Mortaine’s Blog

Apparently, there’s a new Star Trek movie coming out in May. John and I saw the trailer yesterday during The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Yes, we almost skipped right past it and had to rewind the DVR.

Anyway, it looks like a nod to the old Trek with some modern mores going on. Should be entertaining, if nothing else. I thought Paramount had decided to retire Star Trek after Enterprise due to fan fatigue, but I guess they found the right idea, the right script, or the right paycheck.

So, we’ll see it. Maybe not opening night, but we’ll see it.

A friend of mine is a musician, who plays at weddings, events, clubs, and in public street performances.

Today, she gave me a wake-up call. We were talking about some of her frustrations with work, and she said that she absolutely hates it when people video her, almost universally without permission. But also, she glares at those who, as she put it: “stop, and listen for a while, and then walk away, without putting anything in the hat.”

“Wow,” said one of my other friends. “I’ve done that!”

“Oh, what a relief!” I cried. “I do that all the time!”

She looked at us both, her eyes wide and almost wild. “Don’t you understand? You’re stealing music!“

Now, I have been thinking about this all night, and she is right, at least insofar as I should throw something in the hat. I would probably glare at someone photocopying my book in a library (though perhaps I should make a distinction between stopping for a minute to listen to part of a song, and stopping for several minutes before moving along). But my readers are separated enough from me that I am unlikely to ever come in direct face-to-face contact with them unless deliberately arranged.

In thinking on it, I realized that the main reason I walk away is because I never carry cash with me. If I have cash, it’s in the form of some change or a $20 bill. I spent my cash quickly, so all I usually have is receipts and lint in my wallet. Plus, I do not like taking my wallet out on the street. The cash and the “not taking my wallet out” both stem from fears about being mugged (and, frankly, having been assaulted, my fears are neither unfounded nor overly paranoid).

I mentioned this to my friend, and she said “then you should write a note. Or throw in a small something– a post-it, some gum, something. We just need the transaction to be complete, to feel like karma is served. I have a whole drawer of “stuff” that would probably have had no meaning or value if it wasn’t thrown into my hat during a performance, but which now is precious to me.”

Wow. I thought of all the free tchotchkees I’ve thrown away over the years, the trade show swag that ends up in my purse or bag and weighs down my post-conference luggage until I’m ready to cry. How powerful would it be to take the stupid “Taking the Stress Out of DITA” stress ball squeeze toy, and turn it into a treasured gift that a musician would appreciate and value solely because it was deemed an equal trade for the pleasure their playing brought to someone else.

I thought of all the stuff I carry in my purse– was there room for something more, some little special something I could share with whatever street performance I might encounter in my travels? We haven’t encountered any in a while, but surely that will change. Surely, if I carry a toothbrush in my purse for “just in case of dental emergency,” I can bring something to cover the price of admission to the “just in case musical performance.”

When I return home, I have a small sturdy plastic envelope of tiny origami papers that I’m willing to toss into one of the many pockets of my purse. It can stay there for a week or a year– it matters not to me, but when that moment comes and I find myself listening appreciatively to a violinist or a guitar or even the wacky guy who drags his piano out onto the street in Santa Cruz… I’ll be ready. It might not be legal tender, but I’m willing to trade a handmade origami bunny or crane for a sweet song and a smile.

The travel media is very excited about “staycations” these days. Airlines and destinations are their advertisers, so perhaps they’re getting new ad campaigns for staycation services? Otherwise, you can bet they’ll be back to pitching how great it is to spend Christmas in Buenos Aires in a few months. Anyway, the idea behind a staycation is that you take the week off of work, but you… stay home. With your family, friends, kids, dog, neighbors…. etc.

Anyone who has ever been laid off of work for a week knows what a ridiculous idea this is: you’re home, broke, and bored. Here’s how I imagine a typical staycation going: you set up the pool in the backyard for the kids, pull out a lawn chair and the margarita mix. By 10 AM, you’ve had four phone calls– three of them are work “emergencies,” and one of them is your neighbor asking if, since you’re home and all, you wouldn’t mind picking up her kids from daycare and watching them till she gets home at 5. The margaritas turn sour in your mouth and you go into the kitchen to pour it out. While there, you realize the remains of the nice dinner you made for your family last night is still sitting on the plates in the sink, and you spend the next hour and a half washing dishes and cleaning up. At the end of which, the kids run through the house, dripping wet, screaming for peanut butter sandwiches and a side order of marshmallows. You suddenly realize that there’s a reason you work full-time, and it’s only partly so you can afford a roof over your head.

The main reason touted for staycations is to save money, of course. This is because we are all broke. We are broke from spending more at the pumps, more at the grocery store, and more on our IRS forms (do not be fooled by the rebate check– that was your money to start with, and the government made interest on it before returning it to you!) We’re broke from having our home values plummet, stranding our empty houses on the market for a whole year and hemorrhaging money. And yet, the financial impact of the staycation? Since you’re already at home and don’t have anything new to entertain you, you’ll go shopping. Unlike when you travel, though, you don’t have a limit to how much stuff you can buy or bring home, so the next thing you know, there are piles of lumber from Home Depot in your driveway, five bathing suits “motivating” you in the closet, and four video games to distract the kids, now that the neighbor’s 4 year old barfed in the pool after daycare and ruined the fun for everybody.

For the green staycationer, you can fool yourself into thinking the staycation is a great way to save fuel, and maybe it is. All I know is that you’d probably save more energy and have a great time if you spent your week bicycling through French vineyards or on a beach within walking distance to a hotel.

Employers love the staycation, because there’s a good chance they can bother you if you’re at home, whereas if you’re on a beach in Jamaica, you can reasonably get away with ignoring the phone and pretending you just didn’t hear it. If employers really wanted you to save money and gas, they would let you telecommute 4 or 5 days a week. My commute used to be almost an hour each way. Having an extra 8 hours of daylight every week would have been like a vacation all its own. Most working women say that they would take a pay cut if it meant they could have 2 hours in the afternoon once a week, without kids, to run errands.

In the RV, we think often about the concept of being at home, work, or on vacation when all three can take place in the exact same place. Since we’ve regained the commute hours, we both get to pursue personal projects a lot more. My conclusion is that your environment does have to change to give you a real “get out of your head” kind of vacation. For us, that means either leaving the rig, or taking it somewhere too remote for Internet and cell phone service. Otherwise, being in touch means work or other commitments can and will interrupt. It’s not that we mind that much– when you have more time for leisure (no commute) and a lifestyle that lends itself to not being bored by your surroundings, the need for a “real” vacation lessens, and you can get away with a short jaunt here or there.

I’m sure a lot of my readers will disagree with a lot of this, but then, a lot of my readers are very resourceful people for whom boredom is never a problem, and home is an ongoing source of amusement, energization, and spiritual awakening. These folks have my envy, because the majority of us have a really hard time getting away from it all without getting away from ourselves.

We went to the Everglades yesterday. Took a lot of pictures of a lot of alligators! It was hot, but we had a good time and will probably go back at least once before our departure.

Here is a lovely serene view of the Everglades. Really, a classic picture with blue skies and green trees:

And here it is after I circle all of the visible alligators:

See why we didn’t go swimming?

John and I were listening to the radio the other day and I heard something that left me laughing so hard, I couldn’t breathe:

“Unlike the rest of the country, Florida is in a recession, folks. Unemployment is up, the gap between the rich and the poor is so wide, and the real estate market is in baaaad shape.”

Unless Florida is “unlike the rest of the country” in that it’s only in a recession, this statement had me laughing very cynically, very hard. You see, in the past 8 months, John and I have seen many wonderful things, but the thing we’ve seen the most is this: Times are tough everywhere. We’ve driven through towns on Route 66 that are utterly deserted. We’ve parked next to houses that are functionally abandoned, except for the landlord’s mentally ill son, who is squatting in the dark in a house that’s been on the market to sell forever. We’ve been in areas where, when told we’re camping on a Civil War Battleground, the appropriate response is “which civil war?”

Our own home is still on the market in California. It’s been on the market for 10 months. Just when we thought we might have a sale, the Feds lowered interest rates and both the seller and our backup offer fell through. Heartbreak. And frustration– we can be on very strong financial ground once it sells, but until then, we have put ourselves into a risky lifestyle, financially speaking.

Diesel fuel is what powers boats, trains, and all the freight trucks that carry your fruits and vegetables from point A to point B in your grocery store (or Wal-Mart, since that’s what everyone has these days), as well as all the gasoline that goes into your car, no matter how fuel-efficient it may be (except Dave. Dave gets a pass on this, because he drives an electric car). Diesel is also what powers Steggy, our apartment on wheels, and so we periodically take note of diesel prices. When we left California (the state with among the highest gas prices in the country), diesel was hovering around $3.30/gallon and was just a little higher than gasoline, because gasoline had started to drop a bit (those halcyon days are over, of course). As of this week, gasoline is near the $3.80 mark, while diesel is $4.11 per gallon. Please understand: diesel is a lower-grade fuel than unleaded gasoline. It is easier and cheaper to manufacture, even with the new requirements that it not give cancer to low-income kids living next to the Santa Monica freeway. And while diesel vehicles are, pound for pound, more fuel-efficient than gasoline vehicles, the big rigs are operating close to our 8-10 miles per gallon. Which means prices everywhere will rise. Will wages rise to meet them? Oh, possibly there will be an election-year attempt to bump the minimum wage up another 20 cents, but in the overall scheme of things, I think we all know that things are bad. Real bad. For everyone except the very rich.

We’re all poorer, but where did the money go? We all know the answer. It went into the pockets of the top 1%, the Bush cronies and other billionaires (let’s be fair– the Democrats have the same money-backed problem as the Republicans, and President Clinton, much as I loved him, was very good for businesses and not always for the little guys). And the prevailing message that I get from how these billionaires continue to get disgustingly wealthy is that the path to financial gluttony lies through practices that would make baby Jesus weep. From war profiteering to outsourcing to marginal and unfair factories to employing prison slave labor here in the US– it seems like there is no way to profit in a way that’s karmically justified.

Put another way, what companies do you know of that have, top-to-bottom, excellent business, labor, ethical, and environmental practices, and which have managed to become one of the “big boys” in the profit-making engines of big business?

I can’t think of many, and the ones that do come to mind beg me to do some research before tossing their names around. After all, if it sounds too good to be true.