I remember my grandmother telling me when she was young they thought it would be possible for the world to move from a 5 day work week to a 4 day work week.
Turns out, her memory was bang on. John Maynard Keynes wrote the article Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren in 1930. This is a fascinating article to read for many reasons. Not least of which is his clear eyed assessment of the source of Britain’s wealth and his vision to return to the most “certain principles” of traditional virtue: when “avarice is a vice, and the exaction of usury is a misdemeanour [sic], and the love of money is detestable.”
All of that aside, his main argument was that technological improvements and the accumulation of capital have “solved the economic problem… [mankind’s] traditional purpose.”* Within 100 years, Keynes surmised there could be a 15 hour work week or 3 hours shifts to do the necessary work, to “use the new-found bounty of nature differently from the way in which the rich use it to-day.” Keynes found the current rich avant garde leisure class “very depressing” in their “achievements… in any quarter of the world.”
Ah, sigh.
100 years gone and still depressing.
“Happy New Year!”
“Has it been?”
Too many times this past week
To delve into that which one cannot control
To self-flagellate with ICE
Venezuela
Dearest Beloveds,
Courtesy of cleaning chores Bean does weekly at school she now notices areas where cleaning can happen in our house (hooray the invisible/implicit becoming visible/explicit!). In addition to organizing her own room, the family has received her good energy wiping out crumb filled drawers, polishing copper pots, and sweeping pet hair off stairs.
One recent winter dark Saturday evening, your father and I sat and read on the couch by the fire.
Full of energy post dessert brownies, Bean decided she wanted to polish silver.
Dragon piped up, “I want to polish too!”
“There is plenty for both of you, just put on an apron to protect your clothing.”
Dearest Beloved Children,
We are at the end of 2025 and our world is having a nervous breakdown. There is really no other to describe what is happening.
I don’t need to list the reasons why people are overwhelmed. I want to talk about integrity because it is an integral component in your mother’s toolbox against these winds of accelerated chaos.
Integrity.
Dearest Beloveds,
I almost guarantee this poem is not one you might encounter in your academic career. If not, I salute your teacher. If so, well, you chose to come down and join this family with me as your Momma, so you’re welcome - you get to read it twice. (I can feel the future adolescent eye rolls.)
Courtesy of The Emerald’s June 23 2020 podcast entitled Space Hex: The Curse of Restlessness in Worldviews of Perpetual Escape, I have been exposed to Gil Scott-Heron's "Whitey on the Moon" released in 1970. Here is the full text (and you can hear Scott-Heron performing it below*:
A rat done bit my sister Nell.
With whitey on the moon
Her face and arms began to swell
And whitey's on the moon
I can't pay no doctor bills
But whitey's on the moon
Ten years from now I'll be paying still
While whitey's on the moon
I walked into the bathroom for a reason. And that reason was a good reason. I was organizing my pills in the kitchen, did I come in here for a new bottle of something? Which bottle would that be?
I walk back to the kitchen and delve back into pill sorting, allocating, counting... Oh yes! I need more AlgaeCal Plus* - back I go.
As I walk I say the name of the supplement in my head. AlgaeCal Plus. AlgaeCal Plus. AlgaeCal Plus.
Over the years I have noticed (in hindsight) several self-talk vortexes telling me I am in a depressive chasm. These refrains echo from the Cranky Monster part of me.
Corinna, you have read all of the books. There is no more to read. Creativity is dead. Everything is a variation on Twilight.
OR
Corinna, you have no friends, no one cares about you.
OR
Corinna, how much money has the medical industrial complex poured into keeping you on this planet - in this body at this time? You better be doing something earth shattering to justify that allotment of resources and energy - saved the world yet?
Eventually, I get my head out of my ass.
Last year at this time I wrote an email to close friends sharing with them that I was going to have new breasts for my birthday.
That happened.
3 months later drains were pulled, bruising settled, incision puffiness calmed, right side hematoma had been sorted, and I could grasp what living with these bags of saline would entail.
Not for me.
“And so now each fall I begin my class in a garden, where they have the best teachers I know, three beautiful sisters. For a whole September afternoon they sit with the Three Sisters… One of my students in an artist, and the more she looks the more excited she becomes. “Look at the composition,” she says. “It’s just like our art teacher described…”
My dearest beloveds,
I have gone back and forth about this missive several times. It is a poem (see below*) and now a whole lot more.
To summarize, on the last full day of our magical vacation I felt so confronted by the situation I self-medicated with two White Russians, an Aperol Spritz, and a Mojito. Not surprisingly, I passed out on the beach after lunch.
What situation? I hear you both ask. You sailed everyday, ate passionfruit and mango, gazed at the ocean while doing yoga, and swung on a trapeze for the first time in your life.
Yes, that is all true, it was truly divine.
AND every morning BIPOC bodies of former European colonies collected cigarette butts, empty champagne glasses, errant volleyballs, straightened beach chairs, and prepared food for 98% White European bodies.