The depression comes to Southernmost

I read blogs and newspapers and all the articles are about bailouts and banks going under, people losing their homes, and still it seems abstract to me. That is, until another of my favorite businesses closes its doors.

Earlier this summer, we lost a treasure in Carbondale: the feed store that had been downtown for more than 100 years. They tried to hang on selling pet food and plants for your garden and seed for bird feeders, but in June they closed. Then I called Animal Crackers, the slightly nutty, hippie-dippie pet store/kennel to schedule baths for the dogs. Phone disconnected. Store closed. Last week, we saw the signs go up in the windows of one of our favorite stores, Kaleidescope. They (used to) sell reasonably-priced imported items, candles, cards, scarves, jewelery—a perfect source for a wife or sister’s birthday gift.

Tonight it was a punch to the stomach when I drove into Murphysboro and dropped by the grocery store to pick up some things for dinner. I suddenly noticed all the shelves had empty spots, and when I got to the checkout, the magazine racks were bare. I asked, “are you closing?” “Yes, December 13.” I tried to imagine what it’ll be like in this little town with the grocery store an empty building.

Each of these businesses employed people, and gave vitality to our community. They feel like canaries in the coal mine.

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The freest I ever felt was when I ditched my Ford Pinto. I had moved to Chicago in 1970-something, and urban living meant a car was superfluous. I let my sister take over the car payments and gladly walked away from other expenses like car insurance, gasoline, oil, maintenance, parking tickets, registrations and city stickers. I saved up enough money on my meagre $6,000 salary to go in with a buddy and buy a 40 acre farm in Wisconsin.

My sister actually needed the Pinto, because she was studying nursing in Indianapolis, and had to get to school in a city with almost no public transportation. I, on the other hand, availed myself of my bicycle and the CTA and made out like a bandit.

But in the end, I, like my country, just couldn’t wean myself from the automobile. A few years later I bought a beat-up pickup truck and I was once again a slave to the oil companies and the car companies.

Over the next 30 years I watched, horrified, as the city I grew up in, and every other city I lived in or visited, ate up the countryside around it, spewing out strip malls and vinyl-sided subdivisions as far as the eye could see. I knew in my heart it was not healthy, and I knew it was not sustainable.

Now we’ve reached the point where billions of dollars of taxpayer money are gonna be spent to bail out GM and Chrysler and Ford. I think this is a fool’s mission.

There once was a time where our government was able to fund public scoools, trolley lines, universities, libraries, museums and more. Then all the public money got sucked into building and maintaining highways. The automobile reached into our pockets and caused us to spend more than we could afford as a society. Now we’re at a crossroads.

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Christmas came early this year

Our Christmas cactus has bloomed way before it should have, usually sometime after Thanksgiving.

Oddly too, today, a week into November, it is so warm I was able to pick a bunch of zinnias, still blooming in the garden.

I’m feeling a sense of calm and confidence that I haven’t had for quite awhile now.

Christmas came early this year.

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Happy Halloween

Our pumpkin. It’s a Barack O’Lantern.

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We.Are.SO.Not.Listening

I came across one of the best dismissals of the mainstream media over at Democratic Underground this afternoon. We.Are.SO.Not.Listening. Here are a couple of choice paragraphs:

We are uninterested in whatever it is you have to say, whatever product it is you’re trying to hawk, whatever polls, surveys, or demographics you want to trot out and declare as gospel, and whatever opinions you insist on proffering as though any one of us still gives a flying fuck. Because we don’t.

or how about this:

Tens of thousands dead in a war you promoted like a ratings-grabbing miniseries sure to bring in the viewers and the bucks, Constitutional rights torn and tattered while you made a spectacle of shredding the once-noble profession of journalism with your stunning displays of ignorance, a middle-class that all but disappeared while you discussed missing teenagers and the fading careers of the once rich-and-famous, a government that tortured, imprisoned, raped, and plundered with abandon while you busied yourselves with looking the other way.

We.Are.So.Not.Listening.

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Who says Sarah Palin doesn’t read?

Infocloud has obtained this list of Sarah’s top 10 newspapers and magazines:

10. NonReaders Digest

9. The Russian Observer

8. The Juneau Juno

7. Snowmobile and Driver

6. Popular Creationism

5. Better Igloos and Tundra

4. UnCosmopolitan

3. NEWSWEAK

2. The Wasilla Flat World Telegram

1. The New York Review of Book Burning

Hats off to the Satirical Political Report for digging through her subscription records.

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Feeling reamed

So on CNN they celebrated and acted relieved when the closing bell of the New York Stock Exchange went off and the dramatic losses of earlier this week had been regained. I couldn’t share their upbeat mood and had to turn off the television.

Something has been taken away from us this week. After eight years of watching our rights and freedoms disappear one by one, and this past year of seeing our wealth diminish as housing values plummeted, I’m used to it. But this week was the capper.

Now they’ve stolen an additional trillion dollars of our money. They’ve changed the laws so they won’t let us go bankrupt anymore. Wall Street bankers scamper away with severance packages in the millions.

I knew the final throes of the Bush years would be intense. But even I didn’t see this coming. To think there are still people who believe John McCain and Sarah Palin are agents of change and plan to vote for them makes me heartsick.

I have a lot of years under my belt and I’ve never quite felt so frightened about the outcome of an election.

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