watching my loved ones suffer.
I never felt the expected cathartic moment. I'm not even sure I experienced forgiveness. At least not the Jesus kind of moment where you hug and cry. Here's what I did feel. "Yes, I'm thinking of you, X. I'm naming you, calling you out, reducing you to a few inky scribbles beneath my enormous hand. I'm taking the power away from you and giving it back to me."
Not exactly forgiveness. But better. And better will have to do.

The Writing Cure

2010-02-19T15:56:00.000-08:00

I still have work to do, according to Iyanla Vanzant. Quite a lot of work.
Last week, before things got busy with the garden show and books talks and recital, I wrote about Tapping the Power Within, an inspirational book from the self-help guru and Yoruba priestess famous for her association with Oprah Winfrey a few years back.
At the time, I was overwhelmed by the number of life-improving exercises Vanzant proposed that would, hopefully, change me from a dour and bitter pessimist into a more balanced and likable person. I was so overwhelmed that I decided just to put Vanzant's book aside for a while.
I didn't want to write it off altogether, though. That would be flippant and flippancy is the hallmark of a bad attitude. And that's something we want to change, don't we?
So as things quieted down, I revisited the book, looking for at least one spiritual exercise I could be sure I'd follow through on.
There, amidst the instructions on building home altars and blessing one's head, was one that seemed to call my name.
It was in the chapter on forgiveness.
I must admit, I'm a very bad forgiver. I can remember slights from years and years ago--all the way back to elementary school. And for me, it's an easy leap from remembering to re-experiencing the feelings (those unhealthy, life-shortening feelings, along with the increased heart rate and flushed face) of outrage and anger. Like it just happened yesterday.
Recurring rage is not a good thing, I think we all can agree. Just look at that guy who flew into the IRS offices in Austin yesterday. I've been that angry (though not at the government). Recently.
Sure, I know this is very, very bad of me. It's not like I'm trying to feel rage all over again. In some recent cases, I went to great lengths to mentally forgive people who've wronged my family. But when I think of those incidents again, it all comes back and I have to try and re-forgive them. I don't know why. It's like I need the anger for my self defense or something.
So anyway, the exercise. It's simple. In the morning, you number a paper one through 35 and write, "I, (your name) forgive (selected evildoer) totally and unconditionally." In the evening, you number to 35 again only this time write, "I, ____, forgive myself totally and unconditionally. I am free to move on to wholeness and completeness."
I know. Awesome, right? My own enemies list. I wondered, as I got out the first paper, whether 35 is really enough numbers.
The words flowed effortlessly. At first, certain names cropped up again and again (that's okay, according to Vanzant.). The most recent ones were people who have wronged my family. Then I started on those I felt wronged me. These were all people who had just turned around and been rotten for no reason I could see, then or now. There are an amazing number of them, really. I have to wonder: Am I doing something that telegraphs that I'd enjoy this kind of treatment? But I guess that's an exercise for another day.
I did, eventually, run out of names. Before I reached 35 in fact, which made me feel a little less like a bitter scold.
So far, this exercise does not feel much like forgiveness. It's more like saying a Hail Mary. "I forgive X totally and unconditionally, now and at the hour of our death with liberty and justice for all."
The second half, where you forgive yourself, is harder because it's wordier. And it happens at the end of the day, when you're tired.
Last night, for example, I was happily watching a little TV before bed when I remembered:I have to write those sentences 35 times. Oh, #$%!
Because, did I mention? If you mess up and forget, you have to start the whole thing over.
Today is day three. I have to say, the morning list is not as much fun. I'm a little bored with writing those same names over and over. To liven things up, I started throwing in people I'm angry with who have no knowledge of my existence.Some whose names I don't even know. George W. Bush. Jay Leno. The CEO of Goldman Sachs. Even Vanzant.
Is this allowed? I have no idea. I'm certain they need forgiving, though. (Except Vanzant. I just put her in to be cute.)
There are four more days to go in this project. So far, I don't feel any different. But it does make me wonder. Is there some poor soul out there doing this who has my name on the list?

Garden-variety optimism

2010-02-15T09:24:00.000-08:00

I wasn't really planning for a lesson in optimism when I took off this weekend for the Metropolitan Lawn and Garden Show. Yes, as exhibitors Mike and I would get to walk around the show for free. But it would also mean the whole weekend spent sitting in a booth for hours, not getting any chores done or any movies watched.
So when we pulled into the parking lot that first day, I'll admit, I did not think I would leave feeling more happy and optimistic unless we sold a ton of books.
We did sell some books--but not the huge numbers I expected I'd need to feel like life is looking up, Nevertheless, here I sit, feeling better about things than I have in a long time.
This is partly because of the people who stopped by and partly because of Ed Begley, Jr.

First, the people. A steady stream stopped by to see us, and they ran the gamut from potential first-time gardeners to long time growers with years of experience and many great tips. The common thread, though, was a passion for plants and an interest in living more sustainably.
Just knowing that all those people are out there really did a lot to raise my spirits. As a Kansas Citian of 25 years, I've listened to the steady drip of negativity from people who would have you believe this area is hostile to conservationists and low-carbon footprints and anything else that could be tied to so-called "Hollywood elite liberals." If you listen to this long enough, you begin to believe that you are all alone.
But the truth is, a lot of people are coming to realize that it's in their own best interest to save money on energy and food, and that these sustainable methods are going to help them do it.
Begley, who has become at least as well known as a conservationist as an actor, talked several times each day. Mike and I and our son caught three different ones, and all the chairs were filled, with a lot of people standing around the edges. Turns out plenty of people believe as I do after all.

While we're on the subject of Begley, his message was also optimistic. One of his points was that we should feel good about the progress that's been made so far on clean air and clean water, to name a couple of things. And it's true. It's easy to feel hopeless with all the bad that's happened. The lesson for me--the pessimistic perfectionist--was that you need to celebrate your victories to give yourself strength for the next thing.

Anyway, we're big fans of Begley. So much so that I nerved my introverted self up to shake hands and give him a copy of our book. Yes, yes. Just like the awkward fan geek you know I am.

The Power Within

2010-02-09T06:32:00.000-08:00

It's been a year now, into my optimism makeover project and I don't mind admitting I am exhausted. This business of looking deeply (or sometimes shallowly) into my soul and figuring out the thing that needs fixing, the thing that will transform me from an irritating buzz kill into a popular happy person--well, sometimes it just drains me. There's no other way to put it.
Today, for example, I was going to write all about Iyanla Vanzant and the advice she gives in the book Tapping the power within: A path to self-empowerment for women. Vanzant is a famous inspirational speaker and coach who was a regular on Oprah, apparently. (Here is her web site.) Since I never watch daytime TV--except to scare myself to death by checking in on the stock market from time to time or to nauseate myself by watching the politicians go at it on CSPAN--I'd never heard of her.
But apparently she's quite famous and her books are best sellers.
When I searched the library catalog a couple of weeks ago for another advice book, I admit I was in a bit of a funny mood. It was Vanzant's title that got me hooked. The Power Within. The first thing I thought, no disrespect to Vanzant, of was this:

Good old Spongebob. He always cheers me up, I thought. So maybe it's a sign.
Which isn't a bad way to be thinking, because Ms. Vanzant does put a lot of faith in signs and visions she's had over the years.
Iyanla Vanzant is a Yoruba priestess. Yoruba originated in Africa and is a culture, a religion and a philosophy emphasizing spiritual balance. Vanzant writes that Christians often misunderstand some of the things she teaches, fearing that she's leading people into an anti-Christian philosophy, when in fact, the two are compatible.
So far, so good.
Then I started reading it and...wow. I can see how conservative Christians would be a little freaked out. An early chapter deals with prayers calling on the names of ancestors, which of course gets people all scared about ancestor worship, which Christians don't generally do. But--and she takes care to explain this also--this is not the same as worship. It's just honoring and remembering the ancestor and perhaps asking his/her spirit for a little guidance. She also gives instructions for building traditional altars in the home for the ancestors.
Later on, there's an extensive description of the traditional way to "bless your head" every morning (or at least once a week.) There are at least twelve steps to this. This is followed by instructions for five different kinds of breathing exercises. These don't seem odd to me, mainly because we've done some of them in yoga.
If you can develop the self discipline to do all that, then you also can probably do the "mirror of self" exercise where you light some candles in a darkened room in front of a mirror and concentrate on seeing your true self. I find that one terrifying.
And then there are chapters on meditation, affirmation and forgiveness. One forgiveness exercise has you writing, each morning, forgiveness 35 times (perhaps to 35 different people, perhaps not). Then in the evening, you write 35 times that you forgive yourself. Repeat seven days. If you miss a day, you have to start over.
I want to try some of these things, I really do. But it's just overwhelming, to look at it all. And I really wonder if I'm up to it, this task of rearranging my attitude. The more I look at it, the more it sounds imprisoning, not liberating. It feels like when you have a car with a little minor vibration and you bring it in and the mechanic says you need to leave it for at least a week for major overhauls to three systems. There's just too much wrong with it for it to be fixable in an afternoon.
Instead of fixing myself, I feel like I really need a day just to say I'm okay, really, and to learn to stop feeling so guilty over my lack of financial contribution to our family. But...wait...there is actually an exercise on self acceptance.
So okay, Iyanla. It's back on. Maybe, though, I'll just do your self-help exercises one at a time.

Now I Lay Me...

2010-02-04T09:34:00.000-08:00

I was thinking today, as I looked at our heating bill, about something that came up in yoga class a while back. Our instructor was telling us about the bed of nails she got for Christmas.
Let me repeat that. The bed of nails she got for Christmas.
Now, a bed of nails brings a picture to my mind and it is not a picture of blissed-out serenity. The thing I think of, when you say "bed of nails," involves a gleaming mat of spikes, a crowd gathered around and a nervous participant drawn from the audience. Here's an example of what I mean:

(Enrique, I applaud your bravery.)
So it's a little hard to imagine anyone tearing open the wrapper. "Oh, gosh, what could it be? It is! It is! The bed of nails I wanted!"
But apparently the bed of nails in question is the newest thing out there in alternative medicine circles to improve circulation, meditation and help with muscle pain. It's also supposed to help with stress, though that seems a little counter intuitive because you're lying on a bed of nails!
Well, actually, you're not. I looked it up and the modern bed of nails, which goes by the name of Shakti mat, or acupressure spike mat (not acupuncture. No one is supposed to be punctured.) doesn't have any metal nails at all. Instead there are clusters of small plastic spikes arranged in a pattern that is supposed to help the body release endorphins. The back has a design that means something in Sanskrit. (Here's a web site.)
The idea is that at first, you will be uncomfortable, but eventually, you will relax, feel tingly and arise with improvements in those sore muscles you got from running, or in circulation or in those reflexology points on your feet that are supposed to affect every organ of the body. And it's designer says it can help increase happiness. (Go her e, to read interview. Here's more from Preventative Health Journal.)
So I must admit I am curious. If hundreds of hard plastic pointy things digging into my back don't make me happy, then I'll bet they'd at least distract me from a few things that have been on my mind. (Like that heating bill. Seriously, when just about every idle daydream ends with me doing kung fu, something's gotta change.)
But alas. The price on line for a mat is near $70--definitely out of my price range.
For now, normal yoga will have to do.

Dream Big

2010-02-01T07:25:00.000-08:00

It finally happened.
My glasses broke Sunday.
While this isn't exactly life-changing news--compared with what's going on in Congress and even the Grammys--it's a big deal to me.
You see, I've been dreaming my glasses would break for weeks and weeks. To the point that it was becoming a dream genre, as in "Oh, the glasses dream again."
The glasses were crushed, appropriately enough, by the Kansas City Star. (Joke alert. We still have a sense of humor, I hope.) That is, by the Star dropping on them unexpectedly from the heavens. I guess Mike didn't see them before he put the paper down. It was just an accident. A symbolic, metaphorical accident.
And it got me thinking: What other dreams have I been having that might come true?
I have a lot of dreams. They are almost uniformly bad and I can remember most of them. Many come with screaming in the middle of the night. My daughter and her friend have a running joke with the punchline, "Die, bitch," because that's what their tender elementary school ears heard me yell one night a few years ago.
So if these dreams really have the potential to come true, here's what I might expect my future to hold:
1.At some point, I will be forced to crash land a commercial jet full of passengers. In the ocean.
2.I will take a long, grueling journey over one or more polar ice caps taking at least six different modes of transportation, including one where you ride on the tops of trains.
3.Doctors will tell me I have to have groundbreaking, never-before-tried surgery to correct the alignment of my head, which is skewed horribly off center.
4.I will go outside one day and look up to see an amazing assortment of flying machines from aliens, or the US military. When I try to call someone about it, I will be frustrated because the line will be taken over by a nonstop robo call.
5.I will get to sleep inside a giant taco.
Notice the college exam dream is not in there. I quit having it after going back to school for my music composition degree--a cure I heartily recommend to all.

As to the glasses. They cost $360 three years ago at Walmart (I popped extra for the lenses that tint in sunlight). I was racked with guilt when I bought them, because it wasn't totally necessary. I just grew to hate the pair that was covered by insurance, and wanted to change. Now, it seems like a lifesaver to have this backup pair, since we're no longer covered for eyewear.
I've already bent them back a bit and hope the stem can be glued. Woo-hoo, optimism!

R.I.P. JD

2010-01-29T09:44:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-25T08:48:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-21T09:10:00.000-08:00

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?

2010-01-20T09:07:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-15T10:22:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-12T09:22:00.000-08:00

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?

2010-01-09T13:56:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-05T11:56:00.000-08:00

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.

Happy Holidays to All

2009-12-22T09:54:00.001-08:00

There's no denying it. Sometimes what makes me happiest and most optimistic is not to blog. The pressure of even a self-imposed deadline--and the guilt of missing it again and again--are detracting from my efforts to savor the warm fuzziness of this time of year.
So I'm taking an officially sanctioned break. Back in a week or so. Merry New Year and Happy Christmas.
Before I go, here's an item I found in the London Evening Standard about obesity and Santa. Normally I applaud every effort to exercise, but this is pretty weird. It sounds like one of those news hoaxes people are so fond of, but there are quite a few comments and no indication it's fake. So enjoy!

Feeling the pain

2009-12-16T07:34:00.000-08:00

Just in time for the holidays, the New York Times--my perennial cheerer-upper on the economy--has a new poll on the emotional and financial toll of unemployment.
Among the results: Almost half of the unemployed polled have suffered depression or anxiety and 4 in 10 notice behavioral changes in their children.
Although this was primarily about people who had lost their jobs, the Times did give a nod to the underemployed (e.g. those with huge wage cuts of those forced to become part-time workers) toward the end of the piece. Another poll, done at the same time with CBS, holds that 3 in 10 people have had wage cuts the past year. It didn't mention their mental state.
There's no question that people who have completely lost their jobs have it much worse than those still employed. But with a big enough cut in pay and benefits, we still feel a kinship with those other struggling families.
How close is our experience to theirs? Let's take the poll and find out:
Question one: Have you taken money out of savings, including retirement accounts, to make ends meet? That's complicated. After six years of college expenses, we didn't have any savings left. And since the cutback, we can't afford contributions to the 401K any more. But so far we haven't raided it. So our answer is...kinda yes. Poll results--60 percent yes.
Question two: Have you borrowed money from family members or friends? No, although they've kindly offered. National results--53 percent yes.
Question three: Are you more stressed than usual, less stressed or is your stress level no different? Are you freaking kidding me? Of course we're more stressed! National results--69 percent more stressed.
Question four: Have you had any trouble sleeping? Yes, quite a bit back when it was news. Not so much any more. National results--55 percent yes.
Question five: Have you experienced emotional or mental health issues, like anxiety or depression? Not sure how they define this. But no, nobody's sought any medical treatment. National results--48 percent yes.
Question six: How often have you felt embarrassed or ashamed about being out of work? Here's where the toxic bloggers who ridicule Mike have actually done us all a big favor. They've deflected the depression that might have set in, and caused our extended family and friends (and even a few strangers) to rally around us. Any embarrassment or shame has been quickly converted to anger and resolve. Thanks, guys. National results--46 percent some or most times.
Question seven: Have you cut back on doctor's visits or medical treatments or not? We're fortunate to still have health insurance. Even so, there's still a deductible. So when a dog bit Mike's leg a few weeks ago, and it wouldn't heal right, he stubbornly resisted my urgings to go. And since eyeglasses no longer are covered, I find myself Super-gluing my broken ones. But we'll still go when we really need to. National results--54 percent yes.
Question eight: Are you currently without some form of health care coverage? No. National results--47 percent yes.
I don't see a sample question about behavioral changes in children. But I can attest that financial strain has caused a lot more dust-ups and tension with my daughter. One way kids do their fact finding about just how bad the money situation is, is to keep asking for stuff and see where parents draw the line. But if you're on the parental end, you get a little dragged down by constantly having to say "no."
So yeah, not much to be happy about if you're thinking about the unemployed and underemployed this Christmas.
But there are a couple of good things out of this poll. First, I'm grateful that the Times is keeping this in front of people. It would be so much easier to just go with the flow, declare the recession over and forget about the people who have been dumped off the boat.
And second, a part of the poll asks who people blame for all this economic misery. The favorite: Former Pres. George W. Bush with 26 percent of the vote, banks with 12 percent, job outsourcing 8 percent, politicians 8 percent. Only 3 percent blamed Obama.
Now it's time to get to work on the current administration and get tough on those big money boys.

God Wars

2009-12-11T09:16:00.000-08:00

Weird, how everything I'm reading this winter seems to come back around to religion.
First there was The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, by Jeff Sharlett. Then a Dan Brown book, The Lost Symbol. Brown always seems to be writing about religion and science, in one way or another.
Most recently, I finished The Evolution of God, by Robert Wright.
Add to that the recently announced efforts by conservatives to rewrite the "liberal bias" out of the Bible, and you have a really strange convergence of thoughts about religion in the news lately.
What on earth is going on?
On the one hand, Brown's immensely popular novel (it set a new sales record for adult fiction) is all about the New-Agey sounding mystery behind a Masonic secret, which is that people have within themselves unrealized and god-like powers. This, he backs up by citing research in to the mind powers by the Institute of Noetic Sciences.
On the other side are clandestine fundamentalist Christians (I think they call themselves that) who work behind the scenes to ensure their members access to the highest reaches in the American power system. They seem to have a creepy affinity for citing Hitler and other despots (as good examples of how far strong leaders can go with the right use of power) and for getting the US to support some of the worst tyrants on the planet.
Out there somewhere else is Andy Schlafly (son of anti-feminist Phyllis) who leads an effort to man up the Bible by getting rid of gender-inclusive language, eliminating the story of the adulteress ("Let him cast the first stone." That one.) And emphasizing the free market parables. He fits right in with an increasing right-wing tendency to wipe out anything pro-feminine in the Scriptures. I've come across some of these guys on the radio, preaching how God is a vengeful, warrior like god and Jesus has been portrayed as too gentle.
Only after I read Wright's book did any of this begin to make sense. The Evolution of God is an interesting, if somewhat slow read looking at the order and translations of the Bible and Koran and matching them with what was going on in history at the moment. On the way, he also looks at pre-Abrahamic gods and hunter-gatherer gods.
After you take a moment to ponder how breathtakingly difficult a task this would be, you begin to understand how the different kinds of God in the Bible (vengeful, forgiving, etc.) match the different political needs of the times. Even the names--Elohim, Yahweh--seemed to be subject to the political fortunes of the worshippers, according to Wright.
The fundamentalists and the New Agers are doing the same thing people have always done when societies change. They're recasting God to meet society's new needs. God is evolving.
In the Family's case, anxiety over globalization has caused these "Christians" to seek power above all else, securing America's god as the primary god of all the earth. Ancient Babylonians would be proud.
In the New Ager's case, intelligent people are trying to reconcile belief in unknown forces with facts presented by scientific research.
And as for the muscular Christians, it seems like mostly push-back from the anxiety brought on by seeing women's fortunes rise in industrialized countries in the past 50 years.
I don't know why, exactly, but this makes me feel better. The bellicose nature of organized religion the past few years has driven me away from church attendance. Every kind of optimism advice tells me you need some kind of faith to keep up your attitude. Yet here I am, feeling more like an outsider to my religion.
Maybe what I need instead is just a different god. Just like everyone else, apparently.

The third quarter

2009-12-08T10:00:00.000-08:00

There's been a lot of jubilation since the jobs numbers last weekend showed a loss of way less than predicted. That, plus the rallying stockmarket, has caused some people to wonder if the capital Great capital Recession is on its way out.
We can only pray so, though there are those who argue that we'll have another trough later on. It's early, yet, to get too happy while there are still plenty of people suffering.
Our own personal recession is now in its ninth month. So maybe it's time to reflect a little on the changes we've undergone since that first traumatic pay-cut news on Friday the 13th of last March.

Our finances--As the family's checkbook guru and resident worst-case-scenario imaginer, I was prostrate with worry when I heard the news of a 33 percent pay cut and cuts in benefits to part-time. Trust me, I didn't even want to get out of bed.
But so far, most of my biggest fears have not come true. We had to put a couple of college loans on deferment for a year, and that will be a problem if things haven't improved by April. But we have little other debt, can still make our house payments and buy groceries. We've foregone any birthday or anniversary presents for us adults, and we've had to dip into savings sometimes, for appliance or car emergencies. But not often.
To pay for bigger things--like registration, books and other fees for public high school, or a camping trip to Michigan--we've sold stuff. The lumber left from our home's previous owner. The boys' bunk beds. The old weight machine. There's not much left worth selling for next year, though.
We haven't been able to afford to contribute to our savings. So far, we're just happy to hold the line and keep our cushion from drifting completely away.

Career-wise--Make no mistake about it. This has been a painful, gray plod. But in one respect, it has been good for us. Our desire to have fun again, become upwardly mobile (and give our daughter a college education) has caused us to cast about for other ways to make money. In the process, we've both gained skills that will make us more salable once the job market improves. We have a vegetable gardening book we're proud of. We have improved our networks and our on-line skills. And I don't think any of this would have happened without the kick in the butt provided by the downsizing. Hopefully, we'll end up with more options once things start to recover.

Emotionally--There have been some ups and (horrific) downs. But on the whole, the downs are less frequent and not as bad as they were. I no longer stay awake for hours with worry, nor do I cry quietly into my ears during the meditation time at yoga. Possibly it's because I've accepted a depressing new "normal." But more likely, it's the feeling that we're beating them. By refusing to use the credit card, by keeping up the house payments, by refusing to buy crap "budget meals" at fast food places, we are beating all those hotshots on Wall Street who have come to think of American working people as stupid, weak, and not deserving of decent pay.
(Hey, I'll still admit to some anger issues.)

What's worked for me so far--Funny thing about the aforementioned downs. Usually, when I'm having one of my crappy-attitude headaches, I'll ask myself a question. "Did you exercise lately?" And know what? The answer is always "no." I hardly ever get depressed on a day that I've run, lifted weights or swam laps. Just sayin'.
As for all the New Agey stuff...Yeah, the laughing yoga and brain waves and affirmations help. A little. Maybe for a few hours.
But you can't argue with numbers. And by my scorecard, meditating on positive outcomes has the best results, hands down. In just a couple of short weeks doing this as I'm falling asleep, there have been four--or maybe five, depending on how you count--good things that have happened.
Coincidence? Probably. But you never know...

Odds and Ends

2009-12-01T11:33:00.000-08:00

It's been too busy to collect much for a blog post the past week. So here is a little mish-mash of things that have been blowing through my head but never took off to become blog posts:

The movies
One of the best things about Thanksgiving weekend is that it's an opportunity to sink low into the couch and watch movies until your muscles start turning to sugar.
I'm always reading how extended laughing is a cure for all sorts of things, as well as good exercise. If that's true, I've discovered a cure for cancer and a possible substitute for ultra-marathon training in Troll II.
My eldest son brought this over to watch after the big meal. I can't remember laughing so hard at anything in...oh...nine months or so. This was released as a completely straight-faced horror movie, but since has become known as one of the worst movies ever made. It is hilarious. Seriously, my gut hurt afterward from the helpless laughter. Here's a clip:

I understand there's now a documentary out about the making of Troll II, called Best Worst Movie. Unfortunately, it is not playing in Kansas City yet.
A less funny (though somewhat cheesy) film we saw on TCM was The Devil and Daniel Webster, circa 1941. This is a black and white bit of fluff about a down-on-his-luck farmer (Jabez Stone) who sells his soul to the Old Scratch in return for seven years of prosperity--after which time he would be expected to pay up by going quietly to hell.
I don't want to spoil it for anybody so I won't tell the plot. But it had one moment that spoke to me.
Shortly after Stone got his gold from the devil, he strutted in to see the bank officer who held his loan. When the smug banker started to make noises about how he couldn't give Stone another break, the farmer started flicking pieces of gold at him. Take this. And this. How do you like me now, sucka?
And I caught myself thinking, "Gee, it might be worth selling your soul to the devil to be able to do that just once."

Prayer and meditation
The name of the farmer in the movie above reminded me of The Prayer of Jabez, an inspirational book by Dr. Bruce Wilkinson. I read this a few years ago, at the urging of a friend who, I guess, noticed that I needed a bit more spiritual vitality. For a while, this book was all the rage, and also a little controversial. It cites a somewhat obscure prayer (1 Chronicles 4:9-10) of a man named Jabez asking God to bless him and keep him from evil. Wilkinson made self-help prominence by urging people to pray this every day and watch God's power transform their lives.
This little book generated miles and miles of type (here's an example) from people worried about one thing or another. Wilkinson degraded the verse and turned the prayer into a superstitious chant. And isn't it bad and dangerous to pray for our own blessing? Shouldn't we be praying instead for others? Etc, etc.
Which is why I don't go in so much for prayer any more. It's all the self editing and worrying that I'm not doing the right form. Did I ask according to God's will? In Jesus' name? How can I be sure my prayer isn't just selfishness?
Bleah.
I'd much rather meditate, as I have been doing lately, on things I'd like to change but have no control over. It's nice to be able to just run good outcomes of these various problems through my mind and let myself feel the warmth and comfort. It probably doesn't do any good at all.
Or does it? I have to say that, shortly after I started this, two--no, make that three--good things have happened. And these are things that I had no hand in doing.
So maybe it's worth it.
Or again, maybe that's just old Scratch playing a trick on me.

Running
I've been working on changing the way I run, after reading Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superatheletes, and the Greatest Race the World has Never Seen, by Christopher McDougall. McDougall writes about a Mexican tribe of long distance runners (50-mile, 100-mile runs) and how their gait differs from that of modern runners in expensive running shoes. The shoes, in fact, can cause more harm than good, he claims.
But it's more than just a book about running. McDougall makes a case that the running done by this tribe also brings about a sense of joy, equality, peace and good health.
So, okay. I'm game. I can't afford the fancy "foot glove" running shoes, but I can try and change my gait. The last two times out, I've tried to run the first mile more on the front of my food and not my heel, concentrating on kicking my feet backwards rather than reaching forward heel first.
After a couple of days of very sore calves, today was just a great day. I felt I was flying around that hated indoor track. It was even euphoric, for just a couple of laps.
So maybe there's something to it.
Now to find some chia seeds.

Good to be Bad

2009-11-24T10:06:00.000-08:00

I feel great today! Maybe it's the meditation, or maybe it's the idea of a four-day weekend coming up. But--just for a day at least--the world seems right-side up.
Possibly it's a study on moods from Australia that's making me high on life. This morning I was reading a story on the MSN health page about improving your mental attitude. It was a 31-point list of the usual stuff about exercising, eating right, etc, etc, etc. But there, nestled in the middle of the first page was a little network news video about this study that claims bad moods might actually help you think.
The psychologists showed their subjects sad or happy movies in an attempt to induce a mood, then asked them to rate the believability of urban myths and rumors. Apparently the bad mood people were less likely to be gullible, less likely to make snap decisions and more careful and analytical in their thinking. Oh, and also, they were better at presenting a written argument.
"Positive mood is not universally desirable: people in negative mood are less prone to judgmental errors, are more resistant to eyewitness distortions and are better at producing high-quality, effective persuasive messages," the study said.
Well all right then. We in the negative attitude community get tired of being beat up all the time in the media. For the past few decades, it's been nothing but a drumbeat of scapegoating. We're apparently to blame for economic downturns, social meltdowns and, most recently, our own illnesses. It's about time we had a study to call our own--one that claims the clear thinking and cogent writing that is our birthright. It's those positive people who are the ones sending money off to Nigerian princes and veering wildly between national policy viewpoints.
So there, positive people. How's it feel?
Then, while I was still gloating and chuckling, I checked into an article on GOOD about new software that can detect your mood by the type of words you use. The use of "I", for instance, shows not that you're an egomaniac, but that you're less powerful and more self conscious. Should I feel depressed about that? I'm sure I don't know how I feel yet, do I?
Toward the bottom of this article, the software's inventor said that the words were a gauge, but not a means of changing a person's mood:
"...you can’t ask someone to mindlessly repeat more “positive” words and expect them to become less depressed or suicidal. (The software's) real use is in detecting problems such as excessive worry or anger and then showing when progress has been made. When we become more mentally healthy, our language changes unconsciously, because we are changing perspectives."
Wow. Not only is it okay--no, good--to be in a bad mood, but you can't expect to change your mood by mindlessly repeating positive slogans. Like, "I feel happy, I feel healthy, I feed terrific!"
It's not usual for me to find two news items in one day that I love as much as these. Maybe I shouldn't feel so bad about being negative. Maybe I don't have to change my personality after all.
The idea makes me feel...happy?
Uh-oh.

Book Corner

2009-11-22T11:02:00.000-08:00

Just when I thought I was through with all the "mind over matter" advice givers, along comes Dan Brown with his newest, The Lost Symbol.
Now normally, I don't look to works of fiction for thoughts on how to become more optimistic (although maybe I should). The Lost Symbol was meant to be a little escape from my daily cares and worries. And it was fun, just like his other books, The DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons, though I think my favorite is still The DaVinci Code.
The age-old battle between belief and science is at the heart of the newest book, just as it was the others. But what makes this one different--and worth a look in the "Cockeyed Optimist"--is that it explores the way in which things that were once thought to be beliefs are becoming science. Things like meditation, biofeedback, the existence of a soul were once thought to be in the domain of a somewhat loopy new age belief system. But more and more, they're being tested by something called Noetic science. (Check out the Institute of Noetic Sciences site.)
This is not a book review. If you want the synopsis on the book, check out the official website.
Suffice it to say that as part of the plot, we are asked to buy into the idea of a set of ancient mysteries, purportedly unlocking powers of the mind that would bring about a utopian new world (or a distopian one, depending on whose hands hold the mysteries.)
[I read this book right after The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, by Jeff Sharlet. This book explores real life people with a plan for a Christian empire on earth, wrought by the United States. Talk about your creepy juxtaposition. Here are two books, out at roughly the same time, looking at the potential power of belief to bring about the upheaval of most of the world's stability. Whatever happens, I just hope it doesn't turn out like The Road, by Cormac McCarthy.]
But, to get back to optimism for a second...We already have a lot of studies about self-healing and biofeedback. Here's one from the Washington Post, 2005, which says experienced meditators show a marked increase in activity in an area of the brain that deals with happiness and positive thoughts. Here's an excerpt from the Post story:
Davidson's research is consistent with his earlier work that pinpointed the left prefrontal cortex as a brain region associated with happiness and positive thoughts and emotions. Using functional magnetic resonance imagining (fMRI) on the meditating monks, Davidson found that their brain activity -- as measured by the EEG -- was especially high in this area.
Want something more recent? Here's one from Science Daily with this year's date saying Zen meditation appears to help alleviate pain.
Well, I've tried meditating on positive things, but I do not notice a marked increase in my happiness. Maybe I just haven't been consistent. Or maybe I'm rebelling against the idea that it's me--not the world--that needs to be fixed.
But, if I interpret the ideas of noetics correctly, we can also use our minds to point a laser beam at things outside ourselves that need to be changed. If that's true, I have quite a list.
So, beginning this weekend, I'm spending a little time each day visualizing things that I want to happen, but have no control over whatsoever. I guess this would be kind of like praying, but without all the self-editing.
We'll see what happens. In any case, it will be better than helpless worrying.

The Money Museum

2009-11-18T09:50:00.000-08:00

Everyone needs a day off, now and then. I've found my brain just works better if I can have some time to completely squander on selfish interests. With the scramble of the past eight months, I've lost a lot of that time.
So it was that I decided to take a mental health day last week. Forget the book marketing, forget the unsent emails, the promises to my daughter.
What I wanted was a morning at the Money Museum.
The Money Museum, in case you haven't seen the billboards, is an educational area at the Federal Reserve in Kansas City. For years, I've heard about scout and school groups going there, but our kids missed out on it somehow. So last week, I decided, it was time to go.
I must admit, part of the appeal is the free souvenir--little bags of shredded money visitors can take home. Supposedly they're cut too fine to be able to piece together into a bill. But then maybe the Fed underestimates my determination.
Really, though, I just like the idea that the Fed has something called a "Money Museum." I think of museums as places you go to look at something formerly common but now rare. Like tepees and paddleboat wheels and dinosaur teeth. So it seemed perfect that I should visit one to see what this thing called "money" used to look like.
To get to the museum, you first have to go through a scary marble and glass security area with full airport x-ray equipment and guards in a glassed-in booth. Once inside, the museum occupies a corner of the building's first floor.
There are little touch-screen kiosks that tell you about various aspects of the Federal Reserve--the reason "why you can trust your bank," as one sign says. And there was a movie screen in the middle. But the thing that caught my eye was a long wall with examples of coins minted during each administration. Half-pennies, half-dimes, double eagle gold pieces. Who knew money used to be so interesting and fanciful? (How much were those gold pieces worth? And how, exactly is a half-dime different from a nickel? There wasn't any script to answer those questions.)
There were a lot of other things there, too. A gold bar worth $471,139, tantalizingly close in a display case that invited me to pull the lever to feel how heavy it is. Some war money from the Confederacy and World War II. (Didn't see any scrip from old company towns though. Probably, it's a sore subject now.)
Best was a long time line with objects from the Kansas City Fed over the years. You can start at the right and take a walk down memory lane of Federal Reserve red-letter days. I looked tenderly at the Glass-Steagall act of 1933, and then at its repeal in 1999, which has been widely blamed for the banking speculation that brought the economy almost to collapse last year. I spent a minute pondering 1935, when married women were kicked out of their jobs to make way for the men. And at that day a few years ago when banks could electronically process checks, thereby erasing the "float" on which our budget always depended.
Last stop, around the corner and down a hall, was an area I like to call the "crying room." On one side is a wall of bills (or facsimiles) behind a transparent barrier. This, we are told, is what $40 million of $100 bills looks like. You'd have to spend a dollar every second for 15 months to unload it all, according to the sign. Personally, I doubt that. How about we set up an experiment so I can test their data?
And at tour's end is a window to one last room. Two or three workers are loading stacks of bills into a conveyor on a low, gray machine. I see a window into the machine, with a flashing strobe. Apparently it's reading the money. Look closer, the visitor center greeter advised me. See that tube blowing dust up into the ceiling? That's worn out bills, on their way out of the shredder.
Aaaauuugh!
On my way out, I picked up a couple of pamphlets, a box of colored pencils (non-toxic. Made in China!) and, of course, my little plastic bag of shredded bills.
"There is approximately $165 of unfit currency in this bag," reads the label. Hmmmm.
Well, gotta go now. Got some work to do. Don't call me. I'm going to be busy for a while.

Color my glasses

2009-11-16T08:06:00.000-08:00

There was a story in the New York Times last week. And I tried to write about it. I did. Day after day.
But as you see, I was unable to. It just didn't help in the optimism end game.
The story, by Michael Luo, was about unemployment's impact on families, particularly children. It quoted studies that suggest children in families where the primary bread winner has become unemployed suffer emotionally--to the extent that they may be more likely to drop out of school, were 15 percent more likely to repeat a grade and may have lower earnings as an adult.
First reaction: I'm grateful, for my daughter's sake, neither of us has become unemployed. But on second thought: Has anyone studied what mega pay and hours cuts do to kids? When you add the unemployed to the underemployed, you're talking about a lot of people right now. If these things hold true, then Wall Street's greed and mismanagement are even more detestable than previously imagined.
Not only have large corporations taken their workers, wrung them out and cast them off, not only have they stolen huge amounts of taxpayer dollars, but now they are stealing from our children's futures as well. And on another front, an insidious group called "the Family" has worked its tentacles into US and world politics, using religion to defend the status quo. (More about this another time. But seriously, everyone should read The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power by Jeff Sharlet.)
Deep breath here. See what I mean? This line of angry thinking is not very useful to me at the moment. It is not helping me be an optimist.
So instead, I'll meditate today on another story I found, this time in Slate and Newsweek. In it, Daniel Gross argues that job recovery may be sooner rather than later. He cites big gains in productivity over the past few months--meaning fewer workers are doing more work. (Economists call this productivity. Another name would be under-paying your employees.) These gains will force companies to hire sooner, because there's only so much you can squeeze out of an employee before he or she collapses. "Hamsters can only run so fast on their treadmills," is the way he puts it.
This could be very good news for all of us.
Assuming the hiring takes place in the United States.
Sigh. There I go agin.

Don't jump!

2009-11-09T10:54:00.000-08:00

MSNBC.com did an interesting (and rather long) online post today about suicide rates and the current recession. I just finished reading it, and I have the feeling this is going to be one of those things I'll be waking up to think about in the wee hours.
The writer, JoNel Aleccia, examines suicide spikes in a few places where the recession has been longer and stronger than the national average, then looks at the possibility that we're in for an increase in suicide because of the economy. (Whole story here)
Of course, full data won't be in for a couple of years (the most up-to-date figures are as recent as 2006). But the gist is that, despite these spikes, there isn't enough evidence to say that the recession itself is to blame. Maybe some of the recession go-withs--like home foreclosure, bankruptcy and job loss--provide the last straw for already-depressed individuals. But again, you can't just pin everything on the recession.
As an occasional already-depressed individual, this intrigued me. I've certainly felt the despair, shame and anger that go with seeing your spouse downsized. But why would it be worth taking your life? Why?
The easy answer would be that it's not the money. It's the way the money affects you. It's the daily drumbeat of disappointing your kids when they ask for something even as simple as an ice cream or a movie. It's the public shame of seeing your home go for auction, and perhaps hearing malicious or clueless strangers laugh at your distress.
It's the feeling of becoming invisible.
As a work-at-home mother, I'm familiar with this feeling. In America, your job defines you. When you no longer have that corporate-employee stamp of approval, you see your self worth drifting away. Self-employed won't cut it, either. Self-employed gets you asked for your spouse's job info.
Unemployment seemed to be more visible during the Great Depression. You had bread lines, hobos, skinny kids. But because of various reforms from that era, it's less visible now. Is that a good thing?
During my lifetime, attitudes have changed to make the loss of job and money even more unbearable than it might have been in the hippie 60s where I spent my childhood. I've watched as, during the Reagan years, the ultra wealthy and those "masters of the universe" became the most celebrated beings in America. People of lesser means were blamed for their own conditions, told to "take responsibility" for their misfortune.
Weird coincidence: I just started reading The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, by Jeff Sharlet. I'm not very far into it--only up to the chapter on how the religious right gained traction among power brokers during the bloody battles with organized labor in the 1930s. The pitch to the executives then was that labor strife could be eliminated if only the Christ-led top men of the companies treated employees like children (presumably instead of beating them out of their pay, as was then the custom).
A lot of unions have been busted, in the intervening years. Maybe the corporate honchos took that advice. But if they're the daddies and we're the children, then I think it may be time to call Social Services. Get us a foster family. Because too many children are being booted out the door each day with no coat and no lunch money and no doctor.
So, rather than ruminate on how bad things are, we the already-depressed nation need to take some action. We need to mold society back to suit our own needs. (And why not? It's been done for decades by the other side.)
The way I see it there are two ways to go: Take up the picket sign and the megaphone (or just the regular phone) and do what you can to make things better. Or return to the lazy hippie ways of the '60s. Tune in and drop out, man. Become The Dude.
Now pardon me while I take some time to decide.

Godspeed

2009-11-03T19:21:00.000-08:00

Call me an overemotional, preachy, patriotic spendthrift. But when Stephen Colbert announced his fundraising effort to help the US Olympic speed skaters, I couldn't resist.
The team lost it's main sponsor this week when DSB Bank of the Netherlands was declared bankrupt in Dutch court, leaving the team scrambling to find $300,000 with a short time before the competition. (ESPN story here)
I don't know what exactly it is about this that got me. Maybe it's the infuriating image of America it presents to the rest of the world.
Yes, folks, that's us. Unable to represent ourselves on the world stage because we are indebted to a foreign bank. Here are our best and brightest, helpless against the forces of high finance. Just like the rest of the country, they're willing and able to do the job, but someone else has all the money tied up.
It makes you just want to rise up, doesn't it?
And so I did. Despite our 30 percent (plus) pay decrease, I put in an online donation this morning.
And you know what? It felt pretty good to be giving to this team. If a lot of other people do the same thing, maybe it will send a message to the rest of the world.
Take that, big money elitists. When Americans decide together that we want an Olympic team (or health care, or public schools or fire protection) you don't have the final say. We do.
Now that's a message of optimism.

Just for the Fun of it

2009-10-30T10:33:00.000-07:00

Every so often I get a link to something called The Fun Theory. It's a project developed, apparently, by the European advertisers for Volkswagen, although the videos have nothing to do with cars.
The campaign is about using fun as a motivation to get people to do things they normally don't like to do. Here's the first video, which appeared in a music list serve I'm on:

There have been two other videos since. In one, a trash can has been rigged up with a sound speaker to give the impression that whatever is thrown inside is falling miles before it hits the bottom of the can. And the latest one has a scoreboard that turns glass recycling into a game. (Apparently, the Swedes don't get compensated for recycling glass--just like here.)
It's worth mentioning that this is a contest with a 2,500 euro prize. If you go to the site, you can look at all the videos, plus other submissions, which include singing bathroom hand dryers and light switches, to name a couple.
So VW, when are you going to start a fun project here? Because I gotta tell you, we Americans are in serious need of some fun. All the celebrity gossip and judging of our neighbors is beginning to wear thin. And there's only so much Jon & Kate and American Idol and Runway you can absorb before the thought hits you: This is just second-hand fun. I'm just sitting at a distance, judging someone else's fun. I want to play on the funny stairs! I want to drop stuff in the whistling garbage can! I want to win 2,500 euros!
According to the statistics kept by the contest organizers (Yes. They kept statistics of how many people walked up the piano stairs, versus the obesity-friendly escalator), we can change human avoidance of unpopular chores by adding a little fun into the mix. More people used the "fun" machines in all three of the videos, according to the site.
So I have a bigger proposition for Volkswagen: Can we also get large corporations to behave differently by adding fun? After all, corporations are considered people by the law.
So let's see...
You know what's fun? Dominoes!

What if we used a domino reward for, say, corporate morality and health care? Each domino could represent a person who's life was saved by the public option, then whichever insurance CEO's company lost the most money could knock...Uh, wait a minute.
How about this? Each domino represents $500 saved by small businesses and taxpayers for health care reform. Then when it was knocked over, it would reveal a valentine heart and message, "Thank you, insurance industry, for the sacrifice you made for your country."

Know what else is fun? Houses of cards.

What if we tied a house of cards reward to the mortgage industry? These mortgage guys hate the idea of Washington regulation, don't they? So OK, hire this card stacking guy to build replicas of the hated government symbols, the Capitol, White House, etc. Knocking them over can be the consolation prize for the reforms that disallow some past business abuses. No hard feelings, guys.

OK. One more. Mandalas.

You know the go-go financial whizzes we've been reading about? The Masters of the Universe? The ones who like to bet everything on risky derivatives? They should each be required by law to do one of the ceremonies illustrated above each year. Just sit there, staying out of the marketplace, concentrating on the sand and the god of compassion. And they should have robes and bells and headgear, too.
If it didn't help their chi, at least they'd be in a place where they couldn't hurt us for four days. Problem solved.

Hit the button

2009-10-28T08:42:00.000-07:00

Why isn't there a Reset button for weeks like this? Surely, if there was such a thing, I'd be slapping my palm down on it repeatedly today. I'd restart the day without the dog-induced tension at 6:30 a.m., without the cat in my face, without the last-minute bleary-eyed run to school. And without the near miss of my daughter's friend's car, parked on the side of the street. (It's a state trooper car.)
I'd rewind to my morning check of Facebook. Once there, I'd skim over a link to a money advice columnist named Kat Hnatyshyn. I wouldn't click it. I wouldn't read it. Because I already have too much free-floating rage going this morning.
The blog post in question can be found on Kat's Money Corner on KansasCity.com, entitled "Show me some attitude."
Kat's topic is reining in your spendthrift urges, freezing that credit card in a block of ice, quelling that unchecked frivolity that so many of us have these days:

Saying “no” to those little indulgences – like a $4 mocha latte – may be the hardest change of all, but those little expenses add up. Use a goal-setting technique: Start a savings account for something special, such as a nice vacation. Every time you feel the urge for one of those indulgences, stash that money instead in a place reserved especially for that....

Are there really people left out there who still have difficulty with the $4 mocha latte question? Is there someone, right now, in Kat's office (at CommunityAmerica Credit Union) saying, "I'm not sure what I should do with all this extra money and vacation time I have. Do you think I should put it in savings, or should I splurge on a flat-screen TV?" If so, I definitely don't want to read about them.
Right now we have less than $100 of "mad money" to cover our gas and milk purchases until a week from Friday. And our daughter's birthday is this weekend. We'll have to go into savings if we want to give her any kind of present (and we do).
Not that I'm asking for any pity or sympathy. We're still better off than a lot of people who are completely unemployed.
Just about everyone I know has suffered some kind of major lifestyle cutback. If they aren't laid off, they're dealing with an unpaid furlough or a cutback in the business they own. No one is having any trouble saying no to the mocha latte. As for the impulse to run up the credit cards--well, JC Penney just sent us a note saying their new store credit card rate will be 23.99 percent! So I'll have no trouble staying off the card (and perhaps staying out of their stores, as well.).
Believe us, Kat, we'd all love to be optimistic enough about our futures to go on a little spending spree. Maybe replace that bathrobe with the gaping hole in the elbow. Or go all out and buy a toaster oven from a store, rather than a garage sale. Or maybe just buy our families something nice for Christmas after a grindingly long year.
But we're not stupid. Every indication is that things will continue to be bad for a long, long time.
Oops. Sorry about the angry, downer ending. Guess I need a

All I'm asking...

2009-10-25T14:03:00.000-07:00

I went to the psychic fair.
The readers and shamans were there.
Went into a trance
Now I'll take a chance
On McClatchy, five dollars a share.

OK, maybe I'm overdoing the optimism a little, here. At last look up, McClatchy was at 3.42 (down .23, or 6.3 percent)
Silliness aside, I did go to the psychic fair this weekend. Or maybe that's silliness front and center.
I've been wanting to go to this event for at least five years--ever since seeing the signs up along Wornall on my way to UMKC. But usually I only saw them after the fact, when the fair had already happened. This fall, however, the stars were perfectly aligned. The fair was on a day I could go. Add that to the fact that the economy has quadrupled my interest in seers and omens. I put it on the schedule. Mike went, too. Hell yes, take the whole family.
The Psychic Fair, put on twice a year by the Psychical Research Society, is made up of tarot readers, shamans and other psychic advice givers doing their thing, surrounded by vendors from every crystal, herbal, aromatherapy and acupuncture place you've ever heard of. Off in one corner, there were various lectures on the hour.
Two were of particular interest: Changing negative energy into positive energy! and Animal Totems (for previous post on my interest in animal totems and the Great Blue Heron, click here).
Talk about your slam dunk.
Sixteen of us waited in the curtained-off lecture hall for AKA Santa Shaman to enter. Here's how the brochure described the talk:
This experiential lecture will help you transcend negative thoughts and feelings, and instead, think and feel more positively. It will help you create a totally different energy and conjure up hope and joy in your heart.
Well allrighty then. This sounds like just the thing.
At around ten past the hour, Santa Shaman entered. He was a diminutive man with long salt-and-pepper hair and beard tucked under a ball cap (was that Kokopelli on the front? I forgot to ask)
He walked slowly with a cart and some plastic tubing at his nose. He explained he'd had a bout with cancer and heart disease, and in fact, was supposed to have died in 2003.
Then he took a handful of bright, artificially colored feathers and shook them at us. "Hey, hey, hey, hey."
"Does that make you feel better?" he asked afterwards.
Um...
"Who wants to come up and heal me? I've been having some trouble with my knee."
A young lady who said she was a healer went to the front of the room. He made some motions over her open palm, first one hand, then the other. Then she bent down, touched his knee and fell a little sideways to the floor.
Santa Shaman then launched into a lengthy story about his quest to become a medicine man, his life as an ordained minister and truck driver, his law degree and his favorite horse (who was struck by lightning the same day the shaman was supposed to have died, which was also the day he had cancer surgery. This horse will be awaiting him when he crosses the Rainbow Bridge, he said he believes.)
"Who wants to be empowered?" he asked us.
Um...
And again with the shaking of the feathers and the "Hey, hey, hey." About a half hour had passed and still no mention of the advertised talk on optimism. Are there any questions so far?
"What about the positive energy?" one of us asked, timidly.
"You are all natural healers," he replied. Then he had us put our hands to our foreheads at the "third eye" and wait to feel the warmth. When that happened, we would put our hands on top of our heads, and SS would draw another volunteer.
He called on another lady, who stood patiently at the front while SS talked some more about his experiences in the armed services and the force of the pendulum. She got to sit down, without doing anything.
A few people got up to leave.
And then, he remembered. When you get those negative thoughts, he said, "go back to your inner child" and think about the things you did that were the most fun to you. "You'll be amazed how fast the gloomy days will go away."
End of lecture number one.
I saw Mike, as I waited for the animal totems lecture. He was just coming out of the talk on guardian angels and looked blissed out. Apparently there'd been some group hypnosis involved. "That was all right," he said, dreamily. (Read his experience here.)
The animal totems talk, by Cliff Humphrey was a little easier to follow. Animal totems are like guides that come to us to offer help and wisdom, if we are still enough to listen. You sit and wait and see what appears. And even though you may not be able to get into the woods for solitude, you can still look for them on a park bench (although, presumably, they'd be ants, pigeons and dogs. Or, if on the beach, seagulls, though I would think everyone who's ever visited a beach has a seagull totem.)
But apparently it's more complicated because it takes a wiser elder, like a tribal grandmother, to notice what particular animals you attract--say a dragonfly in your hair--and tell you to look to those animals for answers and...just as my thoughts began to wander I heard him say "Great Blue Heron."
What? What about the Great Blue Heron? My head snapped up.
And what does it mean that a Great Blue Heron swooped down during a wedding anniversary ceremony...I didn't catch it all.
"It's a blessing."
Well, I tried.
During the hour I had to kill between lectures, I looked around at some of the vendors' booths. At one was a Magic Eye game, which is kind of like a Ouija board only with a pendulum. You hold the pendulum over the dot in the middle, which seems to be magnetized, and the pendulum swings to and fro to spell out answers to the question you're thinking. It was free.
OK. I picked it up.
"Will the Kansas City Wizards win their last match tonight?"
NO
And they didn't (sigh). But they didn't lose, either. They tied, ruining DC United's hopes to get a playoff spot. That made me happy, in a mean-spirited kind of way.
One more question: "Will Mike's employment status change for the better?"
I watched it swing. Yes, No, Luck and then...
Earth.
Earth? Really? I started to walk away but turned around. This was much too important a question to ask with my non-dominant hand. I picked it up again, this time left-handed.
Yes, No, Yes, Luck. It swung wildly. It started to settle on No, so I moved my hand just a little. And the final answer, ladies and gentlemen: Air. Or Money.
Money it is.

Do Not Pass Go

2009-10-23T17:00:00.000-07:00

It's all too easy to be glum about the way things have gone this year. But as it's Friday and the beginning of another beautiful weekend, I'd rather end on a happy note of gratitude.
Yes, that's right. I'm grateful that my prayers, such as they are, are being answered.
Back when another administration had just won it's second term and I was a little less jaded about church, I used to pray. I didn't pray for specific election results, or particular things to pass or fail in Washington. I didn't pray for public officials (or Supreme Court justices) to die. I'd just, once in a while, pray that the true character of elected officials would be revealed and that the people would take note. That left room for me being wrong.
And, as the term went on, my prayer was answered--event after character-revealing event. We had hurricanes and financial meltdowns (not that I'd ever pray for any of these things) and the officials reactions were noted.
I don't pray as often these days, but when I do, it's still the same prayer. And it's been making me nervous lately. Sure, we've had the push for health care reform. But it was beginning to look like the true character of this administration was to hand over everyone's money to the upper crust and trust in the same, sorry old "trickle down" theory that got us into so much trouble in the first place.
So I was heartened this week when the White House demanded 50 percent pay cuts and caps on benefits for the top management running companies that got so much government bailout money.
(Here's a story on Bloomberg.com.)
At last, evidence of a spine. Despite the fact that, just the day before, Goldman Sachs International adviser Brian Griffiths made news for defending the obscene pay packages the financial industry was preparing to shower on it's top earners. Sachs suggested banks make larger charitable contributions (a public relations ploy to salvage their reputations, I suppose.).
And he went on to say:
“It was the failed moral compass of bankers which was primarily responsible for why we had this crisis,” he said. “The question is: what can we do in the culture of institutions to make them behave in a more socially responsible way?” (whole story here)
Failed moral compass? Really?
If you want to see where these guy's moral compasses have been the past decade, check out this depressing chart of Wall Street bonuses versus average annual pay in the Huffington Post.
I've always wondered at the affinity that certain Christian church leaders have for laissez-faire capitalism. Considering that money changers, rich people and hypocrites were often sore points with Jesus, why is unrestrained capitalism the only economy accepted by them?
Capitalism has no moral compass, beyond self interest. Just ask Ayn Rand. The only point of capitalism is to make money, pure and simple. If that means using tax money of the strapped middle class for a second home, or throwing out a worker because his illness costs your company too much, so be it. Moral compasses are for clerics and philosophers.
So Pres. Obama. Keep it up.
Oh, and here's a great screed from Bob Herbert earlier this week in the New York Times.

Way to go, Einstein

2009-10-21T08:37:00.000-07:00

The inevitable happened yesterday. When I wasn't looking, the dog (Einstein) ripped a gash of several inches in the largest cushion of our sectional couch.
I'm doing a great job of staying very, very calm about the whole thing. See how steady I'm holding my hand? I haven't dissolved into a screaming fury or wept or done any of the other things I usually do when something is ruined that costs major money that I don't have to fix. Instead, I quietly step back and observe Roxie's life of the past year as if watching it happen to someone else. Psychologists call this "dissociation," I think.
After it happened, I spent some time perched on the arm of the couch, discussing it with Mike in rational, adult tones. The couch was already threadbare on this particular cushion, which could not be turned over. And it was probably seven or eight years old, and nothing lasts forever. And it wasn't my fault because I couldn't be expected to follow the dog around every second.
No angry rants about evil forces beyond my control. Just resigned acceptance. See? I'm learning.
Of course it was tempting to look over at the blank space next to the couch which was once occupied by the recliner that fell apart several years ago. Because we've been trying to live with little debt, we've gone years without replacing that recliner. Same with the minivan, which was hauled off to the Salvation Army when it could no longer be repaired for reasonable money. Living with one car has been a challenge, but we've managed.
But still, I can't help wondering whether trying to reduce debt has been such a great idea, given the circumstances we're now in.
Even before Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover, we were big believers in keeping our debt to a minimum. So while others lived it up, we went without a lot of things, and put off repairs. We did borrow for certain things: The house, the car, medical care for the dog, college. But except for vacations, which we repaid ourselves within a year, that was it.
We thought we were building a secure life for ourselves. But now that the recession has cut our income by a devastating amount, we find ourselves with a lot of big-ticket items on their last legs and no resources to repair or replace them.
I can't help wondering if we--and others like us--would have been better off if we'd just gone into debt and bought a new car or stove or couch that would last us through these bad times. We'd have the payments, sure, but there would have been hope of negotiating lower payments, or simply paying the minimum for a while until things get better.
Oh, well. Probably not. I've never been the type to gamble and anyway, it would take a huge personality shift for me to gamble my daughter's college on the hope of things getting better.
Guess I'm just not that much of an optimist.

It's Here

2009-10-16T10:07:00.000-07:00

Top of the list of things that cheer me up this week:
We have a book. It's no longer just in our imaginations. It's a real, concrete thing you can hold in your hands.
After thinking about it and planning it and worrying about it for months, it is now, miraculously, off the press and available for sale. I'd compare this to childbirth, but that would be trite (and anyway, childbirth is much, much more painful. No contest.)
Mike made the short trip over to the warehouse yesterday and picked up copies of Mike & Roxie's Vegetable Paradise so we could have some to show--and hopefully sell--at our booth in the Lenexa Chili Challenge this weekend.
I should be tap dancing on the tabletop, right?
But honestly, I feel a little...freaked out. It's been a long time since the last time I worked in the print media. My freelancing pretty much ended in the 1990s. In the time since, I've watched Mike's column and seen how people--some people--discuss things in the 2000s. And it doesn't encourage me to change any of my natural hermit tendencies.
Can we do a garden how-to book without death threats? I guess I'll find out. But it does feel good to have it out there. And hopefully it will entertain a few people and help some others get started on their own vegetable gardens.
The warehouse just got them yesterday, so they'll be in stores (the two that I know of are the Kansas City Store and Borders) in a few more days. But they're available online at The Kansas City Store right now. And of course, if you stop by the Chili Challenge, we'll sign you a copy.

That's better

2009-10-14T17:22:00.000-07:00

As I said in the last post, this week is devoted to digging myself out of the huge funk of last week and finding things to cheer me up.
Last week, I was not a pleasant person to be around. Well, ok. let's say I was even more unpleasant than usual. I moped. I picked fights. I obsessed on our finances.
But things are going to be different this week.
And, so far...so good. I forced myself to run and lift some weights. More than just once in the week. That's helped, no denying it. But with the downsizing at the six month mark and things not that much improved, it will take more than just exercising.
So today, in an effort to keep a happy face, I'll be writing exclusively about things that lift my spirits.

1. Well-timed focus groups. If you're lucky, someone will call at just the low point in your pay cycle and ask you to drop by and spout opinions about some products, for which you'll be paid. Of course, they'll also make you disavow any knowledge of their existence. Which is why I'm absolutely not saying I'm going to be in one, or that I've ever been in one, or what the subject matter would be. But it does cheer me up when they call, just at the precise right moment, and I have the time free and I qualify. Is all I'm saying.

2.Beautiful goals. The Wizards haven't been consistently that great this year, so I don't necessarily mean them. In this case, I'm talking about my daughter's goal Sunday. Not just a goal, but a game-winning goal. It was beautiful, an arcing shot at speed from the left side that looked so high I was sure it wasn't going in. Then at the last second it dropped down and into the sweet spot in the far corner of the net. And off her right foot, too. I replayed the mental tape of that goal several times, when I was having trouble getting to sleep.

3.Elephants that paint pictures. Or maybe I should say elephants who paint pictures. I came across this video, which has apparently been verified enough to be on National Geographic.

Now if she'd only sign it.

4. Engrish. Those badly translated signs from Japan (China or other Asian languages) are always fun. Here's one I lifted off the Oddee site. Click here for more examples from this site.

("A Time Sex Thing") Should have said, "articles for daily use."

The Loop of Doom

2009-10-12T08:50:00.000-07:00

"Doom loops," and "self vandalism" are two interesting terms that came up last week with regards to the Great Recession. (Seriously, we've got to think up a more colorful name for it.) They're the terms a Harvard professor uses to describe what happens in a company when cost-cutting becomes the only goal and everyone's afraid of being laid off. (Read Mike's column about it here.)
In a doom loop, the scared-s**less employees clam up just when their innovation and brain power is needed most. Because they are afraid of offending the boss in any way, they don't mention how some process could be done better or cheaper. And that leads to the "self vandalism."
The column's emphasis was on doom loops in the workplace. But I think they can also loop their evil way into your head and affect your home life as well.
Example: I didn't get in enough running (or do much of any exercise) last week, which put me in a very bad mood. The depressed and gloomy mood then kept me from running because, really, what's the use of anything? The more the days went by, the worse I felt and the less I wanted to exercise.
Instead, I did what I wanted to do, which was watch television. I watched the Food Network. I watched Alton Brown--not in his normally excellent "Good Eats" but in some bizarre staged 10th anniversary show of a type I would not normally sit still for. I did not cook, because I was so, so defeated from a heroic (and ultimately futile) attempt to keep the two-week grocery bill for the three of us under $200. I should have been able to do that with all the garden stuff, shouldn't I? Proof again that no matter what you do, you lose. Might as well lie still as a stick on the couch watching Food Network until you die.
In fact I've spent the past week curled up in a tight mental ball, wishing for time to pass more quickly (until the financial troubles have passed) and yet more slowly (so we have more time before the college forbearance loans expire). A tight little ball of fermenting cabbage in the dark and gloomy basement (another Alton Brown episode).
Doom loop indeed.
The trouble is, you're not very receptive to new money-making ideas when you're hunkered down, waiting for things to pass. And that's a bad thing indeed.
So this week is dedicated to thinking of things that cheer me up. For instance: I made up a toe-tapper about a...um...little walk I'd like to take the dog on. Humming it brightens things up a little. (Don't worry. I'd never really do any of those horrible things in the song.)
It's a start. Maybe I'll think of more things later. But right now, I've got to get my shoes on and head out to exercise.

Those optimistic Norwegians

2009-10-09T12:56:00.000-07:00

When I was more of a churchgoer, I used to hear a lot about "stepping out on faith." The concept: It isn't enough just to believe you know what God wants. You also have to act. And sometimes you have to trust in your beliefs enough to act, even though you're not sure what the outcome will be.
The big example of this usually came at pledge time, when everyone was urged to commit their dollars for the coming year, even though they were unsure of their future bank accounts. After all, "His eye is on the sparrow."
What makes me think of this today is the announcement that President Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize. This despite the fact that he has been president nowhere near long enough to have much of an impact on world peace. The committee apparently felt his election was enough to give hope of world peace after such a long reign by the Bush family.
It's the ultimate optimistic act. In naming Obama, the committee has stepped out on faith--warranted or not--that good things will come of his presidency.
Okay. So the message is, take action based on your trust in a good outcome.
But I don't mind admitting, even as a committed leftist, liberal hippie wannabe (fill in more character slurs of your choice) I have trouble with this concept, because it has so much to do with what's gone wrong with everything. Sure, that house (or car, or computer) is a little more than we can afford. But things are looking good. Let's overextend our credit--just for a year or so. And no, we don't have much saved for college, but with the way the stock market is going, it will double in no time. In fact, maybe the markets would be the best place for everyone's Social Security.
We all know how well that would have worked out.
Nevertheless, the Nobel committee apparently believes in stepping out on faith. Let's hope Obama doesn't let them (or us) down. As for me, I'm happy to reserve judgement until some data starts coming in.
What's that saying of Obama's I was so fond of a few months ago? Oh, yeah.
"I'm an optimist. Not a sap."