Glimmers of Hope

I have been mired in a cynicism that has colored my political views since 2000 and truly, I have had little hope for the future of our nation since the Republican theft of the highest office in the country.

My senior co-worker danced in hate-filled glee across the lobby in my former Silicon Valley business, and all I heard was the sound of checkbooks slamming shut across the country and the crash that swallowed us alive.   Republicans had the reputation of not being particularly supportive of tech.

I was accused in a thread, here on Facebook that I profess to abhor this country.  I do not profess to abhor, I yearn for better.

The two Supreme court rulings have changed my view from here.
 I feel hope for the future.  I feel hope because Bernie Sanders exists and is bringing out record crowds who also yearn for better.

I do not believe people should be left on their own.
We are screamed at that unions are bad and welfare recipients cause the deficit.  We distrust each other.  People are struggling across this country in numbers unseen since the Great Depression. I believe it is government's role, and mine as a taxpayer to care for the weakest among us.

I get in these baffling conversations here,  in the Midwest, that one needs to hoard what one has and defend oneself against their brothers and sisters who need it.  I feel these deep set fears are controlled and manipulated by the corporations that keep wages so low that all are living on edges of economic ruin.

Bernie Sanders is correct.  Minimum wage is starvation wages.  No one should live like this in these United States.  All this economic uncertainty leads to the misplaced fear among us.  Immigrants!
It must be ILLEGAL immigrants.  NO WAIT. ISIS!  Liberals!  It's liberals all wanting FREE health care.  And it has to come out of MY POCKET! SOCIALISTS!


I MUST keep what's mine because I WORKED FOR IT!

and I make $7.25/hour.

How does a person feel after working for decades and all they can make is $7.25/hour?

You are worth $7.25/hour.

How does that make you feel?

Fear.
Misplaced fear.
The politics and exploitation of fear.

For the first time in 15 years, a true feeling of hope glimmers inside of me that change is in the air.

What Does Trust Look Like?

"So you like white socialism? Seems a little racist."
And another.  "Mostly White, lest we forget." followed by "Do you believe there are characteristics pertinent to different breeds of Canis Lupis?"

These are just a couple responses on my wall to my recent postings about Denmark and in extension, Bernie Sanders.  I find that last statement, comparing people to dogs most egregious, although implying that a society can only work well is based on gradations of skin color is downright insulting.

What if there was a country where everyone is trusted to make good choices?  What does a country look like where it is a built in understanding that people will do the right thing?
What does that society look like?
It looks like Denmark.

The default is trust.

There is a lot of foot-stamping in America.  "My tax dollars are paying for HIS healthcare?!! SCREW HIM."

The overall feeling in Denmark to that is, So What?

Our economic uncertainty has fueled a distrust of each other.  We have fits over how and who we should help.  We should help everyone. All citizens deserve this.  In a country as powerful as the U.S., we deserve our basic human needs met.

Social policy in Denmark makes sure that almost no one falls into economic despair.  Healthcare is a right of citizenship.  Childcare, 2 year unemployment benefits, and education are all part of the system that protects Danish citizens.  College, graduate school, and even medical school are all free.  An educated populace is a productive populace.

Imagine that here.

During my trip, the people I encountered were fit and healthy.  They were calm.  Their children were calm.  Even in the best restaurants, families with children were present.  I notice these things because I don't want children in my restaurants, airplanes, or hotels.

Yeah, I'm a horrible person.  I work with the little snots so I can say these things.

No, but really, in every situation that I encountered with families, the children were happy and chatting with parents.  Not a cell phone in sight either.  What we perceive as poor parenting here is a reflection of our overall stress as a society.

What if?  What if a parent never had to worry about how to pay for their child's care?  What if we never had to worry or debate the right to healthcare?  What if we knew we would receive 90% of income during 2 years of unemployment?

What if we could live together without guns?  What if we didn't feel the need to arm ourselves against each other?

Trust.
I live in a country without trust and it reflects in everything here.

Midwest Working Class and The Great Decline

I wonder if The Great Depression was called The Great Depression during The
Great Depression?  Or was it history that looked back and named it so?

How did our middle class diminish so drastically?  If we have learned one thing in this 21st century, it is that we cannot trust the robber barons not to rob.  "Trickle down" economics is a fallacy and a fantasy for the wealthy who long had their buckets in place to catch any spill-over.  

I will give history a heads up and name this The Great Decline.  

It encompasses more than the decline of the middle class, it encompasses the politics of hate and contempt.  We are led to be contemptuous of those who have less.   We are embroiled in a war on words.  We mention race or racism are immediately called racists.  We talk about the disparity of wealth distribution and charges of class warfare are leveled against us.  The Relentless Machine Which Churns Fear and Divisiveness is fueled by Fox New Corp and the Koch brothers.  It encompasses a populace so divided, and so unsure of themselves that they routinely vote against their own economic interests or vote not at all.

Last summer I moved from a lifetime in Silicon Valley to Iowa.  I have  moved away from the abstract liberalism of the Bay Area to a place where the reasons we need Bernie Sanders are strikingly obvious.  This is not the America I learned of as a child.  The America I learned of as a child was full of opportunity so that anyone could pull themselves up and have a decent wage, a good life, and a chance to raise children who could achieve even more.

What I encounter here in this Midwest is starkly different.  I do not recognize this America.  The American dream is that we are all able to pull ourselves up, but there are entire rungs of the ladder missing here.   The rungs of the ladder that one can reach to and  pull oneself up with are gone.  They have just vanished and people are left dangling at the bottom over an open pit where they will fall headlong into homelessness.

There are great divides in this country.  In Silicon Valley, I never felt without opportunity.  The culture raised me to believe in my talents and abilities.  I feel that I get an equal rate of return for whatever effort I put in and often times more.  But here in Iowa, I see hard working people who take on 2 or 3 jobs.  Each are twenty-five to thirty hours per week with no benefits, sick leave or paid time off.  There are no allowances or leeway.  They are "asked" to work holidays.  It is reprehensible that we are treating the very backbone of our society this way.  Iowa is a very family oriented state.  It is a great place to raise children.  These parents have to keep their child home from daycare when they themselves are sick as they cannot afford it.   Schools and daycares give the children their meals provided by the Iowa Food Bank.  3 out of the 4 public elementary schools in the neighboring Mason City are rated below the national poverty level and children are given their meals there. 

 Not long ago, I read a Facebook thread regarding people who work in fast food.  There were comments like, "McDonald's was not meant to be a career path." and "If you want more money, get a better skill set."  There is some ignorance of circumstance in these particular statements and I will raise my hand first to admit that at one time, these sentiments may have come from my own mouth. 

From my view, there is not the vast array of job opportunities that I had become use to in the San Francisco Bay Area.  People work their entire lives in retail, or restaurants, or fast food here.  These people are white.  Yes, I will talk about race.  In California our Latino brothers and sisters take the jobs no one else wants.  Much like my great-grandparents from Germany, Denmark, and Ireland, people come to America for a better life. 

Bernie Sanders wants to end this abuse of the American worker.  He wants to raise the minimum wage to $15.00 per hour.  Bernie Sanders wants to end the corporate welfare that makes taxpayers take up the slack when corporations like Walmart routinely send their employees to sign up for food stamps and other social services.  This corporate welfare model applies to nearly every job situation I see out here. 

 How can we have American companies employ us and we still do not have enough money to eat?   Bernie Sanders wants to end all this.  

We are Americans.  These are American corporations.  These are American jobs.  We are the richest and strongest country in the world.  This abuse of the American working class must end and we must all work together to see Bernie Sanders as President of the United States. 



 . 

A Study in Survival /Part Two

I was living in San Francisco when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit.

It was 5:04 p.m. on October 17, 1989.  A friend and I had just turned off Van Ness Avenue looking to get something to eat.  Parked cars began bouncing up and down on the street and I did not immediately understand what was happening.  Traffic stopped and people leaned out of their car windows.
"Was that an earthquake?"

I witnessed a phenomenon I will never forget. The entire city shut down, emitting an arching low moan that plunged two octaves into silence. Electric busses, restaurants, stoplights, music - everything shut down as the city was muted.  We decided the best course of action was to get back to our Potrero Hill home.

As soon as we arrived, we pulled out a small battery-operated black & white TV.  There was nothing on the air.  After about 15 minutes, KRON/TV-4 came on with their helicopter showing the first views of the city and damage from the earthquake.  When the chopper reached the Bay Bridge, my stomach dropped.  A section had collapsed and as we watched, we saw cars drive over the edge and fall to the lower deck.  The helicopter proceeded to Hwy. 880 in Oakland.  The upper level had collapsed down onto the lower level at the height of rush-hour traffic crushing everything beneath.  I could no longer breath.  Apartments buildings had sunk in the Marina and people were trapped amid fires and explosions.  A brick building for transient workers collapsed killing nearly everyone in it. 

The occurrence of the Loma Prieta earthquake coincided with an important event.  The San Francisco Giants and the Oakland As were playing the first game of the World Series that night.  The importance of this cannot be underestimated.  There were 62,000 people at Candlestick park.  Thousands of others had gone home early that day to watch the game.  Bridges and freeways were virtually empty.  Sixty-two people died and nearly 3,800 people were injured, but this number could have been far greater if the Bay Bridge and the 880 freeway had been its usual bumper-to-bumper commuter traffic.

It took four days to reestablish stoplights and bring power back to San Francisco.  There were closed freeway ramps all around the city that took years to repair and shore up.  Due to structural damage, the controversial Embarcadero Freeway, built in the 1960s, was torn down.  Property values soared: This elevated freeway that had blocked the views and thrown so many businesses into shadow was now gone, restoring the vistas San Francisco is most loved for.

We are all interdependent, more so in our cities, but even so in the country. We no longer sit alone in the wilderness, like Laura Ingalls Wilder and her pa, twisting hay into burnable sticks to survive the long winter.   We depend upon each other.  We eat the food others have grown and shipped.  We wear the clothes others have made and our transportation is what others have built.

Interdependence, this is what society is built upon and infrastructure is the base we all stand on, connected together.  

A Study in Survival /Part One

It was 13 degrees below zero this winter right here in Clear Lake, Iowa.  As a born and raised Californian, I have never experienced weather like this.   I have to think in a whole new way here.  I need to know what to do.  I need to know what to have in case my car breaks down on a lonely country road in the dead of winter.

I loved the writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder.  Struggling in the wilderness against tremendous odds sounded like one fun adventure to me.  I am now pulling out these books and reading them with new eyes.  These are studies in survival.

 First published in 1940, THE LONG WINTER, finds her family - including two younger sisters as well as an older sister blind from scarlett fever - spending a winter that starts October 1st, running out of coal and slowly starving.

 They finally run out of coal and must bring hay into the "lean-to" of the house to twist into something burnable.  This is no small feat.  Laura and her father sit together in the cold of the lean-to picking up handfuls of hay at least 2 feet long.  Twisting and twisting it, doubling it over and making these hay sticks as hard as possible so that they will burn as long as possible.  They do this until their hands bleed and they can't stand the bitter cold any longer.  They bring these "sticks" into the house to burn and get warm enough to go back out and start again ...for months.

On her first attempt, Laura is able to make only six sticks before her hands are cut and bleeding.

The word has gotten to town that the supply train, now overdue by months, has no way to get there until spring.  People are running out of food and trying to leave.  And if you think (as I did) that this is the olden days, and everyone helped each other ...well, human nature is human nature, and prices on any remaining supplies are jacked up.  The general store is long empty anyway.

It is still only January.

 "February is a short month and March will be spring." Pa said encouragingly.

A man in town butchers his ox and sells it at 25¢/pound, a fortune in those days.  Pa brings home four pounds.  They do have wheat seed.  Ma is able to grind it, in a coffee grinder that holds a half cup.  It is a complicated matter to be grinding and grinding, making the bread with a sourdough starter, and stocking the stove with enough straw sticks,  so it burns long and hot enough to bake bread.

There is a rumor of a man, miles away who has a stockpile of wheat.  Things have gotten so dire that Almanzo Wilder (Laura's future husband) and his friend set out in the general direction to find this person and demand his help as people are now on the brink of starving to death. 

Obviously Laura Ingalls Wilder lived to tell this story.  Almost certainly people died from the cold and exposure, the isolation, and running out of supplies far more than I have ever given thought to. But it is sunny as I write.  The sun streams through my east facing front windows and without that, the winter experience in iowa would be much more difficult.  Especially in the mornings.  These mornings when I think about every little thing.

"Kill Site"

"Kill site."

At dinner with new friends last night I stopped the table.

 "Wait, WHAT? What did you JUST SAY?"

"Kill site."

I guess it's self-explanatory.
Everyone there knew the term. I can say with complete certainty that I have never heard those two words together in my life.

Kill site.

Definition: A place where people kill animals and grind them up.

So this is why I work a little job, with little children; To take up the space in my head that is consumed with anxiety, and a touch of sadness.

My grandfather worked at the Armour meat packing plant in Mason City, Iowa. He never worked when I knew him; he was already retired. I assumed he worked behind a desk. But he had an 8th grade education, and today I realized; He did not work behind a desk.

I never considered my mom's words when she told me, wryly and in an offhand way, that my grandfather never ate Armour hot dogs because "he knows what goes into them."

As many older people do, my grandfather often reminisced about life in his early 20s. I loved his story of how, in the 1920s, my grandfather courted my grandmother. He took the electric trolley from Mason City to Clear Lake, and then took the paddleboat ferry across to the south shore. They would walk to one of the dancehalls on the lake and make an evening of it. If my grandfather missed the ferry back to the other side, he either had to walk or sleep in the woods until morning.

He never talked about his time at Armour and I never asked. What I do know is that my mother said my grandfather was a changed person when he retired.

 She told me that when she was young, he often came home in a horrible temper. He was abusive to my grandmother in a way that was just shy of physical.

I saw none of this. I only knew my grandfather to be kind, funny, and friendly. He was patient with me. He took me fishing. He taught me how to play pool, and how to drive on the country roads.

Today, with some sadness and guilt, I wonder what it must have been like to have had that job.

I never asked. and anyway, he would have never told a child such as myself these things.

A House Built On Memories

A House Built On Memories.

I guess that's what this is.  I guess that's what all houses are made of, memories.  This lake house's span generations.  Mine and those who have lived here before me.  There are memories here of the Fourth of July, of playing cards during summer thunderstorms, catching my first fish with my grandfather, and the time I transformed the fire hydrant into a red, white, and blue soldier for the bi-centennial.  They are all here, by this lake.  The moment we step over the threshold, memories come to life and the walls listen and watch and take it all in.

And so I am in this house of benevolent ghosts.  This house has all my things now.  My parents' things are here, as are my grandparents', and even a few of my great grandparents'.  If that sounds pretty crowded, it is.  These things, and they are just things... each carries on a conversation with me, as I try to sort, donate or throw it away.  Every book, every letter, every photo, every piece of clothing shouts, "Look! Look at me! Remember!"  It is a daunting task to cram three generations of stuff into a lake cottage.

On arriving, I set out to empty closets and purge and to make space here.  But this summer saw me sitting on the floor stuck in time, going through my grandparents' stuff, unable to move forward or accomplish much of anything.  There are time bombs planted, ticking with emotion.  There are lovely memories that do not bring forth happiness, but rather a melancholy longing that for me, borders the lands of depression where I dare not tread.  So the boxes, filled with my life, are still homeless here.  They do not know how to fit in until I accomplish the task of making room for them.

My books fill the shelves though.  My most important books are downstairs, while their lesser brothers line the walls upstairs.  I have too many books.  I will always have too many books.  I made a concerted effort last weekend to start on a large downstairs closet and tackle a box, three feet high, full of papers my parents had written.  letters, cards and pamphlets from every vacation, and correspondence from the days they first met.  There was artwork from my days in elementary school and every report card from the time my brother and I started school.  Every report card?  Do I keep them?  Do I throw them away?  What if I discover the cure for cancer?  Are they important then?

I feel as though I'm living in a time capsule.  As a teen, I told my mother that coming to Iowa was akin to going back in time.  I still feel that way.  Not much really changes here.  Businesses may come and go, especially in Clear Lake, where a business must survive the non-tourist months, but entire buildings and city blocks remain in place, and if you look up above the street level facades to the second story of these two story buildings, time stands still.

I come from the heart of Silicon Valley, Mountain View, California.  I grew up there.  I was born in Palo Alto.  This area is the home of Google and Facebook.   I was taught to program computers with punch cards when I was 12.  This whole way of thinking and the industry surrounding tech started in the 1970s.  To see a building over 50 years old in Mountain View is to stop dead in one's tracks and stare in wonder.

When I was three, my family moved from Palo Alto to Mountain View.  We bought the first house in a tract home development that replaced an entire apricot orchard.  This area was known for its cherries, apricots, walnuts and other produce that grew in a land of such temperate climate.  Orchards and farms filled the valley, but by the mid 60s, were vanishing rapidly.  By 1980, the place once known as the Fruit Basket of the World had changed forever into Silicon Valley.  The last working farm in Mountain View came down in 2006 and 150 luxury homes now stand in its place.

So I have moved here, to Clear Lake, to the lake cottage that was the destination of so many fun summers.  I'll reveal my reasons for moving here in a subsequent story.  For now, I will tell you that for the first time in my life, I saw snow fall from the sky this winter, and that until now I didn't understand the meaning of the word homesick.

I understand it now.