Doing Justice

The tip of my hat to Steve Benen today who posts on justice finally being served to REPUBLICAN attorneys screwed by George Bush's Justice Department. The first was Leslie Hagen, who, despite her "outstanding performance" and Republican credentials, was kicked out of the Justice Department in 2006 because Monica Goodling heard a rumor that the attorney was gay. Like many other people who think their world view is the only one and that therefore they are always right (a kind of insanity, I think), Goodling not only did not renew Hagen's contract, she undermined the attorney at every turn, making sure that she could not get an appointment anywhere in the Justice Department. If hell exists, there is a special place for people such as Monica Goodling. And since I don't think hell exists, I believe it behooves the rest of us to counter-act in whatever legal, moral--hey, and maybe even comedic--way we can the malicious, vindictive acts of people such as this. There is a singular perniciousness in people who vindictively try to prevent qualified folks from attaining appropriate employment.   After a national search to fill the position in the new administration, Hagen was re-hired. (Gee, and she isn't even a Democrat! Imagine an administration that doesn't politically vet all of its Justice hires.) However, as an article on NPR's website describes:

It is not a perfectly happy ending for Hagen. Nobody official from the department ever apologized to her for what happened. She still owes thousands of dollars in attorney fees, and the Justice Department has refused to pay those bills.

The other attorneys Benen mentions in his post are William Hochul --who Goodling got rid of because Hochul's wife is active in the Democratic party though Hochul himself is a Republican-- and Daniel Blogden, who, as U.S. attorney for the district of Nevada, was fired because he refused to politicize his office. Both attorneys have been rehired by the Obama administration. 

What to do with bad presents?

The smirky morning team at ABC has some advice on what to do with bad presents.....

Gee, I didn't get any bad presents.

Here is Odyssey at the end of our Christmas morning unwrapping, telling us that the best presents are the animals who love us.

Happy end of the year!

"Do No Injustice"

Over the past couple of months, I have been going through the papers of my husband's family: letters, photographs, recipe clippings, greeting cards, cancelled checks, and all the ephemera of everyday life left behind by folks who disposed of very little. Their paper detritus suggests their unwillingness to leave this world. Hundreds of letters are stacked in boxes and an old steamer trunk, whispering in the darkness, trying to tell their tales. And I am now trying to make some sense out of the chaos and to channel those voices. I have learned a lot about writers of the family letters; the people are just as ambiguous and conflicted as any today. But in those letters are revealed values that at times seem to shout and echo in the moral hollowness of today's business world--whether it's political business on Capitol Hill or financial business on Wall Street or the daily business of a national non-profit.

I just turned to a letter dated January 12, 1886, a letter written from a father, Edward McCarty Armstrong, Sr., to his young adult son, Baker White Armstrong (later Sr.; my husband's great-grandfather). The son has left the family home in Virginia to find better prospects in Texas. Baker had evidently received an offer of business from one man to take on a partnership. The father offers his son this advice:

I want you to be very careful that in advancing your own interests that you do no injustice to others.

What a world it would be if people took that advice to heart.

Little Stupidities

Okay, I know that the retail business will have some excuse...uh, explanation... for this, but.......Why does the curling ribbon I bought have a sticker on the ribbon itself and not the plastic wrap around it? So I'm wrapping presents in a hurry, and I take out the curling ribbon, unwrap it from its plastic, and then try to peel the sticker off the ribbon. Impossible. I'm left with reams of curling ribbon with white sticky paper attached to it at regular intervals.

Are retailers that worried that people will unwrap the curling ribbon from its plastic in the store and then harass cashiers with items that have no bar code? Are they afraid the holiday lines will be held up like those in the commercial where the woman tries to cash a check instead of using her debit/credit card?

Yes, I've got plenty of more important things to worry about: Will my son arrive safely at the Atlanta airport this evening? Will we have to move in order to provide our family with financial stability again? Can anyone really get justice in this world?  How come people think it's okay that millions of Americans do not have health care and that millions are without jobs?

Oh, and why am I using this curling ribbon, anyway? Shouldn't I use something that's recyclable? Or save paper and not wrap the presents at all?

But it's the sticker glued to the curling ribbon that seems to have unglued me for a moment. Amazing.

Citizens' Rights to Bear Tomatoes

So....people are free to bring guns to events in which the President of the United States appears, but their rights to carry tomatoes are abridged by a local grocery store! A Costco store in Utah took its tomatoes off the shelves because Sarah Palin was appearing at an event in town and because some nut had thrown tomatoes at her when she appeared at the Mall of America. (He missed and hit a police officer, instead.)

Wow. Can this story really be true?

The Comfort of Cats

The semester is over at the community college where I tutor part-time, and now I'm home with the cats.  How can one be stressed with cats around? At the left is Persephone, who keeps me company in my study. She sleeps in here because she is the sweet cat the other two cats dominate; in the study she gets her own chair and cushion and a spot on top of boxes full of material for one of my projects. And when I'm here she has me all to herself. Persephone will crawl up on the desk and rest her chin and paws on my right arm as I type on the keyboard.

Below are the uber-cats of the house, the ones who fight for domination, but Odyssey, the oldest cat in the house, always wins. Odyssey is on the recliner, sleeping beside the partially-crocheted work of my daughter. Pluto has the chair. Both sit in the livingroom, cozily purring near the fireplace.

As long as we have our pets, the world is a little warmer place.

Dashed American Dreams

Today my husband, a highly competent and reliable professional, joined the ranks of the unemployed. He signs up for unemployment benefits tomorrow, having arrived at the local unemployment office too late in the afternoon today (mid-afternoon) to make it to the head of the line. The unemployment office in this county is evidently doing a booming business. I have been under-employed for some time--mostly out of choice for personal and family reasons--but I am now applying for full-time jobs so as to more adequately support my family in this difficult time.

We have become a part of the depressing stream of statistics one reads about in newspapers and on blogs.  In her article at the Huffington Post, Elizabeth Warren, Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, lays out some of those shocking statistics:

• "One in five Americans is unemployed, underemployed, or just plain out of work."
• "One in nine families can't make the minimum payment on their credit cards."
• "One in eight mortgages is in default or foreclosure."
• "One in eight Americans is on foodstamps."
• "More than 120,000 families are filing for bankruptcy each month."
• "The economic crisis has wiped more than $5 trillion from pensions and savings....and threatens to put ten million homeowners out on the street."

The middle class is suffering while Wall Street and bankers took handouts from the government (paid from our pockets) and now are making money once again, paying back the debt they borrowed and acting as if they are now free from any responsibility for the economic crisis.

My family is doing better than many Americans in our situation. We began taking care of financial debt as soon as the economy began to tank and started economizing around our household. We had long-term financial plans in place years ago--but as two adults who are unemployed and underemployed with two college-aged children, we now are facing the possibility of those financial plans failing. Oh, yeah, and what about health care? As Republicans unite to stall the health care debate, Americans are losing their access to adequate health care as they lose their jobs.

There is every reason to believe that we will recover, that my husband will be employed again and that I will find an interesting and challenging full-time job when our last child goes off to college. But this is not a given. I work with young people just out of college who are having a very difficult time finding full-time work in their chosen professions. One young woman, a psychology major and a recent graduate of an excellent liberal arts college, has applied for jobs ranging from holiday retail staff to parole officer. She sends out two to four applications every week while holding down a part-time job that offers no benefits. Other college-educated people with whom I work cobble together two or three part-time jobs in order to make ends meet.  And we see more and more of the recently laid off on our college campus, anxious to update skills in order to be more competitive in a distressfully diminished job market.

Sitting here, now, at this keyboard, I can count my blessings....as I have been trying to do since last week, but I also have a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach, that hollow feeling of anxiety that whispers, "What if?  What if one of you gets really ill? What if things don't work out the way you hope?" The economic news does not inspire confidence. We've been without jobs before, but we were younger, and the economy was better. As Elizabeth Warren notes:

Going to college and finding a good job no longer guarantee economic safety. Paying for a child's education and setting aside enough for a decent retirement have become distant dreams. Tens of millions of once-secure middle class families now live paycheck to paycheck, watching as their debts pile up and worrying about whether a pink slip or a bad diagnosis will send them hurtling over an economic cliff.

And now....back to composing that cover letter and updating my vita.