American Life

The Hobbit’s Life for Me


An interesting post by a fellow writer, Damyanti, led to a blog piece about a man who has escaped the gerbil wheel of modern life to concentrate on himself and what he loves. Rob and I often discuss what it would take at minimum to have the kind of life that allowed us the freedoms to pursue what we loved and still keep a roof over our heads, food in our tummies and raise a child. We have dreams but the plan to the right path hasn’t quite materialized. Not yet anyway.

Where would you “run away” to if money were not the object?

Kid in a Candy Store


I used to shop at a grocery chain called Hy-Vee when I lived in Des Moines. Open 24hrs seven days a week except for Christmas it could boast of being a fairly full-service venue. Pharmacy. Starbucks. Bank that keep the same hours pretty much. And a nicely stocked health food section to appeal to the conscious eaters among us. I took it for granted. The Safeway I use now is very nice. The people are nice and most know me on sight in and out of the store now but to give you an example of the difference in service level I will tell you this little story. The Safeway has new shopping carts. They are the small two-tiered ones for people who won’t or can’t fill the bigger carts. I was pleased to see them. I missed them because I had used them quite a bit back in Des Moines. The clerk at the Safeway commented to me about them as I checked through one day last week. She thought they were marvelous. A kind of sliced bread thing. It was quaint and when I agreed that they were wonderful, I also mentioned that I had used them before where I used to live. She was amazed. She thought they were some new innovation in grocery carts. Shopping in Canada is not like shopping in the U.S. whether it be groceries or clothing or home improvements. The shelves in Canada can be bare for a time while awaiting the next truck and given the lack of any kind of worker in Alberta sometimes that can be a long wait.

 

So today, Rob and I went grocery shopping for Easter dinner at the Hy-Vee near our bed and breakfast. The first thing I did was get a chai to drink while I shopped, and I can do this back home too, but though it is a good chai at the Safeway, I have yet to have a chai anywhere in Canada that tastes as yummy as in the U.S. We started out in the produce and by the time we’d moved on to the next area, my eyes were as big as saucers, I swear. The more time I spent wandering the supermarket aisles, the more like a deer in the headlights I became. There were so many aisles and each crammed with oodles of choices. Oodles. And cheap too.

 

Rob and I read a lot about the tanking U.S. economy but haven’t yet seen much evidence of it. My mother complained about food prices going up but they were still far cheaper than what we play up North, and it didn’t seem to me that lack of anything was keeping people away, The grocery was packed as was the J.C. Penney’s we’d visited earlier in the day for a sale. Plenty of merchandise and people willing to buy it.

 

The clothes shopping I have done, just today, puts any shopping trip I have gone on in Canada to shame. Remember my Old Navy visit a while back? I went to Old Navy this evening. The shelves were stocked. There was stuff on sale everywhere. I left with a pair of sweats and three shirts for under $30 U.S. I was almost giddy with shopping fervor. I could have shopped all night, not even bought anything and be completely content. People here, and I was once one of them, have no idea what kind of a good life is all around them. Hip deep in cheap food. Affordable clothing. Even the gas is cheap. $3.19. That’s the same price as six months ago and certainly cheaper than anything we have ever paid in Alberta or B.C.

 

It’s such a spoiled life here.

Bitch is the New Black? Ain’t So New Really.


In response to my lament about Hillary Clinton’s souring bid for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency, a fellow blogger reminded me that this is not the first time women have been asked to step aside and let black men go first. When it became clear to the women working feverishly for the Abolitionist cause in the mid-1800’s that women were equally disenfranchised in their own country, and they wanted to link their cause with that of the slaves, Horace Greeley had this to say to them, “Remember that this is the Negro hour and your first duty is to go through the state and plead his claims.” Wow. Even before there were buses women were already sitting in the back, doing our duty. Greeley might as well have said “the Negro man’s hour” because he surely didn’t mean black women any more than he thought about the rights of white ones.

 

Newsweek devoted much of its current issue (March 17th) to the fact that it was/is women who are keeping Sen. Clinton’s presidential hopes alive. They called it a “backlash”. If it is, and I don’t doubt that, it won’t be enough because it is mainly older women who are indignant. Young women foolishly buy into the  “you’ve come a long way baby” myth. Apparently all it takes to satisfy a twenty-something female is her right to dress provocatively without being called into question by her peers and the illusion that the playing field has been beaten into submission even though very little has changed since I was in high school in terms of women in the workplace or the household or in intimate relationships. We are still very much doing our duty in all the aforementioned areas. So it’s not much of a surprise that they truly see another man in office as change just because he is black. Mostly, I think, they are just used to being told that it is. They are a generation raised to be superficial and as instantly gratified as possible and conduct most of their relationships from a distance thanks to Al Gore and Steven Jobs. People like this aren’t going to find a grandma as president as exciting as a good-looking middle-aged black man.

 

As a matter of explanation for their magazine’s stance, the Newsweek’s Editor, John Meachem, wrote a piece explaining how he reached the decision to devote so much print to the idea that sexism is one of the real reasons Clinton is struggling. He was reminded by a number of female staffers that the Senator is being treated by the press and her two main opponents, Obama and McCain, in a way that would not be tolerated if she were a black or Jewish man. Obama has accused Clinton of being on the attack when she “is feeling down” as though calling your opponent on issues is something that only female politicians do when they are suffering from PMS. McCain was asked how he planned to “beat the bitch” and instead of calling the questioner on the pejorative, this father of four girls let that little word go. Because “bitch is the new black” according to SNL’s Tina Fey, and she’s right. Women who don’t stay in their God designated spot in the back of the bus and let the men do whatever it is men do when they are questing for power and self-acclamation and following their destinies, these women are bitches. Right? If someone were to sling the “N” word at Obama, it would make the front page of every paper in the world, but men in New Hampshire can catcall Clinton at a rally with “Iron my shirts” and the press ignores it. They ignore the fact that Clinton has to prove she is strong and by doing so she is calculating and unlikable, but Obama and McCain had the testosterone things covered at conception, so they can be charismatic and feisty.

 

So it is once again the black man’s turn. The man’s turn. Because if you think Michelle would have even been given the chance her husband was, think again. Or better yet, watch a rap video and really listen to the lyrics if you can do that at the same time your mind is reeling from the misogynistic images being seared so deeply on your mind’s eyeball that you’ll need a large spork to dig them out.

 

Anna Quindlen has an excellent essay on the whole “second” thing. Only in America can a woman as vice-president be seen a victory by young women and men. The former because they are so easily placated with tokenism, and the latter because with luck they can breathe easy for another eight years.

 

If Clinton weren’t a capable candidate, I could go along with the party line on Obama even though he is mild and status quo and nakedly ambitious. He learned nothing in the Senate except how to play the game from the ultimate insiders but he couldn’t do worse the current administration. But she is capable. She is experienced. She would do a good job. And the fact that she represents me, a woman, is more than icing on the cake. It is ice cream too. I want my cake with ice cream, and I’ll be sitting in the front of the bus while I eat it.