Nickle & Dimed

Sometimes I think that I am too frugal.  I could just buy the thing I don’t need, take the trip beyond what I can afford, and stay out late with friends at spendy night joints.  Instead I cook my meals in, pay my bills every month, and take lots of walks for entertainment.  Still, this is nothing like trying to support myself on minimum wage.  Barbara Ehrenreich wrote the, now rather old, journalistic book Nickel and Dimed in 2001, which I’ve only just read.

Ehrenreich goes undercover and works as a waitress, maid, and store clerk in a variety of US cities.  She is a middle-aged, doctorate-holding career woman.  Nobody blinks as she enters each town and job.  Nobody gives her a break as she tries to get a meal from food banks or find affordable housing.  In fact, she fits in just a little too well for comfort.  Every day Ehrenreich works hard at her tasks and comes away realizing that she can’t do this work and be the same woman as before.  She has entered the realm of those whose work is unvalued.  She has felt the correlation of discovering herself to be unvalued.

So would you or I. 

Ten years later, I believe that the only real difference in American life is the lack of easily acquired work.  Unskilled workers, which Ehrenreich correctly defines as workers skilled in physical capacities, perhaps learned while working, may still find jobs.  Should they exist, I do not believe that the jobs are better paid, better hours, or even sufficiently houred. 

Doubtless, Ehrenreich could have lived her study differently.  She made finite forays into cities, not the country-side.  She had few ideas or connections in the areas she chose.  She stumbled into a couple of unexpected drawbacks.  She didn’t use any government programs.  Maybe certain changes would have completely transformed her experience.  For example, maybe she could earn a living by applying to higher level jobs with her actual resume.

Reading this social documentary a decade later and finding no particular ease on the subject, even though the piece is still one that gets mentioned and noticed, is unsettling.  Although we can see many issues that have arrived in the last half century, this particular issue has existed during prior eras in America.  Is it in fact, universally present? 

What Ehrenreich hasn’t discovered, and I really want to know, is why has America allowed unlivable wages for work?  How do we resolve the situation of the woman working every day whose aspiration is to be able to take a day off work, if she had to, and still be able to buy groceries for the next day?

Although Ehrenreich and I have lived different lives, in different times, and with different values, on this issue we are united.  There is hard work to be done, and many people have more things piled against them than they know, but when one person’s sweat doesn’t even buy enough bread, how well has our affluent society exercised the ideal of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

Place

I finished The Power of Place while drinking a glass of German Riesling and sitting outside on Seattle’s sunniest spring afternoon of 2011.  I could smell my neighbor’s lilacs and watch the baby ferns’ tops trying to uncurl.  The place was spectacular.  It was chilly, though, so I’m back inside remembering the places I’ve read this fascinating treatise on geography.  Stuffy airplane, eating pretzels.  Living room chair with my feet up.  In bed prying my eyes open.  On the floor while stretching after my bike ride.  Local bar waiting for my dinner.

Harm de Blij did a fantastic job taking in the angles on place.  De Blij denies that the world is flat.  Depending upon what hemisphere, what continent, what country, what city, what family, what gender, de Blij can outline some of the terrain you’ll encounter.  It isn’t flat.  De Blij does think that globalization could smooth some of the rough edges, though.  That’s an interesting point of view.

There are a lot of prejudices that de Blij brings to his work.  The one I found most problematic was that of religion.  De Blij does not value religion at all; he essentially views them all as wholly similar and detrimental.  The second most troubling aspect is his position on natural disasters.  His book was written after the world shocking 2004 tsunami in Thailand and areas bordering the Indian Ocean but long before the earthquake in Haiti and this year’s earthquake, tsunami, nuclear disaster in Japan.  He faults human behavior.  I have a more challenged view.  Thirdly, de Blij is a political activist, who has no qualms in giving his reader points of action, which, were they aligned with my worldview, I would appreciate so much more.

What I can agree with is that being born and raised in de Blij’s “core” has given me more than I have in fact been able to absorb.  I cannot take in all the information to which I have access.  What I realize is that I also cannot enter the “periphery” without my expectations and reality reflecting more of the “core” than it does the “periphery.”  It is with certain awe that I examine the statement so often, weekly, monthly, by Jesus telling me that “to whom much is given much is expected.”  I understand that much of my geography.

Beyond the easy parts of geography, “I look out my window and see ____” (mountains, water, plains, desert, skyscrapers, huts, etc) de Blij looks at things that are more challenging (industrial plants, warzones).  In Seattle we’ve had our fourth or fifth sunny day of the year.  Other places haven’t had so many days of rain in 2011.  But, as far as how many cases of malaria, typhoid, dengue flu, I’d say there is good fortune in Seattle.  We grow more moss than we do mosquitoes.  We import more mangos than we receive asylum seekers from the countries who grow the mangos.  We largely practice religion similarly, speak the same language, have ancestral ties to our neighbors and enough food even so.

With all the hills I bike every day between my home and downtown, Seattle has a pretty flat landscape according to de Blij.  Should an earthquake come and wipe this slate clean, as de Blij expects to happen, may my neighbors show me the grace of God, and may my hands work diligently and with skill as I examine The Power of Place: Geography, Destiny, and Globalization’s Rough Landscape.

Date, date, date

30 May 2011 – remiss in not having posted this on the correct date.

So, I blogged not too long ago about a dating book I read, mentioning that that would be it for quite some time.  Yet, at the recommendation of a friend, I decided to go ahead and read another book on dating.  Apparently this is the definitive book on the subject.

Henry Cloud’s How to Get a Date Worth Keeping: Be Dating in Six Months or Your Money Back is the very confident title of a very basic book.  Very basic does not mean anything but that it is straight-forward and essentially absolutely a no-brainer.  The fact that I’ve made nearly every dating mistake in the book and keep readjusting my strategy merely means that I could have written it.  Not with the proven track record of Cloud, but at the least with all the anecdotes!

All that to say, if you’ve also made every mistake possible, you might get a kick out of seeing them listed on paper in front of you.  If laughing at yourself isn’t much of a past-time, you don’t want a better date, or, bless you, are already married, then don’t bother with this.  If you have any singleton friends, though, make their Christmas or birthday really fun for them.  Or tell them to check it out of the library, which is what I did.

Ten Years Later

The forward-thinking librarian who heads the Montlake reading group selected Colum McCann’s Let The Great World Spin right as the world was remembering all the pain and trauma of September 11^th, 2001.  We were to have read it and discussed it weeks prior to the actual date, but I was a little behind schedule, only really finishing as news media and journalists set the time up for renewed attention. 

For quite some time I read Let the Great World Spin as a story.  It was New York.  It was Ireland.  It was brothers.  It was family.  It was a monk.   It was race and Vietnam.  It was street life.  It was the 60’s.  Then we met the tight-rope walker, dancer, performer, master.  The towers come into view and the pieces are all coming together quickly, finally, clearly.

There were no favorites for me.  Every character had a pretty unique story which could have stood alone in New York as a valid point of view and way of life.  Timing was so crucial to the life and death of each person McCann creates on his way that as a reader I begin to wonder whether the next move of any character will throw them under the rails of love or tragedy.

New York is one city in one time and place, but seems to be everything and all its own, too.  The people in New York City have a story, but McCann really makes a case for the city having a story that the people participate in.  The buildings are part of New York, and New York is part of its buildings, but even they are not the determiner of the city, but only some part.  New York is still whole when men and women grieve, yet when they lose too much all of New York is not enough.

Little Bee

Seattle Reads month again! Of course Seattle Reads coordinators have chosen another African immigration story. I really have decided that I don’t mind the single theme. I believe at least once a year I should read, with everyone else, a hard story of life on and off the African continent. But I wonder why it isn’t part of the title more, like, say, Seattle Reads About African Immigration month. That’s a longer title, but absolutely descriptive.

What I really like about this novel is that the immigration is to Europe. I think that is an important reality to consider as NATO bombs Libya at the behest of France and Britain. My blog isn’t about politics, so I won’t describe the lives of asylum seekers I’ve met in Europe. If you read this book you wouldn’t need me to. I’m curious about the importance in Seattle of African politics, as there really are a lot of African immigrants, yet not so many obvious asylum seekers. Perhaps I’m naïve or Seattle hides this issue considerably better than other cities.

Chris Cleave writes Little Bee with a two character first person narrative that I think is excellent. There’s nothing like reading two worlds collide from both perspectives. Of course both characters, Sarah and Ohno, are in a state of confusion and decisiveness, like many women. Maybe that is what makes them so completely compelling. Maybe their stories do. Maybe the storyteller does. Whoever holds the magic, obviously Cleave, the stories of terribly many Africans, and how it awakens compassion in the least likely, it is certain that this story carries power.

This story is about a young girl who suffers such trauma that her ability to even function is staggering. She is Nigerian, from a jungle village. She is about 14 years old. She has an older sister. Well, or so she was and had when she met Sarah. This story is about a professional woman whose life is so idyllic that she cannot imagine true difficulty. She is English, from Surrey. She is about 30. She has a husband. Well, or so she was and had when she met Ohno.

Little Bee is a haunting story and I believe that Cleave treated it beautifully. The fact that both characters are complex, have grave faults and absolute moments of heroism are truly important. Beyond that, the slight repetitions were what I found most calming and jarring, the way they returned to places and ideas – oh, the juxtapositions! – and I never could guess which one would act, or how. This is not a book to look forward to; it is a story not to dismiss.

Bel Canto

Rob Forman Dew of Washington Post Book World wrote, “Bel Canto is its own universe.” I agree completely. Ann Patchett created a world that is both surreal and plausible with Bel Canto.

A respected and uncommonly successful Japanese businessman celebrates his 50^th birthday. Against his better judgment he agrees to go to the developing world because the host country promises his favorite opera star will come sing for him. The unnamed country hopes in return that he will invest there. He knows he won’t. It’s just too big of a risk.

A rogue terrorist group of men and children break up the party. The guests all respond with proper shock. But before long there is deep love, impressive sacrifice, and unearthed talents.

Patchett’s novel makes one of the best cases for grace and the need to share knowledge I have read. Bravo! Encore!

Tinkers

Tinkers was full of tingles. The imagery of a man dying and reliving aspects of his life, while the reader learns about areas he never knew, was captivating. No sentimentality, no gore, just sweet endings to a sometimes bitter history. Renal failure, clocks, hallucinations, epilepsy, harsh winters, moonshine and excerpts from The Reasonable Horologist are all pretty new topics for the novels I’ve read. That Paul Harding intertwines them all so well that I look forward to each bit of the story, never knowing what will come next, is exceptional.

More about Harding’s writing style is that it was full of beautiful imagery. These were snippets of ideas and a day here or a day there in the lives of a father and son. Very little came in a straight line, allowing me to read as disjointedly as I did without feeling any loss of continuity. That I read this book for my new Montlake reading group (which is the biggest and oldest so far that I’ve attended in Seattle) means that I also got to be part of a great conversation about the book.

Overall, Tinkers received some extremely high praise in this circle. Those who’d attended the death of a parent were able to identify with the physical and mental changes described. Those who’d lived in cold weather or overcome adversity or experienced sufficient closure understood many of the novel’s themes. Only questions of all the unmentioned years still perplex. But this was not a memoir, and our principal character, George, was not interested, on his deathbed, in how his mother managed, and he did not dwell on how he got through school. No, George wanted to think about his father, and about all the money he’d stashed in his tool shed.

Each character of Harding’s novel has a particular set of impressions of life. Each is insightful. Each is limited. The novel felt true, and that is novel indeed.