The Tin Man Syndrome

If you rest you'll rust.

That line came from a Denise Austin work out the other morning as I sweated to her Daily Work Out on Lifetime TV.

It gave me pause. Well, I didn't stop exercising but I did look up. Then I started thinking.

I don't want to rust. But I would like to rest occasionally.

I blame the Protestant Work Ethic. This bugaboo has its proponents because it means people work themselves mercilessly. Even in Social Studies at the secondary level, this work ethic is considered a good thing. It is called the Root of Democracy.

This work ethic has made the U.S. the most materially wealthy nation in the world. We're hardworking, prosperous...

We're tired, is what we are.

The New Yorker in 2005 noted that Americans work more and play less than most other nations. Our leisure time is non-existent. The French people work 28 percent less than we do. "Americans trade their productivity for more money, while Europeans trade it for more leisure," the author of this article writes.

He goes on to say this is a result of unions and collective agreements. Europeans had better bargainers. They may have less stuff, but they get to actually enjoy what they have.

In this article about the work ethic in the U.S., note that the Europeans are getting paid vacation. We can't even get time off to have babies, take care of our elderly relatives, deal with sickness... any of the stuff of life. We have to beg and borrow whatever time off we do receive, and then it's given to us begrudgingly.

And when we do finally take vacation, do we spend that entire two weeks away from the office? Nope. We check e-mail, call in, make business phone calls, turn our travel plans upside down to make some out-of-the-area conference.

The reality is, some of us are working hard for stuff. Bigger houses, or a second home, a nicer car, better sofa - whatever.

But it's also a reality that many of us are doing all of this work simply to keep a modest roof over our heads and to pay the necessary bills. I'm talking about utility bills, like electricity and heating, and food bills. There are an awful lot of people who are working two and three jobs just to keep food on the table.

I think millions of Americans can't afford to rest, not because they think they'll rust, but because they think they'll starve.

This is wrong.

I recently learned from the Commondreams article at that link that in 1948, the United Nations set forth a declaration called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I keep up with a lot of things, but I was completely unaware that such a document existed.

As that article points out, the United States violates this document. A lot. And we're in the process of dismantling it even more.

Of course, this document apparently has no legal strength. I suppose it's just a wish list.

I was most interested in Articles 23 and 24, which state: (1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. (2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. (3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection. (4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
Article 24.
Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Does working 60 hours a week fall under those rights? I don't think so.

I am not a fan of capitalism. I think it is demeaning system, a way of having slave labor and calling it something else, like factory worker. It creates class distinctions and allows too much privilege for those who by virtue of birth or luck are able to manipulate the system to their benefit. I have long noticed that folks who play by the rules, which seems to be many people, are the ones left without heat because they can no longer pay the bills.

I think there are better ways to do things, ways that are fairer and more humane. Ways in which to get the job done that are fair to everyone concerned. However, until our society en masse decides this, I don't see a change coming.

I am not saying we should not work, or that people should just receive a handout so they can sit around and watch TV. I am saying that I would like to see justice in the workplace, some fairness and equity in the way salaries and vacations are dispensed. I would like to see people love their life, not hate it. Living should be a joy, not a grind, but our work ethic has made life a drudgery.

Rest or rust?

Why should that be our only choice?

Electricity and Deregulation

Apparently I wasn't clear in my post yesterday about my electric bill giving me a migraine. Let me try again.

Virginia is already a deregulated state with regard to electricity. This came about in 1997, I think it was, when the General Assembly passed "The Virginia Electric Utility Restructuring Act," which allowed direct retail sales to consumers as of January 1, 2002.

What was supposed to happen was competition among electric companies, as in, two or three would be calling you up and saying I can sell you this for that, and you would choose. You could shop around for the best rate.

But what happened essentially was that electricity went on sale at the wholesale level and the consumers were still stuck with the same companies. I mean, I haven't had anyone from say, Dominion Power or whoever else sells electricity in Virginia (I don't even know who that would be) calling me up to say they could beat Appalachian Power's rates. Have you?

In fact, I know people who are right on the line with Appalachian Power and Craig-Botetourt Electric Cooperative who have tried (within the last year) to switch from one electric company to another, and they have been told they can't do that.

So much for deregulation.

Here is an old story - 1997 - that I found written for The Virginian-Pilot. As you can see, the concerns raised here, mainly that consumers would end up with higher bills and no choice, basically have proven true.

So now here we are, 2007, and the Virginia General Assembly has before it bills to institute "re-regulation" of electric companies. These are House Bills 3068 and Senate Bill 1416.

Essentially these proposed bills would stop deregulation and restore control of your electric bill to the State Corporation Commission (SCC), which previously set rates based on multiple factors, including but not limited to corporate profit.

The proposed bills add consumer protections and place restrictions on the utility's ability to raise rates. It also provides incentives for new generation plants and environmental equipment, all subject to SCC review.

In short, it puts energy costs back in the hands of the government and takes it out of the profit-driven, greedy CEOs and stockholders who only give a damn about themselves and could care less if your grandma freezes to death because she can't afford to heat the house.

I have already told my state representatives that I support "re-regulation."

(And on a similar subject, Verizon is asking the General Assembly to deregulate pricing restrictions on your phone service. A story about it in the Washington Times is here. I don't know about you, but I sure miss AT&T and Ma Bell.)

O Christmas Tree

We lost our Christmas tree.

Nevermind that it was a seven-foot artificial tree and much too heavy for me to move. It isn't where it's supposed to be, and hasn't been for two years.

Last year we made do with a three-foot tree when we discovered the big one was missing.

A year later, we still can't find the Christmas tree. So we bought another. But we don't know what happened to the old one.

You see, we kept it in the bathtub. It was encased in a rather expensive plastic container, with a lid that closed tightly. I have terrible allergies and there's nothing like the dust from stored Christmas decorations to get the nasals dripping. The plastic crate helped a lot.

We kept the entire thing in the bathtub because we had no other place to store it. The tub is in the second bathroom and it goes unused. I thought I might as well do something with the space.

So last year we went to put up the tree. But the tree was gone. Husband doesn't remember what he did with it. Wife doesn't remember, either.

We checked everywhere we might have put it. The attic. The storage shed. The garage.

No artificial tree. No big plastic container, either.

We must have given it away, but we don't remember to whom. Or maybe we decided it was getting thin and needed to be thrown out. But surely we'd have kept the plastic crate.

It's a head scratcher all right.

Our saga with artificial trees began in 1984. This was our second Christmas together, the first happening not long after we married. We were in a new little house and Husband brought in a pretty little real tree.

Ah, the smell of pine!

Ah, the sneezes. The watery eyes. The wheezing.

Yes, it was time to acknowledge that Anita is allergic to pine trees, and has been all her life. My mother told me a few years before she died that she took ill during the Christmas she was pregnant with me. She broke out in hives after an adventure in the woods to find and bring in a tree. An act, she was sure, that cursed me with a propensity toward allergies whenever I was in the presence of pine. Or so she thought, anyway.

I grew up with live Christmas trees, and while I was generally sick during the holiday, I never made the connection between the tree and my sneezes. Neither, apparently, did anyone else.

Following the tree-trimming, my allergies were woefully and painfully obvious in 1984. So we undecorated the tree and we tossed it out.

We got another live pine from somewhere and we scarcely got it in the house before my wheezing made it readily apparent that this wasn't going to work. It wasn't just that particular pine tree, it was any pine tree.

So that tree left the premises, too. We went to Sears and bought our first artificial tree. Not so nice, but less detrimental. That was the year of three trees.

Over the years we've had nice artificial trees. In 1993 Husband gave me a lovely florist tree for an anniversary present. It eventually lost its needles and we replaced it with another.

And that's the one we've lost, and it was well before it was time for it to go. So if you should see an artificial tree looking lonely and undorned by the side of the road, maybe thumbing a ride, give us a call.

It might be the one that, all on its own, disappeared from our bathtub.