Taking It To the Street

The gloves are off in Wisconsin.  The naked ambition of the 'conservative' agenda is on full display and the Wisconsin hibernation season is abruptly ended.  People are massing in the streets - they sense the desperate moments are here.  

Soon, the TeaPartiers will be there, organizing against their own interests, unknowingly complicit in the attempted destruction of the American middle class.  Joe the Plumber will grab a mike and another 15 minutes of unwarranted fame to be the mouthpiece of hidden vultures who wouldn't let him in the back door, much less the front door, without a security screen and a background investigation. Another useful idiot who will do the dirty work of fronting for this generation's robber barons.  Mission accomplished. 

The Fox Network will crank the propaganda into overdrive until people's heads vibrate with a few well-chosen talking points repeated endlessly by their unfair and unbalanced talking heads as if it were apocalypse now (hello, Glen). In the process, teachers, nurses, secretaries, firefighters, police officers, road maintenance workers, sanitation workers, accounting clerks will be vilified as responsible for the imbalance in the economy.  You can almost hear the chattering class gearing up in the distance.



Confession:  I am a public employee.  I work with other public employees and have for decades.  As a management employee, I am not in a formal union now (but have been previously).  We are an informal collective bargaining group.  We function as a union and our representatives have many meetings to reach a memorandum of understanding on our working conditions.  It's called negotiating.  It means give and take.  It means reaching mutually agreeable settlement in light of current conditions.  It's not what is happening in Wisconsin.  What is happening there is a unilateral assault on unions and, by extension, the political party they historically support.

I've tried to write my way out of this, but words are failing me.  The bad apples in the public sector (see Bell, California) have most certainly tainted people's thoughts about public employees.  That lingering taint is the fertilizer for those who would blame unions and public pensions for the current economic meltdown.  Granted, times change and it's necessary to revisit wages and benefits in light of current realities.  That's what negotiations are expressly able to do.  But the scale of the Bell corruption does not compare to the ginormous ripoff of the credit default swap scam courtesy of Wall Street or the housing bubble or the cost of two wars that were never funded the old-fashioned way (with tax increases).


So, while the truly greedy continue unabated by any new regulation, picking on the dozing middle class appeared to be as easy as gathering the low hanging fruit.  At least that what's they thought until Wisconsin.  The intensity of this current political theater, with the teabag brigade approaching, will be compelling and tense.  The last act may dictate an historic sea change one way or the other in this country.  Stay tuned and stay safe.


PS - This year, after months of considering the current economic climate, my group took a 5% cut requested by upper management.  Our group chose the method of reduction - options included increased contributions to pension, increased contributions to health insurance costs, or pay cut.  That's called negotiating - a practice the governor of Wisconsin is not willing to even discuss. 


Photo Credit:  AP Photo - Racine, Wisconsin 
Tune:  Michael McDonald - a favorite from the Doobie era

Local Wonders

"If you can awaken inside the familiar and discover it new, you need never leave home..."

Ted Kooser
Nebraskan and U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-06



Perhaps I hadn't quite learned this lesson.  Perhaps it was because it was that time of the year that required vacation - the lull before the work cycle storm of January.  Perhaps it was my restless mind seeking a rest and, like a homing pigeon, looking to the home of my youth and a chance to reconnect with friends from that time I missed the last time around.

Christmas is the season of eternal nostalgia - the season of scents remembered, of songs sung, of crunching snow, of lights and color, of musky midnight masses.  I needed an assist to prepare this year and when I saw that one old friend, Paul Amandes, was opening in a production called Local Wonders, based on a Kooser book, with music he wrote and a play he co-wrote with Virginia Smith, that fact became the anchor, the set piece for an excursion to Chicago in the dead of winter.

I'm a homer, so my bias and admiration for the artistic efforts of those I know is evident.  Still, this production touched me, in that quiet place that reflects and ponders and is as certain as the eternal cycle of the seasons.  I marveled at my friend's artistic maturity.

The 90 minute play with music is both particular and universal.  We follow the specific threads of Kooser's life as a Nebraskan, a writer suddenly faced with a cancer diagnosis.  This rut in life's road is examined as the facets of the man's life are revealed and rolled out through anecdote and song.

Kooser's Nebraska and his Nebraska life, that landscape shaped by storms, is detailed in all its particulars through the spoken word and song - - the tilt of its geography, the treehouse in the backyard and the child who leaves, the pair of geese that come and go with the seasons, the order and disruption of the organization of a man's tools, his very practical mother, the old highway 30, the uncle in his recliner, the old blue heron, a father's hands, monarchs blanketing a distant tree.  No detail too small, every rock and track observed and noted, the wrestling of human nature between the poet as writer/craftsman and the poet as celebrity.

The musical interludes wind throughout the narrative much like the course of the Platte River, with Anne Hills providing lilting lyrical support (big vocal biceps!) and sharp observations and particular contrasts as Kooser's wife and a cast of locals.  Despite the difficult nature of this type of multi-character assignment, the flow of the play and physical stage coverage allowed her to neatly evoke key players who interact with Kooser in a series of tilts from scene to scene.  Harmonic support, both as an actor and singer.

I needed to see it twice - it's densely aural - and richly textured.  For those friends who may live near Chicago - do see it.  Twice, if you can.  It leaves you with that warm feeling, that Christmas feeling of touching base with old familiar experiences, of small things now noticed like the first snowflake in a winter sky, of the promise of hope and magic that lies just out that open window in your own backyard.  Like leaving home to come home. 

You can order tickets here:
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/132271

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Thanksgiving Leftovers

Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.  ~~ Erma Bombeck 

I have no Thanksgiving leftovers in the traditional sense.  Hit the road with Buster and enjoyed a feast with the Amazon Grandchild. She is growing and glowing and I realize that time slides quickly holiday by holiday when you are watching a young child grow. I didn't have seconds, resisted the multiple pies in my quest to be rid of pants with elastic waistlines, and arrived home safely. No rain, no bad road conditions, just the low hanging post-full moon golden on the horizon to guide me and Buster down the yellow brick road.  There's no place like home.

No, my leftovers are the mental residue, the crumbs that linger and must be shaken out before they stake a claim on real estate in my brain.  After living well over five decades, I am now at capacity and only capable of infill development.  Grow up, not out.

Holidays have not been the same now that I'm solo.  They signal the end of the year, another birthday and a time to try to keep looking forward.  Still, I'm finding things to be thankful for - reconnections, a President who is intelligent and not prone to Palinesque outbursts, sufficiency,  digital cameras, a challenging job, and a faithful furry companion.  For now, that's enough.   Sufficiency and simplicity.

The aroma of spice and cinnamon fills the house, the lights are about to go up, the tree about to be assembled.  All's well in this little corner of the world.  Time to buckle up and brave the shopping madness.  

What I wouldn't give to happen upon a random act of culture like this one while shopping.  It takes me back to a simpler time.  A glorious complex choral piece, memories of practices starting in college through my various incarnations and life seasons - a gentle thread.  The pleasure of lifting a voice as part of something larger.  Unplugged and each a contributor.  The sounds of the season.  Giving thanks.

Goodnight, Tim - Wherever You Are

November 16 - Tim's birthday. 


My poem for his birthday on our old blog platform - it turned out to be his last birthday in 2006 - his 52nd.  He was, like his hero JFK, a fatalist who raged against the dimming of the light.  He always believed he would die young.  He did.

When you rob the cradle in your 40's
There's no need to worry about teething biscuits
There's lots to chew on with a political scientist
Who knows a thing or two
About philosopher kings and steppenwolves
And tenderness and mating the queen
And Yes and streetlights that go out
And synchronicity abounding all around
Impressionism met realism with a cubist twist.
He anticipates every hidden eddy of the river
And knows all my undercurrents too
My full moons are reserved for a lifetime
Happily.
 
Happy birthday, my Tim.

When I watch this YouTube I made as some kind of therapeutic exercise, I think of being on the other side of so many of the pictures in this video - I am thankful for the miracle of digital photography - both for its instant gratification and its not insignificant role in my delight in chronicling all our adventures.  I see now what I saw then through the lens.

It's still difficult to write about him.  I've tried.  It's still very raw.  But with pictures and music, I am soothed and remember through a sampler of our moments together how much I still love him.