Drawers

Drawers - horizontal compartments, usually components of chests of drawers or parts of counters - receptacles for stuff - by category usually ; socks, shorts, shirts, spoons, tickets, clips, all depending of course on location and function. All but one, the “junk “drawer, a container of miscellaneous, the diverse, the unclassifiable. Most every household has at least one, sometimes more, competing with hooks and nooks and crannies, now empty, intended as places where stuff should reside but sometimes doesn’t .

When we moved from the Keys, I did most of the unpacking but I don’t remember a box marked “junk drawer “, yet I suspect our Key West home had one. Did we have to start over ? The old stuff forgotten, abandoned or just lost ?

Our primary junk drawer is in the kitchen, near the door to the garage. It is a veritable treasure trove of stuff. Topped by menus from the Chinese take-out and other fooderies like _the No Frills Grill, next plastic bags of screws and stuff, suction hooks, tape measures, plastic bottle caps, bagged reels of black tape, coaxial connectors, door stoppers, short pieces of chain, souvenir tags, keys to locks long forgotten, tools that never quite made it home and things once ordered and long forgotten.

Elsewhere in the kitchen is one other drawer that defies categorization. It holds logically enough batteries of all sizes, yet it shares its space with various pet medications and my brand of cough drops. How this arrangement was first decided remains a mystery but it has served for many years and since we know this is where we look when we want this stuff, why question ? Rules of thumb you have to know where to look or you’ll never find it unless you remember the last time you noticed it somewhere out of place.

Money

We have forgotten that a corporation was first conceived as a device to permit people of wealth to accumulate more wealth without risking every thing they already had. Piles of money assert their right to be heard, their right to be represented, to contribute to candidates of their choice. Absurd, contend the people, you each have your rights, your piles of money have no independence, no right to determine the fate of the world.

But they do, declare the court, 5-4 of course, but piles of money now have rights as citizens.

But then, what about foreign piles of money ? You know, piles of money accumulated from selling us cars, televisions, stuff ? From overseas - why of course we will provide safeguards. We are only concerned with the rights of American piles of money - we will guard against co-mingling you can be sure. Only citizen piles of money should have rights, right ?

American piles of money were influential in our selection as Justices, doesn’t that inspire you with confidence in the correctness of our decision ? No - not really - Why ? Should it ?

Harvest of Fear

The planting, cultivating, and harvesting of fear has been one of the most pernicious practices of society. During the middle ages, the church, designated outsiders, Jews, and other nonbelievers in the true faith, as a danger to society and the inquisition was born. Torture, torment and the constant searching of the heretical bred a climate of fear which dominated Europe and provided the church with a mechanism with which to totally control the populace.

Hitler pointed to the Jews and Communists as a danger to the continued safety of the German people and they were persuaded to abandon their traditions of intellectual freedom and liberality of attitudes; instead embracing brutality, murder and repression as necessary steps to assure themselves of their continued security.

When Senator Joseph McCarthy wielded the power to slander and accuse people of being communists instilling fear, Americans relinquished their traditions of free speech and political tolerance to scapegoat McCarthy’s targets.

On 9/11, when the twin towers fell, we were told that danger and disaster was everywhere, and to “ be afraid, be very afraid.” A more clinical view would have recognized that 19 Wahabi Moslem Saudi fanatics, with financial backing and planning, had succeeded in highjacking 4 airliners due to a lax security system. By the use of misdirection and disinformation, we were persuaded to initiate an unnecessary and costly war which still costs the nation in blood and treasure. A golden opportunity to achieve dominance through fear.

We were told that we were terribly vulnerable, in great danger; counseled to hide under the bed, stock up on duct tape, or in the alternative, to go shopping, depending on the color of a newly adopted signaling system. The Patriot Act, as invasive of citizens rights as were the writs of assistance, was passed under color of necessary for security. No one objected. Fear ruled.

The shibboleth “We’re keeping you safe!” was thereafter always advanced as cover for all manner of abuse and misinformation. As long as we were fearful the administration could get away with all manner of mischief without being called to account. Such is the power of fear.

On the other hand

Some mortgages are now described as “upside down” or “underwater”, cute catch phrases invented by the media to encourage the home owner to feel victimized. Sure the real estate market has gone soft but on the other hand I don't know too many people who check the real estate section of their morning newspaper to see if the value of their home has gone down so why then is it a crisis when your home would not sell today for what you paid for it ? And how is that justification for not repaying the money you borrowed to buy it in the first place ? You didn’t buy your home from the bank so why should the bank be regarded as a guarantor of it’s value ? A mortgaged property is security for the repayment of a debt and the debt is not contingent on the value of the security being constant. And if you're not contemplating a sale of your home anyway what is the significance of its current value being down ? It’s still your home, where you live.

Many people who play the stock market and check the stock market reports daily would never dream of disavowing a debt incurred for a stock purchase when the stock falls in value, so how is someone "damaged" when they still owe  the purchase price of their home while its current resale value is less than what they paid ?

Then why the rush to "bail out" the homeowner who owes more than his home is currently worth? The debt is absolute, regardless of the home's resale value . The buyer would be subject to a deficiency judgment in the event a foreclosure failed to yield enough to pay off the loan.  Walking away is bad advice, fraught with risk. Try a deed back to the lender first, conditioned on a release. The lender saves the costs of foreclosure and the homeowner avoids a deficiency judgment.

RUBIO’S REPUBLICANISM

Marco Rubio, Republican candidate for the Senate, speaking at CPAC, has become the new darling of the conservative movement, displaying the appropriate set of negatives, including an anti-Obama bias. As a senatorial hopeful, he recently announced his newly acquired disbelief in global warming, a conversion based on expediency; he joins such intellectual luminaries as Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, who regards all evidence of global warming as a giant Democratic hoax. These are the people who complain that the national debt will harm our grandchildren but deny that shrinking ice caps and rising oceans will have any consequences. The health of the market, not the health of the planet, is what they regard as most important. Truth is sacrificed to expedient advantage.

In the pursuit of regaining power, an element of recklessness has been injected into the politics of our country. The republicans have now persuaded the people that the system is “broken.” What is obfuscated is that they are the ones who broke it . Acting for special interests rather than the interests of their constituency.

The party temporarily out of power, has decided to act to obstruct every action of the majority party in an effort to discredit it and thus resume power, to control. Formerly, other considerations; the benefit of the people, the health of the nation, our world position was given weight in the equation to arriving at what position, what tactics should the minority employ? No longer, the minority is now willing to risk the utter destruction of the state, in order to achieve control. Winning or losing on a particular issue, extending cooperation where mutual advantage was perceived, are all now subsumed to destroying the majority control at all costs, at any cost, regardless of the damage to the nation or the harm inflicted on its people.

Memory- They’re all that’s left you

Simon and Garfunkel had it right - they’re all that’s left you. But when even these are gone - lost to a fog, a disability. I think it must be a terrible thing to lose one’s memory or even a part of it. As if a piece of you had died, never to be remembered. It is in a way, very much like a small death - that a piece of your life, which you lived, interacted with people, felt joy, felt pain - understood pleasures - all wiped clean - gone as if it never happened. And all the more sad when those around you expect you to remember - look at you with compassion and disappointment - not realizing until just this moment that this part of you had already died - was gone - beyond recall and rememberances.

Talking on the phone recently to an old friend who several times had to remind me that he could no longer remember certain episodes, as if they never happened for him, yet those forgotten things were what bonded us, made us friends - I still recall them but for him they never happened.

My friend has a memory that we are friends but doesn’t recall the nuisances, the transactions, the whys, building blocks that became the basis for our friendship - for him that was gone. And there must be “why’s,” something shared, else a friend is merely someone whose name you know.

BALDWIN HIGH BEER DRINKERS

When it came to beer drinking, Baldwin HIgh’s class of 1949 was second to none. Although we did not field a varsity squad in this endeavor, the wreckage of the men’s room at Baloney John’s in Babylon was mute evidence of our prowess in this regard.

Another, less well known, disaster was the newly seeded front lawn of Mr. Hillman, our history teacher; after being visited by Norm Raben, piloting his 1931 Buick around my block, during the end of one of our beer-drinking episodes. the next morning, my brother Ed was gleeful in describing the activities of the police in taking plaster casts of the tire marks on Hillman’s lawn. Norm arrived, parking his mud stained chariot in front of the house. We left quickly, my concerns chiefly about avoiding apprehension, Norm’s trying to recover from the galloping giggles; (Norm wasn’t big on guilt in those days.)

Then came senior day, when Norm and I led the class goodies to the brewery where we purchased a half keg for the beach party. Later that day Norman defended the keg against abuse by beating the crap out of the abnormal Tommy Nagel alias “mongol” while I quietly passed out at the feet of our prettiest cheerleader. Ah memories !

If they had a beer drinking team back then, I’m sure Norm and I would have earned a letter, albeit a beer stained one.