Money Between Friends

I had a falling out with a friend over money. Not lending it, borrowing it or spending it. Just about having it or not having it. According to the American Psychological Association, 76% of Americans are stressed out about money. That includes those who have it as well as those who don't. And everyone in between.

We both have places to live that we own, enough food to eat, Enough left over to buy cars and computers. It's true that she has an inheritance of undisclosable proportions and I do not. But I am ordinarily not an envious person, I have a job, a promised pension, in short I am doing fine.Yet sometimes I panic in a way that isn't really rational. It has more to do with past wounding; a host of experiences that my friend has nothing to do with.

Financial security is a totally random and subjective idea. I know people with a million dollars worth of savings and assets who are terrified and feel totally broke. I also know folks who live hand to mouth and haven't a care in the world in this regard, people who believe that the universe will provide.

No matter how the chips fall people tend to come unglued when it comes to money. It is a trigger for all sorts of feelings because of, not only what it buys but what it represents, freedom from wage slavery, all kinds of travel but most significantly, freedom from fear.

Many people are very secretive about their financial situations. I've had friends who seem like they would rather die than tell me how much they earn. The friends who speak quite freely tend to be ones in situations most similar to mine.

As I was working at the library reference desk, contemplating these ramifications, a ghost from my past suddenly appeared in the flesh. She had been lovers with an old roommate of mine in the early eighties. She looked older, still attractive but disheveled and totally down and out. Her speech was badly slurred and she was carrying a large duffel bag. She didn't seem to recognize me at all as she crouched down on the marble floor and began unpacking the clothes in her sack, spreading them around her. "The security guards keep hassling me," was what I think she said. I flashed back to her young, wild self. The one who drank and danced till dawn and shot up a bit too.My mind drifted back to the time that her roommates planted drug paraphenalia openly in her apartment the day her probation officer was scheduled to come for a visit. Now, I've had some crappy roommates myself, but never ones who wanted to see me in jail. She told this story in her expansive forthright manner, the way she would tell any other. She'd had a tough life and survived its turbulence the best she could. It's all any of us can do.

The guard escorted her to the security gate and out into the beautiful, spring afternoon as a crowd of people descended into the atrium needing books, information and basically just a bit of attention. Some people have greater of lesser success challenging its parameter but one truth is incontrovertible. Just as Cyndi Lauper astutely observed, "Money changes everything."

Writing: Safety in Ending Silence

Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde the lesbian poet and writer once said, "Your silence will not protect you," I've ruminated over the meaning of this phrase at various points in my life when my big mouth did not provide much protection either! But the benefit of speaking out far outweighs the risks. Exposure of all that lies beneath is an absolute necessity for writers.Writing is like sculpting, as the rock is chipped away and negative space is removed, the truth begins to take shape. Something new emerges, an unseen form arises, something recognizable by all who previously saw only a block of dense rock.

Exposing Anti-Feline Prejudice

Think about a cat. Now imagine a neighborhood bully pulls that cat's tail. If the cat could talk, she might call animal control and describe the boy and tell them that the bully pulled her tail really hard and she didn't like it one bit. If the same cat could both talk and write, she might go around the neighborhood finding out more about the bully and write a blog post saying that not only did little Jeremy pull my tail, the exact same thing happened to Smokey, Puff and Snowball within the last few months. Maybe Jeremy also uses a slur like "stupid pussy" regularly during his attacks. The kitty caucus may now have grounds for a class action lawsuit.

So all you cool cats out there, continue writing, filming, talking and generally sculpting our world. Keep us safe from the bullies whose goal is to scare us into submission and silence!

Labor and the Left in SF: Refusing to Mingle

I marched for workers on May Day in San Francisco. The march was morale-building, energizing, an extremely SF-style event. Mission Street brimming with thousands of foks. (I won't get into the estimating racket here but 3-7,000 probably covers it). Immigrants rights, all kinds of civil rights, queer immigration rights, Arizona boycotts, Gray Panthers, Code Pink and of course, worker's rights. Individual members of unions were there with some renegade signs, but the split between labor and the left in the Golden State was evident. SEIU held separate events and will hold a rally of its own on the SF Embacadero today, Tuesday May 3rd.

This isn't a lovers' quarrel, this spat between organized labor and the organized left. It's more like a gaping abyss, a great divide. In Wisconsin, the two groups, labor and the left actually came together and it was inspiring to see cops and firefighters in the same room as avowed socialists, pulling together for the same end.

Here in San Francisco California it's kind of a warriors versus worriers situation. Leftists want big change, but have a bad reputation for being insular and dogmatic. There is some truth to this. But the left is way ahead of labor on the analysis part of the big picture. You can't have rights for working people without considering the ways that society oppresses everyone. The Latin origin of the word radical means "at the root." And deep rooted change is what we need. An end to severe economic disparities, civil rights for all people, freedom of speech and the press and the whole laundry list of causes that shape societal attitudes and cause the repression of some individuals.

But the labor movement is worried. Part of that worry is because it isn't the thirties anymore. Labor has gotten far too complicit with management, forcing workers to take all sorts of concessions to pacify and pander to the bosses instead of focusing on improving the quality of life for their members. They are also worried about aligning themselves with the "wrong" people. Many union big-wigs rely on the status quo for their paychecks. Still, the public face of labor is changing. It isn't as straight, white and male as it used to be. In spite of that it still keeps one foot in the McCarthy era. The "Red Scare," is part of what prevents them from uniting with another despised segment of the population, radicals and leftists.

So much is at stake now. If we're going to win this struggle we're going to have to unite and find some common ground. It will take more than the unions' "working families" rhetoric to bring people together. Fighting bigotry is an essential component of our struggle. If organized labor won't come out for these issues we will just have to come to them. So move over boys. Ready or not, here we come!

Turning Sixty: A Junior-Senior is Born

Aging is something that I never thought could happen to me. At sixteen I believed I might live to twenty-two. At twenty-two following the death of my mother, the suicide of my grandmother and the death of her husband, my grandfather, three months after that, I was sure that my life would be over within the year.

But life is funny. The survival instinct is overpowering. If you just keep putting one foot in front of the other, time passes. There is always one more dinner, one more drink, one more joint, one more line, one more TV show and one more movie. So it goes. What some refer to as "substance abuse," I now think of as self-medication. It saved my life. There was my sister Lori, to care for, she hadn't yet finished high school. And my old friend Barb who I'd run into at my mother's funeral. She was living in a trailer in a campground. Having worked as a bartender, she really knew how to "entertain." She claimed her life in Ohio was going nowhere fast. So, my sister, Barb and I set off in search of a sea change in the wide open promise of California.

When I tell folks I came out here to live thirty-eight years ago, they look at me with the kind of dismissive disbelief with which I used to regard old people. Sometimes it feels as though every sentence I speak is loaded down with time. I'll say I lived in San Francisco for fourteen years, but now I've lived in the East Bay for twenty-one. These are huge numbers. The folks who are the "right age" now were born in the eighties. When I was thirty-something, I admitted to myself that when I looked over a crowd of people, I only saw the ones in my age group. That seems natural for the young. It must have to do with mate selection and sex drive. I'm sure Charles Darwin could explain it.

In two years I'll qualify for Social Security, if we still have it. I work half-time now, not completely of my own volition, but sometimes even that seems like too much. I'm still strong and healthy but my energy level is not what it used to be. I remember working full time from 8:30 to 5:30, picking up a burrito on the run and then attending a political meeting that lasted until 9:30 or so. Following that meeting, we'd often go to a bar to drink and play pool until closing.

Ah, youth, definitely wasted on the young. If you'd told me then that one day I'd be blogging about it, you could have proved the existence of a parallel universe on a time/space continuum. And, speaking of physics,  if Stephen Hawking can make peace with his limited body, I'm sure I can learn to accept mine.

Scapegoating at Work

The tanking economy has put more pressure on those workers who are left after layoffs, cut-backs and general attrition. Unfilled positions mean heavier workloads for those of us who have survived the slaughter. Our punishment is more of a slow and painful death instead of a simple beheading. Scapegoating in the workplace is not a new phenomenon. It was a problem before the recession as well. It just seems that now everyone being hammered senseless an desperately seeking a dog to kick.

The position of scapegoat is usually a rotating one. The person who holds it is perceived as powerless by others. You are not going to find a middle or upper management person being targeted. I've been actively in the workforce for 40 plus years now and have seen many scapegoats. I have also been one from time to time. In the huge majority of cases I've witnessed the person who falls out of favor is female. As women we have a lot of unwritten expectations piled on our plates. Transgression is easy. The bitch stereotype resonates with almost everybody, male and female alike. And it's a hard hole to climb out of. You can use direct confrontation tactics but that is a slippery slope. Both yelling and crying will only make it worse. Keeping your mouth closed and working hard is the only strategy I've seen work. But it's a protracted one. Don't expect results overnight.

RIght now it is happening to two people I know of at the library where I am employed. One a lesbian artist, the other a straight mom. The arguments against both of them are remarkably similar: "She is not a team player,"  She doesn't allow her work to interfere with her life," etc. are typical statements that circulate about them.

I'm not condemning my co-workers from a tower of self-righteousness. My hands are not clean on this issue either. And after having been the designated scapegoat more times than I care to remember, you'd think they would be. It's an oddly compelling feeling to dish someone in a group setting. It provides a sense of inclusion, of shared threat, of a common enemy. It can be a catharsis as well as a great relief to find that you are not the one being taken down. This thank god it's not me sensation has been a hit with viewers of reality shows for a couple of decades. Just watch Survivor for the reactions of other tribe members when someone is about to be voted off the island.

There is only one instance I recall here at the library when the scapegoat was male. He was a gay man who worked in the Children's Department and he was accused of child molestation. He was convicted by the testimony of co-workers and children and although the courts eventually threw out the charge saying it was unfounded, it was a blow that could not be survived. He is no longer among the living and although his death was due to disease, I'm sure the humiliation and ridicule he endured played a major role in shortening his life.

So, what can we all do to try to make our lives more tolerable in the new depression workplace where jobs are fraught with insecurity, low pay and meager benefits? I could quote Joe Hill on this one with "Don't Mourn--Organize." But if you just need to indulge in some serious trashing remember, that's what Management is there for.

DOMA, The Civil War, Scott Walker and Kathy Nickoulaus

The GOP is paying $520.00 per hour to Republican Solicitor General Paul Clement to defend the blatantly unconstitutional DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act). Aren't you glad your taxpayer dollars are going to good use?

This year is the 150th anniversary of the Civil War and according to a recent CNN poll 42% of Americans and 54% of T-yranny Party fanatics believe that slavery was not the main cause of that war. They've misconstrued it to be some kind of a states' rights thing. Speaking of the Civil War, why didn't we let the south secede? Is it too late to reconsider?

Sly Scott Walker is now not only taking away paid sick days from workers, he is trying to pass legislation similar to what Michigan governor Rick Snyder has bamboozled. He wants the power to take over districts and replace elected officials should the "budgetary need" arise. Of course, he would be the one to determine that need as well as the appropriate replacement for those officials.

In Michigan this financial martial law has taken over Benton Harbor Michigan a poor (average income $10,235 a year) predominantly African-American (85.5%) town to build a new golf course on what once was their lake-front park. Membership in this exclusive club will cost $5,000 per year.


Magician Kathy

And there is a supposedly non-partisan committee now looking into the Kathy Nickolaus sleight of hand shell game with the Wisconsin election results. Not only does she have a 13 year history of working for in the Republican Caucus for David Prosser ( the candidate she uncovered 7,000 new votes for to change the outcome of the election), her track record of screwing with vote counts in previous elections is absolutely astounding. A true magician, she can make votes appear out of nowhere. It's time for a serious challenge to this level of hanky-panky.

Fear of a Queer Cousin

As the world continues to fall apart, I have taken a quick breather, a stint, with my partner showing the San Francisco Bay Area her cousin,  my cousin-in-law, Cindy. Now before I lay out the problem, I must say that Cindy is a sweet, open-hearted person. She just happens to share some of the same old prejudices of the rest of society. Coming from a university town in New England gives her a lot of experience dealing with queer folks, especially lesbians of every stripe. In spite of her immersion, she worries about issues like her hair length, afraid she might be mistaken for a disciple from our side.

We all attended a party for an LGBT organization in which I volunteer. No problem, Cindy was eager to go. At the gathering she socialized quite a bit. When she held forth in small groups she was certain to mention an ex-boyfriend within the first 60 seconds of the conversation. Many heterosexuals feel a need to do this. I start my watch when speaking to married women. Almost unfailingly within two minutes, hubby has reared his slightly balding head. It's a strange phenomenon, perhaps intricately linked to the hyper-sexualization of the queer, or maybe just plain out-and-out fear of being subjected to the kinds of prejudice and discrimination to which we have become accustomed. In this specific circumstance I  think that Cindy was a bit concerned that someone would come on to her. As a long-time dyke this fear both annoys and amazes me. I want to shake the folks who display it and ask,"Do you know how hard it is to actually pick up another woman?" The push-me, pull-you dance of lesbian dating is a courtship more nuanced and stylized than the mating dance of the flamingo.

Life for queers is definitely improving, although sometimes it feels like two steps forward, one step back. In my early days of political activity, when a heterosexual person dared to defend the rights of a non-heterosexual one, he or she would invariably begin the sentence with the phrase, I'm straight but...

I would have liked to respond, " I don't give a flying crap about your straight butt," there is a greater moral imperative here!