Month: November 2006

Miller’s “Story Problem”

I still have a few poems left to read in Everywhere Was Far but so far this is my favorite:

Story Problem

How far is across when you remember
three bridges out the front window all your life.
How strong is magic that turns checks
into cash when need is collateral.
How distant is away when the Olympics are morning,
the Cascades night. How new is bravery
after the woman learns to walk at fifty-seven,
praises the cool linoleum, then takes her pain
straight up, neat. What’s common about common
when a man dresses in a suit for six months
to leave for a lost job. What stage of grief runs
a flat line of miles across Montana.
What good is addition when an only child
sixty-one years later dies an only child.
What equals one story told six ways.

I just love the poem‘s title. Nearly everyone remembers how hard it was to solve “story problems.” Of course, it turned out that real life problems are a hell of a lot harder to solve than those story problems, like how to make a living, how to be brave in the face of immense pain, or how to deal with the loss of a job.

There’s also a natural progression from “interesting“ problems to “heart-wrenching” problems in the poem, from natural curiosity like “how far is across” to “What stage of grief runs/ A flat line of miles across Montana?” The same kind of natural progression that most of us face in our lives as we age.

Miller may not offer any answers, but simply recognizing the problems may make them more bearable.

Everywhere Was Far

Now that the elections are finally over I can get back to something more interesting and closer to home, poetry. Actually since I gave all the money I was willing to give and voted several days ago, I’ve been enjoying myself in many ways unrelated to politics in the last few days.

On the more pleasant side, I’m finally reading Kevin Miller’s Everywhere Was Far. Kevin’s a local Tacoma poet who I met for breakfast earlier this year after Mike introduced us. Obviously I’m a biased reader, but, as noted many times, I probably always am. Still, it’s more fun finding a poem you really like when it’s written by someone you know.

There are actually many poems I like, but here’s my favorite in the first sixty pages:

In Her Garden

After a good rain, goldfinch string
their music through the serviceberry trees.
My wife thinks she’s Saint Francis.
She charms the cedar waxwing
which lights close enough to touch.
She tells me Francis’ theory of containers,
Take from the full, fill the empty.
This works for her, the music of birds,
a song from Francis, and all those nests
the shape of cupped hands waiting.

Since at times I find myself talking to the birds, I can easily identify with the poet’s wife. Perhaps I like it because it reminds me of a picture and haiku-like poem of Leslie hand feeding a Robber Jay that I posted while we were out cross country skiing years ago. Both seem to celebrate the same quality in someone we love.

An Overwhelming Religious Mandate

My greatest problem with Republicans is their total disregard for the environment. For me, that’s the number reason to vote Democrat, even though Democrats don’t have a particularly good track record here, either. If I thought a Republican had a much better record than a Democrat on this issue, I’d vote for him.

It’s obvious, though, that Carter’s greatest issue with Conservatives is their neglect of the poor and emphasis on serving the richest people in our society. Carter seems particularly upset by religious conservatives:

There is an overwhelming religious mandate, often ignored by fundamentalists, to alleviate the plight of those who are in need. Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners magazine, reports that he and a group of other seminary students searched the Bible to find every verse that referred to wealth and poverty. They were impressed to discover that one out of sixteen verses in the New Testament, one in ten in three of the Gospels, and one in seven in the Gospel of Luke referred to money or to the poor. In the Hebrew Scriptures, only idolatry was mentioned more times than the relationship between rich and poor.

Though I don’t consider myself a Christian, I know that both of my parents, Christians who experienced the Great Depression, always saw helping the poor as one of their Christian duties. In fact, I still donate regularly to The Salvation Army in memory of my mother.

I think Carter is right on when he argues that:

Our entire society is becoming increasingly divided, not necessarily between black, white, or Hispanic, but primarily between the rich and the poor. Many of us don’t even know a poor person. If we have a maid or yardman, we would probably not go to their house and have a cup of coffee in their kitchen or know the names of their teenage sons or, God forbid, invite them to come to our house or to take their children to a baseball game with our kids. Even those of us who accept an all-inclusive Christ as Savior are strongly inclined to live separate lives and avoid forming cohesive personal relations with our neighbors. Rosalynn and I have been equally susceptible to this failing.

Unfortunately, since moving to Tacoma I don’t know hardly anyone except through the virtual world of blogging, but it’s unlikely I’m going to meet many poor people in my neighborhood when my $340,000 house is the cheapest house in the neighborhood.

Of course, we Americans love to assuage their democratic feelings by telling themselves that “we are the most generous people in the world.“ Carter suggests otherwise:

Despite all the goodwill and generosity that exist among American citizens, the amount of foreign assistance going from our government to the poor is still embarrassingly small. Predictably, much of the U.S. government’s foreign aid goes to friendly nations and military allies, and Washington restricts many other kinds of assistance with all kinds of political strings. It is distressing to see our great nation defaulting on its obligation to share a respectable portion of our wealth with the most destitute people on earth.

and backs it up with statistics:

Sharing wealth with those that are starving and suffering unnecessarily is a value by which a nation’s moral values are measured, and there is a strange and somewhat disturbing situation in our country. Americans are willing to be generous in helping others and they believe that our government gives as much as 15 percent of our federal budget in foreign aid. But we are, in fact, the stingiest of all industrialized nations. We allot about one thirtieth as much as is commonly believed. Our gross national income (GM) is about $ 11 trillion, of which we share with poor nations only sixteen cents out of each $100 If we add all the donations from American foundations and from other private sources to the government’s funds, the total still amounts to just twenty two cents per $100 of national income.

Isn’t that “chump change?” And this under a “Christian“ administration !#!?

I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised at how little money is spent on helping the world’s poor when we see how Republicans treat the poor in our own country:

Under the tax cuts pushed through Congress since 2000,for every dollar in reductions for a middle class family, the top 1 percent of households will receive $54, and those with $1 million or more in income will benefit by $191 During the first three years, the number of Americans living in poverty increased by 3.5 million, while the income for the four hundred wealthiest Americans jumped by 10 percent just in the year 2002. Another indication of the growing division between rich and poor in recent years is that the salaries of corporate chief executive officers have gone from forty times to four hundred times the average worker’s pay. Even though there was strong growth in corporate profits, wages for the average worker fell in 2004, after adjusting for inflation the first such drop in many years.

When executives get paid multi-million dollar bonuses for cutting expenses by laying off workers rather than for finding ways for them to produce more income for the company, you know something is wrong. In the good-old-days those kinds of leaders would have been fired for a lack of leadership, not rewarded. Hell, in the State of Washington they brag about how they saved thousands of jobs and use their $28 million dollar bonus to run for the U.S. Senate.

Still, the Republicans are consistent, if nothing else:

Despite touting concern for working Americans and private home ownership, key political leaders in Washington have successfully blocked any increase in the minimum wage, which has been held at only $5.15 per hour for eight years and not indexed to accommodate inflation. (In comparison, in U.S. dollars and based on currency values in April 2005, the minimum wage in Australia is $8.66, in France $8.88, in Italy $9.18, in England $9.20, and in Germany $12.74.)

Assuming fifty weeks at forty hours per week, this sets the U.S. minimum annual income at $10,300, below the poverty level, for tens of millions of Americans who have full-time jobs.

Even the rich can ill afford to eat out if they have to pay exorbitant wages to those serving them and working in the kitchen preparing the food. Who knows how expensive motel or hotel rooms might be if the people who changed the sheets and cleaned the rooms got paid huge wages? After all, you can’t outsource those jobs to third-world countries. Or can you?

The Value of Poverty

My greatest problem with Republicans is their total disregard for the environment. For me, that’s the number reason to vote Democrat, even though Democrats don’t have a particularly good track record here, either. If I thought a Republican had a much better record than a Democrat on this issue, I’d vote for him.

It’s obvious, though, that Carter’s greatest issue with Conservatives is their neglect of the poor and emphasis on serving the richest people in our society. Carter seems particularly upset by religious conservatives:

There is an overwhelming religious mandate, often ignored by fundamentalists, to alleviate the plight of those who are in need. Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners magazine, reports that he and a group of other seminary students searched the Bible to find every verse that referred to wealth and poverty. They were impressed to discover that one out of sixteen verses in the New Testament, one in ten in three of the Gospels, and one in seven in the Gospel of Luke referred to money or to the poor. In the Hebrew Scriptures, only idolatry was mentioned more times than the relationship between rich and poor.

Though I don’t consider myself a Christian, I know that both of my parents, Christians who experienced the Great Depression, always saw helping the poor as one of their Christian duties. In fact, I still donate regularly to The Salvation Army in memory of my mother.

I think Carter is right on when he argues that:

Our entire society is becoming increasingly divided, not necessarily between black, white, or Hispanic, but primarily between the rich and the poor. Many of us don’t even know a poor person. If we have a maid or yardman, we would probably not go to their house and have a cup of coffee in their kitchen or know the names of their teenage sons or, God forbid, invite them to come to our house or to take their children to a baseball game with our kids. Even those of us who accept an all-inclusive Christ as Savior are strongly inclined to live separate lives and avoid forming cohesive personal relations with our neighbors. Rosalynn and I have been equally susceptible to this failing.

Unfortunately, since moving to Tacoma I don’t know hardly anyone except through the virtual world of blogging, but it’s unlikely I’m going to meet many poor people in my neighborhood when my $340,000 house is the cheapest house in the neighborhood.

Of course, we Americans love to assuage their democratic feelings by telling themselves that “we are the most generous people in the world.? Carter suggests otherwise:

Despite all the goodwill and generosity that exist among American citizens, the amount of foreign assistance going from our government to the poor is still embarrassingly small. Predictably, much of the U.S. government’s foreign aid goes to friendly nations and military allies, and Washington restricts many other kinds of assistance with all kinds of political strings. It is distressing to see our great nation defaulting on its obligation to share a respectable portion of our wealth with the most destitute people on earth.

and backs it up with statistics:

Sharing wealth with those that are starving and suffering unnecessarily is a value by which a nation’s moral values are measured, and there is a strange and somewhat disturbing situation in our country. Americans are willing to be generous in helping others and they believe that our government gives as much as 15 percent of our federal budget in foreign aid. But we are, in fact, the stingiest of all industrialized nations. We allot about one thirtieth as much as is commonly believed. Our gross national income (GM) is about $ 11 trillion, of which we share with poor nations only sixteen cents out of each $100 If we add all the donations from American foundations and from other private sources to the government’s funds, the total still amounts to just twenty two cents per $100 of national income.

Isn’t that “chump change.? And this under a “Christian? administration !#!?

I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised at how little money is spent on helping the world’s poor when we see how Republicans treat the poor in our own country:

Under the tax cuts pushed through Congress since 2000,for every dollar in reductions for a middle class family, the top 1 percent of households will receive $54, and those with $1 million or more in income will benefit by $191 During the first three years, the number of Americans living in poverty increased by 3.5 million, while the income for the four hundred wealthiest Americans jumped by 10 percent just in the year 2002. Another indication of the growing division between rich and poor in recent years is that the salaries of corporate chief executive officers have gone from forty times to four hundred times the average worker’s pay. Even though there was strong growth in corporate profits, wages for the average worker fell in 2004, after adjusting for inflation the first such drop in many years.

When executives get paid multi-million dollar bonuses for cutting expenses by laying off workers rather than for finding ways for them to produce more income for the company, you know something is wrong. In the good-old-days those kinds of leaders would have been fired for a lack of leadership, not rewarded. Hell, in the State of Washington they brag about how they saved thousands of jobs and use their $28 million dollar bonus to run for the U.S. Senate.

Still, the Republicans are consistent, if nothing else:

Despite touting concern for working Americans and private home ownership, key political leaders in Washington have successfully blocked any increase in the minimum wage, which has been held at only $5.15 per hour for eight years and not indexed to accommodate inflation. (In comparison, in U.S. dollars and based on currency values in April 2005, the minimum wage in Australia is $8.66, in France $8.88, in Italy $9.18, in England $9.20, and in Germany $12.74.)

Assuming fifty weeks at forty hours per week, this sets the U.S. minimum annual income at $10,300, below the poverty level, for tens of millions of Americans who have full-time jobs.

Even the rich can ill afford to eat out if they have to pay exorbitant wages to those serving them and working in the kitchen preparing the food. Who knows how expensive motel or hotel rooms might be if the people who changed the sheets and cleaned the rooms got paid huge wages? After all, you can’t outsource those jobs to third-world countries. Or can you?