A Perimeter Parting

In the Dunwoody HBO & Company building, I remember looking across the pine trees in the parking lot at the Darth Vader building in the distance. 

I remember watching groups of customers on their way to “Hospital 2000” with Dan Labenne or Dan Mowery.  

Having lunch on the sixth floor in the executive dining room with the CEO.  

Writing contracts and RFPs after everyone else went home.  Then being at the front door before anyone else arrived in the morning.   

To me, just a skinny guy that looked like a teenager, it was awesome.

Back then, the Coke dispensers in the break rooms were a novelty and STAR ruled the IT skies. 

It seemed then like it was always spring.  In my memories the colors are always yellow-green and the world was budding and blooming. 

Of course, things change.  Monday is my last day with McKesson. 

I was barely out of my entry level job when I started here.  Every paycheck I can remember has had HBO & Company or McKesson logos on it.   Now I’ll look at a different logo for a while and see if I can get used to it.

This company has been my education, my family, my friends, my life. 

And I'm very grateful for the opportunity to be at such a wonderful place – one that has given so much to me.  To spend my days with better people than I could have found at any company in America.   Of course, that’s my opinion, but I wish that everyone working here today could know what I know about our history – and the people that made this such a great place.   

So here is a heartfelt goodbye and a thank you.  To the people I work with now and in the past. 

You helped me be who I am. 

And if the Coke is still free, maybe I’ll be back.

Goat Pirouettes

I saw a goat up on a mountain
I watched her from a distance
precariously climbing up
on a course of her persistence

Snowy-crowns and complex clouds
a calling to the soul
maybe not the top she sought  
neither refuge nor control

She was younger then but strong
tense but not timid
she'd been treacherously summered
dangerously wintered

With an upside up and a downside down;
a master climber and a risker
a sister soul, a speaker
an old age thought resistor

By chromosome and floating fog
she was tentative but not falling
like a gravity doctor thesis
defying Steve Hawking 

But through the miss's mist
she seemed informally not normal
Jumping tall and wide
like a careless young immortal

I saw her skating then, in pirouettes

like a wonderful young Fleming

out there on the precipice -
dizzyingly ascending

Hypnotizing, mesmerizing
no understudies, no rope nets
just icy flashes and fog curtains
a sometimes soul subrette

But frequent streaks of brightness showed
blinding sunshine
searing white
melting ice and warming hearts
leaving spots upon our eyes

In silhouette
she stood on top 
a conqueror, acting rested
yet another pinnacle
she fearlessly had bested

Then standing in the summit's cold  
she peered back down the path
and saw a bird and heard a chirp
and her reality was recast

It was a small thing, rather puny
to this conquering mountain climber
a needy little puppet bird,
a Sesame Street headliner

But the chirp became an urgent call
a powerful magnet source
greater than the summit's siren
this avian counter force

And so these days I see the goat
on the lower mountain tracks
climbing through spring flowers
with the bird upon her back

But when the bird gets big enough
and it won't seem very long
He'll fly her back to the summit's crest
and chirp his saving song

Typewriter waterfall

Here it is  

a whitewater future

we're rushing across the edge 

across a typewriter waterfall

In our hands; ghosts

typed up voices

hollow, shallow; spectral fonts 

shoulder tappers

Urging and urgent

small case, large case

important and meaningless

filled, filed

Marking time

inbox fears, outbox hopes

stealing time

distorting reality

Philatelic friends  

they're plastic, electronic 

tagged and totaled

displayed and discarded 

A roulette table world 

of spinning urls; reaching, linking

of reds and blacks

of ones and zeros

A generational genome  

of gorilla glass soldiers 

of technical clothing
and forbidden fruit   

And now
I need a break

give me colors and inks, sharpies and pencils

pigments and papers

  

Feel    

passion and love
soul and depth 

truth and inspiration

More than a :)

A Terra Cotta Hiding Place

Here is your chance

Cartagena or Quito
LaPaz, Cuzco, Ushuaia

Brazil or Costa Rica or Panama

It doesn’t matter

You’ll get chiles and sunsets and surf

And terra cotta hiding places

and an escape

Out of your stupid kitchen

and heartache and sadness and noise

Put your fingers in your ears

Open your eyes and be who you are

Strawberry gringa

Dreamer, comic, artist
Woman 

It's four times ten

chasing you back from infinity

So run

From the traffic in your head

From the toll of existence

Don’t you feel it?

Distant thunder and green-lit skies

electric air

They’re your storms and they’re chasing you down

And you’re just wishing them back

Escapa, mi hermana

Run through the sand

Beautiful in the afternoon sun

Your hair and your freckles

Streaming in the wind

Play cat gut guitar

y canta de la vida dulce

Feel it now
the breeze on your cheek
the sun on your shoulders
the soul in yourself

Drink some tequila and be free

hold someone's hand y sabe el amor

dream in a new language
and listen to la gente 

dice tu nombre 

Because there
in your land of escape
you’re the you I know
The you you know

el verdadero tú

But if you can’t escape yet
I can close my eyes and see you there

Y para alla, mi hermana, te amo  

Thankscoming

This is my third year of writing a Thanksgiving Day post.

This year, I feel oddly liberated from our family's Midwestern traditions.  And I don't feel like it's so important that we're all together, doing the same thing in the same place.

I'm not longing for the chilly Illinois winds. And for family news, gossip and pictures?  I've got Facebook.  Colorful fall leaves?  They're already in the blue bins.

Instead, I'm thinking ahead.

Here's a list of things I plan to be thankful for next year:

- For finally meeting young Kalven

- For seeing my niece and nephew bring new children into the world

- For the weekend in Tallahassee with Tommy and Andrew, watching the Seminoles beat the Gators

- For the 2012 Sidewalk Chalk Art festival - posing with my giant neon shark (see "mother earth" from the 2011 show (not mine) to the right here)

- For peaceful, blissful, un-lonely hours spent driving in the mini, top down, watching cattle and palmetto and keeping an eye open for turtles and snakes in the road

- For the redneck voice - (another great year) - and that I got to say "Jimbo Fisher" a lot with it

- For Starbucks (OK, I really do need to lay off the caffeine (that was said in the redneck voice))

- For earning my post-graduate degree in adolescent management - enough said

- For Florida - the gulf, the storms, the sun, the feeling

- For the chance to look up at the stars and see the Milky Way on the beach at Boca Grande

- For seeing Matthew take one more step toward the Air Force Academy

- For seeing Tommy step up to his destiny

- For seeing Andrew get one year closer to the man I know he will be

- For the wonderful women in my life

- For Julie (again and again)

- For my parents

- For my cool, smart brother and his new peace

- For my new friends and old friends - and for me learning how to be a better friend

- For a victorious end to the fight - and a blessed return to normality

I am optimistic and hopeful.  And thankful.

Bring me back the coach

It was a complicated week-long journey of twisted teenage pretzel logic: unpaid speeding tickets, missing vehicle registrations, inept police departments, interstate licensing regulations, motor vehicle appointment scheduling mix ups, about-to-be-revoked licenses, and a non-renewal letter from State Farm.

The underwriters decided that the $30,000 we've paid in premiums over the last 6 years wasn't enough for the risk.

So, the parental management team threw up their hands. Here again was our nemesis - the dreaded two-headed demon of frontal brain dissociation and teenage hormones.

My reaction, of course, was to escape into a ghost book or a new conspiracy theory. But before I could, Julie pulled out her journal, sat down next to me, and read me a story. It was an entry I wrote myself, on a cold day in February, 1999.

"Today we cleaned out the garage and set up the Playschool hoop inside. Andrew and I started a game, and he dunked the ball every time.

Then Tommy shows up. He and I play alone for a while. I narrate, saying things like 'the kid never misses!' His face is lit up with a huge smile. Then the three of us start playing a game - Tommy and I against Andrew. Tommy is wearing his new coat from Kohl's, not a Bulls coat but it's the same colors, red and black - and he loves it."

Well, Tommy decides he wants to be the 'coach' for Andrew and me. He sits on the steps and says, 'time out for some snacks for the players.' The 'coach' goes inside and gets some snacks for us. He comes back into the garage with a Tupperware bowl filled with orange Jello. It's actually half-eaten and it has three spoons in it. He also brings out some strawberry yogurt.

His heart is so bright and innocent and warm. I ate the Jello on the sidelines with the coach - the great, irreplaceable, bounding Tommy."

It's been a long time since that frigid February day, but I remembered it again - with longing - as she read it, like it was just yesterday. It is a reminder of the essence of the soul. I can see him again like I've always seen him - from a diaper-wearing, bottle-drinking backyard explorer to the coach of the garage basketball team.  Goodness and innocence.

And it importantly reminds me of something else: when the zombie underwriters send you a nasty non-renewal, or when the DMV pushes you into their maddening maze, it's time to stop, sit on the steps, and have some orange jello.

It tastes like goodness and innocence. Simple, sweet, pure. And it's good for your soul.

Thank you, coach. Now let's go fix those little things.

The Unconquered

In Doak Campbell Stadium, watching the Florida State football game from the student section, I remembered.

It was parents' weekend. The unlucky N.C. State team looked like a group that the Globetrotters would have paid to be their foil.

It was an afternoon of life in the moment. In a place overflowing with karmic celebration - youth and innocence, pride and passion, hope and excitement. In their college faces, a prescience of possibilities; of dreams yet fulfilled but confidently expected.

I imagined their futures as I looked around.

It was impossibly larger than real life; like it could only have been created by a gigantic glitter-boy generator. There were sequined drum majorettes, spinning their batons high into the blue fall sky, conducting uncontrollable expressions of joy. The sun sparkled off of the band in strobing flashes of light.

Among hats and helmets, pom poms and round-off flips, a Seminole warrior atop an appaloosa charged onto the field and plunged a flaming spear of defiance into the turf.

I looked across the waves of garnet and I could see their goodness. They stood in their tee shirts and jeans, tomahawk-chopping and chanting for the entire game.  In rows and aisles, they were absorbed in every play, every song, every hand gesture.  They laughed and high-fived. They took turns starting the noisy crescendos that began every kick-off or punt.

These are the same strangers that are frustratingly glued to their smart phones and laptops and who spend too many hours on Facebook. They stay up too late and are sloppy. They cook on their George Foreman grills at 3am in their tiny dorm rooms and apartments. They sleep until noon. They text too much.

But God, they are wonderful.

They hunch over their white Apple laptops in libraries, smiling at each other and posting on Facebook. Drinking Starbucks. Thinking about going to Ken's Bar at midnight.

They're a new species - and they make me believe in the future.

As technical geeks and academic magicians, they've been able to overcome challenges never imposed upon (or imagined by) previous generations. They're expected to embrace change and learn it overnight. And deal with economic pain in our society unseen since the great depression.    

They're not timid - not frightened by people telling them that they can't do something. They've been empowered by instant communication and distant connections. They've seen more in their 20-odd years than most of us saw by our 50's. They have hundreds of close friends they network with every day and  new attitudes about marriages and mortgages and expectations.

As I think back on that afternoon in the student section, I get goosebumps.  I remember. It's that same feeling I had, long ago. Before minivans and mortgages.

And I know who the Seminoles really are now.

They are the unconquered.  And they are just in time.

Memories of the Witch Sisters

Every year, when the oak leaves would begin coloring our backyard and driveway with russet and crimson, and when the skies would turn gloomy and heavy and low, my father would begin telling us about the witch sisters.

The witch sisters were probably born on a piece of scrap mat board dad pulled from the bin under the work table in his old art gallery on 111th street.

Like bluish wisps of Bond Street smoke curling from his pipe, the sisters materialized into our childhoods.

In those days, he was a great storyteller. He spun the lives of the sisters through the autumn air as if he was weaving strands of DNA together - witch DNA - one part likable and one part evil.

Those sibling sisters were among his most creative productions. We'd rather hear about them turning someone into a frog then the history of the Union Stock Yards or some old building on Prairie Avenue.  Give us the girls.

Before the internet, before Ghost Adventurers - before ghouls were cool - we could download the witches. Anywhere - on the front porch swing, accompanied by rain and thunder as we watched the autumn storms. In the station wagon on the way to Tippecanoe or Fish Lake.  And at bedtime, where everyone would (and could) fit into the same bed, listening to the tall tales of the fall.

Tales beloved and remembered every Halloween.

Thanks to my father's artistic touch, we could see them in all of their wicked glory.

As the stories would unfold, the images were etched on left-over mat board and brown wrapping paper. Their pointy hats, warts and flowing black dresses. Personalities and quirks. Dark castles and haunted houses, teetering and comic; part Albert Gorey and Part Tim Burton. A spooky Dr. Seuss.

The stories were alternately scary and funny.

The witch sisters worked by day in a six-story room for making broomsticks.  It had all the required materials - straw, sticks, and whatever else was needed - illustrated in magical detail.  The Broom Room was the place where naughty children were taken; cleverly captured by the sisters and, until they were contrite or escaped, helped the sisters make their brooms.

When finished, they'd be eagerly tested; flown up into the cavernous space and accompanied by evil cackles and room-spinning moves.  Quidditch before J.K. ever thought of it.

The children's punishment was always administered by the eldest sister with surprising fairness, but that lack of evil courage was resented by the younger sisters. They would complain and scheme behind her back. The matriarch was often found scolding her sisters for inappropriate acts; some of them unseemly - even for witches.

Everyone's favorite witch was the youngest of the sisters. She always carried fire - whether it was a lantern, torch, or matches.   She was resentful and confrontational, and would always throw fire on those that got in her way. Or she'd burn things up. We loved her.

The middle sister lived in the shadow of the other sisters and unfortunately, I can't seem to remember much about her.  But she had some big personalities in her family and it was easy to get overlooked.

The memories of the sisters are becoming somewhat foggy, like the Halloween scenes they lived in.  But, in retrospect, the most remarkable part about the witch sisters is that a father of seven would find the time and the energy to give them life - and to share his creativity and excitement with all of us.

Which we all have today - in our own ways - thanks to my dad.

Call of Duty

In the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, my father's uncle was hit with bullets from a German Browning machine gun as he was climbing off his Higgins boat, in the freezing ocean water, just off the beach in Normandy France.

The same uncle he used to sit with in his backyard, drinking root beers and talking about baseball.

On the other edge of the world, his twin brother was in the Pacific, sweating and scared, climbing through island mangroves with his M-1 Garand carbine.  While this twin survived, he was never the same, having lost his sanity and his brother while the war raged throughout the world just a single generation ago.

William Tecumseh Sherman said, "War is cruelty. There's no use trying to reform it, the crueler it is the sooner it will be over."

And although the real visions of the war are dimming with time, they can still be seen.  In faded tattoos on veterans - the pale ink images of ships, symbols and companies on wrinkled and spotted forearms.

They have witnessed what most Americans will never see. Incredible, extreme violence and suffering. The core or warfare - eliminating the enemy by causing their death.

Perhaps they have earned metaphysical retribution for those indescribable moments of terror in their lives - a new life, after the war, which is sweeter, more valuable, and more poignant.

But as those real memories blur in the distance, the newest generation of children all over the world have been recruited into an electronic, virtual reality version of that experience - the "Call of Duty" computer game.

It started it's existence as an interactive version of D-Day, but evolved to include many battlegrounds and killing fields, a menu-driven cafeteria of war's death and destruction.

The latest version is the seventh installment of the game.  Within 24 hours of going on sale, more than 7 million copies were sold. A Japanese version was also released.  The total sales of the 2010 version alone exceed 25 million copies. Just six weeks after the release, Activision reported Black Ops had earned $1 billion in sales.

And all over the world, we are now losing a new generation of children to World War II - again - but this time it's the cyber version.

Black Ops (Call of Duty) is mesmerizingly and almost medically addictive and disturbingly and shockingly desensitizing.  It has graphic images of limbs being blown apart by high caliber bullets and blood being sprayed from torn arteries.  Points are collected and tallied on screen for each measure of carnage and gore.

Internet versions of the game allow players to join the virtual battle from anywhere in the world - one  click on an X-box icon and they appear on the other player's screen instantly. A 15-year-old in a basement in Ohio can engage in a real-time virtual fight with a 17-year-old in Kiev.

For the players, the hours seem to be mere seconds. On the surface, it appears to be just a video game. But complex social, psychological, and neurological effects are all in play.  It's anything but a harmless video game.

"Game players have some or even many symptoms of drug addiction, in that some players become more concerned with their interactions in the game than in their broader lives.  Players may ... gain or lose significant weight due to playing, disrupt sleep patterns to play and suffer sleep deprivation as an effect, play at work, standing in the middle of nowhere looking into space for a considerable amount of time, avoiding phone calls from friends and/or lying about play time." (1)

I have heard countless stories of college student addictions.  Having had academic success in high school under the watchful eyes of their parents, they falter in college under the spell of Call of Duty.

Move over marijuana and Miller Lite.  C.O.D. is the new headliner, featuring all-night sessions, sleepless weekends, and an indifference to college academics. In 2008, one of the five FCC Commissioners, Deborah Taylor Tate, stated that online gaming addiction was "one of the top reasons for college drop-outs."

And 20 something women know all about the perils of Call of Duty. There are Facebook sites, blogs, and support groups for women whose boyfriends have become Call of Duty zombies.

Constant exposure to three-dimensional geospatial views within the game are also potentially harmful, and can trigger epileptic and other types of neurological disorders.  So extreme are the jarring changes in perspective that many adults cannot view the game for more than seconds without experiencing vertigo or nausea.

So, 67 years after allied forces landed on the beaches of Juno, Gold, Omaha, Utah, and Sword, the memory and the pain linger.

And we are fighting a second battle, part cyber and part social .  Parents need to understand the truth about Call of Duty and its effects. It has a clear effect on the social development, physical, and behavioral health of teens and pre-teens.  It can strain adult relationships.

It is clearly and undeniably addictive - and tens of millions of copies are sitting in disk drives all over the world.  Addicts are as anxious to spin them as they would be to hold a lighter under a spoon.  

America has to begin saying "no" to the uber-cyber Call of Duty.

It is not harmless.

It is as destructive as the fifty caliber shells that rained down on the real soldiers in Normandy, on that fateful date in June, 1944.

1) Grüsser, S.M.; R. Thalemann, M. D. Griffiths (April, 2007).CyberPsychology & Behavior (Mary Anne Liebert, Inc.) 10 (2): 290–292.

Hair

I heard a voice say, "now keep your eyes closed so I can trim your eyebrows."

The voice was Sherry's, spoken between pillars at Salon nirvana.  Like a seductive Delilah, she was poised to steal my Samson Chi.

Clip it, snip it, steal it, keep it.

Half-Berlinian, half-Dublinian guys like me don't have a lot of body hair.  Sure, after years of rain and wars and living in forests and on cold meadows we've evolved into pale-skinned arm-wrestlers, but we've never had the DNA for GQ beards and sideburns.  

And substantial eyebrows in our gene pool are seen about as often as Paul McCartney is seen in the weight room wearing a muscle shirt.

I've never had them either, but lately things have changed.  Now there are some stray loners, like you'd see sticking out of a mole on the chin of a gnarly old witch.

Pull it, tweeze it, tug it, toss it

Wild and unwelcome, anti-Darwinian un-survivors of the fittest.   Crazy and curling and discolored, like the fingernails of some old Indian yogi that haven't been cut for thirty years.

These are new settlers on the Germano-Irish landscape.  Once populated by freckles and peach fuzz and Coppertone, it's now a dangerous alley with suspicious strangers and escapees from the nearby sanitarium.

What happened here?  It seemed so impossible a few short years ago. 

Wet it, comb it, part it, clip it

My mother always used to warn us not to stand in front of the Radar-Range when we were kids. Now I know why. It was a peach fuzz zapper.

Innocence long since zapped, now I have this strange hair.

Hair like my dad used to have (and still does) - his arms looking like that of an Icelandic Yeti monster. I remember staring at his arms in church when I was bored, thinking "how can someone's arm hair get that long?

God, if you're trying to pay me back for a lifetime of condescending feelings like that - of hair superiority and infallibility and permanence - congratulations.

In places where only baby-fine strands could be seen in the summer sun at Memorial Park Pool, I can now cut it with a scissors.

Not cool.   

Pinch it, squeeze it, twist it, pluck it

In my ears, curling and bothersome. On my ears, which feels like a constant stirring of insects, which are only quieted when I get the tweezers and start plucking.

Hair like my grandpa had. 

It's a freakish distraction for me and others.  On a Southwest flight recently, a three year old boy wanted to "play" with my arm hair.  His mother said, "Now JJ, don't do that, it's rude."  I told her I didn't mind, so he spent the flight with his fingers on my arms, brushing it this way and that, bunching it up in his fingers and pulling.

But where is the good hair, the cool hair?

I can't grow a beard (thanks again you know who).   When I don't shave I don't look like an off duty fireman playing hockey, I just look shabby - not even Bohemian. It's sort of like a splotchy faux acne made of red, white, brown and bronze whiskers. Well, maybe not whiskers in the macho Derek Jeter sense of the word - more like just hair.

So I wait. I know I won't have real eyebrows or a cool beard.

I've decided the next best hope for me is a pre-mature graying, where at least I can get to cool in a wise academic sort of way.

I'm waiting.

And thinking of Broadway.

Flow it, show it, long as God can grow it

I want it long, straight, curly, fuzzy, snaggy, shaggy, ratty, matty

Oily, greasy, fleecy, shining, gleaming, streaming
Flaxen, waxen

Knotted, polka-dotted
Twisted, beaded, braided

Powdered, flowered, and confetti-ed

Bangled, tangled, spangled, and spaghetti-ed


There ain't no words
For the beauty, the splendor, the wonder
Of my...
Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair


Oh say can you see
My eyes if you can
Then my hair's too short
Down to here
Down to there
I want hair
Down to where
It stops by itself
They'll be ga ga at the go go


When they see me in my toga
My toga made of blond
Brilliantine Biblical hair
My hair like Jesus wore it
Hallelujah I adore it

Wicked Wall Street

We learned last week that six banks account for nearly 60% of the US GDP, or 60% of all of the money in the US economy.

We also saw that the top 1% of earners in our country generate 20% of all income.  Ten years ago, the top 1% generated only 10% of the GDP.

This elite strata used to be filled with business owners and entrepreneurs - from silicon valley whiz kids to pizza tycoons and movie rental moguls.  Today, they're almost wholly constituted from financial companies.

Today's robber barons sit behind glowing green screens and look out on concrete and glass vistas they helped finance.  They are money managers, traders, executives, and consultants.  They invent things that average people can't understand, like credit default swaps and complex derivatives.

They spend more on lobbyists and politicians to keep the slot machines running than the entire GDP of many small countries.

And when it looked like their own reckless arrogance (see credit default swaps and toxic mortgage products) would be their demise, the US borrowed money at the taxpayers' expense to keep them afloat - so that the derivatives could keep coming - unchecked and unregulated - and the roulette wheel could keep spinning, smooth and well-oiled with fiat money.

It has been said that a few years ago, economists and government leaders understood that our financial system (primarily our banking and monetary structure, which include Wall Street and the Federal Reserve) was unstable and unsustainable, and that the US was at a critical juncture.

It was time to make a choice.  Start over (as in letting the banks fail) or delay the inevitable by continuing to move jobs overseas - stockpiling profits and manipulating the stock and equities markets.

Alas, they chose wrong.

They could only keep the consumers spending using credit.  Certainly not with new or better jobs or increased income.  Credit.  Mortgages from Freddie and Fannie, easy credit cards, lines of credit, home equity loans.  A bubble just waiting to pop.

And at the same time, they turned a blind eye to the export-dumping, currency-suppressing Chinese, who under-consume (because underpaid and oppressed populations can't afford the flat screen televisions they export) within the new global economy.  Drive the price of the currency down so that Chinese goods are cheaper than american goods, even if they have to be shipped from the other side of the globe.

Chinese goods, built with Chinese labor, then stamped with the logo of a US company, make their way into retail stores across this country.  When they're sold in a retail outlet in Detroit or Columbus they profit no one in Michigan.  Or Ohio.  Or Illinois.  Except the clerk at the register, who gets minimum wage.

With these new profits, banks increased the levels of their own capitalization.  They receive federal interest payments on banked capital as an ostensible hedge against future crises.  But these payments oddly entice banks to grow even more capital rather lend out money to soon-to-be-laid-off Americans.

And now that capital has grown to 60% of our country's GDP.

Wall street has weapons of mass destruction besides credit default swaps.  They are computerized, high frequency, high volume trading programs that execute thousands of stock transactions every second. They use quantum algorithmic formulas based on world news, other markets, insider information, and their own visibility into market orders at certain levels.

And so, each time the stock market plunges and surges, you can be sure that the big banks have been busy pushing the market one way or another. They buy and sell to themselves, affecting huge market swings, now common on a daily basis.

These millions of trades and their immense profit represent the new production line of the once-great american economy. Imagine Henry Ford's amazement that a single quantum-trading computer the size of a Model T's back seat could earn a thousand times more money in a single session than his whole plant could earn in a year.  Or ten years.

Is it surprising, then, that the american future seems so dismal?  Why would banks lend money to build a new plant in Indiana or Ohio when they can roll that money around in the stock market?

The result is that we have few visionaries and risk-takers.  Too few innovations by our best and brightest. And we make little use of the windfall of our vast natural resources.

Main Street is so afflicted by the loss of jobs and confidence and their inability to envision the future that they are on the verge of paralysis.  And too inhibited by regulations and taxation.

Local businesses hire local residents.  But local businesses are small businesses.  And on Main street today they're as uncommon as the horse and buggy.  The real small businesses got big-boxed out of the market in the 1980's and 90's - and kicked into the unemployment line.

What's left? The big box job with the plastic name tag? Or the small cubicle in a sea of cubicles; dialing for dollars and competing with colleagues in India?

Thus, the new american employee rides the current of change, channeled now by the ebbs and flows of corporate earnings and losses, of shorts and longs, of market winners and losers.

Wall Street has sat down in the american kitchen, poured itself a cup of coffee, and put its feet up on the table. Its cigar-chewing grin makes you think the news is bad, indeed.