Line-item review

When a household has financial problems, responsible people look at the receipts and bills line by line to see where the money is going. Then they decide what they can’t live without and start eliminating other items until the outgo is less than the intake. This is normal. This is how it works. One can’t live beyond one’s means.

What if Congress were not allowed to vote on an appropriations bill without first publishing a detailed list of what it would fund? I’m not talking about in the Congressional Record, or even on the back page of the classifieds. No, the American people, who after all sent those people to Congress to manage our money — what you pay in taxes is still your money — deserve a full accounting. We should be able to read, in plain English, a line-item spreadsheet of who would get what amount, for what purpose, before the vote is taken. Then we can tell our representatives and senators exactly how we feel.

Would this ever happen? Would the majority of American voters take the time to read it? I don’t know, but I’m learning to never say never. Seems like a good step to me. Oh, I know bills are hundreds if not thousands of pages long. All I want to see is the budget — who gets what, to do what.

I heard John McCain say in Friday’s debate that he would not sign bills with earmarks. If Congress won’t fess up to the public, maybe the next president could say, “Well, they’ve sent me this bill. Here’s the list of who gets what. [and be comprehensive] What do you think? Would you sign it?”

They work for us. Lock up their credit cards.

 

‘Shift happens’

We’ve heard some of the facts before, but we recently viewed “Did You Know 2.0″ on You Tube for the first time. It’s quite an eye-opening picture of the acceleration of change in our world and the need to not only stay literate but expand our definition of literacy. How to prepare our youth for the future when “We live in exponential times,” as the producer of the video writes?

He also states, “We are currently preparing students for jobs and technologies that don’t yet exist. . . in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.” I’m sure that’s true. So what are the most important things to teach them? How does this affect businesses and our economic strength?

Take a look at the video: Did You Know 2.0. Then comment here and join the discussion. What do you think?

 

Palin: yes!

I ordinarily don’t write on politics, but I gotta tell you, something about this woman John McCain picked for his running mate strikes a chord in me. 

For a long time I’ve been saying we need for normal people to actually have a chance at high office. Not someone with a personal fortune, not a media darling, not a party-line player. Sarah Palin is it, from what I hear. That alone makes my day.

Then I hear that she is into reform, that she’s challenged programs of both major parties, that she and her husband have 5 children, the youngest with Down Syndrome, that she takes the baby to the office with her when necessary. She’s a gutsy woman, old enough to know her own strength and not afraid to use it.

Yes, I need to learn more about her, but so far I’m pumped. No matter how the election turns out, I think the country needs Gov. Palin’s freshness on the scene.

The next few months will be quite a ride.

 

Political conventions: what’s the point?

Denver is beginning to fill up with press and Democrats for the National Convention that starts in a few days. We don’t live there, but two of our children live in the Denver metro area, so we think about how people who live there experience fallout–or spillover, depending on your viewpoint–from the event. Of course it’s an economic boon to the city, but who else benefits? I don’t think the country does any more.

Gone are the days of suspense as we watched the delegates’ rollcall vote. The whole world already knows that Barack Obama and John McCain will vie for the presidency. It looks like Obama may even announce his running mate before the convention. We used to learn that the night after the president was nominated. So what’s the convention all about? The party platform? Obama’s been telling us where he stands on the issues for a whole year already. And now he needs a special venue for his acceptance speech to rehearse it all again. Can’t do it inside. Needs a football stadium. Needs a second set up, second security plan, second everything.

Not that the Republicans will be lowkey, mind you. The Democrats just flash on the screen first.

Does anyone but me think all this money could be better spent where it could make a difference in people’s lives? Who does this serve? Not us. (Well, I guess it makes a difference in Denver hotel and restaurant owners’ and employees’ lives. Ruby Tuesday, for instance is catering at least part of the convention events. Quite a bonanza.)

Does anyone but me think a month or so of campaigning would give us ample time to learn all we need to know about the candidates? How about a cap on spending and time?

Nowhere is it written that it has to be done this way. The fact is, our television coverage probably warped the convention process. Eric Appelman’s article for Democracy in Action makes that point and offers more background into how conventions have changed from real decision-making bodies in the past to what we see today. He also reminds us that a lot happens behind the scenes, during the day, etc. Maybe that’s what the press should show us, then.

By the way, this is Denver’s second political party national convention of the season. The Libertarians met there back in May. Anybody hear about that one?

 

The position-elimination dodge

It’s never happened to me, but it’s pretty common. Just last week I heard of another person who lost her job because her department was restructured and thus her position eliminated.

Here’s how it went down: It’s an HR department that has consisted of one director and one admin assistant, both full time, and one student assistant, very part-time. The new structure adds an “assistant director” (not sure of the actual title), eliminates the full-time admin assistant, keeps the student assistant, and adds a part-time person just for payroll.

I don’t know if the rationale for the restructuring is supposed to be cost-saving, but adding people doesn’t seem a way to save money to me.

A year or so ago we knew someone else who lost his job through “restructuring.” Thing is, before too long that organization decided it might need to start looking for someone new whose job description would look remarkably like the one that had been eliminated. Sigh.

This practice seems less than honest to me. Why not work up the courage to tell someone the real reason you don’t want them around any more? And say it in a tactful, helpful way. Maybe because a person can’t be let go because, well, someone else just doesn’t like you. Or because you’re just not our kind of people.

The result is that the organization looks spineless and manipulative, and the person who loses his or her job gets screwed.

 

Back to school: Good guy teachers

At six and a half feet, he towers over his fifth-grade students with the composure of a gentle giant. They love him because they know he loves them.

 

In our opinion, there aren’t enough big guys out there teaching and influencing the little guys.

 

Year after year, Mr. Ryan goes back to the classroom to make a difference in young lives. He’s more than a teacher. He’s a model for his students.

 

Have a great year, Mr. Ryan!

 

Faith or sight?

I’m a big Katharine Hepburn fan. We recently watched one of her classic films, The Rainmaker, costarring Burt Lancaster as a traveling huckster/salesman who promises residents of the parched prairie that he’ll make it rain–for a fee, of course. Based on a play written by Richard Nash, it has themes of pragmatism vs. pursuit of dreams, of faith vs. sight. Reviews I’ve found online treat it as a romantic comedy, or even a “hayseed farce,” but it’s much more.

Living by sight makes for a dried up existence. The most unattractive character in the movie is the totally pragmatic brother, who  thinks he is doing his sister a favor to tell her she is plain and no man will ever want her. He is a critical parent if ever there was one, even to his father. It’s ironic that his name is Noah, because in the Bible Noah believed, against all odds and popular opinion, that rain would come because God had said it would, even when no one around him believed it.

Lancaster’s character, Starbuck, talked fast to convince himself as much as anyone else that he had a gift. The rain he brought was metaphorical as well as physical, faith and hope to answer the drought of spirit.

Faith and sight. When is a dream foolish, and when it is faith? What does living by faith  look like?

The Biblical Noah lived by faith for a lot of years, acting on something very eccentric that God had told him to do. What would you have thought if your neighbor started building a huge boat, saying it was going to rain so much it would flood the earth? You’d think he’d lost his mind. But it happened.

Moses led the Israelites into the desert on the promise that God would lead and provide for all of them, the widow gave Elijah her last bit of food on the promise that he’d multiply it, Abraham believed in the promise of God that from his son would come God’s chosen people, Esther believed that her husband the king would not kill her if she went to see him uninvited — the Bible is crammed with people who did what must have looked pretty foolish and whom most observers would have called unrealistic, dreamers. But they are the examples for a life of faith.

So how can you tell if you’re acting on faith or if you’re being foolish? I don’t have all the answers to this question yet. I struggle sometimes to trust my own judgment. I don’t want to live in a fantasy land — well, from time to time maybe I do — but I don’t want to be faithless, either, and I can’t live in the arid land of the purely realistic. It’s an illusion that that’s the most responsible route.

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen.”

When and how do you live by faith? Faith in what?

 

Roots and branches we’ve known and loved

Having found out that someone decided July should be Roots and Branches Month, we can’t pass up commenting, that being the name of our blog and all . . .

Roots and Branches Month is meant to celebrate family trees and encourage genealogy. We do enjoy learning about the people we come from. It helps us know more about ourselves and makes history come alive. But we can think of other roots and branches we know and love, too.

Roots Music. We love the soundtrack from O Brother Where Art Thou. Also The Three Pickers, by Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, and Ricky Skaggs. Also Another County, which is The Chieftains with various country and bluegrass artists. And lately, 16 Greatest Hits of Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash, which probably isn’t old enough to technically qualify as roots music, but it’s related (a branch from the root?) and I’m loving it.

The willow tree at the house where I grew up. I was sad when it blew down in a thunderstorm the summer of 1976. I spent lots of my childhood climbing into its lowest branches. My petite and nimble friend Alice could climb 2/3 of the way to the top, which scared my Dad enough that he forbade me to climb it with friends, fearing one of them would fall and we’d be liable. I loved that tree.

Root vegetables. A baked sweet potato with butter and brown sugar. Fresh red beets, cooked, pickled, and chilled with eggs in the juice. Mmmm…

Etymology and linguistics. What can I say? We’re word nerds. Art’s studied Latin, Spanish, Hebrew, and Greek. I’ve studied Latin and French. Hence without much trying we see the backstories of many words. When a word, or word family, intrigues me, I tend to dissect it. What is its root, what language did it come from, and what does its progenitor word tell me about its meaning? What prefixes or suffixes change it in what ways? F’rinstance, somewhere in my files I have a whole page on the -fuse family: confuse, profuse, infuse, diffuse, suffuse, etc. This kind of research helps me get to the concepts behind the words. It even sparks new ideas. I’m also fascinated in learning how languages have influenced each other and why. I think this all started in my first weeks of high school Latin classes, when I met pater (father) and mater (mother) and my neurons started forming all kinds of happy linguistic synapses. It’s all about making connections.

 

Off Art’s chest . . .

Yo–guys! Cook! (And I’m not talkin’ about burning meat on the grill. So easy a caveman could do that!)

If you’re culinarily challenged, rise above it and at least learn to prepare a genuine man-cooked breakfast of eggs over easy and a couple of slices of fried bread (straight-up toast is for wimps). Throw in a glass of fresh-squeezed OJ, and your wife will renew her vows.

Not to be sexist or anything, but have you noticed how many chefs are guys? I’ve worked a stovetop and oven since I was ten, and if you handle it right, your sweetie will feel totally indulged (well, maybe not totally) when you take over the kitchen. (Don’t forget to do the dishes afterwards . . .)

By the way, every kitchen has a “miracle-worker”: AKA slow-cooker. Start there if you have to. Meat, veggies, broth, and seasonings (go easy here, OK?), and she’ll come home with nothing to do but relax and enjoy.

For you accountants and analysts out there, the ROI is huge. For the rest of you, try it. She’ll love it.

 

Ageism or respect?

Discriminating on the basis of age is illegal in the workplace, but it happens–in both directions, I’m sure. How much better off we’d be if we could get past this prejudice, too, and stop with the stereotypes.

I’ve read several excellent articles in the past few months about integrating generations in the workplace. The best ones counsel recognizing the differences and tapping into the strengths of each. This makes so much more sense to me than one generation disdaining another.

Ana Alvarez-Holmberg writes that “There are currently four generations ‘living’ together” in the workplace, which is pretty remarkable when you think about it.  She gives specific advice about navigating their differences in technological preferences–phone, email, texting, etc.

Fiona Emberton writes about building a team that capitalizes on inter-generational strengths.

Phil Cooke blogs about strategies to maintain a professional edge on the mature side.

What about you? Have you experienced either young or old “ageism”? Any insights into how to enhance communication between texting millenials and their more mature co-workers who prefer face-to-face conversations?