INVITATION TO A READERSHIP FORUM ON HARD TIMES; AND HOW TO SURVIVE THEM AND GROW

Well, hi again. I’ve been laying a bit low these past couple of weeks, trying to figure out which way the winds are blowing and taking Grandpa Seamus’ advice about keeping my butt out of the breeze in the process.

Actually, Seamus himself wasn’t very good at that which is probably why, among other things, he got run out of Ireland after Bolland’s Mill and encouraged everywhere else to "go west, young man, PLEASE go west" until he got to some high mountains that were just as ornery as he was. And neighbours just as colourful. But I’m third generation and it’s been thinned out some. Mostly. Maybe. Okay, you’re not buying that. I digress.

Like some of you, I got laid off back late last summer and the job I had before that lasted five years. I’ve also worked at Boeing. As in a lot of other places right now, even temp work is hard to find in Seattle. I understand why and even though I’m behind in the rent, so does my landlady. I’ve got enough unemployment coming in now to pay the rent, just not enough to catch up.

She also knows I spend a lot more than 40 hours a week trying to get back on the Hit Parade. She and her sister own 17 buildings and a lot of tenants won’t be able to make their rent at all. They’re international, these two, and their native country’s going through what the rest of us are.

I think maybe I’m luckier in some ways because I’ve survived lean times before. When a federal judge up here closed down old growth to protect the spotted owl, I ended up losing a three bedroom mobile and fourteen acres of land. Then I moved into a city of almost a million people where I only knew one. It hasn’t been real glamorous but I have learned how to adjust my outgo to my income. Mostly.

I also grew up with good role models in that regard, as well. I remember one time in the early Fifties when times got lean on the ranch and the weather was favouring the trout. There was a lot of work to do around the place and Seamus wasn’t the most patient person to begin with.

We ended up going out fishing one Sunday morning after church, which was unusual because generally going before was Seamus’ way of getting out of going at all. By the time we got to the ravine where the fishing was best, it was noon. And while I took up position downstream and at the bottom of the ravine, instead of baiting up and casting, Seamus tied a blasting cap to a rock, leaned over and tossed it into the creek.

I got a little wet and the ground shook a bit. But between us, we scooped up enough German Brown and Rainbow to get through most of a winter. He admitted it wasn’t very sporting but it did put food on the table. And he doubted it troubled the trout nearly as much as it apparently still bothered some other folks.

And I’ve been fortunate to live among whole communities who reacted, in spirit if not also in fact, like that too during hard times. Reflecting on it, it seems to me they all had a couple, three things in common.

First, facing common adversity, they put their political, religious, economic and other differences aside. (For the most part.) They admitted, both to themselves and to one another, that they were scared of losing it all and trying desperately to figure out to hang on to at least some of it.

Once the figurative and sometimes literal hugging and crying together was over, they got organised. They looked at needs and resources and got a game plan behind every contribution every single member of their family, neighbourhood and community could make, each in their own way.

I’m talking about the kid who rides their bike delivering papers over nine square miles before school because suddenly two incomes is not enough. And the teenager who spends afternoons bucking hay on their uncle’s ranch because said uncle got hurt in a tractor accident and the mortgage can’t survive a bad harvest.

I’m talking the Iraqi war veteran who sees more hell than any human being should, coming back to a nation in chaos. And the UAW line worker who, for twenty years, busted their butt, sometimes double shifting and working on holidays so their kids could get a college education and not have to work probably the toughest job there is alongside coal mining, commercial fishing, construction, farming, logging, ranching and steel working. (in alphabetical order)

I’m talking the ninety year old great grandparents who survived the Depression, a World War, several protracted conflicts and more than one recession, working to exhaustion and falling asleep praying to the Almighty for the strength and courage to make it so all those they helped bring into this world wouldn’t have to keep on going through it.

I’m also talking the company president who cares about their people and needs to make some tough and lonely decisions that get passed down to the line boss, the foreman, the superintendent, the editor. We’re talking a lot of ‘bosses here. You make the best decision you can in the time you’ve got to make it. But no matter how good or bad the call, it stays with you forever.

These folks I’ve had the privilege of knowing during hard times also didn’t spend a lot of time blaming their elected officials for it. Out here, in the Pacific Northwest, we tend to look at their job as we do our own. Because we’re a region of mostly small communities often isolated in winter, we tend to elect our neighbours.

So we’re on a first name basis with folks like Governor Chris, whose daughter I ran into at the post office the other day, and U.S. Senators Maria and Patti. It sometimes takes things a lot longer to get done here but that’s because our elected officials are taking constituency input. If they don’t do their job, same thing happens to them as happens to us if we don’t do ours.

Perhaps most importantly, these folks who not only survived but came out ahead, saw this as a chance to reinvent and prosper in different ways. They had the daring to consider that just maybe the machine’s breaking down for a reason. And maybe it’s because human beings have been sacrificing their health and sanity far too long for a lifestyle that is toxic to every living species on this planet, including them.

Maybe it’s time to downscale and retool. We’ve been a power-driven society since the dawn of the Industrial Age and in our need for validation, our need to keep up with the Joneses, we’ve laid waste to practically every other people and every other species who sometimes not so quietly suggested there was a better and far more time-tested way. And when it comes right down to it, I don’t think we’ve been real kind to one another, have we, gang?

Well, Grandpa Seamus had a mouth on him and I guess I do too. I’ve got some ideas about how we can not only survive this but come out happier and kinder to one another and the planet. But my voice and that of an unreconstructed Irish rebel who should have been gagged, roped to a chair, stood up against a wall and shot by a British firing squad at the "tender" age of 17, is certainly not near enough. We need to open this blog to input from you, the readership, in these regards.

Granted, there are only a hundred of you now but you’re a very special one hundred. And each of you knows a few more like you. You’re spread out from one end of North America to the other and in the UK and France. You’re a brain trust to be reckoned with and then some. Each and everyone of you.

In short, folks, you rock. So let’s get those cards and letters coming in, gang. (And yep, Judah, that means you can get creative with tofu. Just don’t try to sneak any broccoli or cauliflower in mine.)

Those folks I talked about, who survived hard times and came out ahead? They’re you yahoos.

Folks, we have a chance to make a difference. I’ll look forward to hearing from you. Take care, stay well and God Bless.

Rusty

VETERANS DAY 2008

A VETERAN REFLECTS

I am a veteran but I do not believe that wars are good or even necessary. I am, however, proud of every human being on the face of this planet who died in the service of family, neighbours, community, cause and nation. Honoring those who gave the ultimate sacrifice should not, and never has, respected demographics. It is said that history is written by the victor. I suggest that it is remembered by all.

I am glad we no longer blame warriors for wars. I came back to a nation which had apparently forgotten that. I saw what it did to those who fought the hardest and the best. According to one Veterans Administration study I read, 50,000 veterans of my generation’s war killed themselves after they got back. That’s almost as many as who died in battle or from battle-related causes. That seems so incredibly unfair to me, even some 35 years later.

It’s taken me a long time to live down the guilt I feel for the death I helped bring to civilians as well as "enemy" military. It took a Vietnamese University of Washington student whose father was in the North Vietnamese Army and who visited here and welcomed me like a comrade in arms, to let go of a measure of what has haunted me down almost four decades now.

"Rusty, soldiers do not make wars. They only fight them."

I leave you with a poem I wrote 37 years ago and updated at the end after two of the young people in my life served in Operation Desert Storm. I leave you, as well, with a final heartfelt plea, because as Americans, you can do this.

ATONEMENT

It was Christmas Eve and even the Buddhists were turning out.
While their former European masters gathered in basement pubs
to dance and wassail, while from their towers beyond,
Red Chinese border guards smiled knowingly.
We're just come off the gunline and I was tired of killing.
I'd known even then that a single death buries a thousand dreams.
My ship alone snuffed out Paradise several times over.
I watched it all again on a Hong King ferry plying the harbour to Kowloon.
White mingled with yellow' Confucius with Commodore Perry;
the Mings with MacBeth and the Mandarins with Richard the Nix.
Back and forth I rode, sometimes forward, other times aft,
but mostly amidships, like Gulliver in an artillery barrage.
Each trip, a few more of my own dreams died.
It was an act of penance which continued until another gulf
and another war gave both Jesus and God
something else to regret.

Hong Kong
Christmas 1970

Please, put an end to this madness.

The Spirit of '76 - Part II?

EVERY FLIPPING TIME I THINK THE LIMITS OF WEIRDNESS HAVE BEEN REACHED….

Hi again, folks. You know, just about the time I think the parameters of weirdness have been reached, I get something in the email which gives me some pause to reevaluate that assumption. I don’t normally quote emails but since this one was forwarded to me by one of the NSJ readership, I’m making a hopefully rare exception.. And also for the record? I’m glad she thought enough of me to pass it along.

Anyhow and stuff, the Weirdness Bar got raised another couple of inches. Or so. And stuff. Soooo, here’s the letter and my response . Happy Friday, gang.

Fellow Business Executives:

As the CFO of this business that employees 140 people, I have resigned myself to the fact that Barrack Obama will be our next President, and that our taxes and government fees will increase in a BIG way.To compensate for these increases, I figure that the Clients will have to see an increase in our fees to them of about 8% but since we cannot increase our fees right now due to the dismal state of our economy, we will have to lay off six of our employees instead.

This has really been eating at me for a while, as we believe we are family here and I didn't know how to choose who will have to go.So, this is what I did. I strolled thru our parking lot and found 8 Obama bumper stickers on our employees' cars and have decided these folks will be the first to be laid off. I can't think of a more fair way to approach this problem.

These folks wanted change; I gave it to them.

If you have a better idea, let me know.

Sincerely,

Yep, I've got a better idea and this comes from someone who saw merits in both parties and candidates, did a Force Field Analysis and voted according to the results.

If you've read my latest blog http://nstar312.blogspot.com/, you'll know where my greatest concern lies now. I wrote that blog on Election Day, without benefit of the media keeping me abreast of the returns.

I hope this letter was truly a joke and I suspect it is. I'm also certain, however, that many people feel this way and will likely penalize those who disagreed with them and voted their own individual consciences.

If I was one of those employees, I'd be on the phone to the Washington State Department of Labour & Industries because at least in my state, discrimination of this sort is illegal. I know it is on a federal level and if one of those Obama supporters reports it to his Congressional representative(s), there will most certainly be an investigation and, likely, an example made.

I've been a journalist covering politics for over 30 years now and in California, Oregon and Washington. In Oregon, while on hiatus, I ran two county-wide campaigns. On the one hand I know, then, how dirty politics can be and on the other, how vengeful the constituency can be as well. The campaigns I ran in Oregon were clean and free of virtualy all of the unconscienceable behavour I've witnessed in this election.

Why? Because even these "dumb" farmers, loggers and small town merchants knew what constituted appropriate behaviour and which did not. This ‘mud-slinging" crap is beneath the dignity of the constituency, at least in the Pacific Northwest.

My suggestion is to remember that regardless of the demographics, we are ONE nation, ONE people. The election is over and like BOTH candidates said, it's time for us to begin acting like Americans. And I'll add to that, instead of a bunch of Gulliver's yahoos without the common sense God gave a mayfly. Not to libel either the yahoos or the mayfly.

And yes, feel free to circulate this response.

SPIRIT OF 76?

FOR POSTERITY OR AS A POST MORTEM

11/04/08 – Seattle, Washington
By the time you folks are reading this, the election returns will likely be in. As I write this, they are not. I’m not thinking about winners or losers. I’m thinking about how the game was played. I’m also not just reflecting on the politicians but on the slice of constituency I’ve experienced offline in a neighbourhood comprised mostly of University of Washington students and faculty, working people and the mercantile infrastructure. I’m also thinking about several online chatrooms I frequent and which, by the demographics of their regulars, represent not only most of America, but a slice of Canada, the UK and Europe, as well.

I’ll be 60 this March and I cannot recall an election which brought out more of the worst in some and the best in some others. Offline, we don’t discuss politics that much and when we do, it’s always an unemotional "force field" analysis. Name calling, lying and defaming candidates or people of opposing parties is simply considered rude because it’s non-productive. It’s also embarrassing to witness. We have an innate sense of human dignity which may be passe east of the Mississippi but which forms a cornerstone of not only our political philosophy and world view, but the way we behave toward one another. To put it bluntly, regardless of who wins an election, we still have to live with one another as family, friends, neighbours and community.

There was a particularly rabid viciousness to the online constituency I witnessed. It was savage, vile, profane and, for the most part, extremely unimaginative. It involved personal attacks which had nothing to do with the issues at hand or the qualifications of the candidates involved. It presumed an inherent superiority of one party over another that was nothing more than another aspect of the national arrogance. We castigated George Bush when he turned out to be wrong, but when he wanted to play Patton in his race to the Rhine to avenge 9/11, we cheered him on. He took that, rightfully, as mandate and became not president, but monarch. It didn’t take a coup to put him on the throne. It took the constituency.

Since, by birth I am also a member of the International Community, I was ashamed of the conduct I witnessed. I am just as American as anyone born here and I was brought up in Northern California by Americans. I’m a Vietnam veteran, a journalist who has covered politics in three states and someone who has organised and run two political campaigns. My coverage was unbiased and the campaigns I ran were clean ones. Neither would have been possible without a constituency which demanded that level of integrity and eschewed the crap that doth make hypocrites of us all.

Regardless of who is inaugurated in January, Capitol Hill will remain. There will be no rioting in the streets, no Stalineque purges, no calling for heads to roll. The government will go on because that is what THIS government does. McCain is no more the devil than Obama. And regardless of who emerges victorious, the "vanquished" will still be a member of the Senate in good-standing, with the gratitude of his peers and supporters for giving it his all.

My concern is for the constituency and who they will blame next for their troubles in their race to escape personal responsibility. I will also be wondering what happened to the words of the people, by the people and for the people.
I wonder what the framers of the Constitution, many war veterans of the bravest experiment since the Magna Carta, would think of us now.