What's the problem with the economy?

Former Labor Secretary and frequent NPR commentator Robert Reich explains the problem in two minutes and fifteen seconds:

Others Say It Better: May 5, 2011

I am a liar. I said I would continue blogging, but I haven't. I wanted to tell you about John Winthrop's original vision for his Puritan colony in Massachusetts, laid out in his essay "A Model of Christian Charity," the famous "city upon a hill" speech. How God has made some people rich and some poor so that they could honor God by "dispensing his gifts to man by man [rather] than if he did it by his own immediate hands " and "that every man might have need of others . . . [and] be all knit more nearly together in the bonds of brotherly affection."

But the tornado happened in Tuscaloosa last Wednesday. Normal life stopped. And then people acted out Winthrop's vision, especially the part about a community in peril:

"Question: What rule must we observe and walk by in cause of community in peril?

"Answer: The same as before, but with more enlargement towards others and less respect towards ourselves and our own right. Hence it was that in the primitive Church they sold all, had all things in common, neither did any man say that which he possessed was his own."

This tornado has taught me the lesson that objects lose value when they cease to exist, so the objects that still do exist feel like they belong to all. Door signs––mi casa es su casa––become literal. Wallets open to buy others food, toiletries, and, more importantly, drinks to share stories over. "Where were you?" "What did it sound like?" People say "How are you?" and "I'm glad to see you" and mean it. Trivial enmities cease to exist. Some of the haves become have nots, and the have nots become have even less. People are screwed. But people are also loving and sharing and helping one another like I've never seen before. It's a beautiful moment. Yet moments, by their very definition, are an indefinitely short period of time. But those who were here, who lived through this storm, will live in this moment for a very long time . . .

I don't think I can put this experience into any more words, but there are those who have done so, well: Brian Oliu, BJ Hollars, Michael Martone, and Wendy Rawlings (you have to know what you had to know what you lost).

The Blog Must Go On: March 4, 2011.

My father recently asked me if I was going to post any more blogs, because he'd been checking in day after day and only saw Fashawn sitting there paused in front of the Hollywood sign. "If you're not going to post anymore, then you need to let your readers know," Dad said.

I've been buried in teaching. It's winter. The experiment is over. What else do I have to say? I had all kinds of excuses not to post. But this week I received an interesting message on Facebook. It came from a girl I met at a small rock and roll club six years ago while I was tooling around southern New Zealand alone. (She was beautiful, super cool, and French Canadian.) She and her friend took me in like a vagrant and fed me a homemade pizza and poured me wine while we watched Madagascar. The next day, we tried to hit the beach outside Dunedin, but the buses weren't running. We parted ways after that with a promise I would possibly visit her in Montreal some day. Which never happened.

Anyhow, she sent me a documentary called Carts of Darkness in her message and said it reminded her of me. The video is about homeless and semi-homeless men in North Vancouver who live off of recycleables they take out of neighborhood bins. In their spare time, some of these men bomb the hills of North Vancouver on shopping carts, breaking speeds of 50 mp.h. and sometimes themselves (thank the people of Canada for socialized health care). The movie reminds me of Ted Conover's book Rolling Nowhere, because it isn't about solving the problem of homlessness but the freedom and companionship, as well as the alcoholism, that can be found there. It's about the people who fascinate me the most: outsiders.

One of the best quotes of the movie comes from a retired old-timer who lives in a trailer and collects empty bottles and cans: "Every time that you put effort into work and you're making a little bit of money, you better have a very good plan of what you're going to do with that money, because you're using up your life. We're not prisoners. We should not be prisoners of the economic system that we live in. We should be free . . . free people."



I have more posts planned. One will tie in with the early American literature course I'm teaching this semester (I will attempt to out-Glenn Beck Glenn Beck), and I will return to hunting for homeless in Tuscaloosa . . .