Recession Zen

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

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?

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

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

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...

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?

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.