If I may be so bold as to make political recommendations, please, please, PLEASE contact your Senators and Congressmen and ask them to vote against bailing out the Big Three car manufacturers. Under the current proposal, Congress would give these companies a total of $25 billion, no strings attached, to keep them afloat. Supporters claim that car sales for Ford, Chrystler, and GM are down because of the financial meltdown, and that these corporations are so integral to the US economy that bailing them out in this fashion is the only option. Wrong, and wrong.
First: the Big Three have been in trouble for a lot longer than the past year, and it ain't due to banking problems. American auto makers have been losing money for years because foreign cars are coming in with better gas mileage, more efficient engines, and competitive price tags. Essentially, the foreign auto makers are meeting the market's demands better than our domestic producers, who whine and drag their feet and claim that they can't do better than they are now. Funny, not only are your competitors from Japan doing it, you also did it for a while during the 70s when there was an oil crisis (it's true; BackHome Magazine recently demonstrated that cars from the late 70s/early 80s were actually more efficient than they are today...). So, the Big Three have gotten where they are largely because they've been ignoring the wants and needs of their targeted domestic markets. Which is, uh, lousy capitalism. The whole point is supposed to be that you sell what people are looking to buy, isn't it? So why should our money go to bail out companies too dumb to pay attention to marketing trends, too stupid to see where the money is and jump on the wagon? How is that at all in our nation's best interest?
Second, I've heard some supporters of the bill claim that attaching strings and requirments to the government loans--say, requiring the corporations to cap executive escape packages, or *gasp* increase fuel efficiency in their products--would only serve to put unfair strain on the companies, forcing them to go under; some even suggest that the companies will choose insolvency over loans with strings. This is total crap. What large American corporation wants to go under? These are profit-driven companies; given the choice between a) floundering, collapsing, and ceasing to make money, or b) altering their products to meet the needs of the domestic market and thereby not only receiving government cash but also having future profits pretty well ensured, which are they gonna choose? Hmm...death or profit?
The fact is, if we just hand them the money, they aren't going to start selling more cars than they're selling now. In six months they'll be back asking for more money, and still not offering their customers anything that most of those customers need or want. A lot of commentators are apt to see this as us being in a tight spot, needing desperately to save these comapnies before we all get sucked down the crapper. But really, it's the other way around. They're on the barrel, not us. It's time for the American people and their Congressional representatives to grow a pair, and start making these dumbasses pay for their own mistakes, or at least earn our handouts. It's not a free ride; if they can't provide us with things we want or need, fuck em. Please, please, get in touch with your home state reps and ask them to vote this bailout down in its current form. Ask them to support better conditions for the release of this money.

I have personally called and/or emailed all three of my home state's representatives, plus send an email message to one Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, asking him to use his current influence as Pres-Elect to convince his fellow Democrats not to support the bill (which, according to the Burlington Free Press, they've actually been the ones pushing the bailout in the first place.)

So, this is what I've been ruminating over for the past day or so, ever since I was walking around cold while everything was closed and also feeling slightly spiritual--when did churches start locking their doors? In movies, TV shows, books, etc, characters are still often portrayed simply walking into houses of worship when it suits them. Not to mention that these same cultural productions occasionally depict homeless or inebriated people sleeping in churches when they have nowhere else to go. And yet at two in the afternoon on a Monday morning, the churches around here are locked. WTF?

I see a number of problems here. I suspect the door-locking thing originating in fears of vandalism and the like. However: how many people in a town this size (2000 census: just over 5000) are going to walk into the Puffer United Methodist Church in mid-day and vandalize it? I could maybe see locking the buildings after dark as a crime-deterrent, but why during the day? It doesn't follow.

However, my big concern is really with the implications of the act itself. First, why if God is always there, always listening, and cares (and for the record, I don't argue against that position), would the doors of holy buildings be locked except on specific days at specific times? It strikes me as a rather contradictory position to take; it also would seem to suggest that religious feelings etc should be reserved for the proper time and place, i.e., Sunday morning services. Which sort of works against the idea of integrating religion or spirituality into daily life, something that many religious leaders advocate. If you lock the house of worship except on certain occasions, how are people to feel connected to it or its ideas except when allowed in?
Secondly--and this is where I would almost argue that the doors shouldn't be locked even at night--one complaint one hears often from fundies, right-wingers, and even moderate- or left-leaning Church groups in America is the decline in relevance that the church plays in the lives of those around it. But honestly, I feel sort of like we're stuck in the first half-hour of Sister Act here; you can't credibly complain that the community ignores you if you shut yourself away from the community. Moreover, doing so would seem to contradict the very spirit of Christianity, which advocates living as Jesus strove to: walking among the downtrodden, helping the sick and poor and those desiring spiritual or physical aid. Which is probably why for so long in America, the church was such an important part of the social landscape. It was truly a community center, not just a place to receive weekly lectures on the way to salvation. Well, of course our Puritan origins had something to do with it, too, but my point is that the church's participation in the daily lives of the citizens seemed to have coincided with the era in which most people in this country belonged to or at least regularly attended a church. People were more religious because it wasn't a segregated part of their lives. The church building itself served multiple functions, and spirituality infused the rest of life to a much greater extent and for more people. So maybe the key to creating a sense of church/religion as relevant to the average American would be to *gasp* unlock the damn building?
Finally, I would argue that this moves away from being a matter of religious feeling, and has the potential to turn church and religion into the same kind of authoritarian structure that made so many of us hate public education: show up when we tell you to, sit, shut up, and let us deliver truth--as defined and organized by us--unto your minds. Then get out of here. Doors closed & locked. Makes it rigid, structured, and less an organic part of life, less integrated.

But then, I'm not a regular church goer myself, so what do I know?

Jay Ekis: Touched By War

A curious blending of influences, synthesized into an overall pleasing sound: perhaps the best angle to approach this album that I purchased a couple days ago after Ekis's solo performance at the Bee's Knees in Morrisville, VT. Ekis's sound is difficult to classify, because he draws on so many sources. Perhaps most obvious, at first listen, is his debt to the sound of classic Pink Floyd, with soaring slide guitar solos, literate lyrics, and a simple, relatively pure tenor vocal. Songs such as "Fire," the opening track, display this tendency most clearly; likewise, the closing tune, "Quiet Voices" sounds like one of Floyd's more introspective, organ-y ballads. Yet there are also marked debts to country music--"Ride Free" and "Shannon," the tale of a tattoo-covered barmaid and a love song, respectively, are straight-up country a la Kris Kristofferson or Wilco's contributions to Mermaid Avenue. With the inclusion of a few 70s/80s-influenced rock numbers ("Guns and Stone," the title track, and "Just a Fact") the folky-sounding "Bleed," and the marvelous "Down," this coalesces into an intriguing stew of styles that somehow mananges to seem coherent. Perhaps it is Ekis's voice, which seems equally at home with upbeat full-band songs like "Just a Fact" and with the solo acoustic "Bleed". Perhaps it is rather the quality of the lyrics, which blend the best of all genres: by turns poetic and straightforward, apocalyptic and wryly humorous, and often insightful, Ekis's songwriting also occasionally reflects his self-professed early love--heavy metal. War-torn songs like "Guns and Stone" contain imagery that sometimes sounds like something from one of Metallica's classic sturm und drang pieces. But perhaps most of all, the coherence is obtained through the efforts of Ekis's bandmates, who successfully blend all these sounds, giving one a distinctively country-sounding bass or hints of slide or pseudo-steel guitar in some of the rock numbers, and a slight edge of distortion on the more country-oriented tunes. Altogether, a well crafted batch of songs, ably performed--a satisfying and thought-provoking listening experience. 3.5 stars