Odds and Ends

I had a dream the other evening.  We were still living in our home.  For some reason, it was just my youngest son and myself.  I would say he was about 5 years older than he is today.  My wife and older two children weren’t around.  Our house was almost like the description of a flat in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.  My son and I had one room, and we had boarders in the other main level room and the three bedrooms upstairs.  Presently those rooms are the living room, play room, den, and bedrooms.  The kitchen, bathrooms, and dining room were common rooms.  As I contemplated this further, I recognized that this was the concept of space that most of the world had.  I further pondered that the city I occupy could be consolidated into about a 6×6 block area under such an arrangement.  The scale was a bit shocking but altogether human at the same time.

As I read the Chicago Tribune Sunday, I was surprised at the number of stories that were gay-interest stories.  One was dealing with a man in an assisted living center and his debate about coming out of the closet.  Another was an advice columnist addressing how a transvestite should attire himself/herself.  There were one or two other pieces as well.  Upon reading them, I wasn’t filled with offense at all, but had to wonder, “Why?”  I’m sure these are issues within the respective communities, but that isn’t the Tribune community.  It seems that diversity was embraced for its own sake.  Publications and businesses for that matter get into trouble when they patronize their customers.  The goings on of the gay community weren’t focused on in the past not due to latent bigotry but because people didn’t care. 

Reading Mother Jones recently I was particularly struck by a recent story.  It was discussing a recent conservative pheonomenon of going Galt.  Going Galt is the process of dropping out of society or doing the bare minimum.  The big problem was that people discussing going Galt were not the doers or the high income professionals.  They were people like Joe the Plumber, people whose Galt-lifestyle beared strong resemblance to their day-to-day existance.

On that note, it is probably worth mentioning that Goldman Sach’s employees won’t be going Galt any time soon.  On the heals of being bailed out by the federal government, they announced record bonuses to their employees.  With the bonuses, 973 of their employees will exceed $1,000,000 in yearly income.  Of course we have this when Republican congressmen called the extra dollar an hour earned by GM workers over their counterparts at Toyota’s U.S. plants outrageous.  We also have this at a time, when demands that workers at a mininum earn $7 an hour and have health benefits are decried as the workers being selfish and trying to steal from the productive.  The following seems an appropriate response: