My government handouts

The debate rages over the government’s role in providing assistance to its citizens in the form of welfare payments, socialized medicine, educational support, etc. While the economic conservative in me says, “Let people work for what they want,” the humanist in me understands many people are in straits that I cannot even imagine - and that no one in our rich nation should go hungry or without shelter.

For the most part, I have been able to live a good life without much largess from Uncle Sam. But before I get on my high horse and complain about supporting indolence using my tax dollars, I thought I should reflect on times that I’ve gotten “free money” from the rest of you taxpayers.

National Defense Loan: As a student in the early 1970s, I applied for and received a National Defense Loan for college payments of $500. Today that seems like a piddly sum, but at the time, quarterly instate tuition at the University of Northern Colorado was less than $150. What made this a gift was that after graduation, I had $200 of the loan forgiven since I was teaching in an economically deprived area (rural Iowa). 

Food stamps: My wife and I applied for food stamps during our freshman year of college, much to the disgust of my archconservative father-in-law. He did wind up signing the paper that attested to our “financial emancipation” meaning that although we were under 21 we received no support from our families. As I remember, we received $30 booklets for two or three months. I was embarrassed to use the coupons when paying for groceries and thankfully never was unemployed long enough after that to use them again.

Cash for Clunkers: In 2009, President Obama announced a government program that incentivized trading low-mileage vehicles in for high mileage cars and trucks. At the time, I was driving a used, older model Ford Ranger pickup that got about 16mpg. And had a cooling system that was rapidly going downhill. I managed to coax the old beast into the local Toyota dealer where I got $4000 for it, lowering the cost of my new Yaris that got nearly 30mph to only $12,000. The $4000 came from the feds; the Ranger went to the junkyard. My grandson still drives the Yaris.

Stimulus check: A year or so ago I got a small check to help stimulate the virus impacted economy. I did not need it so immediately wrote a check for the same amount to the local food shelter. 

Indirectly I have been the recipient of government spending as well. Instate tuition rates come to mind. There may come a day where I wind up withdrawing more from Social Security and Medicare than I paid in. And I am sure there are many other ways I get more bang for my buck than I realize.

It’s fair to argue about who should get government assistance. What is considered a poverty level? What form of assistance should be provided? How do we use assistance to change peoples lives for the better through education, training, and health care, not just giving them the ability to live day-to-day in reduced circumstances? 

But it’s disingenuous for anyone to say that they have never been the recipient of government spending.  

Cartoon source

Writing as a measure of mental acuity

Im glad I got a second chanse to be smart becaus I lerned a lot of things that I never even new were in this world and Im grateful that I saw it all for a littel bit. I dont know why Im dumb agen or what I did wrong maybe its becaus I dint try hard enuff. Closing of Flowers for Algernon

A powerful story I read when in high school was Daniel Keyes’s Flowers for Algernon. The narrator, who has an intellectual disability, is the subject of an experiment to cure that disability. The cure works - but only temporarily - and by the end of the story, he is back to his original status, but now with an awareness of his limitations.

Charlie’s writing reflects that growth and then decline in his cognitive abilities. Poor spelling and fragmented sentences both begin and end his tale. Keyes's use of the first person narrative to demonstrate Charlie's mental capacities is pure genius - and probably why I remember this story after 50+ years. 

As an English teacher, I tried to remind my students of the “why” of good grammar, spelling, and composition. “You will be a more effective communicator if you write and speak well!” and “People will doubt your intelligence if your communications contain spelling and grammatical errors.” How many kids were persuaded by my “why” arguments and how many just studied subject-verb agreement just to pass the test, I don’t want to know. But I personally believed in my “why” and felt that as a teacher, I had a mission as well as a job.

As I write this, as I write today, as I approach my eighth decade in only a few short months, I wonder if those who read these words may be evaluating my aging intellectual skills. Thankfully spell checkers have become automatic. Grammar checkers fuss at me now and then. AI has somewhat slowed the appearance of aging in writing, just as lane controls and automatic braking has slowed my driving incompetence.

What AI has yet to do is help me maintain the quality of thoughts, depth of my insights, or the originality of my ideas. The content in writing is, after all, what matters. 

As I look back on my writing history of books, articles, and even blog posts, I sometimes surprise myself that it was actually me who wrote that stuff. Some of it is pretty darned good and I wonder if I have the same writing capabilities today. Much of what I wrote about stemmed from real world problems, changes, and challenges in my work as a librarian and technology director. Nothing like writing about a dilemma in order to help clarify one’s own thinking - and having the audacity to believe others might be interested in some of my observations.

My happy retirement world does not present such challenges. The need to get a contractor to finish a siding job on the house does not have the same degree of importance that library budget cuts once had. I can avoid difficult people rather than figure out strategies to deal with them. I’ve not yet found a mission that rivales transforming libraries with technology that once gave me purpose. The gremlin that is my natural inclination to indolence is no longer trapped in his cave.

Perhaps that’s what senility really is: the loss of mental acuity due to lack of use. So, dear readers, if u deetet a slide in my riting, let me no.

For some reason I keep singing in my head Paul Simon’s lyrics Believe we're gliding down the highway, When in fact we're slip slidin' away 

Why am I the only sane driver on the road?

Grandson Miles rode with me for a few hours on my road trip to Atlanta for the holidays. I remarked to him, “I’ll bet you a nickel that the next vehicle that passes us is a big, black pickup truck.” I won that nickel - and two more after that.

The 2400 mile round trip to see my son and daughter-in-law and my daughter’s family was for the most part, enjoyable. Except for some fog and a rain/ice storm around Memphis, the weather cooperated and the roads were good (if crowded).

Atlanta drivers, not unlike those here in the Twin Cities, can be crazy as bat shit. I could be going 80mph in a 75mph speed zone, and drivers in both small sports cars and big dark trucks would pass me like I was standing still. Turn signals - what are those? Why can’t I drive under the speed limit in the left lane or pass on the right?

Thankfully, I navigated the long drive without incident and really not even any close calls. But it made me think of something I’d written a few years ago…

Drivers these days come in two varieties -  reckless speed heads in giant pickup trucks and left-lane hogging old farts in Buick sedans doing 45 on the interstate. Period. I am the only sane driver on the highways and streets of Minnesota with a long held policy of driving exactly 12% above the posted speed limit.

When I started to ask myself why I seem to be the only good driver out there, it suddenly occurred to me that there are other good drivers out there - I just don't encounter them. Other good drivers are driving the same speed I am - or close to it -  they will never pass me nor will I ever need to pass them. If they get on the highway a quarter mile ahead of me or a quarter mile behind me, that is where they will stay - out of sight and out of mind. And who can tell how fast drivers going in the opposite direction are travelling? 

Perhaps the same thing holds true of politics. It is only the wing-nuts in both parties who get the notice, not those in the sensible center. What fun is it reading or viewing an opinion that is reasonable, inoffensive, or common sense? The speeders and lane-cloggers of social media are the only ones you really ever encounter. I have faith that the great majority of people share my slightly off-center views.

One final thought occurred to me: are drivers getting worse or am I just getting old? After all, in my misspent youth, I once lost my driver’s license for going 65mph in a 30mph zone. My ‘63 Corvair did not have a working speedometer, but the police officer did not think that was much of an excuse.