Poetic thoughts while waiting for Joan Baez (extended play)

I wrote the following poem while waiting to meet a friend of mine who had tickets for Joan Baez’s Dallas concert Feb.24. This is an “extended play” of an earlier version.

Halfway sellout
Real liberals of another era
Trying to recapture
Cash-on-demand nostalgia
For the price of admission.
I don’t sign every petition
And I don’t avoid Wal-Mart every day of the year.
But, if I asked you,
Mr. ’60s – and Mr. ’90s corner office – were good to me,
What all is in your IRA?
Or your company’s 401,
Or if you ever tried to get it to divest
Some of the stocks you suspect it might have,
What would you say?
I don’t have a corner office.
Or a 401(k).
Or an IRA.
But, as much as possible,
I still own my own brand.

Old man, take a look at my life,
You could be like I am.
When did you trade your life identity
For your job identity?
You and your fellow yuppies,
The not-yet-digested piglet
Stuck in the gullet of the American python.
Oh, yes, you played with greed
After you quit playing with grass,
And greed swallowed you,
Far more than the grass ever did.

No, old man, on second thought,
DON’T take a look at my life.
Indirectly, you’re already screwing it up enough,
Trying to turn the Me Generation
Into the Me Millennium.

Old man, get away from me.
I don’t wanna be like you are.

Local organics for the lazy yuppie – with hypocrisy

In a new idea that HAS to make the list at Stuff White People Like, Trevor Paque will come to your house and build you an organic garden if you’re too lazy to do it yourself. That includes all the follow-up such as weekly weeding, then harvesting.

And, where do you get this?

Well, nowhere else but the capital city for Stuff White People Like folks — San Francisco.

But, there are similar trends elsewhere, and in the usual SWPL hotspots — New York City (Hamptons), Berkeley and Santa Fe mentioned by name in the story.

However, it’s time for a hypocrisy alert. How much gas is being burned, and carbon dioxide emitted, by to-your-door delivery of local food?

Is the economy THAT bad? Or some yuppies that bad?

If you’re 52 and moving back in with your parents? That’s what 52-year-old Ann Bauer did. Maybe in part:

Kim Foss Erickson, a financial planner in Roseville, Calif., north of Sacramento, said she has never seen older children, even those in their 50s, depending so much on their parents as in the last six months.

“This is not like, ‘OK, my son just graduated from college and needs to move back in’ type of thing,” she said. “These are 40- and 50-year-old children of my clients that they’re helping out.”

But, maybe instead, it’s yuppies who have shot themselves in the financial foot and are looking for one more bailout from soft-touch parents:

Parents "”jeopardize their financial freedom by continuing to subsidize their children,” said Karin Maloney Stifler, a financial planner in Hudson, Ohio, and a board member of the Financial Planning Association. “We have a hard time saying no as a culture to our children, and they keep asking for more.”

And, here’s a few of those soft-touch parents:

Bauer’s parents won't take rent money or let her help much with groceries. She’s trying to save several hundred dollars a month for a house while working as a meetings coordinator.

Bauer would prefer to live on her own, but without her parents’ help would “probably be renting again and trying to stick minimal money in the bank,” she said.

Renting instead of owning? Boo-hoo. I doubt you ever do save enough money to buy a house.

Here’s another softie:

Shirley Smith, 80, said she and her husband didn’t hesitate when they invited Bauer to return to their home in Eden, Wis. Buying groceries for another person isn’t stretching her budget too much, she said.

“I’ve got three kids and any of them can come home if they want,” she said.

Personal angle: I moved back home in my late 20s, and lived there for about three years into my early 30s. Making less than $7 an hour, in the mid-1990s, I not only bought groceries, I saved money.

If you’re desperate enough that you have to move back in with your parents later in life, I accept that. But parents who are STUPID enough to not charge rent, room and board, or whatever, even if just nominal amounts, deserve whatever trouble they get.