Archive for the ‘rant’ Category

our entire economy is in danger

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008

it becomes clearer and clearer to me as we proceed along that Marx had it pretty much nailed:  in a capitalist society, democratic government necessarily represents the interests of the capitalists.  You can try to mitigate the harshness on the proletariat with regulations and oversight and stuff like that, but in the end, the interests being served are those of the folks that own the means of production, and who need to be able to collect labor’s surplus value in order for those magic GDP numbers to keep pinging.

When I read stuff like this:

On Capitol Hill, Mr. Paulson, facing a second day of questioning by lawmakers, this time before the House Financial Services Committee, tried to focus as much on Main Street as Wall Street.

“This entire proposal is about benefiting the American people because today’s fragile financial system puts their economic well being at risk,” Mr. Paulson said. Without action, he added: “Americans’ personal savings and the ability of consumers and business to finance spending, investment and job creation are threatened.”

All I can think about is the myopia with which the USW hitched its wagon to USX in the 60s and 70s — and you see it here in Pgh even now, and in SWPA and WV with the coal industry and the UMW — in which the interests of the labor unions get subsumed into the interests of the companies the unions work for, until we’re all working frantically to keep the capitalists from taking a bath in the shitstorm they created lest the mills close and we all lose our shirts.  Ironically, the orthodox free-market wackos agree that the capitalists have to assume all the risk when they play with their money, and are objecting to the bailout on behalf of the taxpayers.  (The wackos just also think the bourgeoisie should get to keep all the winnings when they come up holding the flush — which of course makes logical sense but makes for a very unjust society.)

But of course all of this just illustrates Marx’s point.

Sigh.

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city versus country

Saturday, July 12th, 2008

So G & I thought we were ahead of the game by submitting an application for childcare at the Waldorf School a full 5 months ahead of time, but duh, no:  they contacted us a few weeks ago to let us know they’d filled all (17? 18?) spaces for the fall and we were 26th on the waiting list.  They regretted to say that it was pretty “unlikely” that we’d be able to get in.

On the one hand, I’m totally delighted that there’s so much support for the Waldorf here, and that there are parents out there excited about getting their kids into the program, since it means there must be (at least 30-35) moms in our immediate vicinity with toddlers Zen’s age who’re down with the arty Waldorf educational philosophy — potential friends!

On the other hand, damn them for getting there ahead of us, and who exactly are we competing against, here?  Where are all these arty moms, are they actually here in Pittsburgh?  Can I meet them?  Do they push unaffordable strollers and obsess about cleanliness and are they trend-conscious in their interest in Waldorf, or are they actually real people who eat meat and dress their kids in hand-me-downs and take public transit?

More specifically, do they say they live in Pittsburgh but actually live in places like Mount Lebanon and Fox Chapel?  Because that’s just not cool.

This post is a rant but it’s not anything to do with the Waldorf — really it’s to do with this aggravating trend in which young professionals looking to start a family avoid the City of Pittsburgh like the plague, talk trash about its horrendous public schools and crumbling infrastructure, but of course all the while they all work in the city and commute in by car every day, shop at Whole Foods and visit museums and theaters and sports events and so forth, availing themselves of culture and city services they never have to pay for.  And of course if you ask them they all say they’re from Pittsburgh.

Take the well-intentioned www.pittsburghmom.com, which appears to be a site where Pittsburgh mothers can connect with each other to consult about local playgrounds and schools and daycare and family-friendly restaurants, etc., maybe set up playgroups and make new friends (which is why I just signed up — I’m looking for all those things).  Check out the discussion boards, though, and it seems like 99% of the people using the site live in the suburbs.  One post from a woman looking for information about Pittsburgh in advance of a possible future move here from Ohio asked for recommendations about neighborhoods and schools and so forth — and not a single one of the replies even deigned to consider what’s available in the city.  Have you looked at Fox Chapel and the Avonworth schools?  We love it here in Mount Lebanon and Cranberry.  There’s so much available in the Monroeveille/Plum area.  Meanwhile I’m all, but if you’re going to be working at UPMC, why not live in Oakland?  or Squirrel Hill or Shadyside, if Oakland is too declassé for you.  Is this for real?  Where are all the Pittsburgh moms, exactly?

I’m looking ahead to the fall when I’m planning to stop working for a little bit in order to Mom full-time, and getting nervous.  It feels like a little bit of a luxury to be able to stay home, after all — we’re able to squeak by on G’s income, and we don’t have to hustle like we did in New York just to make rent, so as far as we’re concerned we’re rich, and this staying-at-home plan is something of an indulgence.  In theory, at least, we’d be even better off if I worked full time, right?  But in reality I’m beginning to doubt that.

I learned from experience in New York that the more you work, and the better paid you are for that work, the more money you spend, and the less time you actually have to yourself.  Within an order of magnitude, the marginal return on a pay increase is a fraction of the actual difference in pay level.  You spend more time at work, and when you’re done you don’t have a lot of mental energy to do stuff like housework and errands and body maintenance and other chores, let alone spend quality time with your family and fun stuff like cultural events, etc., so you buy things and contract for services in an effort to make your life more enjoyable or convenient or efficient.  Life gets more expensive.

Here in Pittsburgh it’s maybe even more the case — because the payscales for the non-profit work that I do are pretty low, and the difference between what I make per hour and what we pay our babysitter, for example, isn’t a whole lot.  I could work more, but I’d have to pay for full-time childcare and probably also a housekeeper (to avoid going completely insane); and then I’d also have much less time to bargain-hunt when shopping for food or clothing or other necessities; not to mention the fact that I’d have very little time to interact with G given his chaotic round-the-clock schedule; and of course I’d be doing all this while giving someone else the privilege of playing with my baby.  It really doesn’t seem worth it, and ironically I feel like I’d actually be able to save money by not working at all.

But I don’t want to deprive Zen of the company of kids his own age, even if I’m able to give him much more of my attention — which brings me back to whole issue of signing up for daycare and looking for playgroups and moms of toddlers Zen’s age, and the mysteries of being a mom in Pittsburgh.  Like many cities, Pittsburgh has many excellent daycare programs that are all over-subscribed, with long waiting lists; but unlike many other cities, Pittsburgh doesn’t actually have many kids.  Enrollment in the public and parochial schools is declining drastically, and there’s a big demographic hole where the 25-to-40-year-olds are supposed to be, here. 

Which leads me to be very suspicious about the fact that we’re 26th on the waiting list at the Waldorf.  If there are that many kindred-spirit moms in Pittsburgh, how come I don’t know any of them?  Am I totally out of touch?  I can’t help but think we’re competing with families from the snazzy suburbs who’re up on the Reggio Emilia trend, here.  Makes me want to stalk the pick-up lines for the Little Friends program this fall, just to see how many kids are being fetched in SUVs with suburban stickers.  Grrrrr.

I could be totally wrong, of course.  I’d be happy to be wrong.  Maybe this fall I’ll have the time to sleuth out the hidden meet-ups of 30-something really-from-Pittsburgh moms with second-hand strollers and good recipies for kale and butternut squash, and I’ll cheerfully print a retraction to this rant.  But until then…

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sacred dada

Tuesday, February 5th, 2008

For very sad reasons, I found myself at a Roman Catholic mass this afternoon, for the first time in a long while.  A close friend’s dad died suddenly last week, and the services were today at St. Frances de Sales in Newark, OH.

It was a very dignified service, and the personal tributes to my friend’s dad were very moving — but (and please don’t think I’m an awful person for focusing on the trivial, here) I have to get it off my chest that every time I check in with the RC’s in America I find the church more and more ridiculous. 

I grew up attending Byzantine Catholic services at St. John the Divine in Pittsburgh’s South Side, where high mass is still sung in Old Slavonic and the priest is liberal with the swinging censer — so I know from arbitrary religious theatricality, believe me.  But I really think Vatican 2 seriously effed the RC’s shit up.  In one swell foop, they basically chucked 700+ years’ worth of priceless art commissioned of the world’s great masters in favor of some disposable kitschy airbrushed velvet portraits of Jesus.

I mean, have you seen a post-V2 RC hymnal?  I have trouble understanding how anyone can take it seriously.  The sappy lyrics are bad enough (why have dignified veneration, when you can have sentimentality?) – but the melodies are what really get to me:  a bizarre hodgepodge of hippie-dippie campfire songs, old English and Irish tunes that you remember from somewhere but can’t quite place, and (this is the real kicker for me) a bunch of old hymns they’ve poached from the Protestants.

For example, the closing hymn in this afternoon’s service began with the extremely familiar opening chords of the Old 100th – so I took a breath and actually started to sing “Praise God from whom all blessings flow — “ but realized immediately that the words everyone else was singing were totally different (and now Google is failing me, because I can’t recall the lyricist or the title of the song they were singing).  It was something really dull and obvious about walking with Jesus, I dunno — my attention was shot, because all I could think about for the duration of the song was “wait a minute, was this melody written by a Protestant or a Catholic?”

Louis Bourgeois was a Protestant, of course.  A Calvinist, even.  Someone for whom the Pope would have represented the Anti-Christ.  Someone who could probably have been burned at the stake by the Catholics for heresy in another time and place.  But hey, you know, it’s a popular melody, and it sounds churchy, so we may as well use it for a new RC hymn.

It reminded me forcibly of an RC wedding I went to a few years ago in which my whole world-view was rattled by the still-to-me-inexplicable choice the bride and groom made to have “Simple Gifts” be the hymn to be sung during the Presentation of the Gifts (itself a bizarre V2 mutation of the liturgy, imo).  They were probably thinking, here’s a pretty song about gifts, let’s have everyone sing it while our cousins bring the eucharistic bread and wine up to the altar.  But of course this left me thinking, wtf?  Shaker dance song as accompaniment to papist sacrament?  And everyone is somehow ok with this?  Am I the one who’s crazy?!

Even though I know that tradition is hardly fixed, and that religious rites always involve a fair amount of superstitious and arbitrary marching around the rug, so to speak, I just can’t get over how blithely modern American Catholics accept the post-V2 liturgy.  To me it totally feels inauthentic and amateur — barely even religious.  Pedantic and utterly without magic.

Like the priest in today’s service:  out of deference to my friend’s dad’s longstanding aversion to the V2 English mass, he rendered the consecration in Vatican Latin (using the soft c and g pronounciations) – but he did it so awkwardly that it was all I could do to keep from giggling.  At one point I think he stumbled over discipulis suis and what came out sounded like ‘dishipooey sooey,’ at which both I and the woman standing behind me visibly lurched with surpressed snorts.  Cui?  Hui, dui et lui!  Ptui!  Like, what IS that?

And really, what is it, other than unselfconscious nostalgia (read: kitsch)?  Before V2, the liturgical use of Latin by the RC was merely stubborn and antiquated; but now the vernacular barn door is open, any return to Latin is inherently inauthentic.  By which I mean, there used to be a real reason why the mass was in Latin; but once that reason was exploded in the interests of expanding modern intelligibility and accessibility, any attempt to bring Latin back feels totally arbitrary.  Unlike the Koran, in which God is very specifically speaking in Arabic, the Bible has always been a multi-lingual collage, and there are any number of older languages we might use in the interests of carrying on a sacred tradition.  I mean, if you don’t like the mass in English, why not have it in Ancient Greek?  Or Hebrew?  Or some antique Aramaic?  Anything, so long as you don’t understand what you’re saying.

Instead, we have an English-language mass where the text is intelligible but the historical subtext is completely obscured.  I’m 100% certain I’m the only person who was musing on this stuff during today’s mass, for example — or for whom there was any kind of cognitive dissonance in the appropriation of Protestant melodies in Catholic hymns, etc.  I can’t imagine why anyone else would care.  Why trouble yourself?  Bibite ex eo, omnes!  Seriously — everyone, gather ’round, take a swig!

Clearly, I need to get a life.

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