I'm hearing a lot about doom lately.
From time to time I hang out in the comments section of a real estate and economics blog called Calculated Risk. CR, as we call the blogger, is a well-informed and level-headed analyst who warned of the housing market collapse and the resultant credit crisis long before anyone "respectable" paid attention. These days CR is very respectable indeed; when his co-blogger Tanta died, the New York Times ran her obit. Well, Tanta was amazing.
And CR is still there, following economic developments, analyzing them, and converting them into cool charts and graphs that anyone can understand -- we call it chart porn.
CR doesn't buy the economic recovery talk. What improvement there is will tail off as soon as the stimulus money is spent, because private industry is still laying off. So show his charts. But he's not waving the bloody flag and calling the End Times, because he's responsible and level-headed and will only say what his charts can show.
But not so much can be said for his Commentariat, the people who hang out in the blog's Comments section. It's a cohesive group that has mainly been with CR for years: it includes people with handles like Angry Saver, Merchants of Fear, Resistance is Feudal, Disempowered Paper Pusher, Byzantine Ruins, creditcriminalslovetrap, and"1 currency now yogi." People with Views.
A lot of these guys are interested in doom; it's not all they talk about, but the subject comes up over and over. Many CR commenters are very financially astute. They can intelligently discuss complex financial transactions that I don't understand, or dissect the policies of the Federal Reserve with merciless precision. But they're angry and nervous, many of them -- who wouldn't be, these days? And they do what angry people do when they're part of a system that they dislike or fear: speculate about its downfall.
Oh, the varieties of doom that they discuss: Mad Max breakdown-of-civilization doom. Peak Oil energy-crunch doom. Hyperinflationary doom that destroys the savings of sober and responsible Americans (like the Calculated Risk Commentariat). Death-of-American-Industry doom with optional Chinese economic takeover. World economic collapse doom with resulting war and carnage: stock up on gold bullion and farmland and build your own private doomstead in which to ride out the troubles.
The doom talk gets so thick that I once proposed that the Commentariat organize a Doomstock festival where all the proponents of the different doom scenarios would give seminars and and sell survival merchandise. Twenty-four-hour death-metal bands on three stages. A weapons check at the door --no entry without weapons.
Nobody took me up on it. Pity. And the doom talk goes on; it kicks up whenever the government pours more money into the big Wall Street banks who caused so much of the problem; whenever proposals to reform the financial system are shot down or replaced with weak proposals; whenever the government pumps out tens of billions more to prop up the stock market, or housing prices, or "cash for clunkers" deals .
But the problem with talking doom all the time is that you start to think it's inevitable. Worse, you get impatient for it, start counting the hours until doom comes and sweeps away all the people that have caused all the problems of the world. And just happens to prove that you were right all along.
I call it millenial thinking. Every thousand years come a new millenium. And something about that big, round "000" number makes evangelists declare the end times, the second coming of Christ and the coming of Judgment Day. A time when all the unbelievers will be swept away to eternal agony and the pure and faithful will get their eternal reward in an air-conditioned afterlife. Makes people feel good to know that the end is near and the evil will be punished: for a value of "evil" defined by you or whatever leader or guru or priest you've put your faith in.
Right now nearly everybody in the nation feels pain and insecurity; so it's understandable that everybody's hoping for an end. And when you've got no leader you trust to bring you to brighter times, doom is all you've got to fall back on -- the end, at least, even if no new beginning. Whether you're a certain type of Christian, or the Calculated Risk commentariat, or even some guy standing in line to see a blockbuster film about the coming 2012 Mayan apocalypse in which Earth itself tires of mankind's depredations and decides to strike back (opening in two weeks, by the way).
Now -- doom happens, there's no question. The dinosaurs are no longer here to crop the grass along interstate highways. Mere changes in wind patterns have vanquished whole civilizations: the rain stops coming, doom comes instead.
Or, the barbarians overruns the gates, convert you all to their religion, and 20 years later it's as if your civilization was never there. Or the goats eat the bark off all the trees and the desert rolls in and covers your cities. Or a nation weakens and is overcome with corruption and collapses under its own weight so badly that people start hoping for barbarians to show up. Genocide itself is just one part of the spectrum of doom.
What looks like doom can also be transition: the end of one regime might mean a better one takes its place. Though there's no guarantee; it might be worse. That's the rock and the hard place: things only tend to change when the specter of doom hangs close. That can be the only thing that scares the nation into taking a new course. But sometimes no new course is taken -- or the wrong one -- and doom really comes.
What I know is that a change for the better here and now will not come without pain, and lots of doom-calling. That's the way it's always been. It was that way in the Great Depression, it was that way in the Progressive Age at the turn of the 20th Century, it was damned well that way during the Civil War and the decades of struggle for equal rights that followed. No matter how bad things are, there's always somebody profiting from it; and they don't step out of the way until they're pushed out. Ever.
In the meantime, too much doom can be hazardous to your mental health. Accept that things will change. Accept that there will be pain. Take comfort in the fact that we will, as a nation, probably come out the other side. Eventually. It may not be fun, but we always have before. It's a lot more fun than planning your doomstead or converting all your cash to gold and moving to Belize. Though it doesn't hurt -- it never hurts -- to put some cash aside and pay down your debts.
And there are other ways to relate to doom. One of the most creative members of the Calculated Risk Commentariat is a guy named Pavel Chichikov. He's no particular expert on finance or real estate, but he's been around awhile. And he's a poet and writer. Every once in a while he caps one of the group discussions with a poem. Once, when I believe the commentariat was moaning about how economic collapse might bring civilization to a halt, Pavel posted this:
NOT A HUMAN LIGHT REMAINED
Copyright 2009 , Pavel Chichikov
She saw the stars above the city,
Every light extinguished then,
Streets were severed arteries
Of city light and city men
All had stopped except the wide
Returning of the universe,
Silence and the long divide
Abolished between them and us
Then the stars descended, shared
Reflections in the window panes,
In all the padded thoroughfares
Not a human light remained
Joyful planets wandered by,
Only some disdained the sight:
Merchants who could never buy
The constellations of the night
It's always good to have a poet in the room. They can put things into perspective. Like this poem on the greed that has brought us to the place we are now:
IF THEY KNEW
Copyright 2009, Pavel Chichikov
Mammon on the platform sits,
Heavy is the weight of it,
Sycophants, and all devout,
(Ponderous the god and stout)
Bending to the ground who bear
Golden Mammon through the air,
Belly to the knees they bend,
Will their service never end?
Die they will and others bear
Up the poles that others share,
Even pay for what they grip,
Mammon calls it partnership
If the bearers let it go
It will crush them, that they know,
Because of Mammon’s heavy weight -
Ownership and real estate
There is something else it rules,
Disunity of many schools,
Babel is where it was made,
Carried since by this parade
Words to think about, made more memorable by poetry. Much more interesting than doom itself are those aspects of human nature that tend to bring it about. And those are always worth ruminating on.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Sick
My mother liked to tell a funny story about being out on her own during the Great Depression. It involved a teenaged girl nobody wanted much -- Mom -- hunger, and fear. Mom thought it was a hoot. I suppose that I don't have her perspective.
Mom was the youngest of six children; her father died when she was five. In that time and place welfare did not really exist, nor did aid for widows -- especially if they were immigrants. So Grandma remarried ASAP. To another immigrant, a bootlegger who didn't expect to raise someone else's children for very long. So she pushed her kids out of the house as fast as she could. She got them places on farms, with dairymen, even forced the oldest daughter into early music with a bona fide abuser -- who she later divorced. (When I was young, I was warned that Auntie Ex was a little peculiar. It took them decades to tell me why.)
As the youngest by far, Mom got to stay around the longest. But in eighth grade she was told to quit school and make her own way in the world. I believe that Grandma gave her the advice "Don't have children," on her way out the door or not long after. You could call Grandma a lot of things -- people did -- but "sentimental" was not one of them.
So Mom found work as a mother's helper -- a live-in housekeeper -- before she was 15. She worked for a lawyer's family: room, board, and $10 a month or so for full-time work. Fortunately, the lawyer's family treated her well enough.
And that was the problem. Mom ate with the family every night. She ate what they ate, in precisely the same portions. But they didn't eat much, and Mom did -- she did all the heavy work around the house, and she was a teenager besides. "They'd serve one piece of bread with the meal," she'd moan, rolling her eyes. "One piece!"
Soon she was going to bed hungry every night -- and waking up hungrier. But she was too afraid to ask for more food. Who knew what might happen? In 1935, in a small city in farm country, in the Great Depression.
So Mom suffered for a while until she just couldn't take it anymore and raided the refrigerator in the middle of the night. She found something that looked like a cake of deviled ham sitting on a plate on a low shelf. She guessed that no one would miss it, and she gobbled it down. "It tasted so goo-oood," she told me later.
The next morning, the lady of the house asked the world at large -- in honest puzzlement -- where the dog's food had gotten off to. (Mom always laughed uproariously at this point in the story.)
Mom broke down and tearfully confessed. Questions were asked, and answered; and the lawyer and his wife, because they were humane people, waved aside the entire matter and began feeding my mother honest-sized meals. End of story.
Last week an acquaintance joked that, if the economy continued on its downward course, she'd be able to get people to clean her house for nothing but meals and a sleeping pallet in the garage. Then she'd feel rich. I didn't find that particularly funny -- nor much of anything else these days. So I told her the story -- not as a joke, the way Mom presented it, but as a story of what it's like to be desperate in desperate times. Mainly, this woman took the point -- she'd just been snarking.
"But," she added, "those people didn't mean to starve her. They just didn't understand."
Completely true. Mom held those people no ill will. Heck, she was even a dutiful daughter to Grandma after she married my dad. She'd give me a smack for telling you this story from the point of view I've used.
My mom needed a place to be in the Great Depression, and the lawyer's family gave it to her. I suppose they felt they were doing her a favor, and they probably were. Of course they could afford to be generous -- they were wealthy by the standards of the day. That little ag town had some very wealthy people in it -- Mom used to say -- and I'm sure the lawyer did well serving them.
And the lawyer's family got something back for their largesse: a clean house at a cheap price. If you costed out Mom's wages and adjusted for inflation, it'd come around to $1.50-$2.00 an hour.
To put it in perspective: if somebody you knew hired a homeless 13-year-old, took her home to clean their house and paid a bed and $2/hour for full-time work: what would you think of that? Especially if they made no time for her to continue going to school, and they thought they were doing her a favor? Mom never did go back to school; she never got her high school diploma; and she never got a good job in her life.
Yes, it's all in the perspective; Mom had hers, I have mine.
Now, the only reason I've been thinking about this is that I've been sick lately. Twice. This has not been a good few weeks. Sure, I took some time off, but somehow staying home sick is almost worse than going to work. Staying home was fun back in elementary school when you weren't really that sick, but your mother would take no chances and it was all about a long day of your favorite toys and books, unlimited television, and Campbell's Cream of Tomato soup. The vapor off a hot bowl ot Campbell's C of T would instantly eat through the dried snot in any blocked sinus or plugged nostril. You didn't even have to actually consume the stuff -- just sniff.
But when you're older and stay home sick, there's nobody to fetch the Campbell's -- because we're all two-earner households these day. And all the chores you know you have to do just stare at you all day. This time I ended up doing the laundry on my sick days from work, even though I really was ill and felt like crap.
So I had descended into a grim mood by Day Two, when the postperson delivered the newsletter from the local food bank.
I give to the food bank because so many poor people around here have a hard time getting enough food all year. These are working poor, most of them. But much of the work around here is seasonal and low-paying. Agriculture. Hotels and amusement parks. Restaurants. Construction (not the good-paying kind). So they need the food bank to fill in the gaps in their income. And this year it's worse than ever.
The back pages of the newsletter bulged with long lists of people and organizations who'd given gifts to the food bank -- thoughtfully sorted by gift amount. People from all walks of life and levels of society. And they're all people who care, and want to help. I have no doubt. I recognized a certain number of names in the back of the book. Some of them are the hidden princes and princesses among us -- not because they give a lot, but because they give all they can.
Then I looked at the front of the book, which listed the food bank board of directors and the advisory council. It was full of pictures of the officers and directors posing at posh fundraisers: laughing, wealthy, and partying for a cause. I know they're wealthy, because I know of many of them. And the others I bloody well looked up on the Internet. Sick people have time on their hands.
There was among them a corporate officer of a giant berry grower. An owner of car washes. The proprietor of the landscaping company that charges my neighbor 'way too much. An executive from the Seaside Company, which operates the Boardwalk amusement park and hotels and restaurants. Another grower. A government rep or two. The widow of a construction industry giant. Yet more growers. And bankers. Lots and lots of bankers to fund the growers and the landscapers and the tourist businesses and the construction companies.
And it occurred to me that all the rest of us who give to the food bank -- all us folk in the back of the newsletter -- are doing a wonderful service to these fine pillars of the community in the front of the newsletter, these businessmen who employ so many. Because these fonts of charity don't pay high enough wages to keep their workers out of poverty, or employ them long enough every year to enable them to feed themselves.
How kind of the rest of us to help out these paragons of free enterprise with our money. Because if their workers didn't get food aid, they couldn't actually afford to stay here on what these fine capitalists pay. With our charity we help the businessmen among us maintain a stable workforce to underpay.
Did I mention that many of the directors and advisors of the food bank -- not all, but many -- are members of the political party that values personal initiative, free enterprise, and low taxes? You can look that up, too. I'm sure they think charity is fine, though; charity is an individual choice, not a government mandate. And it's tax deductible.
I'm sure that many of these people are decent to know face-to-face -- in one case I know that personally. And I'm sure they're happy to throw some spare cash at the food bank and even some spare time at fundraising so that people at the low end of the economic food chain don't starve.
But why should we leave it up to them? Why should the problem of starvation in society be dealt with by society's spare change, given at the discretion of the wealthy. And by the rest of us, unknowingly propping up a bad system for its owners while doing good?
And if I were to wave my magic wand and say, "We're raising taxes on the half-percent of Americans who control close to half its wealth, we're going to make sure that nobody ever goes sick and hungry again" -- what do you think those fine and charitable growers and amusement park owners and construction giants and bankers would do?
Would they be happy and say, "Thank God, at last the poor among us are safe and secure." Or would they fight the proposal tooth and nail with bags of money and threats and dire warnings? Would they say, "No, no, we won't make enough money, our competitiveness will be destroyed, thousands of jobs will be lost, business will disappear, government will waste all the money..."
My answer would be, if your business can't make money unless it pays its employees too little to live and thrive on, you don't have a business. You have a racket. And throwing a few coins that you can easily spare at the people you keep poor doesn't make you any less a source of misery in the world. No matter how hard you exhort the rest of us to feed those poor people. If individual charity alone could solve injustice and inequality, it would have done it by now.
Yes, I'll still give to the food bank, because it helps the starving. But remember -- they're not the only ones being helped.
Live for a world where no one is hungry and no one is sick and no one is afraid. And the wealthy have to throw fundraisers for each other to buy Porsches and third homes and vacations in Tuscany.
Mom was the youngest of six children; her father died when she was five. In that time and place welfare did not really exist, nor did aid for widows -- especially if they were immigrants. So Grandma remarried ASAP. To another immigrant, a bootlegger who didn't expect to raise someone else's children for very long. So she pushed her kids out of the house as fast as she could. She got them places on farms, with dairymen, even forced the oldest daughter into early music with a bona fide abuser -- who she later divorced. (When I was young, I was warned that Auntie Ex was a little peculiar. It took them decades to tell me why.)
As the youngest by far, Mom got to stay around the longest. But in eighth grade she was told to quit school and make her own way in the world. I believe that Grandma gave her the advice "Don't have children," on her way out the door or not long after. You could call Grandma a lot of things -- people did -- but "sentimental" was not one of them.
So Mom found work as a mother's helper -- a live-in housekeeper -- before she was 15. She worked for a lawyer's family: room, board, and $10 a month or so for full-time work. Fortunately, the lawyer's family treated her well enough.
And that was the problem. Mom ate with the family every night. She ate what they ate, in precisely the same portions. But they didn't eat much, and Mom did -- she did all the heavy work around the house, and she was a teenager besides. "They'd serve one piece of bread with the meal," she'd moan, rolling her eyes. "One piece!"
Soon she was going to bed hungry every night -- and waking up hungrier. But she was too afraid to ask for more food. Who knew what might happen? In 1935, in a small city in farm country, in the Great Depression.
So Mom suffered for a while until she just couldn't take it anymore and raided the refrigerator in the middle of the night. She found something that looked like a cake of deviled ham sitting on a plate on a low shelf. She guessed that no one would miss it, and she gobbled it down. "It tasted so goo-oood," she told me later.
The next morning, the lady of the house asked the world at large -- in honest puzzlement -- where the dog's food had gotten off to. (Mom always laughed uproariously at this point in the story.)
Mom broke down and tearfully confessed. Questions were asked, and answered; and the lawyer and his wife, because they were humane people, waved aside the entire matter and began feeding my mother honest-sized meals. End of story.
Last week an acquaintance joked that, if the economy continued on its downward course, she'd be able to get people to clean her house for nothing but meals and a sleeping pallet in the garage. Then she'd feel rich. I didn't find that particularly funny -- nor much of anything else these days. So I told her the story -- not as a joke, the way Mom presented it, but as a story of what it's like to be desperate in desperate times. Mainly, this woman took the point -- she'd just been snarking.
"But," she added, "those people didn't mean to starve her. They just didn't understand."
Completely true. Mom held those people no ill will. Heck, she was even a dutiful daughter to Grandma after she married my dad. She'd give me a smack for telling you this story from the point of view I've used.
My mom needed a place to be in the Great Depression, and the lawyer's family gave it to her. I suppose they felt they were doing her a favor, and they probably were. Of course they could afford to be generous -- they were wealthy by the standards of the day. That little ag town had some very wealthy people in it -- Mom used to say -- and I'm sure the lawyer did well serving them.
And the lawyer's family got something back for their largesse: a clean house at a cheap price. If you costed out Mom's wages and adjusted for inflation, it'd come around to $1.50-$2.00 an hour.
To put it in perspective: if somebody you knew hired a homeless 13-year-old, took her home to clean their house and paid a bed and $2/hour for full-time work: what would you think of that? Especially if they made no time for her to continue going to school, and they thought they were doing her a favor? Mom never did go back to school; she never got her high school diploma; and she never got a good job in her life.
Yes, it's all in the perspective; Mom had hers, I have mine.
Now, the only reason I've been thinking about this is that I've been sick lately. Twice. This has not been a good few weeks. Sure, I took some time off, but somehow staying home sick is almost worse than going to work. Staying home was fun back in elementary school when you weren't really that sick, but your mother would take no chances and it was all about a long day of your favorite toys and books, unlimited television, and Campbell's Cream of Tomato soup. The vapor off a hot bowl ot Campbell's C of T would instantly eat through the dried snot in any blocked sinus or plugged nostril. You didn't even have to actually consume the stuff -- just sniff.
But when you're older and stay home sick, there's nobody to fetch the Campbell's -- because we're all two-earner households these day. And all the chores you know you have to do just stare at you all day. This time I ended up doing the laundry on my sick days from work, even though I really was ill and felt like crap.
So I had descended into a grim mood by Day Two, when the postperson delivered the newsletter from the local food bank.
I give to the food bank because so many poor people around here have a hard time getting enough food all year. These are working poor, most of them. But much of the work around here is seasonal and low-paying. Agriculture. Hotels and amusement parks. Restaurants. Construction (not the good-paying kind). So they need the food bank to fill in the gaps in their income. And this year it's worse than ever.
The back pages of the newsletter bulged with long lists of people and organizations who'd given gifts to the food bank -- thoughtfully sorted by gift amount. People from all walks of life and levels of society. And they're all people who care, and want to help. I have no doubt. I recognized a certain number of names in the back of the book. Some of them are the hidden princes and princesses among us -- not because they give a lot, but because they give all they can.
Then I looked at the front of the book, which listed the food bank board of directors and the advisory council. It was full of pictures of the officers and directors posing at posh fundraisers: laughing, wealthy, and partying for a cause. I know they're wealthy, because I know of many of them. And the others I bloody well looked up on the Internet. Sick people have time on their hands.
There was among them a corporate officer of a giant berry grower. An owner of car washes. The proprietor of the landscaping company that charges my neighbor 'way too much. An executive from the Seaside Company, which operates the Boardwalk amusement park and hotels and restaurants. Another grower. A government rep or two. The widow of a construction industry giant. Yet more growers. And bankers. Lots and lots of bankers to fund the growers and the landscapers and the tourist businesses and the construction companies.
And it occurred to me that all the rest of us who give to the food bank -- all us folk in the back of the newsletter -- are doing a wonderful service to these fine pillars of the community in the front of the newsletter, these businessmen who employ so many. Because these fonts of charity don't pay high enough wages to keep their workers out of poverty, or employ them long enough every year to enable them to feed themselves.
How kind of the rest of us to help out these paragons of free enterprise with our money. Because if their workers didn't get food aid, they couldn't actually afford to stay here on what these fine capitalists pay. With our charity we help the businessmen among us maintain a stable workforce to underpay.
Did I mention that many of the directors and advisors of the food bank -- not all, but many -- are members of the political party that values personal initiative, free enterprise, and low taxes? You can look that up, too. I'm sure they think charity is fine, though; charity is an individual choice, not a government mandate. And it's tax deductible.
I'm sure that many of these people are decent to know face-to-face -- in one case I know that personally. And I'm sure they're happy to throw some spare cash at the food bank and even some spare time at fundraising so that people at the low end of the economic food chain don't starve.
But why should we leave it up to them? Why should the problem of starvation in society be dealt with by society's spare change, given at the discretion of the wealthy. And by the rest of us, unknowingly propping up a bad system for its owners while doing good?
And if I were to wave my magic wand and say, "We're raising taxes on the half-percent of Americans who control close to half its wealth, we're going to make sure that nobody ever goes sick and hungry again" -- what do you think those fine and charitable growers and amusement park owners and construction giants and bankers would do?
Would they be happy and say, "Thank God, at last the poor among us are safe and secure." Or would they fight the proposal tooth and nail with bags of money and threats and dire warnings? Would they say, "No, no, we won't make enough money, our competitiveness will be destroyed, thousands of jobs will be lost, business will disappear, government will waste all the money..."
My answer would be, if your business can't make money unless it pays its employees too little to live and thrive on, you don't have a business. You have a racket. And throwing a few coins that you can easily spare at the people you keep poor doesn't make you any less a source of misery in the world. No matter how hard you exhort the rest of us to feed those poor people. If individual charity alone could solve injustice and inequality, it would have done it by now.
Yes, I'll still give to the food bank, because it helps the starving. But remember -- they're not the only ones being helped.
Live for a world where no one is hungry and no one is sick and no one is afraid. And the wealthy have to throw fundraisers for each other to buy Porsches and third homes and vacations in Tuscany.
Monday, September 28, 2009
The Apartment
Had a nice phone call with Bruce the other day. Bruce is a blast from my past: my old life up in San Francisco and the East Bay, 20 years ago and more. And in fact I may not have physically seen Bruce in 20 years. I'm not sure.
But LK, a mutual friend, hipped Bruce to this blog, and he's been reading. And after a while he wanted to call me and catch up, so the same mutual friend passed along my phone number.
And, after about two weeks of speaking to each other's answering machines, we finally managed to both be at our phones at the same time. We had a nice chat about this, that, and the other. Including the other thing we have in common besides a mutual friend or two:
An apartment.
Thirty years ago I moved to San Francisco to make my name in insurance company advertising (yeah, really). I also came to the city to have an exciting life if at all possible. It actually wasn't; that's something that comes from within.
But I took a cheap apartment on a nondescript block between Van Ness Avenue and Polk Street., and proceeded to experience the city.
And for a young, awkwardly shy man, it wasn't a bad neighborhood: central to the Polk Gulch gay district, the fern bar inferno of the Marina, and the hoity-toity restaurants and salons where the denizens of Nob Hill and Pacific Heights deigned to come down and nosh among we mortals. There was always something to see, five movie theaters to visit, and good restaurants that never closed.
I never felt safer in my life, at any hour of day or night. True, bad things can happen when it's just you facing off another guy and no one else is around. But in that part of town, someone else always was.
It was also the quietest place I've ever lived since childhood: in the absolute back of the building, 40 yards off the street. The only sound I ever heard was faint, tasteful music from the apartment above where Roger the apartment manager presided over a majestic quadraphonic stereo system and five thousand vinyl disks of classical music.
Mostly in a neighborhood like that -- all one- and two-bedroom apartments and nothing else -- people came and went in a few years, as I did. But some people came and stayed. Roger the Manager had been there for decades. Gay, middle-aged, cultured, and of modest means, he cobbled together a living out of managing the building, pulling shifts at a corner grocery down the block, and working at an abstruse record store downtown that stocked only movie and musical soundtracks. He got his health checkups at the free clinic and his cavities filled at the UOP Dentistry School. And he did all that because he wanted to live in San Francisco and nowhere else.
And there was Mike the silver-haired Irishman who lived in a tiny studio around the corner and clerked at a liquor store. He was a great talker, had a million stories -- and the photo albums to prove them. A pianist, a Korean-war jet pilot, an aerospace guy, a dealer in Asian antiques, married and divorced a couple of times -- and now, at 60, all he wanted out of life was a small apartment, an easy job within walking distance, cheap tickets to the opera, and an occasionally drinkie. I had a few with him down at the Marine's Memorial, the Buena Vista, and a few other places. I'm not much of a drinker, but he made it fun.
And Mike introduced me to Bob the Hippie Philosopher, a forty-something underachiever with a doctorate in psych and big plans that never quite materialized. He, too, lived alone in a tiny apartment. His big score while I knew him was landing a gig as Santa Claus in one of the big department stores. And Mike and Bob both introduced me to Stan the public television activist, who fought a losing battle to keep the local PBS station from turning into a hellhole of yuppie programming. Who also lived alone in a small... yeah, you know.
It was kind of strange to hang out with guys who were decades older than me, but they were a riot. Sometimes when they didn't intend to be. I'll never forget the time they started ranting about Unitarian women. There was a big Unitarian church a couple of blocks over, and all the local middle-aged singles went over there for classes, activities, and the opposite sex. The guys assured me that the church was lousy with well-heeled, middle-aged Unitarian divorcees who were always interested in the right man. But only to a point.
"They'll date you, they'll go to bed with you," Bob said . "They'll be your girlfriend. But they won't marry you!" The other guys all grimaced in sympathetic frustration. It was an interesting reversal of traditional roles: the guys wanted to settle down with a sugar mama, but the women had the economic power and liked their freedom, thank you very much.
I could have stayed in the neighborhood forever and become one of the guys. I had the temperament. And San Francisco has all the cheap, public luxuries that a man on a limited budget could hope for. It's the necessities that are expensive.
But I fell for a woman -- the wrong one, it turned out -- and left Polk Gulch to live with her for a few years over in the Richmond District. I didn't see the guys anymore . I finally broke up with the wrong woman and ended up in the Haight for awhile, which was less fun and more menacing than I expected. Haight Street was a lot like Pacific Avenue here in Santa Cruz, except that the worst night on Pacific was three times better than the best night on Haight.
And that's when I got a call from Bruce. He was staying with our mutual friend out in the 'burbs, but wanted to move into the city to live and work. Did I have any leads on a cheap apartment?
Hmmmm.
I told him I'd see what I could do, and called Roger. "Yes, we just had an apartment come vacant," he said. "Your old place, in fact." I talked up Bruce as a paragon of reliability. Roger passed the word along to the owner's son, and it turned out I had some cred with him from paying my rent on time for three or four years straight. Bruce looked at the place, applied for the place, and got the place. And he's been there ever since.
So when Bruce and I talked, of course we talked about what was going on around the old apartment building. The place was in the same hands, more or less, but they'd brought in a management company which prettified the joint and hiked the rents to the sky. And Roger is still there, though pushing 80 by now and no longer apartment manager. San Francisco's rent control laws protected him and Bruce from the worst of the city's rent inflation these past decades.
So Roger is still there; Mike died in place; God knows what happened to Bob; and Stan ended up in "active mature residents' co-housing" in a progressive college town. Which is not a lot different than living in a small apartment above a busy street near people you know.
In that neighborhood most people came and went in a few years, but some came and stayed. I went, Bruce stayed. So did others. I hope he has his guys to hang with, just as I did 'way back when.
I wonder if the Unitarian women are still around.
But LK, a mutual friend, hipped Bruce to this blog, and he's been reading. And after a while he wanted to call me and catch up, so the same mutual friend passed along my phone number.
And, after about two weeks of speaking to each other's answering machines, we finally managed to both be at our phones at the same time. We had a nice chat about this, that, and the other. Including the other thing we have in common besides a mutual friend or two:
An apartment.
Thirty years ago I moved to San Francisco to make my name in insurance company advertising (yeah, really). I also came to the city to have an exciting life if at all possible. It actually wasn't; that's something that comes from within.
But I took a cheap apartment on a nondescript block between Van Ness Avenue and Polk Street., and proceeded to experience the city.
And for a young, awkwardly shy man, it wasn't a bad neighborhood: central to the Polk Gulch gay district, the fern bar inferno of the Marina, and the hoity-toity restaurants and salons where the denizens of Nob Hill and Pacific Heights deigned to come down and nosh among we mortals. There was always something to see, five movie theaters to visit, and good restaurants that never closed.
I never felt safer in my life, at any hour of day or night. True, bad things can happen when it's just you facing off another guy and no one else is around. But in that part of town, someone else always was.
It was also the quietest place I've ever lived since childhood: in the absolute back of the building, 40 yards off the street. The only sound I ever heard was faint, tasteful music from the apartment above where Roger the apartment manager presided over a majestic quadraphonic stereo system and five thousand vinyl disks of classical music.
Mostly in a neighborhood like that -- all one- and two-bedroom apartments and nothing else -- people came and went in a few years, as I did. But some people came and stayed. Roger the Manager had been there for decades. Gay, middle-aged, cultured, and of modest means, he cobbled together a living out of managing the building, pulling shifts at a corner grocery down the block, and working at an abstruse record store downtown that stocked only movie and musical soundtracks. He got his health checkups at the free clinic and his cavities filled at the UOP Dentistry School. And he did all that because he wanted to live in San Francisco and nowhere else.
And there was Mike the silver-haired Irishman who lived in a tiny studio around the corner and clerked at a liquor store. He was a great talker, had a million stories -- and the photo albums to prove them. A pianist, a Korean-war jet pilot, an aerospace guy, a dealer in Asian antiques, married and divorced a couple of times -- and now, at 60, all he wanted out of life was a small apartment, an easy job within walking distance, cheap tickets to the opera, and an occasionally drinkie. I had a few with him down at the Marine's Memorial, the Buena Vista, and a few other places. I'm not much of a drinker, but he made it fun.
And Mike introduced me to Bob the Hippie Philosopher, a forty-something underachiever with a doctorate in psych and big plans that never quite materialized. He, too, lived alone in a tiny apartment. His big score while I knew him was landing a gig as Santa Claus in one of the big department stores. And Mike and Bob both introduced me to Stan the public television activist, who fought a losing battle to keep the local PBS station from turning into a hellhole of yuppie programming. Who also lived alone in a small... yeah, you know.
It was kind of strange to hang out with guys who were decades older than me, but they were a riot. Sometimes when they didn't intend to be. I'll never forget the time they started ranting about Unitarian women. There was a big Unitarian church a couple of blocks over, and all the local middle-aged singles went over there for classes, activities, and the opposite sex. The guys assured me that the church was lousy with well-heeled, middle-aged Unitarian divorcees who were always interested in the right man. But only to a point.
"They'll date you, they'll go to bed with you," Bob said . "They'll be your girlfriend. But they won't marry you!" The other guys all grimaced in sympathetic frustration. It was an interesting reversal of traditional roles: the guys wanted to settle down with a sugar mama, but the women had the economic power and liked their freedom, thank you very much.
I could have stayed in the neighborhood forever and become one of the guys. I had the temperament. And San Francisco has all the cheap, public luxuries that a man on a limited budget could hope for. It's the necessities that are expensive.
But I fell for a woman -- the wrong one, it turned out -- and left Polk Gulch to live with her for a few years over in the Richmond District. I didn't see the guys anymore . I finally broke up with the wrong woman and ended up in the Haight for awhile, which was less fun and more menacing than I expected. Haight Street was a lot like Pacific Avenue here in Santa Cruz, except that the worst night on Pacific was three times better than the best night on Haight.
And that's when I got a call from Bruce. He was staying with our mutual friend out in the 'burbs, but wanted to move into the city to live and work. Did I have any leads on a cheap apartment?
Hmmmm.
I told him I'd see what I could do, and called Roger. "Yes, we just had an apartment come vacant," he said. "Your old place, in fact." I talked up Bruce as a paragon of reliability. Roger passed the word along to the owner's son, and it turned out I had some cred with him from paying my rent on time for three or four years straight. Bruce looked at the place, applied for the place, and got the place. And he's been there ever since.
So when Bruce and I talked, of course we talked about what was going on around the old apartment building. The place was in the same hands, more or less, but they'd brought in a management company which prettified the joint and hiked the rents to the sky. And Roger is still there, though pushing 80 by now and no longer apartment manager. San Francisco's rent control laws protected him and Bruce from the worst of the city's rent inflation these past decades.
So Roger is still there; Mike died in place; God knows what happened to Bob; and Stan ended up in "active mature residents' co-housing" in a progressive college town. Which is not a lot different than living in a small apartment above a busy street near people you know.
In that neighborhood most people came and went in a few years, but some came and stayed. I went, Bruce stayed. So did others. I hope he has his guys to hang with, just as I did 'way back when.
I wonder if the Unitarian women are still around.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Spiderland
My wife Rhumba was born with poor hearing; the shape of her inner ear doesn't focus sound well. She can't hear well on the phone, in classes, and in meetings. She can hear me well enough; then again, my voice carries like the call of a peacock.
A few years ago she got her first good pair of hearing aids. And when we returned from the audiologist that day and stepped out of the car, the first thing she said was --
"What's that NOISE?"
"Noise?" I had to think -- it was just the usual background noise. "Uh, the traffic, I guess." Our house backs up against a four-lane highway.
"It sounds like this all the time?"
"Yeah." From thirty yards away, on the other side of the house, came the roar of a semi-truck's Jake Brake -- rather like the sound a lion might make if it tried to roar and gargle with mouthwash at the same time.
"So why did you let us buy this house?"
"Because it's not noisy in the house."
"You didn't think about the yard?"
I didn't. I never think about the yard. I'm an indoors kind of guy and always have been.
Rhumba and I have friends who practically live in their backyards. By adding landscaping and decks and hot tubs and various amenities, they've made their backyards into integral parts of their houses.
We can't do that: short of erecting 100 yards of concrete sound wall around three sides of the lot, nothing's going to fix the thundering road in back of the house. But even if we could have constructed a backyard pleasure dome for our ease and enjoyment, who knows whether we actually would have? Again: we're indoor people.
So we threw a couple of storage sheds in the back yard, planted a few giant and indestructible bushes, and forgot about it. I cut back the wild grass with a string trimmer from time to time, and feed the compost heap with kitchen scraps once or twice a week. Otherwise we don't go there much.
But the spiders do.
They build vast webs between house and bush and fence and shed. And because no one walks there, the webs endure. And so the spiders feast well, and breed well. And the next year -- there are even more webs. And next year, yet more.
I won't say it's a warm and fuzzy thing, to wander sleepily into the backyard with a steaming bag of veggie scraps for the compost heap and suddenly confront a black-and-white-striped, eight-legged horror hanging in the air at eye level. I wouldn't say that at all.
But I will say that the spiders have now completely colonized the yard. This past month I could not walk any of my typical routes to the compost heap without breaking the web of an eight-legged overachiever. With my face.
Imagine sudden shock of tiny, tough silk wires suddenly cutting into the skin of your cheek, snapping just before they begin to cause pain (just before). Imagine that they are slightly sticky, as well. Does it sound gross? Icky? Oh, yeah. Especially because your next move is a quick full-body pat-down to make sure the spider didn't land on your chest or torso when you collapsed her web.
Did I say they were big? And furry? And striped?
I guess I could go back there and kill 'em all, but why? They cause no real harm. We have spiders in the house, but not the monster striped furry kind, which are harmless and don't come in. (Some of the house spiders -- tiny, drab, unassuming arachnids with primitive webs -- are actually more dangerous than their king-sized outdoor siblings. But that's another story.)
And there are advantages. Precisely one fly made it into the house all summer. One. Moths? Gone. Mosquitos? Missing in action, though the county pest control people may be responsible. Our hovering mini-monsters have fulfilled their duty to the food chain and stripped the air of flying insects. We don't use pesticides, so they've made themselves valuable to us. Even if they're icky.
I also know that a yard that is criss-crossed with giant intact spider webs, is a yard that no one's been wandering around in. This is Santa Cruz. People wander every damned place, and I know for a fact that strangers have roamed through our back yard and even slept in it.
But I'm pretty sure that no one's been back there lately, because they'd have broken the webs. Spiders as cheap security guards? Who'd have though it?
Finally, I'm just a live-and-let live kind of guy. Sure it's my back yard. But I'm not using it. I'm not interested in it. And until I am, someone harmless might as well make use of it, even if they have eight legs and look like the nightmares you remember all your life.
And is even that entirely true? Enjoy Spiderland. And do click on the photo.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
The Supermarket Cookie of Mercy
Human kindness can take many forms. It can address many kinds of human misery.
My least favorite form of misery? The dehumanizing situation that no one will admit is dehumanizing. Oh, keep a stiff upper lip, others say. It's not that bad, they say.
They lie, of course, or fear to tell the truth. And you can bet that somebody profits while others are treated like dirt -- are told very clearly, if indirectly, that they are dirt.
So when somebody actually has the courage to say, yes, it is bad, it's hard on you, we're sorry -- Lordy, I can forgive almost anything.
I'm always very late paying property taxes. Late as in 3 pm on the last day. And if you're that late, you actually have to go down to the county tax collector's office to pay in person. So I do. It's only ten blocks from the house.
And it used to be that, as you inched forward in the endless line with dozens of sweaty people waiting to give the county several thousand of their dollars, you passed by a counter that held a large metal mixing bowl of -- Oreos. The Oreos were only there on tax deadline day.
I don't eat Oreos. If I'm going to eat useless calories, I want ones that taste better, and don't hit the pit of my stomach like a lead washer.
But I always took one, and ate it. Because I appreciated the gesture.
The gesture said, "Yes, we know it's tough. We know it's a lot of money. We know you're not happy. So... have a cookie. We're civil service. It's all we can do."
That's a lot of message for one Oreo to bear. But I could taste it. Small gestures can mean a lot. And I'll take my mercy where I can get it.
A couple of years ago the old tax collector retired, and the new guy did away with Oreos on tax day. Curse you, Fred Keeley! But I'll always remember.
Some years ago I worked for a company that had been taken over by a vast comglomerate. Everything changed overnight. We were given all new duties and tough deadlines. We were told the office might close; and when people started to quit before our big project was done, we were told the office would stay open forever, after all. The new management took no questions; they simply told us to work hard and trust them, with big and insincere smiles.
This went on for weeks. Finally, in a department staff meeting, my manager got off-message for minute and said, "Look, I know things have been hard here lately, even unreasonable..."
"THANK YOU!" I shouted. "THANK YOU!" It just burst out. Because somebody had actually admitted that we were being used. It was a huge relief, like a weight was lifted. Everybody around the table looked at me as if I'd started raving about crop circles. In the end, they understood. A month or two later, when the big project was finished, management abruptly closed the office. Most of us quit rather than take the relocation offer. Because we knew we couldn't trust those guys. But there had been that moment of mercy, when my boss couldn't quite keep his humanity from bursting through.
Tonight, Rhumba and I sat in the car listening to the radio as a man who is President of the United States said things that had never been said from a place of such high authority in my meory. That health insurance companies hurt the American people, and must be held accountable. That Republicans have been telling bald-faced and cynical lies to frighten people into opposing health care, and that he would "call them out" if they tried it again. That private industry without government control and regulation will hurt and harm the American people.
He said all these things which I have believed, which my friends believe, but which no one in Washington has said as the debate over health care and social issues grew more and more vile and dishonest and destructive over the last few months, with no one willing to call out the people who were willing to tear America apart for their own personal gain.
Obama may in the end wimp out on us. But, tonight, he said it. Something that nobody at the highest authority has said in a long, long, time:
It IS that bad!
THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!
My least favorite form of misery? The dehumanizing situation that no one will admit is dehumanizing. Oh, keep a stiff upper lip, others say. It's not that bad, they say.
They lie, of course, or fear to tell the truth. And you can bet that somebody profits while others are treated like dirt -- are told very clearly, if indirectly, that they are dirt.
So when somebody actually has the courage to say, yes, it is bad, it's hard on you, we're sorry -- Lordy, I can forgive almost anything.
I'm always very late paying property taxes. Late as in 3 pm on the last day. And if you're that late, you actually have to go down to the county tax collector's office to pay in person. So I do. It's only ten blocks from the house.
And it used to be that, as you inched forward in the endless line with dozens of sweaty people waiting to give the county several thousand of their dollars, you passed by a counter that held a large metal mixing bowl of -- Oreos. The Oreos were only there on tax deadline day.
I don't eat Oreos. If I'm going to eat useless calories, I want ones that taste better, and don't hit the pit of my stomach like a lead washer.
But I always took one, and ate it. Because I appreciated the gesture.
The gesture said, "Yes, we know it's tough. We know it's a lot of money. We know you're not happy. So... have a cookie. We're civil service. It's all we can do."
That's a lot of message for one Oreo to bear. But I could taste it. Small gestures can mean a lot. And I'll take my mercy where I can get it.
A couple of years ago the old tax collector retired, and the new guy did away with Oreos on tax day. Curse you, Fred Keeley! But I'll always remember.
Some years ago I worked for a company that had been taken over by a vast comglomerate. Everything changed overnight. We were given all new duties and tough deadlines. We were told the office might close; and when people started to quit before our big project was done, we were told the office would stay open forever, after all. The new management took no questions; they simply told us to work hard and trust them, with big and insincere smiles.
This went on for weeks. Finally, in a department staff meeting, my manager got off-message for minute and said, "Look, I know things have been hard here lately, even unreasonable..."
"THANK YOU!" I shouted. "THANK YOU!" It just burst out. Because somebody had actually admitted that we were being used. It was a huge relief, like a weight was lifted. Everybody around the table looked at me as if I'd started raving about crop circles. In the end, they understood. A month or two later, when the big project was finished, management abruptly closed the office. Most of us quit rather than take the relocation offer. Because we knew we couldn't trust those guys. But there had been that moment of mercy, when my boss couldn't quite keep his humanity from bursting through.
Tonight, Rhumba and I sat in the car listening to the radio as a man who is President of the United States said things that had never been said from a place of such high authority in my meory. That health insurance companies hurt the American people, and must be held accountable. That Republicans have been telling bald-faced and cynical lies to frighten people into opposing health care, and that he would "call them out" if they tried it again. That private industry without government control and regulation will hurt and harm the American people.
He said all these things which I have believed, which my friends believe, but which no one in Washington has said as the debate over health care and social issues grew more and more vile and dishonest and destructive over the last few months, with no one willing to call out the people who were willing to tear America apart for their own personal gain.
Obama may in the end wimp out on us. But, tonight, he said it. Something that nobody at the highest authority has said in a long, long, time:
It IS that bad!
THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!
Friday, September 4, 2009
Status Report
It's been awhile since I've posted. Blogging has taken a back seat to a few other things -- some good, some bad. Here's my life:
The Job
The job continues to devolve. Mr. Bigboss proved true to his word: we are doing more with less. Much less. And much more. The routine lunch hour is a thing of the past. Breaks are a fantasy. Everyone has two jobs now; some, three. Every job is top priority and must be done yesterday. And it is. But not well. Which, of course, breeds more jobs.
There's a growing split in the organization between the salesmen and the administrative staff. The sales staff's sales goals are grindingly difficult, so some of them try to push off their administrative duties off on the rest of us. We're no better off, and we're pushing back. Mr. Bigboss is oblivious to the situation, or doesn't care, so both sides fight guerrilla wars up and down and across the org chart.
Somebody was hospitalized. Somebody melted down on the job. The cops got involved, although it didn't make the papers.
Mr. Bigboss held an ill-advised "You're Appreciated!" party for the staff. He showed his appreciation with crackers, onion dip, and Safeway-brand canned soft drinks. Among us are a few people who've achieved amazing things under pressure; none of them were singled out to be honored.
Instead, "I'm Special!" buttons were handed out to each and every one of us. In his happy salesman's voice, Mr. Bigboss told us to embrace the "new normal" and be positive. He then asked if anyone in the crowd would like to say a few words -- hoping, apparently, that one of us would toe the new company line and tell us all that we should get happy.
Nobody said a word. Not his lieutenants, not the first-line managers, not a one of the grunts. We left him hanging out there, cajoling one of us to say something, for a solid sixty seconds.
We've done this to him before, the day he announced layoffs last spring. Won't he ever learn? We'll do what he asks, because we have to; but we won't pretend to like it. That's one sale he'll never make.
Fun (TM)
Eighteen years ago, I almost sold a children's book. I got an agent, he interested an editor. Negotiations began. Then the publishing company abruptly slashed spending, fired the editor, lost the manuscript and cut off contact. My agent quit the business in disgust. I wrote another book, but I couldn't get any other agents to talk to me.
So I gave up. I didn't love my line of work at the time, but it offered large money and a modest amount of respect. Why put a lot of hard work into children's books for $3K advances? Especially if two-thirds of the work was just trying to get someone to read the damned things? I hate selling myself. So creativity took a back seat to comfort.
But things change. Now my job pays bupkis (yes, and I'm lucky to have it iknowiknowiknow), I get little respect, and the work is both boring and stressful.
And my plan to keep my self-respect, to be more than a survivor, has been exercise some creativity again -- after all this time. That's why I began blogging; but blogging is no longer enough, by itself. So I'm dusting off the old manuscripts and will self-publish them.
The Internet offers lot of easy, cheap ways to do this, with on-demand publishing services like Lulu and CreateSpace. You lay out the book according to their standards in your own word processor/design program, email them the file, and they put it up on their site. If someone goes there and orders your book (it's up to you to make them want to), the publisher prints one book, sends it out, and send you your cut. Few or no up-front fees. Ain't technology wonderful?
I'll probably sell a couple of dozen copies at most, mostly to friends. But just the act of creating, laying out, and art-directing a couple of books is proving to be a mad amount of fun.
And I'll publish the text here gratis for you loyal readers. If you're interested in reading the story of a young man whose athletic shoes have been possessed by ancient Egyptian spirits. Or a rather demented 1940s "boys' adventure" about Nazi spies, radio show super heroes, filmmaking, and food. Lots and lots of food. (And that's the one that almost got published!)
Bruce
Bruce, my answering machine dropped all its saved messages the other day, and I don't have your number anymore. I can't remember where I wrote it down. Call (yet) again!
Physical Weirdness
I feel old for the first time, if "old" can be defined as maintaining three or more points of pain for a prolonged period of time. I pulled a tendon in my right elbow months ago, and it's only slowly getting better; my back's been giving me hell for two weeks and won't quite clear up. And I just wore a hole in the back of my heel on a long, ill-advised walk to unkink my back. I can walk, bend, stretch, and lift. But it all hurts. So I tend to sit in one place a lot.
Most or all of this will probably clear up, but I'm getting a preview of my 70s, I'm afraid.
Borscht
It's the food of the gods, dude. Makes Rhumba and I feel human again at the end of a long day so she can thrash away at her knitting machine and I can work on my own projects, far into the night. What's in beets, anyway?
Labor Day
Have a good one. Don't work!
The Job
The job continues to devolve. Mr. Bigboss proved true to his word: we are doing more with less. Much less. And much more. The routine lunch hour is a thing of the past. Breaks are a fantasy. Everyone has two jobs now; some, three. Every job is top priority and must be done yesterday. And it is. But not well. Which, of course, breeds more jobs.
There's a growing split in the organization between the salesmen and the administrative staff. The sales staff's sales goals are grindingly difficult, so some of them try to push off their administrative duties off on the rest of us. We're no better off, and we're pushing back. Mr. Bigboss is oblivious to the situation, or doesn't care, so both sides fight guerrilla wars up and down and across the org chart.
Somebody was hospitalized. Somebody melted down on the job. The cops got involved, although it didn't make the papers.
Mr. Bigboss held an ill-advised "You're Appreciated!" party for the staff. He showed his appreciation with crackers, onion dip, and Safeway-brand canned soft drinks. Among us are a few people who've achieved amazing things under pressure; none of them were singled out to be honored.
Instead, "I'm Special!" buttons were handed out to each and every one of us. In his happy salesman's voice, Mr. Bigboss told us to embrace the "new normal" and be positive. He then asked if anyone in the crowd would like to say a few words -- hoping, apparently, that one of us would toe the new company line and tell us all that we should get happy.
Nobody said a word. Not his lieutenants, not the first-line managers, not a one of the grunts. We left him hanging out there, cajoling one of us to say something, for a solid sixty seconds.
We've done this to him before, the day he announced layoffs last spring. Won't he ever learn? We'll do what he asks, because we have to; but we won't pretend to like it. That's one sale he'll never make.
Fun (TM)
Eighteen years ago, I almost sold a children's book. I got an agent, he interested an editor. Negotiations began. Then the publishing company abruptly slashed spending, fired the editor, lost the manuscript and cut off contact. My agent quit the business in disgust. I wrote another book, but I couldn't get any other agents to talk to me.
So I gave up. I didn't love my line of work at the time, but it offered large money and a modest amount of respect. Why put a lot of hard work into children's books for $3K advances? Especially if two-thirds of the work was just trying to get someone to read the damned things? I hate selling myself. So creativity took a back seat to comfort.
But things change. Now my job pays bupkis (yes, and I'm lucky to have it iknowiknowiknow), I get little respect, and the work is both boring and stressful.
And my plan to keep my self-respect, to be more than a survivor, has been exercise some creativity again -- after all this time. That's why I began blogging; but blogging is no longer enough, by itself. So I'm dusting off the old manuscripts and will self-publish them.
The Internet offers lot of easy, cheap ways to do this, with on-demand publishing services like Lulu and CreateSpace. You lay out the book according to their standards in your own word processor/design program, email them the file, and they put it up on their site. If someone goes there and orders your book (it's up to you to make them want to), the publisher prints one book, sends it out, and send you your cut. Few or no up-front fees. Ain't technology wonderful?
I'll probably sell a couple of dozen copies at most, mostly to friends. But just the act of creating, laying out, and art-directing a couple of books is proving to be a mad amount of fun.
And I'll publish the text here gratis for you loyal readers. If you're interested in reading the story of a young man whose athletic shoes have been possessed by ancient Egyptian spirits. Or a rather demented 1940s "boys' adventure" about Nazi spies, radio show super heroes, filmmaking, and food. Lots and lots of food. (And that's the one that almost got published!)
Bruce
Bruce, my answering machine dropped all its saved messages the other day, and I don't have your number anymore. I can't remember where I wrote it down. Call (yet) again!
Physical Weirdness
I feel old for the first time, if "old" can be defined as maintaining three or more points of pain for a prolonged period of time. I pulled a tendon in my right elbow months ago, and it's only slowly getting better; my back's been giving me hell for two weeks and won't quite clear up. And I just wore a hole in the back of my heel on a long, ill-advised walk to unkink my back. I can walk, bend, stretch, and lift. But it all hurts. So I tend to sit in one place a lot.
Most or all of this will probably clear up, but I'm getting a preview of my 70s, I'm afraid.
Borscht
It's the food of the gods, dude. Makes Rhumba and I feel human again at the end of a long day so she can thrash away at her knitting machine and I can work on my own projects, far into the night. What's in beets, anyway?
Labor Day
Have a good one. Don't work!
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Fangs for the Memories
One of our cats went to the vet today. They pulled his two biggest assets:
Quite the tusker, wasn't he? Thanks to chronic gum disease Petrucchio had just three teeth left in his head. But his condition made two of them seem huge. After today, only the one small tooth remains.
The procedure cost about $400. Every time one of our cats go into dry dock, the price is "about $400." As if the vet now has one price for everything, to make it easier on the bookkeeper. For now, we can still afford it.
Years ago I fed a small piece of beef burrito to one of the cats we had at the time. He'd been begging for it, and I gave in.
Bad idea. He immediately began spewing from both ends. I thought I'd poisoned him. We rushed him to the vet. They did a zillion tests. They gave him back. They told us, "Don't feed him burritos." And they charged us $170.
For years, Rhumba and I joked about the "$170 burrito." But if you adjust for inflation since that time, the price would be -- "about $400." So this game goes 'way back.
But we pay the price because we can (for now), and because we consider our cats to be members of the family. Small, feral, unsocialized members with poor hygiene, big appetites, and no work ethic. Who stay up late and sleep all day. Aren't there one or two of those in every family?
There exists an infant intelligence test that requires neither speech nor sight nor even hearing. A friend of Rhumba's uses it in her work with profoundly disabled children. Out of curiosity she tested her cats: they scored like 20-month-old toddlers. Fur-covered toddlers with fangs and claws. Think about it.
At least they'll never ask for the car keys.
Quite the tusker, wasn't he? Thanks to chronic gum disease Petrucchio had just three teeth left in his head. But his condition made two of them seem huge. After today, only the one small tooth remains.
The procedure cost about $400. Every time one of our cats go into dry dock, the price is "about $400." As if the vet now has one price for everything, to make it easier on the bookkeeper. For now, we can still afford it.
Years ago I fed a small piece of beef burrito to one of the cats we had at the time. He'd been begging for it, and I gave in.
Bad idea. He immediately began spewing from both ends. I thought I'd poisoned him. We rushed him to the vet. They did a zillion tests. They gave him back. They told us, "Don't feed him burritos." And they charged us $170.
For years, Rhumba and I joked about the "$170 burrito." But if you adjust for inflation since that time, the price would be -- "about $400." So this game goes 'way back.
But we pay the price because we can (for now), and because we consider our cats to be members of the family. Small, feral, unsocialized members with poor hygiene, big appetites, and no work ethic. Who stay up late and sleep all day. Aren't there one or two of those in every family?
There exists an infant intelligence test that requires neither speech nor sight nor even hearing. A friend of Rhumba's uses it in her work with profoundly disabled children. Out of curiosity she tested her cats: they scored like 20-month-old toddlers. Fur-covered toddlers with fangs and claws. Think about it.
At least they'll never ask for the car keys.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
