This Land Is Their Land….

Last night I saw Barbara Ehrenreich at the Seattle Public Library; she was lecturing on her latest book: This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation

 

From Publishers Weekly
When a hospital employee whose hospital-supplied insurance doesn’t cover her hospital-incurred bill finds her wages garnished, where’s a political satirist to go for material? Feisty, fearlessly progressive Ehrenreich offers laughter on the way to tears in 62 previously published essays that show the rich getting richer and poor getting poorer. She investigates pockets of poverty among undocumented workers, military families and recent college graduates. Ehrenreich’s reach is capacious, encompassing not only unemployment, health insurance and inflation, but corporate spying, cancer studies, marriage education, the abstinence training business and Disney’s Princess products. Her passion, compassion and wit keep these excursions lively and timely—even when yesterday’s headlines provide the immediate provocation, e.g., JetBlue’s snow snafu. The vignettes go down a bit like eating peanuts—too many at one time palls, but they’re not unhealthy, unless you have an allergic reaction to Ehrenreich’s message: America is being polarized between the superrich few and the subrich everyone else. Entertaining Ehrenreich certainly is, but she raises a hard, serious question: How many ‘wake-up calls’ do we need, people…? (May)

 

Ehrenreich was unassuming, sharp and entertaining, and I had the incredible opportunity to speak with her before the lecture. I don’t know that I made many friends at my table. After waiting a polite pause or two for questions like “Where do you live” and “how was your flight,” I pretty much pounced. With her two books, Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch, she has hit a nerve in me…and I believe there is a third idea out there – the burden the boomer children shoulder.

I’ve written previously on the topic of white collar layoff and would like to explore it further. So much so, that I’m starting another blog on the topic.

Back to the lecture…

Ehrenreich started the evening talking about how scapegoating is the latest tactic in taking focus away from larger issues. She posed the following thoughts:

…On the airport bathroom shenanigans that went on last year:

“Why is it that we are in a orange alert state, and there are police men with detail in airport bathrooms?”

On gay marriage:

“If you don’t like the idea of gay people getting married, don’t marry one.” 

Illegal immigration:

“There is a primitive rage at illegal workers who do all the manual work that make our lives possible.” People make $3/hr at a car wash because businesses get away with it.

She proposed a new scapegoat group: old white people. “They are lazy, play cards, lay on benches…all on the government’s dime – social security checks! What’s eating their money, drugs! We should be on the look out for geezer gangs to maintain their insulin and Lipitor habits.”

Ehrenreich went on to observe that we are in increasingly polarized society, a hot topic in books I cover in the social venture labs blog. That globalization is an excuse for pushing wages down for Americans but that the globalization trend does not affect CEO salaries. “You should put one of the border crossers in as CEO, because anyone who can get across the border has strong leadership characteristics – someone you would want in your company.”

She has a point, it wasn’t a Mexican who took the promise for a pension or hope for social security away from so many families – it was a CEO.

The theme I’m picking up on here after seeing Ehrenreich, Florida, Friedman another others speak comes back to a lecture I went to years ago: Azar Nafisi

 

“American values used to mean something real and concrete. Huck Finn ponders the question: should I give Jim up? He had been taught that to harbor a slave meant that you would go to hell. But he thought about Jim in the morning and Jim in the evening and Jim was his friend. Huck made a decision to help Jim – he was “going to hell.”

American values meant the ability to make a tough decision by way of self analysis. Now….we sleep. Imagination (innovation, alertness) is the key to development (into maturity) and we risk losing it.”

 

Have we lost that ability to self reflect? What will it take (how much more damage needs to occur) before we start to rally like we have in the past?

Notes from a Lecture with Nafisi

The themes she discussed still resonate with me; it was one of the more powerful lectures I have attended.

Azar Nafisi came to Seattle in 2006 to promote her book. I was moved by her speaking and wondered how many people were truly able to empathize with her message given that no one in the audience has ever lost the right to read. Her main theme was intellectual freedom.

Reading Lolita in Tehran is, in part, a memoir focused around Nafisi’s experience in the mid-1990’s of leading a small group of Iranian women in reading and discussing classic works of English and American literature – works which were forbidden and considered decadent by the government.

Her theme addressed the importance (and loss) of imagination in the development of nations. She mentioned that without imagination, you will be deprived of other aspects of your life. This statement reminded me of Ben Franklin’s claim that he would rather lose all rights but the freedom of speech, through which he would win all the others back. Azar riffed on imagination as a theme citing phrases like: “imaginative knowledge”, “Curiosity is insubordination in the most innocent form” and referring to Tolstoy’s definition: imagination is looking at the world through “washed eyes.”

She learned at an early age that reading was a transportive act, giving her the ability to go anywhere. This freeing of the mind in times of oppression presented a place of freedom and connection with others. If one reads a lot, one carries the world with them. Twain, Flaubert, Dostoyesfsky, etc.

She went on to extrapolate her theme more broadly….looking at nations. “Home” (and one’s own nation) is a place to question and re-question. That one (implying “nations”) should question themselves or else they develop a smugness of someone comfortable and unchallenged. Every nation has something to be ashamed of. Every nation has the right to change and grow. That right should be a god given right.

Harriet Beecher Stowe did not have the right to read her own lectures when she was touring in the UK, her husband had to read them. – bc it was “the UKs culture at the time.” In the east, the death scene in Swan Lake is removed and Desdemona’s suicide is removed from Othello so it “doesn’t depress the people” yet they stone a woman to death “bc it is their culture.” Resignation to others’ plight is dangerous business.

People understand the importance of individual rights and individual integrity. If they quote literature it’s bc they tried to preserve the best humanity had to offer in a time when humanity was lacking. When people were deprived of everything and they were on the way to the gas chambers, they quoted Flaubert. The mind is the last frontier and cannot be conquered. Even when the oppressors have taken everything away, you have the choice of what attitude you adopt. It is a constant “no” to the banality of the totalitarian regime.

People see activism as separate from the experience of the mind. In the west, what threatens us is our sleeping consciousness. In order to have the ability to empathize, we need to produce works of imagination. She was critical for a moment, and it was most powerful when she went on to state that

“American values used to mean something real and concrete. Huck Finn ponders the question: should I give Jim up? He had been taught that to harbor a slave meant that you would go to hell. But he thought about Jim in the morning and Jim in the evening and Jim was his friend. Huck made a decision to help Jim – he was “going to hell.” American values meant the ability to make a tough decision by way of self analysis. Now….we sleep. Imagination (innovation, alertness) is the key to development (into maturity) and we risk losing it.”

Related Links:

• Nancy Pearl’s Web site
• Weekday Archive: Nancy Pearl’s Winter Book List, 2007
• Weekday Archive: Nancy Pearl’s Summer Book List, 2007
• Weekday Archive: Nancy Pearl’s Spring Book List, 2007
• Background on Nafisi

Tom Brokaw – Seattle: Leaving some important topics on the cutting room floor

Last night I stood in line for 45 minutes of uncharacteristically cold Seattle weather to hear Tom Brokaw speak at Town Hall.

In short:
- He was a straight talker with a sharp point of view, I enjoyed hearing him speak; I bought his latest book, “Boom.”
- The conversation with the lecturer was like watching a rather unchallenging series of softball throws, each question easier than the next. It showed that the interviewer felt he didn’t have much to add to prior interviews or even a strong opinion about the book. Brokaw was gracious and gave solid answers.
- Seattle never fails to disappoint, giving floor time to unscreened questions on conspiracy theories.

Brokaw must have left confirmed in his opinion of the Radical West. One thing bothered me though: my own lack of gumption in getting up to ask a question I felt strongly about–how the 50s and 60s laid the groundwork for an unspoken epidemic of white collar layoffs the Boomers are now suffering through.

The Boomers grew up being catered to in marketing, dreamt big, lived through a war, questioned hard and took the opportunity to break the rules in the 60s, made it through a tough recession in the 70s, some would argue that many went from hippies to yuppies and reaped the benefits of the 80s. As a demographic, they are hard pressed to make it unscathed through the massive economic restructurings of the 90′s and early decades of 2000.

How then, can a book focused on “what happened in the 60s” not lay the groundwork for what is happening now in our workforce? According to a March 1996 series of articles in the New York Times, “The Downsizing of America,” 43 Million jobs have been lost since 1979 affecting nearly one-third of all households.

I patiently waited my turn for him to sign my copy while the person ahead of me wasted our collective time berating Brokaw for “not personalizing.” Brokaw briefly commented: “Layoffs, it’s a big topic, we’re going through that at NBC.” Gone was my opportunity for a more thoughtful response from someone with such a meaningful vantage point. Never again will I miss my chance on the platform.

Downsizing in America makes the case that….(excerpt from Amazon book review)

“the media tends to favor the dramatic figures from large, well-known manufacturers. Manufacturing in America has been in long-term decline since 1967 and manufacturers have steadily shed jobs.  However, agriculture and manufacturing only provide employment for 15% of the population, so this segment is not a good proxy for the entire economy.”

“Downsizing”, it turns out, is corporate-speak for upsizing. Firms laid off one set of workers – disproportionately less-educated, older, female or parents of young children – and hired on another set, by implication younger, male and single. Was the resulting workforce more productive? No, there was no change in employee productivity. Moreover, non-managerial employees bore the brunt of the layoffs, so that claims to be ridding the company of “fat” actually increased the management-to-staff ratio.

Did investors reward companies for their action? Perception says that downsizing is followed by an increase in the stock price. The reality is that stock prices remain steady or decline after downsizing announcements.

So what were the benefits of downsizing? The authors come to a surprising, but authoritative conclusion. Downsizing announcements force down staff wages so that the firm retains more profit. Simple really, isn’t it?

The Wall Street Journal had a series of stories on the then epidemic of white collar layoffs, starting with the Kodak layoffs in the early 90s. They committed early on to print a story a week until someone stood up to do something, but after about 3 months, you just didn’t read about it anymore. It became the norm. The Dot Com Bubble made an art of such bolemic practices, bringing people in and letting them go, looking at this sort of hefty decision making as a growth opportunity for its management.

Other links on Brokaw:
- Interview with KUOW
- Interview with TVGuide

News articles on the downsizing of America:
- The Downsizing of America
- The Downsizing and Demoralizing of the American Workforce
- Benchmarking Study Report

Pangur Ban

Every now and then, I’m reminded about little man has changed over the centuries. How many of the same emotions, situations, and daily activities have been noticed for the first time by someone, repeated by millions of us over time, and still resonate as “quaint” or personal.

I recently attended a lecture by Seamus Heaney where this poem was featured.

Background
Patrick O’Sullivan gave the following lecture on Pangur Ban at Ulster-American Folk Park.

There is a fragmentary ninth century manuscript belonging to the monastery of St. Paul, Unterdrauberg (in southern Austria). Preserved in that manuscript, along with a Virgil commentary and some Greek paradigms, are Irish language poems – including the little poem about the scholar and his cat, Pangur Ban – perhaps noted down by a bored monkish copyist. That poem had no readership, and no influence, for one thousand years – until it was published by Stokes and Strachan in 1902.

It is now the most famous poem in the Irish language, and one of the best known and the best loved poems in the world – the various translations have been much anthologised, and practically every Irish poet has made her or his version. The Robin Flower translation was chosen by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes for their successful children’s anthology The Rattle Bag. A new translation, by Sean Hutton, Chair of the British Association for Irish Studies, will be found in Shaun Traynor, The Poolbeg Book of Irish Poetry for Children. In fact, in these days of the Internet, a simple way of discovering Irish language enthusiasts throughout the world is to start a Web search for ‘Pangur Ban’.

The Poem
According to O’Sullivan, Robin Flower’s  version appeared in Heaney’s book, Poems and Translations, 1931 - but it is visible all over the web.  One can tell its date by the poetic diction, and by Flower’s attention to the metre and rhyme.

Pangur Bán

BY ANONYMOUS

TRANSLATED BY SEAMUS HEANEY

Read the translator’s notes

 

From the ninth-century Irish poem

Pangur Bán and I at work,

Adepts, equals, cat and clerk:

       His whole instinct is to hunt,

       Mine to free the meaning pent.

More than loud acclaim, I love

Books, silence, thought, my alcove.

       Happy for me, Pangur Bán

       Child-plays round some mouse’s den.

Truth to tell, just being here,

Housed alone, housed together,

       Adds up to its own reward:

       Concentration, stealthy art.

Next thing an unwary mouse

Bares his flank: Pangur pounces.

       Next thing lines that held and held

       Meaning back begin to yield.

All the while, his round bright eye

Fixes on the wall, while I

       Focus my less piercing gaze

       On the challenge of the page.

With his unsheathed, perfect nails

Pangur springs, exults and kills.

       When the longed-for, difficult

       Answers come, I too exult.

So it goes. To each his own.

No vying. No vexation.

       Taking pleasure, taking pains,

       Kindred spirits, veterans.

Day and night, soft purr, soft pad,

Pangur Bán has learned his trade.

       Day and night, my own hard work

       Solves the cruxes, makes a mark.