Category: Essays

Why We Can’t expect BP to Care

~ Deb ~ 1 Comment

As if we needed another reason to hate BP.  Now it seems that the British Petroleum Corporation might have applied its considerable corporate pressure in assuring the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi from a Scottish prison last year.   If that name doesn’t exactly ring a bell, here’s some help — PanAm bombing, Lockerbie Scotland, 1988, 270 people dead, Libya, terrorism.  Add those all together and you get Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who was released a year ago (to the astonishment of many Scots, Brits, and Americans) based on a doctor’s statement that he had advanced pancreatic cancer and three months to live.  He received a hero’s welcome in Libya where, by the way, he is still very much alive, and now doctors are saying he can live at least another 10 years.

Why would BP do this?  For one reason only: a 900 million dollar oil deal with Libya.

A while back, my Tea Party friend (yes, I do have one) asked me, after a rather heated exchange, “Just what do you have against big business?”

What I WANTED to say was, “Where would you like me to start?”  But, instead, in order to keep peace, I said, “I have nothing against big business, per se, but . . .” and then I’m sure I went into some watered-down attempt at civility which didn’t really make my point at all.

So, better late than never, here is what I have against big business.  Capitalism in its pure form, the form so blindly adherred to by the Tea Party Crowd, the form that follows only the god of the bottom line, the form that would see the devastation in the Gulf as primarily an image problem, that form of capitalism simply has no heart.

As I understand it, the IRS views a corporation as an individual.  I can’t speak to the validity of that on a corporate finance level, but on a human level it’s just plain wrong.  An individual takes her choices to bed at night, turns them over and over in the old noggin, has difficulty sleeping if those choices negatively impact others.  An individual watches a commercial for an organization feeding hungry children or rescuing unwanted dogs and reaches for his debit card.  An individual feels something akin to nausea when an oil-covered bird or a beached dolphin makes the evening news.

A corporation is a group of people consciously agreeing to a mob mentality and taking the unbreakable vow, “My company, right or wrong.”   It inherently has no heart.  The closest it can come is by having leaders of integrity, a board that values compassion, and stockholders who openly admit that money isn’t everything.

Perhaps Alan Greenspan is shocked that corporations won’t regulate themselves, but I’m certainly not.  Saddened, but not shocked.  Because capitalism has no heart.  You can’t really expect a purely capitalistic society to actually act human, can you?

My Tea Party friend loves to reduce things to the lowest common denominator.  If I blast BP, then I must be against big business.  (It’s apparently a contagious illness in politics; this same don’t-make-me-think-too-much-please-keep-things-simple reduction is the red meat of the Limbaugh-Beck-Palin crowd.)  But it’s just flat-out wrong.  I’m not against big business.  I just don’t want to make it king.

Make money.  Hell, get filthy rich.  But here are the rules, and here is the corner of our society in which we’ll let you play them.  You don’t get to trample over the whole of who we are just to get what you want.  We can’t rely on you to have a heart, corporate world; we know you don’t.  That’s okay.  But we want a society ruled by compassion, and that’s why we have to keep you in your place.   Don’t take it personally.

Thoughts on Cleaning the House

~ Deb ~ 1 Comment

We had a party on the Fourth of July.  (It was great.  Sorry you missed it.)  This means, of course, that we spent all day Saturday and the bulk of Sunday morning preparing the house for the arrival of guests in the afternoon.  The lawn had been mowed on Thursday.  Saturday morning began with a marathon weed-eating session.  We have two acres, lots of trees, a long driveway, several planters, sidewalks, etc.  Weed eating this mo-fo is not a small task.

Since I already carried the stench of one of the original transcontinental railroad track layers after a week under the prairie sun, I tackled the rest of the outdoor chores.  Moving the patio table and chairs, cleaning out coolers in preparation for ice and beer, setting up the slip-n-slide for the young’uns, blowing off the deck and patio, picking up dog poop, etc., etc., ad nauseam, et. al, i.e., e.g., and so on.   Then to the outside windows and doors.

I’ll let you in on a little secret: I’m a perfectionist.  My partner, Susie, is the queen of the day-to-day upkeep of the house.  I, on the other hand, take these tasks far too seriously.  If you ask me to clean the kitchen, I will emerge two hours later from a kitchen that looks like it was just newly installed.  So, cleaning doors and windows extrapolated into a detail job involving a broom, Windex, far too many paper towels, Q-tips, and a bamboo skewer originally intended for grilling kabobs (not enough room here to explain the necessity of the last item).   The Buddhist part of my nature hid behind my inner pragmatist while I (inadvertantly, but resolutely) killed unknown numbers of spiders with the lethal weapon of an ammonia-soaked environmentally-unfriendly disposable towel.

Then to the inside, and I shant bore you with details with which you are likely all too familar.  Dusting, vacuuming, more Windex, etc., etc., ad nauseam, et. al., i.e., e.g., and so on.

Here is the interesting thing, and the point of this diatribe (I DO have one).  I did all of this with immense joy.  I physically felt really good, which helps.  And I usually find some modicum of joy in menial tasks such as these (the Buddhist part of my nature).  Also, I receive an inordinate amount of pleasure in a crisp, clean, neat little house.  But cleaning the house is a different experience based upon the event it precedes, I have discovered.

For instance, why was deep cleaning for a party a joy, but cleaning for my mother to come visit is often fraught with anxiety and pressure?  I anticipate both events with equal levels of happiness, and  I receive ample house admiration in each instance.  But, my mother’s compliments often feel more like a validation of my very personhood — my issue, not hers.  Wait, did I just hit on something here?  Does cleaning house for my mother’s arrival contain elements of my value as a person, my essential goodenoughness?  With my friends, face it, I’m just showing off.  With my mother, I’m showing up, who I am, how I live.

I originally learned how to live in my mother’s house, naturally.  I learned her value system of cleanliness.  Perhaps the act of cleaning before she arrives feels somewhat like a test.  How well did I learn what she tried to instill?  Now, mind you, it’s a test administered by me, not her.  As with most things, I proctor my own life exam.  I’m not quite sure how to completely stop grading myself when it comes to my mother (if anyone has figured this out, COMMENT BELOW PLEASE!).  But, for the party at least, I give myself an “A.”

Should have taken pictures.  So I could send them to my mother, of course.

Thinking It Through

~ Deb ~ 1 Comment

What would happen if I did what I want?

If I wrote instead of working (as if writing is just a big bowl of warm blackberry cobbler with ice cream and not actually work).  If I took all the eggs out of the money-must-be-earned-to-pay-these-bills basket and put them in the passion-lives here-but-you might-starve basket.  If I made a dream a priority.

What would happen if I changed the whole shape and tenor of my life?

If I dared to leap.  If I leapt to dare.  If I measured possibilities for joy instead of the risks of coming up short.

What would happen if one time, just one time, I didn’t analyze, consider, ponder, determine potential outcomes, weigh options, choose wisely?  What would happen if I did not prepare words in advance?  What would happen if I tore up the balance sheet I keep for money?  And grudges.  And me-and-you.

What would happen if I dismantled the system I’ve constructed called “How To Get Through Life” and replaced it with a merry-go-round of pink horses and red dragons and blue dolphins?  If I stopped marching to so many different drummers and danced like a dervish instead.  If I laughed more and growled less.

What would happen if I took the painting of the me I have allowed the world to see, covered it in white, and started again?  With brighter colors this time, bolder strokes, a little less Baroque and a little more Impressionism.

What would happen if I did what I want?

I’ll you what would happen.  I’d be living from my heart.

The Promise Moon

~ Deb ~ 1 Comment

I’ve been a new moon of late — present, rejuvenating, and yet devoid of light.  It’s as if the universe had lined up the stars in just a way to pull the plug, and the best I could do was to watch my imagination, inspiration, and focus swirl away down the drain.

If you watch astrology the way I do, then you know that there are all kinds of interesting things happening in the sky right now.  Crosses, squares, interesting alignments.  I know just enough to know that the heavens reflect the happenings on this planet with amazing accuracy.  We are indeed part of a web, or perhaps many webs, both macro and micro.  When a string gets tugged by Saturn, we feel the pull.  When lines get crossed, we knot up.  When a meteor shower skips over the grid, we can hear the music of the celestial harp.  Of course, you have to listen very carefully.

I am intrigued by it all, but it is the moon that most often captures my imagination.  I ebb and flow in huge shifts of light and darkness just like our constantly hovering lunar mother.  And, of late, I’ve been a little too waning crescent for comfort.

Last night I stood out under my favorite moon, the waxing gibbous.  I know that might seem a little strange.  Isn’t everyone’s favorite the full moon?  A full and glorious, round and pregnant moon is the muse of poets.  It is the altar of nature worshippers.  It is the author of crazy nights for emergency room physicians.  Although this opportunity is rare in an urban world, try to find a dark wood on a full moon night and you will be truly amazed at how brilliantly lit the nocturnal world can be.  But the yang to the yin of a full moon is that there is nowhere to go from here except backwards.  The shadow will slowly creep back in until the moon mother sleeps again in her renewing.

Ah, but a waxing gibbous is full of promise.  It seems to say, “Here I come.  I’m bringing back the light.”  I want to do things under a waxing gibbous.  I want to write and sing and dance and create.  I want to paint pictures, which is truly strange because I really, really can’t do that at all.  Under the waxing gibbous I feel potential swell up within me.  I love the promise moon.  It brings me back.