Among those of us waiting on the river bank one was a drunken woman. The rest of us understood but she was still confused, demanding of us: “Where am I? Why am I here?”
We ignored her, as if she wasn’t there at all.
Finally the ferryman emerged from the mist poling his raft. He pushed up to the small pier and motioned to us. We crowded onto the raft but the woman hesitated.
“Step on, sister,” the ferryman said. “From my raft no one falls off.”
How we envied her lingering doubt.
This piece began as a letter to the North Coast Journal. It was written in response to an interesting article by the publisher Judy Hodgson that appeared in the November 24, 2011 issue of the Journal under the title PUBLISHER’S NOTE: “What’s it all about?” I had been playing around with these thoughts and the article gave me a chance to clarify my thinking on the subject. The letter was rejected for being too long. I have resubmitted a shorter version of what appears below.
In Publisher Hodgson’s essay about the Occupy movement she recalls how in the 1950s and 1960s we had rapid economic growth and a strong middle class. She infers that it was the economic growth that “narrowed” the differences in income and allowed the middle class to grow. It’s not that simple. In the1950s we had a very progressive income tax (A top rate of 90percent then as compared to 36 percent now) and an estate tax that was steeper and affected smaller estates than it does now.
In the 1950s with this progressive tax policy in place the middle class did grow and it was possible to believe that we were moving toward a true meritocracy, that each generation would compete on an even playing field, that government could be organized to promote the greatest good for the greatest number. From these dreams the sixties were born.
Conditions have changed dramatically since then. Congress flattened our tax structure with the Reagan and Bush tax cuts. We were told then, as we are being told now, that lowering taxes on the entrepreneur, the venture capitalist, the banker and his bank, would result in prosperity for us all. That a “rising tide raises all ships.” That wealth generated by the wealthy would “trickle down” to the rest of us. As Hodgson points out that is not what happened. Instead the wealth has trickled up.
A healthy middle class is not a natural byproduct of a free economy strong or weak. Only where wealth is constantly recycled can a large and vibrant middle class emerge and maintain its independence. Without the redistribution of wealth static class divisions develop: a small very rich aristocracy, a large underclass and a small subservient middle class that is dependent on the wealthy for its relative prosperity. History is full of this same old story: landowners and serfs, nobles and peasants, Brahmans and untouchables, masters and slaves.
Since 1980 the trend has been consistent: the rich are getting richer while the rest of us stagnate or become poorer. The United States is on a steady trajectory away from being a middle-class society and toward the traditional rich-poor divide. That the occasional young man drops out of Harvard to become the world’s youngest billionaire, or a young woman goes from singing front of her bathroom mirror to becoming American’s latest idol, only masks the overall trend: most of us are trending downward while wealth is concentrating at the top.
Changing this slide will require enormous political will and a long struggle because, unfortunately, wealth in this country equals political power. In an ideal representative democracy the CEO of a large corporation would have no more influence on his elected representative than the mother who works at McDonalds since each is entitled to one vote. But in the real world the congressperson’s main motivation is to raise money to finance his or her campaign. A member of congress spends about half her time raising money for her and her party’s campaigns. Most of her waking hours are spent with people who have money to give either individually, through a trade group, a corporation or other entity. These are the people she listens to. It is their concerns she hears about and in the end represents. And if the member of Congress is not rich when she arrives in Washington she soon will be. (An article in the November 21st issue of NEWSWEEK on insider trading in Congress reported that since 2008, a period in which the net worth of most Americans has fallen significantly, the net worth of members of Congress has increased by 25 percent.)
A few months ago Congressman Mike Thompson held at town meeting in Eureka on the subject of the deficit. A member of the audience proposed that taxes be increased on persons earning more than $250,000 a year. The Congressman didn’t like the idea. He knew a number of families, he said, earning $250,000 a year who were truly struggling. The Congressman is either astonishingly naïve or astonishingly cynical. Of course families making $250,000 a year are struggling. The bigger the home, the larger the mortgage. Education at a private school costs more than at a public school. Starting a vineyard requires a lot of loot. A yacht really is a hole in the ocean you pour money into. But those struggles are not the same as the struggles of the single mother working at McDonalds or the unemployed husband whose house is under water or the college student whose tuition is ever increasing.
Today in America corporations are persons and publicly financed political campaigns are unconstitutional. Government services are privatized to the considerable profit of some and the detriment of others. Even Obama’s pathetic tax increases go nowhere. We have a government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich. A government where the heart of a Democratic congressman bleeds for the poor family earning only a quarter million dollars a year.
At the condo in B.C. there is a small porch shaped like an inverted bay window maybe fifteen feet long with access from both the living room and the bedroom. The porch has a glass railing four feet high with a black iron frame along the top. Nina keeps plants in pots at the base of the railing and this summer a garden spider took up residence above the plants. She constructed a large oval web that was anchored to the black frame, the plants and the glass.
She was a large beautiful spider with stripped legs maybe two inches long from the tips of her back legs to the tips of her front ones. She spent her days either cuddled up sleeping below the black frame or hanging upside down in the center of the web. She seemed somewhat nocturnal usually dropping down to the center of the web in the late afternoon and was still there when we went to sleep. This dropping down would happen in a rush as if she woke up and said to herself, “All right, time to get to work.”
If the web was damaged during the day it would be completely rebuilt when we rose in the morning and she would be at rest again beneath the frame.
I think the location she chose was unfortunate. While a few insects made it over the glass railing from time to time to visit the plants or buzz around on the porch, we saw her capture only one small creature. Perhaps she did better during the night while we were asleep, though a lack of food may have contributed to what happened later.
One day in late August a second spider appeared at the edge of the web. He was considerably smaller than the female though his legs were longer relative to the size of his body.
For maybe half an hour he waited at the edge of the web. Then he moved closer to the center and the female dropped down suddenly to her “working” position.
The male began to shake the web violently waving his front legs about. They moved closer to each other, both of them upside down relative to our perspective. Then he turned suddenly and rushed away, disappearing behind the black frame. She waited and moments later he reappeared and the process was repeated. This happened several times but each time he came closer to her. Soon they were within an inch of each other. The male seemed very excited, his front legs beating on the web. The female had turned toward him. Her front legs were curled back, her body seemed thrust toward him. She, too, appeared excited. With one of her back legs, actually the second to the back, the one on her right side, she began motioning toward the center of the large rear section of her body. She appeared to be beckoning him to come closer, quite literally pointing to the spot where she wanted him to touch her.
Still, he was hesitant. He would approach, his front legs beating on hers. A rear leg reached out and touched the spot she was pointing to. His body would swing toward hers. Then he would withdraw again, but now he moved only an inch or two away before returning to where she waited.
If the two bodies ever actually touched it happened very quickly, like a slap. Then without warning the female reached out and captured the male. Working quickly she wrapped him in webbing. Everything became still. She held the wrapped male with her front legs. She had turned him. The tips of his front legs were pointing up and still moving slowly. This dance of desire and death had taken place over an hour or more. Eventually she took him up to her resting place beneath the black frame. She curled up beside him and went to sleep.
A short time later we noticed a second male spider. He was hanging in midair on a strand of web suspended from the roof. He swung back and forth and jumped up and down in front of her as if shouting, “Hey, look at me!” If she was aware of him, she gave no sign that we could see. Eventually he touched down on the edge of the web and waited. In time she woke. He approached and the drama was replayed. This guy however had a different technique. A true acrobat he had tethered himself to the black frame and when he felt himself in danger he would drop loose and fall away from her as if on a swing.
Over the next couple of days I watched the female “entertain” several males. I never saw her capture any of the others, but the second one, the one on the swing was the love of her life. They went at each other with great excitement for an hour or more. I saw their bodies approach and “slap” together ten separate times. He became quite comfortable being close to her. He would approach and walk away only to return a couple of minutes later. Finally he left and she returned to her place beneath the frame. There, before falling asleep, she ate her dead former lover, webbing and all.
Unfortunately we had to leave the condo before she had fashioned her egg sack. Perhaps her progeny will be there next summer.
Hear the drums, Take the journey. The Henderson Memories is a story of idealism and loss, of passions felt and lessons learned.
In 1965 two young American Peace Corps Volunteers arrived at a small town in the Brazilian state of Bahia. Kyle and Jolene Henderson were determined to confront the poverty and social inequality surrounding them, but a few months later the Hendersons suddenly left Brazil. They returned to the States, established careers, raised a family and eventually died, having never spoken to their children of Brazil or the Peace Corps. What happened to the Hendersons in Brazil? Daughter Connie Scheel thinks Clint Estergard knows the answers and she flies to Vancouver, B.C. hoping to get them. But Professor Estergard has a tale to tell, and he’s going to insist on telling it his way. The Henderson Memories is a story of idealism and loss, of passions felt and lessons learned.
“[T]his is really a good Peace Corps story.” – peacecorpsworldwide.org
In the Big City is the story of a family in crisis. When Jason and Anne Winter move from rural Carbondale, Illinois to Chicago so Anne can begin her career with a large law firm, Jason finds himself cast in a new roll, that of a stay-at-home-dad caring for Kim their two-year old daughter. While Anne grows into her new and exciting life, Jason is isolated, surrounded by strangers in an impersonal and threatening city. These forces pull them in different directions and threaten to destroy their marriage.
Jason and Anne try to support each other and both want the marriage to succeed. This sometimes funny, sometimes moving novel is about their attempt to survive this dramatic change with their marriage intact.
“A poignant and finely crafted work that deals with the inner and out journeys of one American family in the tumult of Chicago.” The Humboldt Beacon, California
“Definitely worth reading for those who enjoy a good plot and story line without the need for a great deal of violence.” The Daily Sun, Georgia
