No, Thank You...

I will not be going Black Friday shopping.  There is NOTHING I need that badly, regardless of the cost.  In truth, on top of all the other things that can be blamed on WalMart, the Black Friday stampedes are the most terrifying.  Is there a bargain, or a sale, or a material item worth dying for?  Because people do, every year, in the Black Friday stampede.  Now that Black Friday has been extended into Thanksgiving Thursday (remember Thanksgiving?  It's the holiday for giving thanks for what we have), materialism is even worse.

A friend of mine, an entrepreneur in Florida, suggested that companies shouldn't be condemned for being OPEN on Thanksgiving, only for forcing employees to work against their will on Thanksgiving.  I would agree with this; there are people that would like to earn extra money, or don't have family to be concerned with, or don't celebrate the holiday at all, and closing for the day would cheat them.  The problem, though, is that Wal-Mart doesn't give their employees the choice.  Ehrenreich writes, “We can hardly pride ourselves on being the world’s preeminent democracy, after all, if the large numbers of citizens spend half their waking hours in what amounts, in plain terms, to a dictatorship (210).”  To force employees to work on a holiday, or risk losing their job, is just plain awful.  The company my mother works for allows its employees to choose; if there is a quorum of workers that want to be there, the plant stays open.  If not, they close for the day.  Anyone that stays home gets 8 hours of holiday pay; anyone that wants to work, gets time-and-a-half for their trouble.

The American Awakening

There is an American Dream- it's just not what you think it is. Years ago, when people emigrated from their homelands, they wanted to come to America, the Land of Opportunity. In America, if you work hard, you can earn a nice living, feed your family, put some by for hard times, live in a house with walls, drink water that wasn't brown...

 In 2004, I experienced the polar opposite of The American Dream. I met a man who stood on one foot all the time, because he only had one shoe. To be fair, he had two shoes, but he and his brother shared them. I met families that lived in the bombed-out remains of their homes because there was nowhere else to go. Plants were grown in the hardscrabble landscape of Kirkuk to stave off hunger. Locals lined up at the gate to our FOB (forward operating base) for an opportunity to work hard all day and take home $5 in wages (which would enable their family to survive for almost a week, actually). WE WERE the American Dream to them- we got "three hots and a cot," cigarettes that didn't hurt when you inhaled, fresh chicken eggs, meat at every meal if we wanted it.

 The American Dream was never about possessions. It was about the equality of opportunity that exists here; a lot of people confuse that with equality of outcome. Every American is born with the opportunity to worship as he pleases, to have opinions, to elect his representation in Congress, to bear arms, to be free of unreasonable search and seizure, and to due process of law. It's up to the individual to avail himself of those opportunities and secure his outcome. These inalienable rights-to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness- are available to every citizen, black, white, brown, red, or yellow. It's what you DO with it that matters. The American Dream is not the latest iThing and Abercrombie- it's a chicken in every pot. Hoover was a man ahead of his time; people in 1928 knew what was important, and it's not what you own.

Class and Education

I'm a science major. I very strongly believe that formal education is absolutely required for some jobs- like chemists, or genetic engineers, or doctors, or teachers. My husband added proctologists to that list, and he asked me to specify that. To relegate these jobs to "learn as you go" or even apprenticeships would be not only ineffective, but in some instances it would be downright irresponsible. For these jobs, I think there should be a higher rate of compensation, to counter the cost of the education required, and the time invested in learning a craft. Similarly, I think any tradesman that puts time into learning his craft through apprenticeship should have a high rate of compensation. Craftsmen, stonemasons, electricians, plumbers- they spend years as apprentices and journeyman before they master their craft, and that should be accounted for. In no way, though, should ANYONE receive less respect- all jobs are required for the way we live and work, whether we want to do them or not. We need people to harvest crops and sweep floors and do all the dirty jobs Mike Rowe does, just as much as we need doctors and lawyers and teachers. In the Army, a laundry and bath specialist makes the same amount of money as a laboratory technician or a Patriot missile launcher in the same pay grade, and receives the same respect. I was a lab tech, and spent 10 hours a day in classes to do in one year what George Washington University students do in three years, while a cook spends two months learning how to feed large numbers of people. It's not difficult to imagine why retention of Soldiers in low-density, high-training jobs like mine is very low- we can receive much higher compensation in the civilian sector. We were trained to the Baccalaureate standard- that of a medical technologist- but we were only certified to the Associate's standard- the medical laboratory technician. We had the knowledge and practical experience to make quite a bit of money, but lacked the piece of paper saying we had it. The best I could do was $15 hourly as a lab tech, instead of the $60,000 per annum I could have expected if my Army training had been accredited properly.

Jodi This, and Jodi That...

Some people scale great mountains or swim from Cuba to Florida.  Some people discover penicillin or the polio vaccine.  Still others, no less amazing, decide to go to college after having been a grown-up for a while.  Jodi Tocci is one of those great people.  She comes to Cedar Crest to major in Art Therapy, so she can work with Autistic children and help them express themselves through art.



Throwing a party is a tough business.  Of course, you want everything to be just right, and sometimes that means having delicious M&M chocolate candies in specific colors with words or pictures on.  If these candies are exactly what your party needs, your best bet is to call Jodi.  She works for M&M/Mars, and is the very person one speaks to when making these requests.  Only M&M candies can be personalized since they discontinued the Dove Chocolate personalization.  She tells me it's usually people's names and some sort of well-wish (Happy Anniversary!  Happy birthday!  The divorce is final!), but occasionally she gets really off-the-wall requests.  There is, apparently, an official policy prohibiting pornographic photos and blue words; the problem with the words, she says, is that it's a computer algorithm that detects the letters in the blue word letter-by-letter rather than recognizing the word.  Tatianas have a hard time getting their name on candy, it seems.  Yellow is her favorite M&M; he's "goofy and easy-going."

Jodi is originally from Fountain Hill and lives in Northampton, by way of San Diego, where she was married to a Navy serviceman.  While they're no longer married , she does have a three-year-old daughter called Layla who brightens her days and makes her laugh.  And jumps off couches.  And doesn't, as yet, know ANY Eric Clapton songs.

I'm assured Layla spends most of her days right-side-up.

Emergencies.

There is such thing as a knitting emergency.  When one has 2.5 hours worth of class, and about 20 minutes worth of yarn left, frantic calculations start.  How far away is the nearest craft store?  Joann's is 16 minutes from Blaney Hall; I can get there, pick out a pattern book, find yarn and needles for it, and be back in 45 minutes, right?  As it turns out, yes.  Yes I can.  Now I'm debating the intelligence of fingering weight yarn and size 3.25mm needles for a layette...