Dubbins Hardware and WalMart

My nephew works at WalMart, and loves his job there. He came to be with us around 2:00 yesterday afternoon, and left to go to work by 3:00. He views this as a career. I hope so, and I hope he gets his GED one day. He has been told he is on a track to be promoted at WalMart despite that. Okay.

I understand the need to staff, ... and worked every weekend and every holiday my first three years in Respiratory Therapy in college, beginning in 1970, and on at least half of them for the next four decades. It was an honor to be with my patients, who had no choice but to be in the hospital and were in need of care. WalMart, Macy's, and other retailers who opened yesterday HAD a choice. Their shelves will be empty by Christmas day no matter what they chose to do. Opening on Thanksgiving was an insult to the last and perhaps most honorable national holiday for our families to be together. While Macy's was holding their parade in NYC, their workers were hustling to get ready to man their stores. "Miracle on 34th Street" won't seem quite so miraculous this year to many Americans.

Retailing is a matter of good will, trust and respect, ... or was. I worked at a hardware store much like Dubbins Brothers Hardware in Delhi, NY as a kid. We had to work the Sunday before Thanksgiving each year to ready for Christmas. We decorated, brought tons of stock to all three floors from our warehouse beneath the shopping center. They fed us, there was music that whole day, and when I was almost old enough, Tina Rubbo would share some of the wine his family had made that year, with all of us. Delicious! The only Christmas bonus I remember, came from my boss, Cordy Scartozzi, the owner of the Hardware Center in Paoli, PA around the corner from our house. I will remember that gift all my life. He handed it to me personally, and thanked me for my work over the years I had worked for him. The money was a great help with college expenses, but the handshake was the true gift. He handed me a gold-plated Cross pen, for college, he said. That is the experience I wish my nephew could have. And the experience our customers had there in those Holiday Seasons, is what all Americans deserve. Instead we settle for cheap hustles, and retailers make us fight for "bargains".We stab one another in parking lots for the chance to grab a spot.

WalMart is cheap, ... no question. Whatever they sell that is priced higher than Dubbins, will be discounted at the register to match or beat Dubbins' price. But the staff at Dubbins will remember the paint color they mixed for you, and make and rework the key they cut for you, again and again, until it works, or fix it another way. That is their life, and has been for generations. The Hardware Center http://ww3.truevalue.com/hardwarecenter/ will do the same thing. That is the nature of the Dubber and Scartozzi families, and everyone who has ever worked for them. You know, ... guys like me who could guess a pound of nails with their hands, ... to the ounce, and who buffed the keys to make certain they would work on your locks when you went home. The world changes, of course. A scanner will match the color of paint you used in the kitchen in 1985 now. (Sure you want that?)

But 80% of  WalMart associates reportedly participate in SNAP food stamp benefits to feed their families. That amounts to $4.7 Billion in taxes every year. We tax payers have no stock in WalMart to show for what we provide their workers, to make up for what they do not pay them. All the savings in salaries, go to the Walton Family, who possess more wealth than any other in this nation.We went from Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, and Rothschilds, to the Waltons of Benton, Arkansas. Good on Sam for the biggest scam, I suppose.

We all have the right to shop where we prefer. And WalMart has provided goods at a price point below any other retailer in America. They did that by paying manufacturers in China less, to do what Americans did before them. The Chinese are still Commuinists, of course, and own a share in most factories. I have no problem with that except for the abuses, and so much for any flag waving. Chinese workers are paid 3rd world wages to make virtually everything Sam Walton's Family puts on their shelves. So the only jobs the Walton's leave to Americans are ones which promise promotion, but pay wages so low their families require food stamps to subsist. When the wages here in America match the wages paid in China, plus the costs to ship the goods, factories will open up again here in this country. And the Waltons will own them, ... and pay our grandchildren what the Chinese government pays their workers now.

Sorry to go on, but the truth is the truth. If this were simple. We'd all be doing our Christmas shopping at Dubbins and the Hardware Center, I suppose. The crowds, however, are at WalMart. Shoppers, picketers, cops and news crews.

Something is changing in America. I wish I could pretend it was for the better. It had already changed long ago when the Hardware Center closed its Western most store on the edge of West Chester, and when it closed its middle store, dedicated to the memory of a daughter of the family.

For my part, I'm glad I worked for Cordy, and have shopped at Dubbins, really glad. My kids will never sadly know that experience, and neither will yours. 

And if there is a wish I hold in my heart, it is that they will have that experience, before the wonderful essence of retailing dies in America, and is handed over to Families who are wealthier than Big Oil and Big Railroads, and swill champagne while our kids go to work every Holiday. That's what I wish!

Meditation for America

I wonder if it is comforting, to drive to the grocery store along a road named for a great uncle or grandfather? How must it feel to see a country lane, which led to a farm where your greats lived and tanned leather, and made shoes, ... or raised the cattle whose hides would do that work, and see the road sign that points to that place, and bears their name, ... Your name?

Do the names fade from...your mind as they might on a sign, disappearing in a scotoma that hides them from your awareness? Or is it a greater blessing to leave that place, and then come home again after generations, so that the signs are fresh and contain the magic that once was alive, that told a story of the people who made that place, those people, and me?

Perhaps it is both. My thanks to Vicky and Brian Sickler, Owners of Edward Sickler Monuments in Franklin, NY. Brian also serves as the Secretary for the Ouleout Valley Cemetery. How strange it must have seemed yesterday to have a Pennsylvanian in a "Kansas" tee shirt come to their shop, asking about family members, an uncle and aunt who both died in 1917, the very year their son was killed in the war. And how kind that they called me this morning to say they had found my folks after I had not. And those two, Abel and Jennie Stilson, rest not far from several Sicklers I had seen buried there in my walk at Ouleout Valley yesterday.

I wondered whether Vicky noticed those stones as well, or if she had gone to the cemetery so intent upon being kind to that stranger, to me, that she did not see her husband's family members at all. I did, and those folks become part of a bigger story in that lovely little town among other little towns in a green and kind county in New York.

I never knew Franklin, New York, when my grandfather was alive. I could not tell him how familiar it feels, and how the voices there sing with his accent, ... my mother's accent. I couldn't share that I was curious in which of those Georgian framed houses he had been born. I am still.

How typical my family is to every other here in America. 10% of Americans descend from those few on the Mayflower who survived, and the rest of what we are is derived from others who joined us other ways, ... and discovering the ports and rivers, and borders they crossed to join us, ... or to remain in place as the rest of us swarmed across a land they had forever lived upon and did not even understand, could be "owned" at all.

I love America best of all because of its folk ways. I like the parts that let you drive for fifteen minutes between towns. And I like the bustle of the Cities that were built by immigrants making trunks and suitcases, given loans by fellow countrymen, strangers, who had arrived before them. Survival is success. Sharing with strangers made us into America. They made us, ... just as we will all make what comes next.

I love this America. It shines by its diversity and its durability. It will last, I have no doubt. No single person can corrupt it forever, nor any of us, no matter what we believe She should become, can veer her sharply one way or the other, though we claim that to be our fear, and our hope.

I visit these family places and links to reassure myself that there is incredible continuity to who we are and to what we do. Time restores what TV steals from us at times like these. A drive along county roads brings sanity to me, that the overwhelming conventions and campaigns steal away.

That is great comfort, and an even greater strength we all can share, as we come to that moment when we should think not of the folks who demand our money and our vote, ... but who share the cities, factories, towns and villages with us.

I will be voting for them, and for Us.

REALLY? AMERICA AT WAR FOREVER?

WAR is the most complicated act this nation designed for itself to do. That we are so easily and so often drawn into them, ... should be a deep and genuine concern for Constitutional Scholars, and those of us who fight them and pay for them. It should be an even deeper concern for our Presidents and Congressional Leaders. It is the deepest concern for every mother and father in these times when WAR has become the...great American Pasttime.


I have never been drafted, nor even received a reply when I had asked to serve in the reserves of the armed services of our nation in a Medi-Vac Unit. Many in my family have. I've read accounts of their services and awards, commissions and pensions. They date from before the Revolution through the Civil War, and right up through World War II. So many.

There was not always a declared war, or the need for one to be declared. We were not in a constant state of war as we are now, ... Presidents requested the action, ... Congress declared a War, ... and we were in it, together. Men went off, ... women kept the homefront. (We've seen that Women are great fighters as well, ... great pilots, and can fill every comabt role). Costs were assessed in everyone's life, not just the few who had a soldier deployed. Every war differed, but some had repayments for clothes, a rifle and a horse. A plot of ground in a far off state. Others demanded rationing of essentials. Some asked a 2 cent stamp attached to a photo taken and then sent with a Yankee to war.

War was a declaration of national purpose. We were all in, by definition. Teachers, Like John Carey, signed up. Farmers like Henry Dillman, were drafted. Brothers like Charles Fox, and William Carey, ... died and were buried in some far off battlefield or nearby, often in a plot never marked. Stories were fashioned and written, and spoken before veteran groups to explain the cisrcumstances, but they have often been found to be fiction, to describe the circumstances of the death in a way that might comfort the family and the townfolk. While I did not serve, I worked in hospitals. Death, is death. It is not easy, but it is gentle. Our Maker provides for what medicine and the military can not.

To our Congress, and Our President, the ones we have now, and the ones we will have next, I suggest they address the constant war(s) we seem to find for ourselves. War is not sport. The effects of Hundreds of Thousands of injured, disfigured, disabled and diseased veterans is something this nation has known for 150 years and more.

There seem only three ways to solve the issues that affect and afflict our veterans, ...

FIRST, ... We commit to care for our veterans, from every war and from every service, in a way that will make them whole, and that will address the health effects of their service, no matter how arcane or obscure the DOD might believe their claim to be. What we do not see in civilian care, but see rotuinely in our veterans, ... is from their service! The VA needs to cut the crap and start the care.

SECOND, ... If our national leaders want to avoid the cost of caring for veterans, it must desist from declaring WAR every time the suggestion is raised. And it must desist from pretending an action declared by any president, and not sanctioned by Congress as a declaration of WAR, is a state of WAR at all. And if that does not cease the action, then the Congress must deny such activities the funding necessary to continue the war.

THIRD, and this is critical, ... Our NATIONAL GUARD was always intended to be a state-based means of repelling national and regional assaults, from within our nation, or from nature. It was not intended to be some sort of auxiliary resource for Presidents and Congress to fight undeclared wars, for constant re-deployment to theaters of action in wars that were never formally declared. The use of the NATIONAL GUARD for actions other than declared states of War should be, and very likely is, ... Unconstitutional.

WAR is something America must do , always, as an exception. Our founders knew that from the inception of this Republic. It is the responsibility of the President and the Congress to ASSURE the Constitution is adhered to in this regard.

When Our Armed Services are sent under arms for any reasons, and to any place, we owe them the full measure of care, support and recovery for their commitment and their experince under the command of the Commander in Chief during the confliuct in which HE/SHE ordered them to serve. And if it is an UNDECLARED War, then it must be called out. Pretty simple, really.



The Music of the Waterfall

Buried in photos left to me by my father, relinquished to him by my mother at her death, bequeathed to her by my grandfather, and with few annotations whatever, are photos of him and his first bride, sometime after 1911 I believe, on their honeymoon to celebrate their marriage in that year. As hundreds of thousands of young couples then and now, they traveled the flat upstate of New York to see Niagara Falls. There are photos of him and his wife, another young couple, and my great grandmother, ... What was she doing there? A different era perhaps, or perhaps she had never traveled from Schenectady to see that wonder when it was her turn. No one needs a chaperon on their honeymoon, least of all a mother in law.

But that is not the purpose of this essay. The focus for now is upon the waterfall itself, and the realizations that came to me when I saw the photos from that trip almost 100 years ago.

Twenty years ago, in my backyard, ... my wife and daughters pointed to a patch of ground beside our deck and in full view of the family room windows, for me to create a water garden, a Koi Pond. My father was an engineer, and my mother a pianist, ... and the essence of the concept of the pond I hoped to create was a wonderful and durable garden for fish and plants, Summer and Winter, ... and a waterfall to play music for us and our children, and theirs someday.

The dig was daunting, with gneiss boulders, some 50 or 60 pounds, ... and in the end I lined a "quarry" of orange stone with a rubber sheet to retain the water for the life it would contain. It was plumbed, of course, ... a pump, and a succession of replacements, drawing water through a filter to sift leaves and twigs, and breakdown waste from fish and plants, ... and pump freshened water up a hill of about three feet, to a stone lined water course, over stones and slate plates, ... to splash into the pond once again. Anticlimactic, ... but hopefully enjoyable to the ear.

There was no sound, ... not even the splash you might hear when you draw a tub of water for a bath! I was destroyed, for more than any other feature of this pond, I wanted to hear the sound of cascading water, ... and could not fathom why I did not.

When it came to me in my sleep, I realized something I would understand confirmed in the photos years later, ... there was no sound, for there was nowhere for the sound to resonate.

Waterfalls are no different than a guitar, or a jaw's harp, or a mandolin. The sound occurs in a limited space, a vibrating string or spring, ... a splash of water against a stone. It is the space behind the vibration that causes the sound to resonate and refocus the sound for our enjoyment. Without the box we know as a guitar or mandolin, ... the sound would dissipate in space and be lost. Without a chamber behind the splash of water, the sound absorbs into the ground, and air, in all directions without any amplification.

And so, beneath and behind the last level of the water that cascaded down the stones in the waterfall, ... I created a box, a space, ... in which the sound of the splashing water could collect, and focus toward the porch, the deck and the windows. A "guitar" made of stone and strung with strands of splashing water. Only then did the waterfall sing to our family, at last. And then, ... the frogs came to sit in that box,.. to sing to us and taunt our dogs, ... and the Koi would slither up into that space on a skid of water, enjoying the splash and air and water together. Important to let the water meet the water, so the life can enjoy it too, ... I later realized. Suddenly life focused at the waterfall, which runs even in the dead of winter to aerate the pond, and keep the fish healthy. The failure of water flowing in the waterfall is a calamity that calls me in short order to repair.

Years later, I realized that Niagara, as many falls do, has carved out its own "sound box" with the rushing wash of water, and the erosion behind the stones at the base of the falls. The incredible rush of sound is the natural consequence of the "mandolin" shaped cave the falls themselves have carved behind the place the rushing waters splashed, ... carved over millenia.

I hope to build more waterfalls in my life, ... and tune them to play beautiful music from the water that traverses their steps. More than that, ... I hope to share the appreciation for that sort of understanding and the musical accompaniment they provide, ... as part of being Human, and understanding the gifts that are all around us.

Perhaps it is our best purpose not to splash and dash through life, but to reflect those things around us as they occur. Others may be the perfect object of that for us, ... their sounds amplified by our facing them as they live their lives. And in that reflection, we become a place where life is attracted to shimmer and tinkle in glimmering joy. Simply reflecting the joy around us.

Man in the Moon Image from the BP Robot Probe

This interesting expression is a sort of "Man on the Moon" face, a la Jules Verne, image from the BP probe which was assessing the oil gusher beneath the ocean seems to sum it up nicely! It is a cropped frame from the linked video.

My impression was exactly the same as the expression on the still shot, as the video continues to come in from the spill. That is , ... "WTF?"

No Anonymous Donations Allowed

Yesterday's Supreme Court Decision to remove all limitations on corporate expenditures in politics will have ramifications across the governance of our nation that can scarcely yet be imagined. That fact, while undeniable by supporters or detractors of that decision, does not in and of itself portend whether those effects will be positive or negative, and, as can be imagined, no corporations have released news of how they will use or abuse the new opportunity to twist American Politics back upon itself under their newfound ability to outspend all parties, and all donors.

And so, if you are a person reading this, ... and you are, for corporations are truly insensate organisms, ... the imagined reality of one or more human minds, who already had a right to donate and speak or not (foreigners are not allowed in American Politics except through this loophole provided by five justices), and absolutely without emotion, ... save, that is, for the stockholders and employees, who always had the right of other persons to speak politically, ... no more and no less.

This fact, ... that a corporation is an entity created not to replace its owners, but to protect them personally, isolate them from identification, and organize them collectively into a business venture, means that owners who were citizens already can speak twice, and without limit on the expense in doing so. Yet the funds would not come from their own assets, ... rather from the assets of the corporation, ... with its special tax treatments, and protections from individual liability. Score one advantage the corporation has over the person in American politics. To be clear, nothing precludes the creation of a corporation for the sole purpose of political action, ... nothing.

And what of the liability? It would seem the corporation can speak from behind the corporate veil of limited liability, and say almost anything it would like against a political opponent, ... far more than it is allowed in business. "Free Speech" is free for all in the public place of ideas, while it has severe limits in commerce. Where will the limits be placed, and how will we know when a corporation speaks "politically" and not "commercially". Could that one right become a defense against the other limitation? Score two points for the corporation, who may just have escaped the shackles of commercial obligations and regulatory limits, ... by being brought to life by Scalia and Company. If you doubt the risk, ... imagine how a firm like Pfizer will spend its campaign dollars to avoid settlements with the government for alleged misbehavior in the market. How much influence could be bought with even half the $ 427,000,000 they paid in settling a single complaint for selling beyond the approved uses for only one medication! How do you think the FDA will act in the future, when similar complaints are lodged against this or other corporate behemoths?

It becomes clear that, just as we person voters and donors must register to vote, or disclose our identity when we donate or advertise, corporations MUST be made to do the same. There can be no facade or charade allowed by these entities who have been granted access to the political landscape by this farcical, and disastrous decision.

Just as anyone can see that I gave $ 50.00 to this candidate, or $ 100 to that party, ... we must know the highest and truest identity of every corporate political donor, the specific amounts they have given, to whom, and when. The penalties for perpetrating identity fraud, ... E.g. Pfizer donating as "Americans for Healthcare Freedom, Inc.", or some other corporate subsidiary, and should be directly proportional to the total donation amounts given under that name. So, ... if I gave $ 50, and lied about my identity, ... I would face a fine of, say, 10 times that amount, or
$ 500. If "Americans for Healthcare Freedom, Inc." gave $ 100,000,000 under that identity, when they were principally owned by Pfizer, and the entity was used to obscure the fact that Pfizer gave that money, ... then the parent corporation would be liable for $ 1,000,000,000 in fines. Ten times. Fair is fair, as they say.

And how are we to know?

A good friend had an ingenious idea as we absorbed this disastrous news of yesterday over a glass of wine last evening. As she suggested, there are "crawls" at the base of almost every news or business channel on TV, moving streams of text that alert the viewer to important information. Every political ad should be made to carry a crawl which details the donors and advertisers in support of any politician's campaign, ... not as part of the ad, ... but from a database provided at the FEC (Federal Elections Commission) at the time of broadcast. This would be mandatory, and would, by law be applied to every ad broadcast over the air, on cable, satellite, or internet advertising. In print advertising the same would apply, ... and should require 10% of the advertising space or copy, to be reserved for the top 10% of donors and advertisers on behalf of a candidate's campaign, ... again to be downloaded by the publisher so as to be current at the moment of print. Radio and audio advertising should be required to allocate the last 15% of broadcast time to name the top donor or advertiser, and the amount of donation or cost of advertisement, ... E.g. "As largest advertiser on behalf of the candidate, Pfizer Corporation has spent $ 225,000 toward this candidate's campaign for this office."

Why be concerned with all this?

Truly, Gulliver has come to our political Lilliput. Not some benign giant who traveled to our shores to bid us well and learn our ways, ... but rather to change everything about our political way of life. The analogy is apt as well for there appear to be no limits on what foreign Gulliver owns the corporations who are allowed to speak in our elections. Anyone anywhere in the world who owns a corporation may speak, it seems. Place of registration? Nation where shares are traded? Those appear to mean absolutely nothing to the five majority justices on the bench in DC. If so they need to speak very quickly to avoid an avalanche of ads from overseas.

Corporations here who are owned by the governments or citizens of Dubai, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, England, France, China, Viet Nam, ... you name it, ... have the same right now to advertise on behalf of US politicians as do you or I, and far more money than we have to do it. Is that truly what American Corporatists imagined when they let loose this zombie Gulliver upon our body politic?

Why would foreigners want to advertise in support of one American Politician over another?

I can't imagine!

Bright Days, Dark Thoughts

When the election of 2008 arrived, and its result became known, ... the world was passing into darkness, ... at least the Northern Hemisphere. The economic world was only beginning to grasp that its fate was sealed by men who had sapped it of every asset it had, ... and destroyed the very mathematics of its accounting, ... in such a way that some of them pretended to be the only people on the planet who understood how to unravel its intricate and perverted weavings, ... evil geniuses who had placed our own worth beyond our reach by investing them in trash heaps of securitized crap, ... instruments only a mortician could love. Worthless, ... or worse, ... for they could draw down the value of other assets by association, ... like losing your job because your college roommate sold drugs once upon a time.

And now the rest of us, the ones who did nothing but work, and work some more, at one job, or several, ... we struggle to make our payments. We angrily answer "Opt-outs" from credit card lenders when they raise rates, and drop our credit lines, ... and they hope, ... believe, that we will not remember their practices. In the end we who pay our bills did nothing but make them money, ... dollar after dollar! When the rates of return to their depositors dropped deep into single digits, they raised our credit card rates from 9, to 11, to 19,and then to 30 percent. Over and over. Miss a due date by an hour and you are trash, ... in default.

We know their names. Bank of America, ... Citibank, ... Chase, ... American Express.

There will come an end to this economic madness. We will find credit from some source when we need it to buy a home, a car, the necessities of life, and the exigencies we have not planned into our budgets. For those these banks come to us, and our leaders in Washington. For our part perhaps we seek their help when we should seek each others' help. I will bank at my Credit Union from here on out.

The banks, ... these megalithic money machines, ... seem hell-bent on self-immolation and destruction. My experience convinces me that I should never again use them for my business or my personal finances. Let them die, I say. I'll settle my accounts and then I will be done with them forever. They serve no purpose that I can see.

Sears, ... Penney's, ... other retailers, ... I'll do business with you directly. Only, that is, after you dump GE, and Citibank and BofA. Cut out the middle man. They are the reason I will not buy from you or borrow to do so. THEY are the reason our credit system is fouled.

Perhaps another day we can discuss where your goods are made. For now, ... I need your credit again to help me buy what I need. Dump the banks, and let's you and I talk!

A Case of Identity Theft

On this Wednesday after the Tuesday, the paperwork will be filed away. The principals have been identified, and their names made public. The attention during the culmination of this case, was directed toward the victims, as it should be. Those who perpetrated the theft of the identity of so many were placed on public display, even confronted with a degree of public disdain, and then silenced. They were dispatched, and denied the power to commit that same crime again.

The man who then stood before us, the People whose identity had been stolen, and then defiled repeatedly, spoke kindly, but directly. The recovery from these crimes would be lengthy, but certain, he said. We ourselves were complicit by our permissiveness, even by our naivete. We must remain vigilant, and committed, went his advice. Our identity was a bequest, ours to guard and to partake in, but not to own outright.

This Nation, We the People, have received what may be a reprieve. Our reputation and standing is diminished. Our purposes are suspect. Our history is stained and unfamiliar on the pages we have lived for many years now.

But in this theft of our identity as a People, we were witting accomplices. There were, and remain signs that our election processes was subverted. We handed money to corporations who were unaccountable for their services, for serving our soldiers putrid ice and water, electrocuting them in their showers, and diverting our national wealth to purposes even now undiscovered.

A few spoke out, and then more. Our law-makers stood mute for the most part, or shook their feeble fists in the air, only to let them drop to their sides and claim there was nothing they could do. Our judges gave us rulings, none heeded by the King. Every norm in our society was at risk of breaking down.

We will not carry our wallets in our baggy pant pocket, nor carry it dangling in a purse upon our outstretched arm. We know these men who prowl the public walkways in search of claiming to be "We the People", but who are truly "We the Powerful". Will we know them when they are on the sidewalks again, looking to overcome a trusting people?

Perhaps. For now we stand wary of them. May it ever be so.