A Conversation

I vividly remember a night, sometime in the late 1950s, sitting in a school bus, by the window, gazing out at the stars. I had just read some damn thing or other about space and time travel and was trying to project myself—trying to be myself at some distant point in time looking back at myself sitting in the school bus. Trying to imagine that self looking back at myself at that point. Of course I told no one what I was doing. They still had mental asylums back then, you know.

And here I am, sitting at my desk in my middle-class home in my middle-class suburb in Colorado over 50 years later, connecting with that me in that bus on that two-lane highway running from Murray State University to Providence, Kentucky, on that winter’s night.

We are talking about the future and the past. I’m telling him about the things that happened to him after that night, about the things he saw, the things he did, the people he loved, the worlds in which he lived. He’s appreciative of what I have to say.

Then he asks me questions that I don’t want to hear. “So, did I do what I intended to do?”, he asks. “Was I honest?” “Was I caring and loving?” “Who did I become?” He doesn’t know what authentic means yet, but that’s the question he’s asking.

When I think of authenticity, I used to think of  a commitment to something larger than themselves. Not in a subservient way, as the case with most organized religious folk, but in an “egoless” way, more akin to a Zen notion. As I talk to myself through time, it is that ambition I hear from that teenager-that-was-me. At that time I fantasized about living authentically, focused, clear, and uncluttered, looking at the world through larger-than-life and beyond-life-as-I-know-it eyes.  

Compromise is a dirty word these days, yet we humans, in real life, face compromises every day. The only way around it is to literally “get off the grid” emotionally, spiritually, psychologically, and physically. Some people do that. Those of us who choose not to do so are faced with dilemmas and compromise.

As a kid, I did not think in terms of dilemmas. As an old man, my life is a dilemma. To me as an old man,  living authentically means making decisions in the face of dilemmas, acting on them, and taking responsibility for those decisions and actions. And compromise.

I wonder how many people experience this phenomenon of trying to live up to expectations set in our youth. I wonder how many of us forgive ourselves for not having met those lofty goals. 

I am not the person that kid-that-was-me envisioned. I have made a lot of compromises, many of which I regret. I have faced dilemmas and done the wrong things.

But I’m asking that kid in that bus that night to cut me some slack. He is a forgiving kid.

I think. I'm still waiting for an answer.

Learning About Piece Work and Labor: Kentucky, 1963

In the summer of 1963 I worked in my hometown plastics factory, housed in a cinderblock building with a corrugated metal roof, filled with cardboard boxes, machinery, and plastic. It was often 120 degrees. This was my first on-the-job business course, an important one in which I learned about the concepts of “labor” and “piece work.”

I worked as a supply boy to about 15 women. My responsibility was to provide them with bundles of plastic garment bags on which they, using heat machines, sealed the shoulder sections. The ultimate product was the bags which enclose our dry-cleaned clothing.

These women worked piece work, hunched over hot machines in a furnace. I learned very quickly that all plastic was not created equally. The slipperier the plastic, the more shoulders could be sealed. The more shoulders sealed, the more money was to be made. Good plastic was prized. Bad plastic was to be shared, making sure no one women got all of a bad batch. I screwed up only once, and gave a bad batch to only one woman. She stood up, threw the plastic at me, called me a motherf**ker, picked up another batch, sat down, and resumed work. I was not offended. I had screwed up and knew it. So, I picked up the bad batch, threw it into the re-melt barrel and resumed my work.

These were smart, strong women, who needed the meager money they earned from back-straining, finger stressing work eight hours a day. There were no official breaks, so the small bathrooms were always clogged with smoke resulting from the quick unofficial breaks taken.

Here’s what I learned about piece work. It sucks. It does not motivate people to work harder, it causes people to get pissed off, cuss, and throw things. It does not improve productivity, it causes shortcuts to be made, decreasing quality. This has been proven time and again, but I saw it in action.

Most importantly, however, I learned that it is demeaning to the people who work.

Here’s what I learned about “labor”. When the word is used as a broad term to discuss people as opposed to money (labor and capital), it disguises the issues. To think of Edna Dunbar, Castella McDowell, Dean Wood, Nora Belle Holt, Reba Walker and all the women who worked as hard as they could, in lousy conditions, as “labor” makes it easier for the factory bosses to blame them for the companies’ shortcomings. It’s easier for owners to convince themselves to move further and further south, then to Asia and other off-shore locations in search of cheaper “labor” without having to say, “We’re looking for people who will work for nothing in lousy conditions while we continue to make the business mistakes that drive down our profits.”

These jobs were not held by “labor”—they were held by people like my mother, who used her pennies to pay for my coronet lessons as a kid, bought the white shirts I wore in the band, and paid for the food on our table. The factory provided vital jobs in a small town that was struggling to stay alive.

The company moved away in search of cheaper labor.

Since 1963, not much has changed. Laws in the U.S. have been passed that require companies to provide periodic breaks for employees. Laws in the U.S. have been passed that require working conditions to be safe and conducive to work getting done. But we continue to use words like “labor” to talk about how expensive people are—we have to cut “labor costs”—and how restrictive U.S. “labor laws” have become as we continue to look for places outside the U.S. where we can find “cheap labor” in places "friendlier to business".

I wonder how many political leaders and “job creators” had mothers and fathers who worked in sweat shops. I wonder how many job creators are creating sweat shop jobs today.

I wonder if they consider miners, teachers, fire fighters, police officers, factory workers, and other folks who work long hours to support their families and communities as “labor”, or if they, like I in that factory in1963, have had some sort of learning experience. For all our sakes, I wish for them epiphanies.

1968 and 2012: Musings of an Old Man

In the summer of 1968 I had finished a master’s degree, and was commuting from Athens, GA to Clemson, SC to teach a UGA course to teachers in Clemson. During that commute, my first experience of the phenomenon, with no obnoxious talk shows spewing their venom to distract me, I had time to think. I thought about the times in which I lived, and dreamed about the future.

The Vietnam War was one of three very hot issues during that summer of youth and passion.

The U.S. was involved in an unpopular war to which we sent thousands of draftees, reluctant patriots who found courage, fear, drugs, mental and physical disfigurement, and death in the jungles.

People were demonstrating in the streets against this war. The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was engaged. I brought the president of the Athens chapter in to speak to my persuasion class—probably have a file because of that.

Kent State had not yet happened.

Race and racism was the second passionate issue that summer. Dr. Martin Luther King had just been assassinated. The Black Panther Party was in full swing, taking up arms to end what they saw as extreme oppression. Some white preachers in Georgia and South Carolina were preaching the Biblical support for the proposition that black folks were inferior, cast aside by the Old Testament God. Some black preachers in Detroit and Chicago were just beginning to preach the same message, using the same scriptures, against white folks, the ice people, the blue eyed devils.

It was an election year, the third hot issue. The 1968 Democratic National Convention was scheduled for later in the summer. Robert Kennedy had just been assassinated.

My Quaker, Methodist, and UCC friends and other activists were in the streets passionately fighting against injustice.

In the summer of 2012 I am retired, do not commute but am still teaching, and continue to think about the times. Passion is in short supply as the U.S. Tea partiers chant tired, middle-class, white slogans sounding like robots, looking like robots. Occupiers try to find traction with the working class and minorities, but their tires keep slipping.

Racism is as prominent as it was in 1968, but has taken on new forms. Instead of President Obama being called the “n word” in public, as were Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and other leaders, he is called “a socialist” by people who do not understand what the word means, but do know it’s another “n” word. The percentage of unemployment and underemployment in the U.S. is debilitating. For people of color it is embarrassing, to them and us. The number of black people we legally kill each year should be embarrassing, but instead it is seen as a badge of honor by some governors who proudly proclaim themselves as pro-life.

We are now engaged in at least two wars to lesser or greater extents. Unlike Vietnam, people aren’t being drafted to fight these wars. I wonder if that’s why it is easier for us to ignore them. Also unlike Vietnam, these wars were declared “off budget” and “unfunded” by those avid supporters of fiscal responsibility who argued for the wars, and we now struggle to figure out how to pay for them while our economy has crumbled in part because of them.

As in Vietnam, our current troops are finding courage, fear, disfigurement, and drugs. Unlike Vietnam veterans, many of whom died slow deaths connected to the war, these troops are committing suicide at alarming rates. We struggle to figure out why.

And there is an election coming up in the fall.

There are still activists working within and outside the system with unflagging attention to issues of war and social injustice. Some are young activists fighting the good fight, like my Libertarian-with-a-conscience politician friend in Colorado. These people give me hope, and to them, and those in 1968, I humbly say thank you for your service to our country.

But as I sit in the summer of 2012, as wars and injustices continue to multiply, and as many of us whimper about our taxes and sinful women who use contraceptives, I wonder what happened to those changes I dreamed of in the summer of 1968.

Money, Politics, and My Self-Esteem

Sometime in the mid-1950s, I rode around on the trunk lid of Wanda Whitfield’s car in Webster County Kentucky, with my Sousaphone wrapped around my middle, heading for pep rallies for Happy Chandler. In my memory, Chandler, who was Governor of Kentucky and later became Commissioner of Baseball, was the quintessential Kentucky politician, a charismatic, “glad handing”, baby kissing, sort of pudgy, “go to” guy. These pep rallies, plus pep rally organizers like Wanda Whitfield, and probably some smoky backroom deal making, comprised the campaign strategy for politicians, as far as I could tell. Campaign messages were mostly delivered in stump speeches, “town square” debates, and by word of mouth.

I was thinking about that experience as I listened to newscasts the past few weeks telling me that another new fund-raising record will be reached this election year, which made me wonder about money and politics.

Specifically, what I wonder is, who do politicians think I am that they think they it takes that much money to buy me off?

It seems to have become a given fact that those who raise the most money win. Now I know the contest is not about amassing piles of money, then measuring the piles, and the person with the largest pile, or greatest piles, wins. That would make for interesting races though, and would allow us to use metrics and rubrics in assessing the worth of candidates, always a good business school model, and God knows what’s good for business schools is good for America.

Anyway, as far as I can tell, the current formula is to raise as much money as possible in order to buy as many television advertisements, Internet banners, and robocallers as possible. The messages come from two sources, the candidate, and the candidates’ political action committees. The messages embedded in those media are made to be as nasty as possible, without regard for facts or truth—in fact the “big lie”, the more dramatic with the most loaded and scary language, is preferred. These messages are aired as often as funding makes possible to as many people as possible twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. The more money you have, the more you can air. The candidate with the most air time wins.

The theory is that if you bombard your audience with your message, from a variety of media sources, your audience will believe you, no matter what you say. Consequently, the candidate with the most messages bombarded wins, because people will believe the group that they hear from the most, or the most recently.

I wonder who these messages are created for. I get them, so they were created implicitly for me, right? If so, I wonder whether I should be depressed or angry. The picture created of me, the voter, is just about as demeaning as it possibly could be. I, as a voter, am seen as an ignorant follow-the-crowd “mark”, who will believe whatever I’m told if I hear it often enough from my phone, my computer, and my television.

I wonder if that is not a variation of the notion that my vote can be bought. From analysis of elections the past few years, the answer is yes, votes are being bought, with a potential billion dollars in bribes being raised and spent this year.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, but miss the days of Happy Chandler pep rallies and stump speeches, where votes were sometimes bought, but were bought the old fashioned Kentucky way, one half-pint at a time, with hand shakes and eye contact made. Much more honest and much less demeaning to all concerned.

Wisdom and Vanity

When I was in high school, Rice Sutherland, my Methodist Youth Fellowship guru (no they did not have words like that in Providence, Kentucky at that time, but she was my angel, and I thank her), gave me a Revised Standard Version of the Bible with my name embossed on the cover. Her instructions were, when I was troubled or down (we also did not have words like “stressed” or “depressed” back then), I should open the book to random pages, and look for passages that spoke to me. When I found them I should circle them and write a date.

I still have that Bible. I’ve had to have it re-covered (kept my name on it), but I still have it.  There are a lot of circled passages and dates written, all from the early 60s. As I analyze (that’s what old professors do, you know), I find two themes to wonder about. 

First there is “wisdom”. I circled and dated  a lot of passages over several years that dealt with the importance of seeking wisdom. I can remember meditating (sort of) on the notion of wisdom as opposed to knowledge as I wallowed in ennui and angst in the basement of my house on Normal Drive (loved that address) in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The questions—what is wisdom and how do I get some—still rattle around in my consciousness as I wonder about my place in the universe.

The other theme is “vanity”. Ah, vanity, thy name is (what was that, again?). All is vanity. I still believe this is important. I can criticize the Catholic Church for taking Jesus’ teachings and turning them on their head to create a super structure that would make the Pharisees  of Jesus’ time blush. But to do so is vanity. I can criticize a man who got caught with his pants down and created a church in which it is valuable to have multiple wives, in the U.S. , in the 19^th Century.  But to do so is vanity. I can poke fun at all manner of frivolity and foolishness, but when it all boils down, to do so is to feed my vanity.

I write blogs. Vanity, thy name is me.

I criticize the Catholic Church, yet am smitten by the Latin Mass, and the ne’er do well Jesuits. I criticize Baptists and Methodists, yet understand the good that they do to people in need (and love the fried chicken dinners them Methodists cook). I criticize the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Hindus, yet know that I’ve been in this world before in some form or other and will be here again in some form or other after I’ve left Lakewood, Colorado and am cremated and rolled into joints and smoked by my closest friends.

The ultimate in vanity is for a human being like me to believe that I can know the nature of my creator. The ultimate in vanity (times infinity) is for a human being like me to try to persuade a human being like you to believe that I am right and you are wrong and my god’s greater than your god, and therefore it is right for me to make fun of you and yours.

But as I study those old circled passages, I wonder if the ultimate in vanity, period, would be for me to decry Sharia Law while taking up arms to enforce my particular version of Christian Law.

While wisdom hides in the corner.