Dads and Grads

What a terrific weekend this Memorial Day weekend was. I caught up with my best friend and his family in Berkeley for a couple of days before heading north to California State University, Chico to see my son, Winston, take the walk and grab his diploma for a Computer Science Graphic Arts degree. Or, something close to that in any event.

In Berkeley, it was summer days and nights I remember fondly from my college days past. The temps were low 60s in the day with a pleasant overcast, and a breezy chilled low 50s at night. Heaven. Got over to San Francisco for a nice walk to North Beach and a cup of espresso at Cafe Trieste. Walked past a lot of old haunts through the various districts we covered. The City, UC Berkeley and my friends always make me feel young. Thanks.

I drove in the very wee hours from the Bay to Chico taking Interstate 80 east to Vacaville, and headed north on the 505, which ultimately merges into Interstate 5. Had no idea Genentech's corporate office and campus was situated off that highway just north of Vacaville. No one was on the road. I felt like a kid again on the open highway. In my morning fuzz brain it could have been 1973 on the open road with the tunes ratcheted up and no one to bug you. The only thing missing from those days was the herbal inhaler treatment I remember enjoying.

I made Chico in a little over two hours time. I was about three hours from the ceremony opening. I scraped some bugs off the windshield, added some gasoline into the Beamer and smoked a few cigarettes while downing some highway-stop coffee and a bottled water. Those rice paddies up around Williams and Orland pack a lot morning bugs onto a passing car at dawn.

I hooked up with Winston at his communal living quarters promptly at 7AM. Knocking on the old door did not do the trick, but the reliable cellular phone call from the porch got the job done. We chatted with his room-mates for a bit before heading off to the school stadium for the event.

I had gone to Patrick's graduation three years ago in Sacramento, at the California State University there. It was a nice event but did not prepare me for the Chico State gathering. By 8:30AM all the stands were packed. The field, and the track circling it, were also heavily crowded with the mad mixtures of family members at all age levels taking in the ceremony. The music was early Twentieth Century classical fare, the last blast from the final giants of the form from England and America- Copeland, Holst, Elgar and Williams. Very pastoral to fit the campus surroundings, but not enough of that big back-beat for most of the people ready to celebrate and party under the trees and in them.

I had a lot of misgivings about Winston going to Chico State. Party school was the deserved reputation. In my former life of employ, Tower Records had two stores in the small college town. Tower knew where to put stores where people partied for many years. At the end of day, Chico was the perfect place for my youngest to explore life and courses. He got a really good education at an affordable cost and goes into the world of commerce armed with great life experiences. Congratulations, young man. Thanks, California State University, Chico.

Yikes! Election Day

Out front, checking the planters and sprinkler distribution, what do my wandering eyes detect? A little bubble formation on the wood beam, which helps support the small portion of roofing over the front door and windows. A quick finger exam confirms that those wood chewing insects from hell have descended on the grounds with a ferocious appetite.

There goes another love song.

The exterminators will arrive on Thursday to give the great news on what all of this will cost. I'm sure the tent will be on the way, which means packing up pets and some valuables for a few nights away from the gas and insect carnage. I can hardly wait to hear what the repair bill will by to my little world of infrastructure needs. Who can I hit up to defray my misfortune? The sad fact of bug infestation happens to be one of those karmic delights where friends and loved ones look at you with a gee-how-bad-for-you, so-glad-it's-not-me bemusement, and offer no relief.

This is all so California these days. Less revenue, unexpected disasters, no money in the bank and no one who wants to help own a piece of dry rot.

Tomorrow is election day. When every measure loses look for the state go on sale. I'm not sure how much a state can fetch when every year is drought year, and beetles the size of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's ego finish chewing off the timber in what is left of our forests.

Dude Work in a Player Piano World

Another day means some more lawn mower action, laundry, vacuuming, pet maintenance and meal prep. I don't need to shop, or get down to my dad's to run the necessary errands for him, or chore up at his place on some overdue project his failing lungs prohibit him from getting done. Busy with the busy work these days, just like my manly neighbors Rich, Gino, Joe and Dustin. I watch them out watering, gardening and generally puttzing around their houses while their wives are off at work.

Sometimes the reward for doing the job for its own sake, and the gratitude it engenders, is enough. Sometimes getting cut out of the workforce with precious little chance of re-entry takes a terrible toll on the psyche. Easy answers or understandable explanations are in extremely rare supply for today's job situation.

I found an article discussing how valuable my services are in this day and age. The article was one of those feel good Mother's Day pieces targeted for .... moms who stay at home. The column's basic premise, aside from lifting a stay-at-home mom's spirit, was that she should be making roughly $135,000 a year for all she does. Not having a uterus, or kids at home, I deducted a big chunk from this total and came up for launderer, bartender, gardener, cook, merry maid, pet sitter and psychologist at a figure just under a hundred grand. I almost felt better until I realized, maybe not as quickly as I might have a decade ago, that the column had no employers at the end of the piece looking to reward my peculiar services at the estimated rate of pay. Never was, and never will be a market to reward people looking after and picking up their own shit. The job is worthless, even in this global economy.

I know I've got a ton of extended male company these days. More men have been shown the door during this recession than ever before in the history of this nation. Intellectuals and think tankers have already described our nation's "little" downturn as the Great Recession. And that is no mean feat given the crashes of the stock market in 1973 and 1987. Today is different in that the job losses since this financial collapse began in December of 2007 has seen men receive close to 80% of all the pink slips handed out by the contracting industrialists.

There are reasons why the disproportionate share of current job loss has gone to men. Two of the hardest hit sectors of the declining labor force are in construction and manufacturing. Health and education where women enjoy far superior numbers in the work force have not been hit as hard. Another factor is that the higher paid employees are men. A man still makes significantly more than a woman doing the same job. The latest figures I found from 2007 government data showed women earning 77.8 percent of what their male counterpart earns for the same position.
If a company is determined to maximize saved dollars with a job loss then men are the way to go.

Another major reason for men being more expendable in today's world is found in the growing disparity of college enrollment numbers for men and women. These numbers stagger the brain. Women make up 57% of all college attendees, and graduate at each upper education level significantly higher percentages of students than men. These numbers are the reverse of what they were only forty years ago, and the trend is to see an even wider gender disparity in the various colleges going forward. Men dropped out of school and now are being dropped from the job market.

I'm glad I have a degree, but it has not gotten me very far these past four years. However, the degree certainly helped during the twenty years of peak earnings in the bygone business era I was part of. I'm heading to see my youngest son graduate in about two weeks, but his prospects, and those of his older brother, look a sight grim. The second highest rate of unemployment in the typical age demographics is to be found in the bracket my youngest finds himself in. From the above link to Business Week, you can see all age groups for men are at, or close to historic levels of unemployment.

Very shortly the axe is going to fall on a lot of car dealerships for Chrysler and General Motors, which will only darken the really depressing unemployment picture. I am not sure what investors or the remaining large corporations want any more, but it does not appear to be in job creation.

Let me give you an example of American conglomerates taking job loss to the bank. I have been following developments of the tiered pricing schemes Comcast and Warner Cable are in various stages of trying to develop. Warner scrapped its plans after all the commotion grass roots geeks raised in opposition to the plan. The interesting point of the the cable companies desire to raise prices on heavier users is that without the rate increases the companies saw great revenues recently. Revenue increases were up over 5%, along with a growing subscription base, all the while both Warner and Comcast were cutting capital spending by close to 20%. It is always the short term strategy of quick profits with unnecessary price increases that get fed while costs for infrastructure to the greater benefit of the consumer and the job world get strangled.

At the time the US was engaged in the Korean War, Kurt Vonnegut had his first novel, Player Piano, published. I read it many years ago, and though it was never on my fave Vonnegut story list, the damn story stayed with me. It took fifty-seven years, but much of what Vonnegut talked about in the book has come to pass. The few owners of everything don't need men to work the machine.

I get out the wire hair brush to work out the mats in my dog's fur before plugging in the guitar to jam with my programmed Casio keyboard. My hat's on the floor, drying after a hard round with the yard. It's 11AM, and a young boy rolls down the sidewalk alone on his skateboard.

Breakfast with Strangers -CA Ballot Initiatives-

Another month, another set of Ballot Initiatives to vote on. Must be California.

I sat down for breakfast with an old buddy of mine the other day. It has been almost two years since we had seen each other. He's heavier now, but still one ticket away from a court imposed pedestrian lifestyle. He's no fan of Latino culture, but amazingly moved to Salinas where Latino is pretty much the culture . As an employee of the state, and its penal system, and with the mounting budget crisis in California, I thought my old friend might be voting yes on all these various Ballot Initiatives. I would be wrong. I have discovered, repeatedly, that economic self interest means nothing when it comes to elections. My friend informed me, in no uncertain terms, that no taxes means more than job security or affordable health care for all.

There are six initiatives on the ballot. All of these initiatives deal with trying to find some sort of revenue stream amid a brokered compromise patchwork of budget cap proposals and service cuts that would placate enough Republicans and Democrats in the state to pass. Okay, to be accurate, placate all Democrats and enough independent voters to pass. Getting these temporary patches in place, California might buy enough time to start working on actual fixes for the state budget, and the tortured budget process. But that is a pipe dream.

I was shocked to see one of the big progressive blogs and activist sites in this state, Courage Campaign, come out against the California legislature's brokered deal of Ballot Initiatives. Sure, I know most liberals at this stage are fed up with the conservative anti-tax, anti-social responsibility (insert entitlement here) mantra heard on talk radio these past 25 years. Having won a decidedly lopsided victory for two election cycles on a national basis the Left think it has a mandate to change how government does things. With Republican membership in Sacramento squeezed to near record lows in terms of legislative membership, and a governor who is an outcast among his own Party, this should be the time to move on the important issues with a Left driven agenda. That, too, is a pipe dream.

The six Ballot Initiatives offer no left of center move. Liberals feel the Initiatives only serve to keep a bad status quo in place while conservatives refuse to vote for any tax. The hard-line right advocates broad revenue cuts on the state services their money base wants to privatize and dominate. No surprise the targets here are prisons and schools. Wonder why our schools over the past twenty-plus years have been made to look like prisons? Look at who wants to own them, and why they feed one while starving the other. It is the curious case of factory farming people for profit.

When we had finished our little breakfast and time together I realized why we had opted not to speak with one another for such an extended period of time. All the differences that could be tolerated on differing subjects suddenly take on a very different cast when the political light focuses so intensely. There are probably thousands of explanations as to why this friendship, and millions of others everywhere in this crazy country, have burnt themselves out. My belief is that you just get tired of the same arguments. You realize that the subtle changes over time born from differing habits and venues has suddenly brought together strangers with nothing in common. Issues where shared goals should be easy to hold together split faster than atoms bombarded by a particle accelerator.

Facts matter less today than at any time I can recall. Talking points with deceptive or partial data get used for distortion purposes, and fill the media non-stop. Blogs shout simple points of view, whisper thoughtful exposition of the complex. People become parodies of themselves.

We can't blame legislators for every ill we the people have allowed to fester while failing to reach responsible agreements on difficult issues. Some people feel a social responsibility to share the burden and create a better place. Some people feel each little island unto itself can transform the world one little island at a time. Ne'er the twain shall meet.

The compromise measures will all fail, and California's crisis will continue. I find nothing left to say to my old friend who is now a stranger as we depart. He makes a right at the light, and I head east turning left.

Birthdays

Birthdays! I love other people's birthdays. I love it when close friends or family members notch another year in the belt. I am not a fan of recognizing my own, but since it falls on a holiday of sorts, I am all too aware that circle just got a little tighter every year. Facebook helps me notice birthdays of friends now. What a fine enterprise, if I only remember to remove the birth date from my profile.

People not born on holidays, and not in my Facebook friend list, could miss my recognition and cheers because all those dates are so hard to remember. I'm very bad with the details in my e-mail account files. I have the e-mail addresses, maybe a couple of phone numbers, but no real personal information stored. I was better when I maintained an old address book. After years of dwindling contact with most of the old address people I ditched it. Yes, I am remorseful. Now I am addicted to e-addresses pretty exclusively, such as they are.

I bring this up because my wife, who celebrates her birthday today, always challenges me on what the birth dates are for her parents. She gets to remember my dad on Halloween, and my sister on Earth Day. My sister was born in April on Easter Sunday, but might not have another Easter day as a birthday until after all of us are gathered. I am grateful to all those old hippies at the Whole Earth Catalog for choosing my sister's birthday to celebrate Earth Day. My oldest son was born on Easter Sunday. My youngest arrived a couple of days before Veteran's Day. Close enough to remember. At my advanced age holiday birth dates are best for me.

I love my in-laws. They are two of the best people I have met and know in my life. But, my wife always wins the bet on her parents. I need to get them on Facebook.

Credit Crunch is just a Lack of Faith

Phil Ochs sings an old song of social indifference in the background. The sprinkler spins the water on the lawn. I use the old lawn hose and connection on odd days to hit the spots my main lines miss. These weeks are the last ones when the grass fills full of vigor over the front and back lawn areas. By late June the heat and low humidity will rob the grass and ground of nutrients and thickness. I use a lot of coffee grounds to keep the nitrogen up but my efforts over the years always come up with a yard that never threatens the Better Homes and Gardens look of luxury. I have faith though that one day the lawn will shimmer all summer long.

Faith is what gets most of us through each day. A faith that a situation will improve. A faith that an individual matters, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. A faith that wrongs will be righted, that justice prevails in a world of cold and brutal acts. And most importantly, that the money loaned to a distant in-law or business acquaintance will be repaid with a little interest added on. This small subconscious ongoing act makes life livable.

Trouble happens in a big way when faith gets blown away. When people no longer trust, and refuse to listen to the person right in front of them, something bad brews in the brains. As I watch the rising foreclosures, and see my own neighborhood dotted with abandoned houses sitting among weeds, debris and graffiti I wonder what purpose has been served by taking so much faith out of commerce, or why I'm bothering about my lawn.

Credit is the ultimate in faith in a civilized world, even though that extension of faith can be filled with multiple hazards for both sides of the transaction. The art of the delicate balance needs to permeate the proceedings. Although it might be wonderful if we were all self reliant, our world is a vast network of dependency on one another. When the balance is lost, and the pendulum swings wildly from one extreme to the other, major injuries occur to all caught within the arc of lost faith.

When I see the vacancies in both commercial and residential properties today it boggles my mind. And I realize the market has not hit bottom, and vacant properties are the little buoys bobbing on a sinking sea, trying to float a false value in the face of having the drain plug pulled. Just when you think the fallout from the waves of foreclosures has hit the bottom, curls of spray from new loan defaults find an even lower depth with this crisis. In an April 22, 2009 article, Data Quick reported a record number of mortgage defaults for the first three months of this year within California. The continuing ebb from this news throughout the state means anyone with a home lost some equity and saw their borrowing power diminish. No one has any faith we are at bottom, and credit does not get extended because no one knows what the value of your collateral or job really amounts to.

For many years most of us lived under a delusion that we had a good idea what the value of property, goods and services were. Some were smarter about the relative values of products than others, but given the circumstance of today our real crisis is not knowing what anything or anyone is worth. We live now in a time of true relative pricing and value. Nobody has a clue what we should pay for a movie ticket, a collection of songs, a book, a plane ticket, a hotel room, a meal, a house, a business location, an x-ray, an MRI, a tooth cleaning, financial advice and so on. When no one knows the value of anything it becomes impossible to place a value on currency and work. Everything flows in the flux of the moment, and results in an endless spin cycle of what any person might be willing to spend, or receive, at any random point in time.

I've watched my house double in value from its original price, and then plummet to approximately 20% below what I paid for it. This has all happened in six years. I've seen my sizable collection of movies and music go from a substantially appraised sum to nearly worthless in the same time frame. The frames around my various pieces of art are worth far more than the signed and matted pieces residing inside the decorative wood. I'm no Einstein, but financial relativity sucks a chancre-wanker on projected worth estimates.

When Russia's economy collapsed in the mid-1990s barter became the standard for the masses trying to survive the devastation of valueless currency. The only thing that righted the Russian economy a decade later was the rise in oil and gas prices, which finally stabilized the Ruble. I'm not saying we're headed to that point, but we've got all the signs, and none of the energy supplies our old adversary controls.

Barter may be coming back in a big way to our shores, because the credit ship and all that faith that was stored inside has pulled out of the harbor. Hope is the pier we look out on, with family and friends to sustain ourselves.

12,000 years or so of civilization with little faith to sustain us, and we are stuck on the basics. Here's hoping everyone has more than a "small circle of friends" to keep them well.