Halloween Season

The Halloween season is here...not to be confused with the Harvest season or the Christmas season or the Thanksgiving season which seem to all run simultaneously these days.  Halloween used to be a kid's holiday with a little bit of ritualistic charm but now it is a business.

I must be one of the few people who just don't get it. I enjoy the change in seasons from summer to fall and the things that we do to prepare for colder weather. Every living thing seems to go through this transition. Cows and horses and even house cats get a winter coat of heavier fur. I always put on thick layers of supple fat and, unfortunately, it doesn't seem to come off when it gets warmer. We harvest apples and other produce. The trees change color and drop their leaves...which I refuse to rake. My Hickory tree has been dropping its nuts for weeks and the squirrels have been having a great time. Now its leaves are turning bright yellow and will fall on the next windy or rainy day. We had our first frost last night.

Okay...but what is it that causes us to celebrate Halloween the way we do. Some folks have gone a little crazy over the holiday. Where one carved pumpkin would be fine, they have a dozen. Houses are decked out in orange Halloween lights. We have two large costume stores that pop up in September like toadstools. People wire their front yards for sound and then broadcast creepy music or ghoulish sounds at night.

I try...really, I do try to get into it but I always see it as something that other people do so it is half-hearted. This year I actually bought a Happy Halloween pennant that hangs from my mailbox. I always buy a couple pumpkins and stick them out on the front porch with some other fall decorations but I very rarely will carve a Jack-o-lantern and when I do it always looks happy, with a smiley face. I can't seem to make them look scary.

I actually understand the Day of the Dead thing in Mexico or other Hispanic-culture places. But Halloween seems pointless. We really don't know where it comes from. We aren't commemorating dead ancestors or anything like that. Even the old Celtic festival of the same season had nothing to do with the dead or a satanic figure. I know that some churches or church leaders have a dim view of Halloween but I don't even see the point of that.

The only good part of Halloween is the actual Trick or Treat parade that comes to the front door. Years ago the old pagan holiday morphed into a kid's celebration with costumes and candy. As a kid, I admit I enjoyed every year's trek up and down the street in whatever costume I managed to cobble together lugging my grocery bag full of candy. As an adult I enjoy greeting the neighborhood kids at the door and handing out fist-fulls of high fructose corn syrup nuggets of one kind or another. I even enjoy the older kids whose voices are changing and barely put up the effort at a costume because they need one more last childhood fling...God knows where they will be in five years. 

The adult side of the holiday seems to be morphing into a weird commercial enterprise. I think that's what takes away from the enjoyment and robs the holiday of it's old-fashioned charm. 

I'm turning into a Parrot

I can't help myself. I'm sure that I'm not the only person with this "problem" but I don't know how common my "affliction" is. I'm not a trained linguist or even versed in foreign languages other than a bare minimum of Spanish and Italian. When I go to a foreign country or even to a place in the US where I hear people speaking something other than my own local version  of English I end up parroting their speech patterns after only a short period of time.

I'm from Missouri -- in my family that's Missouree not Missouruh -- and living smack dab in the middle of the US I've always been fascinated by the different American accents. We commonly encounter people speaking Minnesotan or Texan or Chicagoan or North Carolinian. There is N'Orleaneeze and Baltimorean and New Yorker and New Jerseyish and a couple Louisiana dialects depending on the amount of Cajun-ness. Arkansan has kind of a mountain and delta version. Missouri is the same way with urban and rural patterns and there are differences between St. Louis and Kansas City...especially among women.  I can often tell roughly where someone is from if I talk to them long enough. There are exceptions (Ohio and Indiana) and there are places with such an influx of variations...like California and some parts of Florida...that I can't seem to figure it out.

This fascination leads me to unintentionally picking up some of those speech patterns. I start using a hybrid version of my normal speaking patterns and pronunciations mixed with the newly acquired stuff.

It's not just American English dialects that suck me in. I have a friend from Aberdeen Scotland and another from Lviv in Ukraine. I had a fellow working with me for a while from the Ural Mountains in Russia and another from the Philippines. I seem to be willing to surrender my own speech patterns and habits to anyone. I went to Italy and came home sounding like I just moved to the US from a village in Umbria.

I don't mind it. I'm just surprised by how quickly I take on these other patterns and I hope that others don't think that I'm mocking them or making fun of their English.

However, now I am a little disconcerted about a recent development. I am a fan of The Big Bang Theory, a CBS TV situation comedy, and look forward to seeing it every week. If you are unfamiliar with TBBT look here for a clip (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0xgjUhEG3U&feature=related) . They recently started showing it in re-runs for an hour each evening on Fox TV. Guess what. Now I'm starting to sound like Dr. Sheldon Cooper. This will never do...maybe there is some kind of therapy.  Soft kitty. Warm kitty. Little ball of fur.... 

Surprise, surprise, surprise

Times is hard. A good chunk of the middle class is sliding into poverty. The percentage of families in poverty is at a record high. The unemployment rate is officially below 10 percent (wink, wink) but the actual rate is probably more like 15 to 18 percent because job seekers are demoralized and have stopped looking and are too busy moving out of their foreclosed homes. We have been in "recovery" for well over a year and there are not many signs that the economy has a pulse. People on the right are quick to criticize the government's stimulus efforts but I shudder to think where we would be without them. We have had serious recessions before and no one wants to use the "D" word but I would not be surprised if future economists and historians claim that we are in a depression.

There are a few things that make this "downturn" different from others. Big employers have sent thousands of jobs overseas and those jobs are lost...unless you want to move to India or Malaysia. That has been happening for a while and people have been wringing their hands but not much has been done to counter the trend. The difference this time around might be that we no longer have relevant labor unions. I understand the criticism of labor unions but they would have had a voice in the crippling flow of jobs overseas and the elimination of the middle range jobs that have been lost. This economic slump has destroyed many of the middle range jobs that had, in previous decades, been under the umbrella of labor union protection. 

People complain that a worker should be able to hold a job without belonging to a union and that unions drive up the cost of running a business. In the first instance, labor unions used their collective bargaining rights to benefit all workers and I don't see a real issue with wanting workers to be part of the union. If we had strong unions we would have more people working and more people buying homes, cars and other products...which would benefit the economy.

The other complaint, that unions raise business costs, is interesting. Now that unions have been pretty much weakened by business interests and popular apathy, why don't we see a corresponding reduction in costs and less expensive products? Products or services offered by non-union providers don't seem to be less expensive than union products or services. Many businesses have been banking huge profits during this downturn and do not seem to be letting any of that trickle down toward new products or job creation. This is called a "wait and see" strategy -- basically you get as much as you can get and sit on it because you are waiting to see the other guy spend his first. Labor unions are not saints or angels and have made terrific mistakes...just like businesses...but the basic premise of collective bargaining is still valid.

At this point we seem to be in a loop of some sort. The economy is bad and we have a gloomy outlook for the future. As a result, we have no confidence in our future and take the "wait and see" approach...which keeps the economy in the dumps. We have been in trouble for a long time. "W" Bush squandered a budget surplus, gave huge tax breaks to the rich and then started two wars without a tax increase to support the cost. We have been engaged in a huge wealth redistribution effort for ten years or more taking money from the poor and middle class folks and giving it to the rich. The social security fund is investing in US treasury bonds which are then used for operating expenses so that the rich don't have to pay their fair share of taxes. Revenue doesn't cover expenses so we borrow from the Chinese or other countries to pay our expenses and then have to pay back the loans. Heaven forbid that the rich be asked to pay their share.

So here we sit. The housing industry tanked and then tanked again and still seems too precarious to be heading toward recovery. All the affiliated industries have suffered. We had six lumber yards in our town and they were competing for four building projects...only four building permits were issued in one month...and, of course, the one lumber yard that most recently went through an expansion and upgrade went belly up. Furniture stores are closing...we lost two of them this year. I'm seeing some house renovations going on but no real increase in new homes. Two developers who were pushing upscale homes and "gated communities" went bankrupt. I'm trying to sell my house but the housing market is in a death spiral. I had three people who wanted to buy but they couldn't sell their own houses. Prices are falling way below what I think some houses are worth...I'm surprised to see the asking prices on some houses and it becomes very difficult to compete. Luckily, I don't have to sell but I have plans that are on hold and I'm not getting any younger.

On being a "renaissance man"

I was reading a blog article that was focusing on the idea of the modern "renaissance man" [OK, renaissance person] and how one would attempt to become one. I was struck by the fact that our modern era is one of specialization and it is rare find someone who is broadly competent in a variety of areas. It is so rare, in fact, that it seems downright odd and our culture and society does not reward or value that kind of broad knowledge. We tend to become employed in a narrow area of responsibility or technical expertise and society views any concerted effort to gain a broader knowledge as wasted effort. The education system seems to be narrowing the student's focus and exposure rather than broadening their education. A university education is priced out of reach for anything that doesn't have a career payback.
Sometimes we will hear about a baseball player or someone else in sports who also has an interest in something other than their sport. It is mentioned as an oddity -- and as "color commentary" that player 'A' is a gifted artist or a musician or writes poetry or makes furniture.

One short line from the blog article stuck in my mind and I paraphrase it here: Nothing exposes a person's ignorance and lack of culture quicker than faulty geography or a lack of literary knowledge. I would add to that a lack of basic historical awareness. I don't think that you need to be a walking encyclopedia but you should know that Pakistan is in Asia and Ecuador is in South America. It would help to know that India and Pakistan are neighbors and that people in Ecuador speak Spanish.

Americans are notably ill informed on geography, literature and history. The situation is so bad that you cringe when people call into talk radio or C-SPAN to ask a question or make a comment. The ones who are least informed seem to be the ones with ready access to telephones and the airwaves.

Sarah Palin, Michele Bachman, and Texas Governor Rick Perry have managed to rise to the top of political life with little basic knowledge or apparent understanding of history, geography or literature...not to mention the constitution or economics.  Presumably, the people who support them are either equally ill informed or choose to ignore the obvious deficit in the candidstes' knowledge. Some of it is pretty comical but the Founding Fathers would be appalled at the lack of basic knowledge in both the voters and the candidates.

It's getting late so I'll end this for now -- to be revisited later.