.......in which I comment on the fallout of Winter Storm Jonas.

 

"We used to be made of sterner stuff."

I remember my old neighbor Mike saying that wistfully around the butt of a half-smoked cancer stick one evening as we stood on the front porch of my half of the duplex I lived in in Jamaica Plain, a neighborhood in Boston.  Mike was lamenting the recent passage of a city-wide ban on smoking in bars in Boston.  Of course, as the aforementioned cigarette will have hinted, Mike was in large part concerned with the imposition that the ban put on his ability to enjoy a cigarette with his Guinness while perched atop a stool at the James Gate pub just down the street.  But what Mike was concerned with more than that, and what his comment really alluded to, was more of an attitudinal thing, a degeneration of American backbone, a propensity to roll over and let the wiser parents of the government have their way. 

See, the majority of Boston bar patrons -- and employees, by the way -- preferred smoking in bars.  The majority of patrons were smokers, of course, and die hard smokers at that, as could be observed on many a winter night in Faneuil Hall when smokers poured outside into the freezing cold to feed their habits while the bands were on break.  Many of the employees were smokers as well, but their opposition wasn't so much about freedom to smoke as it was about the dent that having more than half of their clientele standing outside the bar half of the time was putting in their tips.  But despite this majority opposition, the citizens of Boston, the heirs of a group of people who dressed up like a bunch of natives and dumped a payload of tea into the harbor because the king's tax was a few cents too high, were just going to roll over and take it.  The Irish gals would stand outside and suffer all winter long, freezing in their spaghetti straps while they sucked on their coffin nails, all because, as Mike put it, Mayor Menino was an eating man, not a drinking man, and didn't want to be bothered by second hand smoke while he enjoyed his lunch.

I imagine two questions are in the minds of many of my readers about now.  One, why would I -- a non-smoker, unless you count the occasional cigar -- seem to be objecting to the passage of a law that is clearly to the health benefits of everyone and to the definite benefit of bar patrons not given to an ill-advised vice?  And two, what does any of this have to do with the picture of the high-piled snow in my court at the top of this column?

The answer to both questions is encapsulated in the sentiment behind Mike's quote that I opened with.  "We used to be made of sterner stuff."  That is to say, we used to have an indomitable individual will that was part of our identity as Americans.  We did for ourselves.  We'd be damned if anyone was going to tell us what to do, whether it was good for us or not.  We were free and self-determining.  And self-doing.  While we always appreciated neighbors and were willing to help each other out, if necessary, we were quite capable of -- and sometimes intent on -- being a society unto ourselves.  Both sides of this sentiment of will -- the will to do for ourselves and be free -- are expressed by Charlie Daniels in the chorus of "Long Haired Country Boy":  "I ain't askin' nobody for nothin' if I can't get it on my own.  If you don't like the way I'm livin', you just leave this long haired country boy alone."

Which brings me to Winter Storm Jonas.  The flip side of letting the GOV tell us what to do is depending on the GOV to do for us.  As you can see from the pictures above, Jonas dumped quite a lot of snow on the East Coast as it rolled through, setting records in Maryland and Pennsylvania.  It had to come pretty close to a record in Northern Virginia too.  Predictably, it crippled the region.  How could it not?  Roads are still being cleared, and as I was writing the previous sentence, I received the text that let me know that Fairfax County Public Schools will be closed tomorrow for the fourth day (and counting).  Most of that is to be expected.  Northern Virginia is not Buffalo.  The area doesn't usually get anywhere near this kind of snowfall and doesn't have the infrastructure to clear it quickly.  I'm not necessarily launching a complaint here about government response to the storm -- although the school closings here are historically absurd.  What I'm more taken aback by is the attitude of the denizens of the East Coast to the storm.  To wit, look at the picture below, taken by a Reston, VA shopper at our local Trader Joes.

This isn't a store under new construction that hasn't received its goods yet.  It's a store whose dairy supply has been completely emptied in preparation for a winter storm.  Yes, it was a big storm, but when I look at this scene, I think we're preparing for nuclear winter, not actual winter.  I mean, yeah, it'll be a couple of days before you can go to the store, but don't we regularly do that all the time anyway?  This scene is rather indicative of what the prevailing attitude towards the storm seems to have been.  Hunker down and wait it out.  Not wait until it stops blizzarding, by the way, but wait until Uncle Sam has plowed the roads back to where they are typically in mid-June and gives us the all clear to proceed with life as usual.  The all-clear was apparently a necessity in New York, whether individuals wanted it to be or not.  Supposedly Bill de Blasio threatened to arrest anyone who was out on the roads in a non-official capacity.  I get that some of that is for cleanup, but the press conference made it sound like part of it was saving people from their own-- what?  stupidity? or is it gumption?  self-reliance?  lack of fear?  Lucky for de Blasio, most of the NYC populace was probably too happy to stay inside and wait on the civil apparatus.  What would we do if we lived in Barrow, Alaska?

Again, we used to be made of sterner stuff.  We used not to be so cowed by something like the weather.  There used to be some honor in being able to overcome obstacles and some shame in being defeated by them.  Our dads were heroes in our eyes, capable of anything, and sons wanted to grow up to be just like them.  That sort of local heroism was a specific American thing, by the way.  The indomitable will of the hero has been part of the Western mythos since Achilles and Odysseus, but across the Atlantic, you had to be an aristocrat -- of a certain bloodline -- to be heroic.  Here in America, it was available to everyone.

I'm not necessarily saying it's exactly heroic to dig your car out of the snow (though it might make your back hurt), or that it's heroic to drive to the store on less-than-perfect roads, or that it's heroic to do a number of other things like it (change your own tire, build a fire, cook without a recipe, etc. etc.), but the capability to do any of these things -- the capability to do for oneself -- is certainly more heroic than the alternative.* 

We used to be made of sterner stuff.  We didn't surrender to something so silly as a winter storm.  The indomitable will used to be a virtue.  I'm put in mind of Tennyson's poem "Ulysses."  Ostensibly, it's a poem about the Greek hero Odysseus (Roman name Ulysses) in his retirement, but in essence, it's a paean to the indomitable human will.  I feel like internalizing some of it will do us some good.

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

'T is not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

So driving on an icy road isn't exactly striving with gods.  Still, I feel like we'd be better off if there were more embracing of the heroic ethos that says we'll do for ourselves and less of the prudent foresight that says I'll stockpile 14 gallons of milk and 8 dozen eggs and wait for civil servants to plow me out.

*Hopefully, it goes without saying that I'm exempting the usual suspects from the shame that might attach to inability here:  children, the elderly, and even the fairer sex (apologies to my feminist friends for mentioning the last; I by no means mean to imply that a gal shouldn't be able to shovel herself out, too).

........in which I comment on the lottery as an odd way of taxing the poor.

Chase Stephens had a piece in Dailywire the other day that came through on my Facebook feed.  It was the story of one Cinnamon Nicole, who had spent her entire life savings on Powerball tickets for the recent $1.5 billion jackpot and then established a GoFundMe site in order to recoup her losses when she didn't win.  Perhaps the most amazing part of this story is the fact that she was actually able to get people to give her $800 before GoFundMe shut her down. 

I'm not sure how I feel about people giving her $800.  On one hand, there's the logic that says a Darwin Awards candidate like Cinnamon (or is Nicole her given name?) really should be out her life savings.  What she did is a pretty stupid thing to do, and it doesn't bode well that in her GoFundMe plea, she gives evidence of not having even learned from her mistake:  she  pleads with would-be donors, "With your small donation of at least $1.00, a like and one share, I’m certain that we will be able to pick ourselves up from the trenches of this lost [sic] and spend another fortune trying to hit it big again!"  Yes, she is apparently ready to do this again, so on one hand, I'm with Kenyatta Gibson, the GoFundMe user who wrote in response to her plea, “Guuuuuuuuuuurl…….I ‘SWEATERGAAAAAWD’ if I see one person give you one rusty copper penny I will spend ten times what you spent on lottery tickets on PLANE tickets to fly to their humble abode so spoiled in riches that they can afford to make it rain on Sweet Brown like ratchet humans such as you who choose to spend their cash on Remy, Flaming Hot Cheetos, VOSS Water and Powerball , and commence to kicking every single one of their asses!!!” (courtesy Dailywire). 

On the other hand, it says something nice about the mercy we're still willing to have on each other that someone would subsidize Cinnamon Nicole's (I'll use both names just to be safe) chronic lack of wisdom.

Moreover, though Cinammon Nicole is perhaps the most publicly egregious example of Powerball puerility that took place over last weekend, she's certainly not the only one.  I will admit to getting a little caught up in the mania myself.  I'd purchased a couple of tickets when the jackpot was at $900 million, and since I had the correct Powerball in one of them, I parlayed my $4 winnings into two more tickets for the $1.5 billion drawing.  The scene at my local Safeway was taken with Powerball mania.  There was an unusually long line at the lottery ticket machine, and everyone was abuzz with lottery fever.  It was, in a way, festive, but it was also, in a way, a little sad. 

I should set some context.  I live in a decent enough area of the D.C. suburbs, but Reston, VA, is intentionally economically mixed, so the Safeway in question services, in addition to my middle-class development, some lower income developments and a sizable project building.  The demographics of lottery ticket buyers, by all appearances, came from the lower income neighborhoods.**  While many of the ticket buyers I observed may not have been going quite to the extent of Cinnamon Nicole, there was all manner of what appeared to be foolish spending and illogical thinking.  One lady, for instance, while waiting for the customer service person to process her handful of lottery slips -- what had to equate to $50 or more worth of tickets -- remarked that she didn't usually play the lottery, but when the jackpot got this big, she had to go in on it.  I suppose this makes some sense on the face of it, and the critical reader here will no doubt recognize that I was doing the same thing, albeit to the tune of $4, but when you examine the statement, it makes no sense.  Why is $1.5 billion so much more compelling than a very small jackpot, like, say $40 million.  Presumably, the $20 million she would keep from the smaller jackpot would change her lifestyle no less drastically, yet she, and many others in her shoes, are apparently not willing to part with money they can't afford to lose for such pocket change.  "No thank you.  You can keep your tens of millions of dollars.  But when it gets to a larger jackpot, which I am equally, if not more, unlikely to win, then I'm willing to part with half of next month's electric bill for a chance at the really big bucks."  Something like this sentiment was echoed in a lot of Facebook comments I saw last week.  It's a strange idea.  If you're really putting your eggs in the lottery basket, why does it have to approach $1 billion to get you to play?  You should be playing every week.

Of course, not everyone could afford to play every week at the rate that they were buying tickets ahead of the $1.5 billion jackpot.  Most of the people in my Safeway weren't taking the conservative road I was, hedging their cash on a mere $4 bet.  Most people that I could see were going whole hog.  The man immediately in front of me shelled out no fewer than 3 photos of Andrew Jackson on lottery tickets.  Apparently, the amount of money people are willing to fork over is proportional to the amount of the jackpot, which I guess makes sense, but, again, the smallest of Powerball jackpots would do the trick, and I would think that the increasing size of the jackpot shouldn't lure you into spending more money that you don't have on a chance to win.  The $60 the man in front of me fed the machine looked like it would have purchased at least half a dozen pairs of shoes, assuming what he was wearing that evening was representative of his regular footwear. 

I am loathe to tell anyone how to spend their money -- the clear critique of how my fellow Safeway shoppers were spending their money notwithstanding -- but what I saw in the last week or so in the run-up to the giant Powerball jackpot made me think that this lottery is making a whole bunch of people spend money they don't have on a very foolish hope.  As I was driving away from the Safeway the night the jackpot was actually won, I got to thinking about the lottery as a form of taxation.  And by the lottery as taxation, I don't mean the parts of the proceeds that go to education, environmental upkeep, etc.  I mean the income taxes on winnings paid by the jackpot winners.  According to Money Magazine, large jackpot winners will pay about 39.6% in federal income taxes.  That's about $600 million.  Another $40-80 million will go to state taxes.  That's a lot of tax revenue the GOV is raising in revenue, and again, that's completely aside from any revenue that they take directly from the proceeds (which, if I read the ABC news article I referenced above correctly, amounts to about another $350 million, roughly speaking).  And keep in mind that that tax revenue is not coming from the much maligned top 1%.  Far from it, by my observation.  I mean, those that are financially set are not blowing significant money on Powerball tickets.  I bet Mark Zuckerberg bought zero.  My guess is that the overwhelming majority of tickets are purchased by people of lower-middle class status or below, people who are hard-up and holding on to a pipe dream that the winning numbers will make it all better. 

So what struck me, after thinking about this for a while, is that the lottery is like some sort of bizarro-world Bernie Sanders taxation scheme.  Imagine if the effect of the lottery with regard to government revenue and who it was being taken from were announced as an actual tax program.  Imagine the government saying, "We're going to amend some of our revenue difficulties by assessing another $1.85 billion in taxes.  We're going to take this money randomly from the poorest Americans, but, here's the good news.  We're going to kick about half of that $1.85 billion to between 1 and 3 of the taxpayers, selected at random, who pay into this special assessment.  The more you pay in taxes, the better shot you have of winning the money, but your chances of winning anything of significance at all are less than 1 in a million."  Because that's essentially what's happening, unless I'm misunderstanding something terribly.  My guess is there would be something of a hue and cry if it were announced this way, and yet people can't part with their hard earned money fast enough when it's voluntary. 

As I said, I don't mean any of this to tell anyone how to spend their money.  Nor do I mean to get all moral about the lottery or gambling or any of that.  I just find it odd that we get so drawn into something like the Powerball, so drawn in that we voluntarily tax ourselves at an alarming rate, and collectively do so in one of the most regressive tax structures the world has ever seen.  I feel like we should be more clear-eyed about this as a society.

Then again, as Annie Savoy once said, "This world is made for people who aren't cursed with self-awareness."***



**Before accusations of racism fly, let it be known that I was making this observation based entirely on what the buyers were wearing, particularly on their feet.  I may, of course, have been incorrect in my estimation of the socio-economic classes of the various ticket buyers, but we all know that I wasn't.

***Annie Savoy is the female love interest in Bull Durham, played wonderfully by Susan Sarandon.
 

........in which I reflect on a certain character in The Force Awakens (spoiler alert....I'm serious; do not read this yet if you haven't seen the film and care about what happens in it).

Like many Generation X boys, I learned most of what I need to know from Star Wars.  Well, that's overstatement of course, but you get the point.  It seems most of us grew up either wanting to be Luke Skywalker or Han Solo.  I fell into the Solo camp.  My ideal of masculine virtue was probably formed as much by Han Solo as anything.  Of course, it doesn't hurt that good-hearted scoundrel is also in my family DNA going back as far as I can trace, but that's rather beside the point of what I want to say today, which is a fond farewell to one of my great childhood mentors.

I was oddly not completely emotionally flattened by Han's apparent death* near the end of The Force Awakens.  It seemed somehow fitting in the context of where the story is going.  The writers have clearly announced with this film that this trilogy is about the next generation of Star Wars heroes.  Rey, Finn, BB-8, and Kylo Ren will clearly star in this adventure, with the holdovers from episodes IV-VI providing supporting roles.  And oddly, I'm OK with that, too.  Lawrence Kasdan has done a great job with developing characters that fill the shoes of Luke, Han, Leia, and Vader, in my humble opinion, and I'm happy for my sons to have their own heroes to root for over the next several years as opposed to borrowing mine.  My almost-seven-year-old already has a crush on Rey that will probably parallel mine on Leia.  I also really like what they've done with Kylo Ren as the son of Han and Leia.  It's an unexpected twist that nonetheless fits -- one of those feats of story that you don't see coming, but, once it's happened, makes you say, "Yep, that's about right."  In that context, Han's sacrifice on the bridge in Starkiller Base fits in the story.  Yes, I said sacrifice.  This wasn't an Obi-Wan Kenobi giving up his life so other's can get away, of course, but as Han walked out onto the bridge after Kylo Ren, I was muttering his own famous line in my head -- "I've got a bad feeling about this" -- and I think he knew what was coming too.  He sacrificed his life in an ultimate gesture of faith in the good left in his son and in -- forgive the sentimentality -- an ultimate gesture of love for his son, no matter how wrong he has gone.  I actually found it a profoundly redeeming moment for the character.  One of my own rules in story is that if you're going to kill an important character, you better damned well not waste his life in the process.  I don't think they did that with Han Solo in the slightest.  I think it represents a sacrificial maturity on the character's part, and I actually find myself liking it very much, though, like Luke and Leia, I will miss Han very much.

The only real complaint I have is that they shortchanged Han and Leia's reconciliation.  It should have been longer, more complete, and more romantic.  In short, they definitely should have shared a heartfelt, maybe even a passionate, kiss.  Of course, I was forced to rethink this a little after the somewhat awkward kiss between Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes in the season premier of Downton Abbey, but I still think Harrison Ford and Carrie Fischer could have pulled it off.

In any case, I find myself saddened but at ease with Han Solo's passing, as, I suppose, one would with any old (and let's face it, he was old) friend and mentor.  So, by way of farewell, I'd like to list a few of the things I learned from Han Solo, and in doing so, I assume I speak for a generation of boys who modeled themselves after the crass yet lovable smuggler pilot of the Millennium Falcon.

• (Since we're on the subject of the Falcon) -- Character is the thing most important to be sought after in one's mode of transportation, with speed coming in a close second.  Sensibility is for losers.**    

• Girls like scoundrels, provided that they have a heart of gold.  My wife will never admit to this, but I only ever made real traction with her when I started sardonically calling her "princess" (with the accent on the second syllable).  I suppose one shouldn't make too much of this, but one should not also underestimate the importance of being a little bit interesting.

• A few good friends are worth a world of acquaintances.  Han held much of the galaxy at arm's length, but Luke, Leia, and, of course, Chewbacca were people he would have died for.

• The arbitrary laws of men may be taken or left, but it is important at the end of the day to do the right thing.  (cf. Han's opportune appearance during the Death Star run at the end of Episode IV)

• “Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.”  Overstatement, of course, but there's something to this cowboy pragmatism, and really, it is a good thing to know how to shoot.  Which is to say nothing about the virtue of self-reliance that is latent in this quote.
  

• And finally, it is a noble and good thing to, at the end of the day, be willing to lay down your life for the love of another person, as Han did for the hope of his son's redemption in The Force Awakens.  I think that is why I was so satisfied with Han's death.  I mean, we all have to go, but it's very poetic and right to go in a way that embodies the virtue in one's character that redeems all of the loveable and interesting flaws.

So, assuming you are actually gone, happy trails old friend.  I and numerous others will miss you, but rest assured that you will take your place in the hall of heroes in Western culture.  You'll be there beside Achilles, Aeneas, Frodo Baggins, and when he gets there, your old pal Luke Skywalker.  You've taught us well, and we're appreciative.


*I say apparent death because one never knows for sure.  As I'll say later, the circumstances of Han's death on that bridge over a chasm were eerily similar to Gandalf's apparent demise on the bridge in Moria, and he came back inexplicably.  I don't expect that to happen here.  I do think we'll see Han again, but most likely in that blue-shaded Force apparition in which Ben Kenobi and Yoda appeared in Return of the Jedi.

**My vehicles in life (with the exception of the Volvo I currently drive, inherited from my wife):  a '65 Rambler, an '80 Pontiac Phoenix (this was a mistake), a '74 Chevy Caprice, an '85 Porsche 944, a '64 Rambler, and an '80 El Camino.  I get some of this from my dad, too, by the way, who is very Soloish in his relationship to vehicles.  When I was very young, he bought a 1977 Ford pickup that he is still driving on occasion, despite numerous (unintentional) attempts by his children and grandchildren to decommission the vehicle -- it might, in fact, be currently still in dire need of repair following my nephew's recent ill-advised attempt to cross the highway with it, but I have no doubt dad will fix it and drive it again.  I remember him saying one time that he wanted to be buried in it because "it's gotten me out of every other mess I've been in with it, maybe it'll get me out of that one too."