jumpingfish

They might have driven Alan Grayson out of the House, but he certainly hasn’t shut up.

Poor P. J. O’Rourke.

1. Last Night

Something woke us in the middle of the night. Strange sounds outside. A muffled swooshing-swishing. We sat up, listening intently but seeing nothing in the dark.

“Is that rain?”

We dashed to the door and looked out. Indeed it was rain. Beating hard on the roof. Gushing out the downspouts. It came in waves. Torrential for a while, then drizzling, then in coming down hard again.

2. This Morning

I worked in the yard this morning. Picking up fallen sticks and stuff. Taking scraps to the compost pile. Kicking fire ants off my feet. The ants are as happy as we are.

I worked out there in the cool air with soft ground underfoot, and I could feel the trees smiling. Like my mother does, I could feel the trees smiling and feel them drinking deeply and feel them breathing in the fragrant air.

The professor wheeled a cart into the room. There was a monitor and a keyboard on top and a computer on the lower shelf that had a computer inside. He showed us examples of programs that his students had been writing—small programs written to solve small problems, because they had to run on a small machine, a machine so “small” that it fit on the bottom shelf of that cart.

I remember on that day in that classroom telling myself, “This is something I need to learn about.” And within a few months I started reading about computers to figure out if I should buy one and if so what.

The research took months. There were Commodores and Sinclairs. There were Cromemcos and Ataris. There were Radio Shack TRS-80s and Apple IIs. And there was a new boy on the block: the IBM PC. It was a question of what computer and what operating system and whether or not to buy a dot matrix printer and maybe a 300-baud modem. And in the end, I decided that they cost too much.

Then came Macintosh. Quite literally, my life has not been the same since.

Thank you, Steve. Thank you.

1. Down on the Corner

There’s a bank on the corner just down the street. It has a spacious lobby, lanes of drive-up tellers, a fancy building with tinted windows to resist the grueling heat of the summer. And its grounds are dying.

The grass and the bushes and the trees around it are dying at an alarming rate. They are dying and being cut down and dug up and carted off so that the destruction isn’t too obvious. But they can’t cart them off fast enough. Two weeks ago it was a Red Oak in front. Then a Live Oak on the side. Now it’s a Cedar Elm and the shrubbery lining the front.

This paragon of American culture. This solid institution. This bastion of western economics and pinnacle of western thought. This guiding light. This mechanism for growth and expansion and wealth…

Everything’s around it is dying.

2. Out by our Street

Step outside with me, won’t you?

Come with me and let me show you our Monterey Oak. While the trees fall at the bank down the street, look at this one. Look at the green leaves, at the new growth now that the temperatures have dropped. Look at the mulched landscape at at the base of the young trunk. And look at that soaker hose lying there in the bark and leaves.

Once a week is more than enough. It doesn’t take much time. It doesn’t cost that much.

It’s our little investment in the future. You’d think the bankers would know about that kind of thing. Evidently not.

1. Painting

I helped when I could, but frankly that wasn’t very often. He did all the work—taping the drywall joints, applying layer after thin layer of mud, sanding and rubbing and checking the surface closely with his hands.

He talked about his family—about his daughters, about his wife’s late night shifts at the drug store, about his mother and father years ago, about the brother he works with and his youngest brother who died tragically years ago. He talked about working in a machine shop in California. He talked about looking for work in Alaska when he was 20. And he talked about working with his father when he was young.

“My brother and I barely get half as much painting a house today as we did with my father more than twenty years ago.”

And that’s in absolute dollars no adjustment for inflation. Twenty years ago, they could make a living at it but not today. He’s looking for other work.

The bottom has fallen out.

2. Powder

Actually, the bottom has been falling for a while. But now that the middle class and white collar workers are beginning to feel the pain, the story is gaining a little more traction. Meanwhile the elites in the corridors of power and finance strategize and make their plans, oblivious to the despair about them.

Did you know that there have been protests on Wall Street in New York City, for almost two weeks? The Occupy Wall Street protesters don’t have an organized agenda or at least no clear list of concrete demands, but they are mighty angry. They, like the Tea Party, are a consequence of this despair.

They might not be well organized. They might not have leadership executing a plan, but does it ever really work that way? It might not be a powder keg, but there’s clearly a lot more powder out there than most people realize.