The Three Faces of June (Minus One)

Read with your best Basil Rathbone impersonation. 

  My mother, the quiet some go so far as to say demure, elderly woman lives a simple life in a subdivision. Oh, and she has expressed this particular persona so well for so long that she has fooled almost all the people all the time.  But mum has a dirty little secret.

  June's pains seem harder to get a handle on than a greased swine. Just when the Nortriptyline seemed to be taking effect and her nerve pain was subsiding, the pain mysteriously started up again. 

  Back to the doctor and can you believe it, as it turns out June has been living a double life. During the day, she is an 87 year old woman with a plethora of medical problems, but by night, while I sleep she has been sneaking down to the ocean for a skinny dip.

  Yes, to the layman it might seem that I have a screw loose, but wait... there's proof.  

  What proof you ask?  

  And I'm so glad you asked. 

  Yes! SHE HAS SWIMMER'S EAR! Aha! - Ha,..ha! - the true June revealed at last!

  When the doctor stepped out I quickly confronted her with - “How did you get swimmers ear pray tell, mother?” She gave me that coy little smile and said in a weak and quavering tone - "well, I donno honey!" 

  I DON'T KNOW HONEY, my eye! I may have been born at night, but it wasn't last night.  Although this clever subterfuge, the weak and quavering tone, the effort to look old and small, has worked many times before, this time,…this time, would prove to be June’s Waterloo!

  Too much evidence was stacked against her.  First and foremost I feel compelled to address the seemingly out-of-character skinny dipping activity.  The truth is, June does not own a bathing suit!  Further, she would not jeopardize her undergarments by exposing them to salt water. 

   In addition, her constant refrain has been – “Philip, my ear is draining.”  And where is this liquid coming from? She claims it started IN her ear,… “oh please, give me a little credit, mother”, I said in response to that little red herring! 

  And then there’s the seaweed fertilizer she uses? She claims to have purchased it at the local nursery for its high nitrogen properties.  Only a fool would fail to see the link – sea and seaweed,… unmistakable!

  And, I am awakened in the night by strange lights that appear in the hallway.  When I get up the lights go out.  Funny noises, ...yes funny,…noises coming from end of the house where the two car garage is.  And car sounds at odd hours of the night, on the street, barely audible at first, then the sound of spinning tires from round the corner. Yes, very strange indeed.

  But, even armed with this incontrovertible evidence to support my brilliant analysis, I decided to drop my investigation into this very serious matter.  I realized that others, when shown the evidence might come to a different conclusion and may even consider me a killjoy.  So I thought, "You've got to lighten up Philip, let her have her fun.  You don’t want the moniker Killjoy do you?”

  Obviously I had to subtly let her know, that I was not fooled by her little obfuscation, even as I relaxed the bonds of her captivity. So,...I told her, though she vehemently denied any unauthorized submersions, or any nocturnal dalliances involving an automobile, “if you must have your fun, don't do the back stroke, as it unnecessarily exposes your ears to the intrusion of water."

  I have to hand it to the old girl, as she remained stone faced, her expression did not give away one iota of understanding. It was as if she had not comprehended one word I said or even giving the impression that she thought I was speaking to her. All she answered was, “I think I’ll go to bed now.”  Ladies and gentlemen, it was only 7 pm. Clearly this was an attempt to escape judgement!

  That flippant response almost motivated me to reopen the discussion, but alas, she was already trundling down the hallway, deep in conversation with Seattle, her cat about the various possible hiding places of her beloved cane, allegedly a cherished gift from a mysterious saint-like person residing in Oklahoma.

  As a last attempt to give some evidence, at least in my own mind, that I am faithfully discharging the fiduciary responsibilities to my mother’s welfare, I fired one more shot across the proverbial bow, so to speak.

  “You will take heed of what we talked about, mother,” said I, blindly, into her dressing area.

  Dismissively, she answered “What was that? Have we been talking?”

  Of course, of course, I should have expected the short-term-memory-loss ploy.  But again, she was one step ahead of me, even though I should have been prepared, as she seems to be using it more and more of late.  I decided to drop the subject, to take it up at a more opportune time.  In the meantime, we treat her mysterious otitis externa with Amox-clav and ear drops.

  She takes the amoxicillin-clavulanic acid (pills of size more suited for creatures bearing hooves) and for my part, I have increased the security around here.  I'm sure that if I wait long enough, I will discover her nighttime beach visit - modus operandi, much in the same way I discovered her clandestine bungee jumping by the marks on her ankles. Naturally, she also denies any involvement in such thrill seeking, and claims some other innocent reason for the marks.  Indeed!!!....

  Ever vigilant,

Phantasmically yours,

Philip

Don’t Let a Good Administrator Go Bad

    You may remember the 70’s ad campaign with the catch phrase “don’t let a good boy go bad.”  It was a campaign to ask car owners not to leave their keys in the ignition – which was apparently a problem back then.  The idea is that your keys would tempt the otherwise innocent young man to steal your car.  Regardless of how you feel about the original public service announcement, the concept is useful today.  Today, the “good boys” are administrators and the “car with the keys in the ignition” is anything that can be shown to produce profits for the “one percent”. These administrators are everywhere and include CEOs of companies, college deans, provosts, presidents and hedge fund managers.  Almost anybody who has the power to do so, does take advantage of those “keys in the ignition”.  That brings up a couple of questions such as; just because you can turn those keys, should you?  And, is there really any alternative to this behavior or  can you entice them with something other than the keys?

      How do college presidents and other public and private administrators contribute to the wealth of the top of the private sector?  By failing to lead, failing to step up and oppose the defunding of education, or a city, or a county, or healthcare, or aid to single mothers, or elder care,… etc.  These structures are not strapped for cash because there is no cash, but because the cash is going more and more into the pockets of the rich, virtually unopposed by our leaders.  Coming from a different angle, when an administrator you know steps up and takes a leadership role, it is shocking, and usually makes the news.  Unfortunately, this is a rare occurrence and is considered foolhardy by his/her brethren who long to move into the commissar class. There is a good chance that the administrator you know who behaved in this fashion is no longer an administrator today.

      What are these administrators up against while they are eying those keys in ignitions? Certainly their foe is a strong one, but nonetheless it is the responsibility of our leaders to promote the general welfare of the people. Certainly the forces arrayed distract them from this responsibility are organized and extremely persistent; greed as a tool of the powerful has been with us from the beginning.  Like an airborne virus, it can randomly affect any of us; it is also concentrated in what we recognize as the community of ultra-rich.  Don’t be fooled by corporate philanthropy, as it is just a tiny fraction of the spoils, designed to place a fog around the truth. With the current structure of incentives and promotions (the path to the top), refusing the keys in the ignition will doom the administrator to a low level position in the hierarchy of power, or more likely reject him or her entirely.  If you find someone of Bill Gates’ stature, who got to that level of riches by a different model, rest assured that you have found an anomaly.

      How do we help them make more equitable decisions – “to promote the general welfare”?  First we bring that old gem back from its grave out into the light of day.  Most people don’t know that this concept is encoded in the preamble of our constitution, yep - it was an original tenet of the document.  If it was good enough for Madison, it should be good enough for our bosses (and us).  Presently that is not a criterion for the mark of a good administrator public or private; rather our administrators get promoted by ignoring the general welfare and promoting the welfare of the few.  This is because they see no other alternative and indeed, all choices that lead upward in the hierarchy look like keys in ignitions.  The situation is how it is now because of the careful manipulation of the corporate model by those at the top to benefit themselves. We have the power, through elected officials, through the voting box, and through push back to corporations, to change the culture of success.  It is a tall order, but it needs to be done.  The first step to help our administrators not go bad is to correct the corporate model.  Great reform is necessary. We the people used to dictate to corporations, but now that is reversed. No sweeping reform will ever be possible when corporations are given the status of personhood, effectively creating “super” people who game the system.  After reform, company charters, laws, etc. can be changed to create a corporate culture of promoting the general welfare of the people.

     Lastly, I am not naïve enough to believe this tenet has ever been realized in the United States of America or perhaps anywhere else in the world.  However, our constitution and our democracy both enable us to change the game and take away our excuses.   We can continue to let good administrators go bad or we can remove the keys and thus the temptation and move forward towards providing the best for all the people!

Fears or Failures

under revision

How We Save Money

Our local NPR affiliate, KHSU, was on this morning begging for donations again.  Are they increasing in frequency, those fundraisers?  No matter, that is the topic for another blog.  I am writing about the little book of coupons you get if you give them a check that passes a certain threshold of giving.  Here's the pitch.  If you donate amount X you'll make it back and more by using the coupon book, so in reality, joining the station costs you nothing. Let's examine that hypothesis.  First, you have the amount you send in to the station.  Let's say the threshold is $10 a month for the next year.  That comes out to $120 dollars, or approximately 0.02 cents a minute if you listened the station 24 hours a day every minute for a year.  Man that's cheap. Then, when you get your coupon book in the mail, you get all these buy-one-get-one-free offers from businesses in our local area and as far away as Ashland, OR.  So, you go to a show in Ashland and you spend 60 bucks on gas, another 100 on the hotel, and then 55 bucks on one ticket to a play and you get one 'free'.  Then there's food - you have to dine out on the trip - and other incidental expenses.  Let's call that 80 dollars.  So, to the listeners who bought the membership in KHSU for one year, this is how to save money.  For me, saving money is an entirely different enterprise.  Example: I get my paycheck and I go down to the bank and I deposit 55 bucks into my savings account. 

Let's review.  Saving money to me does not involve spending money, but apparently spending $415 dollars on a weekend in Ashland is the same for the subscriber (and the promoters) as me putting 55 bucks in my savings account; because they only payed for one theater ticket.  However, the only way you could convince me that those coupon books save you anything is if they were for PGE, or for some other expense that you could not avoid.  Now, that would be savings, because your normal budget, perhaps requiring you to expend a routine monthly fraction of your income, could be reduced by the coupon.  That reduction could be placed into your savings account and real savings would have taken place.

Is it any wonder that the world is in the shape it is, when we have promoters and consumers both believing that spending is the same as saving.  Folks, in your quest to retrieve the original $120 is based on a false premise.  That coupon book is a spending device and not a savings device.  I had hoped that KHSU would promote truth in advertising, but clearly that hope was in vane. The promotion, if offered in its reality would still be a good one.  I would change the pitch though to this.  If you want to support your community while spending your hard earned cash, get our coupon book and spend less.  You will pay the non-recoverable cost of 120 bucks and we will offer you this coupon book.  Although you will not get your original $120 back, you will realize a decreased output, if you are continuing a traditional amount of eating out, etc.

Poverty Is Not Cultural

Michael Harrington popularized the theory of "Culture of Poverty" in his book "The Other America"; later pushed by his drinking buddy Moynihan and becoming the cornerstone of conservative ideology since Reagan's day. Harrington's book galvanized the 'better people' (i.e. the non-poor) liberals and conservatives alike - into action. Readers and adherents understood that 'poor people' are different than 'us'. They have no impulse control, base instincts, and really need someone to guide them away from their indulgences and excesses. Money in the hands of 'the poor' deepens their depravity, while money in the hands of the "better people" is in its natural habitat. I guess that is why I am worried about buying gas for my car so I can visit my mother, instead of thinking about building a new library. Being in the 99% I can't seem to see beyond my immediate needs and imagine the Zastrow Library.

Now that the 'middle class' is sliding relentlessly into the ranks of 'the poor' perhaps it is time to realize that being 'poor' isn't cultural, it comes from a shortage of money (or resources if you like). While 'working hard' works for some, working hard alone doesn't get you riches.  The "working hard story" is the mythology passed through the ranks of the 1% and the wannabee 1%. Just ask a ditch digger or someone working 3 part-time minimum wage jobs to pay someone elses retirement dream (rent). It's more luck than anything - being in the right place at the right time, or being in the right group. I won't say what the right group has been in the country, you figure it out.

And now the 1% wants you to shovel more their way, by getting rid of the protections for the rest of us. "If we could only get rid of regulations..." they say "it'll be happy days again." What they mean is happier days for them and misery for those not willing to sell their soul to get into the 1%. Gee, all one need do is get someone in a third world country to put thousands of people into sweat shops and voilà, up go the value of your shares. Oh, those people volunteered to be in the sweatshops? Well yeah, I guess you are technically correct,... they wanted to feed their children and hopefully eat themselves. But they could console themselves by knowing that their "better people", backed by the US CIA, are in their mansion munching on caviar. In the voice of Daniel Tosh - wake up people on the side of the room who think they are immune to poverty. Or, join that country club and hope that the "better people" recognize you as one of theirs.  Wherever you end up, it won't be your personal culture that got you there.