inequality and fairness

When I was in Havana a couple years ago, there seemed to be a good sense of social interaction on the street. It may have been partly the pleasant tropical climate. People were going about their business or leisure. I know I was ready to see that Cuba was a good place. We did hear from one of the tour guides that the elite did have access to better housing but that they generally did not have more disposable income. The ostentatious signs of inequality in the U.S., such as McMansions and huge black SUVs, are not so visible in Cuba.

In last Sunday's Opinion section in The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof wrote about "What Monkeys Can Teach Us About Fairness." Recent research had looked at how monkeys reacted when one of them got a prized grape rather than a cucumber slice in exchange for a pebble. Other research looked at how travelers in coach were more satisfied with their flight if they did not walk through a first-class cabin on their way to the coach cabin. With all the complaints about airplane seating, I've never been able to understand why anyone would want priority boarding. Still other research showed that sports teams with similar player salaries generally did better than teams where some players got much larger salaries than others. The perception of inequality exacerbated the situation.

I suspect that my good feelings about the general sociocultural climate in Havana came from a sense of shared space as well as the afterglow of improving relations between the U.S. and Cuba. Sure, there were some people that were more shabbily dressed than others but it wasn't the grotesque visual clash of socioeconomic inequality.

separated at birth: suburban life

Top photo: Paul Cadmus, Aspects of Suburban Life, seen at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, February 2016. cf http://shermaniablog.blogspot.com/2016/02/cadmus-berry-sonsini.html

Bottom photo: "Dr. Kenneth B. Clark, the prominent black psychologist, scholar and educator, at home in the predominantly white New York suburb of Hastings-on-Hudson" cf http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/national/unpublished-black-history/kenneth-clark-at-home (part of the Times photo history for Black History Month)

Neither suburban existence was part of my growing up.

no mail delivery, no land line: will I be ready for the new communicating?

As I drove home from Bard on Wednesday, two successive stories on All Things Considered had me practically weeping.

USPS has started using curb boxes or neighborhood clusters of boxes for new houses. Congressman Darrell Issa of California would like to make that universal. Click here for an article from matzav.com on this matter. The next story on All Things Considered said that Verizon is going to switch over from land lines to wifi-connected phones. That is (this is what I heard them say, not necessarily what they meant), the phone on your desk would connect to a wifi box that would connect to Verizon's service. It will save Verizon from maintaining all those deteriorating copper wires. Folks without consistent wifi service or those with health or other emergency needs would continue to be eligible for traditional land lines.

It's true that I use email for personal messages more than I send things via USPS. It's also true that paying my bills via USPS won't keep them afloat, nor will my continuing to use discs for my Netflix viewing. And I even have no problem with walking to the post office or some neighborhood box for my mail. I do finally have a cellphone but I prefer my land line phones, most of the time.

It's more the abrogration of the responsibility for our shared infrastructure and its maintenance that makes me weep. And pine for the good old days.

world of joy and suffering

Last night, I watched the film City of Joy. It's not hard to watch Pauline Collins, Patrick Swayze, and Art Malik in a film but the story is tough. The City of Joy is a clinic run by Sister Joan (Collins) in the slums of Calcutta. Patrick Swayze plays Doctor Max who is troubled by his doctoring career and childhood memories. The clinic is targeted by the gang led by the godfather and his son (Malik). The film circles around the fate of a rickshaw runner and his family. The film has a bit of a Hollywood feel but is a heartbreaker and tearjerker with an optimistic ending. Sometimes I wish that I had chosen a life path which was more directly related to helping the needy. At the same time, I recognize that my talent for cataloging and indexing is perhaps more helpful as an income source so that I can donate to American Friends Service Committee or Doctors Without Borders.

City of Joy includes an episode in which a young woman who lives and helps at the clinic is attacked by the gang and her mouth and cheeks are razored. She is patched up by Doctor Max. In today's New York Times, there is an article about a real life case of a young Afghan woman who was axed by her brother because he believed she had run away with a man to whom she was not married. As the title of the article says, the "scars are [the] sole testimony to 'honor' victim's ordeal." What a testimony.

All of these thoughts swirl through my brain and heart and soul as I live in the relative luxury of middle-class America. Sometimes I wonder how we can get from one day to the next.

The picture is from the IMDb page for City of Joy.

P.S. It could be that I was set up by a fine rendition of "We shall overcome" at church on Sabbath morning. Thoughts of Martin Luther King and his legacy.

income inequality

Sitting in the Collegiate, reading the Sunday New York Times. One of the front page articles is on Donna's Diner in Elyria, Ohio. It's a small operation, just barely making it. The Collegiate seems to thrive but it's through a lot of hard work on the part of John and Chelly, the owners, and their staff. I couldn't help but think of Alfred's diner and Donna's in Elyria, and how the hard work pays so little relative to that of the hedge fund managers and Romneys of the world.

And then, a few pages in, there was an article about young boys in Mahi Par Pass who used crushed Pepsi bottles as signals to heavy trucks and cars as the traffic navigates the hairpin turns of the mountain pass between Afghanistan and Pakistan. One of the boys does this work, as the only employed person in his family, so his brothers can go to school. What if all of the money for war materiel was spent on schools and other services?

These thoughts seem to come naturally, and vigorously, to me and all of us during the election season.