B is for Backpack

On Sunday we took a homeless person to breakfast. You can read about how we met Renee here, although please note that Fresh Start turned out to be uninterested in helping homeless people and she's no longer working there.

Renee is a nice person that bad things have happened to. Although she has been homeless for more than 9 years she's clean and neat and looks like any other resident of Walnut Creek - except for all the bags she has to carry around. An accident leading to nerve damage resulted in her being unable to work regular hours and despite her various volunteer activities and personal initiative nothing has ever resulted into a paid position or any substantial help.

In her own words, because she's not a druggie or illegal immigrant, there's no support system for her. Even her cleanliness is against her - when she goes to the local church for help, where she used to volunteer teaching computer basics until the recent service cuts in public transportation, they tell her they need to save resources for people who need it more.

Her own words have also gotten her into trouble. She has written passionate letters to directors of various charities and groups she has worked with, telling them how they're missing the boat on giving people what they really need. She criticized the local police for harassing her and got fired from her column. She's a vegetarian so soup kitchens don't work for her. Etc., etc., etc.

Still, as she tells her tale of one disappointment after another you find yourself wondering how people can be so unhelpful and uncaring.

At breakfast she nibbled toast and sipped tea, unable to eat more. She shared some details about her past and daily challenges, which were very hard to hear. For example, the social security agency recently declared her dead and has to restart the process on claiming the benefits she's already been fighting 13 years. She has no way of gathering the documentation she needs of employment history, bank accounts, etc., to complete her application. The lawyers she has contacted to help her navigate the process have all said that her case is too complex and refused to help.

You get the idea.

I felt pretty helpless. I mean, it's not like we can set her up in a condo and pay all her expenses or make someone hire her. And we can't give her back her health or change the social security administrative rules.

So we asked her what we could do and she told us that she needs underwear and toiletries as well as a new backpack, because the decrepit old computer bag she's carrying around now is on it's last legs and isn't big enough to hold everything, which means she has to carry several bags in addition to her heavy backpack.

That's why yesterday before work found me at Target carefully selecting light, servicable undergarments and toiletries (yes, people, I finally bought some new underwear, but not for me). And yesterday evening found Ralf and me at Sports Basement being consulted by a wonderful salesperson named Aaron on backpacks.

Aaron also has a homeless friend - I guess that's the new thing in this economy - and spent about an hour helping us find the optimum backpack for durability, lightweight, and compartments. When he found out why we were buying the backpack he also threw in several waterproof bags and gave us 20% off.

The point I'd like to make is that both compassion and lack of caring are contagious. You can't fix everything for everyone but sometimes there's something concrete that you can do to help. And you might find unexpected people pitching in to help you do it.

Thanks, Aaron.

A trip down marketing lane

I recently renewed my passport, which needs a new German residence permit stamp so we drove out to the Muenchen Landskreisverwaltung (or maybe it was the Landratsamt) this morning to take care of this. On the way we saw this sign:

'Yes you can!' President Obama would be proud to know that his words are being used to sell jeeps in Europe. And clearly Germans will pay more for enormous American gas guzzlers if they are depicted in front of the White House.

This is my deoderant:Nice, huh? I snapped it up in a Rite Aid going out of business sale. It is 'Stylish and Trendy' so I make sure to insert my underarms into every conversation so people will know I'm using Teen Spirit. I've gotten a lot of compliments, believe me.

And this is my sunscreen:

It's not as stylish and trendy as my deoderant, but it does claim to protect my DNA. I love over the counter DNA alterning cosmetic products, don't you? I looked up the ingredients online but all it said was, 'contains active ingredients.' Which is good, because I wouldn't want the chemicals that change my DNA to be inactive, right? It just makes sense that they wouldn't work as well as active ingredients.

When I was in high school our social studies classroom had a poster of Mickey Mouse flipping the bird with the caption, 'Hey Iran!' I know that's unthinkable today but THAT was marketing. Simple, direct, compelling. With one simple captioned picture my adolescent brain registered the following message: 1) the US is mad at Iran; 2) the US has big cahonas; and 3) the US is the good guy because we have Mickey Mouse.

Today that same poster would probably be a website with links to related stories, articles, interviews, blogs, youtubes and advertisements and after wasting an hour or so I would come away with dozens of conflicting messages instead of just 3 simple ones. Which is good because people are easy to fool with simple, direct, compelling messages.

But it can also be paralyzing.

I don't really have a point.

Er. . . bye.

Is anything actually true?

I buy OK magazine every week because I like looking at pictures of Brad, Agelina, Jennifer Anniston and her former man ho John something-or-other. That's right, I divide my free time evenly between saving the world, offending my neighbors, watching Chuck and stalking celebs.

Like clockwork, one week Brad and Angie are on the brink of divorce, the next enjoying marital bliss again - and all using the same pictures from Oscar night. These articles are so clearly not based on any actual new information or facts.

Reality TV is also totally staged, just ask Lawyer Mom.

The media tried so hard to turn the swine flu into something newsworthy but too many people inconsiderately refused to die. You could almost hear the reporters high fiving each other when some poor person with chronic health problems died of the flu and they could write about it.

The economy is also fickle. One day all the indicators are bad, the next consumption is up again and we're headed back toward prosperity.

None of this is news, it's entertainment.

What is true, anyway? It's complicated because there's always more than one side, more than one interpretation, more than one apparent truth. A plausible case can be made for the lamest and most obviously made up arguments, as we've seen in recent years over the 'clean coal' debate.

As you know, I love coal and wish we had a coal burning stove in our living room because it's so clean.

Fortunately for truth seekers, things that aren't true make us physically uncomfortable, even if we don't know they aren't true. I wrote more about this here if you're interested.

I don't really have a point today (hence the picture of the waffle, get it?), I've just been struck lately by conflicting messages everywhere I look.

In the absence of a clear external truth the need for a reliable internal moral compass seems kind of important.

Where can I get one of those?

Got Tim Tams?

I'm still getting the cold shoulder at the Kindergarten, not only for nosing around too bluntly about the Ausflug arrangements but also for the spirited barf fest that ensued after K (patient 0) left Friday. Miss Vanessa shows signs of thawing but the other moms don't like me any more.

On the bright side, Julia likes me again but she's only nine and our relationship is primarily financial.

When I was an outspoken second grader with unkempt hair (the kind who raises their hand and announces in a high, clear voice, 'Mrs. Dean, Justin didn't throw that spit wad, it was Doug,') I tended to get hunted by large gangs of my classmates after school. I learned to fight, run really fast, climb like Spiderman, hide, remain still for long periods of time, find food, divide and conquer enemies and, when other options ran out, find adult help.

I don't want to paint the wrong picture here. I was not a skinny, asthmatic, fearful child but a big, strong kid with a cocky attitude so we were pretty evenly matched. Sometimes it was even kind of fun.

This went on for about 3 years and then I was suddenly reasonably popular again, at which point I promptly dropped all running and climbing activities and focused on feathering my hair and getting my mascara straight.

Bit of a shame, really - I could shimmy drain pipes like a monkey but my hair never turned out that well.

Here's my point: There's always a bright side. Life isn't about the bad stuff that happens, it's about the good things that happen in between.

For example, this week I'm a little unpopular but on the bright side, no one's hunting me with sharp sticks and I have a package of Tim Tams, which my mother thoughtfully brought with her.

Friends come and go but Tim Tams are forever.

Follow up on various items

First of all, thank you Lawyer Mom for the Kreative Blogger award. However, instead of nominating other blogs (since I recently did two rounds of nominations) I recommend you check out the people who follow this blog. They all have great blogs of their own, not to mention excellent taste.

I'll write about things I love in a separate post (such as Republican bashing, so fun now that it's not a threat to national security any more) because I want to close the loop on a few open items today:

1) My mouth - All better now. The dental surgeon was very pleased when he removed the stiches and patted me on the shoulder because I did such a good job healing. He also said there was no sign of necrosis, a possibility I am glad he kept to himself until after the procedure. The roof of my mouth is still a bit numb but that's normal. So if anyone ever wants to know about gum grafts and the Maven for some reason isn't available, I'm your girl.

2) K's promise to sleep in - She did keep her promise but since then L's been getting up with me every morning so my days have been off to an earlier than usual start. I'm not complaining, however, because they've been really good this week while Ralf's been away.

3) Ralf - He's coming back tonight but then flying to Ireland for two more days tomorrow morning. Then we're all done with travel for a while.

4) My US residence and tax status - Technically we are no longer California residents although we left a lot of our money in California to tide them over thanks to AMT. We will also be paying 2008 taxes in the US and California since we didn't move back to Munich until September. Sadly, California does not yet (to my knowledge) have a tax treaty with Germany so there will be some double taxation as well.

Therefore I still reserve the right to rant as a California tax payer.

Oh, and I paid California property tax on a house until 2002 and income tax when I sold the house.

Anyway, I think I've paid back my modest childhood medical expenses by now, with interest. But regardless of my situation, which is somewhat unusual, a forward-thinking country invests in its children. A country that is run by people who think it's OK to get huge bonuses for poor results doesn't.

Where I stand

When I started school my mother was divorced and unemployed, although she received some financial support from my grandfather. Her unemployed status entitled me to various school subsidies, such as a hot lunch, and other types of subsidies as well, including health care.

Although I was not a sickly or accident-prone child, I had a dust allergy and the state paid for a vaporizer for my bedroom and weekly shots in my backside. Today I am allergy free.

I also had a slightly crossed left eye, which was corrected surgically. Today I can cross my left eye as a party trick, but can also stop crossing it.

I was flatfooted and the state put me in corrective shoes. Today my feet are still pretty flat but my knees and back are in better shape than Ralf's.

As I recall, vaccinations were also given in grade school, free of charge.

And finally, I lisped until I was about 10 and the state of California paid for a speech therapist to work with me until I stopped. You can still hear it today if you listen for it but it's tolerable.

Then I went to a fabulously expensive boarding school for seven years, care of my grandfather, but that's not really germane to the point I'm trying to make here.

When it was time for college, Grandpa said I was on my own but the killer combination of poor and valedictorian qualified me for several tuition and board scholarships.

Same deal in graduate school, although by that time need-based scholarships were pretty thin on the ground.

Today I'm a healthy law-abiding middle-class tax payer. Real salt of the earth.

My grandfather's support probably launched me into a higher income bracket. But it was the state that made sure I didn't catch polio or tetanus and corrected potentially disfiguring problems that my mother might not have found out about in time if not for active state subsidized pediatric care. Although she was pretty vigilant so who knows.

Would my grandfather have footed any hospital bills for me? Certainly. I was one of the lucky ones in that respect. But what if my grandfather hadn't been able to help out? I shudder to imagine myself today with a crossed eye, a limp, a chronic cough and a lisp.

My point: The US government treated me as a worthwhile investment, which is now paying off. I'm thinking that California would have gotten fewer tax dollars from me over the years if these problems hadn't been corrected early on.

And they not only get my tax dollars, they also get Ralf's, so they doubled their investment. I'm like a twofer.

Ralf, by the way, is as thrilled as I am to help pay for AIG bonuses.

Obama's pretty busy right now trying to get his budget passed and has more or less glossed over the AIG bonuses in order to focus on the big picture. He's right, too, that AIG bonuses are low on the list of American problems right now.

But he's also partly wrong because in many ways the AIG bonuses ARE the big picture.

I'm a conservative Democrat. What this means to me:

I don't think my tax dollars should buy flat screen TVs for crack moms BUT I do think their kids should get hot lunches and a chance to be something when they grow up.

I don't think I should have to pay for a fat smoker's third triple bypass but I do think every child should get the vaccinations and basic medical care they need.

I don't want Congress telling me who I can marry but I do believe the government has a vital role to play in creating opportunities and shaping desired behavior.

And finally, I think it's fine that an executive earns more than a garbage collector but I don't think it's OK if the difference in pay is 1:1000.

(Unless, of course, the exective in question did something like build a company that employs several hundred or several thousand people. Just sitting in management meetings looking important and shifting the odd worthless asset doesn't cut the mustard for me. )

For me the AIG bonuses are a microcosm that highlights everything that's gone wrong in the US since Regan sold people his fake 'Father Knows Best' persona. It's about greedy people sticking their hands in the till not because they earned it - say, with a healthy company - but because they can.

And damn it, $200 million is a heck of a lot of scholarships and vaccinations.

I remember one of my HS teachers explaining that a robust middle-class is what makes a country strong. That was the eighties and we were pretty strong back then.

How strong are we now? How strong will we be in ten years? Twenty?

This is the big picture that President Obama is working toward and I support that.

But to me what's happening at AIG is part of that big picture.

Now, that's a little more like it...

The House actually passed a bill to tax AIG employee bonuses at 90%, which applies to anyone who got a bonus and earns more than $250K a year.

Putting aside my surprise that the House can actually agree on something quickly (328-93!), this news puts a spring in my step.

Should the President have known about this earlier and worked toward legislation that should have prevented the bonuses being paid in the first place?

Probably. Although do your people tell you everything you need to know?

Does this represent a dangerous precedent of random taxation to promote political will?

Absolutely. But except for the 'random' part, that's what government is supposed to do.

Is extreme taxation legislation a little bit scary for non-welfare folks, given the Democrat's general attitude of 'tax the rich and give to the poor?'

Well, yeah, kind of.

Is it possible that this entire fiasco was engineered as a political move to foster outrage and demonstrate action, or perhaps distract the American people from something more serious (like American tax dollars being used to shore up foreign banks)?

Maybe.

But today I don't care. It just feels good that someone finally got slapped on the wrist for fiscal irresponsibility and highway robbery.

The big rant against everyone

For the last couple of posts I've been somewhat caught up in saccharine and probably irritating reflections on the perfection of my offspring and yes, they're wonderful, but I'm over that now.

Because... I recently finished 'The Audacity of Hope' by Barack Obama and feel an overdue political rant coming on.

To summarize the essense of the rant: What a cluster%#*!.

To be fair, President Obama presents the facts with a great deal of respect and humor so I don't think this was the impression he was trying to leave readers with when they think about Congress and the other banches of government. He clearly loves the Constitution and is a devout believer in Democracy, despite a few regretable shortcomings.

Anyway, before I get on a roll and start thumping anything but a Bible, let me just say that the book made me feel deeply respectful of Barack Obama as a person and grateful that he's at the helm during the current crisis instead of yet another geriatric-and-out-of-touch-with-reality or young-but-completely-amoral Republican. Or - let's be fair - some other well-meaning-but-indecisive-and-waffly Democrat.

That wasn't the rant, by the way, I'm just getting started.

Now it begins.

The book made me think critically about things I was trying not to think about because they're gloomy. And these unintended reflections made me mad at a fairly large cast of characters:

At the Bush government for systematically making poor short-sighted choices that brought a thriving economy to its knees and put - not to be too melodramatic here - the survival of the human race up for grabs. Yeah, sure, there were insustainable factors in place that made some sort of correction inevitable but looking over the last eight years is like watching an alien come to earth disguised as the President (and let us not forget the Vice President) and gently nudge everything toward a speedier collapse so they can take over when we're gone.

At the American people for voting for him twice. I'm going to generalize broadly here (because this is a blog and not a dissertation, which would require a little more fact checking on my end) and separate these people into two categories: the poor and the rich.

First the poor: I find it ironic that the people who have been hurt the most by Bush policies were also some of his staunchest supporters. People who go to church and probably try to lead decent lives but are unknowingly hindered by the fact that they believe gay marriage is a viable platform to base a Presidential campaign on and that Bush's tax cuts were intended to help them. As I look around at the state of the world I think they almost deserve what's happening to them now because they helped bring it on themselves.

Almost.

But not quite. Because they were seduced by very clever people whose watches cost more than their annual salary. (This is my rant against the rich, by the way.) People who sell out their employees to drive the share price up a few pennies before cashing out. Who don't want to pay a penny in taxes to the society that provides the infrastructure that allows them to live like they do. Who knew how to tap into the social power of the church for their own ends.

Speaking of which, I'm mad at organized religion, for butting into politics and choosing the wrong side. Yet again.

This might be a good time to mention that I'm a conservative Democrat who left organized religion behind years ago when I decided that unless the minister had God on speed dial, he probably didn't know any more than me about His intentions.

I'm mad at Congress for being so totally lame.

I'm also mad at the rest of us, who passively sat by or even actively contributed to the mess with our self-centered, wasteful lifestyles. I include myself in this list, by the way. I'm no poster child for enlightened living.

And finally, I'm mad at the rest of the world for starting pointless wars over non-essentials and failing to read the writing on the wall and behave better than the US.

Did I forget anyone?

So basically, I'm pretty much mad at everyone except my kids, who didn't create any of these problems but will inherit them.

Does anyone actually believe we'll never run out of stuff? That if we poison all our water and air we'll still be able to drink and breath? That it makes sense to increase the use of resources we know are running out? That money doesn't have to be backed by anything real? That a tiny super-rich elite surrounded by unrelieved poverty is a sustainable economic or political model? That the current status quo is still an option?

I doubt it. I think that most people, like me, try not to think about it because it's gloomy.

The good news is that President Obama gets it. Let's just hope he can persuade the rest of us.

To end on a lighter note, the current situation reminds me of an old joke: Earth and Mars are chatting and Mars asks Earth how she's doing. 'Not well,' moans Earth. 'I have a bad case of humans.' 'No worries,' says Mars bracingly. 'That goes away by itself.'

Let's hope it's just a joke.

Reflections on Nun Blowing

I'm back in the Vaterland after a productive week and a family weekend. Once again I can nuzzle my babies' lovely soft hair when I kiss them good night. Thank goodness.

My multi-flight trip to Ventura from SFO via LAX for my grandma's birthday was completely uneventful, as was my flight back to Munich. My grandma is in great shape for 90 and we even saw a few whales.

The biggest excitement was what I think of as 'The Nun Blowing Machine' at SFO security.

A bit of background on this: I gather nuns can't be searched like the rest of us and they also wear rather voluminous garments so they're a potential security hazard. The comprimise between religious expression and national security is to run them through a big expensive machine that jets air up their skirts and does a chemical analysis - just in case they're fake terrorist nuns with bombs.

You can't be too careful.

Anyway, I got to watch 4 scandalized Spanish brides of Christ clutch their flying wimples and make their way through the machine.

The hills were alive with the sound of squealing nuns.

Think Marilyn Monroe with billowing skirt meets Mother Superior from the Sound of Music and you've got the full visual.

It was surreal.

Not to mention pretty sad that we need a $500,000 machine to check nuns for bombs.

Is it just me?

Is it just me or does the new US economic stimulus package involve a pretty high national debt? It's probably better to stimulate the economy with style than to waste money and accomplish nothing by doing it on the cheap, but whoa. Does anyone still think any of us are going to see any social security when we retire?

Is it just me or is sending troops to Afghanistan kind of scary? After reading Three Cups of Tea I'm thinking it's probably where we should have been in the first place, but. . . 20,000 troups against the Taliban in the vast cave-riddled countryside of Afghanistan? Can you say, 'Vietnam?'

Is it just me or do you LOVE Obama for bitch slapping the Republican members of Congress when they protested the high price tag of the economic stimulus bill? I think the price tag is pretty high, too, but after eight years of shameful waste on war and looking the other way while business leaders gambled away our economic viability I don't want to hear it from any lame ass Republicans. No offense.

Mind you, bogus hedge funds and war and war machines create a certain amount of economic activity but only as long as no one examines the funds too closely and the war lasts, ergo, not much of a long-term economic stimulus plan unless you are in the business of financial scams and war. So I consider the last eight years to be a total write-off, economically speaking. At least Obama's stimulus package has some funds earmarked for long-term investment in clean energy so we may actually end up with something to show for all that spending.

Is it just me or do we produce an inordinate amount of waste every day? We are an average household of 4 people who recycle and try to use our purchasing power for good rather than evil and yet at the end of each day I am amazed at the amount of rubbish we produce just from consuming our groceries. Once upon a time fresh produce would be lovingly wrapped in old newspaper but since the 1940s suppliers triple package everything in single-purpose materials that can withstand the elements for thousands of years. Who says we don't build to last any more?

Is it just me or should the bank and financial house executives that screwed everything up and retired with big fat bonuses have to pay some of that money back?

And finally, is it just me or are those weanies in Congress ever going to pass any global warming laws? I'm afraid they may be exhausted from voting on the economic stimulus package and need to take expensive lakeside vacations before they can vote on anything else and the clock is ticking.

Yes, it is. Yuh huh.

Wake up call: Carbon emission rates are 35% higher than they were in 1992, when the Kyoto Protocol was signed. Projections estimate that our carbon levels will be up to three times higher by 2100 if we do nothing and while the carbon is re-absorbed in 200 years it takes 1000 years for any warming effects to reverse. If you want to write to your weanie Congress members to remind them about global warming, the Environmental Defense Fund will automatically route your email (which they also write for you, although you can tailor it) to your Congress members based on your zip code.

Just me,

honeypiehorse

Three Cups of Tea

In honor of my coffee embargo this week I'm going to review the book 'Three Cups of Tea.'

Three Cups of Tea is the story of Greg Mortenson’s life work to build schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The schools are primarily (but not exlusively) for girls, who have fewer educational opportunities than boys but more positive impact on poor communities when educated.

I've been avoiding this book. I thought it would be tedious or depressing and I’m a bit of a book wimp – I usually only like happy books or at least books with happy endings. Endless toil in the Pakistini backwater to build schools the Pakistanian government has failed to build while being shot at by terrorists and drug lords didn’t feel like my thing.

Not that I’m against it, I think it’s great - go girl schools! - but I would have been good with an article or a brochure.

How wrong I was.

The book got off to a slow start, with more details about mountain climbing than I strictly wanted but well written. And somewhere along the line I bought into the vision of schools for girls in Pakistan and got genuinely interested in the people portrayed in the book.

The Pakistani people, that is. I'm afraid the American policy makers don't fare quite as well. The US military elite comes across as a bunch of rich old guys wearing rediculously expensive and shiny shoes surrounded by mindless laptop-toting minions. And Congress is portrayed as a mob of well-intentioned (for the most part) but mentally sluggish, overweight, ill-informed bureacrats.

Except the late Sonny Bono's wife Mary, who is totally cool.

For those of you who haven’t read the book I want to share a couple of passages that struck me as important. I will leave you to interpret them as you think best.

Passage 1, in which Mortenson responds to a Republican congressman who asked (right after 9/11) why schools matter when national security is at stake:

“I don’t do what I’m doing to fight terror. I do it because I care about kids. Fighting terror is maybe seventh or eighth on my of priorities. But working over there, I’ve learned a few things. I’ve learned that terror doesn’t happen because some group of people somewhere like Pakistan or Afghanistan simply decide to hate us. It happens because children aren’t being offered a bright enough future that they have a reason to choose life over death.”

Passage 2, in which Brigadier General Bashir Baz speaks after watching wailing Iraqui women carrying children’s bodies out of a bombed building on CNN:

“People like me are American’s best friends in the region. I’m a moderate Muslim, an educated man. But watching this, even I could become a jihadi. How can Americans say they are making themselves safer? Your President Bush has done a wonderful job of uniting one billion Muslims against American for the next two hundred years.”

He also talks about Osama: “As a military man, I know you can never fight and win against someone who can shoot at you once and then run off and hide while you have to remain eternally on guard. You have to attack the source of your enemy’s strength. In American’s case, that’s not Osama or Saddam or anyone else. The enemy is ignorance. The only way to defeat it is to build relationships with these people, to draw them into the modern world with education and business.”

_____________________________________________

OK, I lied, I'm going to offer my thoughts about these remarks.

On the one hand, I think it's a bit rich of the Arabic world to do nothing to help the poor in their own and neighboring countries and then point their fingers at the US for not showering aid on them. If you're a government you have enough money to offer rudimentary education and the whole sitting around waiting for aid theme got a bit old by the end of the book.

And to Brigidier General Baz I might inquire if the US is supposed to finance the education of one billion Muslims so they don't bomb New York any more?

On the other hand, I remember sitting in social studies class as a pre-teen and being struck by how the teacher stressed the importance of American generosity to Japan and Germany after WWII. This generosity re-shaped the world dramatically by creating allies out of enemies, although some of that good will has understandably eroded over the last eight years, and was good for the US economy, too.

Since that brief time of enlightenment we seem to have lost our path. What the book showed was that there are mostly good, decent people in that part of the world who will move mountains to help themselves if just a little bit of support is extended. And for whatever reason, their own government isn't willing or able to extend that helping hand.

So Greg does it.

And just a thought here, that may do more for national security than dropping bombs on people.

Business as usual

I've got a couple of serious topics percolating that I considered trying to tackle today, such as vaccinations and AIDS, but changed my mind while watching Ralf play with his iPhone this morning.

For those of you who have read Chrossing the Chasm, there are early adopters and late adopters (and a couple of groups in between that are not represented in this family).

Early adopters buy Version 1 of the latest technical gadget for exhorbitant prices and get a testerone high from how poorly it works and how difficult it is to use. Ralf, budget permitting, is an early adopter. Naturally, he has an iPhone and before the iPhone he had an extravagent Sony Erickson that cost 600 EUR and also ran up a fortune in Internet surfing charges while sitting locked in the glove compartment during a soccer game.

We never found out why the phone decided to surf the Internet on its own and the German Vodafone legal machine, supremely uninterested in possible mitigating circumstances (like we didn't do anything), made us cough up.

Yes, a lot of our mechanical objects seem to have a life of their own.

For this and other reasons I tend to distrust new technologies and am more of a late adopter. I don't buy anything until it's cheap and idiot proof. For years I've been happy with the simplest of cellphones and when Ralf ordered his iPhone last year I opted to save the family money with a basic Nokia.

But the iPhone has reached a sort of Tipping Point (another great book) in coolness and ease of use (although it's still not cheap) and I feel unreasonably jealous when I watch Ralf look up Munich U-Bahn maps on his phone. By comparison, my Nokia is clunky, primitive and difficult to use.

It sucks, really.

My next phone will be an iPhone.

With the iPhone you can download a number of cheap and simple little programs, like a picture of a burning candle with a timer for mediation, or light saber sound effects that respond to how you move the iPhone - Ralf loves showing that one to his friends. There are also various sound effects, like animals, drumrolls and rasberries, which are useful in business meetings.

And perhaps coolest and most unnecessary of all, the one Ralf can't get enough of, is the flute. That's right, you blow into the iPhone microphone and flute sounds emerge. On the touch screen there are also keys you can press to hit different notes.

AND you can register as an iPhone flute player and some global database tracks who's playing their iPhone flutes right now and shows you a map of the earth with lights to indicate where they are.

AND you can drill down and listen to, say, Eric in Bakersfield play his flute.

AND you can rate him.

Strangely enough, I feel I can live without the iPhone flute but Ralf is hooked. And someone earned about a dollar for this piece of iPhone software from Ralf, and a dollar from Eric in Bakersfield, and so on.

Along the same lines, a German state minister ran into a Slovakian woman on the ski slopes and killed her outright. They were not wearing helmuts. Following this there was a run on helmuts and shops ran out long before the demand was supplied. And out of this undeniable tragedy a second small but thriving sub-industry has emerged: ski helmut bling, like bunny ears and other silly decorations, which are selling like hotcakes. You can't stand in line for a ski lift without someone's idiotic tiger tail hitting you in the face.

When I see stuff like this I really wonder about people but I stop worrying about the economy. A 7.6 % unemployment rate is awful and I pray for the people this has impacted. True, selling the same old stuff in the same old way has probably run its course. But the good news is that people will always come up with new stuff that people will pay money for.

And the design, development, packaging, sale, distribution, technical infrastructure, marketing and legal document filing for these goods and services will create new jobs.

Gotta love it. Or be very, very afraid. . .

3 Things You Need to Know

Actually you don't need to know any of these things but I am going to share them with you anway:

1. Your cat litter may be making Dick Cheney rich. Excuse me, richer. More than half the litter in the United States is made of bentonite, a stripmined clay, and may also contain carcenogenic silica dust (kind of scary when you think about how the dust explodes out of the cat litter and fills the air when you pour it into the litter box). Halliburton, where Cheney was CEO, produces about one-sixth of the 3 million tons of bentonite sold each year, of which 1.7 million tons go into cat litter. So buy the green stuff - it needs to be changed more often but isn't your cat worth it?

2. There are birds that live in caves and build nests out their own saliva. People climb down into these dangerous caves to collect the nests and sell them to restaurants, where they are used to make soup. And people actually eat this soup, which is fairly expensive as soups go. It just goes to show that some people will eat anything if you charge enough for it. I myself ate silk worms once.

3. I am finally going to reveal why I did not like the book She's Come Undone, which everyone else in the whole wide world apparently loved. Here is what I remember about the plot (and it's been a while so no guarantee that it's totally accurate but I think I remember the highlights correctly). Ready? Here goes: Young girl is raped by a trusted family friend. She deals with this tragedy by becoming grotesquely fat. She somehow gets into a decent college but screws the pooch by creating a fantasy identity for herself and writing phony letters to her future roommmate. Her roommate is disgusted by her when they finally meet. Somewhere along the line her mother is killed by a speeding truck at a toll booth. She has a revolting sexual relationship with an obese female janitor at the college. They sit around devouring junk food a lot. She poisons the janitor's fish and runs off. The end. So.... that is pretty much why I didn't like the book.

Quote of the Day: US Service Outage

You comedians are doing all the heavy lifting for me...

This just in from Naturelady, and if you want to see some spectacular pictures of Alaska you should definiely check out her blog:

Here's something hilarious I found on an Alaskan blog (THE ESTER REPUBLIC):

Dear World,

The United States of America, your quality supplier of ideals of liberty and democracy, would like to apologize for its 2001-2008 service outage. The technical fault that led to this eight-year service interruption has been located, and the parts responsible for it were replaced November 4th.

Early tests of the newly-installed equipment indicate that it is functioning correctly, and we expect it to be fully functional by January 20th. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the outage, and we look forward to resuming full service --- and hopefully even to improving it in the years to come.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

*The USA*

How will he be remembered?

It's cold today and my house is cold. A professional heating technician turned my floor heating down to a more 'appropriate' level - and funnily enough, what a middle-aged German man thinks is warm enough is very different from what an LA girl like me finds warm. And of course, our new heater is a masterpiece of German engineering so I can't change it.

Ralf could change it but doesn't want to. German men are all alike.

But that's just a side note. I actually want to talk about something a little more serious today.

I don't personally know anyone who isn't thrilled to have a new President, or at least no one who admits it. And it is thrilling - after 8 years of incompetence, corruption and wrongminded policy we Americans can hold our heads up again because we elected someone who can speak well and exudes integrity.

But it seems to me that too much has been made about Obama being black. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to take away from from the hard-earned triumph of Dr. King and all those who stood with him. It's wonderful that such positive change is possible within a generation or two. It's just that it seems to me that if Dr. King was right, the color of Obama's skin is beside the point.

I'm just happy to have a good man in the white house and I honestly don't care if he's pink or blue. Well, maybe not pink, 'cause that's a sign of too much drinking.

Obama's landslide election is a significant milestone in US history, but not just because America elected a black President. It's a milestone because it shows that we acknowledge our heinous mistake four years ago when we re-elected a poor President (and yes, the signs were already there). It shows that we acknowledge that the current path we're on leads nowhere good. It shows that we acknowledge that you get the government you deserve - for example, if you elect an oil man you'll get oil. Duh.

And it shows that we as a nation finally understand what every animal in the jungle gets: Don't poop where you eat.

You may completely disagree with everything I just said but ask yourself this:

Do you think President Obama (or McDreamy, as Emily poetically calls him, and yes he is) wants to be remembered as the first black President or as the man who ended torture of prisoners, upheld civil rights, revamped the US energy grid to introduce alternative energies, worked for peace in the Middle East, strengthened the middle classes that are the backbone of the US economy, brought affordable health care to children and made America a name to respect again?

I'm just saying.

On the bright side

TWO THINGS THAT CHEERED ME UP YESTERDAY

Thing 1: A dad doing the weekly shopping with his kids. And not just that, they were all wearing ski suits, so he took them skiing first and dropped by the grocery store on the way home. I thought about asking if he was single but the answer was pretty obvious and he wasn’t nearly as cute as Ralf so I just grinned at them all. This is Germany so they hated that, except the youngest child who smiled back when his dad wasn’t looking then stuck out his tongue.

Thing 2: At the gym I discovered that Paris Hilton is looking for a new BFF. Seriously, people, I’m going to apply. She doesn’t need any of those skanky ho’s that want the job, she needs ME. I’m the ultimate second fiddle. In fact, I should probably have included that in my list of life skills (see previous post) because it’s a bit of a specialty with me. I am attractive enough to be seen in public without posing any threat to my BFF. I can babysit the icky little dog during photo shoots. I can converse with the ‘spare’ guy on a variety of topics while she snogs the cute one. I can distract her other BFFs by telling them how amazing they look while she hits on their boyfriends. I can run her website and make sure she gets money when people watch naked videos of her and charge people twice, so her financial future will be assured. Moreover, I will always be honest with her and tell her when the guy she’s dating is a hairy tattoo’d moron. And if she ever decides to finish high school I can make sure she’s Valedictorian.

Clearly, she needs me. I love being needed.

Bailing the boat

Yesterday got off to a rough start. Ralf is away on a business trip and I miss him. The kids are skiing with their grandparents and I miss them. There were no distractions. I could clean, shop, sew, cook, organize, get ready for taxes, stalk friends on Facebook, meditate, sleep, read something good, read my next book club book, surf the Internet, get ahead on some design work, have another cup of coffee, eat chocolate, book my February flight to the US, do laundry, sort stuff in the attic, go to the gym. . . but I didn’t feel like doing any of these things.

Things are broken. They always break (chaos is the second law of thermodynamics, after all) but Ralf usually fixes them. The front panel on my underwear drawer is hanging off and probably needs to be glued back on with Superglue, which Ralf hides from me. The brand new DVD player ate my dvd so I couldn’t watch Eureka last night – it’s a high-tech DVD recorder that apparently sulks if you turn if off. And the new top-of-the-line heating unit we installed in our attic went completely insane three times last night and shook the whole house with loud hammering noises.

I worry sometimes that I could never live alone. I can cook, clean, shop, blog, read, write, pay bills, sort food by order of expiration, give my kids space to find (some of) their own answers, speak to large audiences comfortably and design personal management software. These are my humble life skills so naturally I wonder how long it would take for my entire house to fall down around me if I lived alone. I would definitely need a lot of friends with husbands to take up the slack.

OK, that came out really wrong but you know what I mean. I’m talking about stuff like installing DSL, right?

My dearth of useful skills isn’t the only thing that worries me. The environment worries me. I’m a mom so I force myself to keep track of what Al Gore is doing, sign a petition or write to my congressperson when he requests it and have even made some key lifestyle changes. I do my little bit but it’s not enough. On the other hand, I’ve been worried about the environment for long so long that I’m pretty used to it, kind of like the constant, low-grade fear in my tummy I had when I was 8 and thought the Russians would nuke us.

They still might but no one worries about it any more because we have bigger problems. How scary is that?

On a positive note, Obama gets it but he’s chosen to fight with subsidies rather than penalties and this may not be effective enough. It may even drive up the price of clean technologies for the rest of the world. But what can he do? Penalize companies for poor planning and irresponsible world citizenship that are already laying more than half a million people off?

That’s the next thing bringing me down lately, the news that US unemployment is over 7% (which is almost 1 in 10 people). This will impact other countries as well and right now parents just like me are wondering if they can keep their houses and feed their kids. As a parent I can’t imagine too many more things more frightening than that.

Except... being in the Middle East, that’s probably worse. I've been thinking that the 10 Commandments aren’t a bad start but we clearly need a few more, like:

Thou shalt not assume that everyone who doesn’t like you or criticizes your actions also hates your entire race.

I would also recommend:

Thou shalt not hide weapons or bad guys in hospitals, schools or residential areas.

Bastards. But then, I suppose this is why I’m not a military strategist.

And finally:

Thou shalt not kill in the name of religion.

You might think ‘Thou Shalt not Kill’ would automatically cover this one but religious killers always seem to assume there’s some special dispensation for killing in the name of religion so I would add this, at least as a footnote. Notice they took this approach with coveting, i.e., you shouldn’t covet anything belonging to your neighbor AND you shouldn’t covet your neighbor’s wife, but I guess sleeping with your neighbor’s wife is a worse sin than killing someone so they wanted to make it idiot proof.

ANYway, as I was saying before I took a short detour to improve the 10 Commandments (you’re welcome, by the way), yesterday all this stuff was bubbling up and bringing me down. So, instead of working or cleaning my house, I took action and spent a half hour meditating.

Seriously. We’ve all seen what can happen when we're in a good mood and smile at everyone we meet. Almost magically, people are friendly (except, of course, in Germany) and no problem is insurmountable. Well, the reverse is also true. Negative emotions like fear, sadness, anger are contagious and lately it feels like there’s too much of them around and the world is out of balance. It’s like we’ve been living on credit for too long and the bill just arrived, only it’s not a bill any more, it’s a delinquent notice.

Meditation can help bring negative emotions back into perspective.

So that's what I did and I felt better afterwards, like I had finally got around to bailing a very leaky boat, and got dressed to hit the gym and go shopping. And while I was doing these things I saw two other things that cheered me up no end.

In my next post I will write about these happy things.

Updating my Blogroll

First a quick update from Munich: I’m still here and it’s still winter. Can you believe it, it’s already been winter for days and still no end in sight. This morning was -12 C, which I consider fairly chilly. And since we have a big sofa in the middle of our garage that we’re trying to sell I have to park outside. And scrape. Ice. I’m officially giving Ralf another week to get rid of the sofa (after he gets back, of course) and then I’m going in with the axe. Meanwhile the cat has been protesting Ralf’s absence by doing extra smelly things in his litter box. The phrase ‘courtesy burial’ apparently means nothing to him.

Meanwhile out in Blogland I’ve been reading so much great, funny and sometimes tragic stuff lately that it’s hard to decide where to start each day, let alone single anyone out. Nonetheless, today I want to update my Blogroll (down there on the right) with a couple of blogs I’ve been following recently that make laugh out loud:

R Max, a very funny mom from New Zealand.

And Kristina P, who is funny and evil, origins unknown. Actually we’re still debating whether she is evil or not but she is definitely funny.

According to their blog bling, they are both Morman Mommy Bloggers. What are the odds?

Pretty high, actually. Over the course of my extensive religious research, I have concluded that in addition to starting relatively few religious wars (compared to the rest of us, I mean), Mormons also have a better sense of humor than people of other religions.

Let me clarify this, because I’m afraid it came out all wrong and I certainly don’t want to offend any of you non-Mormons that have comedic aspirations: The odd Jewish or Catholic person may well be funnier than a randomly selected Mormon but I’m talking averages here.

In fact there is even a Mormon website dedicated to humor. On this site I re-discovered that wonderful history of everything compiled from student essays. This is important historical information.

A few choice quotes with my comments:

"The Bible is full of interesting caricatures."

me: Isn’t it just?

"Moses led them to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients."

me: This is actually not a bad way of describing Matzo bread.

"Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him.

me: Let this be a wakeup call for all of us."

"Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained."

me: This is the literal truth.

"There were no wars in Greece, as the mountains were so high that they couldn't climb over to see what their neighbors were doing."

me: And it just goes to show that the less we know about our neighbors, the less we want to kill them.

Anyway, thanks R Max and Kristina and the rest you whom I didn't mention but am stalking for making my day.

People and Deities Behaving Badly

Ralf has been grumbling that I've digressed from writing interesting - albeit ignorant and misguided - social commentary to ‘Poor me, I’m so sick’ postings punctuated by German doctor bashing. So in recognition of his support for this essential social service I provide, today's challenge is to try to get my groove back.

Since I don't want to offend anyone, I thought I'd take on a nice, safe topic like Christianity.

Me and Christianity go way back. My grandmother, a Presbyterian minister’s wife, used to read me Bible stories by the hour. She got a lot of babysitting mileage out of the Holy Book - not only is it chock full of short, action-packed stories, you can also make a game out of reciting the chapters: ‘Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1st and 2nd Samuel. . . ‘ and so forth.

And we didn’t just study Christian literature together, she also read me hundreds of stories from Greek and Norse mythology, and I was engaged to a Jewish guy who converted from Catholicism before I married a religiously lax German Protestant, and we meditate with a Buddhist Sangha, so although there are a few gaps in my knowledge of mainstream religions I feel like I have a pretty good grounding in comparative religious studies.

I recently acquired a Young Reader’s Bible for my kids and was looking forward to sharing the same special memories with my girls but I just can’t seem to get started. As an adult I find that many of the Bible stories are difficult to tell children because they tend to ask all those why questions that are so inconvenient when you’re trying to find your faith.

There's still some magic - I mean, when Moses parts the Red Sea that totally rocks.

But I have issues with God, at least as He is depicted in the Bible. He is inconsistent, vengeful and not above wiping out entire cities or playing petty pranks on his most devoted worshippers. Not that he never comes through - I mean, he saved Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego from the fiery furnace and Daniel got a break with that lion but he didn’t lift a finger to save his son and don’t even get me started about Job.

And the Garden of Eden, what was that all about? ‘See this tree full of delicious looking apples right in the middle of the garden? Don't eat any or I will be eternally pissed. Just enjoy the garden, worship me and don’t look at the apples. Have an apricot or a grape instead…. Did you just eat that apple? I can’t BELIEVE you ate that apple!!! I will SMITE your sorry ass for this!!!!’ And so on.

I realize that many people have found a loving, merciful God in the Bible and that's the kind of God I want, too. I'm looking for the God the Harlem Gospel Singers sing about, the ‘Rock of My Salvation’. I just can't find him in the Bible.

And I don’t like how Eve got blamed for everything, either. Adam's a spineless yutz and this is Eve's fault?

I also don’t care for the author’s note at the back of the Young Reader’s Bible that God personally oversaw the writing of the Bible. Is it just me or does it seem unlikely that someone who doesn’t lift a finger to fight AIDS, war or famine has time for, or interest in, authoring a book? Even a spectacularly popular book like the Bible.

I sometimes wonder why the Bible is so popular. God isn’t a very sympathetic hero, with all his ranting and city destroying. It isn’t particularly well-written, either, all that boring Ezrah son of Abraham stuff at the beginning of each chapter and mediocre character development. I mean, the God in the Old Testement has a completely different personality than the God in the New Testament.

But like The Devil Wears Prada (another poorly written book with an unsympathetic, badly developed main character that was amazingly popular), it has a few things going for it:

It has a catchy title. ‘The Bible’ has gravitas, dignity, authority. If they called it ‘People and Deities Behaving Badly’ instead it would lose much of its mass appeal and moral authority. Ditto ‘The Devil Wears Prada’- I mean, say it was called ‘The Really Mean Boss’ instead, would you read it?

It’s available in English, thus making it instantly more accessible than other viable religious texts with equally cool names like the Torah and the Quran. Ditto TDWP.

It has an appealing concept: Super powerful being offers perfect after life if you go to church and do what the priests tell you in this life. Ditto TDWP: Mean boss bullies plain mousy girl until she develops a fashion sense and stops being such a total weanie. People like to read stuff like that because it's reassuringly easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys.

Church backing also hasn’t hurt the Bible's popularity, given that the Church has more money than God (heh heh heh).

Incidentally, it just has occured to me that blaspheming right after a bad bout of bronchitis might not be such a hot idea. . .

I still pray to God when my kids are sick or I can’t find my keys. And I say 'God bless' when someone sneezes or as a gesture of support. But it doesn’t feel like I'm calling on the God from the Bible, more like something greater and less… uptight middle-aged white guy.

I'd like to leave you with this thought: Most mainstream religions have been adapted to fit personal agendas over the years - usually for the sake of fomenting violence, sometimes just for money - and Christianity is no exception. But if we boil them all down to their most basic tenets I think they are all trying to tell us the same thing:

We are all connected.
Love is more empowering than hate.
There is a higher purpose.
Live in this moment.
Do no harm.
Be helpful.

Who killed the electric car?

In the US we place great stock in market solutions and are suspicious in our DNA of anything that smacks of Communism, like government interference with the free market. Mind you, this attitude has recently taken a beating as banks line up for government handouts, but it is part of who we are. If Jay Leno were to ask the average person on the street if the US has a free market I think most people would say yes – or, at least the few who actually understood the question.

Now, as it happens our country also has a rich tradition of government interference in the free market in the form of domestic subsidies and targeted tax breaks but I don’t want to dwell on these because that would require research. Instead, I want to focus your attention for just a moment on another form of free market interference: coallitions.

But first, let me make it clear right now that I am not an economist. I have degrees in international politics and management so there has been some economic study and I wrote my senior dissertation on IMF policy in Mexico, which was very well-received (my professor wrote: ‘Laura – hilarious work! Thanks for making my day!!!’ on it). In graduate school I even studied for a semester with a professor who was so well-known for advanced international economics that he had difficulty remembering mundane things like which way the supply curve goes. But there my claim to economic glory ends and I have to resort to common sense like everyone else.

There is an underlying assumption that if there is a demand, someone will find a way to produce a supply. This is the underlying principal of free market theory. Remember Adam Smith’s invisible hand? Even if you majored in English or Drama you probably encountered Adam in high school but here’s a refresher: Everyone will try to maximize their own economic advantage and it is good for society as a whole for them to do this. Some of you may also remember Michael Douglas’ ‘greed is good’ speech from the movie Wall Street where he dresses down all those corporate fat cats.

So anyway, you get the idea. In a truly free market an idea or product that has a real potential to be in demand, which means people will pay money for it, will inevitably be pursued by business people who, quite properly, want to maximize their economic advantage.

Yes. . . well.

To be fair, Adam Smith has largely proven to be correct. Demand does tend to generate supply and all of us in the first world can go to the supermarket on any day in any season and buy a cheap pomegranate, which (if we disregard the ethical question of whether that’s really a good thing for society as a whole) is highly convenient when you want to make one of those fancy salads with pomegranate seeds.

Unfortunately, bringing a product to market represents the long way to satisfy greed. I mean, it’s work, right? And it may require hefty investment and some personal risk as well. So, if there’s a short cut to satisfying that same greed, Adam Smith’s same law may actually work against the good of society.

How so? Well, what if someone had a working prototype of something people really wanted, like an electric car that doesn’t cost more than a regular car and needs little or no gas to run? Adam Smith would predict that someone would make this car and sell it and if it was successful more people would make it in order to jump on the profit bandwagon. But what if someone with a lot of money really didn’t like this idea at all? What could someone with truckloads of money could do to kill a good idea even if the ‘free market’ liked it?

They could apply economic pressure on key decision makers at companies that wanted to sell this car in order to change their minds. And these decision makers might see a quicker route to the same rewards for them personally...

And there’s the rub: greed only lets you care about yourself, not the thousands of workers that work for you and depend on you to make good decisions, and not the millions of people threatened by global warming.

Adam Smith assumed that people are willing to work for their money. He failed to take into account what happens when greed meets laziness or ethical laxness or incompetence.

The results? A brilliant idea, highly in demand, killed by a few decision makers working together to maximize their own profit. A problem that could have been solved, pushed under the carpet. A huge American company, that could be standing tall and strong today, failing.

Of course, Adam Smith wasn't totally wrong : we all bought Hummers just as happily.

Who killed the electric car? Check this out and draw your own conclusions, which may be different than mine: