Tag Archives: Anecdote

My Brush with Ayn Rand

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It's a strange confession for a fully-grown Democrat: I had a brief affair with Ayn Rand.

Let me take you back for a second to an embarrassing moment in my life (anyone want to place bets on how long this post stays up? What's the over-under? 24 or 12? Hours or minutes?). The year was 2000. Y2K was a non-event followed by spring followed by a surprise divorce. I found myself living in my parents' basement in my little sister's old bedroom, with a junker car, working a dead-end job at a bookstore cafe. My wheels were spinning and I was bereft. And in moments when I wasn't working or driving around aimlessly at night in the dark just for space, just to be alone, just to not be looked at (is she okay?), I did what I always did (still do), read and write. Incessantly, constantly, obsessively. The perma-student.

And, having heard of it, knowing it as a Work with a Reputation for Serious People, I picked up The Fountainhead (10% off, thank you very much, bookstore cafe job).

I read it. Having already had a thing for architects, there was something mildly appealing about Howard Roarke. And what that thing was, was competence. And that was something I found necessary, vital, grounding; It was something solid that I could glom on to in a universe that had, for me, not only flipped upside down in an unrecognizable way, but had actually nearly disintegrated to the point that it was like being in mid-air with just bits and pieces of objects floating by, not a one of which I could grasp, not a one of which would settle into place. After all, there was no longer a place. So there was competence and an impersonal effectiveness– it wasn't real, it was Randian, it was selfish, but it made sense at the time.

So then I read Atlas Shrugged (again, at a lovely 10% off: working at a bookstore is a blessing if you're a reader– a very expensive blessing: Library, what library, I'll pick it up on my half-hour break). And there I discovered more competence. Lovely, competent people who got things done, who made the world work, and that made sense to me. It was Dagny Taggart in her asymmetric black dress with her titanium steel bracelet being smart and compelling and lovely and successful. Everything I wasn't being; everything I wasn't capable of being.

And I'm not proud of it, but for a brief flash of time, I thought those books were Deep. I thought those books made a bit of sense of How To Be.

And, luckily, thankfully, I grew out of it. They didn't stick with me.

And I'm so grateful for that. Who I was following that miserable period of time was the most self-absorbed person imaginable. Yeah, I hurt. But I was so consumed by that, that I forgot that other people in the world had it far worse than I did. That if the Randian view celebrated strength and competence, it also rejected the worth of everyone who wasn't Dagny or Reardon, John Galt, or Roarke.

So selfish and blind and non-thinking was I that I didn't question these stupid books I was reading. That whole critical thinking thing went out the window, into the swirling ether. I remember reading the sections on the humanist–Toomey?, Elmer?–the scholar or newspaper guy, the “villain,” who said things about the poor, said things that I kind of agreed with and I remember knowing from his status as creep, from the sneering tone that surrounded him, that I was supposed to think he was inauthentic and wrong. It's not like I agreed with Rand, or the protagonists, or found myself pumping my fist and cheering against Everyone Else; I just sort of dismissed that part, and any moral discomfort that went along with it. I do remember it struck me as dissonant, that this guy who was saying words of kindness was the Bad Guy, the Weak Guy. Perhaps I thought it was clever to take the guy saying the right things and make him the one you love to hate.

Little did I know (again, self-absorbed, lost, and despite daily newspaper intake, ridiculously ignorant) that there were Important People in politics who were taking the big Randian picture seriously: not the competence part, but the “screw 'em; they're not worth it” part. And they were using it to help define their worldview and then using that skewed worldview, culled from fiction, to cordon off their policy positions.

At any rate, we fast forward to the now, when I'm embarrassed by everything I was then and constantly feeling like I need to apologize to everyone I knew between the ages of 16 and 34 because I was such an ass and I'm embarrassed to say that, yes, I've read Ayn Rand. I've fallen (briefly) victim to her charms. And I (it's really just so gross) understand the appeal.

Or rather, at one point, I did. I know it's anecdotal (so the least effective argument possible), but the Rand thing–it's a worldview that belongs to a juvenile phase of mind; that appeals to the most limited, selfish, and insecure version of one's self. It belongs to a phase. It's something you grow out of. You know, when you grow up and read Better Stuff, More Stuff, and begin critically thinking about the ideas behind the words on the page– when you realize the world you're living in is The World, not just yours, and when you further realize that while you were absorbed in your psychic navel-gazing, really bright, good people were struggling and falling through cracks in that world, despite their best efforts and it had less to do with their failure to be talented or competent and more to do with Everything Else.

So for any politician passing The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged out to his/her staffers; for any politician thinking that the world is divided into good-bad, job-creators and riff-raff, 47% to 53%, I call “foul.” Ayn Rand was a fiction-writer with a very personal world view. She may have thought seriously about it, but that doesn't mean it was Serious. It never grew, it never developed, it never looked at the big picture. And that's fine for a novelist but, frankly, ridiculous for a policy-maker in the real world. There is something very limited about the world of Ayn Rand and I don't think limited thinking derived from a set of novels is the most effective tool for solving real-world problems that affect the broadest range of citizens.

And, FYI, while for a delusional month and a half it seemed to be, it really wasn't such a great tool for dealing with a brutal divorce and a messed-up half-life either.

 

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King Tut, But Not That Tut

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King Tut. He Yells.

A while ago, my mom found a box of papers and cards from when my sister and I were kids (Hi, Mom!). Amongst the fabulousness that was in that box was a picture I had drawn of (ahem) King Tut. I want to make it clear immediately that at the time of that drawing I had zero—explicitly, zero—clue about (a) Egypt (b) King Tut as equaling Tutankhamun, boy pharaoh, or (c) any shred of global historical awareness that might have enabled my mind to associate that (a) belonged to (b). Yes, I feel completely moronic about this and I can remember drawing the thing (in the back of a grey pick-up truck on a move across country from Indiana to Colorado and it was in a notebook with Annie on the cover and I was lying on a red and white checked blanket that was very, very soft) and, more than just remembering the red-orange crayon in my little kid hand, I can even sort of remember what I was thinking about. And it wasn’t Egypt. Clearly. (Let’s just say some rough combination of Hoth, Mongolia, Marco Polo and Genghis Khan; vaguely Asian, vaguely ancient, and very exotic and exciting.)[1] And, just to set the record straight, now that I’m a bona fide grown-up, I have rectified the whole Tut-is-from-ancient-Egypt thing.

I really have. Stop looking at me like that. I know a smirk when I see one.

So the Tut-who-is-not-Tut reminds me of my family and childhood and all that has been wonderful in my life. But today I was at work (run by the Marie Antoinette-Let Them Eat Cake School of Business Administration and Management)[2] and I was half-listening to news and wondering where my concentration has gone of late. And that led to a whole list of things I felt strongly had gone missing. (I am not posting the whole list. I am pretending to have a modicum of pride here, after all, despite the Egypt thing, so I’m not going to just hand you people Michelle’s List of Weaknesses. Make it up for yourself, if you like.) The concentration will come back (the essential Michelle is awkwardly, absurdly concentrated/oblivious/focused). But one thing on that list troubles me with its absence.

Where, oh where, has my imagination gone? Tut-who-is-not-Tut reminded me I did, contrary to popular belief, have one at one time. My imagination was not found in that box of papers. I do not recall the last time I saw it. Is it possible I am too old to need one? No. Nonsense. So if anyone should see my lost imagination (moves slowly, likes treats), please, please return it to me.

Reward: one particularly stunning original artwork titled “King Tut.”

[1] Also, I will not rule out the influence of that extremely scary movie with Goldie Hawn and the white-haired man that takes place during a performance of The Mikado. The headdresses on the performers of the opera were great (I think?) but the movie itself was terrifying. If you ever time-travel back to the early 80’s, please do not let children near this movie because said child/ren will have nightmares involving the white-haired man and stairs for weeks. (Mom, do not feel guilty. You are the best mom ever. You are not responsible for the dreams. In fact, don’t read this footnote. Okay?)

[2] I am grateful for my job. I am grateful for my job. I am grateful for my job. So, just kidding about the whole Marie Antoinette thing. Mostly.

Evaluating the Value of Field Trips in Early Childhood Education

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1.) The Orchard: Lessons learned: a.) The air in autumn smells better than any air anywhere at any other time. (b.) Apples with both green and red in them are the prettiest, followed narrowly by the ones which are yellow and the ones which are yellow-green. This is not subjective. (c.) When visiting an orchard on a field trip in October, each pupil will receive a free pumpkin. This is awesome. (d.) Size and appearance matters; the free pumpkin will result in early introductions to comparative studies on the bus ride home. This will involve tears and disappointment for pupils who choose poorly. Their misshapen, flat-sided, and/or otherwise inferior pumpkins will elicit conversation/derision on the bus ride back to the school. (e.) Decision-making.

2.) Kroger: Lessons learned: a.) Each pupil visiting a Kroger (grocery store, for those outside the continental U.S.) will receive a free donut. The donut shall be glazed; it shall be yeast. (b.) The students will be taken upstairs to look out at the store behind the one-way glass mirror. (c.) Kroger has an upstairs. (d.) There is no privacy in a Kroger.

3.) McDonald’s: Lessons learned: a.) McDonald’s does not give free food to pupils. (b.) Birthday parties at McDonald’s include party favors, unlimited orange drink, and one box of McDonaldland cookies per child. (c.) Parents who truly love their children give them birthday parties at McDonald’s. (d.) Even young children are not fooled by McDonald’s, even though the French fries are good.

4.) The Fire Station: Lessons learned: a.) Dalmatians are optional at fire stations. Do not ask to see one; you will be embarrassed. (b.) There really is a pole in the firehouse. Yes, firemen will occasionally use it but they prefer the stairs. (c.) Firemen don’t fight fires every day. (d.) The grass in front of a fire station is greener than grass anywhere else. The grass in Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day in the fulsome mists of spring wishes to be fire station grass when it grows up.

Are field trips in early elementary education worthwhile? Yes.

Hail, Virginia

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Central Park, New York, a very long time ago.

Another lifetime ago, back in New York, my neighbor was an elderly lady called Virginia. Her apartment was crowded with tchotchkes and stereotypes and was strongly steeped in rosewater and deep nostalgia. Virginia had coal black hair. She wore glittery things and old-fashioned hats. Her dentures slipped when she spoke, nearly impossible to look away from, like a lazy eye or the proverbial car wreck. You know you shouldn’t be looking at it, but where do you look, and ohmygod what did she even just say? And then you’d retrain your focus on her words and look at the brooch or the curtains or for the pet you could smell but never see and you’d hate yourself for noticing any of it. Virginia was kind. And gnawingly, achingly in need of company. So you with your backwards, equally lonely Midwestern-in-a-big-city self, accompanied by your far more dashing and self-assured roommate, would find yourself occasionally sitting in Virginia’s rosy-musty living room, eating Archway cookies and Milanos from dainty china plates, listening to Virginia.

Virginia, again like god-awful stereotype, reeked of the past, some other time. She was alone and she had, it seemed, limited her world to her apartment and the shops (it seems silly to refer to them as “stores,” even. Impossible to talk about Virginia’s world without reverting, in part, to the language of it). If she had children, there were no photographs among the shelves (stuffed animals and dolls in crocheted dresses, yes, but few photographs), no mentions. There was a husband, once, but she had lost him long ago in her past. She was a mix of the decades from the 30s to the early 60s and everything about her was strongly reminiscent of everything from black and white film stars to Jackie Kennedy to early TV. It would shift while she was talking, as disorienting as her highly mobile dentures, pinning her down to times you had only heard about and, I suspect, hiding the real thoughts and concerns of Virginia.

Virginia never talked about the present; she didn’t much ask about the lives or backgrounds of these girls in her living room who were eating her cookies. She didn’t talk about life in the past, strangely, since she was so evidently still, well, living in it. What she talked about, and exclusively talked about, was her plan for a TV Christmas special.

I’ll give all the following due respect to Virginia: her imagination and childish glee were second to none, her belief in the imminent success of said Christmas special was unshakeable, and her descriptive powers were strong enough that, holding my cookie, I could see absolutely her TV show in my mind as real as if it had already aired. Mind you, it had the same coloring and video qualities as an Andy Williams Christmas repeat (that strange, Kodak-y both dull-and-over-bright chromatic quality that will date any video as several decades old) but nevertheless, in the mind it stood like the memory of an actual show you really had seen before.

Virginia’s Christmas special was “A Trip to the North Pole.” It had dancing penguins who ice-skated in front of Santa’s workshop, described down to the personalities of each little penguin and the fact that said penguins were wearing red bow ties. She had personalities and casting ideas for the elves. She could—and did—describe endlessly and lovingly the set requirements, the costume changes, the scenes, the props. There wasn’t a lot of plot (Virginia was a detail-oriented sort of gal) but, it too, was outlined and tight: to say she had given this a lot of thought would be the understatement of a lifetime. I truly believe Virginia had given it her every thought. Virginia’s Christmas Spectacular was her opus, her masterpiece, her passion, her life. And the critical piece of her beloved TV show was Santa. Her Santa would be played by Frank Sinatra. I don’t think she knew he had been, to put it delicately, unavailable for quite some time.

She had, so she said, written letters to Mr. Sinatra and his agent with the script proposal, the details of her Christmas special. I think she said she had contacted NBC, CBS, and ABC. But it gets harder to remember that now; like I said, this was a lifetime ago. And truthfully, after a couple of hours of listening to Virginia wax effusively about Frank, and the elves, and the reindeer, the attention would start to wander when she’d get into the infinitely less thorough and thought-through parts of realizing her dream.

But then, my best guess is, it wasn’t the realization that mattered to her, not really. It was the dream. Just the dream.

I am glad I knew Virginia. I am glad I ventured across the hall to hear about her Christmas special. I am glad she, like H&H Bagels and Gray’s Papaya and the free baklava with purchase of coffee at Nick’s, is a part of my New York in that lifetime. And I am heartily sorry that I couldn’t always manage to look away from her dentures. I hope she never noticed that.

My Beautiful Laundrette

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I swear this really happened.

Yesterday afternoon in hot, sunny downtown Indianapolis, I sit outside on a break from work to enjoy the fresh air, however tempered it may be from the potent combination of soap and fabric softener wafting from the laundromat/lavanderia across the street.

A young woman exits said laundromat and crosses the street, walking directly toward me. She is eating a fudgsicle and tugging a rather impish looking toddler with her.

“Hey. You know anyone with a baby?” She stands over me (I’m on the curb of the sidewalk). Her demeanor is chipper and it’s impossible to miss the brightness of the toddler’s eyes, the sweetness of his smile.

I answer an embarrassingly slow negative: the question has surprised me. Normally the questions from strangers are of the “You got a cigarette/quarter for the payphone?” or “What kind of work is in there/They hiring?” varieties. There are very seldom exceptions.

“Well, the thing is, my baby just died…”

“Oh, my god, I’m so sorry.” Horror. Pity.

“Yeah. Had to go identify the body today.”  She says this in the exact same tone of voice I would use to say “I could use a coke.” Now, a stoic or even matter-of-fact expressionless I could have understood; anything other than the vaguely pleasant, rather casual method of delivery of what appears to be, to her, a small detail of her communication.

She doesn’t really pause after this shocking sentence, but continues: “Well, I had just bought all this formula and now I’m stuck with it, so I thought if you knew anyone with a baby…”

Here, she pauses, bites off a piece of the fudgsicle, hands it to the toddler, who pops it into his mouth, stretches his arms over his head, stands on his toes, falls back on his heels and then covers his eyes with the upstretched arms just enough to peep disarmingly out from under, at me. Throughout the whole moment, he smiles his gift of a smile with immaculate little baby teeth, sticky face, and impossible good-natured perfection.

“Anyway,” the mother says, “I’m only charging 10 dollars a can, ‘cause I have to make my money back, so I just thought…” Shrug. Fudgsicle. And she and her toddler amble off away while I’m still sotto voce-ing between “so sorry” and “good luck” and some version of “how can I help?” and “what?”

I would like not to make a commentary here, to not judge, to class the moment as “surreal.” Instead, the only thing I can say is that in order to sleep, in order not to experience a dissonance so severe it drives me straight to crazy, I have to believe somehow the story she told isn’t true. Because I surely cannot square a personality I would describe as chipper (but not, say, of Paxil/Prozac/chemical derivation) with the words that fell out of her mouth, to me, a stranger.  And I certainly don’t know how to deal with the weighty helplessness at the thought of a recently (immediately?) bereaved mother selling her baby’s formula to strangers because the need for money is that desperate.

Just another Friday on Prospect (less) Street, Zipcode WTH, Indianapolis.

Excessively Partisan Mountain Dew Pajama Pants

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I Ask You

Following President Obama’s deficit-reduction speech on April 13, 2011, Brand Spankin’ New Bona Fide Celebrity and House Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) stated that the president’s speech was “excessively partisan.”

“Excessively partisan?” Like beginning the text of  Fiscal Year 2012 Budget Resolution with the words “Where the President has failed, House Republicans will lead.” That kind of “excessively partisan?”

Paul Ryan’s Budget Resolution, also titled “The Path to Prosperity: Restoring America’s Promise,” on page 5, the start of the actual budget, opens with the statement that the president has failed but the Republicans will save the day.

I ask you, what business does something like that have in a formal government document, let alone a budget proposal?

Sure, I might feel like scrawling “Sallie Mae sucks my will to live” at the top of my checkbook register (hey, I kick it old school), but I don’t write it on my checks or anything. Then again, I’m not a member of the House Committee on the Budget. I might be too grown-up and/or aware of professional etiquette for that.

Dear Congress: when people say they want their country back, I usually roll my eyes. But when you slur the president (any president, actually, or any fellow legislator) in an official government document, it makes me want my country back, too. Because I’m pretty sure that anyone else I might give it to wouldn’t open their formal legislative document with something that sounds like it should be hollered from a tree-house and followed by a secret club-member’s handshake.

Why So Huffy, Duffy?

On a trip home to defend the House’s passage of Ryan’s Budget Resolution, fellow Wisconsin Republican Representative Sean Duffy was a little overwhelmed by a constituent who calmly told Duffy in about 45 seconds of reasonable speech in a totally indoor voice that what Mr. Duffy had just said wasn’t right. Mr. Constituent (a.k.a. Duffy’s Boss, in theory) was in the middle of his third sentence when Mr. Duffy silenced him with “Let me tell you what. When you have your town hall, you can stand up and give your presentation.”

I could make a snarky comment here about town hall events not being events traditionally “had” by the common folk in their day-to-day lives, but there’s a really good reason Representative Duffy has been out of sorts lately: He’s been experiencing money troubles. As he told a constituent in March, he “struggles to meet his bills.” And that’s something I think we all can relate to. I mean, $174,000 annually just doesn’t stretch as far as it used to.

Bless Her Heart!

Of late, I’ve noticed that a new trend has emerged in the political theatre world. A politician says something unpleasant about another politician or their ideas and then follows it with “but [fill in the blank] is a Patriot.” It works the other way, too: “My partner from the other side of the aisle is a True Patriot but…”

I’m relieved to see the people in charge have begun to find a replacement for the overuse of insult flag “disingenuous.” For a while it had been getting difficult trying to explain the near-constant drinking I was doing while listening to the news.

And although I’ve grown up with the whole “She’s so sweet but…” and “He’s such an ass, bless his heart” insult formulae, I’m willing to give the whole Patriot variant a shot. I love my country just that much.

Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life, At Last I’ve Found Thee!

She walked into a bustling Speedway convenience store, a stranger I’ll call Misty, short for “Mystery.” Misty pushes past the five or six of us standing on line, looking disdainfully at our poor pathetic god-forsaken doomed to wait eternally for a cashier selves, and collapses her purse, her keys, and her job application in a heap on the counter and announces she’d like to apply for a job and look, it’s already filled out.

Misty is wearing stained furry bedroom slippers. Which are probably the only appropriate footwear one can choose to complement Very Pink Pajama Pants covered with endless repetitions of the Mountain Dew logo.

Yet again, this is one of those mysterious moments where I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry. Poor Misty in her Mountain Dew pajama pants. It would be so funny if only I didn’t have a gut feeling that both of the following are true: Misty needed that job; Misty probably didn’t get that job. And I can’t stop the harsh, sneaking suspicion that Misty will not know why she didn’t get that job.

Oh, Misty, turn those pants inside out! Or wear something else, anything else. Dress for success, Misty! And then, stand in line with the rest of us poor souls. Think “customer service.”

Bless your heart, Misty, you Patriot, you!

Memo: Random

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“O Beauty ever ancient and ever new!”

An urgent car question led me into the auto parts store on the corner a couple weeks ago. The clerk was a young man in his early twenties. Neither of these things is remarkable. But the young man’s face could have been painted by Botticelli and then brought to life: fine-boned, translucent, belonging to any time or no time, somehow otherworldly. It was a face too delicate to be real, a genderless and beautiful face that gave nothing away but its loveliness. Strange and exotic, there against the orangey fluorescent glare of the store with its metal, bottles, and rubbery smell, and there it was. How I love spotting grace in unexpected places.

What Say You, Walsingham?

“I’m trying to catch my breath so I don’t refer to this, um, ah, maneuver goin’ on today as, uh, chicken crap.” John Boehner

“Men preserve agreements that profit no one to violate.” Solon

“No, no, no. You’re confusing me with Abe Lincoln. I was born in a manger.” Lyndon Baines Johnson, when asked if he was born in a log cabin

“The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.” Winston Churchill

“All writers are inherently curious.” Alain de Botton

“If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man, but it would greatly deteriorate the cat.” Mark Twain

“Something deeply hidden had to be behind things.” Albert Einstein

Last Week’s Smackdown Highlight

“No, it’s just a bewilderingly strange position. I can’t see how any intelligent human being could make that argument,” replied economist Robert Frank in response to Representative John Shadegg’s (R-AZ) statement that the unemployed do not spend benefit money and that consumption doesn’t drive the U.S. economy. (The Rachel Maddow Show, 30 November 2010)

And what if it did not have to be that way?

President Carter recently appeared on The Diane Rehm Show to give an interview. He was asked about his friendship with President Ford. How could he be close friends with a man who said such terrible things about him in public? To which President Carter replied that Ford always called him up beforehand and would explain and apologize and Carter would accept, knowing the audience Ford was facing. “I knew he had to say those things.”

But what if he didn’t have to say those things? What if the truth was given, whether the audience expected it or not? Is there a chance that we don’t get the politics we deserve, that rather, we get the politics we and they expect? What if he, what if any of the politicians didn’t feel they had to say those things? What if one day they said what needed to be said and not what they assumed we wanted to hear?

Tuesday’s Factoid

Indiana is one of only 14 states without a sustainable/renewable energy production requirement.