Little Red Hen Syndrome

Being the sole working adult in a household of two middle-schoolers, I have identified, over the years, what I call the Little Red Hen Syndrome.

You may know the story: Little Red Hen asks all the other animals if they want to help plant the wheat. Not I, the horse, goat, cat, dog, etc. all reply in turn. Will you help me water the wheat?.... Cut it, mill it, make it into bread? No, no, no. But of course when it's time to EAT the bread they're all right there. Too bad, says the little red hen.

It plays out a little differently for me. As I stoop to pick up a sock, bring a dirty dish to the sink, return something to a shelf, the though will rise, unbidden: Am I the only one that knows how to do this? It's a bad thought to have; unchecked, it only inspires carping (why don't you ever...!) and self pity. I've finally developed a much healthier attitude about it, one that looks as much at my own reaction as the event that promoted it...and one that's a lot more strategic about, say, incorporating desired behavior into allowance payment plans.

Lately as I watch our economy implode and Obama's stimulus package wind its way through Congress I find another version of the Little Red Hen syndrome playing out in my head.

I've worked since I was 14 years old. I thankfully have a pretty good credit rating and live in a house I own. I've worked in human services for many years because I believe structural inequalities in our society need to be fixed. I know many of those now losing their homes were lied to about their mortgage terms, work at jobs with wages depressed by unfettered global capitalism and years of institutionalized crippling of labor's power.

And yet...there's a tiny, tiny Little Red Hen in my head when I see my puny 401K swirling in the middle stage of the toilet flush, when I watch my home value plummet and hear about mortgage assistance programs and government bailouts. My relative lack of debt and good credit rating come from not taking nice vacations, from living in a house filled with mismatched hand-me-downs, and until very recently driving a car with rust holes you could lob a golf ball through. Where's my reward? this voice asks. I've been working so hard. What do I get?

I'm not proud of this voice when it talks about mortgage assistance programs. I give it free reign and add extra outrage when it comes up around the financial services bailout.

Other parents nod their heads and smile knowingly when I tell them my Little Red Hen theory. Problem is, she lived and worked in a system that was ultimately fair, that rewarded work and had ample resources.

Don't think we do anymore.

We're measuring the wrong things: Or, was ANYTHING good about the Depression?

Listening to the news coverage of the economy around Christmas, I was struck at how the very fundamentals of what we measure are a perfect example of we're in such a mess.

Consumer spending is down, reporters intoned, meaning retailers suffer, tax revenues drop, and the downward spiral continues.

But past holiday buying seasons, which bolstered the economy we were used to, were based on credit card debt, and on that peculiar American brand of entitlement that's the envy and the downfall of our financial system and the world's: We DESERVE that new plasma screen TV. Our lives are deficient if we don't have the right new car! No matter what we make or how these expenses bring our spending out of kilter with our income. The right to borrow and spend more than we make is our right too.

We are measuring the wrong things.

Lurching into this recession, watching my home value plummet and my 401K waste away like everyone else, I've been trying to change my habits, to be more in line values embodied by my parents, trained by grandparents who lived through the Depression. Sensible saving, good for the long term economy and our individual and collective financial health, means Christmas retail sales drop, resulting in this hysterical (and perhaps misdirected) news coverage of how the economy continues to tank.

If I were a news editor I'd have my reporters also find out how much we are saving as a nation, whether we are paying down some debt and putting money in the bank. Include savings as a benchmark, an automatic news peg. Spending is good and needed - but so is saving, and living within your means. Where is the sweet spot where these trajectories connect for the greatest good?

Sometimes I think the Depression taught us some good things: recycle, be careful with and grateful for what we have. It's sad and touching, in a way, the implication that if only we saved enough string we'd be all right. In fact, the most maddening thing about W's response to 9/11 was that he asked nothing of us. Look at how Americans have rallied together and sacrificed in the past. If only he'd asked us to pull together then, the whole painful reversal in attitude and fortune, now beginning in the midst of a yawning crisis, could be well underway.

Listening to the news the other morning, my older daughter asked if we were going to lose our house. It's unlikely, now, I was able to tell her. And even if we did, the worst thing that would happen to us is we'd double up, maybe living in Pepere and Gradma's basement.

No problem! both girls replied.

I think the entire country is going to have to undergo this large shift in thinking. It's going to be painful and not quick.

Teaching your kids to be dinosaurs

Waiting for the bus my daughters and I read the papers. When we can afford it we revel in the New York Times. (A friendly delivery man knows we like the Globe too and drops us one when he has a spare.) Lately, though, it's just the incredible shrinking Hartford Courant - our state's capitol city paper, emerging from rounds and rounds of buyouts and sales and layoffs.

Reading the entire paper in 10 minutes has its advantages, I guess...fewer to take to the curb. Less put into landfills. But half the front section seems like police report transcripts. Be afraid, it seems to intone - be very afraid. We talk about that: what's reported, how it's easier to copy a police report than to analyze complex records and events, how the paper we hold in our hand represents something that is not proportional to reality.

So you see my kids have a steady diet of news. And commentary about news.

Maybe I am teaching my kids to be dinosaurs.

Cooking dinner recently, one of my daughters stated a nearby town is poorer than ours. Really? I queried. Yes, I've been there, came the confident reply. So I explained different ways to measure community wealth and resources. They quickly grasped the notion of a Grand List, adding up all the taxable property and dividing by the number of people. We have a house, we have a car; they could relate.

Later, I thought ruefully that of course my clever middle school children could grasp the basic elements of a municipal budget, drilled into me as a 21-year-old reporter covering a town. But there are fewer and fewer people know how to report on these things, or opportunities to read about them.

Recently I was in a panel discussion reflecting on whether our current state of media - massive corporate ownership, diminishing reporting and investigative resources - is a chicken or an egg problem. Or has a chicken or egg solution. Do we as a society expect and seem to like such shallow reporting because that's all we get? Is that what we get because that is what over time we have shown we want? Is that what we want because it's all we know? Or all we have time for?

I remember feeling from my own reporting days that I was often just writing into a well. You work your ass off, break a fabulous story, and no one cares or acts on it and nothing changes. That's a good part of why I left journalism, and now, after a lot of years of trying in other ways to change the world, I can see how even the best reporting got to be part of a much larger and more concerted campaign. You need the analysis, and the content in that 30+ inches of unbroken copy, but you've also got to call out the important parts and hit people over the head with it. Again and again and again.

There are actually some good things about the incredible shrinking Courant. I do see they are calling out information in new and visually appealing ways. Good! What's still lacking, though, is analysis, and any context. How about a police blotter that also tells us whether crime - by any measure! - was up or down or the same as in recent weeks and years.

Maybe this is one of those things that will work itself out with time. Perhaps the upsurge in blogs and online news will fill the gap - although I am afraid I agree with those who point out that online communities too often consist of people who agree with each other or are interested in narrow and specific topics (left-handed dentists, Buddhist parents.) They're not learning about things in their own community and they are not talking to anyone with a different opinion.

I cling to the notion that as an informed citizens we should have a grasp of certain facts and processes and benchmarks. What's our tax rate, how do we compare to other places, how are we educating our kids and taking care of our seniors, and so many more. And I haven't found a better place we should be able to look to for that than our media.

Hundreds of words for snow

I don't know it it's true, the ubiquitous urban myth that Eskimos, tied to and living off their land, have 100 different words for snow.

Lately I have been feeling that way about leaves.

I am still raking, and now, on the weekend where I have time off from work and my daughters are at their dad's, I am determined to finish up.

Today and yesterday the leaves are very damp and even wet. Tarps weigh many times their usual weight as I drag them to he riverbank. I have to switch hands, feel myself develop Popeye forearms.

Raking them is different too. My yard is not completely level and in some places leaves have gathered in small depressions; here they are packed and wet. In other places, under the eaves of the house, there are pockets of leaves that are entirely dry, fluffy, still colorful and easy to rake.

Most of the yard now has been cleared at least once, so when I go back over and sweep three or four inches worth of these damp leaves, it feels good.

Home Depot Illimunati

I used to joke that if the Illuminati does indeed exist, their greatest accomplishment is Home Depot.

I thought of that again this morning as I was taking leaves. My home office window looks out into my lovely yard, graced with numerous enormous maple and beech trees. Unchecked, leaf accumulation gets to a foot or more of wet, packed, smelly mouldy matter by spring. This year I am resolved to keep up with it, and get out there to clear small patches, even though the trees above are still half filled with trembling, turning leaves.

Weeks ago I was rather stressed, eying my finances (which do NOT include leaf removal) along with the ticking by of the season and what I know to be the massive job ahead. I've had some success in moderating the stress by simply acknowledging making note of it and letting it go; also, though, by not leaving it all till the end, and taking advantage of every free half hour on a nice day to enjoy the air and revel in the exercise.

And so I was out there this morning, and I remembered my old joke about the Home Depot Illuminati.

It goes something like this:

If indeed there is a giant powerful international cabal, intent on seizing and holding control of our political and economic systems, what better success could they hope to have than Home Depot?

Think about what Home Depot successfully promotes.

If you are a homeowner, it is your single largest and greatest investment. If you are not, you are supposed to aspire and work toward it. After all, the greatest form of middle class welfare given the mortgage interest tax deduction.

Well, this, your home, is in constant and unending need of improvement. Even if it isn't actually falling down around you, you are continually told - through trillions of dollars of very well developed glossy commercials; entire sections of the newspaper - that is needs to be brighter, prettier, glossier, larger. Marble. Stainless steel appliances. Skylights! Renovated kitchens!

If you even halfway listen to this constant drumbeat you can spend every spare cent (hell, go into debt if there's none to spare) and every spare minute improving your home. Otherwise you are worthless! Inadequate!

As Betty Friedan said about housework, home improvement now expands to fill all available time.

So, back to the Illuminati part. If the goal is a populace that doesn't care about politics, or public policy, or how society invests its resources, what better way to achieve it than this? (Or doesn't have time to care; maybe the same thing.)

Cause or effect? Kinda doesn't matter.

I've seen Michael Moore's Sicko since developing this theory and think he's got it even more right. Americans are overworked, overextended, and feeling fundamentally really vulnerable about the increasing disconnect between the lifestyle we are told to want, the actual cost of living (even without plasma tvs), juxtaposed against real earnings; and the fact that for many years we have experienced no political hope or sense of our own power and effectiveness. In France, the government is afraid of the people, Moore concludes; here, the people are afraid of the government.

I do have to say, I almost can't bear to watch any more news. The unavoidable economic black hole combined with the possibility (however remote) of a McCain/Palin administration is almost too much to bear. (Although I do feel increasingly free to prepare to celebrate Tuesday.)

However: I have decided to enjoy raking the leaves this year. I do not have to bag them, instead throwing tarps full off a steep hill that leads to a riverbank. That's a kind of wild, joyous feeling in itself. It makes a wonderful, massive compost pile, and the kids love to jump in them. And I can use the mental time to muse, reflect on work and other things, dream up barely read blog posts.

Prescription Religion

An old boyfriend once had a T-shirt with a marvelous and pithy list that summarized the major world religions with a quick irreverent quote for each.

After being raised Catholic, I became a more generic Christian, moving eventually to Buddhism in my thirties.

How do these two things relate?

I sometimes think that Buddhism - for all it has kept me grounded, given me great insights, and meditation - might be the worst thing for me. Truth be told, I've always been a very compassionate person. (Look at my choice of career and political views.) Being able to put myself in another's shoes has never been something I've had to work particularly hard at. In fact, what I often think I need is assertiveness training - to get better at standing up for myself, recognizing when I am being taken advantage of, being firm and clear about what I want and need and will and won't accept.

Which has led me to the belief that what we may need, in place of this modern western ability to shop with impunity for pretty much any faith or spirituality that speaks to us, is someone ELSE to tell us what we need.

Prescription religion.

I look at myself lately - 40 years old and staring hard at my second divorce; glaring questions there about my judgement, at least in one major area! The last thing I need is to sit around thinking and talking about the need for compassion and emptiness! I need some stronger stuff....Wrath of God, chosen people. Maybe I need to ingest some a couple of shots of fundamentalism and start getting ready for the Rapture. Maybe I need to go back to confession, list sins and be absolved.

Sigh.

I am kidding, of course. Mostly. I am reading commentaries on the Diamond sutra lately. I was lucky enough to go to a daylong seminar on it, years ago, and have always loved the realization that only transcending emotions lets you see them; that "all form is emptiness, all emptiness is form," meaning that for all that they consume us at the moment, emotions are really only in us and don't exist otherwise or on their own. From there it's a short leap to being able to hold yourself above or apart from them to really see them.

(Except when you are consumed with primal tears at odd times. On hearing a song that hits you the wrong way. Driving home.)

I have asked the old boyfriend for the T-shirt and he doesn't have it anymore. Couldn't find it on line, either. I think I will spend some time on a comparative religious study, taking snippets as needed.

Later: Stepping in dogshit.

Garden Darwinism

It's that time of year when I long for the desert - when the lush, overwhelming greenness of New England threatens to overwhelm the senses, choke off paths and driveways when untended for a week. When I'm reminded how any bare patch of dirt in these parts, left untended, will be covered in a month with scrappy Queen Anne's lace, sumac trees, bright weedy wildflowers.

When my local walking trails seems sultry and overgrown, with a steamy, closed in feeling, that would render me unsurprised should a brontosaurus poke its head around the corner.

My vegetable garden goes through the same wild process every year around this time, and I am too weary to intervene. I go away or get busy for a week or so and return to find that the tomatoes are overtaking the squash, the oregano is totally out of control, and the sweet peas are staging an invasion again the neighboring asparagus with apparent success.

Garden Darwinism, I call it.

This year's vegetables have been haphazard. I planted all my tomatoes at once and am sure they will all come ripe at EXACTLY the same moment, when my car crosses the state line on my way out to vacation.

In the back row I whimsically planted come climbing moonflowers right in front of some lovely tall sunflower seeds. Unfortunately I did not also then install string for the moonflowers to climb, so as they came of age they lurched inexorably forward and established a mutually lethal stranglehold on the sunflowers. I finally ran some string and coaxed the resultant moonflower-sunflower conglomeration up the ropes, feeling vaguely like I was violating the Prime Directive.

If they survive, I thought, it'll be lovely, if odd. The moonflowers so far seem okay.

Who would think that the fragile, tapering leaves of the moonflower - blossoming only at night, slender trumpet blooms - would overpower the thicker and sturdy trunk of the sunflower? Yet that seems to be the case.

Sometimes at this time of year I feel sympathy for the Pilgrims, who, starving, must have looked around at all of this lush, fantastic growth - not much of which, occurring on its own, seems to have the nutrients to sustain human life...yet how accommodating the land, with just a little knowledge.

I am descended from some actual Pilgrims. Growing more and more allergic every year to poison ivy, I now think of it as nature's way of saving to my ancestors: get back on the boat and keep looking.