Half Changed World

Steven Greenhouse covers the labor beat for the New York Times, and The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker is his summary of the state of working America.  It’s not a pretty picture.  He describes a world of layoffs, unionbusting, sexual harassment, workplace injuries, and broken promises.  These issues are what I work on professionally, so little of it was news to me, but Greenhouse brings the abstract issues to life with individual stories.  And even I was surprised at the ubiquity with which Greenhouse found that store managers forged timekeeping records and forced workers to work off the clock in order to cheat them of overtime and keep labor costs down.

Unfortunately, while the topic is important, I have trouble imagining anyone reading it all the way through but those who are already convinced.  The unremitting grimness of the book is only slightly broken by a chapter on model employers, such as Costco, Patagonia, and Cooperative Home Care Associates.  The last chapter of the book offers some possible solutions, all of which would be positive steps, but which either don’t seem up to the magnitude of the challenge (enforcing wage and hour laws more strongly) or are far easily said than done (expand health coverage to all while bringing costs under control).

My current dilemma: if we let the kids stay up late because they don’t have to go to school in the morning, the window of time between when they go to bed and when I fall into bed becomes increasingly narrow.  When am I supposed to blog?

Just before bed, D showed us the digital slideshow of the first grade year. Overall, I’d say he had a good year.  I don’t think he was challenged, but he didn’t seem to be bored either.  He made friends, improved his self-control, decided that he likes science, and improved his writing.

The school said that you can submit letters about your child’s "learning style" to help them make class placements for next year.  We’re not sufficiently hooked into the parents network to know who the second grade teachers are, and if there are code words that we should be using to try to avoid certain ones.  (And yes, I sometimes think that I’d be more hooked in if I were the at-home parent, but I’m not sure that’s really true.)  So, I guess we’ll have to actually write about his learning style. The main thing I’d like him to learn is persistence through difficulty, and I sure don’t know how one goes about teaching that.  So far, video games seem to be our best bet.

This week we spent $132.41 on groceries, bringing us to $228.39 for the month.  That included a trip to Costco, where we got out for under $100 — but barely.  Some of the things we bought (like a double package of peanut butter) will certainly last us longer than the month, but we’ve also been eating things that we bought before the start of the month, so I think it more or less balances out.  But, of course, if I was really worried about running out of food before the end of the month, I’d be less willing to buy things like the extra-large bag of chocolate chips.  (T has been on a cookie-baking kick since we finished our kitchen renovation.  It’s probably more expensive than buying generic cookies at the supermarket, but cheaper than the brand name packages.)

We’ve been eating very little meat, but that’s not unusual for us, so we’re not feeling deprived by that. But blueberries don’t seem to have reached their usual seasonal low price, and I’m reluctant to spent $4 on a pint that N will finish off in an afternoon. We did go strawberry picking this morning, and got about 7 pounds of berries.  Even if I add the cost of gas to their price, that was quite the bargain.

The Metro Orange line has been a mess all week — several serious delays, and terrible overcrowding even when the trains are running.  When I got to the station yesterday morning, the platform was so crowded that they had to stop the escalator to make sure no one was pushed onto the tracks.  And the air conditioning in my car seems to be dead, so I’m soaked in sweat by the time I get home.  It’s only taking a little longer than usual, but it’s really taking the stuffing out of me.

The scary thing is that it’s only going to get worse if the price of gas makes more people switch to the train.  They can buy some more cars to run more 8-car trains, but that only adds a limited amount of capacity.  I can work from home sometimes, but usually not more than once a week.  Maybe I should talk to my boss about working 7-3.30 or something.

Today’s book review is part of a MotherTalk tour.  That means I got a free copy of the book and an Amazon gift certificate to review the book.  But, given the topic, I’m confident that I would have reviewed the book in any case.

The Maternal is Political, edited by Shari MacDonald Strong, is a collection of essays by women writers about "the intersection of motherhood and social change."  Some of the authors are famous, either as politicians (Nancy Pelosi, Benazir Bhutto), activists (Cindy Sheehan), or writers (Barbara Kingsolver, Anne Lamott, Anna Quindlen), but most of them are by women you’ve never heard of, talking about how their motherhood has affected their political activity.  In most cases, the essays are about how mothering has inspired them to take action, but some of them are about the struggles to balance the demands on their time from their families and their activism (the essay by Valerie Weaver-Zercher about "Peace March Sans Children" made me grin in recognition).

One of the things I liked about the book was the wide range of issues covered,  Several of the essays are about opposing war as a mother’s issue, but others touch on abortion, homeschooling, public schooling, religious freedom, disability, environmentalism, sexual harassment, adoption and more. Of course, I have some quibbles about the topics that are missing… I find it hard to believe that there’s not one about health care (Flea could have done a great job with that one) and in general, I think economic justice issues were under-represented.  (And yes, I should have submitted an essay… I can’t find it now, but I’m pretty sure I posted the call for submissions here when it came out.)

In spite of that long list of issues, the voices were different enough that the book never felt like a litany of complaints.  Anna Quindlen’s piece on being pregnant in New York made me laugh, and two essays made me cry — Cindy Sheehan’s anguished farewell to activism to "try to regain some of what I have lost… before it [the system] totally consumes me or any more people that I love" and Kathy Briccetti’s joyful account of her family’s second-parent adoption.

I also liked the recognition that there are many ways to be political.  A few of the writers were elected officials, and some engaged in politics by writing letters to the editor, going on protest marches, or submitting testimony to their state legislators.  But many of them were political in everyday ways — raising feminist sons and daughters, choosing to reduce use of hazardous chemicals and natural resources, speaking up about equality in personal encounters, standing up to a man harassing another woman (who is someone else’s daughter), helping out another mother by taking care of her kids when she’s in a crunch.  I think those examples may really help people who feel like they don’t have time to be politically active — or that nothing they do will make a difference — to think of ways to incorporate activism into their lives.

My one real complaint about the book is that there are two essays about personal relationships with people who are (gasp!) Republicans, but no actual Republicans — or even conservatives — in it.  I would have liked to read an essay by someone whose experiences as a mother made them an anti-abortion activist.  I would have loved to read an essay by Cathy McMorris Rodgers on the challenges and insights of serving in Congress as the mother of an infant with Down’s syndrome.  I don’t know if Strong made a deliberate choice to only include liberal voices, or if it’s a function of the way the call for essays was marketed, but I think it limits the audience for the book unnecessarily.

It looks like there may be record low turnout in the Congressional primaries in Northern Virginia —  the State Board of Elections site is showing about 1 percent turnout so far, but I can’t tell if the denominator is all voters or just the precincts that have reported.  (Ok, I checked again, and it’s up to 1.6 percent, so it must be all voters.)  I don’t know if voters are suffering from campaign fatigue after the presidential primaries, are just disgusted by the generally negative campaign, or can’t figure out any real policy differences between the candidates and so just don’t care.

In any case, this race has to set some sort of record for most money spent per vote cast.  VPAP only has info on candidates for state office — is the info for federal candidates somewhere?

I haven’t checked to see what precincts are reporting, but with about a third of the precincts in, it looks like Connolly is winning easily.  Interestingly, Byrne seems to have done best in Prince William county, which I think is generally more conservative than Fairfax county.  (I looked it up, and in the 2004 Presidential race, Kerry got 53 percent in Fairfax and 46 percent in Prince William.  I’d guess Fairfax has gotten more blue since then.) But Connolly presumably has much lower name recognition there than in Fairfax.

I think Connolly should win easily in November.

We’ve been receiving a torrent of mailings and autodialed calls about tomorrow’s primary for the open 11th Congressional district seat.  I’m going to vote for Byrne.  I think the mailings (from Women Vote, not Byrne) calling him a war profiteer were pretty over top, but I do find it a little queasy-making that he works for a defense contractor in "community relations" while chairing the Fairfax Board of Supervisors.  And fundamentally, the only criticisms I’ve heard about Byrd are that she’s "divisive" (e.g. has opinions) and is "shrill" (e.g. has opinions and is female).

There’s been lots of talk about Jim Webb as a possible running mate for Obama.  I’m not nearly as opposed to him as Kathy G.  While he’s said some incredibly stupid things about women in the past, from listening to him during both his Senate race and as Senator I believe that he’s truly learned since then (and not just gotten PC drummed into him).  And he’s been consistently out there on the economic justice issues I care about.  But he’s a dreadful campaigner — he won in 2006 because it was a tidal Democratic year and because George Allen couldn’t keep his foot out of his mouth, not because of his own campaigning.  And I’m not at all confident that the Dems could keep his seat if he vacated it.  (Well, unless the Republicans keep nominating the likes of Jim Gilmore.)

I can’t say I’m particularly enthusiastic about Tim Kaine as a running mate either.  He’s a nice guy and a solid governor, but I don’t really think he brings the evangelical vote with him, and he’s not someone I particularly associate with changing the way Washington works.

Here’s my wild and crazy VP suggestion:  Coleen Rowley.

Who’s your VP suggestion?

The average price of regular gas in the US has officially passed $4 a gallon.  Here in DC, I haven’t paid that yet, but may the next time I have to fill up.

Gallop polled people about the cost of gas last month, and a majority said they thought gas would hit $6 a gallon within the next 5 years, but only 19 percent thought it would hit $10 a gallon within that time period.  My personal guess is that it’s likely to hit $6 or $7 in the next year or so, as part of a speculative bubble, but then fall back to the $3-$4 range.  But that’s just a guess.  I’m pretty confident that gas-powered cars will still be around when my boys hit driving age, unlike the author of an essay I read recently.

My car needed some not-insignificant repairs to pass its inspection this month, so I spent some time crunching the numbers to see if it made sense to replace it with a hybrid.  The answer is no, at least not for economic reasons — I drive less than 8,000 miles a year, and even if I doubled the fuel economy, I just wouldn’t save that much money.  At the very minimum, it makes sense to hold out a couple of years so I can get a next-generation hybrid, which are supposed to have much higher fuel economy.

(I also read an article that suggested that a plug-in hybrid could be used as a backup power source.  Given the unreliability of power in our neighborhood, that would be a killer app for me.)

One week into our new attempt at following the thrifty food plan, we’ve spent $95.98 on groceries.  That includes a big shopping trip to Grand Mart (big Asian grocery store, with very low prices on produce) where we stocked up on veggies, and three separate trips to Harris Teeter, which is the closest supermarket.  We went there to get ingredients that we couldn’t find at Grand Mart, then to get cookies for D’s class party when we didn’t have power and couldn’t bake them as planned (electric oven), and then to get milk and jelly.  The good news is that we didn’t have to throw out any food due to the power outage.

We’re a bit ahead of budget, but we’re out of chicken nuggets, and so are likely to hit Costco this week.  And we rarely leave there spending less than $100…

It’s super hot now (high 90s) and supposed to stay that way for the rest of the week.  Some of the things that I had planned on making require the oven to be on, which doesn’t seem like a reasonable plan at the moment.

We lost power in yesterday’s storms and didn’t get it back until this afternoon.  We’ve got a big branch down in the back yard, but since it didn’t hit the house, we’re grateful. 

This did show me that we’re not as prepared for "disaster" as I’d like — while we had lots of candles and flashlights, we didn’t have batteries for our big lamp, and this morning, we couldn’t find our battery operated radios to find out whether the schools would be opening on time.  (Wound up sitting in the car to listen to the radio there.)  We have lots of supplies, but I’m not quite sure where they are…