Well, this is awkward.  Today’s prompt from NaBloPoMo is –

Tell us about your first kiss.

So.

Just how personal (read vulnerable) do I want to be here in internet land?  How much of my past do I want to reveal?  And the larger question, do I even remember my first kiss?

The answer to the last question is, “No. No, I do not remember my first kiss.”  I do however, remember my first boyfriend.  And I remember a much later boyfriend and a first kiss that mattered much more.  I’ll tell the story of the first boyfriend, but not the story of the later boyfriend (no, it was not LightHusband) … it’s only the interesting people who have a checkered past, you know 😉 .

I have a theory about the eighth grade and being 13.  It is the year one is at one’s most stupid/foolish during adolescence.  That is the year when we engage in the silliest behaviors. Some children chose a path that year which will make all of adolescence and highschool difficult.  Others manage to regain their footing and continue through the teen years on a more even, yet still turbulent, keel.  I was part of the latter group.  I have several friends from eighth (and even seventh or sixth grade) who I maintain contact with.  We all shake our collective heads regretfully when recalling eighth grade.  It was not a good year.

In particular, my one of my very best friends (maid of honor in each other’s weddings, etc.) and I both “went out” with boys when we were in eighth grade.  This begs the question, where did we go?  We grew up in the hills of Vermont.  It was a 20 minute drive to our highschool (grades 7-12 and it drew from 5 towns).  How, exactly, do 13 year olds go on a date?  It was crazy.  Mostly we were in love with an idea.  So, here is the sad, embarrassing story of my eighth grade romance.

He was in ninth grade and an older boy.  Blonde hair, blue eyes … the only blonde I would ever date.  He played saxophone in the band, and I played flute, so I expect that is how we knew one another.  He gave me his ID bracelet to wear as a pledge of his daily troth and short-lived like.  I don’t remember much about our relationship except that when it was over, I was embarrassed by it.  What was I thinking?  There are three events in our relationship that stand out.  The first is that one day he came over to my house to “hang out” for a while.  We disappeared into the hayshed to “make out.”  It was a huge disappointment to me.  Neither one of us knew what we were doing, so it was just kissing (this was good), but the kissing was bad (this was probably also good).  I remember thinking that if this was all there was to kissing and making out, I didn’t see what the big deal was; it was sort of boring.  [Never fear, I found out otherwise later in life ;-)]

The second event was a time when my brothers and I were going to see Young Frankenstein (with Gene Wilder).  The 8GBF and I tried to turn it into a date.  This was quashed.  I was furious with my mother.  But the movie was so funny, I got over it quickly.

The last event was breaking up.  I was free.  I ran to tell my friends.  Here was something that I had wanted so badly, but it had become a shackle around my neck.   I never regretted breaking up with him.  Oddly, I was always slightly embarrassed by the relationship until writing this blog post.  Now, I’m inclined to think that perhaps we were necessary to each others’ growing up.  Maturing is hardly ever easy, sometimes we are assisted by the mostly unlikely of people.

For today’s snack, we have a walk down memory lane:

If you could go back in time and meet your 16-year-old self, what three things would you tell yourself?

Well … now.  Things just got really heavy, didn’t they?  And sort of existential or something like it.  I’m bleary-eyed this morning because I stayed up too late watching the Chicago Blackhawks win Lord Stanley’s Cup last night.  This might be more raw than ordinary because I am less guarded than usual … so here goes.

I would tell my baby girl self (even though she would not listen) that time is a finite resource.  When you are sixteen your life stretches out before you in an almost limitless road with countless possibilities.  Choose.  Pick something, anything and do it well.

I would also tell her to enjoy herself more and be responsible less.  That it’s okay to have fun once in a while and be less serious all the time.

Last, I would tell my LightGirl self that all the world really is her oyster.  She really is that smart, that good and she really can make it.  She really is the sort of girl who can make it out in the world; there’s nothing to be afraid of.  When the time comes (and it will) she should just jump in with both feet and swim.

It’s Women’s History Month here in the U.S. of A.

I wonder if there are any people of color who are equally irked by African-American History month?  I mean, I understand the motivation behind having these once a year months to focus on here-to-for underserved populations in our midst.  But …

But there is something about the idea of having  the dominant population “allow” a month for women’s history or african-american history or whatever history that is vaguely unsettling.  Because if the culturally dominant population is still in a position to allow this, then they are also in a position to take it back.  Which means … they still hold all the power.  I would very much like those scales to be more in balance in terms of race and gender one day so that ML King, Jr.’s dream will really come true for all of us.

So … for me, it’s HerStory month.  This isn’t about HisStory.  We get to hear HisStory pretty frequently.  So here in the Ravine I’m going to be telling some stories about women this month.  Women in the long ago and maybe some women in the near and dear.

For starters take a look at a couple of things that lead up to this month:

Our women in the Olympics –

There were Lindsey Vonn and Julia Mancuso  – alpine events.

Hannah Teeter and Kelly Clark – halfpipe (snowboard)

Hannah Kearney and Shannon Bahrke – moguls

Meryl Davis (with Charlie White) – ice dancing

Lana Gehring, Alyson Dudek, Allison Baver and Katherine Reutter – short track speed skating

Erin Pac and Elana Meyers – bobsled

21 Valiant women on the US Women’s Hockey Team

Katherine Reutter – short track speed skating

and these were only the medal winners.  We sent dozens of other female athletes, trainers and moms to the Games.  They all have a story to tell.  Of sacrifice and love and joy and pain and passion and fierce dedication.  Stories that are not unlike ours.

So I will back throughout the month with more stories, ideas and maybe even a book review or two.  Stay tuned.

Photo by Derek Redmond and Paul Campbell, licensed under GNU Free Documentation License

The above photo is very familiar to me.  Though it may not be to you.  I was 8 during the summer of 1969 and becoming more aware of the world around me.  I lived in Vermont.  I had friends who were old enough to know alot about Woodstock and if they didn’t go, they had posters of the event in their bedrooms.  I have cousins who may or may not have gone, but certainly lived close enough to have considered the journey.  It was, rather famously, the Summer of Love.  Or was it?

There’s a lot mythology that’s grown up around that famous summer in the forty years and several months since.  The gathering was peaceful (and generally it was) about the rain, etc.  But what I remember most about it was the ruin.  I remember seeing these photos and (being a child on a farm/in farm country) wondering how that mess would ever get cleaned up.  It turned out that it never did.

The young people who came in droves to that farm in Woodstock, NY for several magical days in August of 1969 left as quickly and as miraculously as they’d arrived.  Coming empty handed, they left empty handed.  And the fields were covered in trash and mud and clothes and shoes and excrement and waste.  The once working farm was in ruins, never to be worked again.

I wonder though.  Looking back it seems as if that one weekend was a snapshot of world that was to come.  There was chaos.  There loud music.  There were some drugs.  There were people getting along.  There were people coming and going.  There were increasing security concerns.  It was the first concert where a promoter decided to try and repeat it.  Above all though, the generation who staged it, held it, attended it in droves and then left that field and town in ruins showed the world their care-less attitude about … really everything but themselves.  The so-called “Me” generation of the 70’s and excesses of the 80’s should have come as no surprise to anyone after seeing what these people did as young adults at Woodstock.

We really should not be surprised that now in their late 50’s and early 60’s they are very concerned about health care and retirement income for themselves … but they’re damn sure not going to give a rip about the rest of us or how we’re going to either get it or pay for it four generations into the future.  You can rest assured of one thing though … someone else will come along and clean up their mess.  Someone else always has.  I know … because I’ve been trailing this selfish generation with a shovel and a broom my whole life.

In celebration of International Women’s Day, Julie Clawson of One Hand Clapping challenged us to find some unsung heroines of the Bible and celebrate their stories today in a synchroblog.  So I pulled up BibleGateway and put “daughter” into their search engine.  I think it came back with about 110 hits … or something like that.

Some daughters just got honorable mention.  That is, they were simply mentioned as so and so’s daughter and that was the end of that.  Others had an actual story attached to their name.  Sometimes the story was fairly mysterious.  As in the case with Caleb’s daughter.  She was married to her cousin, by Caleb’s younger brother because Caleb had promised his daughter to whomever won a particular battle.  His nephew won the battle, so he married off his daughter.  This is not very acceptable by today’s standards, but in that culture we can understand it.  The next couple of verses recount an event that is odd.  Caleb’s daughter went to him and asked for some additional land.  When he gave it to her, she also asked for a couple of springs.  So he gave her those.  And there the story of Caleb’s daughter ends.  With the gift of springs.  It’s mysterious, really.  In there for a reason, but why?

So I moved on and found the story of Job’s daughters:  Jemimah, Keziah and Keren-Happuch.  This story can be found in Job, chapter 42 … the very end of the book.  Job has come through his trials with some version of success:

¹ Then Job replied to the LORD :

 ² “I know that you can do all things;
no plan of yours can be thwarted.

 ³ You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?’
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know.

 ⁴ “You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.’

 ⁵ My ears had heard of you
but now my eyes have seen you.

 ⁶ Therefore I despise myself
and repent in dust and ashes.”

⁷ After the LORD had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. ⁸ So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly. You have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” ⁹ So Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite did what the LORD told them; and the LORD accepted Job’s prayer.

This is curious to me, because here we see the result of what happens to friends who might give you (however well-meaning) an incorrect perspective of God during your trials.  Those friends will have to sacrifice in your presence and have you pray over them.  This is an interesting perspective that I’ve not heard taken away from Job … but more on that another time.   I’m just thinking we need to be very careful with what we say to people about God when they are experiencing trials.

In any case, the account goes on tell us what happens to Job in the rest of his life:

 ¹⁰ After Job had prayed for his friends, the LORD made him prosperous again and gave him twice as much as he had before. ¹¹ All his brothers and sisters and everyone who had known him before came and ate with him in his house. They comforted and consoled him over all the trouble the LORD had brought upon him, and each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold ring.

 ¹² The LORD blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the first. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys. ¹³ And he also had seven sons and three daughters. ¹⁴ The first daughter he named Jemimah, the second Keziah and the third Keren-Happuch. ¹⁵ Nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job’s daughters, and their father granted them an inheritance along with their brothers.

 ¹⁶ After this, Job lived a hundred and forty years; he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation. ¹⁷ And so he died, old and full of years.

Wait?  What?  Three short sentences.  That is all we have of Job’s daughters.  They were part of a family of 10 siblings.  We don’t know where they fell in the sibling order.  We do know who among the girls was eldest, middle and youngest.  We know they were beautiful.  Most astonishing of all, we know that “… their father granted them an inheritance along with their brothers.”  That’s it.

It’s a genealogist’s worst nightmare.  We have names and nothing else.  We know only the most bare facts of their existence.  But we know one more thing.  Job gave them status.  He told the world that his daughters were equal to men.  His daughters were not chattel to belong to their husbands.  They owned something of their father in their own right.  I’m not certain I can fully convey how remarkable this was for that time.

It was miraculous.  Unheard of.  Women were not considered capable of owning or managing the things that men did.   But Job did it.

These are the just sorts of passages I do love.  Open-ended, without a tidy message.  We don’t know what happened to Job’s daughters.  We do know that Job lived to see “… his children and their children to the fourth generation.”  I believe that would be his great, great grandchildren if I’ve figured correctly.  My guess is that his daughters married and children of their own.  So how did they use their inheritance?  And … did they pass it on to their daughters?  What was their inheritance?  Was it land, animals, jewels?

I wonder about those things you see.  We have things (land, jewels and the like) that have been only passed to women in my family.  Our summer lake house is among them.  When my aunt left it to our family, she left it to my mom (her relative).  Her will stipulated that if my mother had pre-deceased her, it was to go to me and my brothers.  She was emphatic that it stay in her family.  In the 100 years prior to that, the house had always passed woman to woman.

They are so intriguing to me.  Those daughters.  Jemimah, Keziah and Keren-Happuch.  They are the opposing book-end to Job’s first three daughters.  As I thought about them and let their names rattle around I came to another realization.  I’d heard two of the names before.  Jemimah and Keziah were common names given to girls who were slaves in the American South.

I started looking for confirmation of that.  Of course, I quickly ran into a brick wall … because records of what slaves were named by each other were … um … slim.  Nobody thought it was important to keep track of what they called each other.  Sometimes just the gender and the slaveholders last name is recorded.  Certainly, no inheritance was given to these men and women.  It is intriguing to me that Jemima and Keziah were used as girls names though.

I wonder … could those names have been picked on purpose?  Are they names of hope?  We’ll never know for certain.  But we do know some few things.  We know that some slaves were given Christian training.  Some were even given Bible teaching.  We know that some of the stories resonated with their experience and certainly Job’s would have been among them.  It’s not a terrible stretch to imagine naming your daughter Jemima or Keziah out of hope … hope that one day you would have an inheritance to leave her, hope that she would be known as the daughter of a man who was blessed by God, hope that your trial would be ended in blessing rather than curses.

I think there might be something to that.  None of Job’s other children are named.  Not his first ten children (seven sons, three daughters) and not his second seven sons; just these three daughters.  So, it seems to me that these names spring to the top as names that are symbolic of the hope of a good outcome at the end of horrible trials … the kind of trials endured by slaves in the antebellum South.

Thus I came to the Aunt Jemima pancake empire.  It was begun in the 1890’s by two men who, having created an instant pancake mix, needed an icon to name it and represent.  One of them ducked into a black-face minstrel show and there heard the following song:

The monkey dressed in soldier clothes,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
Went out in the woods for to drill some crows,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
The jay bird hung on the swinging limb,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
I up with a stone and hit him on the shin,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
Oh, Carline, oh, Carline,
Can’t you dance the bee line,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!

The bullfrog married the tadpole’s sister,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
He smacked his lips and then he kissed her,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
She says if you love me as I love you,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
No knife can cut our love in two,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
Oh, Carline, oh, Carline,
Can’t you dance the bee line,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!

Shortly after hearing the name, Nancy Green was hired to represent Aunt Jemima.  She was currently working as a servant for a judge in Chicago, but had been born and raised a slave in antebellum Kentucky.  Aunt Jemima and her pancakes were introduced at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago.  It was held from May to November and Nancy smiled, sang, told slave tales, flipped and served almost a million pancakes during that six month period.  In the hundred and ten years since then she has become perhaps the most well-known African American female face in history.

Yet, there is something vaguely disturbing about that.  This name, Jemimah, started out as a name of hope, blessing, inheritance and beauty had become a term interchangeable with disparagement, slavery and bondage and now … commerce.  You never hear Jemimah as a name anymore.  There are no young women with that name … no fathers or mothers hoping to pass on that message of hope, blessing and inheritance to their daughters with that name because it’s lost all of it’s power.

We still hear Keziah.  You might not recognize it.  You’ll hear Keshia or Aisha.  Both of those names have their roots in Keziah.  A name of hope and blessing and inheritance for girls.   That’s just what we need to give our daughters today … a sense of hope and blessing and inheritance.  What sort of inheritance will you give your daughters?

*****************************************************

This is my contribution to the International Women’s Day Synchroblog –

Here are links to some others –

Julie Clawson on the God who sees
Steve Hayes on St. Theodora the Iconodule
Sonja Andrews on Aunt Jemima
Sensuous Wife on a single mom in the Bible
Minnowspeaks on celebrating women
Michelle Van Loon on the persistant widow
Lyn Hallewell on the strength of biblical women
Shawna Atteberry on the Daughter of Mary Magdalene
Christine Sine on women who impacted her life
Susan Barnes on Tamar, Ruth, and Mary
Kathy Escobar on standing up for nameless and voiceless women
Ellen Haroutunian on out from under the veil
Liz Dyer on Mary and Martha
Bethany Stedman on Shiphrah and Puah
Dan Brennan on Mary Magdalene
Jessica Schafer on Bathsheba
Eugene Cho on Lydia
Laura sorts through what she knows about women in the Bible
Miz Melly preached on the woman at the well
AJ Schwanz on women’s workteenage girls changing the world
Teresa on the women Paul didn’t hate
Helen on Esther
Happy on Abigail
Mark Baker-Wright on telling stories
Robin M. on Eve
Patrick Oden on Rahab and the spies
Alan Knox is thankful for the women who served God
Lainie Petersen on the unnamed concubine
Mike Clawson on cultural norms in the early church
Krista on serving God
Bob Carlton on Barbie as Icon
Jan Edmiston preached on the unnamed concubine
Deb on her namesake – Deborah
Makeesha on empowering women

One of the things that both amazes me and frustrates me about life these days is plastic.  And not just any plastic, but the hard plastic packaging that manufacturers use to protect their products; it’s commonly called clamshell packaging.  It is so frustrating to get into that we now need a special instrument just to open our products when we get them home; simple scissors will no longer do.

A further disturbance in the force arises when this packaging is used to secure and protect so-called “green” products, such as these flourescent light bulbs.  I’m not certain, but to me it seems that all of the energy saved by using such light bulbs is off-set by that used in the packing of them.  Not to mention the breakage that occurs as you attempt to free the bulbs from their captivity (UPDATE – photo credit: Beth Terry @ FakePlasticFish).

On the other hand, I think this packaging is amazing.  It’s lightweight, strong and virtually indestructible.  If it weren’t so blasted difficult to get into once it has been sealed around a product, it would be a nearly perfect package.  It’s other problem is that it is lumpy and awkward.  When giving the product as a gift, you can’t wrap them easily.  I far prefer boxes for their tidy square corners and the precise way they can be wrapped.  The wrapping paper industry has accommodated the advent of clamshells by producing gift bags to be used with tissue paper.  These bags can be used one or more times, cost very little to produce and may be sold at a much higher price.

So the clamshells have become ubiquitous.  We don’t think too much about them anymore beyond cursing them as we attempt to get our prizes out of them.  But why do we have them?  What purpose do they serve?  To me they are a shining example of how we humans have become subject to the machine.  Allow me to explain.

Before the Industrial Revolution things were made one at a time.  Slowly, precisely and by hand.  The producers were known by their consumers for the most part.  Production and consumption were closely tied together.  Blacksmiths who couldn’t make a good nail lost business, regardless of how good their horseshoes were. This was because more people needed nails than needed horseshoes.  Blacksmiths were known for how good or worthless their product was.  They were also known for how fair they were.  This was true of all tradesmen and women.  The good, honest fair tradesmen and women made honest livings, others … not so much.  Young people were taught the trade one or two at a time by an older mentor in an apprentice relationship.

Then, about a hundred years ago, Henry Ford introduced the assembly line into the manufacturing process and life as we know it changed for good.

Don’t get me wrong.  There was a lot that was good in the ideas that came with assembly line manufacturing.  But as we’ve discovered in the intervening century, progress is not all it’s cracked up to be either.  I’d much rather not travel with these accommodations any longer (Photo by Shorpy – the 100 year old photo blog)

It reminds me of the Thomas Hobbes quote about life for humans being nasty, brutish and short.

The problem, though, with assembly line manufacturing and the clamshell packaging that has resulted from it, is that it begins to treat human beings as a product of it’s own process.  Humans, creations made in the image of God, begin to be seen as products of human creation.  We see this both during the process (employees of the production company – workers on the assembly line) and the perception of the consumers who will purchase the product.  It does not suit the efficiency of the process to consider humans as individuals … whether during the process of production or during the process of consumption.  If we begin to see humans as individuals, with unique needs, unique desires, unique hopes, unique dreams, unique failures and unique successes, then they may no longer be relied upon to purchase cloned products that are spewed by the millions off assembly-lines by robots and purchased by robots.  Even though much of the labor that goes into assembly lines has now been replaced by artificial intelligence, and robots, there remains a need for human interaction with the process … eyes on.  To catch the errors.

We are not robots.  We are not clones of one another.  There is no one size that fits all … even when it comes to automobiles.  Can we turn back the clock?  No.  Not a chance in hell.

When LightHusband and I started dating and for the first part of our married life he was a drummer.  He played the snare drum with the Third US Infantry Old Guard Fife & Drum Corps; the US Army’s Honor Guard for the President.  About six months after our first date, Ronald Reagan was inaugurated for the second time.  This lead to an interesting juxtaposition for the two of us.

LightHusband was scheduled to march in Reagan’s inaugural parade in the lead unit.  I was busily looking for protest to march in.  And I was fairly vocal about it.

Ronald Reagan was a very popular President and his legacy has much to be admired, but we are now beginning to realize the one major flaw in what he left us:  trickle down economics.   I knew then that any idea that people could be willingly parted from their money and it would somehow trickle down to those with none was ludicrous.  Even given the tenets of capitalism, it would never work.  I was determined to protest it.  LightHusband, of course, had his orders which were to march in the parade.

Neither event happened.  The weather prevented all outdoor activities that year as it was unseasonably cold and we all celebrated the night before by drinking into the wee hours at a local watering hole.  I seem to remember that Blue Hawaiians featured prominently in my repertoire that evening.

Ronald Reagan was duly sworn in without public protest or public fanfare of the outdoors variety.  He continued his presidency for four more years without a hitch.  Not that anyone anticipated a hitch, of course.

During his presidency I was vigilant for the evil I was sure that was to come.  I was certain that all sorts of horrible economic woes were about to befall us because of Reagan’s ill-thought-out plans and designs.

But.

Nothing happened.  In fact, we slowly but surely began to dig ourselves out of the rut.  And by the 1990’s our economy was in a boom again.  The Dow didn’t know a ceiling.  Unemployment was low.  Housing starts were high.  All economic indices were that we were good.  It appeared that trickle-down economics did work.  Or at least some version of it.

The trouble is that trickle-down economics rewards greed.  So does capitalism (inherently).  So we find ourselves in 2008 with an economy on the rocks and now we are looking to the government to bail out the very corporations which stumbled and fell in the first place.

It took a long time for ugliness inherent in trickle-down economics to become apparent, but now we are seeing the fruit ripen on the vine.  What is that fruit?

–Customers who trample a temporary employee to death at a Wal-Mart so they can get the best prices for Christmas …

… and then sue the store for inadequate security.

–Executives of the auto industry who fly individual private jets to Washington DC  to ask for money to bail out their companies.  I understand the need for private planes … but did the idea of plane pooling never occur to these men?  No one is that important.

–AIG receiving a multi–billion dollar bailout, then taking its staff on a multi-million dollar retreat.

These are well known and well discussed examples.  But they are examples of greed run amok.  Greed at the top and greed at the bottom.  We are all greedy … every one of us.  We all want what we do not have.  We look over the fence and see green, green grass that must surely taste sweeter than the dusty dry stalks at our feet.  Inherently, we are told, that’s a good thing.  Go for that greener grass … you deserve it.  You’ve earned it.

No one ever thought to ask what expense it came at.

When I was in high school it was a huge big deal to gather friends and go to Burlington for the day.  I lived in a tiny town in central Vermont.  There were about 4 stores in the local larger town, so going to Burlington represented shopping, eating and metropolitan nirvana for us backwoods hayseeds.  Once one or two of us reached driving age, and had parents who would release an automobile into our possession, we were free.

I had my first experience of ordering Chinese food on my own and using chop sticks in Burlington.  We’d wander up and down Church Street together.  Church Street has since been blocked to auto traffic and is an open air mall.  Back then, it was an ordinary street filled with adventure for teenagers in from the back country.  Some distance away from Church Street, a new experience opened up in the later years.  Two funny guys from New York City bought an old gas station and turned it into an ice cream store.  Man.  They made the best ice cream anywhere.  And it should have been … it was made with real ingredients.  Whole milk, whole cream.  Real fruit.  Dark chocolate.  Ice cream to die for.

But … ice cream in a gas station?  Who would buy it, the old-timers in the state ridiculed the idea.  And the lines in the summer were around the block.

Pretty soon, the ice cream was being cartoned and sold in small containers throughout the state.  But one could only get it in Vermont.  There were now also a couple of other scoop shops … I forget where the earlier ones were placed.  But I know that I had my first anniversary dinner in one ten years later.  I had a hot fudge sundae in a waffle cone and LightHusband went next door for a slice of pizza.  We sat outside on a swing to eat.

You know the name of the company; it’s become ubiquitous with ice cream now.  Ben & Jerry’s.  Their pints stock freezers nation-wide.  For all I know, you can get them in Canada too.  The company sold out to Hershey or Nestle or some large conglomerate several years back and the ice cream isn’t nearly as good anymore.  What was once innovative is now just silliness and twaddle.  One might say they jumped the shark.

If you asked me what the most innovative thing about Ben & Jerrys was, the answer might surprise you.  For their ice cream was divine.  They were locovores before it became trendy or even had a name, using only small family dairies for their milk, cream and eggs.  No, the most innovative thing about Ben & Jerrys was this … their executive compensation structure.

I remember reading in Inc. Magazine back in the late 1980’s that they had structured the company in such a way so that neither Ben nor Jerry were compensated greater than 7 times the salary of the lowest paid employee of the company.  Think about that.  No matter how much Ben or Jerry made, it could never be greater than 7 times the salary of the lowest paid person in the company.

This has been on my mind recently as I read about the financial crisis on Wall Street and in Detroit.  I read about the “necessity” of golden parachutes in the tens of millions of dollars and executive compensation packages that look like lottery ticket loot.  There are some companies which have made an attempt to restrain executive compensation.  Whole Foods limits compensation of its executives to lowest employees in the ratio of 19:1 according to this Fast Company article written in Feb. 2007.  It’s the reprint of a letter written from CEO, John Mackay to his leadership team in which he raises the compensation ratio from 14:1 to 19:1 and reduces his salary to $1.00.  Apparently, what is left out of all company press is that Mr. Mackay also has an impressive stock option from Whole Foods.  Of course.  Cynics point to this as evidence of malfeasance.  Make of it what you will.  He’s still only taking $1 in salary and donating the rest to charity.  He’s a rarity in the business world.

I have to wonder though.  In yet another grocery store albeit tiny, independent and Mennonite, I saw this on the wall last spring:  “The cost of something is that amount of life which must be exchanged for it.”  I’ve been meditating on that for months now.  Especially in light of our nation’s current financial woes.

The cost of something is that amount of life which must be exchanged for it.

What will our greed cost us?  What amount of our lives will we be exchanging in order to pay for these few at the top?

When we begin to understand that we, or rather our representatives in Congress, have done that for us, then perhaps we will begin to actually change things.

So …

Where were you when?

Where were you when John Glenn Neil Armstrong (thanks BroKen) walked on the moon?

Where were you when …

… the first man of African-American descent was elected president?

I’m going to remember every step of this process.  I’m going to relish it.

Sometime last weekend it was announced that the final rally of Obama’s campaign would be literally in my backyard.  In my hometown.  Less than two miles from my house, on Monday evening.  So CoachWonderWoman and her daughter, LightGirl and I all walked to the appointed place.  We stood around watching the people and wondering for about three hours.  There was an amazing cross-section of people at the rally.  There were young and old, of every ethnic background and all walks of life.  We could have been in an airport, or on a street corner, or in a bus station.  There was everyone there.  Everyone.  (And some bad music.  I don’t know who was in charge of the live music, but it was horrid.  Think Bill Murray Lounge Lizard.  Ugh.  They played “Celebrate” by Kool & The Gang and I thought I was in the world’s largest elevator.  And I discovered that I can hear “Beautiful Day” too many times in one evening – five, for the record)  It was a typical political rally and hearing Obama speak was wonderful.  I’m glad we saw him (microscopically) in person.  I’m glad we had the experience of being amongst fellow supporters and seeing what that was like … that was more important to me.  Apparently, there were about 80,000 of us packed into that field.  I still can’t quite get my head around that.

Yesterday I walked to my polling place alone.  Both children were otherwise engaged and LightHusband had a meeting.  He was going to vote later.  My polling place just so happens to be in a middle school which was once the place of worship for a church I used to go to (my CLB1).  Usually the voting room is in the chorus room in the back.  But yesterday in anticipation of long lines and increased voter turnout, they had moved the voting to the cafeteria.  This happened to be the very place where we used to worship.  I didn’t really take note of this until after I’d left.

I went to where my last name lined up with the letters and waited my turn … less than a minute.  I noticed a table off to the left groaning with snack food for poll workers.  Then it was my turn and I handed my voter registration card to the people at the table, they asked me for my identifying information, assigned me number 243 and I went to await a booth.  I got to the booth and was overwhelmed with exuberance.  I don’t know.  I just got happy.  Everytime I hit a button on the touch screen I had to do a tiny jig.  Well, this was a little bit too much for the tiny little African-American lady who was attending my booth.  I think she was worried I was going to knock it over or something.  She was smiling at me, yet nervous.  When I was done and she handed me my sticker, she also gave me a big hug.  Then I promptly tried to walk out the wrong doors! and everyone hollered, “Ma’m you’re going the wrong way!!”  oops.

What a ninny.  So I turned around with a big grin on and all the poll workers were smiling at me.  So I waved and shrugged and went the right direction.  And told them I had the blonde streaks applied for a reason!!

Then I came home and giggled the whole way.  I wore my sticker with pride.  For the first time since my first time voting (1980), I’ve been excited about a candidate.  I’m inspired.   I’m inspired because Obama gets scripture; he quotes it regularly and not just the easy, well-known stuff … he quoted from Amos last night.  And I’m inspired because he gets the “social contract” in a way that many of our latter-day leaders have not … to whit:

His triumph was decisive and sweeping, because he saw what is wrong with this country: the utter failure of government to protect its citizens. He offered a government that does not try to solve every problem but will do those things beyond the power of individual citizens: to regulate the economy fairly, keep the air clean and the food safe, ensure that the sick have access to health care, and educate children to compete in a globalized world. (italics mine for emphasis)  From today’s NYTimes editorial

In other words, there are things that are the responsibility of the government and things that are the responsibility of us as individuals.  Give us the empowerment to do our thing and then do the stuff that is the responsibility of the government.   Give us the the space to do things locally in our communities to bring about change where ever we are and in the things that impassion us.  And, well … that is the way to truly change history.

So, like many US-ians I’ve been following the market and the hoopla surrounding what is being called the financial crisis and bailout.

The President is calling for a lot of money to be earmarked to spend on companies which made risky bad financial decisions.  Otherwise, so the thinking goes, our market will crash.  Our credit will be bad.  All sorts of horrible things will happen.  There are, apparently, monsters in our national closet just waiting to come out and eat us.

Well, there’s a part of me that’s feeling the crunch on behalf of my in-laws.  That’s for sure.  People who are depending on the stock market right now for their retirement income are bearing the brunt of this.  People who are planning to retire in the next five years or so will also bear the brunt of this.

Here’s the thing though.  Or perhaps it’s several things that I’ve been thinking about.

First is this.  This crisis did not happen overnight.  It has been slowly building over the course of about 30 years.  It began during the Reagan administration and has been the result of successive Republican AND Democratic administrations AND Congresses turning a blind eye to the consequences of their economic policies.  This is a bi-partisan issue.  No party can point the finger at the other and say, “It’s all their fault.”  Because both have done some good and a lot of bad.

For a crisis that’s been coming for so long, how is it that our government got caught with it’s pants down?

As a Christian, I do not look to a government, or a political party, or a president for redemption, perfection or utopia in this world.  However, I am a citizen and so I am a bearer of the social contract that we all hold with our government here in the U.S.  I believe that social contract gives me certain privileges and rights, but it also brings with it certain responsibilities.  It also gives the government and it’s representatives certain rights and responsibilities.  We tend to dicker amongst the left and right about what those rights and responsibilities should be.  And how they should be meted out.  But we don’t dicker about the necessity of having a government.  We all tend to agree about that.

There’s been a lot of noise and heat generated lately about this crisis heralding another Great Depression.  This feels like fear-mongering to me.  And that makes me ashamed of my government and our leadership.  Lord knows, I do not want another Great Depression, nor the panic or Dust Bowl that accompanied it.  It was a terrible time for our country and the world.  People struggled and died.  But people also struggled and overcame.  We forget that part of the story line.  We came together as a nation during the Depression.  We helped each other.  Yes, FDR put into place some things that have frayed around the edges and are coming apart at the seams now, but at the time, they were a safety net.  This allowed people to help themselves and each other.  I think of our National Park System and our national highway system both built in part by the Civilian Conservation Corps.  When people were out of work, Roosevelt created jobs for them.

Our current government though, is not living up to its part of our social contract.  Regardless of which bits and pieces you feel the government should be providing (i.e. whether you’re a liberal or a conservative), our government in its current form is not looking out for the citizens, but is looking out for business entities alone.   By rushing through this enormous financial bailout and forcing the citizenry to bear all the bad risk brought on by greedy decision-making on Wall Street, a Democratic Congress and Republican Administration are reneging on their end of the bargain.  Congress (both House and Senate) should slow down, ask for hearings from professionals in every walk of economic life.  A couple of weeks won’t hurt (as we’re seeing).  There are more options for solving this problem than all or nothing as the politicians would like us to believe.

Some of those options might involve all of us planting gardens and growing our own vegetables (Victory Gardens).  It might involve personal sacrifice on the part of the executives and executive boards of those fat cat companies; as it really should and as I seem to remember from my economics classes.  It might involve real leadership from the top, real ideas, real negotiating, real compromise, real change.  There are other options out there.  And if we’re going to put that much money on the line, we all need the opportunity to step back, take a breath and decide if it really and
truly is necessary. Or, are Adam Smith’s bones chattering in his grave  about now? Because from what little I remember from my economics  classes, this bailout/rescue seems to fly directly in the face of  solid capitalist market theory.