Wandering Toward My Shifting Self

Funny Money

My Financial Services agent recently visited me. We changed the beneficiary on a small annuity. A review of my annuity shocked me.

When I was ten years old, my fiscal policy was shaped by a rhyming couplet:

“One for the money, two for the show, three to get ready and four to go!”

I’d mow a neighbor’s lawn for a few coins. I’d check the neighborhood movie. I’d change from grubby play clothes to school clothes. I’d spend a delightful afternoon with Frankenstein or The Singing Cowboys: Roy Rogers and Gene Autry.

In 1950 after graduating High School, I went to work summers in the shops at Union Wages of $1.41 an hour. I was rich compared to my part time jobs during the academic year at minimum wage of $0.50 an hour. 

But this combination paid for food, shelter, transportation, taxes, tuition and delightful entertainment during my years in college and seminary.

When I married and had children, this childish economic strategy of “One for the money” didn’t work. Painful reality forced me to consider a different economic principle.

Frugality furthers freedom. Borrowing brings bondage.  As a husband and father keeping those two in balance created a difficult learning curve.

In 1980, I earned $4.50 an hour. Our daughters were in college. We paid for food, shelter, transportation, taxes, travel and delightful entertainment.

In 2010, I ‘m fully retired. My income is $7.31 an hour. This pays for food, shelter, transportation, taxes and delightful entertainment.

Money is funny. I don’t mean counterfeit money but authentic dollars. The intrinsic value of a dollar bill is tiny: maybe a penny. Its value as a token to purchase life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness varies wildly over time.

Remember the shock a review of my annuity gave me. Thirty years ago when my wife and I bought it, we gave instructions to invest half in blue chip proven stocks and half in growth stocks. We never touched it in all those years either to change investment strategy or take a disbursement.

The agent informed me that since 1980 the annuity gained just a bit shy of ONE PERCENT – less than a penny per dollar in thirty years!

Money as a commodity to maintain life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness has always been funny. Given fifty years of enormous growth in our nation’s wealth leading up to the 21^st Century, money today is even funnier!

It’s no wonder Economics is commonly called the Dismal Science.

Straight Shooter

Goodness Gracious Sakes Alive! Will wonders never cease!

An attractive young woman is running for the U.S. Senate in Arizona. A recent news cycle played her campaign ad over and over. It’s great.

It opens with her dressed in tight Levi jeans, Stetson rakishly shading her eyes from the Sonora desert sun. She blasts away with a Thomson submachine gun.

A Tommy gun! Shades of the good old days of Chicago politics. Al Capone and Elliot Ness blasting away at each other in the streets so the good citizens of the city could enjoy lively jazz bands and cocktails in their local speakeasy.

Next she switches to a long barrel Colt 45 Peacemaker. She carefully sights and fires off several rounds.

Ah yes happy childhood games of Cowboys and Indians. Our heroes were Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday at the OK Corral making the village safe for god fearing folks to enjoy the camaraderie and faro games in the local saloon. Their quick draw 45’s took care of the bad guys – both Indians and Rustlers.

The commercial closes with her steady hand holding what looks like a Gluck 9mm automatic on target. She rapidly fires off the entire clip. A modern gun for today’s bad guys!

We get the point. She can hit all her targets.

If indeed she beats McCain in the fall election and takes over his U. S. Senate seat, just think how lively their sessions could be.

I’m much too young to have ever seen Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. I understand Annie Oakley was a star attraction. This young woman could hit any target with her trusty repeating rifle. Large crowds of people all over the world paid hard cash to see her shoot.

Maybe if this young woman shooter from Arizona wins, the Senate could charge admission for seats in the Public Gallery. This could help offset the debt incurred by the off budget warfighter appropriation bills that usually pass 99 to 1.

Flatbutt Society

Whoopee! A Literary Agent agreed to handle our book!

My daughter and I had spent a week of long days sitting on hard folding chairs at a Mystery Writers Seminar. Now it was party time in my other daughter’s kitchen. In gratitude for her driving us around, feeding us and giving us bunks, we  inducted her into ‘The Flatbutt Society’ with exuberant silliness.

Next morning getting on a plane for home, the stewardess took my carry-on from me. The overheads were full. After the short flight, she handed it back. As I started across the terminal to my car park, I realized both wheels on the bag were broken off.

The wheels came off our project.

The agent accepted our proposal of sample chapters and a full outline. Our ‘Cozy’ had an amateur detective solving a murder with gentle humor. Discovering ‘who done it’ was complicated by the clash of Dutch and Scandinavian cultures in a small town.

 We had lived the nuances of food preferences, the tension of café conversation and disagreements over different life style choices in a bucolic village. Putting this into words on a page for a ‘Cozy’ was harder than we first imagined.

Our book project died dead. Publishers were not buying ‘Cozies’. The reading public wanted ‘Procedurals’ that depict hard boiled cops roaming the mean streets to make war on druggies, drunks and other low-life citizens.

We were functionally illiterate about Murder Mystery. Our book was never published.

47% of American adults are functionally illiterate according to statisticians. With powerful new digital technology, our knowledge in history and science has exploded. In the words of an old hymn: time makes ancient good awkward!

Take the story of Ben Franklin flying a kite in a thunder storm and discovering electricity.

A new biography puts that story into a whole new context. Born into a poor working class family, Ben came to Philadelphia at sixteen broke but knowing how to run a printing press. He parlayed that into a publishing empire.

Using the popularity of his “Poor Richard’s Advice”, he franchised printing shops in all 13 colonies. This gave his newspaper and eventually his “Poor Richard’s Almanac” a huge circulation and made him rich.

At age 42, he decided he had enough money to live on the rest of his life. He retired and devoted himself to scientific research.

The kite incident led him to invent a lightening rod. He refused to patent it. His reason: why should I make myself richer on reducing the number of people’s homes burnt down by lightning strikes?

At his own expense, he went to France to plead for guns, professional soldiers and a navy. He got them. At the Battle of Yorktown, they won the Revolutionary War.  

He then helped write the Constitution which created the United States of America. 

I wonder. Shouldn’t we petition the National Park Service to add Ben Franklin to Mt. Rushmore? As the inventor of American Free Enterprise Capitalism, he’s earned the honor!

Jpbs! Jobs! Jobs!

The News Channels were all atwitter! Steve Jobs at Apple Computer just announced his new iPhone. It’s beautiful. According to technical reviews, he cleverly designed older technology in a stunning new package.

Just like another entrepreneurial genius, George

Eastman! Some weeks ago, Eastman Kodak Inc in Rochester, NY eliminated thirty thousand jobs worldwide. Consumers won’t wait 24 hours for film processing to see their pictures. They buy ‘see it as you take it’ digital cameras.

Take a dusty shoes on the pavement walk in my neighborhood:

I had a first repair on my 2002 Buick. Back in the ‘60’s, we wryly joked that you were lucky if GM cars ran one week longer than your 18 month loan. But armies of workers showed up at each shift change to put these clunkers together.

In the last decade, one million automated robots appeared on factory assembly lines.

Last fall, two city blocks were demolished a half block south of my condo. Over winter huge cranes lifted pre-fabricated modules into place. An upscale condo and entertainment complex now fills the space.

This spring my granddaughter got a good job there at $3 an hour and tips

I downloaded ‘Skype’ onto my obsolete two year old desktop computer. For all I know Skype is run by two guys on a New Zeeland sheep ranch. What I do know is I can talk in real time face to face video with anyone in the world. Much better than phones and it’s free. No taxes! No long distance fees!

I’ve been getting everything I need for a comfortable life with a couple of clicks on my mouse. The Busy Brown Truck and the Post Office deliver to my door.

It’s unlikely anthills of delivery services scattered over the nation moving stuff from container ships to my door will disappear anytime soon.

Every year since 1950, 52% of all American paychecks have been issued by governments – local, state and federal. To all the people who keep me cozy in my condo clicking my mouse, like college coaches whose games entertain me, sewer workers who keep my condo sanitary, cops who make my street safe, etc.

Can brick and mortar businesses create “Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!”?

I watched a documentary on the newly refurbished Anheuser Bush St. Louis facility turn out 4 million bottles of beer a day on its totally automated production line. A handful of engineers watch computer monitors to catch glitches while executives count profits.

The 2010 Census is expected to count three times more citizens than the 1950 Census.

As the available labor force expands, free enterprise capitalism employs more labor saving robotics.

I wonder where is the anger about tweets, emails and U Tube clips that fuel the ferocious discussion in the Public Square about “Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!”

Dancing Feet

Once upon a time my wife-to-be and I decided to dance.

We were hanging out with my Mom and Sister. The big French windows were open as the radio softly played Hit Parade music. We breathed in the sweet perfume of garden and new mown grass. The summer evening stillness surrounded us with its lush dreaminess.

Les Paul and Mary Ford came on with their arrangement of “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered”.  Caught up in the words and the brand new sound of smooth syncopated electric guitar, we were seized with an irrational desire to go Dancing in the Dark.

We moved out onto the front sidewalk. The magic of the evening enveloped us. We heard the music loud and clear. Let’s Dance!

We embraced and began to sway to the music. As we tried to move our feet to the beat, a problem rose. Concrete is not a good surface for gliding in togetherness.

We moved to the grass. Better but we still found our feet tangling not two-stepping. We continued to stumble more than slide to the rhythm.

My Mom and Sister were much too well bred to laugh out loud. But they were smiling broadly and stifling their giggles.

My wife-to-be and I never fell over. We did wobble as our feet never seemed to move in synch to the delightful rhythms our hearts heard.

Neither one of us knew how to dance! No one had taught us any dance steps. We had never bothered to learn how to move our feet together in a waltz or a polka or a tango.

It’s probably a good idea to learn where and how to coordinate your feet on the ground if you’re going to dance with delight the syncopated rhythms of democracy.

I wonder! Could we have graceful governance if every elected official took lessons in ballroom dancing before taking office?