Tonight the family gathered round the glowing plasma for some teevee time. “The Empire Strikes Back” kept us entertained, although we were moreso by all jokes we were making about it. During one of the every ten minutes, twenty minute commercial break, a burger ad came on excitedly touting the value proposition of the “BK Stacker” family, consisting of anywhere from one to four 2 ounce beef patties, bacon, cheese and some dressing:
650 calories
43g fat
18g sat. fat
1g trans fat
145mg cholesterol
38g protein
29g carbs
7g sugar
1020mg sodium
I’ll give the BK Marketing folks some credit. They describe the “BK Triple” as a “mountainous monument of meat.” That’s poetry. Anyway, when meat mountain scaled the screen, the following conversation ensued:
Megan: “Oh, that’s gross!” Dad: “Megan, there are people grabbing their car keys right now.” (Laughter)
I always look for reasons to quote great lyrics, and today’s title is from the Drive By Truckers, “The Righteous Path.”
Since the holidays I’ve been pinching pennies a bit, saving for Paris in the Springtime. Exactly ten days ago I did a quick(en) review of my short-term finances and it looked like I had an extra $800 or so in checking that could be moved to “le fonds France.” After dark, I walked out along the short front walk to check the mailbox, its long slender pole-neck finally out of the snow sweater it had been wearing for a couple months. I pulled out a Victoria Secrets catalog, about 14 credit card solicitations for Megan and… ugh… my heating oil bill for $673.05. I’m not complaining. I can pay it and don’t need to re-fi my house to do it. I wonder how other families less fortunate than mine are coping with the rising costs of heating oil and gasoline.
There are far too many families that can’t pay and can’t save because offshoring and the Wall Street theft of 2008 have swelled unemployment and depressed wages. A Culpepper salary survey pegged US salary increases for 2009-11:
2009 1.66%
2010 2.38%
2011 2.91% (projected)
In stark contrast to Wall Street bonuses:
2009 $20.3B
2010 $20.8B (Average bonus $128,530)
Love him or hate him, Michael Moore isn’t afraid to state a point of view. Recently he was in Wisconsin to support the union workers there. He said:
“America is not broke. Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you’ll give up your pension, cut your wages and settle for the life your great grandparents had. America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash. It’s just that it is not in your hands.”
“It has been transferred in the greatest heist in American history from the workers and consumers to the banks and portfolios of the uber-rich. Right now this afternoon just 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined… most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer bailout of 2008 now have more cash, stock, and property than the assets of 155 million Americans combined.
“I’m trying to keep focused on the righteous path.” Amen.
Leaving my office I began to think about this post. A little button in my head was pushed. It is round with tapered and slightly shaded edges and a right facing triangle. Immediately precisely arranged zeroes and ones streamed out splices of a Bob Seger song. First words were “On the road again,” but then the song jumped across a couple deep, black grooves to “There I go… Turn the page.”
Odd. I know the song popped into my head because I was thinking of a post title, and it really doesn’t take much to push that button anyway. Anyway, this post isn’t about turning the page in the sense Seger sang about, but a page turner by Cormac McCarthy, “The Road.”
The book was recommended a few months ago by (Work)Joyce, so I downloaded bits of a sample to my Kindle and read it while climbing stairs yesterday. Joyce suggested I could relate to the story of father and son survivors touring the charred corpse of earth, courtesy of Mutually Assured Destruction. Kindle samples vary. Some are long and rich. Others barely get you to chapter 1. This stretch of “The Road” stomped stairclimbing me in less than 20 pages. Here are three that kicked me hard:
“He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.”
Son: “What would you do if I died?”
Father: “If you died I would want to die too.”
Son: “So you could be with me?”
Father: “Yes. So I could be with you.”
Son “Okay.”
“You forget some things, don’t you?
Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.”
It’s bleak but right now irresistible. Gotta go turn the page.
Before my face was kissed by the cold, fresh air, I could see through the tall cafeteria windows that a sunset was happening. It wasn’t a “10” on the awe scale, just some pleasant refraction sketching an outline around low, puffy clouds of gray-blue. Many of us are fortunate to see so many sunsets in our lives that few stick in our memories, and most of the time we remember more about the place and who we were with than the exact colors and style of nature’s curtain call.
It’s only been 12 hours or so and the hues exact position in the Crayola 133 is fading. A quick lookup suggests last night’s horizon wasn’t colored with any of the “standard 12.” Yeah, sure, they were palette mixed from the 3 primary shades, but from rapidly dimming recall, I’m guessing it was Atomic Tangerine or Bittersweet. Yeah, that’s the one.
My childhood memories evoke the long, bright days of endless summer. I’m sure some of the shortening days of increasing cold and darkness are buried in there, but the days I hold onto were warm and filled with light. As I looked at the glow seeping out of the sky last night, I wondered how many more I’d see, where I’d see them and with who. It wasn’t a bleak, morbid assessment. On the way home I chatted with my dad. He’s 77, in decent health and with fully functioning cognition. I told him how lucky he was. I realized the same about myself. At this point in life, it still seems about two minutes brighter every day.
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