Obit in A Van Window

I was driving by a cemetery and thought why bother? I must advise them to make me into ashes.

I stopped at a red light. It was at a corner of the cemetery. On the rear window of a local family van was written the name of a boy. They had also written his birth day and the day of his death. They wrote about how they missed him. They ended the note by telling us of their love for him.

I would doubt the boy was now ashes. I could make a case for remembrance not dependent on a gravestone if he was now ashes and this message was in lieu of that gravestone. The message could be a carrying on of their vivid memory of him. So that really the note was about them. Perhaps it was denial. As if he could drive up behind the van and read about himself. It was as little likely that he could read this own obituary. Was this their obit for him? Could it be there was no desire to publish in the newspaper?

Most likely they had more to say but the size of the van window, and the need to make the lettering large enough to be read, left not much room for more words. Was it an advertisement? It was informing me so that I would ask a question? Talking about him to strangers could make the pain they felt lessen somewhat?

Other messages I have seen, as bumper stickers, were about how proud the parents were that their child had made the honor roll. It is a wonder many more stickers are not affixed to bumpers proclaiming the other achievements of children, a wife, a husband, or a friend, and so on. These stickers could have gotten large and obnoxious - boastful, we once called it. In bad taste, some once said. So with our age of thousands of irrepressible jerks sending messages to us, I repeat, why haven’t bumper stickers of such a faulty nature not become commonplace? May be there are laws.

Then for rear windows of vans the laws may not apply. I read it. So what am I to do about it? Do I acknowledge it with no action taken? A stroll through a graveyard would bring as meaningful an acknowledgement? My reaction slipped into resentment. Why? Must I know of his death? Haven’t I enough beside-the-point knowledge already? Why not list the grave site? I could visit, pay my respects. I am sad he is gone. He was one of us. Every one of us has an end. It is a question of timing. We don’t die all at once, together. A great many of us can die at one time but then something is wrong. I am not implying that the death of the boy was appropriate and satisfactory.

Lacking in satisfaction, Ralph Waldo Emerson dug up his dead boy. Lacking in appropriateness, they name buildings in honor of those still living. Couldn’t I write a short series of phrases about myself for my car’s rear window? It wouldn’t yet be about my death. It could be a pithy weekly report. Would anyone read it? Must they be a captive audience at a stop light? Would they paint out my messages if they could? If enough people did as I did, spray paint cans in the front seat of most cars would become de rigueur.

Of course, my death will not be news to me. The digging, naming, and spraying are only as effective as the living, us, can make them. The shovel, the plaque, and the paint will break, fall, and erode.

WVA 500, WA 0

 

1:48 PM 8/18/2009

The Governor of West Virginia recently proposed a five hundred dollar bonus for all full-time state workers. This proposal is at odds with the prevailing recession wisdom that state employees of whatever state are to be laid off, or receive no salary raises of any kind for at least two years, and lose ground in state-supported health insurance programs, and be subject to furlough without pay of days to weeks in length, and, in general, show devout appreciation for having a job.

This appreciation must come about even if the jobs do not provide for a car, food stamps are desired, across a river one can do better on welfare, and plush vacation time and retirement time are not as suspected. Good salaries are also alleged. The hourly rate can be $8.60. Others receive $9 to $11 per hour. West Virginia’s officials recalibrated many state salaries since the salaries had fallen close to or underneath minimum wage.

West Virginian state workers, then, are lucky to be doing so well. They number 56,000 in a state population of 1,802,000. The state workers are reputed to be too many in number. The state workers support the least foreign born citizenry in the USA. The entire state's citizenry has low per capita income. It is so low that only Mississippi and Arkansas are less on this score. The West Virginia income earners live in no town greater than 50,000 in population. West Virginia has mountains and coal.

Mountains there are, also, in the State of Washington. Not many of Washington's state employees are in the mountains. There are 66,000 state employees. They support a population of 6,500,000. Sixty percent of the population is to be found in or near Seattle. The state population has 10% foreign born. The population has a per capita income of $41,000. Seattle and environs are home to Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon, Nordstrom’s, Starbucks, the University of Washington, Costco, and various firms of high technology, biotechnology, and biochemistry. Seattle proper has around 500,000 people. Neither the populace not the business pays taxes as do most in the elsewhere of the USA. There is no personal income tax. There is no corporate tax. There are property taxes and sales taxes. As a whole, Washington has the worst tax structure in the USA. That is to say, it is not "progressive".

Such regression has led to no use of a state surplus in Washington. Prior to the recession, Washington legislators spoke of having too many state employees. It was felt by some legislators and candidates that privatization of the state government's functions was the way to go. Regardless of prior notions, after the recession came about, they decided to get in step with the prevailing recessionary wisdom in regard to state employees.

Apart from the prevalence, they sought to cut off health care assistance to the poor. As a substitute, they decided more roads and upkeep of current roads was the way to go. Be it noted, lesser numbers of state citizens could or would need use of the roads. They would be unemployed. State workers, too, could be found closer to home in the unemployment lines. Washington doesn't tax supermarket food. Nevertheless, a woman of nobility once made the remark that cake was good enough for hunger pangs. This enunciation transposed to Washington's highway budget items would translate into "let them eat concrete".

So it goes in politics. In West Virginia the Governor looked like Santa Claus at first. Then other state officials thought retirees and teachers ought to get a bonus too. Then the Governor assumed a fiscal responsibility posture or pose and said whoa to such budget busting generosity. Then he said the bonus for state workers could be resurrected sometime in the future. He had already said no pay increases for state workers for the next two years. He is a Democrat. The legislators are mostly of the Democratic Party.

She is a Democratic governor in Washington. Most of the legislators are of the Democratic Party. With the recession looming, she supported salary increases for state employee unions. Then, of course, that had to be rescinded. No resurrection of this cost cutting measure has been witnessed. She had campaigned against a privatization candidate to the tune of she wouldn't be as bad as he. State employees supported her candidacy.

In Washington the recession is an excuse to confirm the sense of the injustice of being forced to have a state payroll for state employees. Perhaps money spent on concrete is quite all right. But to pay people via taxes to do whatever it is that they do is too much to stomach. It goes against the regressive grain of the Washington citizens who endorse backsliding, deterioration, lapses, retreat, and defeat.

If a diet of concrete harms them, let them work at McDonald's or they can enter the prison system however they want to do so. Why should anyone even get a bonus? The bankers among us can address this question. If the highway construction worker, relatively few in number, spend time on guard rails studying Nature's delights, well whose to say the furtherance of a presumed sense of ecological awareness can be criticized?

The hostility, derision, insolence, revulsion, intolerance, discrimination, and all around revulsion expressed to, for, and of state workers or employees should be given its due. The state workers or employees should then take leave of state employment by means of their own volition. Let them put in the privates. Replace those that were supposedly only doing with those than must help. Substitute a class of community given by business concerns. They are experts in giving suffering as a byproduct of who they are. Buy low, sell high, always. Make it yield a return. Is there enough bottom to the apoplectic line?

This line is a slim one for the separation of people. From one person to another across lines was a way of getting it done. With privates its how to jump the chasm. People will be people. They are bold, silly, and they suffer. Here and there, forlorn and sad. Yet, aren't they human beings?

dunk6@msn.com