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.

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.

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.

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Have you heard of pine mouth? No? Didn’t think so. Google it. I dare you. I hadn’t heard of it until a couple of days ago. Picked some fresh basil from my garden, got out the garlic, the aged parmesan, and pine nuts from the pantry. Did I read the label on those pine nuts? I sure didn’t, but I wish I had. Turns out they were from China. It’s apparently widely, if not well known, that Chinese importers have been mixing the regular old pine nuts with some other species of pine nuts, indigestible by humans (but not deadly, I’m promised), but indistinguishable on sight from the regular old kind. The result – a bitter metallic taste in the mouth that will last from days to weeks.

Every day I am shocked at how quickly and deeply Chinese-made goods have infiltrated our lives. Every time I need or want to make a purchase, I wonder if there is any realistic way to avoid such goods.

A few weeks ago I needed a dress for a party. Off I went to Bloomingdales, a theoretically “upscale” department store. Every single “designer” item I picked up was “Made in China.” At the downscale stores, it’s all the same, but I wouldn’t expect any better. It’s how they protect their margins. The “Made in China” label is pervasive across so-called luxury brands.

That very cute Kate Spade baby bag I wanted, Made in China. That all-purpose Burberry purse that would be the last purse I’d ever need, Made in China. Nearly every children’s toy and item of baby and toddler clothing that has come into my house: Made in China. Of course, the ubiquitous Apple products that help the bottom line of a company with a net worth higher than the U.S. Treasury “assembles” its products in China.

Even the most unexpected items seem to be made in China. When someone bought my child the bubble liquid and wand that he’s become obsessed with, the label declared it was Made in China. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that it was truly cost efficient to throw together water, soap and glycerin six thousand miles away and sell it for ninety-nine cents at a Walgreens down the street.

Animal Stinks, or Instincts

Even in the so-called natural pet food store, the “highest quality” thirty-dollar dog treats: Made in China. How am I supposed to believe that the highest quality pet food treats come from the same place of melamine tainted dog food, deadly baby formula, and exploding watermelons? Am I to be assuaged by the red, white and blue banner across the package that proclaims they may be made abroad, but are checked for quality right here in the U.S. of A? I’m sure China is a lovely country. It’s even on my travel bucket list, somewhere between Easter Island and New Zealand. As soon as those brown skies dissipate, I’ll be there. In the face of our new global economy, I often wonder how we have become a country of people oblivious to the working conditions of those who make our consumables. Then I remember that we’ve always been that country.

Despite the most recent reading of the U.S. Constitution in the House of Representatives, that purposely omitted slavery from its rendition, our country, and much of our world has been built on the shoulders of free, or nearly free, labor for hundreds of years. Few here or abroad had a problem with it. It looks as if that’s not about to change. For years, the labor has been black and brown people here. In the nineteenth century, Americans were happy to expand the railroads and plant sugar plantations on the backs of Chinese laborers. On the other side of the world, workers in sub-Saharan Africa, or even India were and are the exploited. Now a bulk of the work has been moved a continent away.

What We Know

The difference between now and then is knowledge. The working conditions of those so far away are no secret. Workers are far away from home, sleeping dozens to a large dormitory room. Women are checked to make sure they’re using birth control and are not pregnant. Suicide- prone workers are given nets to keep them from falling to their death.

Occasionally, a child or two or fifteen finds his way into one of these factories, All this for a little under two hundred dollars a month, hardly enough to buy the products they produce. But we keep buying them. Whether it’s a way to prop up our shrinking standard of living with the illusion of wealth, or whether we’re just victims of ceaseless marketing, I can’t say. I for one think we and the Chinese both would be better off without all the stuff. It’s terribly sad to watch our middle class disappear as quickly as our once thriving manufacturing sector. It is especially sad when you see that other countries still can make and sell goods to their citizens. I myself just bought those French-made shoes and German-made toys for not much more than I regularly spend on Chinese goods.

I am going to try a little experiment. I’m going to avoid Chinese-made goods for one solid month – starting today (make that tomorrow – I just bought some new Uggs, and Melissa and Doug toys that I’m sure were made there). I think my taste buds, pocket book, and moral compass will thank me.

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I first heard of Anita Shreve when one of her books was chosen during the early days of the Oprah book club. I found her books different, and that was a good thing. Different writing and interesting plots used to be her hallmark.

This book hit those marks, but was a little too shallow and brief to be truly interesting. The characters’ motivations were never fleshed out. The plot was a bit thin. I’d still give another of her books a try, but hopefully one that had a little more time to percolate.

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My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I love Mickey Haller. No, really. After reading the Lincoln Lawyer, I would have gladly stood in line to be his third ex-wife.

Unfortunately, we’re getting to that part of the relationship where there may be a parting of the ways. What I initially loved about Mickey – was that he got it. He was a defense lawyer and understood the mission involved in that job. He lost me for a moment in the last book where he was a special prosecutor -and was as much of a jerk as the prosecutors he’d worked with over the years.  How could he, I continually railed.

But the real Mickey was back in this book, or so I thought.  He was going strong as a defense attorney in full form. Then the hand-wringing started. How could he after all these years start having qualms about his work? He has a righteous, constitutionally required place in our ‘justice’ system. He’s what’s standing between the rest of us and tyranny.

You can say the change in character hasn’t gone over well and the ending was like a knife in my heart. Now, if he’s doing all this for a woman, then, perhaps it’s understandable. If he’s just switching sides, then it’s not.

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My rating: 2 of 5 stars

First, a note on the narrator. I listened to this as a book on tape (my preferred reading method with a grabby toddler). Can someone please tell her that everyone who lives in New England does NOT sound like a bad Kennedy imitation?

I have loved Barbara Delinsky for years. She was an auto buy starting in the 1980s when she wrote romance. As I type this, all of her Harlequin books and her first single-titles are on my keeper shelf, yellow and dog eared. She was one of the first authors I read who made me feel something when she wrote.

The last few books, however, have not been for me. I have a friend, a former lawyer like myself, who does not read books with characters who are lawyers (written by non lawyers) because inaccuracies pull her out of the moment. I don’t have such a policy and think that some lawyer characters can be super well written – so I don’t discriminate.

Halfway through this book, I wish I did. The main character, Emily, started out believably for me. Ivy League lawyer hates life after ten years. I get that. I’ve been there and most of my friends have as well. At that point we either get out or change what we’re doing. I get the aspiration and ambition. I get the debt while keeping up ‘appearances.’ I get the urge to ‘run away from it all.’ But after that, Emily (and James for that matter) lost me.

Their jobs were too unrealistic (she never did settle on what kind of law they really practiced). Let me just say, if you’re on headphones all day you’re not meeting too many criminals. If James was plea bargaining, then the kind of work hours he had would be different, and the pressure would be different.

And leaving? Emily starts out talking about maxed out credit cards, but blithely quits her job. No foreclosure on the horizon? No creditors calling? I didn’t get it.

The other thing that got me, all that communing with coyotes. All this coyote allegory seems to be a book trend, like writing in the first person is a trend. I live near coyotes and they’re not that mysterious. They’re just wild dogs, really. Is there any meaning in that?

I wanted more. More depth, better characterization, a less sensational side story. Alas it wasn’t to be.

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Dear American Businesses,

You continue to disappoint me. Instead of continued innovation, creativity and choice, it seems you have nothing to offer but stuff I don’t want at prices I don’t want to pay. Last week’s dilemma illustrates one of my problems by your kind.

I wanted to do a very simple thing: Buy an airline ticket from Los Angeles to New York City. With a seemingly vast world of options (or at least expedia.com makes it look that way with lots of blinking graphics) and a reasonable budget, it seems as if this would have been easy. Of course, it wasn’t. Instead, it was an exercise in picking the least terrible choice – exactly like voting for President. Here were my choices:

Option 1: Buying a ticket on an airline with comfortable (coach) seats that would take off and land on time. The only problem – the airline had already sold all the seats. To buy a ticket would be to take a ride on the oversubscribed wagon, where everyone hopes someone fails to show. Otherwise there’s a lot of nail-biting at the gate while we all hope some person is willing to take a later flight along with a voucher. If no one steps up, then it’s a Lord of the Flies moment. Someone gets left behind. And for someone about to take a sleeping pill before getting on a red-eye – that wasn’t at all a good idea.

Option 2: Buying a ticket on a legacy airline. Likely to take off and land on time, but only center seats in the back available. Can we say, “no recline?” Combine that with a ridiculously high price, and it was a no go.

Option 3: Buying a ticket on a discount airline flying out of Burbank – a smaller airport with a lot less problems. Lots of comfortable (for an extra charge) seats available. But the first and only time I went the “discount” route, I was stuck on the tarmac at JFK for hours – a ridiculously common occurrence on this particular airline.

Many Choices? Huh!

For seven hundred and fifty dollars, none of these options sounded attractive. Throwing more money at the decision would not make it any better. I held my nose and bought a ticket. (In the end, I was only stuck on the tarmac for ninety minutes).

The beauty of capitalism and America, you continually espouse, is that it’s a world of unlimited choice. The world (of products, at least) is our oyster. If I want it, you can sell it. Maybe I’m not looking in the right place, but you never seem to provide enough choices for me.

Take for example, my recent decision to (try to) avoid items made in China. Everything I’ve come across from you the last month has been made in China (or Taiwan, or Hong Kong, — again, China or Sri Lanka and India). Want goods manufactured in a first world country by people who have healthcare, or at least in our country, have emergency room access? It’s a no-go. Many of my friends discussed bans or boycotts on goods made with low-paid labor. For most of us, it’s been an exercise in futility. Unless one can get a local artisan or manufacturer to make something for you, it’s nearly impossible. If there is consumer demand for these items, why don’t you make them? It’s supposed to be a supply-and-demand world, after all.

Food Problems Will Make You Choke

In my circle of acquaintances who are interested in real food that is not factory farmed, or genetically modified, the scarcity is the same. I can’t tell you how many times some local food treasure has been sourced only to rush out to find it sold out. Leaf lard is the best example. Twenty miles and thirty minutes of quality freeway time later, I and the others who’d heard it was in stock were out of luck. The proprietor of this particular American business had no sense of when a new shipment would arrive. The number of blogs dedicated to the pursuit of real food is mind-boggling. Instead of a celebration of the food we crave, most posts are about chasing obscure sources – and those should be plentiful, given the demand, right?

Then there is the popular product that you innovatively produce and then dump (and with it all support). Just last year everyone I know bought one of the Flip video cameras; great high definition film quality, small camera, and best of all, small price. I thought it so great that I bought two, one as a gift . . . the day before Cisco announced it was shutting down the Flip business it had recently purchased. Profitable (a state many of you claim to want to reach and maintain) was not profitable enough. Adding insult to injury, Netflix, which I always thought an ingenious idea, is cannibalizing its own business, on purpose. The current mode of operations appears to be: Raise the price, don’t provide much content and then turn the core business of DVD rentals into the bastard step-child. Again, it’s the case of not enough profit.

George W. Bush urged us to go out and spend our hard-earned dollars on your products. Our current President and his administration have been more reserved, but the message is still the same. We’re a consumer economy, we should consume what you have to offer. But every time I hear that, I look at the piles of “obsolete” goods I already have and wonder why I should invest in anything new. As I was writing this essay, Hewlett Packard announced it was spinning off the computer division. Of course, I have a new one of those too . . . .

I’d love to support you, but you continue to raise prices, outsource everything but marketing, and refuse to give us what we want. I’m going to try to save my money and hope for a brighter future. You, you’re going to have to make it on your own.

Sincerely,
The disgruntled American consumer

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I think it was an article in the New York Times about self-published books that brought this to my attention. I’ve been interested in self published books for years, but have been reading them more aggressively since many of my mid-list author friends have been dropped by their publishers. The quality of what was once called vanity publishing has definitely improved.

Now this book had an interesting premise, although it taking place in the ’80′s threw me off a bit; (it was hard to conjure up the entire milieu of that time in my mind).

I don’t think it lived up to it, though. It ended up being a sort of slice-of-life piece rather than a fully rendered story. There was no arc, no denouement, no real tension. Or rather it built up to that, then petered out. The main character more or less walks off the stage without a full sense of resolution, much like this review.

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My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Have you noticed that when some authors reach a certain stature, they seem to coast – on their past books and good name.

This is one of those books. I remember reading a good Anna Quindlen book or two nearly twenty years ago. Yeah, that’s a long time. So to expect that level of dedication and commitment to future books to continue, may be too much to expect.

People often wonder about Harper Lee because she only wrote one book – but it was good. I now think not everyone has the wherewithal to write a new, fresh, well-plotted, and exciting book once a year, or even once every five years.

Unfortunately publishing is like every other business that likes to have a well defined product they can sell. In this case, it’s an author who has produced before . . . .

I wanted to like this book, but it was too loosely woven together. There wasn’t so much as a plot as a slice of uninteresting life of well-to-do white folks. And both New York City and the black and brown folks that populate the so-called ‘outer boroughs,’ were too stereotypical and lacking in nuance to be interesting.

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