6.1.2021 – insecurity

insecurity
flatlining pay are every
day reality

From the paragraph:

In fact, for millions of people in Britain, 2022’s growing sense of disaster is another chapter in a story that goes back at least 10 years – to rules and regulations that turned the welfare state into a mess of trapdoors and tripwires, to the hacking back of benefits, to the dire treatment of disabled people and to a new world of work where chronic insecurity and flatlining pay are an everyday reality.

In the article, The decade that broke Britain: the disastrous decisions that left millions in a cost of living crisis by John Harris.

What struck me is the thought that I have been focused on the Covid years of late and all the issues it has caused.

This article (based in Britain but a lot of applies here) made me realize how long, going back to the the Housing Market crash of 2009 and the first time I got fired by the same company.

Talk about insecurity.

Back in 2009 the company I was working for called me into the office on a Tuesday and I was told my job had been eliminated and that my last day would be Friday.

In the next sentence, I was told that the company was creating a new corporate department and that I was wanted to be on that team and I was offered the same job I was doing but if I wanted it, I would be doing that same job in Atlanta.

So off to Atlanta we dragged all the kids and that chapter of our life started.

Then in 2020, I got call to be in a meeting on a Tuesday and once again I was told that my job had been eliminated and my last day would again be Friday.

The first time it happened, I felt it was the current economic climate.

The 2nd time it was pure spite and meanness and people who I worked with turning out to pretty small people.

If you read this blog, you will know this turned out okay for me but do I have trust in my job, any job?

Do I jump any time I get a note to be in a meeting?

Is my insecurity part of my every day reality?

BOY HOWDY!

5.30.2022 – piece of cloth, a sound

piece of cloth, a sound
make something not cloth nor sound
totems of love, hate

Adapted from the passage:

A flag is a piece of cloth and a word is a sound,
But we make them something neither cloth nor a sound,
Totems of love and hate

From the poem, John Brown’s Body by Stephen Vincent Benét.

According to Wikipedia

, John Brown’s Body (1928) is an epic American poem written by Stephen Vincent Benét. Its title references the radical abolitionist John Brown, who raided the federal armory at Harpers Ferry in Virginia in October 1859. He was captured and hanged later that year. Benét’s poem covers the history of the American Civil War. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1929.

The photo is of my Great Great Grand Fathers grave.

When he was 18, he joined the 16th Michigan Volunteer Infantry and later fought in Virginia and wounded in action at the Battle of Gaines Mill on June 27, 1862.

Here is a larger extract from the poem.

One cannot balance tragedy in the scales
Unless one weighs it with the tragic heart.
The other man’s tragedy was the greater one
Since the blind fury tore the huger heart,
But this man’s tragedy is the more pitiful.
Thus the Eastern board and the two defended kings.
But why is the game so ordered, what crowns the kings?
They are cities of streets and houses like other cities.
Baltimore might be taken, and war go on,
Atlanta will be taken and war go on,
Why should these two near cities be otherwise?
We do not fight for the real but for shadows we make.
A flag is a piece of cloth and a word is a sound,
But we make them something neither cloth nor a sound,
Totems of love and hate, black sorcery-stones,
So with these cities.

Even today, We do not fight for the real but for shadows we make.

A flag is a piece of cloth and a word is a sound.

But we make them something neither cloth nor a sound, Totems of love and hate.

4.19.2022 – then, even before

then, even before
I was six, books began
to happen to me

Adapted from this passage in the book, The Big Sea, An Autobiography by Langston Hughes.

In Topeka, as a small child, my mother took me with her to the little vine-covered library on the grounds of the Capitol.

There I first fell in love with librarians, and I have been in love with them ever since- those very nice women who help you find wonderful books!

The silence inside the library, the big chairs, and long tables, and the fact that the library was always there and didn’t seem to have a mortgage on it, or any sort of insecurity about it – all of that made me love it.

And right then, even before I was six, books began to happen to me, so that after a while, there came a time when I believed in books more than in people – which, of course, was wrong.

That was why, when I went to Africa, I threw all the books into the sea.

Not any sort of insecurity about it.

I’ll pass over any discussion about working at a library and being aware of tax-payer funding and other such insecurities to focus on the magic and wonderfulness of that line, ‘[didn’t have] any sort of insecurity about it.’

Mr. Bono sings, “But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”

Sometimes what you are looking for is right under your nose.

A place with out any sort of insecurity about it would check a lot of boxes on anyone’s search form.

My motto,
As I live and learn,
is:
Dig And Be Dug
In Return.

Langston Hughes

4.9.2022 – this done each man be

this done each man be
allowed return to their homes
not to be disturbed

I have long been fascinated by the United States Civil War.

Fascinated by the romance of it.

Fascinated by the accounts of battles that read along the lines of, “Our losses were small. 30 killed and 300 wounded.”

I watch the news and see what 30 killed look like today.

How was any less 160 years ago.

More and more (not or less) takes the romance out of it.

Today, April 9th, is the anniversary of the surrender of Confederate forces at Appomattox Court House in Virginia.

When asked for terms of surrender, General US (the initials famous for Unconditional Surrender or pretty much, ‘You admit we won and you have to take what comes’) Grant wrote in his own hand:

APPOMATTOX C. H., VA.,

Ap 9th, 1865.

GEN. R. E. LEE,
Comd'g C. S. A.

GEN: In accordance with the substance of my letter to you of the 8th inst., I propose to receive the surrender of the Army of N. Va. on the following terms, to wit: Rolls of all the officers and men to be made in duplicate. One copy to be given to an officer designated by me, the other to be retained by such officer or officers as you may designate. The officers to give their individual paroles not to take up arms against the Government of the United States until properly exchanged, and each company or regimental commander sign a like parole for the men of their commands. The arms, artillery and public property to be parked and stacked, and turned over to the officer appointed by me to receive them. This will not embrace the side-arms of the officers, nor their private horses or baggage. This done, each officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by United States authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside.

Very respectfully,

U. S. GRANT,
Lt. Gen.

And that was that.

After 4 years of doing there best to kill each other, Grant told the other side to:

Give their paroles.

Give up their arms.

Go home.

Did Grant include a warning or a threat?

Nope.

He included a promise.

A promise that once they gave their parole, gave up their arms and got home they would not to be disturbed by United States authority.

He handed it the other General who, after a sort discussion of plow horses, signed it and said, “. . . that this would have a happy effect upon his army.”

Grant signed it.

End of negotitions.

End of a war.

2.25.2022- basic math you can’t

basic math you can’t
tell the future because you
can’t tell the future

I enjoyed the article this morning, ‘A really bad deal’: Michigan awards GM $1bn in incentives for new electric cars.

I enjoyed because of what the reporter, a Mr. Tom Perkins of the Guardian, did.

He did the math.

He did the the very basic math.

GM and the State of Michigan have announced a deal that gives GM $1 Billion dollars in tax incentives over 20 years, — that is 9 zeros – $1,000,000,000 — to build a plant in the State that will create 3,200 jobs that will in around $55,000 a year.

Mr. Perkins divided that 1 billion by 3,200 to show that each job will cost State and Local entities $312,000 in lost tax revenues.

Mr. Perkins then figured state and local tax revenue at $4,600 per job over 20 years and came up with $300 Million in revenue.

Leaving the State of Michigan and local towns a $700 Million short fall.

I thought that the basic math employed by Mr. Perkins to be refreshing, simple and to the point.

This announcement, and I am sure the planning of the announcement went through several drafts and plenty of hard work in producing a memo that, used wonderful words explaining the wonderful benefits of this wonderful deal.

So long as no one did the basic math.

As Mark Twain wrote in The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg, “There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practiced in the tricks and delusions of oratory.”

To be sure, Mr. Perkins, admits that each job will have an impact as each worker needs banks, gas stations and pizza places.

But Mr. Perkins writes, “The state also claimed the direct and indirect jobs created by the project will generate $29bn in new income over 20 years, or the equivalent of 29,000 jobs paying $50,000 annually. Economists from across the ideological spectrum who reviewed the analysis said that level of job creation is highly unlikely and pointed to a US Commerce Department report that labels such claims “suspicious”.”

Mr. Perkins quotes Michael LaFaive, fiscal policy director with the right-leaning Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

Forecasting 20 years of economic impacts is nearly impossible, LaFaive said, and the MEDC’s (Michigan Economic Development Corporation) job projection “strains credulity”.

“They can’t tell the future because they can’t tell the future,” he said.

Oddly enough, after writing this, I remembered that the ‘Verse of the Day’ for yesterday was:

Jeremiah 29:11-13 (NIV) For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

I am okay with some one knowing the future and I am okay that it is NOT the folks running the State of Michigan.

PS: I went searching online for what for me would be the perfect image of the GM building in Detroit. I did not want that silly logo on that silly ReCen. I wanted the old General Motors Building in downtown Detroit over by the Fisher Theater. And I wanted to show the sign, GENERAL MOTORS and I wanted it a night to show the sign how it looked with its glowing red letters. I grew up in a Ford family and GM was kind of a shadowy evil empire. In my mind, that huge, multi winged building looming in the haze that always seemed to be around Detroit with those glowing red letters, was the twin of the Castle of the Wicked Witch of the West. If she drove a car, she would drive a GM product. NEVERTHELESS, my search turned up empty. If anyone can find a photo of the old GM Building AT NIGHT with the sign in red letters, please let me know.