The Shape of Things to Come

The Gleaners, Jean François Millet I just want a little bit
Just the eenie-weenie bit
--I Just Want a Little Bit,
Magic Sam

You should be so happy
You should be so glad
So why are you so lonely
You 21st century man?
--21st Century Man,
Electric Light Orchestra

The money spent on bombs alone
Can build poor people a happy home
--Study War No More, Willie Dixon

Johnny's playroom
Is a bunker filled with sand
He's become a third world man
--Third World Man, Steely Dan

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With "grim" economic news from a Labor Department report showing consumer inflation is up 5% over the last 12 months, and a Dow dip of 92 points yesterday, we'll revisit last Wednesday's post, Profligacy.

With consumer prices that have "shot up in June at the second fastest pace in 26 years with two-thirds of the surge blamed on soaring energy prices (Consumer Prices Jump 1.1% in June)," what might life in a turned-down 21st century look like for many residents?

Though the economy is taking a nosedive accompanied by spiraling commodity prices, the media assures us this is not linked to the hemorrhaging of government assets at war. We are nothing if not pragmatic at Ranger. If you are hitting the links later, the following ideas may be removed from your experience. Still, take a spin through and see what you can add.

Last Thursday's Achenblog (Will Turn Phrase for Food) considered the quid pro quo transactions which have disappeared from our daily lives, and waxes nostalgic over days past when stores actually competed for your business.

Agent 99 remembers using BP glasses with yellow-and-green happy faces, a free 6 oz. bottle of Coke with a fill up, and every fill up came with an under-the-hood check and windshield wash and tire pressure check. Today one is lucky to find a filled reservoir with the squeegee at the pump. If you can find air for your tires, you'll pay for it, and bring your own gauge.

Mom saved S and H green stamps in books which you could redeem for useful household items. Dad's hobby was upholstery, and he was very pleased to restore to fitness items destined for the trash heap. These he would sometimes give to someone who needed them. Mom kept a small garden, and others in the neighborhood would share their particular bounty at harvest time.

In Europe they have Sperrmüll days, when people set their unwanted items out on the street to be salvaged before they are taken to the landfill. Why don't we have Sperrmüll in every city in the U.S.? A few have started the initiative, but not many.

In our college town, the ritual for poor students and city residents is "dumpster diving" following each semester. Families turn out for this ritual, and having partaken once, I can testify that it was a civil affair. Since one can only canvass so much, people declare what they are looking for and ask the same of you. We found money, new clothes and appliances in the dumpsters. Why weren't these items made available in a less prohibitive way?

In our Publix markets each night an obscenity occurs: shopping carts full of refrigerated food are removed from the shelves as their freshness date is soon up, and they are thrown away. Why are these foods which were for sale only minutes before not given to needy people? Management says it is due to liability issues. Couldn't needy people sign waivers of release before taking possession of the items?

Les Glaneurs (2000), a film by Agnes Varda (distributed by Zeitgeist Films, a rather prophetic name), explores the French subculture which lives by salvaging still edible food from market stalls and harvested fields. These foods may be undersized or blemished, but otherwise edible. Varda reads from a French codicil still in effect from the 16th century specifying that citizens have the right to scavenge in fields behind the first harvest.

Living in agricultural area, we can testify to the tremendous waste of agricultural foodstuffs. Massive amounts of tomatoes go unharvested or are dumped off of trucks because they are too ripe, and will not survive transport.

Perhaps bartering will once again become a respected mode of transaction. Landfills are environmental blights, yet our highly litigious society prohibits salvage. I am told our landfill keeps paint in a separate room, and those in the know are allowed two buckets per week. At least that is something recycled.

Perhaps my real motivation was a recent article, Baby Boomers Got the Blues. For these "curmudgeons," everything is Farshtunken. "Boomers have never been happy."

"A whole lifetime of whining" due to a sense of entitlement and revolutionariness which hasn't quite born itself out. Anti-depressant manufacturers grow fat over their overblown expectations of transcendence . "It's all part of the frantic tap dance of figuring out how to raise boomers' tender and flagging happiness . . ."

If you are dismal now, these times give little reason for renewed optimism. Your thoughts on 21st century survival are welcome.