AFTER THE GOLD RUSH

History tells us that the bubble will burst, as it’s done before. A cold wind will come with a speed and power which “no one could have predicted.”

The radio waves, inter-webs, and our “leaders” will tell us that it’s just a bump in the road, and that it’s somehow the fault of greedy school teachers firemen, poor folks, and old age pensioners.

We’ve seen this movie before, but surely on a plane or in a hotel room for background noise, because this is not the type of movie one chooses to watch voluntarily with popcorn and all.

As Woody Guthrie once wrote, “Like dope. Like whiskey. Like tobacco...Like morphine or opium or old smoke or some kind. They got the regular habit of taking us for damned old silly fools.”

New Year’s Revolution

I’ve heard Springsteen say that after middle-age, it’s difficult for some people to fill in the blank pages with a new chapter or three, but I disagree.

Not where you belong? 

Grab a pen.

RESOLUTION

My 2020 resolution truly comes from a happy place. I’m extremely happy career-wise with great plans for the coming months (stay tuned) But did you ever wish that you knew THEN what I know NOW?

THIRD WIND

No longer young and audacious, the corporate world trained me to hold my breath when I should have been speaking out. Weren’t they paying me for my experience and opinions?

Today’s business world continues to ask us to wait for permission, rather than to quickly get to the bottom of things; to keep quiet as to avoid the regret of saying the wrong thing, even if —especially if —we know the topic better than anyone else at the table. Many of us have allowed people who knew nothing about our areas of expertise to hush us, embarrass us, and minimize our roles. The apathetic leadership and top-heavy organizational charts of the last two decades mostly to blame.

We’ve been expected to nod and do as instructed, envisioning the paycheck which arrives drops the same day as the mortgage payment is due hanging over us like a rain cloud. (“At least I have a job,” she says far too often.)

Outside of work, some of us may similarly be expected to “keep the peace” with friends and family, some of whom feel entitled to being recipients of our best etiquette and goodwill, though they never seem to demonstrate these niceties themselves.

I’m neither out of place nor out of time, but aware that while I may no longer be young and audacious, I’m also no longer willing to accept bullshit or incivility from strangers, co-workers, bosses, or anyone else.

Extremely positive and excited for what the new year will bring!!

I’m writing a new ending.

Why say "yes"?

“Yes" means opportunity. "Yes" makes the dots in your life appear. And if you're willing and open, you can connect these dots. You don't know where these dots are going to lead, and if you don't invest yourself fully, the dots won't connect.

The lives you make with those dots always lead to interesting places. "No" closes doors. "Yes" kicks them wide open.....As long as you're able to say "yes", the opportunities keep coming, and with them, the adventures. Say "no" to fear and complacency. Keep saying "yes" and the journey will continue.

--William Shatner, Shatner Rules: Your Guide to Understanding the Shatnerverse and the World at Large

>>Eric Garner was killed four years ago this week for selling loose cigarettes. We are all poorer for his loss, and the policies which allowed it.

The Message

Too many people have this romantic notion of America as the mythical land of Paul Revere's ride, and other made-for-TV stories, without acknowledging that it's also the place where we did things like intern 125,000 Japanese-Americans during WWII, because of their ancestry.

Too many have a pre-conceived opinion of what things like Occupy and Black Lives Matter protests are or aren't, without ever taking a breath to consider even for a minute our recent (and current!) track record of lynching, segregation, housing discrimination, police violence, and economic and social injustice. 

Loving only the "Paul Revere” and other popular versions of America is not helpful. They are incomplete constructs of a country which never really existed. 

It's very similar to how 1950's and early-60's "white family" sitcoms have become an idealized version of America by people who watched the 1990's reruns on Nick at Nite, but never lived through the era. 

Ronald Reagan being hailed by middle-aged white people as patron saint of the working class might be the best example, since if they’re "middle aged," they presumably lived through the era of Reaganomics and at the least had CNN on in the fucking background, no?

These false memes and pre-fabricated histories do more damage because they do not allow people to understand the real reasons for our current state of income inequality. More importantly, they fail to acknowledge our constant potential-- and our need-- to do so much better. 

Immigrants

What's your complaint about immigrants today? Are they too lazy to work or are they stealing your job? But it's just this current crop of immigrants, right? Your great- grandparents came in through Ellis Island " legally" and got "no help from no one," right?

Argos

If you think Odysseus too strong and brave to cry, that the god-loved, god-protected hero when he returned to Ithaka disguised, intent to check up on his wife

and candidly apprize the condition of his kingdom, steeled himself resolutely against surprise and came into his land cold-hearted, clear-eyed, ready for revenge—then you read Homer as I did,

too fast, knowing you’d be tested for plot and major happenings, skimming forward to the massacre, the shambles engineered with Telemakhos by turning beggar and taking up the challenge of the bow.

Reading this way you probably missed the tear Odysseus shed for his decrepit dog, Argos, who’s nothing but a bag of bones asleep atop a refuse pile outside the palace gates. The dog is not

a god in earthly clothes, but in its own disguise of death and destitution is more like Ithaka itself. And if you returned home after twenty years you might weep for the hunting dog

you long ago abandoned, rising from the garbage of its bed, its instinct of recognition still intact, enough will to wag its tail, lift its head, but little more. Years ago you had the chance to read that page more closely

but instead you raced ahead, like Odysseus, cocksure with your plan. Now the past is what you study, where guile and speed give over to grief so you might stop, and desiring to weep, weep more deeply.

- Michael Collier

Prologue They'd met once before, years ago when they were each married to someone else. She'd nearly forgotten, but not him.

My theme song.

"A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on." ~Carl Sandburg

Bah!

I am constantly surprised at the number of cable "news" people who believe that Americans can only talk about one topic at a time. To change what we see on the "news channels," we need to change the viewers. Americans don't want objective facts and information because they don't want to go to the trouble of figuring shit out. Much better to have two people on the TV screaming on the TV and you just have to pick a side, usually (falsely) presented as simple as Right or Left.