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The Holy(days)

   It's a rather hectic time of year with crashing stock markets dampening the excitement that was expected with the holidays.  Stores are still full but people once flush with cash, money that seemed to keep multiplying like magic, are now viewing statements that are proving shocking instead of exhilarating.  As the chastising headline in Barron's yelled out last week after the tidal surge of declines, "It's the Stock Market, Stupid."  Ouch!  It was also the time for me to reflect on my annual and personalized re-cap of the year, a holiday letter which I send out to friends and family members who either look forward to it or dread it as much as Aunt Mirabella's centuries-old dessert recipe (in the U.S. that would be any sort or version of fruitcake, an often-dry, almost unleavened cake packed with dried pieces of what is supposed to resemble chucks of fruit but is often left for the birds to sort out --which they do, by leaving all of it alone-- and eventually for you to clean up; once the holidays are over such cakes are discounted to ridiculously low prices which lures unsuspecting buyers to feel that they are getting a bargain, that is until they rush home and actually discover by tasting what the term "money down the drain" truly means; for those of your in European countries this "fruitcake" is vastly different from your brandy-soaked Christmas cake and should not even be placed in the same category, one being edible and one being more of a plasticized and petrified display to be used over and over in storefront windows...my opinion, of course.

Recent t-shirt addition from Northern Sun

   Ahem, where was I?  What is so different for my wife and I about this year's holidays is that it is the first for both of us without our moms, both of whom passed away during the year.  And while we're certainly not alone in this aspect of noticing that several places at the table are vacant, it is our first time.  This is usually a period when family generally get together, admittedly sometimes as infrequently as my annual letter, but a time seemingly to assuage any guilt for not having gotten in touch more or calling more or visiting more, which pretty much is how I began my update letter to family and friends.  We all grow busy, our lives take different paths and our priorities shift onto whatever we feel needs our attention...that may prove to be our children, or our aging parents (or pets), or our homes, or (one hopes not) our finances or careers.  And lest we forget, our final forgotten frontier is often that of taking care of ourselves.  But I ended my letter with a note that there were two bumper stickers I was now placing on my vehicle, those mini distractions that one places on the rear bumper of one's vehicle (here in the U.S., it's not enough to have your cell phones distract you from driving; we place over-brightly-lit LED billboards on expressways Vegas-style, and stickers on our cars which often have such fine print that you have to almost bump into the car ahead just to read them); anyway these stickers read: The Best Things in Life Aren't Things and the other having a quote from escaped slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglas: It Is Easier to Build Strong Children Than to Repair Broken Men.  Both come from the company Northern Sun which prints tee shirts, stickers, magnets, buttons and yes, is always looking for new ideas and quotes (and will pay you for such)..."Products for Progressives" is all that their catalogue says.

   We need to take a break, it seems, for there was a time when the holidays would distract us from the woes around us, bring compassion into our lives for those less fortunate and bring families and friends together.  But this year seems to not be letting up, the events of the world almost giving us pause in the true sense of the word, a pause so short and quick that we're almost dreading the head that will soon be peeking around the corner and loudly telling us, "breaks over!"  One of the books I recently completed was The Best American Travel Writing of 2018 which featured published stories on people and their travels, but not in a destination travel way (as in a glossy "you should go there to visit") but more of a reflection of where writers had been, places that had transformed them at a particular point in their lives and of which they had now decided to write about; one such story came from Pam Houston and her piece in Outside telling of her search for an abode, her driving around in a van perhaps as randomly searching and as lost as her soul, one which wanted to settle down but didn't quite know where or how.  She unexpectedly settles on a remote ranch pretty much in the middle of nowhere, its spectacular views and remoteness as enticing and captivating as the brutal winters which would soon become isolated and confining.  As she adds in the piece: All my life I have been happiest in motion -- on a plane, in a boat, on a dogsled, in a car, on the back of a horse, in a bus, on a pair of skis, in a cabbage wagon, hoofing it down a trail in my well-worn hiking boots.  Motion improves any day for me; the farther, the faster, the better.  Stillness, on the other hand, makes me very nervous...And there is one more thing.  The summer before I drove all over the West looking for a home was the summer I lost my mother.  I am only telling you now because I had never realized the coincidence of it, had never thought about the cause and effect relationship of it -- until I began to write the story of the ranch.  I am only a little better at giving in than I used to be, at slowing down, at sitting still.  But progress is progress, and any amount of it I have made I owe entirely to these 120 acres of tall grass and blue sage, with a simple log house, a sagging barn, and a couple of equine senior citizens.  And when the chores are all done, the ranch is a meditation in stillness.  It says, "Here, sit in this chair.  For the rest of the after­noon, let’s watch the way the light lays itself across the mountain.  Let’s be real quiet and see if the 300 head of elk who live up the mountain decide to come through the pasture on their way to the river to drink."  How do we become who we are in the world?  We ask the world to teach us.  But we have to ask with an open heart, with no idea of what the answer will be. 

   For some reason this holiday season (at least for my wife and I) just doesn't seem to be slowing down...rather the opposite.  Part of this might be because another story in the book, this one from Richard Manning and appearing in Harpers, talked of the early days in Flint, Michigan and how that carved-out bit of history might still be there and might have added --and still be adding-- to the leaded water woes of that city.  In the article he wrote: It was the mid-1950s, and my mother caught me mouthing a penny, as children do.  "Don't put money in your mouth," she scolded.  "You don't know whether a colored person has touched it."  Actually, my memory has her using the more incendiary label for African Americans...Her racism reflected official policy in Flint.  For instance, about ten years before, in the 1940s, black residents had pressured school and recreation officials into granting them access to a public pool.  They were admitted only on designated days.  Then the water would be drained before white swimmers came, since it was like the penny in my mother's mind, sullied by contact.  She and some of the city officials were Baptists, and so had deep-seated faith in the ability of water to remove sin and wash it away.  Maybe it suited them to imagine that having black skin was a sin that remained in the water.  

   If  that seems shocking and outdated and well, in the past, then glance at the piece by Michael Greenberg in the New York Review of Books on the immigrant laborers of today and the efforts by big farmers to turn a blind eye to their use of undocumented workers while rallying in support of getting rid of "illegals."  And by big farmers he mentions this: Measured by yearly production, the San Joaquin Valley is one of the highest-value stretches of farmland in the country, and is dominated by large growers who preside over a labor force of migrant workers in a way that has not changed much since Carey McWilliams described it in his 1939 book, Factories in the Fields...”The revenue from all the crops harvested here and elsewhere in California is $47 billion a year, more than double that of Iowa, the next-biggest agricultural state.  Most of this revenue benefits a few hundred families, some with as many as 20,000 or even 40,000 acres of land.  Plantations on the west side of the Valley are so huge that managers keep track of workers by flying over the fields in planes.  And about that nationalistic chanting making the news, small but vocal rallies of people yelling to return jobs to American workers and to get rid of the undocumented workers, Greenberg wrote: In response to the argument that immigrants steal jobs from Americans by undercutting their wages, the UFW (the organizing group, United Farm Workers) set up a website offering citizens and legal residents agricultural jobs anywhere in the country through state employment services.  This was in 2010, during the Great Recession.  The website received about four million hits, out of which around 12,000 people filled out employment forms.  Of these, a total of twelve citizens or legal residents actually showed up for work.  Not one of them lasted longer than a day.  According to a Los Angeles Times report, Silverado, a farm labor contractor in Napa, “has never had a white, American-born person take an entry-level gig, even after the company increased hourly wages to $4 above the minimum.”  A wine grower in Stockton couldn’t lure unemployed citizens for $20 an hour.  In case you missed that middle part about working in agricultural jobs, here it is again: ...a total of twelve citizens or legal residents actually showed up for work.  Not one of them lasted longer than a day.  So here's one response from Congress being introduced by a member from Virginia, allow "guest" workers in to do the labor-intensive and back-breaking work, undocumented of course, and according to the bill being introduced: ...they would not be allowed to bring their spouses or children.  And they could only work for the contractor who hired them.  If they experienced wage theft or maltreatment on the job, they would have no recourse to seek justice or find work elsewhere.  If fired, they would be immediately deported, at their own expense.  If they fled, they would be hunted as outlaws.  At least 10 percent of their wages would be withheld until the contract expired, to make sure that they left the country.

   I had to jump to another piece that talked about atheists and the long history of such beliefs (or non-beliefs) in the U.S.  In a review in The New Yorker by Casey Cep, he wrote: Americans, in large numbers, still do not want atheists teaching their children, or marrying them.  They would, according to surveys, prefer a female, gay, Mormon, or Muslim President to having an atheist in the White House, and some of them do not object to attempts to keep nonbelievers from holding other offices, even when the office is that of notary public.  Atheists are not welcome in the Masonic Lodge, and while the Boy Scouts of America* has opened its organization to gays and to girls, it continues to bar any participant who will not pledge "to do my duty to God."

   Back in the day, certain religious occasions were indeed Holy Days.  But over time, the word went from Holyday to Holiday and began to take on a meaning less of a religion occasion and, as Wikipedia says, a day or week meant for rest and travel.  For some reason, perhaps because our mothers are not here, this holiday season seems to be diminished in two ways, both the slowing down portion and the holy portion.  Maybe my wife and I need to find that remote ranch and to quit reading.  Or maybe we all just need to do as author Pam Houston did and let our own inner "ranch" talk to us, to tell us to slow down and reflect, to right the wrongs and to dig deep into ourselves and nourish the good inside.  Back to the Northern Sun company and a poster they offer, one which appears to do a better job of describing this unsettled holiday feeling of mine: Buddha was not a Buddhist.  Jesus was not a Christian.  Muhammad was not a Muslim.  They were Teachers who taught Love.  LOVE was their religion. 


*Ironically, the Boy Scouts of America may file for bankruptcy to avoid increasing payouts due to alleged sexual abuse.

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