Frugality Isn’t Going to Keep Me Warm at Night

(originally published @thefrontpageonline.com)

Three days after my grandmother died, I bought a brand new luxury SUV. It turns out shopping, and I mean dig-in-your-heels research, and negotiate as if your life depends on it shopping, work excellently at keeping the grief at bay. I got a great deal on that and a few other completely unnecessary but coveted items during the week between her death and the funeral.

I can only imagine what you think of me. For many, this probably does not seem to be the most productive way to deal with grief. For me, it works. You should see the projects I’m working on next. Turns out in Los Angeles, there are plenty of ways to empty out your savings account. And plenty of people more than willing to help you.

While my grandmother has been sick for the last few months, and before and after her funeral I have been staying in her house. The same house she’s lived in for the past forty-one years. The house I lived in for five years in my childhood. The same house my mother and grandparents were thrilled to own in New York City – when home ownership was more difficult for those without many resources. The same house that went from being in a white working class neighborhood to being in the all black and Latino ghetto in less than ten years, but was never sold.

Living a Quality Life 

While at that house, I realized something about how she’d lived much of her ninety-one years – by making do.

If black people were ever the poster children for anything other than crime, drugs and welfare, many of us could be the exemplar of the puritan ethic. My grandmother never said this, but “Make do, or do without,” could have been her personal motto.

Why get the hot water faucet fixed when cold water will do. Why install new flooring when this less than lustrous flooring has some life in it? Why get something new when the old one kind of still works? In my family, it had to be dead as a doornail before it was replaced.

But that’s from growing up poor and destitute, first in Mississippi, then New York. As the oldest of nine children in rural Mississippi, my grandmother and her family were used to doing without. As sharecropping put them farther and farther into debt year after year, they did without a lot. They wore shoes only in the winter. They ate mostly what they could grow themselves. Clothes were hand sewn and handed down. Beds were always shared.

I can only imagine when the Franklin family moved to Albany and then New York City that what was available seemed like so much. A world where everyone had one of their own (whether a bed or anything else). A place where indoor plumbing, and hot and cold running water, were taken for granted. My family was by no means rich once they got to the north, but in many respects, things were better. That didn’t always make things easier. Instead of having no choices – options were thrust upon them. This one or that one? Pleasure or necessity?

There were few pleasures when they were young, and more as my grandmother and her family got better situated. But it never extended to anything as outsized as new cars, much less so-called luxury vehicles or home remodeling.

This in stark contrast to life here in Los Angeles. When my grandmother visited my house for the first time years ago, she thought it very nice. Everything, in her eyes, was new and lovely.

In contrast my eagle-eyed fellow Angelenos always ask me when I’m going to renovate. My bathrooms, they tell me, are out of date. My kitchen cabinets tacky. And in new, new, new- obsessed Los Angeles, they are probably right. The eighties weren’t kind on style – and my house drips with gold faucets and blond wood.

Because I don’t want shopping to be a twenty-four hour a day, seven day a week experience, I often make do as well. Being with my family these last months, however, has made me want to make do less – the opposite of what I expected to happen. I thought spending time with those who were frugal with their money and thoughtful of their purchases would be more reassuring. I thought that saving as much as possible for that long and inevitable future was the right thing to do. Instead, I’ve gone the other way.

I Need To Be Different 

Death has made me want to seize the day. I don’t want to make do. I don’t want to do without. Now, more than ever, I want to live life fully. Turning forty late last year, coupled with this death, among others, and cancer scares from every direction, has given me a sense of carpe diem.

Didn’t like the car I’m driving, I got a new one. Hate the tacky, poorly designed kitchen in my house – I’m starting a remodel next week. Don’t use that paved backyard (my second in Los Angeles – what’s up with that?), get someone to jackhammer it up. I’m not sure if anything is gained by suffering. I’m not gunning for that Martyr of the Year award. The accolades of frugality aren’t going to keep me warm at night.

With death comes finality. There’s something to the adage about not being able to take it with you. Since I can’t take any of it anywhere, I plan to enjoy it now.

Warning: You’ve killed 30 (and a half)

(originally published @thefrontpageonline.com)

A broken Ramones CD was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I was probably the last living fan of the U.S. Post Office. After all, my father worked there most of his life, and I had a soft spot in my heart for that bastard step-child of government agencies. Alas, that love lives no more.

Having a nostalgic moment over the holidays, I ordered a CD of the Ramones’ greatest hits. In what can only be a great moment of karma, the CD was shipped that day and arrived in my hands the next day – while I was still on the wayback machine. The bad news, the CD packaging, which was emblazoned with red letter warnings: “Do not machine,” was clearly tossed into one of the postal sorting machines. The CD was cracked in half when it arrived.

“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’” Who’d have ever thought I’d be invoking Ronald Reagan? I’m as liberal, as radical, as they come. I think a little or a lot of socialism is a good thing. But the longer I live, the more I distrust American governments, federal, state, and local.

Both Parties Are Guilty 

My mother says the whole social safety net is falling apart – as planned – by some evil Republican conspiracy. I can only point out that we’ve had a bunch of Democrats in power, and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. If the Republicans are wolves, then the Democrats are wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Take public schools as one example. If anyone had a choice, would she trust her children to schools that fail at teaching, all the while keeping the students penned up in what can only be described as a prison-like environment – accompanied by “lockdowns,” “searches,” and tall, tall fences. What about any of that inspires trust in the government? I used to automatically vote for any school ballot initiatives. In good conscience, I don’t anymore. I can’t imagine throwing more money at that situation.

Science is another no-win situation. It seems that every month the federal, and sometimes even state, government comes out with a health recommendation. We should eat this. Or take that pill. Or trust this newest medical device. After all, posters and billboards everywhere promise – various government entities have our best interests at heart. These are the folks who recommended margarine and lots of hydrogenated trans fat until they figured out it killed us. The number of medicines where the cure is worse than the disease, that were subsequently recalled or banned, are too numerous to list. We won’t even talk about the current spate of failing hip and knee replacements due to government-approved parts that were supposed to last a lifetime. It’s as if there is no government oversight. The latest stomach turner, the FDA’s sanction of human experimentation outside America’s borders. The situation doesn’t seem as if it could be any worse without all of that regulation and agency oversight.

How Government Milked This Incident 

On one hand, they’re asleep at the wheel. Then there are the times that lately there seems to be a little too much government. I’m a big drinker of raw milk. That’s right, milk straight from the cow, no pasteurizing, no homogenizing, no sitting in tanks for a month before it reaches my house. Unlike most Americans, I’m not wowed by the pasteurization of milk, juice, eggs, nuts and everything in between. I support my local raw milk farmers and buy their products every week. A few months ago, unfortunately, a few California children came down with E.coli. Their families said these five children from four different counties who’d gotten sick over three months, had consumed raw milk. The California Dept. of Food and Agriculture sprang into action. They recalled milk and refused to allow the dairy to sell any fresh milk. Of course, none of the milk or cows tested positive for E.coli. But did that make a difference to CDFA? No. They swore they were protecting us. I’ll skip the wrangling in between. But the milk never tested positive, and the company lost upwards of half a million dollars. I would be all for this kind of oversight if it were evenhanded. Cantaloupes killed, not sickened, killed thirty people. Do we see the banning of cantaloupes? Nope. Did the CDC, FDA or FBI or whomever has the right to bear arms come to the farm, guns blazing? Nope. Jensen Farms voluntarily stopped selling cantaloupes after they tested positive for listeria. And Jensen Farms, after all that, got a warning letter. Now I’m not saying that in a vacuum that either government action was inappropriate. What I’m saying is, it looks a little heavy handedly tilted toward the small, local farmer. In either instance, I am not sure I could rely on the government for protection. When push comes to shove, a little spinach or cantaloupe could kill you and the heavy hand of government wouldn’t be there to save you. But they would surely send a warning letter.

This is just a tip of the iceberg of things that outrage me on a daily basis. There’s the police. In Los Angeles, they now have something called the BatCat, basically a large remote control vehicle that demolishes houses to get holed-up suspects out. If that’s not the very definition of overkill, I don’t know what is. In my hometown of New York City, we have a police force stopping thousands and thousands of innocent citizens, who are most coincidentally black and brown, compiling their names in a database. For what future use, who knows? Just the thought of an army of men and women with guns and my vital statistics is not heartwarming.

Then there’s our justice system, which lately seems to think it okay not only to enforce the death penalty, which is proven to be classist, racist, and plain unfair. And in 2011 actual innocence did not seem to be enough to save you from the electric chair.

Not to leave unmentioned our endless wars, warrantless searches, prison-like processing for air travel. The TSA workers do not inspire confidence.

Everyone’s got an answer to my dilemma. Vote for Democrats: They’ll give us good government. Vote for Republicans: They’ll give us small government. After watching forty years of deterioration at their hands, I’m not swayed. I’m off the political party train. Next stop: Libertarian.

Quick Review – Trader of Secrets – Steve Martini

Trader of Secrets by Steve Martini
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I am not so narrow that I don’t think writers can cross all sorts of genre barriers. This one didn’t work for me. I sort of liked Martini’s legal thrillers. And I mean sort of in the I-don’t-have-anything-appealing-to-read-so-this’ll-do way.

There are hundreds of reviews out there that explain just what’s wrong with this story, with lawyers as spy novel protagonists, etc. I’ll leave that to them.

All I have to say is that from the start I was rooting for the bad guy – and that’s not a good thing.

View all my reviews