The cookie is delicious, as I expected, but that is not the point. I hesitated. I could have skipped it entirely. Once more, in my willingness to be agreeable, I have nibbled away at my own resolve to protect my health.

We read a lot about corporate efforts to exploit our hungers with nutrition-poor fast foods. We read a lot about diets and self-discipline. But less is written about the conflicted nexus of holiday tradition and eating. My hostess does not see herself as tempting or controlling me; her hospitality is on the line. She works hard to provide an ambiance of comfort in which food ranks paramount. If I reject the food, I reject her culture, her labor, and her striving for a perfect Christmas in spite of bad times. Acknowledging these efforts, accepting the spirit of nurturing and comfort, accepting her wish to see me eat, I give in. Later, I wish I hadn’t.

Although she never urged food on me, my mother might have urged me to be gracious. That is, she might have done so back before her own cholesterol count shot up and her resolve toughened. Before the stroke devoured chunks of her vocabulary like chocolate chips, leaving her to signal her word retrieval failures with a finger motion across
her throat.

No longer young myself, I think of my mother as I stand facing the Christmas platter. I squirm. I wish the economy were better. I wish my friend had found a grander arena for showcasing her culinary excellence–as chef in a fine restaurant, perhaps. But few cooks are launching restaurants these days.

“Delicious,” I tell her honestly. “Perfect texture”–all the while wishing that the wagons of tradition had not circled, in these hard times, around a cookie platter. Wondering if I am dying to be sociable, I take another bite.

For her part, buckdata is wondering why money isn’t getting to the people most hard hit by this depression, such as those on the verge of losing their homes, those who have already lost them, and those for whom a tarp is not a government program but a literal roofing strategy in tent cities around the country.

To aid the President—on this issue at least– the following modest solution is hereby submitted:

Let’s all be bankers! Maybe it’s time for the poor and dispossessed and the rest of us to found some banks. Buckdata has a few in mind: First Foreclosure Bank in Stockton, Credit Default Swappers Bank in the New Orleans Ninth Ward, Toxic Assets Bank in Flint, Bonus Plus Bank with a nice Manhattan address, the Bank of Kaput in New Shock, Pennsylvania, and, of course, the online Bank of Buckdata.

Consider the possibilities: Laid off attorneys can volunteer time to help with the charters and incorporations. Laid off Wall Street employees can help us set up the books. Laid off web designers can devote their graphics talents to creating suitable online presence and branding. Impoverished retirees can exhume their mothballed suits and ties to lend us all gravitas at the headquarters front office.

Once the banks are set up, perhaps the homeless, the foreclosed, the evicted, and the about-to-be dispossessed will be able to approach Washington politely, hats (if we still have them) in hand, in search of generous bailouts. After all, a democracy, too, involves a contractual obligation, doesn’t it?

The proposal has a further benefit: If the sheriff’s deputies should arrive to evict us before the bucks start rolling in, we can always live in the vault. –buckdata

Note to readers: This is a satire. The above banks do not now exist. There is no Bank of Kaput in New Shock, Pennsylvania. There is no New Shock, Pennsylvania. No intention to single out particular existing institutions should be inferred from this blog post. This caution is necessary because of an unusual initiative reported in the New York Times on April 8. The article by Graham Bowley and Michael J. de la Merced details a scenario in which ordinary citizens may  be cajoled to invest in private mutual funds which are to be set up with government support to purchase other private institutions’ soured assets. The writers suggest such citizen investments may be envisioned as similar to the patriotic purchases of “Liberty Bonds” during the World War I. In such an audacious climate, formal disclaimers truly become necessary. Without such disclaimers, even well-informed readers may find themselves unable to distinguish pastiche from reality.

Twitter is software which allows a registered member to send out very brief messages to others, either from twitter.com’s website or from a cell phone. Recipients can get the messages either on the web or on their cell phones or other mobile devices.  Members can “follow” others’ messages or allow others to follow their own. One can thus send messages like, “I’m doing the dishes,” or “I’m saving the economy” to friends, family, colleagues, and nearly total strangers who have signed up to receive them.

The service is free, except for the instant messaging charges the cell phone carriers may impose.

It’s a neat idea and its time may have come in a way many media watchers not have foreseen. Here’s why: With mounting middle class layoffs, lots more people will have the leisure to try out new technologies, particularly low cost and free ones. Using their new and copious spare time, they will learn how to – as the users of this new communication system put it – “tweet.”

This week, a buckdata.com writer received a solicitation to follow her to date rather scanty Twitter postings. Checking out the profile of the would-be follower, she discovered a discreet link which connected to the sender’s resume.

It is not likely to be the last such.

Readers, brace yourselves for the sight of the new-new media being used the old-fashioned way. The great Twitter job hunt is on!

Virtual Christmas Giving: A True Story

I prefer Halloween to Christmas.  You can dress up any way you like, pretend, and have an excuse for putting on a mask.  As soon as retailers start luring us with Christmas decorations and television repeats all those soppy movies, I get depressed.  Some Christmases are more difficult than others, but one that could have been a catastrophe, transformed forever how our family celebrates December 25th.

In 1996, the day before the office Christmas party, my boss called me in to his office and gave me 30 days’ notice. Since summer, I had been the sole support of my husband and teenage stepson after my husband’s  plumbing business tanked. With credit cards at their limit–stretched by one income instead of two to cover the expenses of three–we had done no Christmas shopping and had not even bought a tree.  I did not know how I would be able to numb myself with holiday cheer and forget the reality of my financial situation.  On the way home, tears ran down my cheek as the announcer proclaimed six shopping days left and the shrill voices of the Chipmunks sang, “Christmas, Christmas time is here, time to sing, time for cheer.”

Somehow that week, out of the depths of my despair, I got an idea. We would have a Virtual Christmas. We would each find and wrap up pictures of gifts we would have been thoughtful and generous enough to buy, had there been money to put into circulation! Three days before Christmas I hid the stockings and decorated our ficus plant with lights. We each looked through catalogues, magazines and our hearts to choose five replica presents for one another, and place them under the ‘tree.’ We agreed one of the virtual gifts had to be intangible, like a quality within you would like the other to have.

In addition to the gifts of not only the car, the driver’s license, the baggy sweatshirt and pants, and guitar lessons I wanted to  give to Bobby, there was a fifth gift of “confidence in his own talent” that I wrote on a certificate for a course in entrepreneurship for teenagers, so he could market the artistic skill so evident in his cartoons.

Our teenager really got into it. He gave me concert tickets to Sting and Gloria Estefan, a color printer for my computer, and some Laurel Burch earrings all wrapped in comics from the Sunday paper. This teenager’s conceptual gift to his stepmom was a sign that said, “No Speed Limit!”

Besides a white Porsche, Larry gifted me with a vacation in Hawaii, a new PowerBook, a set of Cutco knives, and a stud from the pages of Playgirl (“for the few times our batteries are out of synch,” he wrote). His conceptual gift to me on a 3×5 card: “I give you the magic sword to conquer your Boogie Man, permission to be gentle with yourself, and license to proceed full steam ahead with realization of your writing dreams!”

For my beloved, I wrapped up the picture of a nose-hair tweezers from the Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue. He would get a car too, a Dodge Viper like the one we saw the weekend we met, plus a leather jacket, more memory for his computer, and a video camera, so he could practice at his dream career: film maker. For his virtual gift, I inscribed words on a magnifying glass that granted utter and absolute belief in himself and in the unlimited power of his creativity.

On Christmas morning, looking at my husband’s face as he stared out at the sunrise with tears in his eyes, I silently sent him that missing one percent of faith that would help us all actualize our dreams.

The virtual Christmas presents worked. It’s amazing how a concept once put in the mind, can manifest in reality.  One year later, we’d moved and my stepson was registered for a course on Art Presentation at the local community college. My husband was finishing the college degree he had abandoned 31 years earlier.  His belief in himself prompted a mid-life career shift to multi-media instructional technology. I had successfully hoisted that sword to my writing fears, was studying screenwriting and had published some freelance non-fiction.

A Christmas Wish, 2008

Imagine: if more American families practiced Virtual Christmas, perhaps the trampling episode that resulted in death and injuries at a Wal-Mart this past ‘Black Friday’ might have been prevented.  With the mortgage debacle, spiking unemployment, major plant and retail closings, stock market crashing, gas prices out of control, escalating credit card debt, increasing bankruptcies, and foreclosures, it is time for more of us to let go of the commercialism that underlies this holiday season.

The conceptual gift I would give everyone right now, would be a perspective that helps him or her see the bigger picture. Guilt, the gift that keeps on giving, be gone! We need eyes that can see things in a way that helps us transcend our struggles to survive, heads held high.  Our individual consumer debt is but a small mirror of the multi-trillion dollar debt our own government amassed in the past seven years, a large part of it for a war most of the world agreed should not have happened. We who are in dire financial straits need to realize this is not all about us. I would virtually gift us all with a view of the human condition that goes beyond our worth being determined by work, our  j-o-b-s.

I would bless us with divine insight as to how the preciousness of each moment must be cherished. How love and forgiveness matter, and little else does. How hugs are more important than deadlines. How breathing deeply and sitting still are more essential than driving fast or shopping or even eating a lot.

May our model for Virtual Christmas Giving help your family as it did ours, to focus on the abundance and potential we all do have, rather than allowing fear pervade this glorious season. It is the power of positive intention that counts. Make your holidays this season virtual and they can still be merry!

©Pat Hanson, 12/02/08  Contact: pat_hanson@csumb.edu