Well, the holidays are over. I took down my tree on Saturday. It brought tears to my eyes - not the actual dismantling of the tree - but real tears of pain when I jammed the middle toe of my right foot into the coffee table. That little piggy won't be going to market for awhile. He is in intensive care.
Looking back over the holidays one thing stands out as a serious disappointment - to whit, the lack of flying financiers that one might expect in the midst of the current economic meltdown. Thinking back to the Great Depression, I clearly remember reading stories describing whole squadrons of financiers, stock speculators, and other busted seers leaping into the Great Unknown from their Wall Street offices. The penthouse to pavement express.
While suicide is admittedly a drastic step - and is frowned-upon by the purveyors of the prevailing Superstition; I, as a non-subscriber, certainly regard it as justifiable in some circumstances. To my mind it is a no-brainer in many instances of terminal illness. And I can readily conceive of circumstances where a person who has committed the gravest of offenses against his fellow man would conclude that only taking his own life could expunge his overwhelming sense of shame and self-loathing.
It certainly seems to me that there were plenty of candidates to take the plunge this past holiday season. Mr. Madoff, whose Ponzi scheme has bankrupted a number of charities, resulting no doubt, in plenty of human suffering, certainly has plenty for which to atone. And that god-awful Kerry Killinger, former CEO of Washington Mutual, should have a mighty hard time looking at himself in the mirror these days - as tens of thousands of folks lose their homes, lose their jobs, and lose their health care either directly or indirectly as a result of his incompetence and malfeasance. And there are hundreds more who are equally culpable...
To what, then, can one ascribe the dearth of death on Wall Street in the current crisis? After several months given over to prayer and meditation, I have concluded that there is only one plausible answer. These people simply have no sense of shame or self-respect.
And this fact probably says at least as much about our system of higher education for aspiring moguls and modern corporate culture as it does about these pathetic individuals. And then, of course, there is the appalling example set by Messrs. Bush, Cheney & Associates the past eight years.
I have been thinking about this matter for some time and have been composing this screed in my mind for weeks. Unfortunately, Mr. Christopher Buckley beat me to press with his right-on article I saw in the Daily Beast yesterday which I highly recommend: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-01-04/carnival-of-the-shameless/
In other news, winter continues unabated in Juneau. We got over a foot of snow this past weekend and I have been kept busy shoveling snow and running various errands for the elders. Friday was medical day - actually got dad to go to the doctor. Not because of any of the myriad of SERIOUS health conditions he now confronts - like his edema; but because he had bit his lip a month or so ago and said wound was not healing and causing him discomfort. He is truly amazing. We got some salve for his lip and the doc also prescribed a more potent diuretic to bring down the swelling in his legs and ankles.
Last night my landlord and family hopped the plane to Seattle and are continuing on to Disneyland this morning. So their little rat-bag Yorkshire terrier, Finnegan, is now sharing my bachelor pad. He is a cutie - if not exactly my idea of a dog.
Well, time to go shovel.
TallyHo!
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