More than Seventeen, Less than Twenty

 

For the NTH year in a row, I've completely spaced my blogoversary.  

On September 25, 2003, I sat at the keyboard and clacked out my very first post to the "new" AOL hometown construct-- "journal land."

 Infant, yea, almost embryonic social media.

And, you know what?

It was SO much more...SOMETHING...back in that fleeting moment of technological childhood.

But...I stick around.  

Because this little blog has remained the least sullied corner of social media that I can find. 

So, when I get sick of wading through the manure on Twitter (and I wouldn't go back to Facebook if you paid me big money), I come here and...splatter something.

Happy Birthday, Coming to Terms.

I still love ya.   

GOODBYE Already, Summer!

 

I've made no secret of the fact that I'm no longer a fan of summer.  Advancing age has slowed my walk and dulled my senses to the point that I simply cannot keep up with the frenetic "Go! Go! Go!" of long warm days and short sleepless nights.  For many, summer is like a 90-day-long party.  I'm hard pressed to party for even 90 minutes, much less 90 days.  When fall rolls around and the pace slows down, the nights get longer and the days lose their aggressive heat, I am SO there for it.

And of course, for the past 2 years, we've had COVID to deal with, as well as summer.  Ordinarily, I'm just as happy to stay away from the crowds summer brings to local recreation areas in a largely tourist-driven economy.  So I can't say I was terribly unhappy when the summer of 2020 rolled into history and I had done nothing and gone nowhere for 3 months.  But this year, we were looking forward (sort of...) to jump-starting Cafe de la Rue with a return to the Scandinavian Festival.  And we almost did it...came within a hair.  But as July approached, I realized our age-depleted work force was not going to be able to handle the event.  And then, Delta variant arrived, our vaccinated nephew came down with COVID, and we knew that the 2021 Festival was going to have to go forward without us old people who, three short months previously, were so certain we would be out from under the COVID threat for good.  

I honestly don't know whether to be elated or depressed about that particular development.  The only mildly sad part was that without the activity and engagement of production, set-up, and the actual festival week itself, summer yawned on even more interminably than usual.      

I sweated and dragged, sighed and coughed my way through July and August. It seemed as if the days just kept getting longer and longer, hotter and hotter, smokier and smokier.

 

By the third week of August, I was seriously jonesing for fall.  I started bringing out my fall decorations (everybody was harping, "It's a little early for that, isn't it?") If it couldn't be fall outside, I was going to have it inside, by god.

The last week of August rolled by like a freight train grinding to a halt just before it gets completely clear of the railroad crossing. "Oh, god...it's still only August!" Eighty- and ninety-degree days pulled summer along with them deep into September.

Then I blinked twice...and it's almost October.

 

It's here at last.  MY time of the year.

I going to wrap my arms around it and hug it like a long-lost friend. 

 

Love This Image...

 

 

 

I'm not sure if the sentiment is valid 

(what with the GOP intently focusing on 

taking away the power of our votes)

But I do love the image.

I feel like it takes back the "American eagle"

 lately hijacked by wingnut "patriots..."

Progress?

A reliable universal truth:

One step forward

Two steps back.

Every. Fucking. Time.

 

 

Presidential Images

 It is an enduring source of shame 

for the United States of America, 

that this man was elected President 

 

...and this man almost did not defeat him in 2020.

What is wrong with us????

"No One Wants to Work!"

 

How sick to death am I of hearing American businesses whine that they can't get help, and "No one wants to work do (sic) to government handouts"?!  American business has been the beneficiary of a "Lucky To Have A Job" economy since the crash of 2008.  And sporadically before that, every time the economy has taken a financial dump, large or small--which has historically occurred every four or five years since 1929--Americans workers became "luckier and luckier" to have employment bestowed upon them by beneficent American Business.  It's hard to know whether these economic contractions were actually orchestrated by Big Business. I suspect that's highly possible.  Because every time one of these blips shows up on the economic radar screen and unemployment rises, business exploits to the hilt the opportunity to browbeat American workers into believing they are SO "lucky to have a job."  ANY job.  The shittier the better. 

And since simply HAVING a job is reward in itself, any notion of attracting employees with higher pay, health benefits, paid time off, or schedules that allow them to have lives outside of work has disappeared, as if it never existed...at least, that's what business would like us to believe.  American businesses do not want employees.  They want slaves.  Or, at the very least, indentured servants with no hope and no options. 

The "recovery" following the Great Recession of 2008 was fueled by an explosion of crappy, low-paying service jobs.  Restaurants and retail businesses opened on every corner.  Strip malls sprang up magically on every empty lot within spitting distance of a population center.  The expansion of these two industries was largely fueled by the existence of a labor pool full of Americans thrown out of work by the high jinks of the big banks, desperate for an income...ANY income.  The restaurant and retail industries made hay while the bright sun of high unemployment shone down upon them.  People needed jobs.  Businesses could pay the legal minimum, offer no benefits, guarantee no hours, treat workers like crap...and people would put up with it.  Because folks had to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.  Exploitative employment practices became a fundamental bullet point in the business plans of the service industry.  

I know this because I participated in it.  I owned a restaurant from 2006-2011.  I never paid myself, and we never made any money.  But we stayed in business.  If I'd been required to pay my employees a living wage and provide benefits for them, I would not even have been able to consider being an entrepreneur.  My restaurant would not have existed.  (And the world would have gone along fine without it.)  But worker exploitation was/is the industry standard.  I never gave it a second thought.  Now...let's just say my eyes have been opened.

It's not difficult to understand why COVID-19 has brought a time of reckoning to the service industry.  Enhanced unemployment benefits early in the pandemic provided exploited workers with an opportunity to enjoy what it might be like to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads without being subject to the terrible conditions offered by the service industry: no set schedule, no guarantee of income, no paid days off, no vacation, no health insurance, nasty managers who didn't give a crap about the workers, and wildly aggressive customers.  People finally got the message that a stagnant  minimum wage wasn't nearly enough compensation for having to work under those conditions.  And the "front line workers" who kept their jobs during the pandemic, literally putting their lives on the line every day to continue the flow of dollars into their employers' pockets, got to experience first-hand exactly how much their lives were valued by those employers--who would basically allow customers to get away with any bad behavior, up to and including physically assaulting workers, in order to keep the cash registers ringing.  

Today, service industries are bleeding employees to the tune of 700,000 workers a month who are turning their backs on their former or present employers, walking away and never looking back.  They're finding work in the health care industry, or the gig economy, or wherever they can as long as it's NOT servitude to mean, aggressive customers for the benefit of nasty, uncaring companies.  

And what are the employers doing?  Are they ponying up extra dollars, looking at providing health insurance, coming up with attractive benefit packages...basically doing what it will take to attract workers in a free market economy where there is a labor shortage?  Hell fucking no!  They're putting up signs on their doors whining that they can't open or they've had to cut their hours because nobody wants to work due to government handouts.  They're staying steadfastly and aggressively blind to their culpability for their own problems, and blaming the government...because the free market gravy train has stopped going their way and veered off toward giving workers the advantage.  Oh, waaaaaah!   

Economies swing on a pendulum.  Back and forth between boom and bust, feast and famine.  Fueled by an unforeseen rise in fascism, helmed by a corrupt, power-mad political party ostensibly representing half the voting population of the country, ours has taken a dangerous swing toward oligarchy.  But the pendulum can be counted upon to reach its zenith in one direction, and fall back the other way, one way or another.  In the past, this has been heralded by murder and mayhem, bloody revolutions and periods of tooth-gnashing anarchy.  

Let's hope that COVID-19 has been the catalyst the US has needed to come to its senses and reset the economic scales, so that we can skip the riots, the guillotine and the firing squads this time around.  Let's hope that those of us who lately have survived at the pleasure of the rich can retrieve our dignity, and some measure of the power that has been stolen from us over the past 70 years, without having to grab them out of the cold, bloody dead hands of those who took took them from us.  

From my keyboard to gods' ears....   

     

Cry Me a Goddamn River

 So, I screen-shotted this off my Twitter profile...today's tweet:

AND:

1.) For Chrissake, LEARN HOW TO SPELL.

2.) Guess you've lost MY business, asshole. 

The Questions of Retirement

 

Last year, every event that keeps Cafe de la Rue afloat was canceled. 

It was worrying, because we still have about $30k in debt associated with the business. Plus a building for which we have to continue to furnish utilities, internet and trash service.

Somehow, between the COVID stimulus payments, our tax refunds and the money we had squirreled away from 2019, we managed to keep the bills paid without too much hand-wringing.

We're now poised to re-start Cafe de la Rue.  Our one big event--the Scandinavian Festival in Junction City--is determined to go forward.  This depends heavily on the vaccination rate in the state: The governor says she will relax most if not all COVID restrictions once 70% of Oregonians 16 and over have received at least one dose of vaccine.  We are currently at about 60%. And while the Oregonian (Portland's newspaper) optimistically predicts we'll reach 70% by June 28, I am not getting behind THAT prediction.  We have way too many brain-dead Trumpsters running around the state for me to predict we'll EVER get to that 70% benchmark.  Be that as it may, we're preparing to gear up for the August festival.  

But the year of enforced idleness has given me fresh insight into my little business and its future...or lack thereof. 

We "founded" Cafe de la Rue in 2002.  It was started in part to fulfill my dream of owning my own food business, but there were two additional factors that were key to the genesis of Cafe de la Rue. #1--I was determined to have a place where family members down on their luck and in need of cash could work, and earn enough money to get them through rough spots. #2--As a family, we were totally in love with the Scandinavian Festival, and being a part of it was a primary goal. (It helped that it generated a fair amount of profit, as well...)

The "stasis" year of 2020, and the prospect of getting back into things in 2021, have given me the opportunity to take a stark look at how my business is continuing to fulfill the goals that inspired it, and what life would look like without it. 

Is Cafe de la Rue still fulfilling my dream of owning my own business? Better question, is owning my own business still a dream?  I'd have to say, "Been there, done that."  Entrepreneurship has morphed from dream to obligation.  Which, at nearly 66 years old, I'm wondering if it's an obligation I want to continue to carry around.     

 

Is it providing needed income to any family members?  Most of us don't NEED the income of the business any more.  It generates a decent amount of pocket money, but not enough to call a "windfall" and/or apply to any major purchases we might not have made without it.  The one family member who could actually USE the extra cash has informed me that her physical limitations will preclude much of her involvement in the festival and preparations for it.  So...no.  Family is no longer benefiting from the business.  In fact, the advanced age of all concerned has all at once caught up to us; to the point where we will need to procure outside help if we even hope to pull off this year's festival at all.

Lastly, are we still in love with the Scandinavian Festival?  The answer to that has to be an unqualified, "No." Which I realized last week for good and all, when we attended the lamest "vendor meeting" associated with the festival upon which it has ever been my misfortune to waste an hour of my life that I will never get back.  In fact, it was that meeting that inspired this post.

I got home from that meeting, and I had to pause and really think about why we USED to love doing the festival, why it was so important for us to be a part of it, in the past.  And if those parameters still exist.  And I realized that the festival IS NOT THOSE THINGS to us, anymore.

Because we wanted to be part of the experience.  We wanted to be able to go watch the dancing on a slow afternoon, or go out and wander the craft booths, or take an hour and go to the wine terrace at the end of a shift.  In the old days, that was what we did.  Unfortunately, in the last three years, there has been a major attrition of food booths at this festival which commands an attendance in excess of 100,000 souls in a weekend.  As a result, our own business has increased exponentially.  We've gone from that state of being able to partake of the festival to a 4-12-hour-day hammer-fest.  Lines at the window, 2 blocks long, for hours at a time.  ANY time.  ALL the time.  

Sure, we bring in a lot of bucks.  But it isn't fun anymore.  In fact, this year, I'm wondering if it's even possible.  Or if there's enough of fun, reward or exhilaration about it for about it for me to make it possible.  I have serious doubts.

Unfortunately, we are not going to be able to throw in the towel quite yet.  The federal government came to our rescue in the form of a sizeable chunk of grant money.  Which was bestowed upon us in the interest of helping us restart our little business and get it running again.  

If we don't keep going, we have to give back the money.  And I have a hard time with the concept of giving back $40k of free money.  

Though, honestly, we might have to revisit that question on September 1.  And I'm prepared to do that. 

Sometimes It's Better Not to Know

 One of the ostensibly positive services social media provides is the ability to locate long-lost friends and family members.

Though I have to say, for me, this particular "service" has more often been a curse than a blessing.

It has shown me exactly how valued I am/was by any human being in my past.

The few times I have located people I knew years ago, they have politely responded with a weak, "Oh...hi!" and then disappeared back into the ethereal forest, never to be heard from again.

So, oh well.  Not really life-affirming.

Be that as it may, I had one friend that I secretly yearned to reconnect with.  A friend from my childhood.  My best friend.  For more than 20 years.  We were practically sisters during our school years.  Nearly inseparable.  We spent so much time at each others' houses that we called each others' parents "Mom and Dad."  

Maid/matron of honor in our weddings, months apart, in 1976.

 

When the husband and I moved to Oregon in 1984, my friend and I drifted apart.  She and her husband visited us a couple of years later, on their way to moving themselves to Arizona.

I saw her one last time back in the 90's--an awkward weekend visit that ended with promises to keep in touch.  I wrote her a letter shortly after she went back home.  It came back, "Moved, Left No Forwarding Address."

After that, I made a few attempts to find her on the internet now and then.  When I came up empty time after time, I put 2 and 2 together and figured I had my answer. If I couldn't contact her, it was probably because she didn't want me to.  Ok.  I made my peace with it.  It was what it was. 

Until last month.

A whole complex set of circumstances involving Facebook and my husband (who refused to have anything to do with FB during the years I was on it, but has inexplicably changed his mind, now that I have walked away from it...) put me in touch with this friend I have been secretly longing to find for so many years.

She sent me an email.  I sent her one back.  She answered.  I responded.

All very tentative.

All very revealing about where each of us is on this life's journey.  

And increasingly indicative of how far apart we have traveled from one another, physically, spiritually, ideologically.

She is a bible-believing evangelical.  A deaconess, married to a deacon.  In Arizona.

Do the math.

Now, I have no problem with REAL Christians. I told her my attitude toward spiritual beliefs is that I am fine with whatever works for an individual, whatever makes them a better person.  And I expect that latitude to be extended to me in return. She responded that she is sorry that I don't believe that Jesus Christ is my lord and savior.  Face palm.

Still, I held out hope that she was the kind of Christian who had chosen the actual guidance of Christ over the ideological right-wing, Trumpian bullshit minefield. Hoped against hope that she would be one of those rare individuals who had not jumped into the political fray with both feet. Knowing the "her" of 40 years ago, I thought it possible this would be so. 

Yesterday, I convinced my husband, who is FB friends with my old friend, to show me her page.  I really just wanted to see a current picture of her, and maybe her new husband, and get some idea of her life.

She had four pictures posted on FB.

One of them was this:

So, today, I am sad.

I am glad to know that she's alive, and happy, and doing what she wants to do, fulfilling what she believes is her purpose on the planet.

But I am so, SO sad that she has been led to choose Trump over reality.  To choose the Golden Calf over the true way of Christ.

And I hate this ideological crevasse that has yawned across our world, cruelly separating those who should be connected by love and a shared history. 

Sometimes, it's better not to know.

Ten Things About COVID 19: Number 10 (8 & 9 Got Lost Somewhere)--Coming Out of Hiding

 

Last summer, I started a "series" on COVID 19.  It was supposed to be a "10 Things" format...I made it all the way to Number 7 and...dropped the thread.  I'm not sure why, but I have a pretty good idea.  

I have written in journals since I was in high school.  I have a stack of them mouldering away in a closet somewhere.  For the past 17 1/2 years, I've kept my journal in this closet called "Coming to Terms."  My angst, my anger, my sadness, my loneliness...all the desperate emotions that are part of being human (and more a part of some lives than of others)...are recorded, mostly in places where no eyes but mine will ever see them.  In fact, "Coming to Terms" qualifies as that now, doesn't it?

But the unifying thread through all my writing is angst.  As a general rule, when I'm happy or positive or content, I don't write.  I don't have to.  

So, beyond all reason, and contrary to what the entire rest of the world had been going through from March 2020 through March 2021, I was...happy.  I had my husband--my best friend--as a constant companion, for the first time in more than half our marriage.  I had my pod of sisters and spouses, meeting outdoors for "wine" a couple of times a week...for them, it was to alleviate boredom; for me, it was cement, patching together the fractured relationships that had sent me to 20 years exile in Scappoose.

My writing languished for months.  One would think all the horrible things going on in the world daily, from COVID to Trump to the Big Lie to the January 6 Insurrection to daily mass shootings and back to COVID again, would have had me banging away on the keyboard morning and night.  But I was so content, so warm and cozy in my little COVID bubble, that I just couldn't muster the deep, burning angst necessary to ignite my creative fire. The only thing that darkened my “lockdown” days was the loss of my four sweet boys in less than 2 years.  Those events tore me up, but only enough to write about them, specifically.  Not enough to jump-start my writing about anything else.  Because I was more content, felt more loved and connected to one special human being than I had in many, many years.  It was a powerful drug, stronger than any anti-depressant on the market.  

But here I am now, crawling out of my cozy nest box and firing up the keyboard once again.  

Why?

Because the nest box is empty and lonely, now.  

We've been vaccinated.  We're all setting our sights on getting back to "normal." 

For me, that means the husband has gone back to work and left me to once again get my own life.  And my family has gone back to our dysfunctional, "no one can hurt you like family" ways.

"Sheltering in place" is officially over.  Time to get back to life as it was, or something as closely approximating that as possible.

Yay.