NYCweboy

Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In The Shadows?

Well, I didn't intend to go four days without posting, and my thanks to the 3 or 4 diehards who refuse to give up on me (especially my best friend J, who posted the flowerlude - and can we just say how beautiful his flower photos are - and wrote to make sure I wasn't dead).

I'm not dead... but I'm struggling. Some of it is.... well, personal, and I really won't be sharing it here (that's not my way); some of it is also personal, but part of the political scene as well. So I thought that would be as good a place as any to start.

As you might guess, since I talk about being a Starbuckian, my income is not what it once was, or what it needs to be. No disrespect to Howard intended, but it's hard to get by on a small hourly wage and the kindness of strangers (a/k/a tips). What started as a merely interesting moment of feeling somewhat strapped has gone on to a feeling of being generally destitute. And it's hard, not so much because of all the things I can't have or do - in the end, you come to appreciate that unnecessary things are, well, unnecessary - but because writing (when I am writing) is providing so much joy, it's hard to contemplate giving that up to chase extra income.

So Saturday, I didn't write because Jennifer and I were traipsing around my nab, window shopping... which was very nice, as we both try to enjoy a new spirit of "look, but don't buy", and really, that makes for an entertaining afternoon trying on sky-high Ferragamo shoes at Nieman Marcus. It was blazing hot, and eventually, the whole day was lost to travel and meeting people, and when I ultimately got home it was too late to really blog effectively.

Sunday, I worked, and that's where I - and my co-worker - discovered this awful story on the front page of the Times, Gretchen Morgenson's admirable attempt to tie together the corporate interests in the debt crisis with an actual individual story.  That the story itself was incredibly sad (and a little predictable), only made the sense of identification all the more vivid. A single mom who got herself way too deep in debt, it looks as though she will lose everything... and still owe on her debts.

And she's not alone.  I think the story affected me more deeply than I first thought, because the idea of even writing about it stranded me for another day. Until this morning when I saw David Brooks follow up on his "debt culture" column with another, fairly dead-on assessment of the problem:

On the front page of Sunday’s Times, Gretchen Morgenson described Diane McLeod’s spiral into indebtedness, and now a debate has erupted over who is to blame.

Some people emphasize the predatory lenders who seduced her with too-good-to-be-true credit lines and incomprehensible mortgage offers. Here was a single mother made vulnerable by health problems and divorce. Working two jobs and stressed, she found herself barraged by credit card companies offering easy access to money. Mortgage lenders offered her credit on the basis of the supposedly rising value of her house. These lenders had little interest in whether she could pay off her loans. They made most of their money via initial lending fees and then sold off the loans to third parties.

In short, these predatory companies swooped down on a vulnerable woman, took what they could and left her careening toward bankruptcy.

Other people emphasize McLeod’s own responsibility. She is the one who took the credit card offers knowing that debt is a promise that has to be kept. After her divorce, she went on a shopping spree to make herself feel better. After surgery, she sat at home watching the home shopping channels, charging thousands more.

Free societies depend on individual choice and responsibility, those in this camp argue. People have to be held accountable for their indulgences or there is no justice. As McLeod herself admirably told Morgenson: “I regret not dealing with my emotions instead of just shopping.”

If you go to the online comment section affixed to Morgenson’s article, you see advocates of these two positions talking past one another, one side talking the morality of social protection and the other the morality of personal responsibility.

Brooks goes on to argue that there's a third way to look at this: that our culture helped make being in debt seem the norm, made consumption the objective (mass luxury), and changed our decision making and our behaviors.  It';s a way of saying... we all bear some responsibility in this.

I suspect many people will be put off by Brooks - he's already got a passionate set of detractors - but I think this is a moment where he's getting it right: finding the center, and saying that as much as anything, we need to be a better society made up of better people with a better value system. That's going to seem, to many on the left especially, like a moral judgment about people like Diane McLeod. But the point is... we are all like Ms. McLeod.

The problem with the debt and mortgage crisis story, I've thought all along, is that it brings out the distinction makers - "I didn't do that," "that's not me," "those people should have known better." Myself. I think people who amassed massive credit card debt really should have known better, but with mortgages I think many people were swindled by banks and lenders who did not explain in enough detail what these mortgages meant to people who did not understand what they were signing on for. But in any case, what's already happening is that, on the margins, in the shadows... people are starting to lose everything. And if we don't get conscious to the problem soon, we will all be facing it.

Notes on New Orleans

I just got home from six nights in New Orleans - a mix of business and pleasure (the city would have it no other way), traveling with the man and meeting with non-profit folks and public housing resident-activists.  On my first morning there I joined several residents and activists in solidarity at another's hearing at NO's Criminal Court.  Some thoughts on that are here.

My relationship with New Orleans is a tense one - the intensity of the inequity is something this uptight, machine-politick-reared New Englander cannot abide.  My work there takes me through a morning at the Criminal Court, and I pass another listening to another former resident weep over the loss of her home and sitting with her through one family crisis after another.  In an effort to escape from the despair, I trundle over to Magazine Street and spend hours wandering the boutiques full of relatively inexpensive, funky and fun dresses (I marvel at the affordable and independent designs they have down there - I'm not aware of any equivalents up here in MA).  But it's difficult to overcome the cognitive dissonance of watching families cope with trauma and injustice and then pay an excessive amount for two sandwiches and glasses of wine with the man at an overpriced (if delicious) bakery shop decked out in fantastic pinks and blues.  Surreal is often a word folks use to describe their experiences in post-Katrina New Orleans, and they're not wrong. 

I finally verbalized that one of the things I can't stomach about the city is its lack of government - I live in a city with a strong mayor and a city and state with a long history of liberal patronage and paternalism (we have our own public housing up here, for example).  This sentiment, of course, made me feel both like a loser and a teeny bit fascist - but at every turn it seems like there's a new outrage - and the civil and non-profit sectors can only do so much.  I hope Pelosi et al. are listening slightly more carefully than they've been during this whole FISA nonsense.

But despite my links o' grief above, with each passing day I relax a little bit there.  Drinks with friends help.  As does excellent food.  And hot, humid weather (I may be alone on this one) and lush parks and foliage.  And the endless little new stores opening up here and there.  And the sheer breadth of experience I have there, in a way that my rather cloistered world here in MA cannot match - for better and worse.  It's a rarefied city, and writing about it off and on for three years now (I know, I'll never be from or of there!!) - well, I'm starting to feel a little cliched.

August 29, 2008 is the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.  The city is slowly returning, but unevenly and precariously.  The Democratic Convention ends on August 28. Gulf Coast organizations and their national allies are pressing Sens. Obama and McCain and the Democratic and Republican Parties to prioritize Gulf Coast recovery in the upcoming administration.  Because while the scale of Katrina's devastation is exceptional, its physical and social aftermath is strikingly less so.

I leave you with an excerpt from a Times-Picayune piece on New Orleans volunteers helping out after the Iowa floods:

Unlike the brackish water that surged over the New Orleans area, the Cedar River's fresh water spared the green grass and flowers. Except for the vegetation, though, the vacant neighborhoods could be Gentilly or Old Metairie or Meraux after Katrina.

In the Cedar Rapids neighborhood of Time Check, named for merchants' 19th century practice of honoring the postdated paychecks of railroad workers, references to the 2005 hurricane are ever-present.

"I sat at home. I watched TV. I saw the pictures of Katrina. But you just don't get it until you're actually living it," said Janette Schorg, who drove last week from Davenport, Iowa, near the Illinois border, to help her parents muck out their two-story home of 40 years.

It just angers me every time I drive into Cedar Rapids that it goes from beautiful to a war zone," Schorg said.

Some residents admit the recent flooding has forced them to reconsider their notions of New Orleans.

"We all watched during Katrina and said, 'Why would people live in a bowl?' " said Bill Polton, whose 85-year-old father lives just three blocks from the levee that runs along First Street Northwest, on the Cedar River's west bank.

"Well, here we are sitting in almost the same scenario," Polton said. "Nobody realized how far the flood plain would go."

- Redstar

Hot Stuff

I think it's the heat.

The string of heat waves this summer have done a lot to sap my brain power, and make almost any distraction from writing look appealing. I think the heat has also made news a bit stupid, too: precious little of any real import is leading the news - even though the serious stuff that's happening is pretty awful and serious - making Christie Brinkley's divorce settlement somehow seem deep.

So, while I've been pretty silent, I haven't been completely out of the loop. Here are the things I've been following, in short form. I'm thinking a summary approach may help me jump start my writing again... plus it doesn't take so much energy.  Plus... with the rain this morning, it's also a little bit cooler. So here goes:

• FISA Follies - I'm sort of fascinated at how the FISA story won't go away, and how it's become something of a rallying cry for a new disillusionment with Obama. What's really disheartening is that all the protesting won't amount to a hill of beans.  And PS, funny how Clinton wound up on the right side of that one... and hilarious how the Hillary Haters just couldn't admit she'd gotten it right without some caveat...
• Testicular Fortitude Theology - I think anyone's slow slide into irrelevancy after years in the public eye is a sad, painful thing to watch. Still, it's a real car crash moment with this whole Jesse Jackson "cut his nuts off" comment, ain't it? I mean can't look away, can't help but feel a little sorry for the guy... the whole bit. Still, what an amazing, spectacularly inappropriate thing to say - and on a live mike! - and while some want to try and hang an Obama critique on it... I'd say... best not to go there. Jackson's notion of his own importance is such a lost cause, and his irrelevancy so apparent at this point... I think it's best not to draw more attention to him.
• Mediscare - One of the somewhat overlooked stories of the past couple of weeks is the collapse of... er... testicular fortitude when it comes to dealing with the healthcare crisis. Paul Krugman suggested - and Ezra Klein approvingly noted - that Congress' decision to raid Medicare HMO funds to fund a softening of cuts in doctor's fees under Medicare fee for service was a good thing... but it's totally not. Aside from the fact that Medicare HMOs are proving to be a positive step in delivering care to some seniors the fact that no one wants to address spiraling healthcare costs in any serious way is the biggest indication that the talk of "healthcare reform" is almost entirely talk (for the best explanation of this, check out wisewon's comment in Ezra's post; wisewon is one of the smartest people I read on healthcare issues, a doc with a great understanding of the issues). Krugman points to the notion that a united Democratic front can defeat GOP intransigence... but when that united front is in place largely to give gifts to doctors... that doesn't seem like a good place to be.
• Fannie and Freddie - One very large hen came home to roost this week, a two- headed monster called Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  The two semi-private mortgage banks have been in free fall as the extent - and depth - of the mortgage crisis became all too clear in the last few weeks. Though "too big to fail" may turn out to be true, the real problem with Fannie and Freddie is not that they are part of the mortgage crisis... it's that, with some 50% of all mortgages tied to them, they are the mortgage crisis. It's easy, as some have done yet again, to blame mismanagement at both firms; there's definitely loads of scandals still to come. But this is also a problem 70+ years in the making, as a reasonably well conceived and intentioned notion of providing government support to some home buyers gradually morphed into a system of purchasing every mortgage under $400,000.  Now the two lenders have some 5 trillion dollars worth of potentially wrecked debt that the government may have to assume... which will double the national deficit overnight. And for once, the Wall Street Journal is right: this was avoidable, and it's astonishing how stupid people have been in letting Fannie and Freddie grow beyond all reason.
• Our D-I-V-O-R-C-E becomes final today - oh come on, you know you looked at the Christie Brinkley story too: and what earthly good to drag each other through a week's worth of embarrassing revelations (worse for him... but who wants a psychiatrist's testimony that you need therapy for your lousy taste in men?), to reach a settlement that almost everyone knew was pretty much where they'd wind up anyway? And while Cook may look like a total loser while Brinkley hangs on to most of her fortune, one of the interesting side notes was the fact that she's sitting on some 18 properties in the Hamptons; which, given the disastrous real estate market out there and everywhere, may not be the gold mine some think it is.

But You Can't Stay Here

I don't really talk about my actual paying job much; I'm one who thinks its best to separate the blog from the rest of a personal life.

That got a little harder last week, when Starbucks announced it was closing 500 more stores, bringing planned closings to 600.

I found out the night before it hit the papers, because we got the press release posted to the in-house web page, and I was working.  That night and the next morning were all about answering the "is it you guys" questions from friends, family, and, most touchingly, customers.

It's not us. It may not even be any store in my district. We are all performing pretty well (though the "underperforming" criteria was left rather vague, so no one's actually sure what the criteria is), and all of that has to be viewed in the context of a weak economy.

It's the broader economic implications that are really worth writing about. I don't think I've ever worked for a company that held the place of "stand-in for the larger economy" before, even at other retailers. It's an interesting place to be. It's why, I think, you get pieces like last Friday's in the New York Times, which blamed poor real estate choices for what realy is a story about broader economic trends.  It's also I think why David Margolick's profile of Howard Schultz (yes, we all just call him Howard) seems so sour and less than flattering. Howard is supposed to solve everything for everyone... or he's failed. That seems like an outsize level of expectation, if you ask me.

Of NYCs, Bettys, And Pride... Of All Sorts

Dear J,

I am, at the moment, a most real NYC Weboy; I am house-sitting for friends in Chelsea, and it is Gay Pride Day... I am one with all.

Of course, I wish you were here.

And you're not, and as with so many years when we are apart and one of is in New York when the other isn't... God is not smiling on the homosexuals: yes, today's forecast calls for rain... and I just looked sat Weather.com, and the clouds are hovering just off to the West.

It never rains on a Sunday in June... unless all is not right with the world.

I think you would appreciate the surreality of the day - all the pretty, pretty boys and their current uniform, a military style tank top and a long-ish short, usually Madras or camouflage; all the bustling around town as people get ready for their afternoon at the parade; and this year's hottest accessory: your life partner.

I think we may have mutually conjured this year's rain: I feel less connected to the day than usual... but not to the concept. I've been thinking a lot about what Pride means to me this year, and how I don't wear my sexuality as a badge in quite the way I did at 22 or 23; who I am is more than cute boys, and the defiance of being "outrageous" ... or even fabulous. I don't feel so fabulous, these days... but that's okay. Pride, I think, is what I learned from you, and from our friendship; our lives are transgressive, confrontational of the status quo. But at the same time, we are part of, and connected.

So here I sit, trading stories of how it used to be (not the fun parts - the parts about the tranny hookers and the prospect of getting mugged and the wild fringes of the sex club scene, here and in Paris), looking at the ads for dance parties I will not go to with music I no longer care to know, and dealing with the fact that New York is no longer the things we knew and were... and it's okay. I miss you. Wish you were here.

Happy Pride, Joan.
xoxo Betty

Tell Me More, Tell Me More... Cause I Sound Like A Drag.

I'm in one of those 4 days straight of work streaks - good for the pocketbook, bad for blogging (and it's not like I have one of Jennifer's fabulous handbags, if you know what I mean). I also have very little to say... though come tomorrow, I'll try to muster a little energy for something political.

It's a beautiful summer day, and it's Gay Pride weekend in Baltimore (in the month of June, it's always Gay Pride somewhere in America), and what I've come to know - cause I'm statistical like that - is that summer numbers in the blogosphere go down, and summer weekend numbers go down even more.  That's no hep, I know, for people who travel around the web on their pooters, searching in vain for new content.

So I interrupt the flowerlude, only to say I'm a little tired, and a little pulled in too many directions, and a little bit in a writing dry spell. Maybe we all just need a little time in the real world, and then we can come back with entertaining stories.

Although I have to say all the entertaining stories I've heard in the last couple of days are a bit too racy for a general interest weblog. And believe me, I figure into exactly none of them. I'm such a drag. :) As I take my purse and head out the door.

Everytime I Breathe, Everytime I Try To Leave

So here I sit in Towson, Maryland, typing away at another Starbucks.  I had hoped to mention traveling - or at least to have done a joint post with the J in town... but that didn't happen. Sorry for the silence.  As Red notes, all the important news happened in the sports world, anyway.

Except, maybe, for the loss of Cyd Charisse.

In any case, as Red noted overnight, it's a moment of feeling a bit beaten down. J and I had a long conversation - all evening, really - about coming to grips with Obama. I try to come up with ways to get comfortable myself... and nothing seems to work. If it's not the tired rhetoric of his Father's Day speech, it's the dull, conventional nature of his advisement choices (I don't necessarily have the issues others do about his economics team... but his foreign policy team is dull dull dull).

Perhaps more instructive was the man who struck up a conversation with me waiting for the Light Rail to bring me to J. He's a painter by profession, 32 years, and work's been hard to find. First day he'd worked in 3 weeks, he told me. When I said "Vacation?" he laughed bitterly and said, "if only."

Beat Down

After an hour on the phone with the man, I'm realizing as this day comes to an end how beat down I'm feeling by the subtleties of discrimination in all its nefarious forms.

This election season has driven home with brutal force what most of us who are non-white-able-bodied-straight-affluent-men experience on a regular basis: the subtle dismissals, devaluations, and discounting of our worth.  Clinton has been martyred for the rest of us, and many still want to debate whether there was sexism in the campaign, and if so, how bad was it really, anyway?  C'mon now.  I'm sure "likable enough" is just arrogance, pure and simple, not couched in a gendered context in a patriarchal society.  And surely Whoopi wasn't talking about colorism on that coffee-klatsch The View?  Is that what I just heard?  Colorism?  What's that?  Aren't they just gabbing, those black and white ladies?  We do live in a color-blind society, right?

Daddy Loves You... Daddy Loves You...

I have to admit that part of the reason I am a sucker for Country Music is the "Daddy songs" - play me "That's My Job" or "Love, Me" and I just break down and weep. Seriously. In the car, driving along, tears streaming down. Good times.

Similarly, Will Smith caught me short when he released "Just The Two Of Us" - his reworking of the Bill Withers song as an ode to his son Jaden, culminating in exhortations of "Daddy Loves You, Daddy Loves You".

And now, here I am, tearing up as I write this.

Last year, at this time, I wrote about my Dad. He died almost twenty years ago (there's another country song to cry to - Kenny Rogers' "Twenty Years Ago"), and he and my Mom had separated years before that. My mom worked really hard to raise me and my sister, and the sacrifices she made were tremendous. It would be easy for me to say Father's Day is about my Mom... but that's not true.

Getting Serious... Mostly About the Dishes. And The Laundry.

Back to politics...

My Mom keeps asking when I will "shape up" or "get serious" about supporting Barack Obama. The pressure I'm facing is not entirely serious; Mom (who scored "hedonism" on the philosophy quiz, BTW) knows we're all on the same page, basically.

And I am... but... it's still early, and I'm still watching to see what develops.

Besides, I still can't escape the sense that an Obama win is a bit of a foregone conclusion: whatever it is that McCain is doing, to say that it adds up to an effective campaign seems ludicrous to me. Not really able to get it going on a debate about the economy, McCain managed to put Iraq squarely in the middle of the debate, in a way that doesn't help him at all, by calling plans to withdraw "not too important," focusing more on (dismal) casualty numbers that don't really help him.

McCain is helped even less because he's still so heavily tied to the Bush folks; his best hope all along has been to parlay his "maverick" status into a Third Way answer for Republicans. That hasn't happened, in no small part, because Bush simply refuses to go away. Watching the depressing European leg of his Farewell Tour - it's like watching some tired old rock act try to squeeze one last round of profit out of final appearances - though in Bush's case, it's money for Afghanistan. Instead of a polished stage act, of course, we continue to get the same old routines: Laura Bush looking uptight and uncomfortable; while Bush continues to figure out why we went into Iraq... something that's just not hapening - dude, when you can't even convince a lapdog like McClellan... you should really just stop. We went in. We shouldn't have. Case closed.