LIVity

Apparently these so-called, long-term resident's have no long-term memories because as someone who has lived in PG County my entire life, I know I've heard this all before.  Most recently, when we were asked to vote the construction of the National Harbor. 

Much like this new casino's deal offering to further education and bring 120,000 new jobs to the county, the Harbor's deal was that it'd further education and 30 percent of its construction would be contracted to local,  minority businesses.  In '08 it was revealed that only 4 percent of these contractors found work there. (Washington Post: Minority Contractors Speak Out, 8 May 2008). 

And, as of this year we discovered our county taxes are still the highest in the area, but our school system is still reprehensible. (Please visit my post, Open Letter to Elected PG County Officials for information on our tax situation and Follow-Up: Open Letter to Elected PG County Officials for information on where our school system is ranked). 

So, I meant it when I decried Governor O'Malley for broadcasting that Maryland has some of the best school systems in the country and saying voting for Question 7 will ensure this status.  It's not relevant.  The only reason our state made the list is because of Montgomery County.  Stop misleading and using the people of Prince George's County.  If this casino is to maintain our state's level of education, then please, go convince the people of Montgomery County of this and put the casino there.  But if this issue is really about improving our school system, it's in the numbers, we have more than enough resources to do that without this casino.

When the population of any species outstrips its food resources, that population declines until it's once again in balance with its resources.  Mother Culture says that humans should be exempt from that process, so when she finds a population that has outstripped its resources, she rushes in food from the outside, thus making it a certainty that there will be even more of them to starve in the next generation.  Because the population is never allowed to decline to the point at which it can be supported by its own resources, famine becomes a chronic feature of their lives.
 

What this is saying philosophically it's better to let people starve because it's nature's way of realigning the population with what it's able to provide for.  That by trying to help, we're actually not only prolonging the inevitable, but also making it worse.  That it's better to let everything take care of itself.  But it comes at the expensive of human lives.  Furthermore, it goes against most of our instincts to let others suffer when many of us are living in excess by some standards.  So, where do we draw the line for what's better in this situation??

The last situation I could come up with was when people are convinced that something ordinary is better than it really is.  I was going to cite the beauty industry or Hollywood illusions here, but I came up with something more monumental - literally.  The Leaning Tower of Pisa.  I've always looked at it as a tribute to the beauty of human error and thought it was amazing because it never fell.  But I never really took the time to research it or even really examine it that closely for that matter.  Today, I did.  Looking at the architecture, it's pretty, but there's nothing really unique about the columns and arches that constitute it.  I guess that's because it was designed to be a bell tower.  And to my dismay, it's not still standing by some divine intervention; the Italian government installed anchors and counterweights to keep it from falling because it didn't want to lose the tourism revenue the tower attracted.  I'm not railing against this historical landmark or even the Italian government, all I'm saying is, you don't have to accept something as better than it really is because of how the majority views it. 

And in the broader scheme, the only way to keep from taking better too far is by making a personal decision about what's best for you.

 

Many people who know me know I've been having some difficulty with my supervisor of the past nine months. One of our issues has been my attendance.
My previous supervisor wasn't a stickler for time. She knew I'm a hard worker with high standards for my work product and that I'll do what it takes to deliver something I'm proud of. Oftentimes, this meant working long office hours, continuing to work from home once I "got off," monitoring my Blackberry on evenings and weekends and working 20 hour days when on business travel. It was not something that was required of me, but because my last supervisor didn't expect it, but was so appreciative of it, it motivated me to work harder to support her as best I could. So we had an understanding, I had office hours of 8:30-5, but she didn't trip if I got in at 9. And if nothing was going on around the office, she'd release me to go home in the evening an hour or two early.
I got spoiled.
When my new supervisor came onboard, she quickly made it clear she wants me to account for every moment I am on the clock. Her reasoning is she is signing my time card to verify I worked 40 hours a week, so she needs to be sure I'm actually doing so. My counterargument: I work more than 40 hours a week, but don't claim it (for overtime or compensatory leave) because I enjoy what I do. Being the low person on the totem pole, we all know the end result. I was informed I could not work outside of my office hours without prior authorization, that I must be in the office from 8:30-5 and that I have to check in when I arrive in the morning and when I leave in the evening - in person if my supervisor is in the office or by e-mail if she's on travel. Tight leash that's contributed to huge amounts of tension between she and I.
Imagine my shock when I checked my personal e-mail last night and had a message from my supervisor asking if I wanted to arrive 30 minutes later than normal today because my check-out e-mail yesterday evening was time stamped 30 minutes later than my usual departure time. I had to stay late to deliver a priority product with a tight deadline. I replied by thanking her for the offer, but let her know I planned to arrive at my normal time because I have another project I'm working on and I wanted to get as early of a start as possible on it.
It has taken a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get here and I'm under no pretense as to the cause of the offer. This is all an ongoing process that I can't get into online, but it does have me thinking about the nature of people. Initially, I concluded that when left to their own devices, people will do the right thing. Very naive, but in my defense, I had just woken up when I came up with it.
A couple hours and a couple cups of coffee later, I've come to two summations about the nature of people:
1) We love blanket ideas because we believe they protect us. For example, it's easy for my supervisor to have a blanket distrust for her employees. Perhaps she got burned in the past by an employee with dishonest time keeping methods, so now she thinks it's in her best interest to distrust all her employees and treat them accordingly.
2) When left to their own devices, people will do what it's in their character to do.
These bullets are completely juxtaposed because the second asks for us to release our proclivity towards the first; release our tendency towards blanket ideas in favor of handling each person and situation on an individual basis. And perhaps therein lies true human nature - juxtaposition.

"I am  neither religious nor superstitious, but there is something otherworldly about the space where two roads come together.  The devil is said to set up shop there if you want to swap your soul for something more useful.  If you believe that God can be bribed, it's also the hallowed ground to make sacrifices.  In the literal sense, it's also a place to change direction, but once you've changed it, you're stuck until you come to another crossroads, and who knows how long that will be."

And without giving anything away about the plot and what transpired in this chapter, it ends with:

"When we passed the sign to get on the interstate highway, he didn't put on his turn signal and instead kept driving along the two-lane road.  He slowed a bit at every intersection, giving my mother the chance to ask him to change course."

Loved how Jones used the 13 pages that made up this chapter to bring this story within the story full circle.  

Also, am a big fan of this paragraph because it feels like a childhood memory:

"August was canning season, so the women were busy washing tomatoes, peaches, and beets.  Willie Mae was saving her money to  buy two window air conditioners; in the meantime we kept cool with window-box and funeral-home fans...Across the street, a lady sold Styrofoam cups of frozen Kool-Aid for a dime, but my mother had told me not to eat from strange people's houses.  I spent most of the time in the kitchen, up under Willie Mae, who would stumble over me from time to time.  The atmosphere was thick with the sugary smell of boiling fruit.  I would lick my forearm and taste salt."

I'd give this novel five out of five stars; highly recommended.

 

Recently, I was thinking about the nature of change. Missing some people and things from my past and realizing I sacrificed them to make me the person I am today.  A work in progress.  Which means in the future, I'll be sacrificing something I currently hold dear in order to progress to my next season in life.  Made me want to enjoy and value everyone and everything in my life that much more.  To make sure I'm really living in the moment because who knows how the next one will look.