Ardee's Open Salon Blog

Austerity and bad parenting

Wed, 16 May 2012 15:05:27 -0400

The more I read about the Eurozone failures, the US mortgage foreclosures and the Republicans’ push to cut spending for everyone but rich people, the more I hear Daddy scolding a 5 year old for spending his allowance on something he wanted, but Daddy didn’t like.

Germany is having a field day, running roughshod over the southern European countries that aren’t as “serious” about strict monetary policy. There is also an aspect of the Protestants scolding the Catholics, but I’ll leave strictly religious analogies to someone else. But the social implications of the Puritanical approach to finance are relevant. The US, like Germany is a “Protestant” country psychologically as well - work hard, earn your way, save for a rainy day, etcetera.

But what happens when all jobs have disappeared? What happens when the financial deacons have eradicated those acts of economic faith in which we can prove our worth? We all go to financial hell, and they will pave our way there, because apparently anyone not born wealthy is guilty of original sin. And they are happy to punish us for it.

Yes, I get the feeling we are all being punished. There is a religious vibe to it, as well as a strict parent vibe. We are being judged, and judged harshly, for needing food, shelter and healthcare. And we were set up, Daddy gave us an extra dollar on purpose to see what we’d do with it and since we spent it on things he didn’t like, we have to give it back, with interest. And he really likes that part, taking money from his kids, to teach them a lesson.

When I think of southern Europe, I don’t think of large gleaming cities with acres of corporate jobs and financiers. Sure, there are some cities like that - Milan, for instance, and likely Madrid, Barcelona and the capitols. But the products of southern Europe, the jobs and the national incomes come largely from sources other than exports, banking and corporate jobs, incomes that are based on more volatile sources like tourism.*

Germany is a different type of economy, historically more industrial than rural. This is similar to the rural vs. urban divide in the US, with different needs and opportunities. Anyone not living in a city has little chance to work in a career that is well-paid, with a secure future and an upward track, that American Dream article of faith. The financiers have sold off the factories and farms in the hinterlands and bought up all the small competitors in the fly-over states. The only jobs left are hourly jobs at the corporate stores, like WalMart, at minimum wages, ridiculous hours and no benefits. Is that Protestant penance enough for them?

No, we can only go to bed without supper, after a good strapping. Nevermind that Daddy changed the rules, that he lured us with cash and then blamed us for spending it. Nevermind that he would rather punish us than give us a job to do to earn his trust again. Nevermind that he himself spends lavishly on weekends at Vegas and the horse races, but would rather see us starve and thrown out of the house than allow us to feel confident enough to do without him.

Let’s grow up, people. Greece is thinking of moving away from the Eurozone home, and it will be hard, but they can do it. France just fired their Daddy figure and is making plans to spend their allowance the way they damn well please. Parenting with fear, the Republican way, is being shown for the bullying stance that it is. We have to move away from home sometime, and it’s scary as hell. But the future awaits. There are some Democrats who want to help us go there, without making us feel badly about ourselves. And they want Daddy to pay his fair share to get us there.

*Most of the southern Euro countries have negligible exports that would allow repayment of the forced debt. Greece is 123rd on the list of 156 countries, with 20% of GDP in exports. Germany is 88th, with 33%. Here are some more economic comparisons of Germany to Greece. FYI, the US is 148th of 156, with 11% of GDP in exports

Birthday Card for Designanator

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 21:04:34 -0400

Happy Birthday John!

As promised some years ago, here is one of my photos of Providence taken in 1976. (full res here)

Born on April 22, the same day as Immanuel Kant, Vladimir Lenin, Odilon Redon, Vladimir Nabokov, Charlie Mingus and Bettie Page, no surprise that you are massively talented in art and music, creative, hard-working, intelligent, not to mention a puckish sense of humor.

Have a fantastic birthday!!!

Ham and Cranberry Breakfast Cookies

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:04:13 -0400

What a stressful morning and it’s not even over!

I just had some plumbing work done in the shop so I got up way too early, they wouldn’t bill my landlord so I had to cover the huge amount due, and my ex is coming in this afternoon to visit and… deliver bad news? It’s a soggy, rainy gray day, I have to finish cleaning the house for his “inspection” and I’m chilled, damp, sleepy, queasy and my cat wants me to love on her to the exclusion of everything else. Sounds like a baking opportunity!

What I really want is someone to make me a huge spinach omelette, with biscuits, honey and butter and a bottomless coffee mug, but since there's no one else here, I’ll bake up some cookies and make a second cup of home-made espresso and call it done.

I need sugar and salt in equal measures, so I’m adapting a no-egg cookie recipe I got off the web. It’s the kind of recipe that works for whatever you have on hand, and without a lot of OCD measuring - a perfect recipe for me.

I don’t like eggs in cookies, because I like the crispy, crumbliness of just butter on the grains. This recipe is originally called No Egg Chocolate Chip Cookies, and it calls for quick oats as well as flour, which I always have on hand. In fact, I like a cookie recipe that uses ingredients that, by themselves, are not tempting to eat and can sit in the pantry for months til I get the urge for cookies. Chocolate chips do tend to disappear, but cranberries are just as good. Sometimes I toss a handful of coconut in there, and nuts or sunflower seeds are good too. You can fudge this recipe entirely, putting more or less flour, oats, sugar or butter in and it will still work fine. I’ve given you the measurements for 6 cookies - plenty for me! - but just double it for a dozen.

So, here is my morning cookie recipe, and hope it cheers up your day too!

Ham and Cranberry Breakfast Cookies

makes 6 cookies

1/4 cup butter (I’ve made these with half this amount of butter; just add more milk)
1/4 cup sugar. brown or demerara preferred

1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup quick oats
1/4 cup corn meal

(or 3/4 cup of combined oats, flour or other ground grain)

1/8 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
1/8 tsp vanilla, optional if you’re making a sweet cookie

2 oz chopped ham and cranberries, in whatever proportion you prefer (or chocolate chips, or… )

Splash of milk, as needed

Preheat the oven to 350º
• Melt the butter in the preheating oven
• Mix all the dry ingredients
• Mix in the ham and cranberries, coating them with flour to keep them from clumping
• When the butter is melted, pour over the dry ingredients
(This is a trick I learned to make cornbread - the hot butter slightly cooks the grain and helps make it crispier. If you have chocolate chips, let the butter cool first or they’ll melt)
• Add the vanilla, if you are using it.
• Mix all together til it is just barely holding together. You can add milk in small splashes if it’s still too dry to form into cookies. The more milk, the less crumbly/crispy, you choose.
• Form the cookies on baking parchment using a spoon and your hands to mold them into shape.
• Bake about 25 minutes, or till they are brown on the bottom and firm when you press on them.

Yum!
OK, enough baking. Now I have to go clean the bathroom *sigh*

Post Racial or Race War? You choose

Sun, 8 Apr 2012 16:04:23 -0400

A dream I had last night, in three acts:

I was at the shop when two men, black men, walked into the shop with guns to rob me. I was afraid and directed the leader of the two towards the cabinet where I kept the cash, while the other stayed and talked to me. He was soft-spoken and non-threatening, but he held a gun on me while the other guy was in the other room. I felt attracted to this man, and wanted somehow to be on equal footing with him, so I was acquiescent and let them take the money and leave without incident. I walked out the back door after them, calmly, and talked with them while they got into their truck in the parking lot. The truck drove off in a normal fashion, and while I was unhappy to have lost the money, I wasn’t distraught. I knew that I only had about $50 in the cash drawer, and felt badly for the men that it was so little money. I looked up the hill, where a hip-hop club was located, and saw a ring of heavily armed policemen around the club, who were there to prevent violence. I thought, if I had only called out, screamed, warned them in some way, they could have caught the robbers. Because I acted like I knew the robbers, they got away. I felt stupid for doing so, but not terribly upset about it.

That night, at home in bed in the dark, I was suddenly awake and thought, ‘it was just a dream, I wasn’t robbed.’ And then I felt a weight on my legs, moving up the bed towards me, and I instinctively knew that it was the soft-spoken robber. I was frightened, too frightened to scream. In the way of dreams, my throat was constricted and I could barely breathe, much less scream for help, so instead, I pretended to snore, loudly, hoping it would make him less interested somehow. The weight stopped moving towards me, and suddenly my cat was under the covers, rootling around in a jerky fashion and I knew something was very wrong. The weight had disappeared, but I felt like there was someone in the dark watching me.

I picked up the cat and felt around on the floor for the legs of a chair that was in pieces, to use as a weapon. I rushed out the door, swinging the leg, but not encountering anyone. I rushed up the hill to the line of policemen, terrified that someone was following me, and I cowered in the parking lot. Suddenly there were shouts, and lights and gunfire and the soft-spoken robber was down on the ground in a pool of blood and headlights, dead. I thought, 'what have I done?'

And then I woke up, with the lights and the radio on and I realized I had fallen asleep reading. It took me a few minutes of blinking and connecting with reality to realize that, as real as the dream felt, it was just a dream and yes, I wasn’t robbed. Yes, I only have about $50 in cash at the shop, and I was still relieved, because it was a traumatic dream, almost a nightmare. And it reflected closely what I had been reading last night on the Internet about the copy-cat killings and racially motivated crimes that are happening in the wake of the Trayvon Martin murder.

Having a dream like that is really strange for me, because I can’t remember ever fearing theft, rape or murder committed by someone of color. I have never experienced a crime perpetrated by a black person in all my 60 years living in the South. Dreams are often echoes of our waking experiences and much of this dream reflects my past life. I was raped at gunpoint in exactly that manner ( a weight falling on me in the dark, in my own bed, but minus the snoring and the cat and what came after). But it was a white man who raped me. If I’m afraid of anyone, I’m afraid of white men with guns and a ring of policemen with assault rifles on the hill, far more forbidding than the robbers.

Even though I grew up in the South, in the last years of segregation, I was a post-racial child. My mother hung out in the jazz clubs in Chicago when she was young and said that she partied with Dizzy Gillespie and other black musicians in the 1940s. When I was in high school in the mid 60s, I went to the Jacksonville Coliseum to see James Brown and Aretha Franklin, and never felt strange or afraid, even though I was one of about 10 white people in the crowd. But I did consciously try to ignore race, hard as it was in those days.

I was driving at night in the warehouse district of Jacksonville and picked up two black kids, around 12 years old, who were hitchhiking or something. (As I type those words I’m amazed myself at what I risked at that age - this was around 1968, and there had been a lot of unrest in Jacksonville in earlier years.) I realized that my purse was in the back seat with them, and that there was a chance that they would steal it. I decided to just say something about it, and I said, if I was them, I would be tempted to steal my wallet, and if they were tempted and did steal it, would they please put the wallet in a mailbox so I could get it back. Sure enough, that’s what they did. And while I felt stupid for enabling a theft, giving them permission to steal from me, I also felt that I turned it into a gift instead by acknowledging the situation. I knew I could afford to lose the money and that they could use it. The part of my dream where the two men robbed me, and I treated it like a normal occurrence came directly from that memory, with the exact same regret tempered with… I don’t know, wanting to help in some way? It was an instinctual acknowledgement of how unfair and unnatural the situation was for both of us.

In the years that followed, those of African descent have been my heros, my friends, my colleagues, my neighbors. The very first election I could vote in, the 1972 Democratic presidential primary, I voted for Shirley Chisholm. My first political hero was Barbara Jordan, who was active in the Nixon impeachment. I have breathed a sigh of relief that the bad old days are mostly behind us. But now we are being led to question the hard-won tentative balance in our communities, by a small group of rich white men.

What I’m getting around to is that my nightmare is being sourced by current events, and it’s being planted in our minds for a reason. This entire travesty, the murder of an innocent boy, the shooting in Tulsa, the neo-Nazis coming out of the woodwork, the disgusting right-wing pundit racism, the comments on Facebook that blame and revile Obama, are all part of an effort to get us to fear the “other.” And it’s succeeding. These acts of violence prove it.

Those who have simmered in their hatred and resentments - of women, of Muslims, of people of color - are being roused into action with rhetoric and legislation that gives them permission to act. They are only a tiny minority of the population, those who are willing to commit these crimes, but the media enlarges on them, the right-wing punditry eggs them on and the intent of the rhetoric and legislation could still produce their desired result. I fear a violent backlash that would not have happened without the right wing and the media nudging it into being. They are trying to make white people afraid of Obama, afraid of black men, afraid enough to keep us from voting. They are cynically inciting violence to gain political power.

We are approaching a post-racial era, even with our subliminal fears and pockets of racism, even with the discrimination that stubbornly endures. I voted for Obama, and joyfully celebrated his victory. No matter what he has or hasn’t done as President, no matter that he has kept to the center and not fought hard enough for progressive issues, his election was a watershed, and he is an honorable and principled president. It is more important than ever to vote this year, and to re-elect Obama, to prove the right wing doesn’t determine the heart of this nation.

But even more important is the need to vote in State and Local elections to unseat the Republican super majorities that have put this all into motion. This whole racial episode - not to mention the unconscionable war on women and the restrictions on voting rights - originated with ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), which wrote the legislation for Stand Your Ground and other regressive laws that have had predictable and unfortunate consequences.

They intend to distract us with a race war, goading us to fight each other in the streets, while they take over our government and take away our rights. But we can keep that from happening. PLEASE!!! Vote a straight Democratic ticket in your state and local elections this November, and vote to recall any Republicans that are not running for reelection. If we take away their dominance in the state legislatures and key state and local offices, they won’t be able to manipulate our communities with their abusive push for power. It is so important to vote this year, while the judiciary is still independent enough to strike down the restrictions on voting rights. Next election cycle will be too late. No, the Democrats are not perfect, but they are also not conspiring as a bloc to take away our voting rights, our healthcare rights and safety on our streets for our men, women and children.

We have much more work to do and don’t need to be shoved back into the 50s again. I don’t want to have frightening dreams about you, and you don’t want to teach your children to be afraid of me. None of us want to return to the bad old days - that would be the true nightmare.

Big Sister advice

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:11:51 -0500

One of my sisters called me today, very depressed and not seeing the point of life. Being a good big sister, I unloaded my best platitudes on her and hoped that one of them worked. It's interesting that I usually need to hear this advice as much as she does. So I'm repeating it here so I can take it in, myself.

You are not stuck. You have lots of choices. You can stop the thing/job/relationship that you are in the middle of and do something else. Starting today, if necessary. Even if you need time to transition, you can start making plans.

Your job is not to save the planet or make everything right for everyone else. Your job is to make yourself happy, and take care of yourself. If you've gotten roped into fixing things for someone else, and it's wearing you out, start looking for the things that make you happy and formulate a plan to do those things.

Try not to spend too much time watching or reading the news. It's depressing, and you can't do anything to change it. But you don't have to. Remember, that's not your job, your job is to make yourself happy, and that is the only thing you have control over.

Make lists. Make lots of lists. Make lists of things you would feel great about devoting your life to. Be specific. Don't put down World Peace. Put down More Bike Trails or Clean Up My Street. Whatever would make a difference in YOUR world. Make a list of places you'd like to visit and places you'd like to live. Make a list of jobs that might be fun to do. Don't do anything with these lists yet, just fill them up and feel yourself get interested, even excited about what might come next.

If a relationship or a job isn't working out anymore, don't feel defeated because it didn't last. Nothing is forever, and the whole fairy-tale ending thing "And they lived happily ever after" is bullshit. Life is a succession of experiences, relationships and efforts. It's not easy, but it's ever-changing so you get new chances all the time to do something else. Life is a journey, not a destination, so treat it like a Grand Tour. Make a list of all the experiences you want to have and then make your life about achieving them.

Don't cut yourself off from people, and depend on one person (your SO) to make you happy. That does lead to isolation and a feeling of being cornered. Friends will always help you to get free and give advice, directions, ideas, and sometimes places to stay and resources to keep you going. The more friends, the more resources. But no one person can make your life worthwhile; that's your job.

Try to get away for a short time, even if it's just taking afternoons off to sit in the park or the library, and make these plans. Even better is a week in another town, maybe one you'd like to move to. Getting away from the routine helps you to think clearly; a change of scenery can change your thinking about things. Imagine what other people are doing with their life and see if any of it is intriguing.

When something in your lists starts to stick in your head, and you think you want to go in that direction, ask someone to help you formulate your plans, like a coach. That will keep you from getting stuck, and you will have the advantage of two heads. Or get several coaches for different aspects of your plan. Just be sure that you don't do it all by yourself.

Don't burn any bridges, but start to put dates on your plans. "By this date, I'll decide on a new city, by this date, I'll have an apartment rented, by this date, I'll take this new class," etc. You can always change your schedule, but at least you have a structure and some deadlines for research.

Money and jobs are scarce now, no doubt about it. But there are people in your life who will help, and even if you don't get the exact situation you wanted, you can still move closer to your ideal and you can definitely make a change in your current arrangements. Most importantly, ask for help. Believe it or not, people want to help you, and will find some way to get you started on your new journey. Even the person you are leaving behind might help you, if you can communicate how the change will make you so much happier.

If you can make even a small change in your life by taking these steps, you'll be going in the right direction and you'll gain confidence in your own ability to control your life. If you can get yourself un-stuck now, you never have to find yourself in a dead-end situation again. I know you can do it!

And call me anytime. I'm here for you.

(Hey, I haven't heard back from you. Call and let me know how you are doing.)