White Gentrifier Guilt

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been tooling around Teh Intarwebs and the real world, getting a feel for real estate. Watching my mom, aged 80, continuing to grapple with the question of whether to leave the home she shared with my stepfather (answer: almost certainly not) has me thinking about what I'd like my own old age to look like, and it's possible it might not look best in the house I've got.

When I purchased my home in July, 2001, I never imagined being in it 18 years. It was meant to be starter equity, to be traded in when I found some hapless victim man - really very nice, but nothing I meant to become permanently attached to.

Well, my equity is now old enough to vote, or to die in a foreign war (but not drink!), and I find myself wondering whether it might be best traded on at some point. The house is two steep storeys, AND has a full basement: and the laundry is located all the way down there. Being of a moronic and stubborn nature, this means I regularly huck hundred-pound loads of clothes up and down stairs in varying states of safe clearance. Oh, in my fantasies, some engineer appears magically and offers to build a motorized dumbwaiter in a convenient spot. But then, in my fantasies I also have a slate-floor screened porch, a brick car port with electricity, and the house is suddenly not located in a super-white neighborhood either.

Yeah, I am 51 years old, and have realized that MOST of my life has been lived in a White Flight bubble. The schools I went to were named for old white politicians, proponents of Massive Resistance (we could have been Edgar Allen Poe high, but ohhh no - must be a politician!). The suburbs I spent most of my time in were without diversity.

So I don't really want to live my entire life in the economic, cultural, and personal bubble that is White Fragility Comfort. If I do sell, I'd love to see my place go to people who don't look exactly like me. When I bought, I was still a little afraid to buy in neighborhoods with bars on the windows.

Now, I'm more afraid to buy in those neighborhoods because, inevitably, those of us who grew up like I did are seeing how nice the houses were, that our parents or grandparents left behind in heading for the suburbs ... and they're coming back, displacing historically Black neighborhoods, denuding beautiful homes of vintage architectural details (white shaker cabinets that do not reach the ceiling and theoretically high end finishes that clash with and poorly cover older homes' interiors - what I call "stick on" kitchens), falling for ugly and disrespectful flips. Gentrification is killing family businesses and families, pricing people out of places they have lived maybe for generations.

I don't want to be that person. The notation "yoga studios and coffee shops are popping up everywhere!" in a listing, translated, means "don't be scared, lil' white folks, you can come back to the city because we're papering over what it used to be as fast as we can destroy lives!" It also means ramping up economic inequality - and, cringe-ironically, sending those who'll no longer be able to stay to cheap apartments ... or maybe the midcentury ramp crappy flips we're leaving behind now that they're no longer fashionable.

In just a few weeks' looking at my own future and driving around trying to suss out the worst of the gentification, I haven't figured out how to puncture the white economic bubble I've spent an awful lot of my life in, versus avoiding landing like a lummox on an even more delicate neighborhood ecosystem without damage.

One thing I know: whatever comes, I'll have zero use for boo-teeks, coffee shops, or yoga studios, so at least I don't have to feed THAT aspect of economic flux.

But I don't really know if there is an answer. It's entirely possible the answer is, "Sit down and shut up" - and, the fact is, I'm entirely willing to take that answer. Eighteen years in, I let my eye rove, and what I find when I come literally home is, home is a really nice place. Maybe I ought to hope my own environs might diversify with time, and save money for that dumbwaiter, that porch, that car port. A person could do far worse.

For now, I'm educating myself, and it's already working. I'm getting a feel for what the real priorities would be, what it would take to take me away from the house where I have loved my Sweet Siddy La and Pen and Goss, where I endured my father's and my stepfather's and my best friend/sister's deaths. Where I felt Mr. X's hands across my back as he held me, the day dad died, the first time he ever visited here. It wouldn't be easy to strip my home and leave these walls, these bricks, these good bones.

Maybe at some point I'll figure out the balance. Maybe (it's remotely possible) Mr. X and I might even find a home together someday.

Eh, maybe I'll be hit by a bus tomorrow. It's unlikely. But in the meantime, I gotta live.

And my place isn't a bad one for doing that...

Collection

Marine biology geekness: Oct Tale of Two Cities ... Octlantis and Octopolis. I am not making this up. Even Sponge Bob isn't making everything up. Huh! (Plural-wise, though, they missed opportunities to use the super-fun word, "octopodes" ... oh well.) The click beyond - biomimetic architecture. SO COOL, and finally that word escapes Star Trek babble. Yay!

You can get the dirt off Donnie, but you can't get Donnie off the Dirt.
--RIP, Dirt Woman

And next, a tale of two dirties. It was a big deal around here - front page news - when Dirt Woman died. And there was a sort of bookend appropriateness to Hef, that dirty old man, dying right after. I won't link HH's obits; if you cared, you've read them - and I, frankly, do not. But Donnie? Yeah. RIP, with Dave Brockie, Donnie.

The Americans of, say, 1970 genuinely had more in common with each other than will the Americans of 2020. Their incomes banded more closely together, and so did their health outcomes. Almost all adults lived in married households; almost everyone watched one of three television evening news programs. These commonalities can be overstated, but they can also be overlooked. ... One more thing they had in common: a conviction that the future would be better than the past.

Sentence #2 above ... nobody has lost sight of the ravaging effects of wealth disparity, not only in the United States, but worldwide. As our lifestyles have diverged, the working class and poor have been left so far behind the famed one-percent, and the effect has been devastating. A worthwhile read (and possible TBR pile toppler) from The Atlantic - Politics must be affirmative. Opposition is a mood, not a program. (Personally, I'd put "obstructionism" in where opposition stands, but the point is well taken.) Two clicks beyond, for those really interested in layered views.

Pointing to the economic costs of bullying—in tandem with highlighting the psychological, physiological and academic ramifications—can be an effective way to garner high-level attention and spur positive change.

So what *does* bullying cost? Well, $276M in one single state alone - and that's just the K-12 educational budget. Add bullying in the work place, and the price of bullying becomes, at least for my wee and paltry brain, inconceivable. The cost in lives, of the contributions of those who are silenced, to the wellbeing of our community and culture ...

Collection

Ever notice how hard it is to find a supermarket in a city's downtown? But easy to find a McDonald's or other fast food? It's not just a happy coincidence.

There's a fast-food restaurant within walking distance in many low-income neighborhoods, but nary a green leafy vegetable in sight.

Do you know who Maggie Walker was? Find out here and especially here - it's nice to see her getting some attention.

A brief history of children sent through the mail. Bees, bugs, and babies, y'all. Thanks, Smithsonian Magazine, I am well and truly squicked. (And how many of you are now wondering what the weight limit on modern drones is ... ? Yeah, I thought so. Same as a Europran swallow.)

Also from Smithsonian, here is a cool look at Wonder Woman's origins ...




American Duchess talks with Cheyney McKnight on a range of things, including a nuanced look at slaves' clothes in America. The post alone is interesting, but the hour-plus podcast is highly worth the listen. Never say what we wear - what YOU wear - sends no message.

Yet again, researchers have looked to the yucky/bizarre medicine of the ancient past, and found it was not so bizarre after all.

One of the problems with the modern concept of The Dirty, Stupid Past is that we no longer understand the most basic mechanisms of our world. We judge crazy old plant medicine without understanding plants in the slightest, nor allowing for the possibility that what we now call chemistry was for millennia the mere result of observation and implementation. The scientific method was only named in recent centuries; but the need for experimentation and innovation go back as far as humanity itself. Contemporary society considers itself very advanced, but hardly any of us understands the workings of anything we use, from our technology to our environment. Whereas, in times past when people were dependent upon their environment, and had no vast networks of text-bound research or even vast networks of other people's observations and experiences, communities (a) worked together and (b) knew their world intimately. Small as those worlds may seem to us today, the individuals living in them knew them better than we even know our own bodies anymore.

Collection

Rest in peace, Wallace.

This is frustrating. Labor is being paid first again. Shareholders get leftovers.

Revisiting the shareholder-first business model - courtesy of The New Yorker.

On the unexpectedly morbid history of ribbons as adornment. Naturally, this piece brings to mind the Beresford Ghost, and other stories.

To my knowledge, this lady hath much joy and pleasure in death.

I have to say, this makes more sense to me than fear, perhaps *especially* in the direst of circumstances - precisely because those people are facing deliverance from suffering.

The real point of this article - or, really, the research it discusses - is the guiding force in American healthcare: avoidance of death. I have known more than one person who would have been happier had they not been treated not-to-death, honestly. I do not intend to become the dying person constantly snatched back from the brink, either, and I don't wish to die in a hospital. This morning, I said to someone who said, "Getting old sucks!" "Yeah, but it beats the alternative." The fact is, sometimes death beats some of the medical alternatives, too. The trick is to know when to choose what. At some point, perhaps I will have the grace and blessing to choose not to incur obscene debt for life"saving" measures which prolong my agony and deplete my earthly resources. If I get there, I don't expect I'll face the end with horror or regret.

To people furious over the Kathy Griffin photo I ask, where were you when effigies of Obama were lynched and burned across the eight years of his administration...?

The Boston Globe has an EXCELLENT piece looking at the outrage surrounding the Trumpian Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar. And I say: um, yeah. Anyone who thinks this play is a celebration of assassination is ... well, let us use the term "uninformed" to be kind.

Throwback post - because it needs to be said. Again and again and again.

And again. Because we KNOW it's about power, not sex.

Collection

Casey Karp's blog is a new favorite, not just for his talents in wordlery, but also because he brings the learn-y stuff. This week, take a look at some of Amazon's REALLY chilling new problems. One, the new world in gig-economy logistics, and two, the Authors Guild article he links from that post, about how a new algorithm may cost the publishing industry - and authors. The final sentence here is pretty frightening.

I enjoy Jeff Sypeck's unique outlook; here is an interesting area of cultural context leading up to the American Civil War. Excellent quote from Mark Twain on this. Looking at what we consume as relating to what we enact.

"Rubber ducky, I love you - and the writing you help me do!" Maggie Maxwell has a great strategy, apparently used by IT programmers. I've never heard of talking to the duck, but it does make a kind of sense. (Though, personally? I tend to use actual coworkers or other writers or readers, depending on my issues ... Writing buddies really DO make great ducks. Heh.)

Collection

I meant to post this first link yesterday, but the good news is, Dena Pawling is updating EVERY DAY with delicious facts!

Dena Pawling is going to have me thoroughly addicted to her new daily tidbits – this is GREAT stuff! National chocolate covered cherry day. Aww. My grandma LOVED these cordials, every time I see a box of Queen Anns, I think of her and it makes me so happy. She was a source of joy and still is. Also, Alaska became a state on this date in 1959. I may someday forgive it, but my personal associations with that state are NOT joyous ones. Martin Luther and Fidel Castro share the date of their excommunication (if not the actual year!).

Longtime readers (and Reiders) of mine know I am poor at marking big milestones, like writing profound New Year's posts, but I quite liked this one, from Elise Goldsmith. Short, honest, and not without hope. Let's make 2017 count, indeed.

The Atlantic has a nice take on first sentences ... on restraint and drawing-in rather than grabbing a reader by the throat. The piece may be spoilery of an Alice Munro story, but the essay is a nice analysis of quiet intensity.

Smithsonian Magazine always has intriguing content, but I'll admit that this piece attracts me more for its pettiness than its social or scientific implications. How claiming an exclusive on a color can come back and bite you - or, have you heard of vantablack?

I suspect many of my reiders have accounts with Librarything - how many have heard of, or participate in a library of things? The Atlantic again, on the new sharing economy, and the origins of ownership.

Collection

Mark Chappelle, one of my first friends on Twitter, has some thoughts on being a packrat ... and being an emotional packrat ...

History Extra looks at the crucial components of the phrase and the concept of being "better equipped than ever before" to study the royal dead in England, but the questions the whole idea raises reach well beyond the U. K.

Heard about that skull found still inside its ancient Geek helm at Marathon? Gary Corby takes a good look at the facts.

Finally, a quote for the day:

I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth will starve in the process.
--Benjamin Harrison

What Fresh Pitchforkery Is This?

Self-described plutocrat Nick Hanauer, a not-even-one-percenter, but higher by dizzying heights event than that, takes a rather well written look at America today ... and every revolution in history.

No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None.  ...

I know there are many of you who are convinced that because you saw a poor kid with an iPhone that one time, inequality is a fiction.

Here’s what I say to you: You’re living in a dream world.  ...

The most ironic thing about rising inequality is how completely unnecessary and self-defeating it is. If we do something about it, if we adjust our policies in the way that, say, Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the Great Depression—so that we help the 99 percent and preempt the revolutionaries and crazies, the ones with the pitchforks—that will be the best thing possible for us rich folks, too.

Hanauer loses me flat when he takes credit for "reminding" the seething masses of our power, but the point that our economy is a "complex ecosystem" an not merely the playground for, say, obscenely (his word) wealthy plutocrats (again, his word) is at least reasonable.  We haven't seen any surfeit of reasonableness in public discourse of late (... in my lifetime, actually - and I'm old), so I'm seeing fit to link and even to quite this guy.

You can skip the first few paragraphs, of background self-aggrandizement, but the general gist is worthwhile - and necessary.  I only wish I thought any of the other plutocrats was really listening, rather than the likely reality, that all the relatively-poor slobs are the ones liking this article.

I believe I do own a pitchfork.  But man would I rather just use my shed for yard implement storage for things I may never use - rather than as a magazine for arms.

When those who set bad examples...pay their workers close to the minimum wage, what they’re really saying is that they’d pay even less if it weren’t illegal. ...

The most insidious thing about trickle-down economics isn’t believing that if the rich get richer, it’s good for the economy. It’s believing that if the poor get richer, it’s bad for the economy.

*Shudder*

HR

What an odd little day it was in the context of HR.  My new employer has had more than one opening come up since I've been there, which would suit Mr. X remarkably well.  Somewhat as a tease, I've sent him several listings - but I've also been keeping my eyes open for a few others I know.  Today, I reached out to three people I know (other than him!) about different possibilities.

At the same time, I've received a come-on via LinkedIn.  My first instinct was to shut that down flat, but I told them to tell me more; I certainly know enough candidates, obviously.  Even if I'm happy and blessed, that's not enough - I'm like my mom in this; I love to make connections for people.  In a professional context, this is about as rewarding as human activity gets; if I put someone onto a job they actually got - and were happy with? - wow, what a remarkable feeling.  One of the best friends I ever made at a job (five positions ago) is the BEST networker I've ever seen.  She quietly connects people to jobs over and over again - and she herself is one of the best admins I've ever known.  She put me onto my gig at the utility company some years ago, and I've watched her hook people up time and again with various people she knows.  What she's done, and for how many people, who can thank her for their very LIVELIHOODS (I could, for a couple years there myself - and am still grateful).

What a thing that is to put into the world, to give to someone.

If even one of the connections I've thrown out to the winds ever came to that for someone, it would be such a blessing.  If several did ... what gratitude.

Except the Admin

Throughout my career, I've lived under the caveat, "except the admin."

What I mean by this is, I go to meetings about employee engagement or corporate structure, or participate in training and so on geared to the widest possible swath of a given employee population - and, almost always, the target as envisioned by committee can be defined as "everyone who works here from execs to analysts - except the admins."  Administrative support is always just to one side of whatever is being discussed, always just outside given parameters of training, discussion, expectation, what have you.  I don't think I've ever even SEEN a performance evaluation which relevantly expresses the nature of my job nor provides for development.

It doesn't particularly bug me, but I have brought it up before at meetings throughout the years - "you are interested in diversity but there's always this 'except the admin' configuration" - "this training is not relevant to my job, but there are things that are which are not addressed and should be" - "there is no on-boarding process for admins" - and on and on.

April marks Administrative Professionals Month, and we just completed Women's History Month and right before that was Black History Month.  During each of these months every year, there are voices saying "I'm more than the month (or even the day) you've assigned me for relevance" but these are always ignored.  The fact that Women and Admins fall right next to each other isn't lost on me either - it's no accident that every year when I attend Administrative Professionals events, if there's a man involved at all, he's probably a speaker and not anyone employed in "assisting" anyone for a living and by title.

So it is perhaps odd - and it is certainly maddening - that throughout my entire life, whenever I have heard a story about equal pay for women (happy April Fool's everyone: this is a relevant topic after all) *I* have mentally pronounced the marginalizer:  "Except the admin."

Women don't get paid as much as men in comparable positions.

Admins don't get paid as much as ANYBODY, period.  Ever.

Again, I signed up for it, and I am not starving.  But it's a galling and absolute fact that my chosen profession is seen as less "professional" than others, across the board.  I didn't get an MBA, I didn't go to Wharton, I don't travel for meetings (indeed, if  I can help it, I don't participate in meetings at all except to implement them for those poor souls who must).  I bring, in short, less "value" to an employer.  I worked at one place once, where it was all but explicit that admins were nothing but "OVERHEAD" and were a painful necessity.  This was very heavily part of the office culture.

I don't make $.80 on any man's dollar.  I make $.60 to ANYONE else's dollar.

One of the aspects of being an admin is that, in many jobs, we're the ones who know what everyone's pay is.  And I've never known anyone in any group ever who made even within a 20% margin of as little as I did.  Indeed, it's often as much as a 50% jump between my solitary salary and the next-lowest-paid member of a team.  There is nothing whatever unusual in that.


All this is not to complain, oddly enough, that I don't get paid what I should.  If I have a complaint, it is that people imagine what I do is "menial."

I actually ran across that word just this past week, on LinkedIn.  Some frothy article or other about job seekers - and a commenter who listed herself as an EVP, telling the supposedly heart-touching story of her youthful executive aspirations, subsequent wife-dom and widowhood, and how when she came back into the workforce she had only "menial" CSR and admin work for options - oh, but (let the music swell now) she told the world to stuff that MENIAL work and now she's an EVP.

People like this, who believe my work is "menial", perpetuate a classist and heirarchical culture in the workplace which is entirely inappropriate to the actual efficient running of ANY organization.  Without us "menials", our friend the EVP - and any company as a whole - would not survive for one day.  There isn't an industry, service, nor office which can be run without administration.

One of the difficulties I had in leaving my last job was the degree to which my team understood and valued what I provided for them, objectively and subjectively as well.  Several of them were in the habit of calling me "Goddess" - which might be a patronizing joke in some quarters, but which was a clear marker of their deference to my armament in service of their goals.  One of my executives happily called me Madam Secretary when he realized my relationship to the term, and it was a mutually agreed-upon title of respect.  He even looked for a long time one April, trying to find a card for Admin's Day or Week or whatever, that had the word on it.  "Do you know how hard it is to find a card with 'secretary' on it instead of admin?"

I still have the card.  I still use the gifts he gave me, too.  They were as much appreciated as I was.

I've had jobs where I wasn't given recognition and appreciation.  One, in fact, I lost on March 31 some years back.  I always remember it as the lousiest April Fool's joke ever - "they even got the DATE wrong."  But in fact I was glad to be out of there; I'd been looking for months before they fired me.

And even there, one of my bosses paid me a personal visit one day, to express his outrage that I'd been laid off.  Many of us had, but to my knowledge I was the only one he reached out to like that.



What I do is important.  What I do:  I really love.  You can have your paychecks and your meetings and your TRAVEL, all you non-"menial" types who don't get what I do at all (and who think there's something wrong with me for doing it).  People like that I am immensely grateful I don't have to work with.

The people I *do* work with are still learning just what I have to give.  I'm learning my way around what I can provide and even improve.  In the end, it's a nice time to celebrate my little "month" (or week or day, or whatever anyone gives and/or calls it).  The weather's just getting warmed up ... and so am I ...

Talent Drain

When I left my previous job to come to my current position, it was a difficult decision not least because I was a public servant.  My job gave me a lot of pride, and even though it didn't occur to me consciously every day, the fact that even my telephone said I was "serving America's economy" was never lost on me either.  I loved my team, I got stressed about my work, but the initial love affair I had that had me telling people "you're going to have to pry this job out of my cold, dead hands" never actually truly ended.  It just became distracted, divided, and overridden.  Fear for the future is fear for the future, no matter now much reward you get from a day's work, and I was afraid.

Though my reasoning at the time was not precisely accurate, it IS true that with subsequent changes at my old department, the likelihood they would have been able to keep me is almost unthinkable.  My reasoning was based on old assumptions, but the outcomes were what I feared, and so the move was the right thing for me.  In short:  my group got smaller.

It might have been possible for me to stay in public service, to find a new niche in the same world - but I had to take care of myself, and the interviews I had there didn't promise exactly what I need.  And so, I left.

I happened to leave for a wildly different culture and employment, but it also happened that someone I'd known at Public Service Employer had pre-departed me for this place.

Today, I met a third person who's left that public service world for this new employer.



This is, for those who haven't heard of it:  talent drain.  It's the depletion of human resources in public service, which has occurred over a period of years of screeching that public servants "get" too much (as defined by those who get it all).  There has been a systematic insistence that government, civil, and administrative employees serving our economic and civic institutions are a drain on our economy - and the end result at this point is budgets so constrained that the men I worked for for my years at that job got not one raise - not only during my tenture, but even predating me by a year or two.  These are people dedicated to preserving the financial well being of the entire nation - and they're not starving - but we're doing nothing to "incent" (to use the corporate-speak term) their continuing service.  These are people who do what they do with no mean measure of pride and ambition, even if that ambition does not translate to the sort of thing coveted by those politicians and blowhards so eager to point fingers at MY former coworkers as entitlement junkies.

During my three and a half years in that job, our senior executive used to talk about retention of talent.  He went to pretty great lengths to see a project through and still maintain the talented team who implemented it - and, whether I turned my coat and left or not, whether I had faith or should have or not:  he was not wrong.  He would talk about the ridiculous waste of recruiting a team of the stellar talents our group brought to the table, and not holding on to those people.  And, whether it scared ME or not, I know to a unique degree just what he was fighting against in terms of budget constraints.  I saw some of the sacrifices asked, and I saw Isaac walk away from the stone.

I thought I might be the sacrificial goat at one point ... but I walked away too.

And that is the shame of it, the true pity of the sacrifices made by an entire, gargantuan nation's worth of *human* resources, who have been constrained and restrained from growth and held down by our economy's more difficult passages.  That those who could strengthen our important institutions are squeezed out - that the governments and agencies and infrastructure which once ran our country from the bottom up  have been denuded of the strength and talents of people like the woman I knew here before I left to come work here - like me - like the new person who's come over the wall - like that one guy I'd love to see "do better" than he can where he is.

There is a saying at my former employer.  "You don't get rich working working for *****."  I always followed that up with, "Yeah, but you don't get poor either."

That was true.  I wasn't suffering from penury - only from fear.

But life with no hope of riches - indeed, yes, financial wealth as much as the personal (it HELPS, it is relevant, it's not greedy to want to be able to fix up one's house, or buy a new car after ten years in an old one) - is a hard prospect most of us can't sustain.  I couldn't stick with it.  I'm not alone.

How long can our institutions go on, losing those talented teams and individuals who dedicate themselves to service?

How long can we forgo hiring the thousands of entirely deserving, and driven, and intelligent people who've been unemployed for so long their futures are tapped out?

How is it okay, for a nation so invested in pride ... to humiliate and to shame - and to drive out (... to drain ...) those who make it truly run?  Not the politicians, but the WORKERS, the servants, those whose pride is paid in fear and scorn and less and less hope of real reward?

Excess and Express Dress

Last night, I looked into Fast Fashion, a book about the devastating effects - economically, ecologically, and psychologically - of the evolution of the fashion and clothing industry into another instant-consumption-and-throwaway economic juggernaut.  The comments section at Amazon might have been the most intriguing product of my curiosity - and not entirely reflecting on the content of the book itself.  There's a worthwhile indictment here on a certain part of the publishing industry, but nobody illuminates the reason for the problems people find (editorial departments are overhead, and many have been stripped to the bone).

Even with the problems some editions of the book seem to have (unfortunately, it's not clear how to find cleanly edited printings ...), I have to admit a strong enough concern about the issues it raises to overcome the editorial quibbles.  The effects and costs of our consumption may not be perfectly reported, but they MUST be reported, and I want to learn.  Insty-wardrobing is something I've thought about before; unfortunately, there aren't a wide array of options to look into these things.

Today I did find other angles, of sorts, on the same picture.  One of these, I suspect, points to why this pattern of purchasing has taken hold in the United States in particular.  Populism is a fundamental part of our national psyche, and insty-clothes are a great equalizer.  They can even provide a good feeling inside, "I am not being wasteful when it comes to money" - even as we are wasteful in opting for ten cheap tops which won't survive two years, and which are made of

The final article I'll link is the second I saw today on the subject of cost and clothes, which looks into why some garments are so expensive.  At exactly the other end of the spectrum from the populist H&M $99 wedding dress, we investigate why a wedding dress should cost $8,000 - and indict the wedding industry in the process.  As you might guess, I have a whole RAFT of nasty and completely irrelevant opinions I'll keep to myself for now in the interest of brevity.  The point is that, as much as populism appeals to us - so do elitism and status - and weddings are the occasion upon which symbolism and consumption mean the most to many.

What is the monetary value of the image you leave behind for your descendants?  What do we want it to say?  What do we want it to take away from, or add to the world itself?

What are the dog-walking pants and ratty sweater I'm wearing right now going to become as years pass and their matter travels into the waste stream enveloping more and more of our planet ... ?

What part do the economics, the chemicals, and the totemistic and cultural importance of our clothes play in our lives individually ... and collectively?

Happy Birthday

The job I have so recently left was difficult to leave behind, in very large part, because I was a public servant.  It is a great source of pride to have been a part of the Federal Reserve System.  I was part of an aspect of the System which was not quite "part" of any one Reserve Bank, and yet was in all twelve of them.  It was fascinating, rewarding, and is still painful to leave behind.

I still celebrate those who stay and serve.  A toast, with Ghirardelli hot chocolate, to you all (I know you're reading)!




Me, now ... I'll serve food instead.

Workin' (for) It

Ahh, Miss Manners.  Would that everyone working in this difficult economy had bosses like this - and bonuses like Letter Writer #2's.

Ahem.

Grape Pay

The question becomes:  whose monkey do you want to be ... and ... do you want to carry the rocks for the guys who PAY in grapes?





It's an important question.  Even when so many of us monkeys are told to make do with the grape stems.

Rambling Arose

This morning, sitting in one of those very large pep-rally sorts of meetings where my brain simply never escapes the ‘except the admin’ clause in everything that is said, I got to thinking, too, about how the role has changed.  We still remain that necessary evil some types of management wish they didn’t have to have at all (nothing but overhead, an administrative position ... and, yes, I have actually worked at places where that was pretty clear and overtly the outlook) – and yet, particularly at the level I’ve attained, having been doing this work for the best part of a whole generation now, being a secretary ain’t what it used to be.

I’ve long stressed that a good admin is a relationship manager and a project manager.  Lacking the gumption for meetings, classes, and tests, I don’t have the legitimacy a PMP confers, but if I had a schedule of meetings the like of which pretty much all my coworkers endure every day, I’d shoot myself in the neck in a New York minute.  From my chair, I get to PLAN the meetings.

But everybody knows the admin does that.  The changes are more profound.

Every couple of weeks, I round up my two executives and have a short come-to-Jesus with them.  Here’s what’s done, here’s what I’m working on, what have you got for me?  During our most recent one, a hotel issue came up, and – the head honcho decided it was easier for him to handle the problem.  Assistant Vice Honcho said the same, and I was pretty chagrined and joked about me calling them together to make them do my job.  This actually turned into a fruitful conversation, though.

The Moneypenny position used to make every bit of sense.  Executive has important things to do, so part of what secretary does is manage the administrivia.  But ... these days, an awful lot of administrivia has reached a level of convenience for which that irritating joke is apropos:  “there’s an app for that.”

After the 2008 financial crisis and massive job losses across the country, the greatest sector affected was administrative workers.  The evil overhead positions were cut, divvied up, and a shocking percentage of those eliminated will never come back.  I’ve read about this and heard it most recently on NPR, but there’s plenty of material out there (I am being too lazy to link for you; this time, I won’t be your secretary and do it for you ... heh) illustrating this sea change in our career culture.  There are many who think the day of the secretary is over, thanks to helpy little apps and all the functionalities in the calendars we carry with us, which “personally” manage so much more than schedules (without so much as a person involved).

And yet, the death of the admin is just another buzzing in my ear, like the death of Real Books, the death of rock and roll, the death of civility, and so on.  People like to honk on about this stuff, but what I see is evolution.

As my bosses strategized a path forward where, as the best writer, the best editor, the creative core of our group, I’ll take on more presentation work and thereby gain the benefit along the way of a better understanding of the technical side of what our team really does, I heard echoes.  None of this is new.  I have done newsletters for the better part of twenty years.  I was the customer service agent for orphan insurance clients who did not have an agent, at one job.  I assisted the house attorney in penning a book about estate planning (no, it never published; still, I did the work, and typed the phrase “death tax” more than a body ought to have to ...).  I have been in ownership of our staff recognition program for nearly two years now.

I’m still the secretary.

Yet I own all these things, and have owned this sort of thing for almost the length of my career.  If I saw myself leaving the title of “admin” behind, it would always be in the name of taking fuller ownership of a function like this, with a much more sophisticated level of involvement and execution.  A friend recently left the title behind to take on video conference coordination at her location.  It’s nothing she hadn’t had plenty of exposure to before; as an admin, we have exposure to all sorts of things.  Indeed, to take on a job like that is a NARROWING from the breadth of a secretary’s job duties – but a deepening of the authority over this area.  From a coordinator, she’ll become much more of a technician, and build a niche with an identity people relating to her will find more concrete.  The change is, I have no doubt in my mind, something that people will perceive as a “better” job.

Me, I love my job.

But it is hardly beyond my ability, to imagine that little recognition program I own, and remembering when I was part of that much much larger quality assurance program, and when I wrote that newsletter way back when, and to believe that in the right universe, that could be a job unto itself, and a more complex and interesting tool than it is.  It isn’t beyond my ability to perceive that so much of what I have done for many years includes entire programs, managed by me, because budget isn’t “there” for those programs to become something bigger.  What has kept me from acting on dreams of “I’m going to rule the world of” (fill-in-project-blank-here) tends to be corporate structure and money.

Since September 11, 2001, tasty little jobs devoted to telling people they’re simply spiffy are thin on the ground, at best.  More to the point, since that day, my career has been one of sustained *sustenance*.  I lost my place with a boss I loved (shoot, I even miss his wife and his dogs) and spent eight months unable even to *volunteer* my time because everyone else had lost their jobs, too, and you literally couldn’t give it away back then.  Habitat for Humanity didn’t even return my calls!

Then I got in with WS – interestingly enough, in their quality assurance division.  I parlayed that temp job into a low level gig which represented a massive pay cut for me, something over twenty percent.  Networked and WORKED, and parlayed that into a midlevel gig.  Networked and WORKED, and parlayed that back up to executive status.  I was at the top echelon of one of the largest securities firms in the country (working with the guys who *didn’t* want to hand out credit to every Tom, Dick, and Fido) when, thank you 2008, the economy once again collapsed.  In the seven years since it’d done that last, I had promoted myself three times.  And once again I found myself at mid-level and thanking my lucky stars to be even there.  When the next layoff came, it took only three months for me to get a senior administrative gig, and I have been grateful ever since – and, frankly, baffled that I even got seen.  My resume hit this employer electronically, I knew nobody here, and I got my foot in a door most people can’t even get close enough to knock on.

Even today, I still haven’t regained the trajectory I had begun in 2001, or rebuilt by 2008.  In 2007, it was possible to imagine building a job all its own out of the responsibilities which have always been part of an admin’s roster of projects.  That isn’t the world right now, and that is okay.  It is probably one of the unseen motivators which got me to write a novel, and to take on the great load of work that brings with that, which can be so much harder than the actual writing.  I wouldn’t want to give that up for a “real” job, either.  It doesn’t mean I’m not motivated, and don’t dream at my job.

It just means that I never forget, I work because it pays for my life.

I write because that’s a big part OF my life.

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Blogs *do* have power, sometimes, to spur us to action.  This post, for instance, inspired me to look here at options available in my state.  I'm mulling over whether to opt for a block option or 100%, but even just $10 is stated to be the equivalent of removing 1.2 gasoline-powered automobiles from the road for a year.  A far better $120 than spending it on a few of the pizzas I might order in a year, or vintage jewelry I'm not actually in need of collecting.  Vintage purses, of course, I desperately need, but baby steps ...

Think about it.  Thanks also to Teh Intarwebs, looking into - and signing up - for these things is now remarkably simple.

In Dependence Day

Speaking of education (and several other things too), this is a great post for today.  Patriotism isn't a language spoken with one single, unified voice.

... And a Billionaire Shall Save Them

Very late, as usual (I may be no Procrastacritic, but apparently I have the same DNA ...), I have finally gotten around to watching the culmination of Nolan's Batman trilogy.  The Dark Knight Rises is, in its way, the perfect movie for our times - but it is not a feel good spectacle.

This isn't the statement it seems to be.  I like a "dark" movie, and don't ask for pap.  But this film is disturbing.  It doesn't question our world and posit something better.  Its function, in the end, is to look at our world - this economy of haves, the invisibility of the have-nots - the cruel dynamic of "the 1%" - the ever-tipping balance of imbalance - and posits that revolution is evil, *and* that self-rule equals anarchy and ends in death.

Bane, the villain of the piece, is the product of ultimate deprivation, and his theorem that the concentration of power (and money) in the hands of the few is unacceptable is positioned, in this story, as the ultimate form of evil.

The Dark Knight Rises celebrates the wealthy, mourns any injury to them in the most shamelessly sentimental terms - "This house belonged to a family" says, of all people, Catwoman, as The Great Unwashed overtake a mansion - and rejoices in the billionaire savior, come to return Gotham from its peril in the hands of The People and restore it to the wealthy, the rightful in power.

DKR is more offensive and disturbing even than The Artist or Battlestar, for being a direct rebuke of justice.  The Artist's problems were not thematically unallied to this thesis (a bid for pity of the wealthy white man who loses not even close to everything that counts, when he arrogantly and petulantly chooses to resist the very authority he's adored as long as it was making him a fortune).  Battlestar's were racist, sexist, and philosophical, though it was rising somewhat from its worst by the end.  DKR is simply a political piece, commanding obedience to the now, decrying any questioning of our existing economy, our existing political structure, as unthinkable villainy.

It's pretty sick, is what I am saying.  Worse, it's fairly engaging (though not as well done as it should be, and far too full of bizarrely convenient ramps for people to escape far too many chase scenes), if a bit murky to follow and somewhat poorly plotted.

Here is the surprise gem.  Catwoman, here portrayed in as close to her Julie Newmar incarnation as any production in the past forty years has attempted, by Ann Hathaway (she of all the teenaged girl-fantasies about getting to wear fancy fancy clothes) of all people.  Selina Kyle, in this incarnation is as wildly competent as ever, which is nice to see, and her sexuality, fully present, doesn't get to compromise her in this script.  The character remains competent at all times, is able to manipulate without missing a beat - but NOT because she is a "wily female" character (indeed, her gender is not the informing source of any of her worse traits, nor is it the excusing factor in redeeming her from them).  She is not vulnerable in the pouting, diffident way most female characters, particularly in action movies - *particularly* in *superhero* movies - are.  No, her evolution, through this story, is singularly personal, has some meaning, and keeps her the most fascinating character on screen.  She participates perhaps more than Batman, Bane - more than anyone else in the film, except Joseph Gordon Levitt's John Blake - in the reality of the consequences of the action.  She and Blake alone appear to actually represent the masses, the huge population of Gotham, enduring - and overcoming - the results of those forces battling it out so attractively for the audience.  I even like the design choice that justifies/creates her cat ears.

I didn't go into this watching hating Ann Hathaway, but I've come away appreciating the hell out of her bringing to life this character.  It's even explicit in the film:  "There's more to you than that."

All this and only one gratuitous shot of her ass.  Would this had been her film entirely.  Ah well.

Tom Hardy, unfortunately, is all but lost.  As a Trek nerd, I've watched him ever since America glanced across him in Nemesis.  But there's no way to direct around the constraints of the character Bane.  Hidden behind a mask, given another in the series of all-but-ridiculous voices the Nolan Batmans provide such a rich series of - there's not much an actor can do to clamber out of the hole dug by such constraints.  Edward Norton, in Kingdom of Heaven, and hidden behind a silver mask of his own, somehow managed to make a memorable character leap out from behind it - ironically, not least by his use of a somewhat funny voice.

Sadly, the funny voice doesn't seem to be the magic.  I'm sorry to watch Tom Hardy, whom I can't hold responsible for his own death, lost so completely in DKR.  Bane's not bad to watch, but there is no depth as written, and as directed there's nothing to lift the bad guy out of a flat comic panel.  After the late and legendary Heath Ledger, I guess putting the villain behind a mask was about all they could do, but it is still unfortunate to waste an actor like that.

Thirty-seven years ago, Luke Skywalker was a hero.  He was a rebel against tyranny, fighting the faceless, artificially animated Powers That Be.  Now the hero is the guy kicking down the rebel, who is himself repulsive for his infirmity.

Way to go, progress.

Way to go, billionaire Bruce Wayne.


Please understand - I know that this is a reductive interpretation.  That doesn't make it incorrect, and it doesn't redeem this film from its reckless and disturbing messages.  Dark Knight Rises is still a dangerous story in this day and age.  Think about whom it serves best before thinking it's time to get shrill on this reviewer.

Did the Internet Do It?

Many of the items I post here, though without criticism nor even always much/any comment, I don't necessarily agree with.  Here is an intriguing one:

“... a word that manages to convey both a capacity for mercurial insight and a lack of practical job skills."

I don't think it's anywhere near so simple a cause and effect, but considering aspects can help in looking at a whole.

What do you think?  Was Kodachrome really rose-colored, one of those examples of how things "used to be better" ... ?  Is the story here the hero's death, or something more complex?  White boy dreds never inspire confidence in me (and this article is from Salon, after all) - but this guy claims discipleship to no less than Richard Feynman.  So do we call him and say "Surely you're joking, Mr. Lanier" ... ?  Could be an interesting read, the book this shills.

We shall see, of course.  The question is whether we'll actually look - or learn.