You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
He admitted it was an academic book that deserved to be published, but their research indicated they’d be lucky to sell 400 copies. Without a hefty subsidy, there was no way his university press could afford to move forward on the project.
Welcome to the club.
Flipping through the latest New Yorker and admiring the cartoons brought a sense of loss, too. While the New Yorker and Playboy had long been the epitome of the art, paying the premium rates for work that matched the highest standards, almost every magazine ran cartoons, at least as fillers in the back sections. These days, though, hardly any of them do.
When I was in high school, the wit of fellow Buckeye James Thurber became a model, along with the Addams Family even before the TV series. And then there was Gahan Wilson’s mordant pen. But who’s come along, say, in the past decade to fill the ranks? Not in magazines, as far as I see.
Or in newspapers, where having an editorial page cartoonist was seen as a badge of distinction. (Except at the New York Times, of course, which abstained.) In the collapse of the second newspaper in most markets – and the elimination of afternoon editions – the ranks of those cartoonists have also been evaporating. Even before we get to the recent rounds of attrition.
It’s not a laughing matter.
Journalism students used to be told of a reporter writing a weather story in a newsroom. Even though he can look out the window to see that it’s raining, he turns to the guy at the next desk, asks him to look out the window, and then quotes him in the report. It’s probably apocryphal, but it does reflect the kind of training no-nonsense reporters had in turning to sources, rather than their personal observations.
That’s why you see so many direct quotations in a news dispatch.
What you learn along the way is that what you see may not be the full story, much less the real account.
For all I know, it could have been glass falling from an explosion or sawdust, as they do in theater productions.
At least this way, there’s someone to blame if it’s wrong.
In the old days, a newspaper or magazine often had a personal imprint. The publication took on the publisher’s or top editor’s vision, and a certain tone and range of interests followed. We can look at the legendary names – McCormack, Hearst, Pulitzer, Scotty Reston’s New York Times, Ben Bradlee’s Washington Post, the Bingham family’s Louisville Courier-Journal, Tom Winship’s Boston Globe, even Bill Loeb’s Union Leader – and then realize it’s not something you see in the corporate journalism of today, especially where top editors are out the door in a year. Can you name anyone at the helm today?
As for the big-name stars of network and cable news/entertainment, well, let’s just say they’re pale imposters. There’s something to be said for knowing the ropes of a community and its people. Of having roots and depth – and the responsibility of recognition when they’re out in public.
Within an organization, you may see a manager who chooses to surround himself or herself with talented individuals and then allows them the freedom to perform at their best. This is the leader who’s not afraid of being placed in their shadow but rather supports their efforts and builds a team of responsible players. This leader hands out kudos, rather than blame, and corrects errors as a matter of avoiding them in the future. Credit is shared rather than hoarded.
There’s another kind of manager who wants to stand taller than his or her subordinates. Talent is viewed with suspicion, and workers are held on a short leash and often micromanaged. Scant praise is handed out – and when it is, there’s little reason to trust it. Fear and blame, especially, are the root of motivation, and maintaining a low profile and even doing as little as possible (to reduce one’s exposure) are inevitable consequences. These managers don’t want to hear your ideas, though they expect you to follow their orders.
One type leads to excellence; the other, to mediocrity.
I’ve worked for both – sometimes briefly in the same enterprise. But I know which one gets the most for the money. Not that money’s the top item when you’re working for them.
As I said at the time: Golly, I hadn’t thought in terms of “lower middle class” in ages, though that’s where I’ve been most of my adult life – even as management. According to government statistics, at least, and thanks to my union card, we made it up to median income, although in reality, considering the cost of housing in New England, we were never quite there. Before the housing market decline (our property had more than doubled in price in a half-dozen years), my wife saw the assessment and cried out, “I never thought I’d live in a quarter-million dollar house – and it’s still a dump!” Yup.
What is amazing is what can be accomplished when we focus our resources and set priorities. The secret is that you can’t have it all. My wife would love to travel, but then we managed for her to not have to be employed, which in turn allowed her to return to college and to chair the local charter high school (a full-time, unpaid job) while taking care of both her mother and the girls. Maybe we’ll get around to travel, but for now, there are too many other demands – on our time, especially. I was able to carve out blocks to draft/revise large sections of work, although in doing so, I wasn’t submitting much anywhere – that would come later, probably in retirement. So I hoped.
One of our favorite writers, Wendell Barry, points out that a divorced family is, on paper, far more economically viable because it has to pay for two households, hold down two jobs, maintain two cars, and so on, each point adding to the cash flow, which can be measured. Of course, that fails to calculate a lot of other, more meaningful values. Keeping my mother-in-law in her own little apartment in the barn, for instance, allows her some independence while still getting some family care – none of it showing up in the gross national product, or whatever we call that calculation these days.
Over the years, my own spiritual practices have undergone many changes. Even in a tradition like the one I’ve embraced, seemingly free from the annual routines of a liturgical calendar or outward emblems, there appear cyclical changes mirroring those of the seasons. Cycles, too, like those of progressing from childhood and parenthood into retirement or release. In Salem Quarterly Meeting in Ohio, the session each Fifth Month meant rhubarb in the applesauce. See it as sacrificial and special.
There are times of struggle, doubt, and distrust. Times of whirlwind passion and excitement. Times of discovery. Times of drought or deep winter, relying on what’s brought out of storage. Times of renewal and recharge.
This has manifested as periods where I’ve been able to dedicate significant time to meditation, solitude, travel in ministry, prayer, Bible study, research into history and theology, organizational service, teaching, correspondence, or writing, as well as to regular disciplines such as fasting or physical spiritual exercise (the hatha yoga sessions or even wilderness hiking). Emphatically, however, one would predominate while others would likely be absent or greatly diminished. In addition, they would be strongly impacted by the events of my daily life itself – whether I was single, married, divorced, or “in relationship,” my hours and nature of employment, my friendships and faith community, my driving patterns through the week.
The result of all of this would be a crazy-quilt tapestry or a ricochet trajectory if it weren’t for a spiraling within it. That is, over the years, various periods and interests begin to overlap one another, creating a kind of harmony or accumulated depth. My asparagus bed in New Hampshire has roots in my experience of asparagus along irrigation canal banks in Far West desert three decades earlier. A dog sitting through Quaker meeting here is a reminder of dogs sitting through predawn meditation sessions in the Pocono Mountains, or of the cats aligned on the scaffolding outside the windows, as if they, too, were deep in concentrated worship. I read a particular Psalm and see the passage taking twists I hadn’t perceived earlier.
In my own life, my childhood was filled with natural science, hiking, and camping, each with its mystical visions and moments. Adolescence led into politics, classical music, opera, and writing complicated by unrequited sexual yearning. Without romantic companionship, a Lone Ranger journey. Rejection of existing creed while ensconced in church office was followed by flight into atheism and hippie excess landing, inexplicably, in a yoga ashram with its Hatha exercises and sustained meditation. From there, into Quaker practice, though of the ABC – or “anything but Christ” variety. The ashram lessons were applied here, in circles of deepening prayer life. By steps, I moved toward Christocentric and Plain speech, and an especially faith fervent language. Among the Wilburite Friends as well as Mennonites, especially, I came to wrestle within Scripture while similtaneously undergoing repeated Dark Night journeys and questioning. Turning to therapy, I wondered if anyone could come along with me through all of this. By now I was no longer meditating to get high, or transcend, but rather to center down to the Seed. Here, with all of its committee work, I was engaged in a religion that combines mystical experience with social witness and activism. In a nutshell, then.
Each swirl also stirs up something from before. What failed in earlier marriage or relationships reappears. What has been left unfinished is not left entirely behind. What has been shredded remains to be woven. I heard this opera in its entirety a hundred times. Have I ever heard this note before?
I moved from the Midwest to the East Coast and back before heading on to the Pacific Northwest in what seemed an epiphany but instead shattered amid volcanic eruption and devastation. I left the wilderness for another kind of wilderness, back across the Midwest to the East Coast. The pendulum, as they say. Here, I now see life as both linear and circular – that is, spiraling. The spirit requires flesh, or is it that flesh requires spirit? Seasons include times that are full or overflowing, and times that are barren or dry. I now welcome the questioning that is not hostile is both essential and healthy.
My first spring in the orchard, I expected all of the trees to blossom simultaneously. They don’t. The apricots and cherry petals give way to plums, pears, and peaches. The apple blooms arrive last, when others are already gone.
Experiencing a new place through a full year or repeated years provides a much different understanding than a tourist gets – even one who spends several months there. Relocating requires a year-and-a-half to gain familiarity with the new surroundings – to get beyond the obvious, to establish friendships, to be oriented with the elements one finds essential or special. A favorite restaurant, a woodland pathway or place to swim, a boutique or gallery.
There are seasons for a person of faith, from winter to spring elation and then into fullness, dryness, struggle, or disillusionment. To harvest, perchance. Marriage? Family? Children? Extended into joy, compassion, humility, appreciation – one begins observing and naming.
The turning point in my own journey came when I accepted a new name.
You see the lists from time to time: America’s richest individuals or families.
You also see how proud people are about finding loopholes to cut their own taxes or lobbying for another advantage over the rest of the public.
Seems we’ve had it wrong. We should be according that respect to America’s top taxpayers. Yes, let them compete for the status of being the most generous Americans, the ones who step forward for their country. We could even break this out by occupation, for extra Top Ten lists. I’d even be in favor of having a monument in Washington inscribed with their names.
Let the rest of them be considered shirkers.
When you invest, even if it’s just for retirement, you’re told to diversify your risks.
Why is it, then, that it seems OK to keep having big corporations merge into less and less competition? During the Bush I and Bush II regimes, we saw what that meant for the banking industry: big bailouts on the taxpayers’ tab.
We were, after all, faced with another Great Depression.
Seems to me it would be far healthier to spread the risks here, too: break out into smaller companies – which would make more of them, too.
Along the way, there would be fewer layers of high management – and think of all the savings in executive pay along the way.
Those who advocate a free market need to remember: any company that’s too big to fail without taking down the rest of the economy is a threat. Period.
Not too long ago, the pharmacist owned the drug store, the corner bank had its own president, the local publisher owned the newspaper, and so on. Each one knew the community, and each one could make independent decisions. Each one also had a desire to be respected by those he or she served. Often, too, it was a family affair.
Now, of course, the pharmacy is headed by a manager who reports to a district supervisor who may report to an assistant vice-president somewhere who reports to a president of a subsidiary who reports to another vice-president of a conglomerate who reports to a president who reports to a CEO who probably has little real decision-making power, thanks to all of the policies that must be followed, thanks to a board of directors beholden to the major stockholders. As if you could name any of these people. Ditto for the bank and the newspaper and what used to be the local department store.
At each level of hierarchy, there’s little room for discretionary action – it’s all a matter of enforcing policy, especially as it relates to maximizing short-term profit.
Important local leaders have been reduced cogs following orders from afar. And the big money follows. Note, too, that the emphasis is on stockholders, not shareholders, who would include the workers, their communities, and even the faithful customers.
How, then, do we reclaim our full community, and heal the damage? It’s a basic question for democracy, after all, if the American Experiment is to continue, especially with any sense of equality and fairness.
Jnana's Red Barn 