The GM Bankruptcy - And How I Love My Buick

I don’t quite understand how this bailout of GM and the subsequent bankruptcy is supposed to work. This is a little over my head, and I only hope the Great Minds know what they’re doing on this. All I know is, I find myself a little bit fearful—kind of a free-floating anxiety—about where I’ll be able to get my cars in the future.

It’s not that I object to getting cars from overseas manufacturers. I’ve had cars from them before, and they’ve been okay cars—not the fabulous bargains of staggering quality they are sometimes portrayed—but okay cars. During the decades that these foreign car producers were making their big gains in the U.S., we took to ‘buying American’ without thinking too much about it. It just seemed right to support American industry. Well, that worked out well. We must have been the only ones supporting it.

Anyway, the reason we kept buying American was because of our Buicks. We bought the first Buick because it offered 0% financing or some fool thing, and cars seemed so expensive at the time that a break in the interest rate was very attractive.

We grew to love our Buick. It was solid, attractive, and reliable—and had that smooth Buick ride on road trips. And I dearly love road trips. A smooth ride is very important when you’re trying to balance a McDonald’s coffee cup and Egg McMuffin early in the morning as you try to beat the rush hour traffic on the way to some pleasant, far-off destination.

We rode that Buick into the ground. And it was very good to us all along they way, with few repairs, and almost no breakdowns along the side of the road that I can remember. The gas gauge did go out—which made road-tripping a matter of intense calculation. And it did cost an enormous amount of money to have it repaired. They had to remove the entire gas tank to get at the gauge mechanism to replace it.

No matter. We bought our second Buick, regardless. And, again, it is being very good to us. I don’t know what surprises it may have for us in the future—a relationship with a car is much like a relationship with a person, you go in with great hope and optimism, and learn to deal with the all the quirks and breakdowns along the way. And as with a relationship, you mourn when you must part. And as with a relationship, some new, flashy item catches your eye and takes your mind off your grief. Ah, the patterns of human existence continue on and on, don’t they?

So for the moment, I love my Buick. I worry that the GM bankruptcy will hamper my purchases in the future. However, I also see that if they could take the quality and reliability of my Buick and graft it onto a hybrid’s environmental benefits, they would really have something. So I’ll wait. With fingers crossed. Hoping the American auto industry will remember to take what they are good at and blend it to what they have been negligent in incorporating.
This could be the start of something big.

On The Road--Traveling to Key West

I went on a road trip the other weekend. Now, there’s nothing I like better than a road trip—the feeling of moving forward—the strange food in little known restaurants—the different landscapes—different demographics—the radio stations—the shops, the groceries, the dives. It’s addicting, this seeing how other people live, seeing what they think is ‘necessary’ to them, and what level of ‘necessary’ is required.

This trip was to Key West. For those of you who haven’t been, it’s definitely a destination you should put on your list. But it’s not the destination of Key West, that final point at the end of the continental U.S with the galleries and restaurants and Mallory Pier at sunset, that is important. It’s the journey getting there. And what happens to you on that journey.

The first Key in line is Key Largo. It still has many of the amenities you’d find near Miami proper. But it is also full of dive shops and dive charters that serve those who want to experience some of the best diving and snorkeling opportunities in the nation. It is here that you will begin to feel like the mainland is far behind. Your tidy home, your serious job, is behind you--somewhere. You will begin to get sun-streaked and wind-blown, and all those things you thought were so important to worry about suddenly don’t seem very important at all.

The next key you hit on your drive is Islamorada, home of many of the famous Keys fish tournaments. The entire key is all about fishing, boating, diving, and water sports. Though there are plenty of comforts in Islamorada, they are all outdoor-centered. The turquoise waters of the Keys will be your home for the rest of your visit. Even if you aren’t an avid fisherman, you will still become a creature of the water. Lying on beaches, photographing the water and boats, watching the sea birds. You may come off the water—shower—change—go to a nice restaurant—visit a shop or gallery--but the conversation is all about what was done on the water, or what will be done tomorrow on the water.

Marathon is your next city on the road to Key West. It is the last big city you will see for a while, so if you need to provision your trip, do it Marathon. Marathon has an airport, charters, resorts, restaurants—everything to make you comfortable. But even here, it’s all about the water. Getting back on the water--information about the water—the weather—the fishing—the diving.

By the time you get on 7-Mile Bridge on Big Pine Key just south of Marathon, you will have made the transformation. You don’t dress up anymore. A tee shirt and shorts—usually over your swimsuit—is your uniform. You don’t comb your hair anymore. You don’t wear make-up. There doesn’t seem to be a point to these things anymore. People aren’t looking at you, they aren’t judging you, and they aren’t comparing you. They are thinking about the water. Where to swim. The best fishing spot. What boat rental to go to. Where to grab a sandwich to bring on board. Sunscreen will be tucked into your pocket. A rumpled hat will be on your head. You keep a tight hold on your sunglasses. That’s all that seems important.

By the time you reach Key West, it’s like another country. You have made the break with the mainland, not only physically, but emotionally. You have surrendered to a hedonism of the most primitive kind. You roll into town, surprised and blinking at the bustle and crowds of tourists. You reluctantly consent to town life—only temporarily—waiting to get back to the waterlife that has became a part of you. You visit the galleries and bars, you sit in waterfront restaurants eating fine food. You see the nightly show at Mallory Pier. You visit the shops and buy fudge and souvenirs and tee shirts. But your heart is back on the water. And you find every possible excuse to get back to it.

And if you have any sense at all, you will follow your heart.

Whatever Happened To Small Business?

It’s funny, we’re not hearing a thing about how small business is doing in this dire economy. It’s as if small business—which was often described as ‘the engine for new jobs in our economy’—has suddenly dropped off the radar. And I suspect it is because small businesses are disappearing at a horrifying rate that they don’t want to tell us about.

You would think media would cover this all-important area of our economy, but the media is curiously silent. Media can go on endlessly about the dangers of swine flu, giving us more coverage than we’re ever going to need on that subject. Media can cover Nancy Pelosi’s feud with the CIA and the Republican Party for days on end, covering every little detail, every nuance, every conjecture—but not the state of small business in America. Media can give us all the latest poop (and I do mean poop) on Brangelina, Madonna’s adoption case, and Jon and Kate Plus Eight’s marital difficulties—but they can’t tell us how small business, the incubator of new jobs in our country, is doing.

What’s that about?

One can guess how small business is doing in the U.S. Consumers have rolled back their spending. Credit is tight or can’t be gotten at all—which means small business cannot get it to cover payrolls or material for upcoming jobs. Small business can’t get orders from larger companies either, because large industries have slowed down to a stop as well. Small business can’t do any hiring, because A) there’s no work for the new hires to do and B) small business is most likely still in the process of doing layoffs. Equity in homes, which often financed new businesses, has disappeared, so the start-up of new business is being hampered by the mortgage crisis and falling home prices. Small business is probably living on whatever credit they have left, which will require paying off in the future, so don’t expect any big gains there any time soon. Oh, and btw, small businesses can’t afford health insurance. With whatever customers they do have left pressuring them for rock-bottom pricing, there’s little money in there for the constantly rising costs of health insurance. So, if they do start hiring again, it will probably be jobs without health insurance.

I know this sounds negative. But this is reality. We spent too many years being told ‘the fundamentals of the economy are sound’ and running our lives as if that were actually true. That lie kept us from arranging our lives into more reasonable and realistic form, and cripples us now.

Small business is probably taking some of the biggest hits from the bad judgment and delusional thinking of the past 8 years. At least, that’s what I see in my little area, which is among the hardest hit.
Let’s hope somebody finally notices that small business needs a leg up, too--like the bailouts we are giving the big guys.

Healthcare and the Great Republican Listening Tour 2009

First, let it be said that healthcare costs are killing small business. There’s no way small business can manage to cover its employees and make a profit. It simply can’t be done, for the most part, and it’s difficult enough for any small business entrepreneur to cover him or herself and family. If the businessperson happens to be over the age of 50, then the problem is magnified about 10-fold. If the businessperson happens to have one of those ‘pre-existing conditions’ magnify it again.

Because it is unlikely that anyone who is self-employed will be able to qualify for any state-assistance program, that over-50 or pre-existing-conditioned business owner will likely go without health insurance at some point. His or her employees will also go without it, also, because individual policies are obscenely expensive. So we have an entire class of people—small business owners and their employees—that are in chronic jeopardy of being without insurance. They will get sick, however, and will add to the rolls of people who turn up at emergency rooms getting the most expensive type of healthcare that adds to the cost of health insurance for those who DO get insurance through their employers. It’s a circle that has as yet been unbroken by any ‘ideas’ offered by political parties.

Which brings us to the Republican Party and their efforts to provide—or rather not provide—basic healthcare for the American people. If you have observed them as carefully as I have over the years, you can’t help but notice that they are alarmingly cavalier about this issue. Their best effort has been to offer ‘health savings accounts’ which as essentially catastrophic plans with big deductibles that many STILL cannot afford, even though these policies with their big outlay of personal savings for the deductible has contributed mightily to bankruptcies among the middle class. They know this—and still they do nothing. They do worse than nothing—they obstruct those who ARE trying to provide health coverage for Americans. And rest assured, with the big lay-offs this country has seen, even more people are doing without healthcare. As many as 9 million more. That means that these people are also contributing to the high cost of premiums for everyone with their use of emergency room care. Let the circle be unbroken, by and by, Lord.
So now, we see Eric Cantor and the Great Republican Listening Tour 2009 spouting a lot of ‘focus-group-tested’ feel-good words to bamboozle us into thinking they are actually committed to doing something about our healthcare crisis—words like ‘cost savings,’ and ‘keeping your own doctors,’ and ‘our high quality of care’—words that are specifically designed to lead people around emotionally. I’m offended. The time for political manipulation has passed. It worked for Republicans for some time, but it left our country even worse off than before. And I’m holding them accountable for it.

Thoughts on Torture

Okay, I have to tackle this subject. Sure there’s been way too much said about it, but I will have to add my two cents to the cacophony. Why? Because we can’t let this one go. We can’t just ‘keep walking’ as Peggy Noonan suggests, and not look back, in the hopes of having the whole ugly episode ‘just go away.’ It won’t. If we don’t expose it to the disinfectant of sunshine, some other party somewhere on the planet will—and that will leave us looking even worse.

You can read the torture memos yourself at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/16/bush-torture-memos-releas_n_187867.html


It’s not pleasant reading. And it’s not pretty to think that our national leaders spent so much time parsing the details of what temperature of water was required to douse a prisoner with, for how long, before it actually became torture, nor whether having a physician and psychologist just standing there could assure there would be no lasting damage that would make it torture. The very fact that they studied the processes so closely and refined the details so exquisitely means they were dancing on the line—often wandering over that line, either by accident or design. It’s ugly to think about.

And there is Cheney. Now, I don’t have to add to the public dismay at the character of Cheney. All of that is obvious—it’s self-explanatory—from the lying on camera to push the war in Iraq—to the handwriting on the memo regarding Valerie Plame. It’s a dismal ‘legacy’ for Cheney to leave behind, and no doubt his progeny will have to bear the burden of it, because he surely doesn’t seem inclined to. That is his personal concern. It’s his personal conscience that he must live with, for now and throughout the ages. I wish him luck on it.

Let us just say that we can’t let this sleeping dog lie. We can’t pretend it didn’t happen. We can’t even pretend it wasn’t as bad as it clearly turned out to be. America is better than that. America is stronger than that. We can admit we were led astray. We can admit we were paralyzed with fear into inaction. We can even admit that we so wished it wasn’t true. All that is very human. What is inhuman—and inhumane—is that we knew, and did nothing about it once we knew.
That is beneath us. And I don’t believe Americans will tolerate it.

The Joy of Lint

For those who don’t know, Lintballing is the careful accumulation and nurturing of that stuff that comes out of your drier filter, that stuff that can make your life a living hell if not attended to, and which can be an element of endless creativity if you utilize it properly. Evidently, humans have made friends with dryer ‘fluff’ and have come to view its accumulation as art, as science, and as culture. Yes, this phenomenon has come to the fore at the very time when our lives are most insecure--when our jobs most threatened, our finances most pilfered, and our futures most uncertain. Lint has entered to save the day.

It started, as many things do, with a person in a chatroom.

A woman whose name will remain unblogged mentioned that she saved—that is to say, collected—the fluff from her dryer. She found that this dryer ‘fluff’ formed beautiful, intricate patterns when it was gathered together into artfully manipulated ‘balls’ that were both pleasing and satisfying. In what most of us would ordinarily overlook and discard, she had found beauty and Art.

When I first heard of it, it struck me so deeply that I wanted to participate in this ‘lintball phenomenon.’ I began collecting this fibrous output from my dryer filter, and it did, in fact, have wonderful bits of color that called to mind not only the clothing and material it came from, but the people and events that surrounded that clothing. And collecting this lint was a sensory experience as well. Smelling fresh from the fabric softener, and soft from the fluffing of the dryer, it was the kind of thing that made you put your nose right into it and savor the moment. But I soon found that collecting lint demanded a focus and dedication that I did not possess--well, not for lint, anyway. Houseguests came and treated the lint like so much garbage. And this caused a deep resentment for my guests that I otherwise would not have felt. They didn’t understand me AT ALL—they didn’t even KNOW me--and they sure didn’t respect my property. The nerve of these people.

It was after one of these occurrences when my carefully crafted lintball was thrown into the trash, that I began to see that my attachment to this collection of lint was perhaps not healthy. That is the hazard of lintballing—it is addictive and absorbing. So I tossed the lintball and stopped lintballing altogether. I’m not saying I don’t still have the craving, because the fact is, I still appreciate and caress the little woven sheets that come off my dryer filter (“Oh, that’s a nice one!” and “Look, there’s Mom’s sweater!”). I just don’t attach to the emotion anymore. I let it go. But I still retain an interest in lint in general, and communicate often with the woman who started the phenomenon, so that I can vicariously enjoy her collection.

To update:

Her lintball has grown to unmanageable proportion and she has decided to burn it, ritually, on a day and time meaningful to her. I find this not only fitting, but a decision that must be supported. Why, I don’t know. Lint is symbolic of something else, it seems. All that we throw away—all that we consume without thinking—all that we leave behind.

She decided on the June 21st, the beginning of summer. It was only then that she told me a story of a demanding, abusive husband, who pulled out the lint from the dryer and showed it to his wife with the words, “There—see how you waste our clothing?”

I knew that the woman who related this story to me had no tolerance for abusive men in any way, nor even women who allowed themselves to be abused. Yet, the story stuck in her mind. And it sticks in mine.

At this, I suggested that some Tori Amos music might be a suitable accompaniment for the lintball-burning ceremony. She agreed. We might even post the burning event on youtube. A ‘Burning Lintball,’ rather like the Burning Man event in Nevada—only with particular meaning for women. Announcements will be forthcoming.

This blog entry has gone on for too long, and I have no idea why. As I said, lint is symbolic of something else. A metaphor.
Consider it yourself, and see what it means to you.

The Rape of the Afghan Women

I don’t like to say stuff like ‘I told you so,’ but I told you so. We are now in cahoots with an Afghan government that is legalizing the rape of Afghani wives by their husbands, pretty much whenever they want. I don’t know what tenet of Sharia law this follows, nor in what passage in the Quran it is mentioned, but I’m pretty sure this just your garden-variety marginalization of women that that world has always been seen, throughout the history of mankind, especially in Muslim countries (usually on religious grounds). This means that not only are Americans sending their money to support an Afghan government that betrays women at the drop of a hat, we are also sending our soldiers to die for it. This is not cool, man. This is NOT okay.

I’m mad. And I’m mad not only in that ordinary ‘someone is pissing me off’ way, I’m mad in a political way, historical way. I’m mad for everything that has been done to women for someone else’s advantage, throughout time. I’m mad for every time anyone has ever said or thought, “It’s okay now—women have their rights and should pipe down.” I’m mad in a profound, visceral, all-encompassing way—because I do not intend to be complicit in ‘trading away’ the rights of women for certain alleged successes. That is not a ‘success.’ And it has been done habitually in the history of the world, and I won’t have a part in it.

We anticipate this happening in Iraq, too. The ascendancy of Sharia law will make it not only harder for women there to keep their rights, but for religious minorities, too. And we have blundered into it, losing 4270 of our soldiers to the ‘liberation of Iraq.’ And countless of innocent Iraqi lives, as well. Who—exactly—will be ‘liberated’? What are we to tell the families of those soldiers who were lost? That ‘they didn’t die in vain’? That their service was wholly ‘honorable’? How can we sustain that lie when a previously secular Iraq will now be demanding veils on women, and keeping them in their homes unless they have men to accompany them? What is ‘honorable’ about that? And you can’t say ‘well, we didn’t MEAN for that to happen’ when it was totally foreseeable, given the religious situation there.

So what do we have in these places that we have bumbled into with some testosterone-loaded plan to vanquish the ‘enemy’ that A) wasn’t in Iraq to begin with, and B) might have been in Afghanistan, but is now in Pakistan, and where we have in fact, helped to continue the oppression of women. We have a mess—that’s what we have. An unjustifiable, unholy, unfair, and undemocratic mess.

I do not hear Republicans taking responsibility for that mess. I do not hear this party that is so anxious for others to be ‘accountable’ for their actions actually being accountable for what they themselves have lockstepped in support of for the past 8 years. In fact, I hear a party that is STILL pushing the swaggering, macho ‘strong (if thoughtless) defense’ mentality that bungled us into these various messes. Well, I am not going to let them carry on as if nothing has happened. What happens to the women of the world may not be very important to them, but it is important to ME. And I will out them at every opportunity.

As is spoken from those who endured a previous hideous outrage of history: “Never again.”

Whenever we deal with countries whose entire cultural and historical pattern includes the oppression of women, we must tread carefully, so as not to entrench these grotesque patterns even further.
That is the very least a ‘democratic’ nation can do.